“Girl, Your Lungs...” — Woman Finds Mysterious Black Soot All Over Her Apartment

A woman's apartment is being covered in black soot and she has no idea where it's coming from.

Kaitlyn (@kaitlynclayton13) documented the strange environmental conditions in a TikTok that culminated in a ton of theories from users, with one that appears to be more popular than the rest.

"Help! Does anyone know what this is?" Kaitlyn writes in a text overlay of her video that she posted to her viral clip that's accumulated over 51,000 likes with some 4,700-plus comments.

"I'm about to have a problem with my apartment complex because they can't tell me what this is; I'm about to show you guys something," Kaitlyn says at the beginning of her video, which then cuts to her standing by a window in her unit. She's holding a bottle of "glass cleaner" and "clean paper towel[s]" which she shows off to the camera before she gets to work.

"You can see there's nothing on this paper towel," she remarks before spraying her window with the glass cleaner and begins wiping down the glass. "Watch this. Gonna spray the window, watch this," she repeats again as she wipes side to side. "Literally one swipe, ready?" she says, before showing the paper towel she just used up to the camera.

It looks almost entirely black, as if she just cleaned a dry erase board with it. "Is that normal?" she asks, chewing her gum and looking into the camera. "And there's black soot all over my walls, everywhere in my house, there's black soot everywhere," she states.

"Like this is from another, just one swipe."

Her video then cuts to another angle of her bedroom, indicating that the problem extends to the very walls of the unit. "There's also lines of black soot on the wall and they're in the corners."

Kaitlyn goes on to show more of the soot build up in another video where she shows a part of a sliding glass door.

"This is what it looks like on my slider, just black soot all down my slider," she says, before holding her finger up to the camera and rubbing it into a part of the door. It creates a dark, dirty swirl effect. "I just licked my finger, like what the f*ck is that? And I just cleaned this like two weeks ago," she says, hitting home, again, she has no idea where this soot is coming from.

"It's really bad in my bathroom, too, like, look," she says, showing how multiple areas in her apartment are covered in the substance. "I called my apartment complex one time and they told me that this is because I burn candles in my house."

Kaitlyn began to explain why she doesn't think this is the case: "For one, I rarely ever burn candles and for two, this is my whole house, how could this happen from like burning a candle once a week?" she asks before turning it around on her viewers, asking if they have any ideas where the soot could be from.

"Like let me know if anybody knows what this," she asks, and other users on the app weren't shy about sharing their speculations on what could be causing the soot buildup inside of her place.

One user remarked that she should immediately put an "air purifier" inside of her unit.

However someone else thought that she was endangering herself by staying inside of her apartment and that it would probably be in her best to immediately get out of there: "Girl, that means you, your lungs, and everything you own is covered in that. Getttt outtt asap."

Another person echoed the aforementioned user's sentiments while adding that Kaitlyn should seriously consider seeking legal counsel in order to address this matter. They also mentioned that she shouldn't let the building complex know that she's doing this: "Get a lawyer. That is not healthy for your lungs. Could be a furnace issue or something like that. Don’t tell the complex you’re getting a lawyer."

Why it would be best for her to keep them in the dark? Well, if the property management company is found guilty of any wrongdoing, business will continue as usual on their part, which means that Kaitlyn and her legal team can collect enough evidence to use in a possible case against the building.

Another TikTok user was sure that the soot was coming from the vents in Kaitlyn's place, and they came up with a way for her to prove it: "It's coming from your vents. The way you can prove this is get paper towels and tape them over each vent in the morning take a picture then at night take another picture to see how black they have become."

The user also added that she wasn't going to hand over her rent but rather put it in escrow until the issues were addressed: "Keep detailed records of this because if you need to put your rent in escrow this will be great documentation, I would do this a few days in a row and send it to the landlord."

There were a ton of other people who thought it was from vents, too: "Oh this happened in our house! The vents need blown out/cleaned. Probably a smoker lived there previously or a neighbor with shared vents smokes heavily."

"Ummm, that is DEFINITELY from the ventilation, and I can bet there are other apartments having the same issue," another wrote.

Kaitlyn responded to the above user, too, writing that building management told her that there were indeed other folks having the same problem: "They said there are! And they weren’t gonna do anything! They said it’s WORSE in some others?!!!"