According to The New York Times' Allyson Waller, "Chris Town was assembling a bed frame for a friend's son in a 19th century house in Guilford, Connecticut....when the floor gave out beneath him." Town had fallen into a fieldstone cistern well that was concealed beneath the floor boards, Waller reports. The well was 20 feet deep and was filled with about seven feet of water.

Firefighters were called to come and rescue Town from the well, a feat Capt. Chris Gode said he has never had to execute in his 26 years of service. According to Waller, the house was built in 1843 and the floorboards over the well was likely a later addition.

"Sometimes homes had wells in their basements in order to protect them from freezing,” Dennis Johnson, director of health for the town of Guilford told The New York Times. "Then, with really historic homes, sometimes we occasionally find them in an addition on a house, or in a basement or right next to the house. Occasionally you do find them, but it’s not real common."