Photo: Joe Toreno

If you want to lace your house with cool hidden passages, you can't simply add hinges to a bookcase and shout, "To the Batmobile!" You have to account for shelf sag, and you have to build something sturdy enough to work hundreds of thousands of times. "My history in robotics helps," says Steve Humble, founder of Creative Home Engineering—the only company dedicated to making hidden rooms and secret doors.

The design engineer discovered his calling when he wanted to add a Scooby Doo passageway to his own house and learned that there was no one to build it for him. He got a special contractor's license created for designing secret lairs, then he went on to design over 150 installations for geeky Goldfinger wannabes all over the country. Customers have very specific requests: a door that opens when certain piano keys are pressed or when pieces on a chessboard are arranged just so. And then there are more ambitious undertakings, like "an underground complex with 10 secret-passage doors made from Kevlar-steel ballistic armor, blast-resistant hinges, and multiple redundant locking systems." We can only hope whoever ordered that is using their powers for good.