Choose the correct a lternative to fill in the blanks respectively.

Several years ago, Walter R. Wheeler, an architectural historian, began to notice a pattern. Many of _______ elderly colleagues - contractors, carpenters, historians - told _______ that, while renovating or dismantling older houses in the region, they had found strange, unsettling things hidden in the walls: dead animals, dismembered dolls, children’s shoes, broken knife blades, and also bottles filled _______ human hair, bent nails, or pins. Some of these objects _______ secreted behind old planks and floorboards. Others were concealed in nooks and voids that would have been inaccessible if not _______ the intrusive work of restoration - suggesting that they had been placed there deliberately, _______ permanent parts of the building.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/witch-houses-of-the-hudson-valley