Normally, when we meet up with friends, we head out on the town. But sometimes there’s nothing like a chill night at a good friend’s place—unless they live in a pigsty or worse…so much worse. We all think we know our friends, but do we really? These shocking stories blow the doors wide open on the skeletons our friends are hiding in their closets.
1. The Big, Very Un-Comfy Couch
My best friend and I had been friends for probably 12 years so we were super close and our families were super close. We would travel together for sports and stuff. Her parents were basically my parents. Her dad was this big, big guy who was super tough. He was scary if you didn’t know him but he was really just teddy bear at heart.
We would usually spend the afternoons after school together since both sets of parents were working. We ended up at her house one particular day. We walked in expecting no one to be home, but we were in for the surprise of a lifetime. Her dad was sitting on the couch just sobbing uncontrollably. It took a while for him to catch his breath enough to tell us what happened.
He told us that someone had walked into his work that day and just opened fire on a bunch of people. He lost three of his closest friends that day. He was in shambles. My BFF just instantly started crying and jumped in her dad’s arms. It was one of the most wholesome, yet scary and awkward things I have ever been witness to.
2. A Very Long Nap
This didn’t happen to me but to my girlfriend. She went over to her friend/neighbor’s house one day and it smelled absolutely awful. Like unbearably bad. She asked what the smell was coming from and her friend just said, "Oh that's grandma. She’s just sleeping over in the next room.” Well, turns out grandma’s little “nap” was more restive than she thought.
Three days later, the sandman (a.k.a. the coroner) was carrying grandma out of the house in a body bag. It’s anybody’s guess how long she had been decomposing in there.
3. Pack Rat Roommates
My best friend lives in the basement of his parents’ house. It sounds pretty sweet that he has a whole floor of the house to himself—until you realize his parents’ dirty secret. They’re hoarders. My friend has to walk through a tunnel of car parts, furniture, Christmas decorations, moldy clothes, and dried dog droppings just to go upstairs to use the bathroom.
Whenever I visit, I can tell that they've tried to fill his mostly clean room with junk because he pushes it back out onto the piles.
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4. My Door’s Always Open…Always
My best friend’s mom was single but she seemed to have a different boyfriend every other month. She would always walk around in her birthday suit and before you go thinking that that was like a “Stacy’s Mom” situation, it was the most awkward thing ever. She would leave the door of her bedroom open whenever she and her new boyfriend were being intimate.
It was the most awkward thing in the world to play Halo with my friend hearing what was happening just upstairs.
5. A New Kind Of Bed Wetting
When I was a kid, my mom took me and my siblings to visit an old friend of hers. We were playing with her friend's kids while our parents caught up on old times. Her friend's little boy, probably five or six at the time, really wanted to show us his room. I wish I had never, ever seen that little boy’s room. Nothing could have prepared me.
For the most part, it was pretty normal if a little messy. The weirdest thing though was his bed. It was just mattresses on the floor. Then he showed us a hole in the mattress, about one foot in diameter. He explained to us that that was the “toilet.”
6. Go To Your Room! And Stay There!
This didn’t happen at a friend’s house but it was still the most messed up thing I’ve seen in another person’s place. I used to work at an apartment complex. One of my jobs was to come in after someone moved out and do a maintenance assessment. It was usually pretty straightforward. Most people left the apartment the way they got it with only normal wear and tear.
The worst exception to this was an eviction case. When I walked in, I found that the tenants had left the living room full of garbage. They had obviously strewn it about intentionally. They also had a dog that they clearly didn’t let outside or clean up after, if you get what I’m saying. As bad as that was, it wasn’t even the worst part of the apartment.
The worst was the kids' room. I guess the kids must have been between three and six years old based on the “evidence” I observed. The kids had drawn on the walls with crayons. In fact, they had practically repainted the walls in crayon. It definitely would have taken them a very long time to do that—they must have been drawing on the walls for months. And it got much worse.
The closet reeked of urine and it was easy to see why. The lock on the door faced outwards into the hallway. The tenants had changed the knob around so they could lock their kids in their room. At that point, I turned it over to the authorities. It was obviously a case of child neglect. So terrible.
7. Rub-a-dub-dub In The Tub
I used to wonder why my friend always wanted to come over to my house to play. No matter what the circumstances were, she just never seemed to want to go to her place to hang out. One day, we ended up at her place and, well, I learned why she wanted to be anywhere but there. Her place was like something out of a horror flick.
Every room in the house was full of trash and looked like a hurricane had gone through it. The worst part was the bathtub. It was filled to the brim with a mysterious, murky brown water. Suffice to say, we kept playing at my house after that.
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8. Where Are Your Manners?
When I was about six years old, I would sometimes go to my neighbor’s house for breakfast. We were close friends but I guess I didn’t know his family as well as I thought I did. Turns out his dad had something of a bad temper—or he wasn’t very good at practical jokes. One morning, my friend’s dad asked him to pass the ketchup.
My friend either didn't hear his dad or ignored him. Either way, his dad overreacted big time. He reached over and grabbed the ketchup himself then proceeded to smash it over my friend’s head. Free dye job.
9. Let Them Eat Cake
I was 19 when I had to babysit the kids of some family friends (a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl) at their house after their usual sitter quit unexpectedly. The first day was rough but I brought some cookies and games to ease into it and get the kids accustomed to me. The second day was a babysitter’s nightmare.
The house was the definition of a disaster: junk everywhere, mud and dirt on most general surfaces, and a musky smell in every single room. The girl I was watching wanted a snack, so I went to the fridge to get something for her. The entire inside was brown and filthy from years of neglect. I gave up on the fridge and went to the cabinet.
It was still a mess but I managed to find some crackers. As I turned back to the living room to give her the crackers, I found the girl holding something baked in her hands. It was beige, kind of dense, shiny, and covered in a foamy fluffy stringy substance. I gasped in horror—it looked like an alien’s idea of food—and asked her what it was.
She pointed to an ornate glass cake display behind a pile of paperwork and junk on the dining table. I looked and inside the container was a cake that, well, had seen better days—or years. That thing was at least two or three weeks beyond the point of being even somewhat edible. It had partially dissolved, was covered in white and green mold and it was sitting in a centimeter of some liquid that I assume was what it was melting into.
I told her to spit it out and she reacted by shoving the whole thing into her mouth, sprinting to her bedroom and removing a piece of wood that covered the broken spot where an old AC window unit used to be. She then jumped out the first-floor window and ran down the back alley. I had to chase her down a back alley and finally grabbed the hood of her jacket and she fell to the ground.
By the time I got her home, the boy had gone halfway down the street in the other direction, throwing fireworks at a mail truck. There was no third day.
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10. Everything That Glitters Ain’t Clean
I was at my friend’s place and he asked me to get us a couple of clean coffee mugs from the dishwasher. I’ve been second-guessing everything I’ve ever eaten at his place ever since. Besides the two “clean” mugs in the dishwasher, I found a couple of other not-so-clean items. Staring back at were two toilet brushes, just washed. No amount of dish detergent would make that kosher.
11. Watering The Garden
I was friends with this girl who had the strangest habit when she was home. She would always get glasses of water (yay, for hydration) but she would pretty much never finish them. Instead of pouring smaller glasses, she came up with a “solution.” When she had had enough to drink, she would just dump the rest on the carpet because "it just absorbs it.”
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12. It’s Like A Doll House But Creepier
I went to high school with a girl who had the weirdest family. They would dress up their house like it was a model home in a magazine or something. For example, they dressed the dining room table with a plastic Thanksgiving feast complete with plastic food on nice plates and fake wine in fake glasses. And that was just the ground floor.
When you walked into her bedroom the bed was made with the top corner open as if she just got out of bed. There was a tray with a fake bowl of cereal and a fake glass of orange juice. On the floor were coloring books and crayons as if a child lived in the room. They kept the place spotless and every room had an odd theme of fake living.
Even her parents’ bedroom had quite a few large African animal statues and fake rose petals leading to the bed.
13. A Gruesome Memento
I moved cities in the second or third grade. I met someone the first day and he invited me to his house that weekend to stay over. Everything was great at first. We played GameCube and stayed up until three in the morning (the latest I had been awake up to that point). When we finally couldn’t keep our eyes open, he said we had to sleep in the basement so that we wouldn’t wake his parents when we went upstairs.
I actually thought it was pretty cool to sleep in the basement. Little did I know, I was descending into a house of horrors. When we got downstairs with our sleeping bags, I immediately knew something was wrong. The worst smell I've ever experienced filled my nostrils the further we descended. I found the culprit in the corner of the room.
There was a bed covered in what looked like crusty blood and some pus-colored streaks. Turns out, his mother had had a home birth the week prior and kept the sheets as a memento. I haven't been back since.
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14. I Think I’ve Seen A Ghost
I was friends with my little league baseball coach's son. One day they invited me to their house for a "play date." As I walked through the door, I saw a huge framed white cloth with some weird symbol. I didn't think much about it because at the time I didn't know what it was. My coach noticed me looking at it as I entered the house and said, "My Grandad wore that. It’s been in the family for years.”
Naturally, I thought nothing of it. If anything, I thought that it was cool that they kept old family heirlooms like that. But now that I’m older I realize what that white robe was. It was a KKK robe. And the worst part of it: I’m not white.
15. Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees. Or…
I was visiting a friend this one time. We were having fun so we decided to extend our night by grabbing a 30-pack at the nearby store. I’m no freeloader so I told my friend that we had to stop by an ATM so I could pick up some cash to pay my half. Then my friend just turned and looked at me and said, "Don't worry about it, we can just go to the money drawer.”
Yeah, you read that right. Money drawer. This kid's family literally kept a drawer full (overflowing) with $20 bills in the kitchen. You could just walk up, grab a fat stack of 20s whenever you needed something. It was pretty surreal. I never questioned where all of that cash came from. Probably better I didn’t know.
16. It’s Quiet. Too Quiet.
My now ex-girlfriend’s house and family was so creepy because it was so normal. Like eerily so. Her family was kind of your typical Midwestern family. They were extremely nice and amazing people. Not a bad bone in their bodies. Anyways, I met them and everything was great. Her mother made an amazing dinner and we feasted like kings.
Afterward, we sat down on the couch and we all just talked. No TV, no cellphones, no bickering, no fighting, no trash talking about other family members or curse words. Nothing. Even her nephews sat on the floor and listened to the stories the older people told. It was like an episode of The Brady Bunch. And then it hit me.
Coming from a rambunctious Irish Catholic family, I was probably the dysfunctional one from a weird home. It was really a life-changing event for me just to know that families like that do exist. A weird experience for me. A great experience.
17. The Multiplex
I went to meet a friend of a friend and to pick up some of their belongings as they had moved out. It was the first time I was meeting that guy—and definitely the last. We walked into his place and he had three TVs and various computer screens set up in the living room. All of them were playing…adult entertainment. That guy and my friend thought that it was completely normal and my friend didn't warn me.
After we left, my friend just shrugged and said, “That's what he does.”
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18. That Ain’t No Kitty
My friend Todd and I were both ten years old. I spent a lot of time at his house, but always had the feeling that things were just off in some way. I didn't know what his mom did for a living but I knew that she slept until two in the afternoon every day. Something that always threw me off was the overpowering stench of urine in their place.
Todd told me that the smell was from his cat and that it wafted up from the basement. But I couldn't understand how one cat was capable of that stench. Turns out, it wasn’t. Eventually, his mom and stepdad eventually were caught manufacturing speed.
19. Mannequin Make Out
I showed up at my friend’s house unannounced as was the style at the time. His mom or dad or somebody was outside and told me to just go right down as he was in the basement. I probably should have announced myself when I went—I could have spared us both a really awkward encounter. My friend was in the basement in his backroom.
When I went down, I found him making out with the top half of a mannequin. He had even dressed it up with makeup and everything. I wish I hadn't let out a noise of surprise and could have just left him cause dude really freaked out that I saw him and I felt so bad.
20. The Other Crocodile Dundee
One of my friends was friends with this kind of shady guy. He was filthy rich though. I thought that he maybe had some high connections in low places if you get my drift. Anyway, my friend and I went to this place and he was like, “Bro, want to see my crocodile?” I laughed, thinking that he was talking about fancy, expensive crocodile shoes. Nope.
Dude opened the door to the basement. Sure enough, there was a crocodile. Probably kept it around to get rid of “evidence.”
21. That’s Weird. Period.
This happened many years ago. My friend invited me over to her place to swim in her pool. She was someone I had just met through another friend of mine so I didn’t know her that well. The three of us were in her room changing into our swimsuits. That's when I noticed something disturbing. There were a bunch of used—read: bloody—maxi pads laying open on her desk.
I asked her what that was all about and she very nonchalantly answered, "It's so my mom knows I'm not pregnant.” We were maybe 12 at the time.
22. A “Log” Chopper
The strangest thing I saw in my friend’s place was in their bathroom. Honestly, they had a normal house apart from this. I had to take a trip to the loo when I noticed a real machete hanging from the bathroom door. When I asked my friend why they had a bathroom, he basically said, “Just in case, man.” In case what exactly?
I guess it was there in case someone broke in when you were busy fighting dirt dragons—you wouldn’t be at a total disadvantage. Everyone at his place was surprised when I said I'd never heard of it. But I now keep a bathroom hammer handy, because, really, you never know.
23. That New Box Smell
I was at my friend’s place and we were getting something out of his dad's closet. I noticed that there was a ton of expensive electrical equipment stuffed into the back of the closet. It was all still in boxes, in the wrapping and everything. I asked him about it. Apparently, his dad kept everything new for a year before unboxing it and actually using it.
My friend didn't know why his dad did that. Not the creepiest thing but still boggles my mind. Very strange.
24. The Bubble-Wrapped House
The weirdest (and I mean creepiest) thing that I saw at a friend’s place was the extent to which his family went to "preserve" their furniture. Each piece of furniture, including the lampshades, had a custom-cut plastic shell draped over it. Every furniture leg had a plastic bowl underneath it to distribute weight across the carpet, preventing indents.
The strangest part was the plastic pathways laid out across the floor. These pathways were kind of like "plastic carpets" laid on top of the real carpet. They didn’t allow you to walk on the actual carpet. Instead, you had to walk on these plastic mats that crisscrossed the floor and connected all the rooms to each other.
It looked like the entire house belonged on the set of Dexter.
25. Father, Dearest
My friend’s dad was actually the weirdest thing in his house. When I was a kid, I used to stay for dinner. But my friend’s dad wouldn’t eat with us. The mom would make a plate of food, take it down the hall and slide it halfway under the door to the basement. A few seconds later the plate would disappear to the other side. No one at the house seemed to think this was odd.
The other odd thing his family did was every weeknight at 7:00 PM on the dot, the family would clear out of the living room so my friend’s dad could come and watch Star Trek. Once the show was over, he would go back into the basement and the family would move back into the living room. It was creepy. He was like a cave troll.
26. Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty
When I was a kid, I went to a friend's house. It was my first time going to his place—and I wished it would have been my last. There was this really pretty kitty asleep on the couch so, naturally, I went over to pet it. But if I had been expecting a soft, cuddly, furry animal then I was in for an unpleasant and morbid surprise.
My friend’s family had their cat stuffed taxidermy style after it passed and they just had it proudly on display on their couch. Gross.
27. Whose House Is It Anyway?
I hate to admit it but I used to be the kid with the messed-up house that I didn’t want my friends to see. Ever. My mom boarded dogs out of my childhood home for money but she wasn’t any good at it. The dogs were always doing their business in the house—number one and number two. She took on way more than she was capable of handling.
The dogs were always so loud and I couldn’t go downstairs without gagging on the stench and having these dirty dogs jump all over me. Honestly, I hated my life. I could barely keep any friends and I couldn’t convince my mom to get rid of the dogs. She thought I was trying to “take away her happiness” by wanting a clean, quiet, calm home to live in and invite friends to.
28. Anybody Home In There?
I went to my friend’s place to pick up some headphones he was selling to me. When I walked into the living room, I noticed a lady sitting in a chair. She was totally unresponsive. I mean, practically comatose. When I asked my friend if she was doing alright, he said, “Oh, that's my aunt. She's high on smack.” It seemed perfectly normal to him.
I said, “Hi,” but she didn't seem to notice because she didn’t blink or anything. I got the headphones and got the heck out of there.
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29. Get Your Head In The Game
When I was growing up, we used to have a human skull in a glass case in our living room. It was years before I figured out that was really weird. My mom got it from a doctor friend or something. It was just some random head, not like a relative or anything. We called him Freddy and had to superglue his jaw back on every few years when it fell off.
I wonder if my friends who came over thought that it was weird.
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30. Diaper Duty
This wasn’t a friend’s house but it was still really weird. I was an adult literacy volunteer and I went to this couple's trailer. A shirtless kid, maybe five or six, walked in wearing a diaper. At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I thought maybe he had developmental issues. Then the mother said, "About time to change your diaper, ain't it?"
In perfect, clear English the boy said defiantly, "You ain't gonna change my diaper."
31. Grandfathered In
I went to a friend’s house and my friend’s dad had the strangest collection. He had lined their halls with grandfather clocks. That was a little weird but I didn’t think much of it. The weird part came when his dad told me and my friend, "Don't you kids go around telling anybody about my clocks.” In all fairness to him, they were probably worth a fortune.
32. The Writing On The Walls
I will never forget visiting my friend’s house when we were kids. The thing that stood out to me was the wallpaper. They had it in all of the hallways. The pattern was of totally undressed women. All throughout the apartment. Just a bunch of a pattern tiny, unclothed women. We were maybe eight years old. It was amazing. And kind of weird.
33. Cat Got Your Tongue?
I went to my friend’s house for his birthday. Honestly, their house was normal but the birthday party was…well, very abnormal. Instead of a birthday cake, they had a cow tongue. It wasn't like they couldn't afford a birthday cake either. They just had a cow tongue with a single candle in it. I hope he wished for a normal birthday cake.
34. Is Your Toilet Running? Then You Should Flush It
I was about 12 or 13, visiting my best friend's house for the first time. After lunch, I got the urge to take a dump, so I went to the restroom and did my thing. I finished up and flushed...only nothing happened. I took a step back and flushed again but still nothing happened. At that point I started freaking out—I had just broken my friend’s toilet.
I was getting so nervous. I didn’t have any money to pay to fix the toilet or buy a new one. Worse yet, I was stuck standing there, sweating, with my “delivery” just floating in the toilet. I tried to figure out a plan but after 15 minutes I couldn’t think of anything. I finally decided to fess up and face the embarrassment.
I stepped outside and sheepishly told his mom that I broke their toilet. She started laughing, went into the bathroom, and very calmy turned on the water flow to the toilet. She waited a few minutes then flushed and down went the log. Everyone (my best friend, his mom, and his sister) took the opportunity to start laughing at me because I didn't know it was "normal" to turn the water on/off whenever I needed to use the bathroom.
To this day if I'm unfamiliar with a restroom, I always do a precautionary flush just to make sure everything is working the way it should.
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35. Are Those Bones Or Are You Happy To See Me?
When I was dating my first girlfriend in high school, she invited me over to her house for dinner and to meet the parents. At one point I was talking with her father in his study and I noticed lots of old-looking phallic-shaped objects on the shelves in the room. On closer inspection, I discovered that they were, in fact, mummified phalluses. There were dozens of them.
Fortunately, there was a perfectly rational explanation—her father was not, as I feared, castrating her boyfriends. Turns out, he was a urologist and an amateur archaeologist. Still…it was pretty creepy and intimidating.
36. I Like Your Stash
My friend was a bit of a slob but that was nothing compared to his parents, who were really bad hoarders. My friend had a full-sized trash can in his room and it was always full, but his parents had him beat. By a lot. They had dedicated an entire "wing" of their home to their “hoard.” They said that it was off-limits which, of course, only increased our intrigue.
My friend would take anyone and everyone into the “off-limits” wing when the opportunity presented itself. While the rest of the house was relatively messy, it was nothing like that wing. Behind that door there were boxes, old newspapers, and random stuff everywhere. The hall that led to their room had a narrow pathway carved out with dust built up several inches to the side of it.
The most shocking thing was their bed. It was visually lopsided. They were big people and apparently that was the side they got jiggy on. Fortunately, there were all of those boxes and mountains of dust to muffle the sound.
37. If It’s Yellow…
I found a dog poop on my friend's carpet next to his bed. When I pointed it out, he elected not to pick it up but to leave it and clean it up later. At the same sleepover, I went to use the restroom and the toilet had not been flushed by the previous person. It was just pee in there, but it had been in there so long that when I peed into the water, I broke through a solid thin layer of film created by the unflushed pee.
38. Two-Ply, One-Ply, No-Ply
Two friends of mine shared an apartment. They started fighting about who bought the most toilet paper. I didn’t realize how intense their feud got until I visited once. It wasn’t so much what I found but what I didn’t find. Their fight had gotten so bad that they both stopped buying toilet paper altogether. And they resorted to desperate measures.
It got to the point that they only used the washroom when they had to shower. Sometimes it’s the things that aren’t there that are the most shocking.
39. The Franken-Puppy
A friend from middle school had parents who would always get him dogs even though they didn't bother to take good care of them. My friend loved those dogs but the parents would always let them out somehow and they'd run away. One day I went to his house and he told me about how his current dog was hit by a car and half its body was smashed.
I assumed that the dog had passed in the accident but when I visited his place, I was shocked to learn the truth. He walked me to the backyard with a small plate of food for the dog. The parents had dug a shallow hole and threw the dog in there while it was still alive. Poor thing was withering and suffering while maggots were eating its lower half.
The next day, he told me that his dad had put it down himself. At that point, it was a mercy.
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40. Shocking Revelations
When I was 13, I was at a neighbor friend's trailer (we lived in the same park). As we were hanging out, my friend's older sister got into a fight with her mom and they started yelling at each other. His sister was shouting that no one ever believed her and then dropped the big news. She said that her deaf uncle (her dad's brother, also living in the trailer) had been forcing himself on her at night.
It was the most uncomfortable situation I'd ever been in—and remains so to this day. I wanted to leave immediately but was halfway way through coloring in his older brother's tattoo so I couldn’t just cut and run.
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41. Little Terrors
When I was about 15, I went to a friend’s house (let’s call him Doug). From there, we met up with one of his friends at their house (let’s call him Tyler). Down the hallway at Tyler’s house was a door with a deadbolt on the outside. Tyler asked us if we wanted to see something “hilarious.” I said, “Sure,” and immediately regretted it.
Tyler unlocked the door and there was a little old lady, probably in her mid-to-late 80s, in the corner of a dark room. She was surrounded by dirty dishes and half-eaten bologna sandwiches. She looked up at us, startled, and said, “Who are you? What do you want?” Without answering, Tyler then picked up one of the sandwiches and threw it at her.
He got the poor, little old lady covered in mustard and bologna. He then threw a drink at her. It was awful. At that point, she got up and started yelling, “What the hell are you doing?” and cursing at him. Tyler ran out the door and locked the deadbolt behind him. She was banging on the door. It was awful. Anything but “hilarious.”
A minute or so passed and Tyler unlocked the door and walked in. She was so visibly confused and sweetly, calmly asked why she was wet and what was all over her. “It’s alright Grandma,” Tyler said, “just sit down and eat your food.” Tyler and Doug thought it was the funniest thing in the world and didn’t stop laughing for hours about it.
I left and didn’t go back to either of their houses again. Just witnessing that made me sick to my stomach.
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42. The Weirdest Family Values
I dated a guy whose family was just…odd. Visiting their house felt like stepping into the twilight zone. They just did things so differently, sometimes I wondered if they weren’t aliens. For example, no one in the house knew how to use a stove. They used the microwave or ate out. They left every cabinet and drawer in the house wide open for no discernible reason.
His mother walked around the house in her birthday suit pretty much constantly and took about ten baths a day. His parents would go to McDonald's to watch TV despite having a very nice TV with satellite. And his family had a lot of grandiose tales. Things like they saved two men from a plane crash and how the mother outran a pack of wolves in suburban Arizona.
There were a lot more oddities but those were the strangest of them.
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43. Kids, Bath Time!
I spent the night at a friend's house in the sixth grade. To put that into perspective, we were eleven or twelve years old. Anyhow, he lived with just his mom—his dad wasn't in the picture and he was an only child. Seeing as though it was just the two of them, they developed a close relationship but, in my humble opinion, they were way too close.
We were having a great time until his mom called him for bath time. With her. Like, together. They even left the door open like it was nothing.
44. House Slitherin
I had a friend named David and he invited me to his house once. Little did I know that his family were horrific hoarders. You couldn't see the floor of his house, and I was literally stepping in bowls filled with cereal. At one point, I saw a snake just slithering through the refuse. That was way more than enough for me.
I immediately made up an excuse that I was sick so I could go home. It was an actual nightmare.
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45. The Lion’s Club
My parents were in a bowling league and would bring me with them. I made friends with a girl who hung out at the bowling alley because she lived in a home on an acre of land next to it. One night, she invited me to over to her house while my parents bowled. I asked my parents and they said I could. I was in for the story of a lifetime.
We walked to her house and when I walked in there was a lion cub (like Simba, like a giant wild cat) chained to a coffee table in the front room. She asked me if I wanted to pet the lion and of course I did! I pet the lion, we hung out and I got back to the bowling alley like nothing happened. I really should have taken a picture.
When I told my parents about it, they were like, “Sure,” in that indulgent kind of way that I knew meant they didn’t believe me. The joke was on them though. Years later, I was reading the newspaper and saw that the girl and her family had been charged for illegally having exotic cats. I showed my parents and had the best "told you so" moment in my life.
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46. My House, My Rules, My Face. Everywhere.
One of my wife's co-workers invited us to a dinner party. I wasn't really friends with that guy because, well, you’ll see. Anyhow, he was a very accomplished doctor who, supposedly, was the foremost authority in his specialty. I knew the man had a huge ego but nothing prepared me for what I saw when we went to his home—or shrine, as it turns out.
As soon as we walked in the door there was a life-size painting of himself that one of his patients had given him as a gift. There was nothing too strange—if a little self-centered—about that. He saved a patient’s life and they were very grateful so they gave him a painting. No biggie, right? Well, that house might as well have been an art gallery…in his honor.
His wife took our jackets, hung them up then walked us to his massive living room where the rest of the guests were mingling. As I looked around the room to take in what a magnificent home this man had, I noticed that there were hundreds of pictures lining his shelves and walls. Every single one of those pictures was of him. Not of his wife, not of his four children, not of his siblings, parents, etc.
Even the pictures that looked like they may have been group photos, he had clearly cropped so that he was the only one in the frame. I'm terrible at hiding my true feelings. My face usually gives me away every time but I spent the next hour desperately trying to pretend like that wasn't remotely strange. After a few drinks, I decided to head to the bathroom.
I had to take a dump and I'm not shy about doing so at another person's home. I walked into their guest bathroom, closed the door, lifted up the lid, sat down, and grabbed one of a dozen books that were sitting next to the toilet. The first book I picked up was—surprise!—written by our host. So, I picked up another book and you guessed it, that guy was the author.
I checked all of the books in the stack and not surprisingly, they were all written by this guy. Part amused and part disgusted I looked up and noticed there was a picture on a small table across from the toilet. That guy again, staring at me while I tried to use the washroom.
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47. Is That A Feather Boa?
I had a friend who lived on his own in high school and we partied at his place a lot. He had a revolving door of roommates to help with rent. One of these roommates was a seriously sketchy character. He was extremely paranoid and rarely spoke to us besides uttering vague threats. The one he always repeated was that we never, EVER go in his room. Seemed easy enough because he always kept it locked.
Well, one day he found himself locked up—in the clink. He communicated through family again not to enter his room, saying that eventually, his family would come get his things. Weeks went by and a strange smell started coming from the locked room. This dude and his family were super scary so we didn’t want to mess around and find out.
But finally, my friend just couldn’t take the smell anymore. He figured that it was probably just rotting trash and that he could take it out without touching anything else. He was way in over his head though. When he finally entered the room, he found a massive, decomposing boa constrictor. It wasn’t even in a tank.
48. Fearsome Father Figure
When I was ten or eleven, I was hanging out at my best friend’s place. For some reason, his dad got really angry. He must have been seeing red. He grabbed my friend by the arm and dragged him across the living room. He was so rough that he snapped my friend’s arm. In public, the family blamed it on some skating accident. But I knew the dark truth. It was so sad and creepy.
49. A Family Photo Album To Remember
My good friend in high school’s parents were discussing putting in an alarm on their house once while I was over, but were balking at the price. I told them I would cable it for them, which made they very excited. The attic access was in the master bedroom closet so I had to go through there. And their closet had some skeletons.
When I went up into the attic, I found a bunch of pictures of my friend’s mom with a guy who was not her husband. I mean a bunch of pictures—and she was doing it all with this dude. My friend’s dad was permanently disabled and didn’t have great use of one side, so I’m guessing that’s why she thought that was a safe place to hide her dirty secret.
I never said anything to their family about it.
50. It’s A Feline Frenzy!
I went to high school two towns south of where I grew up and I made some new friends through sports almost immediately. The two girls I befriended invited me to this other girl's house. I hadn't really talked to her much but she seemed nice so I went with them. After a little while of jumping on the trampoline, one of my new friends asked this other girl to show me her "cat room.”
We went up to the bonus room above the garage and opened the door to a house of horrors. There were countless cats and kittens of all ages, colors and sizes. But not even Catwoman would have been comfortable in there. The whole room—the ceiling, the walls, the floor, everything—was covered in filth. The poor cats were crawling over one another.
The girl whose house it was didn’t seem to think it was off. She just started playing with the kittens and tried to hand one to me to play with. I don't even know what I did. The two girls who invited me were laughing hysterically and I tried to make some type of excuse to get out of there and one of them was like, “Oh, but you haven’t met "Sprinkles" yet.”
The girl whose house it was went off in search of one specific cat and we were trapped in there for another ten minutes while my new friends laughed maniacally. I can remember the smell. Oh, the smell.
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