Different house, different rules—but just how different? These Redditors confessed to the quirkiest and downright confounding things they’ve ever seen as houseguests in someone else’ abode. If one homeowner’s treasure is another person’s trash, what does that mean for the stuff we keep in our houses? Turn the other check to these wildest sights seen in someone else’s home.
1. Not Suitable for All Houseguests
My brother (about six at the time) came home from a friend's house upset and confused and my mom figured out that the kids' parents had been watching smutty videos openly in front of the kids. Needless to say, he wasn't allowed back. So screwed up.
2. Overprepared for a Game of Musical Chairs
Their living room had eight sofas in it. The room wasn’t that big and there was no other furniture. It was like a maze. Was told it was for the bible study they hosted at their home.
3. A Room for Business
They had a room where they would just let their dog poop on the floor. It didn't look like it was cleaned often.
4. In the Game of Thrones, You Cure Cancer or You Die
A guy at work had a golden throne in his parents’ house that his mom bought for him. He lives with them. A literal golden throne. I didn’t see it, but my other coworkers did, plus it’s the guy’s Facebook picture. He’s about 20. His mom also paid for a literal fluff piece in the local newspaper about how he’s going to cure cancer. He was just a student and not a very good one either.
5. A Cleansing Fire
A can of gasoline next to the toilet in their bathroom. I asked them what it was for and they told me they'd put it in the toilet, bathtub, and sink to clean it because it takes off grime and gunk.
6. Nothing Gets Better Than an Air-Dry
Friend would shower and never use a towel to dry off. He would just put his clothes back on (jeans, T-shirt, etc.) still soaking wet from showering. Pretty sure the family didn’t own towels.
7. A Fashionable Friend is Now Her Bodyguard
She had half a mannequin on her kitchen table that she dressed up. Just the head and torso. No arms and legs. Said it was because she liked some movie and this woman in a box that had no arms and legs. The same girl had a male blow-up doll that she dressed in clothes and buckled in her passenger seat, in case someone wanted to carjack her.
We called him Dan Dan the Rubber Man. She brought him in to work so he wouldn’t melt in the car. She was weird.
8. The Only Thing Worse Than a Chicken is a Spendthrift
I'm going to say medium-rare chicken. Had dinner at my friend’s house when I was 10. They said the blood made it delicious, I tried to politely ask if I could microwave it a little longer, which offended them and resulted in a lecture of how they ate people during WWII in Romania, and how lucky I was to have medium-rare chicken...
9. Welcome to the Wasteland
I had an appointment for a dishwasher installation (I'm a handyman), out in a, real backwoods, redneck wonderland of a town. They were on what they called a free farm, I think? All the animals ran free, and some even had access to the inside of the house. There. Was. Poop. Everywhere. Like, literal animal poop. It covered so much of the driveway, I had to tiptoe, and it was all over the house.
I walked past 5 piles of animal droppings attempting to hike my way to their kitchen. They openly apologized for the poop, citing their disabilities as the reason they had not disposed of the poop. The primary animals running free were geese and ducks. There were lots of pigs, dogs, cats, and other animals too. I didn't do the job and never went back.
10. Bloodsucker’s Pride
My mom had a friend who lived up the road that was an ex pole dancer and gave pole dancing lessons. She lived in a nice double-wide trailer with a really nice room with a stage, two poles, lights, fogger, full bar. It was a nice setup. That's not the part that was weird. You know those Christmas towns they sell at Hallmark or whatever?
She had a huge Halloween one set up. A dozen little haunted houses and a hundred little creepy figurines. In the middle of summer. And it was very well done. She was very proud of the tiny figure of Dracula bathing in blood. It was cool but odd. She was like a grandma showing off her little collection.
11. Speak of the Devil and Smell Like One Too
My uncle is 50 years old. He is retired and a millionaire. He never had a girlfriend. He spends his time with video games and sex workers. His house is filthy the smell is unbearable. In that beautiful house of his, he has over 700 devils. Plush devils, plastic devils, glass devils, big devils, small devils. You name it, he has it. It's all over the place on tables shelves and on the floor. He loves them.
12. The Dirty Days
While in elementary school, we lived in a four-story apartment complex. Had new neighbors move in just below us and they had four kids, I think. I had been invited over by the daughter that was my age. While getting the tour of her room and whatnot, I notice streaks on the floor in several of the rooms and an odd smell.
We get to her room and I move the door, and there’s human feces in the corner of the door, at the wall. One of her little brothers is running around with diapers on and she explains to me that he’s being potty trained. But explains it as if it’s normal that there's dried feces behind every door “because he’s learning.” Never went back to that house.
13. Someone Needs an Extreme Home Makeover
My next-door neighbor's entire decor. Awesome to me, but it's not every day you walk in and the shelves are lined with decorative skulls, spiders, various witchcraft items from ceiling to floor. She has a huge weirdly shaped jar filled with a hundred or so little plastic skulls and glass cabinets filled with potion bottles and such.
At one point, one whole wall was covered with the flags of the four Hogwarts houses, because she threw her kid a Harry Potter themed birthday party and didn't want to take them back down. Never been in the bedroom, but she's enthusiastically talked at length about her and her husband's BDSM collection that fills an entire closet.
14. Park Your Business Somewhere Else
My old childhood neighbors had nine dogs, a large German Shepherd/boxer mix and eight pugs. One old pug they rescued and a pair that they bred and had aspirations of becoming breeders with, and five of their puppies from the first litter because the wife couldn't part with any of them. That put the kibosh on the breeder plan and they did get them all neutered, to their credit.
Anyway, the fact that they kept an entire litter of puppies isn't the weird part. Because pugs have trouble in really hot weather and I live in the southern USA, it got very hot in the summer. The wife also didn't like to make the pugs go out when there was snow on the ground, because of how short they are. Their solution? Let eight pugs use their garage as a bathroom.
And I'm not talking with paper or pads down. I'm talking just right on the floor. They didn't clean it until it was too hard to walk through without stepping on poop. In which case they would pick up the poop and do a modicum of mopping. You might think, that's not THAT bad I guess, except you don't know that this wasn't an unused garage, they stored many things including spare furniture, workout equipment, books, etc., so it was all basking in the stench of two weeks’ worth of eight dogs’ worth of poop and pee for at least half the year.
I moved out of my home before they did theirs and I checked it a few years later and wasn't overly surprised that it had been condemned.
15. Better Safe Than Scratched Up
Not at someone else's house, my own, but I recognize how weird it is. We have child-proof locks on the bathroom cabinet where the toilet paper is kept, and on the cabinet under the kitchen sink where the cleaning chemicals are...despite there being no children in the house. My cat once destroyed a whole package of TP for fun.
The bathroom floor was covered, and there was a trail of paper going down the hallway. He has also been known to open all the kitchen cabinets and bat around whatever he finds. A can of soup is fine, he can't really hurt himself with that; but not so much that bottle of chemicals. So, we have childproof locks for the cat.
16. Kitty, Don’t Leave Home
I know someone who keeps her cat on a harness at all times, tethered by means of about 10 leashes attached end-to-end and tied to the coffee table. The cat is not allowed outside ever, but since she can't be bothered to be careful with the doors or keep the windows closed this is her solution. Also, the cat's litter box is in the bathtub, filled with way too little crystals, and 50% poop.
Smells like you would imagine, so I hate going to the toilet in her house. The reason for this torture? Her neighbors are Asian, and therefore she believes they will abduct and eat the cat if it wanders into their garden. I've been warned by several people not to mention it because she flies into a rage/panic and will not listen to reason and instead make you the bad guy for wanting to take away her beloved cat.
I would very much like to report her, but my reality is I can't because she would know it was me and would retaliate. Besides, it wouldn't do any good because the animal welfare authorities in this country can't do anything if she's not actively causing the cat any suffering, which she isn't beyond restricting its freedom of movement and forcing it to live in unhygienic conditions, which is not exactly uncommon.
Sadly, it's not a crime to be an ignorant racist idiot.
17. Hello, Dolly!
My great aunt has had these toddler-sized old lady dolls scattered around her house for as long as I can remember. They are ultra-detailed, with human hair wigs, outfits that get changed semi-frequently. They're dolls her late sister had made, so they are sentimental I suppose—but she sets them up in chairs all around the house.
One of them she calls by her sister’s name, and is always sat up in a rocking chair in the living room. The more horror movies I watch, the creepier they become.
18. A Bloody Bad Habit
Went to a work friend's house for the first time. At the time his fiancée lived with him, very loud and very opinionated. The house was small, and the kitchen was a mess, but I didn't think too much about it at the time. We went out back to shoot some hoops. After a bit, I had to go to the bathroom, so I went into the house and asked his girlfriend where the bathroom was.
She just kept watching the TV and just pointed down the hall to a small bathroom. When I opened the bathroom door, I was shocked, it looked like a crime scene and smelled awful. The entire floor was covered in bloody period panties with the pads still in them, like she had just dropped them and stepped out of them and left them where they lay.
They were literally everywhere on the floor and there was no safe place to step so I did an awkward balancing, twister pose to get the job done and get out of there. I couldn’t say anything. I was so embarrassed because she had to know, hell, they both had to know and thought nothing of it. Nothing was ever said, and they both used that bathroom before I left and never acted like anything was wrong.
I never went back, and still shudder when I think about it.
19. Let the Water Wash Away Your Sins
My ex-boyfriend's family would refill plastic water bottles and not clean them out. It absolutely grossed me out and often gave me sore throats from the germs. He would even happily drink mold in his water bottle that he used for work.
20. Putting Your Faith in the Dance
One day many years ago my friends and went to several open houses in West Hollywood to see how people with a little money lived. The third place we walked into featured framed photos of the owner with Richard Simmons in every single room, including the bathroom. I guess the homeowner lost a lot of weight 30 years ago and was forever grateful.
Richard’s eyes seemed to follow you wherever you went in the house.
21. A House is Not a Home
My sister-in-law's house she shared with her baby daddy. We knew they were living in squalor, and we were finally able to track them down. No edible food in the kitchen, broken glass littered the living room floor, kids running around in their underwear, no power but they had an extension cord run to the neighbor's house so they could watch TV.
No working toilets. They pooped in buckets and dumped it in the back yard occasionally. Five children were living there, too. The oldest was seven and had never been to school. He was illiterate except he could read some words for food so he would know what to steal from the grocery store down the road, so he and his brother didn't starve to death.
At seven, the only word he could spell correctly was "cookie.” Now, I cannot tell this part without crying...and I'm a full-grown man. Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I type this, but I've got to tell this story because the sadness of this broke my heart. The oldest boy was so desperate for any type of normalcy that he had cleaned about a 3x3 foot area of one remote corner of one bedroom hidden behind a bed.
He had meticulously picked the dirt out of the nasty carpet and had wiped the walls down as best he could. There, neatly lined up against the wall, were his little shoes with the laces all carefully folded into each one and the few Matchbox cars he owned carefully lined up in perfect order. That was the only part of his world he could control. I'll never forget seeing his little island and those little shoes among the chaos that was that house.
That day, right after physically dumping the "parents" out of their bed and screaming at them to "clean your freaking house,” we essentially kidnapped the two oldest to save them—the other ones had been dumped with other people at the time. We called the Department of Social Services on the way home, and in short order got the other children permanently removed.
Fast forward six years later. We adopted the two oldest boys, and the other siblings (eventually six in total, five at the time) were also adopted out to other families. All are doing amazingly well, and we have regular get-togethers for the kids. They are all great kids. That little illiterate boy who had never been to school? He's now a tall, handsome, well-spoken honor roll student in advanced math classes going into seventh grade.
The younger one is very musically talented and wants to be a neurosurgeon—he had brain surgery, so he knows about that profession. Our boys are both A/B students with mostly As, are polite, and trustworthy kids. They are growing into fine young men that any parent would be proud to call their sons. I shudder to think what could have happened had we not tracked them down and took them.
22. The Cold Green Yonder
I may have caused this in someone else. My family had a party, and we were dumping out the ice from our cooler after on our grass. The little neighbor girls, about five years old or so, came over and asked what were we doing. My dad and I look at each other, purposefully put on a confused face, then I turn to the girls and say, "You two don't ice your grass?"
One sheepishly responds " ... No." My dad finishes with "Oh, that's weird..." And that was the end of that conversation.
23. A Doggone Life for Her
When I was a kid, I went over to a friend from church's house. His mom was overweight and didn't get up out of her armchair the whole time. The place was pretty messy as you'd expect from an eight-year-old and a single mom who could barely walk, but overall it wasn't that bad. The weirdness: She had two little dogs, like terriers of some kind.
Little hyper yippie jerks. She kept a box of dog treats just on the ground, open, on its side, with the treats spilling out and within easy reach of the dogs. Thing is, they wouldn't actually go for the treats until she gave them permission as a reward! And they were super-excited to get them, like dogs normally are when they get one!
It was the weirdest thing. They weren't trained in any other way (except basic housebreaking), but I would be shocked if those dogs went for the treats when everyone was sleeping and there was no one around to notice. She trained them to only get treats on command so she wouldn't have to get up to give them treats.
24. Finally, A Mess I Would Love to Help Clean
I have this one friend who always complains about not having enough money. The fact he's always talking about it is a little annoying, but understandable, seeing we're both just university students. I went over to his place one day to hang out and it was the first time I've ever been there. Firstly, there was stuff everywhere.
Aside from the floor, there was not a single uncovered surface in the house. That's not the weird part though, it's a mess, but I've seen that before. What was really weird was the amount of $50 bills just lying around everywhere. There were more of these bills next to the TV, in the kitchen and sticking out from behind furniture than I even have.
Like, they weren't in one place or anything. There'd have to be at least a grand in randomly placed cash.
25. Why Wander to Let One Loose?
It was first the first time I ever slept over at a friend's house. Think I was in kindergarten or first grade. When it was bedtime, his parents gave us empty cups with removable caps on them. I asked my friend what they were for, and he said for peeing. Apparently, his parents didn't like the idea of their kids wandering around the house at night to go to the bathroom, so we peed in cups and emptied them in the toilet in the morning.
26. A Different Kind of Dress Code
When I was a kid, there was a boy named Jeremy in our apartment complex. I was nine and he was a year older than I. One day he invites me over to his place to check out his comics. When I walked in the front door, his father was sitting in his recliner watching TV. I walked up to say hi to him and didn't realize until it was too late that his father was completely naked.
I was pretty shocked and taken off guard by it. When we went upstairs, I asked Jeremy, "Why is your dad naked?" He said his dad was always naked. I never went over to Jeremy's place again.
27. The Sound of Music is Depressing
My childhood best friend was raised by super intellectual parents whose idea of a good time was to gather around the harpsichord (that the dad had built) with their kids and me on various instruments and play some high-culture music. The funny part of the story to me was that friend later married some guy who had picked her up hitchhiking with both of them tripping during the ceremony.
She soon got divorced then told her parents she was going to college. For four years, she let them pay “tuition” and living expenses while she hung out and lived on their dime. She’s been an evangelical Christian for the past many years and is—sorry Susie—not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
28. Something Rotten in the State of This House
Back in eighth grade, I was the only person to show up at my friend's birthday party other than his extended family, who all lived in the same mountain "neighborhood." His whole house had this nasty smell to it, like rotting plants. I'd never been there before and didn't want to be rude, so I just ate party snacks in the kitchen while we waited for other people to arrive.
I finished some watermelon and asked where the trashcan was. My buddy and his mom directed me to the kitchen's "backdoor,” which lead to a six-foot drop and a pile of decomposing fruits and vegetables. They also had just set up a downhill zip line, which was pretty dope except that you had to drop off at just the right time to land on an old track high-jump mat instead of the rock/metal pile behind it.
My buddy's sister nearly died when she did a full flip and missed the mat. My family, who had come to pick me up, and I just stared at each other like "Did you just freaking see that?" while my friend's mom just calmly said "Oh dear, let's get you cleaned up..." and my buddy shouted at his screaming sister "I told you to let go Linda, but no—you just had to do it your own way and that's why you got hurt!"
29. This Blame Game Doesn’t Hold Water
I was asked to do dishes at a place I was staying, no problem. Loaded up normal dishes in the washer and started it, then started cleaning the pots in the sink. The kitchen flooded and I got yelled at—as a grown adult, by another adult, I was mad—because "everyone knows the kitchen floods if you run the sink and the dishwasher at the same time," and the other people in the house berated me for being so stupid.
I have done dishes like this a ton of times before and never flooded anything, and I've done it at other houses since then and never flooded. Even in my damn apartment, it wasn't a problem.
30. To the Bone of the Problem
I was sent to a new customer's home by my boss to install some lights and ceiling fans. First thing I noticed was the house was kind of smelly, like old food. Nasty but no big deal. Then I walked into the living room and noticed the large bones on the floor. Apparently, the family would sit around and gnaw on the bones while they watched TV.
Downstairs I saw a bunch of hunting gear, bows, and rifles. I guess that's where the bones came from. Hoping it was animals.
31. Where Does the Pig-Sty End?
My family and I decided to buy a horse advertised for sale on the internet. We drove to the woman's house—she had some fields around the house where she kept the horses. The place was badly run-down, and the fields were full of weeds. I needed the toilet while we were there, and she said I could go into her house and use it.
I have never seen a house in such an appalling state. As soon as you walk in, you see that there are huge—almost the size of a human—sacks of dry dog and cat food, which are open and have been tipped over, and the dog/cat biscuits have spread all over the entire floor, nobody has bothered to pick them up and they've obviously been like that for ages as they are all broken and trodden into the carpet, well you can barely see the carpet at all.
There is so much other junk that there's barely any light as the windows are blocked by junk and you can barely move in there. Then I went into the toilet, and it was obvious it had never been cleaned. The toilet/bathroom was also full of junk and everything, the sink, toilet, walls, and floor were brown and crusty with filth. It was the filthiest place I've ever seen, and the owner seemed to think it was totally normal.
32. Don’t Look to Them to Lend a Helping Paw
I have this friend who has a lot of cats. And with a lot I mean she had at least 11 cats. Not to mention, two dogs. I'm all about having pets but in my opinion, you need to keep it to a minimum when you have a very small house, which was my friend's case. Now, why do I mention this? Well, when we were about to have breakfast in her kitchen, she suddenly put two little cat bowls in the middle of the tiny table, filled with wet cat food—so you know it smells bad.
Two cats jump up and start eating out their bowls, with their tiny pinkish-brown anuses just staring at me, while I tried to ignore the smell and did my best working my breakfast down. Apparently, she did so because the whole house already was filled with cat bowls and if the cats got to close to each other while eating they would start fighting.
So, she deemed the kitchen table a good location. When I finally thought well it can't get worse than this, a chicken jumps up on the chair in front of me. A CHICKEN. It just sat there, joining us at the table. And I swear to God, my friend barely looked up. So needless to say, I was quite confused and weirded out. My friend didn't seem to think there was anything wrong or unsanitary about this.
33. Your House is Dollhouse
Porcelain dolls. There were a lot of them, and they were propped up almost anywhere. On the piano, by the couch, on the dinner table. I was in New Zealand and it was my first time going to a white person's house. I thought all white folks loved dolls like they did for a while.
34. Nailing Down the Weirdness
I used to fix TVs for Samsung, in people’s homes. I've seen some shit. It doesn't matter who you are or how you live, if you bought one and it dies under warranty. One place was a big Victorian house, I'm led in and see no sheetrock or plaster on the walls. Just the insulation paper between the studs. The studs all had those little nails that used to hold the lathe, the ones that are very time consuming to remove and prevent actually nailing up some sheetrock.
On these nails were hung all sorts of decorations, Christmas lights, doll heads, Mardi Gras beads, etc., covering the walls and ceilings. Full-size inflated Santa in the corner. Huge 6' long fish tank. And a full-grown live pig under the kitchen table. The lady was reading the paper and rubbing the pig’s belly. Little girl playing some computer game among the doll heads like it's all cool.
35. Sin on Your Doorstep
Whiskey (for cough syrup purposes) on the back porch because it's a sin to have liquor in the house. Saw this on more than one occasion growing up in an extremely Southern Baptist small town.
36. The Roach Motel Came Home
A guy in mom's neighborhood found out I played guitar in a few bands and asked if I'd be willing to come to his house and answer some questions, give tips, etc., and I agreed. I enter his house and it's infested with roaches. Roaches on the wall, in the sink, on the floor, freaking everywhere. And the roaches were completely unafraid of us.
He and his family (wife and two kids) seemed completely oblivious to the absolute horror-show that was their home. I'm trying to act normal, but in my mind, I'm freaking the heck out. I stayed a few minutes and answered a few questions before making an excuse to leave early.
37. An Exclusive Club Right in Your House
I moved to another town when I was about seven, to a house in a middle-class neighborhood. There were tons of kids my age there, so I luckily made friends quickly. So, I go to this girl's house for the first time and she's showing me around. There was this room locked, right at the entrance, and she told me that was off-limits. It sounded ominous, and I didn't like it at all.
Turns out it was just a living room, with posh carpets and sofas and art pieces of dubious taste. They would open it just when they had "important" people over. I later found out that all my friends’ houses had one of those. Every single house in the neighborhood. Another friend once decided to sneak us in because she wanted to show me something (some weird glass sculpture) and her mother went absolutely ballistic.
That was when I realized why my house had two front doors right next to each other. My parents never really cared and turned the "guest living room" into a TV room. Middle-class people are bonkers.
38. Hereditary IRL
My friend’s family has a shrine for her grandma. When I first saw, I was like “Oh, she probably passed, and this is a way to commemorate her,” since we also have a little “shrine” for my grandma. I was on Facetime with her later on that night when I got home and asked about it. And it turns out that her grandma is VERY much alive and healthy.
She explained that she thinks her family is a cult with her grandma as the leader, and I don’t know…every time I go to her house, I freak out just a tiny bit.
39. Tinder is Not a Daycare Service
I went to have a sleepover with a friend when we were 10. I show up at her house and there is a dude hanging out in her house. I knew her dad wasn't around so when I asked who he was she told me she did not know. Apparently, her mom gets a new boyfriend every week and is constantly left alone with a strange new guy almost daily.
After I told my mother about it I was never allowed back at the house, but my friend was always invited over. When we learned that she only ate Lunchables for dinner, she was also always invited for dinner.
40. Getting a Head Start for the Coroner
I am doing part-time freelance nursing at the moment. One of the cases I attended was a rather large house in the middle of nowhere for an elderly man. When I was let in by his caretaker, I saw the old man lying in a box, which was disguised as a bed. I was told it was because the family knew he was on his last legs and eventually he will pass on, so the box was his pre-coffin for the undertaker to take to the parlor and it’s a norm for their family to do this.
Creepy, but that wasn’t even the worst part. While I was waiting for the antibiotic drip to complete, I looked out the window and saw the backyard of the house, all the coffins of deceased family members were all above ground and you could open the window to see them in the coffins, preserved from the day they died.
They were only lowered into the grave once the decomposition began despite the preservatives. Apparently, it was part of their beliefs and family traditions.
41. Too Little for Liquid Lunch
So, this was my own house that made my friends freak out, apparently. My mom would like to drink. Mostly screwdrivers. So, our house had a lot of frozen ready orange juice. So, my fridge would always have 2 pitchers of orange juice. One with vodka and the other without. This also led to many breakfast mornings of a small shot of vodka before I realized I grabbed the wrong pitcher of orange juice.
So, one night I stayed at a friend's house on a school night. I woke up in the morning got ready for school, my friends family told me to get what I wanted to get it from the fridge to drink. So, I opened the fridge, and without hesitation, I ask, "Is this orange juice safe?" To which my friends’ parents responded, "What do you mean safe?"
I humbly reply, "Oh, does it have vodka?" That's when I realized most households don’t have two pitchers of orange juice.
42. Too Much Off the Top
Went to an open house in my town. The realtor told us that the couple was getting a divorce. The man had left his wife. She was a bit strange. So, we make our way up to the master bedroom and the only piece of "decor" was a long glass display case like you might use to showcase a model ship or car. It was about two feet long. Inside was something that looked like a ticker-tape rolled up at one end and pulled across the length of the case.
It was a life monitor readout that slowly flat-lined to the end. Across the bottom of the case was displayed a ponytail...with a good-sized section of the scalp still attached to it. Totally morbid. We got the heck out of there. Found out later that the daughter of the couple had been killed by a drunk driver. The wife went a little batty and drove her husband away.
43. Obsessive Father
One summer, when I was about 13, a friend of mine had a girl from her school who invited us over to go swimming in her pool. We go to her place and are shown to her room to change. As I'm changing my friend suddenly whispers "What the heck?" I turn around and see a bunch of used sanitary pads lined up on this girls desk. She comes to join us in her room and my friend flat out asks her what the pads are all about. She says, very plainly, "They're for my dad so he can check that I'm not pregnant."
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