From friends with disgusting habits to unspeakable mess-making, these selfish guests really are the worst of the worst. After these stories, maybe you'll think twice before inviting anyone over to your house.
1. Some Fishy Business
My family is in the hotel business. One day, one of the rooms suddenly started smelling unbelievably bad for no obvious reason. We checked everywhere over and over, trying to find where it was coming from, but found nothing. We sprayed the whole room with deodorizer again and again, and it still didn’t help. We even left the room open every day for months to air it out, but nothing changed.
Eventually, we somehow traced the smell back to the table lamp. We were completely baffled and kept wondering how that could possibly be the source. When I figured out what had happened, I was stunned. The last guest in the room had broken the lamp, stuffed a fish inside it, and glued it back together. My brother and I laughed so hard we actually applauded the guy’s creativity. He absolutely got us, and honestly, I couldn’t even be mad.
2. Liar Liar Pants On Fire
One day, my boyfriend and I were upstairs in bed watching TV and playing video games when I got a text from a friend we had stopped talking to about a year earlier because he always lied about ridiculous things. The message said, “Hey, I just got mugged down the street. They took all my stuff and beat me up really badly. Your house was the closest, so I came here to rest for a bit. I’m in your living room.”
So my boyfriend went downstairs and said, “Hey man, I guess you can hang out for a little while, but we’re busy today and we’re about to head out soon.” He was already annoyed because the guy did not look like someone who had just been attacked, and he still had his bag with him. My boyfriend decided to make himself a drink since this was how we were spending our day off.
A few minutes later, my boyfriend came upstairs, and we decided to act like we were getting ready to leave so we could ease this guy toward the door. I was in the bathroom brushing my hair when I heard my boyfriend suddenly yell, “Where did you put my drink?!” The guy said he had no idea what he was talking about and claimed he hadn’t touched it.
Then my boyfriend pointed out that there was a glass at the guy’s feet, and the guy said, “Oh, I guess I had a glass,” before finally handing over the bottle, which was now almost empty. We sent him on his way, and I started picking up the empty glasses he had left on the table. That’s when I noticed the rug was sticky and soaked. After looking closer, I realized he hadn’t actually drunk the whole bottle.
He had poured it onto my floor, left the mess there, and then lied about it.
3. Roll ‘Em Up
My cousin and her daughter came to visit and were staying with me at my house. At some point, her daughter had an accident on a quilt, and for some reason my cousin handled it in the strangest way possible. She rolled the quilt up and shoved it into the guest room closet without telling me. It was wrapped tightly enough that I didn’t notice the smell right away. I only found it after they had already left.
My dog stood in front of the closet barking nonstop. I checked it out and found the quilt. My poor dog was so upset by it that she kept barking until everything had been completely cleaned up. So I called my cousin and said, “I found the quilt from your bed rolled up in the closet with poop in it. What happened?” All she said was, “Oh, my daughter had an accident. Sorry.”
4. What A Surprise!
When I was about two or three, my family was staying in a hotel that was definitely not very fancy. My brother and dad were out, my mom was reading, and I was crawling around on the floor looking for who knows what when I found a piece of newspaper wrapped around what looked like ashes. I picked it up, and my mom told me to put it in my dad’s ashtray. That turned out to be a terrible idea.
People were allowed to smoke in the rooms back then, so we didn’t think much of it. Later, my dad went to put his cigarette in the tray and bam—it turned out not to be ashes at all. It was gunpowder. I ran off crying and hid in the bathroom. We didn’t get blamed because the people who stayed there before us had left it behind. I mean, who would ever expect to find gunpowder in a hotel room?
5. Neighbor In Waiting
I was babysitting my neighbor’s daughter. He was supposed to pick her up hours earlier, but he wasn’t answering any of my messages. I got the living room set up just in case she needed to stay the night. It was nearly midnight when he finally showed up, and when I opened the door, I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
He was extremely drunk. He pushed past me, went straight into the kitchen, and started knocking over and wrecking everything he could reach. He grabbed juice from the fridge and drank straight from the carton. Then he staggered back into the living room where his daughter was, started rambling at her, threw up all over my couch in the middle of talking, and then passed out. I ended up having to call child protective services.
6. But You Gave Me A Key!
I lived in a two-bedroom apartment in college, and one of my roommates had an older brother who liked going to parties and drinking nearby. Each of us had a private entrance connected to our bedroom, plus the main front door, so she gave him her key so he could crash on our couch instead of driving home after drinking too much.
He seemed harmless enough, so I didn’t mind at first. Then one afternoon he showed up completely drunk with a very unsettling friend and wanted to hang out in our apartment. His sister wasn’t even home. He ate her food, went into her room, and told his friend he could sleep it off in her bed. I assumed she knew about all this and had agreed to it, since she had given him a key.
She absolutely had not. When she came home and found a stranger in her bed and her brother acting ridiculous, she was furious.
7. This Birthday Was A Bust
It was my 21st birthday party. I wasn’t doing anything huge, just having a few friends and family over. My mom’s best friend brought her daughter, who was a year younger than me. We weren’t especially close, but we had grown up together, so we knew each other well enough and got along fine. As it turned out, her relationship had ended that day, and she was taking it really hard.
She got extremely drunk and spent most of the night crying. In a lot of the pictures from that night, you can actually see her crying in the background. Eventually she said she needed to lie down, so we told her to use the guest room. Instead, she went into my bedroom. About an hour later, everyone at the party heard loud banging coming from inside the house.
No one knew what was happening, so I went to look. She had thrown up all over my room and was crying. She had taken off her shirt, and there was vomit all over her lap. Her mom came up behind me and just froze. Then the girl looked up and started yelling at her mom, blaming her for everything.
Her dad eventually helped her outside and hosed her off in the yard in full view of the guests. I couldn’t even be angry because the whole thing was just so sad. Her mom ended up cleaning up the mess while crying. Overall, it turned into a really awful night.
8. Time To Move
My dad was talking with the neighbor in the living room when they both watched his son knock chocolates all over an expensive carpet. The neighbor then let my 60-year-old father get down on his hands and knees to pick up around 20 chocolates without offering to help, while continuing the conversation like nothing had happened. This was the same neighbor who had previously let his son knock glass ornaments off our Christmas tree and never apologized.
They also once asked my mom to pick up bottled water and wine for a party she wasn’t even invited to. And that still wasn’t the end of it. This neighbor lived above us and never came down to check the damage after his broken boiler leaked into our place. The water soaked our huge bookcase and even seeped into the kitchen below. He and his wife were also the neighbors who, the very first time we met them while moving in, asked if we were planning to move out because they wanted to buy the whole house.
He did try to buy it five years later, but we turned down his offer and waited for a better one, which came the next day.
9. Don’t Go There!
I had some coworkers over for a dinner party at my house. We intentionally turned off the lights leading upstairs as a subtle way of showing that the party was downstairs and there was no reason for anyone to go upstairs. Throughout the night, I noticed one coworker using his finger to pull tobacco dip from his mouth and scrape it into his plastic cup.
A little later, I went upstairs to check on my dog and heard noises coming from the master bedroom. I walked in and saw that same guy using my toothbrush to dig tobacco out from between his teeth. He doesn’t get invited over anymore.
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10. A Free Room
My friend treated my house like it was a hotel room. I thought he was coming to visit me so we could spend time together and make plans, but the truth was really disappointing. It turned out he mainly wanted to save money on a place to stay. He already had his own plans and didn’t tell me about any of them until he arrived. He even tried to get some of his other friends in the area to stay at my place too.
I hadn’t seen him in years, which made it worse. I was really let down that I had planned my holiday weekend around seeing him, while he had clearly planned something completely different.
11. His Behavior Was Nothing To Sneeze At
I lived with a friend for a couple of years in a nice, big apartment. A mutual friend of ours was separating from his wife, so we offered him a place to stay for two weeks. If he needed or wanted to stay longer, he could rent the room. At the time, I was working overseas, but my roommate told me everything was fine.
I reminded both my friend and my roommate that if his dog was there, they needed to keep my bedroom door closed because I’m allergic. About six weeks later, and just a couple of days before I got home, my roommate told me he still hadn’t received any rent from my friend and that he’d been having random people over that neither of us knew.
I called my friend, and he tried to tell me my roommate had said it was fine to have people over. While we were on the phone, I could hear his dog barking. I reminded him that the dog had better not be in my room. He said the dog was going back to his ex that day and that it had never been anywhere near my room. When I got home, the apartment was a disaster.
There was dog hair everywhere, a car was parked in my garage spot, and two more were in the visitor spaces. There were stains on the carpet where the dog had pooped, and the kitchen was a wreck. I went into my room and it was obvious his dog had been sleeping on my bed. He tried to tell me I was wrong and that it must have been my roommate’s cat. I asked him if he seriously thought I was that clueless, because cat hair is pretty easy to recognize.
I threw out all my sheets and pillows as soon as my allergies kicked in, and there was no way I could sleep with dog hair all over everything. Then I went into the bathroom and had to clean the toilet before I was even willing to use it. I did a little digging and found out he owed money to a lot of people. At that point, I decided I wanted him out. He begged for one more night, and I said no.
I finally got him to leave, and it still took him another week to get the cars moved out of the visitor spots.
12. Religious Freaks
We had some Orthodox priests show up at a family Christmas celebration. They spent the whole time trying to tell the younger women to wait on them constantly. When that didn’t work, they started complaining that the women were dressed inappropriately. In New Zealand, Christmas falls in the summer, and there was a pool at the house, so the women were wearing swimsuits.
Even though they complained about what the women were wearing, they spent the whole time staring at them and implying that our girlfriends, nieces, cousins, sisters, and so on were somehow immoral. We weren’t especially religious and didn’t care much for being bossed around, so it didn’t go over well. We either ignored them completely or made fun of them until they left. They seemed offended that we didn’t show them the respect they expected, but respect goes both ways.
13. In The Secret Stash
One time, my parents invited some friends over. They had two kids who were a couple of years younger than me and my brothers, a boy and a girl. Since I was the only girl in my family, I got stuck entertaining the girl. I showed her around my room and, very unwisely, showed her my stash of Nutella. I regretted that almost immediately.
After a few hours of playing Minecraft in the living room, she said she was going to the bathroom. She was gone for a pretty long time, so I went to check on her, and she came out of my bedroom with Nutella all over her face. I went into my room and checked my stash, and sure enough, one of my jars was empty. I’m never rude to guests, so I let it go. I just never let her into my room again after that.
14. Candle Capers
I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law at their fancy new apartment, and I took a very smelly dump. They had candles in the bathroom for exactly that reason, so I lit two and waited around for the scent to do its job. Somehow, I didn’t realize until it was too late that the candles were giving off black smoke and leaving dark streaks all over the walls.
I blew out the candles and tried to clean the walls. Toilet paper didn’t help, so I used their nice white towels. That didn’t work either, and I ended up ruining the towels in the process. Eventually, there was no way around it, so I had to admit what happened, and I was absolutely mortified.
15. The Uninvited Lech
A few friends and I were having some drinks when a guy we knew showed up uninvited with one of his friends, who was so drunk he immediately passed out on my couch. The guy kept drinking, complained about the music we were playing, and kept trying to put on his own terrible punk band instead. Then he cornered my wife.
He demanded that she change her shirt because he had some issue with the singer of the band printed on it. Later, when it was 6 a.m. and we said we were going to bed, he complained about that too. He woke up his wasted friend and said, “I guess we’re getting kicked out,” and then they finally left.
16. Soap Fiend
My 10-year-old distant cousin opened three brand-new bars of soap and flushed them down the toilet on the third floor of our house. That night, we came home from dinner and found water dripping from the first-floor ceiling. The third-floor bathroom had flooded, the water seeped through the floor, dripped into the second floor, and then leaked all the way down to the first floor.
The kid happily admitted the whole thing, and his mother thought it was hilarious. The damage ended up costing thousands of dollars to fix.
17. The Vacation Home
My parents owned a house on Cape Cod that had been in the family for almost 200 years, but we lived somewhere else and only used it on weekends and in the summer. They often let friends stay there. One time, some family friends who had stayed there before and also went to our church asked if they could borrow the house.
My parents said yes and gave them a key. The next time we visited, we found that they had painted the kitchen window trim and sills red. They had also clogged the toilet, which ran on a septic system. But the real kicker came in the next church bulletin, which thanked this couple for hosting their son’s Sunday school class “at their charming home on Cape Cod.” Our house!
18. Tome Of Salads
I’ve owned a bed-and-breakfast for the past eight years, and the strangest thing I’ve ever found was an old, beat-up notebook. What was inside was both baffling and fascinating. The cover said “Why I Love Salad,” and inside were literally 40 to 80 pages explaining why salad was amazing. Every now and then, there were hints that the writer seemed to think salad was somehow alive.
It looked like it had been written on and off over the course of several years.
19. I Wanted To Dye
A close friend once brought his now ex-girlfriend over to hang out with me and a few other friends. About thirty minutes after arriving, she did one of the most aggravating things I’ve ever seen. She went into my very white bathroom and dyed her hair black. She stained my white counters, the bathtub and shower, the floor, two decorative towels, the carpet outside the bathroom, and the toilet.
I was furious, and I really don’t think she understood that you cannot do something like that in someone else’s house without asking. Everyone there, including me, told her to rinse off and leave. She stained so much stuff that it still makes me angry just thinking about it.
20. The Ultimate Hypocrite
A friend of a relative stayed with my parents for a week. He was Argentinian, in his late 50s, and very old-fashioned and religious. At one point, he even told my parents it was wrong for me to live with my boyfriend without being married. One day, he asked my mom if he could use her computer “to check his email.” He was in there for quite a while. It turned out he had been watching explicit videos.
He had searched for everything in Spanish, and my mom found it all in the browsing history. When she confronted him, he tried to blame my 16-year-old brother, even though my brother had his own computer, mostly spoke English, and was away on a camping trip. He was never invited back.
21. A Weekly Ritual
There was one guy who stayed at our hotel at least one night every week, and he always asked for the same room. We started wondering if he was up to something shady, so one day after he checked out, we searched the room. It turned out he had been hiding an inflatable doll under the mattresses. We threw it out, and he only came back one more time after that. Honestly, I kind of felt bad for him.
22. Rules Of Wiping
My wife’s oldest friend was using wet wipes in the bathroom and then tossing them into the small trash can. That alone would have been a little strange, but not especially unforgettable... except it got worse. She also spent the whole visit criticizing our house, and when I noticed a bad smell coming from the bathroom area, right next to the kitchen, she said, “Well, it must be your sinks. Do you ever clean them?”
It turned out the smell was actually coming from her own used wet wipes in the trash. I found out what she’d been doing when I went to empty it as she was leaving. When I brought it up, she immediately started lecturing us about how we handle bathroom hygiene. No responsibility at all. She’s now banned from our house.
23. Pet Peeve
We hosted a baby shower at my house, and my aunt, who was also our landlord, was there too. At the time, there was a strict no-dogs policy. One of the guests brought their chihuahua and let it run loose inside without even asking if it was okay. I thought my aunt was going to lose it. On top of that, the dog was so nervous around all the people that no one could catch it until after the party ended.
24. The Past Came Back To Haunt Me
I hadn’t seen this girl in years when she showed up unexpectedly at my parents’ house. I was really happy to see her, so we invited her in. We had dinner, caught up, and since it was late, she stayed the night. The next day, she admitted she had just gotten out of prison and had nowhere else to go. We spent weeks trying to get her to leave.
Then one day, we stopped at Walgreens for something, and she stole a bunch of items. After that, my grandpa told her she had to go no matter what. I dropped her off at the train station. She called me 20 minutes later, but I didn’t answer. Thankfully, I haven’t heard from her since.
25. Smashing The Keys
I have an antique grand piano, and it’s not something I want people messing around with. Twice, I let people play it while guests were over, and both times they were incredibly rough with it. One person started pounding on the keys with her hands just to be silly, and another actually climbed up with her boots on and stomped on the keys. I was furious. I picked her up, carried her to the porch, and told her to leave.
A few months later, I ran into her at a bar and gave her a look. Eventually, she asked what my problem was, and I told her exactly what she had done. She claimed she never did that and said she’d never even been to my house. I can’t stand when people don’t even remember the awful things they’ve done.
26. Grooming The Dog
My uncle, aunt, and mom traveled from another country to visit me while I was in college, and they stayed at my place. I had to leave for class that morning, so I left them at the house to relax. When I got back, my uncle had shaved my shih-poo’s legs, apparently thinking he was helping me out. My fluffy, adorable dog looked terrible.
Even worse, he somehow only shaved three legs and left the fourth one untouched.
27. This Ended In Disaster
One of the players showed up empty-handed and spent the whole night complaining that nobody was sharing. Then he helped himself to my kid’s snacks and my soda.
I was furious. It completely ruined the night and ended the game early. Everyone was annoyed with him, especially my toddler.
28. Blood Bath
I was out of town for the weekend, and my roommate had some friends over for drinks. The issue was that when he drank, he sometimes blacked out, which is exactly what happened before he made sure everyone had gone home. The next morning, he realized that two of his friends had stayed over—in my room—which was already not okay.
Then I found blood on my duvet cover.
It was pretty obvious someone had hooked up while one of them was on their period. This wasn’t an accidental “oh no, it started overnight” kind of stain. It was on the edge of the bed, on top of the blanket, and smeared around. What made it even worse was that we weren’t reckless college students. We were all in our mid-30s with jobs and, you’d think, at least some basic respect. They were never invited back.
29. A Short-ish Hike
I was once at a natural hot spring that hadn’t been developed for tourists. I ended up having a long conversation with this girl, and strictly as a friend, she had more red flags than a parade. Still, it seemed like we had a few things in common and were dealing with some similar life stuff. It turned out she had hitchhiked there with an older guy who was now being creepy, so I offered her a ride.
By then the sun was coming up, so I suggested we take a short hike on the way back to town, and she was into the idea. I lent her my jacket because it was cold. She had talked about money problems after her husband recently left her, and said she was thinking about composting and starting a garden to help cut costs. So we’re on this hike, and she’s wearing my jacket.
At one point, I noticed her picking up a few rocks she liked. She had also mentioned that cow pies make good fertilizer. Then she picked one up and slipped it into the pocket of my jacket.
Cow dung. She was saving it for later.
30. The Piggy Bank Thief
When I was younger, I was saving up to buy a Nintendo game. It was a few days after my birthday, and I had gotten some cash that I put into my piggy bank. I had a bunch of piggy banks, and one of them was sitting out on display with a 5€ bill sticking out. A very distant relative came over with her parents, and I showed her my room. I still can’t believe what she did.
When she left, she took my 5€ with her.
I was so upset. I told my mom, and she told the girl’s parents. Later, we went to their house to visit and get my money back. She had tucked the bill into her phone case and handed it back to me. I’m still annoyed about it. The whole thing was strange, but the weirdest part was her keeping my money in her phone case.
31. Space Invader
A friend came to visit my fiancé—who she hadn’t met yet—and me. We both had to work, and she needed to finish a paper, so I got her set up with the Wi-Fi, some snacks, and a comfortable place to study. She smoked, so I told her that was fine, but if she needed a cigarette, she had to lean out of the bedroom window.
When we got home, we found her IN OUR BED, UNDER THE COVERS, smoking. And somehow that still wasn’t the worst part—she stayed there for another ten minutes while my fiancé awkwardly waited to change. I finally had to tell her she needed to get up so he could change and relax. Later that night, we had plans with friends, and she chose not to come along.
When we got back, she was asleep, but I noticed a used face mask sitting on top of my laptop, which she had moved onto our bed. If it had just been my apartment, I probably wouldn’t have been as upset. We’d lived together years earlier and were never big on boundaries. But she had never met my fiancé, and it didn’t seem to occur to her that she was completely invading his space.
32. Hanging On By A Thread
After our sister passed away, our brother-in-law remarried, and his new wife was awful. During one visit, she flossed her teeth in the living room and then left the floss on the carpet. Later, when we were getting ready to go swimming, she changed in the room where I was staying and used the chance to go through my suitcase. I figured she was either being nosy, looking for my prescription pain medication, or both.
She also took the eye drops I had left out for my dad. We could never confront her, because if we did, she would threaten to keep us from seeing our late sister’s children.
33. The Luckiest Day
When I was about eight, maybe a little older, there was a neighborhood kid who came over every now and then. He seemed normal enough and was fun to hang out with. But one day, as he was leaving my house, he spotted some money on the floor and actually said, “Ooh, it’s my lucky day!” in this high-pitched, irritating voice.
I just stood there and said nothing while he walked off with my money. We never spoke again.
34. The Farewell Gift
In college, a friend and I shared an apartment, and there was a man in his mid-30s living downstairs. He was a little awkward, but he seemed harmless enough, and we didn’t think much about him. Every now and then he’d borrow something, but he usually returned the favor, so he seemed like a decent neighbor.
Then one day he knocked on our door holding a roll of Scotch tape. He told us he was about to be evicted. What he asked next completely stunned me. He wanted to know if either of us would be “sweet” enough to stick some of our hair onto the tape as a goodbye gift. I shut the door as fast as I could.
35. Obsessed To The Point Of No Return
One evening when I was about 17 or 18, I had some friends over for drinks before we went out to the pub. One of them was obsessed with EastEnders, the UK soap, and couldn’t miss an episode. Just to amuse him, I put it on the TV since it was only about 25 minutes long. My mom came in and asked if anyone wanted food or anything, and what he said next completely shocked me.
He told her to “be quiet” because she was talking during his show. He was never invited back to my house after that.
36. Inconsiderate Winer
My father-in-law gave me a bottle of 2008 Chateau Margaux when my daughter was born. It was worth about $800, and the plan was to save it for her 20th birthday. Then we had someone over who decided it was fine to ignore the perfectly good vintages on the counter and go digging through the closet instead. They found the bottle, took off the ribbons, ignored the card, opened it, and poured it for everyone.
37. The Little Thief
We had my girlfriend’s family over to our place for sports night, so there was plenty of drinking. She lived just down the street, so we stopped by her house for a minute and then came back. Apparently, while we were gone, my brother took $20 and a necklace from her mom’s purse and got caught by my girlfriend’s sister.
As we were walking back to the house, we heard my dad yelling. Then we saw him holding my brother up by the neck, carrying him from the front room down the hall toward the kitchen. My girlfriend and I just looked at each other and silently agreed we should probably head back to her house. I can only imagine what her family must have thought watching that.
38. The Boat-Sleeper
One night my roommate came home with a co-worker who needed a place to stay, so of course we offered him the couch. He was this odd guy who looked kind of like Screech and really didn’t match the whole party atmosphere. Still, when a friend asks for help, you help. Plus, he had the strangest reason for needing a place to crash.
The guy lived on a sailboat, but someone had taken his rowboat that day, so he had no way to get home. Anyway, we got him set up on the couch while the party was still going, and then he pulled me aside and asked, “Hey man, what are the magnetics like here?” I just stared at him, confused. Then he said, “I can’t sleep unless the magnetics are right, so... are they?”
I told him, “I have no idea, man. There are train tracks across the road and a cemetery down the way... does that help?” “Perfect!” he said. Then he added, “Also, I wouldn’t usually ask, but could you tuck me in, just in case?” I looked at him even more strangely. But in the end, I—a grown man—tucked in another grown man before he went to sleep. Truly weird times.
39. Fleabag
My grandma brought my aunt’s badly behaved, not house-trained dog with them when they came to visit. We had specifically told them the dog could not come into the house. When they arrived with it anyway, we found an old playpen and said the dog had to stay in there the whole time. But my grandma kept picking it up and letting it run around whenever she got the chance.
About two weeks after they left, we made a horrible discovery. We realized the dog had fleas. Because of that, we ended up with a huge infestation that spread to all five of our dogs and all four of our cats. We were all left with scars from the bites, and it took nearly three years to finally get rid of the fleas completely.
40. I Cried Over Spilled Milk
I gave up my bedroom to my stepson and his girlfriend while they were visiting. I don’t smoke, and my bedroom is literally the only smoke-free room in the house. I asked her to step outside if she wanted to smoke, which really wasn’t a big deal since there was a sliding door from the bedroom to the lanai.
I also asked her not to bring food into the bedroom because ants were a serious problem in Florida. I could smell cigarette smoke when she lit up, but I didn’t say anything at the time. I assumed she’d gone outside and was finishing it there. Later, I went into my room to get some shoes and noticed the little porcelain tray was missing from my nightstand, so I started looking for it.
I found it shoved under the bed with her cigarette in it, along with my cream-colored throw rug and a bath towel. It turned out she had brought chocolate milk into the room, spilled it on the carpet, then grabbed a towel to try to clean it up. Instead of taking everything to the laundry room, she balled it all up and hid it under the bed.
I was furious, and she ended up convincing my stepson to leave three days early. That was the last time I ever gave my room to that rude, spoiled woman.
41. The Potato Problem
We have a friend who has always done some pretty unusual things. For example, he eats raw couscous because he likes the crunch. But somehow that still wasn’t the strangest thing. He was such an odd guy that, at first, we didn’t think twice when we found a potato on the floor. At the time, he was staying on our couch while some work was being done on his apartment, and he was also working at a farmer’s market.
He was the kind of person who might interrupt you just to hand you a bunch of carrots or pull a sweet potato out of his pocket. So one day, I spotted a potato on the floor and laughed. Since he was still staying with us on and off, I assumed it had fallen out of his pocket or backpack. No big deal. I picked it up and put it in the kitchen.
As it turned out, my wife had also found a potato and assumed it came from him, so she had put it with the rest of the vegetables. Then later, I found another potato in the living room, except by then he hadn’t stayed with us for a few weeks. Still, it wasn’t shriveled, wrinkled, or sprouting. As far as I could tell, it looked like a perfectly normal, fresh potato.
I called my wife over, and the first thing she said was that our friend hadn’t been around in a while. That’s when I learned she had found potatoes too. She hadn’t known I found any either. We were both confused, and we spent a while throwing around different theories. Then we finally discovered what was really going on. Eventually, my wife caught the cat grabbing a potato from the kitchen and running off with it.
Our friend was such a strange person that it honestly never crossed our minds that he might not be the one leaving potatoes in the living room. We moved the potatoes somewhere the cat couldn’t reach, and that was the end of the wandering potatoes.
42. A Bubble Break
We had been invited to a friend’s house to have some drinks and stay the night. We were sitting in the garden, talking and drinking, when one of our friends got up and said he was going to the bathroom. He was gone for about 20 minutes before someone suggested we should check on him. Another friend went upstairs, and about five minutes later he came back down laughing uncontrollably.
It turned out the missing friend had gone upstairs, run himself a bubble bath, lit a few candles, and even added a floating rubber duck. The friend hosting the gathering was easygoing and didn’t get upset since we were all close, but it was definitely unexpected and hilarious.
43. Money Heist
When I was a kid, I had three friends over, all brothers. The oldest was my age, the middle one was a couple of years younger, and they had brought along their youngest brother, who was difficult to deal with. That day, my dad had let me hold onto a $100 bill because I thought it was interesting and had never seen one before. I showed it to my friends and left it on my bedside table.
After they left, when they were almost back at their house, the youngest brother said, “Hey guys, look what I took,” and pulled out my $100 bill. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone. The two older brothers were so angry that they dragged him, crying, all the way back to my house. They handed me the money and made him apologize.
44. Get Lost
I had a friend who got lost on the way to my child’s birthday party and ended up arriving at my house after we had already gotten back home. She had both of her kids with her, and her phone had died. We were all tired, but I invited them in because they had been driving around for quite a while. We made them plates of food, spent some time talking, and put on a movie so the kids could relax.
Her older child was wonderful, but her younger one, who was between the ages of my two kids, was extremely difficult. He was very rough and started hitting and punching my oldest, who stepped in to protect his little brother. Her older child kept telling him to stop, and eventually I had to step in, separate them, and calm my own child down.
She stayed for more than four hours. I spent three and a half of those hours trying to stop her son from tormenting my kids. We haven’t invited them over again since.
45. A Surprise Shower
My cousin was in high school when she decided to bring a group of her high school friends over to our house. My dad was home at the time, so he kindly made lunch for all of them. While he was cooking, though, he noticed the girls coming out of our bathroom wrapped in towels and being very loud. He was pretty surprised and annoyed.
My cousin and her friends never told my dad they were planning to use our showers too. They also used our soap and bathroom supplies, and they didn’t even apologize for leaving the bathroom messy.
46. Dinner Is Served!
Back when I was a university freshman, I invited a few friends over for dinner because my mom wanted to meet the people I spent time with at school. When the food was set out, my mom said, “Go ahead, help yourselves.” Of course, she meant the dishes on the table and the meal she had prepared. But that is not what happened.
One of the guys I invited walked straight to our pantry, opened the door, looked around for a few seconds, and then started taking canned food off the shelves instead of eating the dinner. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. I think my mom was so completely stunned that she didn’t even say anything.
47. Kicked To The Curb
I didn’t have many rules for people riding in my car, but there were two I would never bend on: wear your seatbelt and don’t smoke in my car. I had just bought it. It wasn’t brand new, but it was in excellent condition. Less than a week later, a friend asked me for a ride to the train station. I knew he smoked, so while we were walking to the car, I specifically told him to wait until we got there before lighting a cigarette.
I backed out of the parking space, drove to the edge of the lot, and as I looked left for traffic, I heard the unmistakable click of a lighter. He couldn’t even wait until we were out of the parking lot. I asked him what he thought he was doing, and he just looked at me and said, “Relax, it’s not like it’s a new car.”
He ended up walking to the train station.
48. Midterm Madness
When I was in university, one of my roommates asked if a friend from high school could come visit and stay in our apartment for a night or two. I said yes. But I was in the middle of midterms and extremely stressed, so I made it very clear that they couldn’t party at our place because I needed to sleep without being disturbed.
I got back from the library at 11 p.m., and they were both completely drunk. My roommate was passed out in his room, and there was foul-smelling vomit all over the toilet seat. On top of that, his friend had brought a girl back from the campus bar and was hooking up with her in my bed. I kicked them both out of the apartment and ended up doing laundry at 11:30 that night because my sheets were damp and disgusting.
I stopped talking to that roommate after that.
49. A Family Reunion
One time, my cousin came to my house for a family reunion, but he arrived a few days early, so he had the guest room to himself. Then his girlfriend came early too so she could meet the rest of the family. For context, they were both 15 and we were in the UK. They were not supposed to stay in the same room, so she was put in the other guest room.
The odd thing was that I kept hearing her walking around, but I was only eight at the time, so I didn’t think much of it. Then one night, everything made sense. I had forgotten something in my cousin’s room, so I just went in without knocking. I saw my cousin and his girlfriend in bed together, in exactly the situation you’re probably imagining.
Since I was eight, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing, so I yelled for my mom, and my cousin shoved me back out of the room. When my mom came downstairs, she shouted and called my cousin’s mom to come get him. The reunion itself wasn’t canceled, but their side of the family didn’t come. After that, I never saw his girlfriend again, so I assume they broke up.
Years later, I understood what was happening, and now I can barely make eye contact with my cousin.
50. Sticking Around
There was a kid in my neighborhood when I was growing up who came over to play at my house once. The problem was that when it was time for him to leave, he simply refused, even after being asked over and over. My parents and I actually ended up chasing him around the house trying to get him out the door, while he laughed the whole time like it was some strange game. He was never invited back.
51. Sense Of Entitlement
A friend of mine stayed over for a while because she was going through a tense, messy divorce. She didn’t want to go back to the house she shared with her husband, and since she had no family in the country, she was staying on friends’ couches. But instead of being thankful, she acted like a demanding customer in my home.
My tea selection wasn’t good enough, and the grape jelly I had apparently didn’t measure up to a proper range of jams. She ate the pancakes even though they weren’t her favorite, and seemed shocked that I didn’t own a waffle iron. Then, before leaving, she went through our pantry and packed herself a bunch of snacks to take along. Turns out she wasn’t just couch surfing—she was burning through everyone’s patience with that attitude.
She was all take and no give.
52. Rug Rat
My boyfriend once invited a couple of friends over while I was at work because we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and I didn’t always want to sit around watching the game. Honestly, I thought that was pretty thoughtful. When I got home, he was asleep and his friends had already left. I noticed that my new bathroom mat was stained and figured it was probably from dirty shoes, so I didn’t inspect it too closely.
When he woke up, I made him come look at it with me because I was annoyed—it was brand new. After a closer look, we realized something awful: before leaving, one of his friends had wiped poop all over my bathroom mat. The marks were brown streaks that looked like they’d been smeared across the whole thing with fingers. And there was toilet paper right there.
We threw the mat away immediately and never let them back into the apartment.
53. The Right Utensil
We went on holiday and hired an older local woman to look after our cats for the 10 days we were gone. The cats were perfectly fine, and nothing seemed off with their care. We had left out plenty of extra food and water bowls, bags of litter, litter bags, and the scoop. When we got home, the cats were happy and the house looked normal. But there was one detail that has bothered me ever since.
Next to the litter tray was the spaghetti server—you know, that odd kitchen tool you barely ever use. That was what she had been using to scoop the cats’ poop the entire time we were away. The real litter scoop, which had been sitting right there the whole time, had never been touched.
54. After The Bath
Early in our marriage, my wife and I used to host international travelers from the Servas group in our home. One young couple from Denmark stayed with us, along with their four-year-old daughter. One day they gave her a bath, and afterward they let her run around our small living room naked because, apparently, that’s what they did back home. Fine, I guess.
Except this time, the little girl decided to pee while running around. She was literally spraying everyone as she ran in circles. Her parents thought it was hilarious and acted like it was no big deal, which I still can’t understand. My wife wanted them to stay because we were supposed to be “good hosts,” but after they left, we had to hire a carpet cleaning service.
55. She Was No Bed Of Roses
A wealthy friend of ours stayed at our house for a couple of weeks and brought his girlfriend with him. She was half his age, had grown up with very little, and was now getting a taste of a much wealthier lifestyle. We were hosting them, but she treated us terribly. Around her boyfriend, though, she acted sweet and charming.
One day she started sneezing and decided the flowers in our garden must be the reason. So she took it upon herself to go outside and cut them all down. I caught her in the middle of it and asked what she was doing. She said, “The flowers make me sneeze, so I cut them for you.” I was stunned.
She was a guest in our home, and she destroyed our garden, leaving a huge mess behind. She didn’t even clean up the clippings—she just left them scattered across the garden bed beside the plants she had cut. It was incredibly rude.
56. Birthday Bungler
When I was six, I was celebrating my birthday with a few friends. An eight-year-old kid tried to open my presents. Even worse, his mom just laughed like it was funny. When I looked at her, she told him to stop, but he kept going because he wanted to see what was inside. Then he told his mom he was ready to cut his cake.
My mom was in the kitchen, and none of the other parents stepped in. They all just sat there and watched. I was so upset. He completely ruined my birthday.
57. The Dogfight
It was 105 degrees outside. My grandparents were visiting in their RV. They started complaining that our two sweet, well-behaved golden retrievers were scaring their precious little Chihuahua. My parents went to work, and my sister and I went to school. When we got home, we found out they had put our dogs outside with no water in 105-degree heat all day.
And all of that was so their tiny dog could sit on their lap on the couch. Seriously... they couldn’t have left the Chihuahua in the air-conditioned RV? Or kept our dogs inside at the end of the hallway? We even had a baby gate to block off parts of the house. They couldn’t have just kept their dog in their lap, like they were already doing, and told ours to lie down somewhere else?
It’s been 25 years, and I’m still angry about it.
58. Wrestling Night
I’m a big wrestling fan, and I used to invite my cousin and a group of friends over for WrestleMania every year. We’d watch the show, have a few drinks, order pizza, and just enjoy ourselves. One year, my cousin asked if a friend of his I’d never met could come too. I said sure, the more the merrier, right? I regretted that almost immediately.
This guy was just not my type of person. He walked into my house and immediately started going through my DVD shelf, picking up my movies and loudly commenting on them. He talked nonstop all night, interrupting people and loudly pushing his opinions. We were a pretty laid-back group, so it made things awkward.
Then, at the end of the show, when a wrestler he didn’t like lost the main event, he jumped onto the floor, counted the final pin along with the referee, then stood up and gave the TV both middle fingers. Needless to say, he wasn’t invited back the next year.
59. This Relationship Went Out The Window
When I was living with my ex, one of his old friends asked if he could stay with us for a day or two. They drank a lot. I woke up in the middle of the night and found the “friend” standing in our bedroom, peeing on the bedroom window. When I woke my ex up, he acted like it wasn’t a big deal. That was the day I packed my things and left.
60. It Was A Kick In The Pants
A friend of mine came to stay for a week. Even though my wife wasn’t thrilled about it, I told him he could stay at our house so he wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel. I told my wife it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I was wrong. During dinner on the second night, he spilled his drink all over my carpet and over his only pair of pants. So I lent him a pair to wear while his were being washed.
That night, he got so drunk that he peed all over himself and my couch. To make it even worse, after he left embarrassed, I found the wet pants I had lent him stuffed under the couch.
61. A Bit Of A Fixer-Upper
My in-laws act like they own the place whenever they visit. One time, my father-in-law used the bathroom before heading home, and on his way out he stopped to tell my husband something was wrong with our sink. Then he handed him part of the drain. He had actually taken our sink apart in the bathroom while trying to “fix” whatever he thought was wrong with it.
Now our drain doesn’t even work properly.
62. A New Start?
A friend of my father’s went through a really hard time and lost her apartment. Since we had a spare room, he invited her to stay with us for a few weeks so she could get back on her feet and look for a new job. At first, everything seemed pretty normal. But then things started to go downhill fast. She began bringing home all kinds of things for her “fresh start.”
I’m talking clothes, kitchen stuff, decorations, and more. At first it didn’t seem like a big deal, because everyone has to start somewhere. But it got out of control very quickly, and she basically became a hoarder. By the time she had been with us for a month, you couldn’t even see the floor in her room anymore. There was just stuff everywhere.
My father was understandably upset and confronted her about it. She responded with a huge screaming fit and even slapped him. We had the authorities remove her and gave her a chance to come back a few days later to collect her things, but she never showed up. I have no idea where she is now.
63. Something Was Fishy
My mom’s cousin came to visit with a friend. They were both in their early 20s, definitely old enough to know how to behave as house guests. My mom had ordered takeout for the adults and put fish fingers and chips in the oven for us kids. Before the food arrived, the guests decided they were hungry and ate our fish fingers without saying a word.
When my mom opened the oven, she found a tray of chips and an empty tray where the fish fingers were supposed to be. Who eats a kid’s dinner when their own meal is less than ten minutes away?
64. He Wouldn’t Get The Hint
I had gone on a few dates with this guy. One night after we went out, he dropped me off at my apartment, and we stood there talking for a while. The conversation started dragging on, and I was tired, so I told him I was going to sleep and that it was time for him to head home. He insisted on walking me upstairs to my bedroom, which already felt a little strange. On top of that, my room was a total mess at the time, and I was embarrassed.
I told him several times, but he just didn’t seem to understand that I was planning to stay in the living room until he left. So I told him I was really tired and would probably just fall asleep on the couch, hoping that would finally get him to leave. It didn’t. Instead, he went upstairs into my bedroom, took the comforter off my bed, and brought it downstairs to the couch for me. I never went out with him again.
65. Sit! Stay!
A guy my ex was friends with was at our house all the time, and he knew our dogs’ commands. One time, a girl came over for a house party and was terrified of dogs. After we helped her meet my dog and get a little more comfortable around him, that friend thought it would be funny to give my dog the “attack” command as a joke. My dog did not treat it like a joke and lunged at her, ripping her dress open.
That was the last time he was welcome in my house.
66. The Food Fight
We were having a cookout for some friends and family when my neighbor and his wife wandered over and sort of joined in. I didn’t know them very well, but I didn’t really mind since they always seemed pretty cool, and getting along with your neighbors is usually a good thing. I wasn’t paying close attention at first, so I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.
The two of them were putting away enough food to feed a whole extra group. My wife had been watching the entire time, and by the time she pointed it out to me, she was already irritated. They each started with a ribeye and sides, then went back for two more steaks and even more sides. After that, they grabbed fresh plates and piled them high with crawfish and corn on the cob, plus dessert plates with pie and ice cream. That was when my wife came to get me.
I went over to them before they started eating again, around 3:00, and explained that I had only planned food for a certain number of people and there wasn’t enough extra for them to take that much. The husband looked offended, and the wife said, “Wow, are you serious?” like I had done something wrong. I said, “Yeah, sorry, there’s only so much to go around.”
The husband stood up to leave, but the wife got the last word in her own way. She picked up her plate and took at least two pounds of crawfish home with her. The funniest part came afterward: the husband would always wait to mow his lawn until after I mowed mine, and he’d leave a narrow strip of grass standing between our yards like some kind of petty boundary line.
67. Christmas Calamity
My mom invited a woman over for Christmas Eve because she felt sorry for her, even though the woman was a little unstable. At some point, she and my dad got into what started as a calm debate, until suddenly she put her hands around my dad’s neck. My dad grabbed her wrists hard enough to get her off him, and she started screaming.
She accused my dad of hurting her, and my dad just said, “Merry Christmas,” in the driest tone possible before walking downstairs.
Then my brother had the awkward job of driving her home.
68. She Was A Cookie Monster
When I was just starting junior high, my sister left for France on a study abroad program. As part of that same program, my family became the host family for an exchange student from Japan. She was very nice, and I really didn’t have any issue with her except for one thing: she ate all the cookies. My family likes cookies as much as anyone, but every Wednesday my grandma would come over and bake a fresh batch for the kids to have after school.
The problem was that if there were any cookies left by the end of the day, the exchange student would eat every single one of them in the middle of the night while Skyping with her friends back in Japan. Without fail, I would hear her heavy footsteps in the middle of the night coming down the stairs, which shared a wall with the room where I slept.
Then I’d hear the unmistakable sound of the cookie jar opening, followed by the awful scraping sound from the bottom of the jar as she searched for the last cookie. It became such a regular problem that we started asking my grandma to hide a few cookies so we could still have some the next day. She was wonderful in every other way, but waking up to an empty cookie jar every Thursday morning was the worst.
69. The Chocolate Fountain
I work at a hotel, and my boss once told me a story about a couple on their honeymoon. We usually try pretty hard to provide whatever guests ask for, and these newlyweds requested a chocolate fountain. My boss figured it wouldn’t be too difficult, but it actually took a lot of effort to track one down. After the couple checked out, they didn’t really say much.
Then the maid went in to clean the room and immediately started laughing. My boss came in too, and there was chocolate absolutely everywhere. There were chocolate handprints, footprints, and the outlines of other body parts on the bed, the table, and even the ceiling. You could practically trace where they started and where they stopped.
70. The President Arrives!
I once found a goat dressed like Abraham Lincoln. That’s really the whole story, or at least all I know. At the time I was working as a hotel cleaner. I went in to clean a guest’s room, already expecting a mess since they had been staying there for a while, and there was the goat.
I have no idea how it got there or how anyone eventually got it out, but it made for a great story afterward.
71. Happy Trails
My grandfather’s cousin stayed with us for a week. He had a bladder issue but refused to wear adult diapers. As a result, he kept leaving a trail of urine—and sometimes poop—whenever he walked through the house. It was awful. It didn’t take my mother long to step in and handle it. Family or not, she wasn’t going to let that continue.
Nobody leaves that kind of mess on my mother’s floor.
72. Self-Imposed Nightmare
We had a family friend who basically invited himself over while he was in the area. At first, everything was fine—pleasant enough—until he took over my PS3. He yelled at the TV and monopolized it the whole time. I thought, “Okay, whatever, he’ll be leaving soon.”
Then the next morning, he came into my room to wake me up and jumped on my bed.
He ended up tearing the canopy off my bed, which damaged the ceiling. And somehow it got even worse. Later, he went out, saying he was visiting a friend nearby. He came back five hours later, around midnight, with some sketchy woman and told my parents they were staying the night and would leave in the morning. Thankfully, my parents said no and kicked him out.
73. A Research Blunder
I used to work at a body donation facility. Basically, when someone donates their body to science and medical students or implant researchers or whoever need a human knee or head, they would contact us. I handled the dissections and some of the deliveries. Before I started, there was one very clear rule: no deliveries to hotels.
I thought that was strangely specific, so I asked why. The answer made me laugh immediately. A few years earlier, a researcher had asked us to deliver his frozen specimen to a hotel for a conference. We did, no problem. What nobody expected was that he decided the fastest way to thaw an entire human torso was to fill a bathtub with warm water and let it soak.
No arms, no legs, no head. When he stepped out of the room, a hotel employee came in to clean, saw a bloody human torso in the tub, and called the police. The researcher ended up in handcuffs, and we had to explain how we were legally dismembering donated bodies. We heard the hotel worker quit on the spot. That’s why we don’t deliver to hotels.
74. Turning The Room Upside Down
I was working at a luxury hotel, and we had a fairly well-known band staying there. There were no noise complaints, and they seemed like ideal guests. But after they checked out, we went in to clean the room and found that every single piece of furniture had been nailed to the ceiling in almost the exact same arrangement it had been in on the floor. I thought it was pretty funny. Management did not.
75. That Sinking Feeling
We threw a party at our house, and some guests ended up using the bathroom in our bedroom because there was a line for the guest bathroom. We had one of those sinks without legs that’s mounted directly to the wall. One of the guests sat on it and broke it. I was honestly stunned that someone could look at something so obviously unsupported, clearly not designed to hold weight, and decide to sit on it anyway. After that, we added legs to it.
76. He Was Plumb Rude
There was a leak in the apartment my fiancé and I were about to move into. We hadn’t even spent one night there yet. We called a plumber to fix it. He went into the bathroom, locked the door, used the toilet, then came back out and told me the flush was working fine. But that wasn’t the end of it. He also took a drink from one of the bottles I was in the middle of unpacking.
77. Hiding Under The Bed
Back in high school, I was on a trip with my crew team, about 80 of us total. The guys decided that, since we had an entire hotel floor to ourselves, we should drag all the mattresses out into the hallway for no real reason, because, well, we were in high school. I was just about to shove my mattress through the doorway when I heard this perfect mix of screaming and laughter a few doors down.
Everyone rushed into the room at once. We found something truly gross. Under my friend’s mattress was a slightly moldy, dirt-covered cucumber about 18 inches long. The maids came in and sanitized the room, my friend got a new mattress, and they told us that two construction workers had stayed in that room for the previous two weeks.
78. Such A Bother…
My grandmother weighed herself on our bathroom scale every time she came over. We kept it standing upright between the shower and the vanity because our bathroom was tiny, and every time she visited, we’d hear a loud THUNK as she dropped it onto the floor to use it. I don’t know why, but it drove me crazy.
I tried tucking it under the vanity and out of sight, but she found it anyway, and THUNK. There’s something especially frustrating about trying to move something out of the way only to have your effort completely undone. I couldn’t say anything, though, because that would have been considered disrespectful. Apparently, digging through someone else’s cabinets to find something they clearly put away doesn’t count.
79. They Got Off On The Wrong Foot
We had some friends over with their kids, who were four and eight. My husband had already told them there were to be no feet on our furniture. That made the parents upset, so they told their children they could put their feet—shoes and all—on our furniture anyway. Their reasoning was that we let our dog on the couch.
80. What Are The Odds?
I had a collection of $1 casino chips, one from every casino I’d visited. A housemate had some people over, and one of the guys noticed them and started fiddling with them. I assumed he just liked having something in his hands, so I didn’t think much of it. But he ended up taking a handful of random chips and even tried to buy a drink at a bar with them. Luckily, one of the other guys he went out with managed to get them back for me.
81. The Party Secret
It was around my 10th birthday, and I talked my parents into letting me have a party. I even made the invitations by hand and gave them to kids in my class. Not many people came, but I didn’t mind because I was just excited to have a party at all. We did the usual stuff—cake, presents, all that—and then wrapped things up and everyone went home.
Afterward, I went into the bathroom and noticed a really awful smell. I looked around, then checked the trash. Someone had had an accident, thrown their underwear away, and left without saying anything. I just walked back out and told my mom. After that, we decided no more parties, and honestly, I was fine with that.
82. The Missing Towels
I let a friend stay in my spare bedroom for a month or so while he got back on his feet and looked for a job. After a few weeks, I realized the six extra towels in my linen closet were gone. I asked him about them, and he said, “I’ve only been using the one towel you gave me. I don’t know anything about the others.” I searched the whole house and still couldn’t find them.
Then for some reason, I thought to check under the couch... and there they were: six damp, mildewy, moldy towels stuffed underneath it.
83. She Was The Pits
My brother and his now ex-girlfriend were at my uncle’s house, sitting around watching a movie. She was lying across his lap when something completely bizarre happened. My brother started pulling out her armpit hair and dropping it onto the couch. It was genuinely unbelievable to watch.
84. This Was A First
It was our first Christmas in our own home. My father-in-law came over for Christmas dinner, and it was also the first Christmas we’d ever spent with him. I cooked the whole meal myself for him and six of his guests. He brought absolutely nothing. He sat at the head of the table and chain-smoked while waiting for dinner. Then, as he was leaving, he tried to talk my husband into coming to the bar with him and leaving me behind to handle all the cleanup.
When that didn’t work, he just said, “Okay, see ya,” and tossed his empty cigarette pack onto our living room floor.
85. Pyromania
My son had a hard time making friends when he was younger. He finally became friends with a boy from school and invited him over for a sleepover. I met the boy’s grandmother, and she seemed nervous and unsure. I told her he’d be fine with us. I let the boys stay in my trailer out back for the sleepover. About an hour later, my son came back into the house and went straight to his room — by himself.
I asked what happened and whether they had argued. He said no, but the boy was being kind of bossy. I asked a few more questions and found out the kid was in the trailer starting fires. I went out there right away and caught him trying to hide a pack of matches, with a bunch of burned ones scattered across the mattress. Then I understood why the grandmother had seemed so uneasy — the kid had a serious fire-setting problem.
I took him straight home and told my son he had made a real effort to make a friend, but some kids just aren’t good friend material.
86. Just One Night, I Swear!
I had a cousin come visit when I was living in my first apartment. I shared it with my girlfriend after moving out of my parents’ house. My cousin was in town visiting family and wanted to stay at our place for the night because we’d gone out partying. We had a spare room, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. Looking back, I probably should’ve realized something was off right then.
The next day, she wanted to go to the pool at our apartment complex and have some drinks, so we did, and that stretched into the evening. We let her stay another night, and again, it didn’t seem like a problem. On the third day, Sunday, I had to leave town for a job site about four hours away. I went through my usual routine, finished my laundry, packed my bag, said goodbye, and left.
My cousin went out to hang with friends, and my girlfriend went to work. This is where things started getting strange. About ten minutes after my girlfriend got home, my cousin buzzed from the gate and asked to be let in. My girlfriend let her in, and my cousin went into the spare room to get her things... but instead, she just went to sleep.
My girlfriend told me what happened, and I thought it was odd, but I let it go. We figured it was better for her to sleep it off than drive if she’d been drinking. Then my cousin showed up again the next night and did the same thing. My girlfriend is one of the kindest people you could meet, so she didn’t want to turn her away.
And by then, I was already asleep because getting up at 5:00 am on the road comes fast. The next morning, my girlfriend had an early shift, and my cousin was still asleep when she left. After working eight hours, my girlfriend picked up her 10-year-old nephew from school, fully expecting my cousin to have grabbed her things and left by then.
She and her nephew walked into the apartment and found a mess. The place smelled awful, and my cousin had three people over, all smoking weed in our living room. My girlfriend was embarrassed and furious. She quickly introduced herself, then turned around and took her nephew out to get food so he didn’t have to stay around that.
She called me and, understandably upset, asked why my cousin was still in our apartment. I had no idea she was even still there. So I called my cousin and told her she needed to leave, that I wasn’t even in town and she was staying in my place without my permission. She gave me this long story about how she didn’t know my nephew was coming over.
She said she didn’t think it was a big deal and that she didn’t want to go to her mom’s house because her mom didn’t like the friends she was with. I didn’t give in. I told her to pack up and go. But that still wasn’t the end of it. She then called my sweet girlfriend and gave her the same story, apologizing over and over and asking if she could please stay just one more night because she didn’t want to deal with her mom.
My girlfriend heard her out and let her stay again. The next day, I counted it up and realized she had stayed in our guest room from Friday to Thursday, six full nights, when she was only supposed to stay one. I called her and broke down the rent and expenses, and I told her that if she was still there when I got back the next day, I was going to expect a week’s worth of rent.
And if she couldn’t pay it, I was going to call her mom and explain everything that had been going on, including the fact that she had overstayed her welcome the entire time. She left that night, but not before leaving behind a bunch of her stuff and completely trashing the bathroom.
87. My Visitor Was Complete Trash
A friend of mine came over once, got completely drunk, and threw up in an empty trash can that didn’t have a liner in it. Then, instead of cleaning it up, they put a fresh trash bag over the can like nothing had happened. I didn’t discover it until a few days later, when I was finally trying to track down where the awful smell was coming from.
88. A Helping Hand Gone Bad
My fiancé had a very kind heart. Honestly, too kind. One of his coworkers was going through a rough time, so we let him move in with us, which turned out to be a terrible idea. He smoked in my car and my fiancé’s car. The same week he moved in, my grandpa had just died of lung cancer, so I was especially sensitive about smoking. It was something I was very clear I wasn’t okay with, and he did it anyway. Then he started bringing his girlfriend over.
They were together every night, which wouldn’t have been such a problem except they were extremely loud at 2 am while my fiancé and our toddler were trying to sleep. My child did not need to be hearing that, and I told him more than once. The last straw was when he started using substances in my bathroom. At that point, we were done and kicked him out.
I still can’t imagine how much worse that situation could have become. I don’t speak to him anymore, and my fiancé no longer gets to help people that way.
89. In This Corner
My mother-in-law loves volunteering to give new guests a tour of the house during big gatherings like birthday parties or Christmas. And every single time, she somehow leads them straight to the part of my home I most hope no one sees — usually a closed-off room tucked away somewhere, or whatever area I’d least want to show off. Then she’ll have them stand there and chat like it’s completely normal.
You know the kind of room I mean: the bedroom where you shoved all the clutter so guests wouldn’t see it. Or the storage room in the basement past the laundry area, packed with random junk and no real organization. It took my husband eight years to realize that yes, this really does happen every time. It’s not the worst thing she’s ever done to us, but it might be the most weirdly petty.
90. Picking Up The Trash?
I was about eight when this happened, and my friend was seven. We were playing in my room while our moms talked in the living room. The doors were shut. We were making things out of paper, so little scraps were all over the place. My friend accidentally knocked over a bag of trash that had all the tiny paper pieces in it.
I asked her to pick it up, and she said she would and apologized. Then, right in front of me, she did the strangest thing. She got down on the floor and started licking it up, with pieces sticking to her tongue. I just sat there, staring, like I was watching some kind of ritual. I wasn’t even laughing, just genuinely concerned. I handed her the trash can, thinking she was done and was about to spit it out, but she didn’t.
She swallowed the paper, all those tiny pieces. Then she grabbed my glue stick and ate that too, saying it would help push the paper down her throat. I was stunned. I just kept playing, waiting for some kind of reaction or for something else weird to happen, but nothing did. She went home and apparently forgot all about it, but I never did, and I never told anyone. She was such a strange kid.
91. Total Dealbreaker
I had a friend stay with me for a month while I was living in a popular vacation spot. The idea was that the trip would be her reward for quitting smoking. Instead, she kept bringing random men over at all hours of the night and being extremely loud with them. Then, about two weeks into her stay, I found out she had never actually quit smoking at all and had been sneaking cigarettes in my guest room and bathrooms whenever I was at work.
92. She Was Out Of Her Noodle
I had a weird friendship with a girl from middle school. My mom really wanted me to make friends, so she invited her over for dinner. We had spaghetti, and without a second thought, she started eating it with her hands. My mom and I just stared at each other wide-eyed across the table while she took huge bites from this handful of pasta.
It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen someone do, and I doubt I’ll ever see anything like it again. I went to her house afterward, but I never got to ask about the spaghetti because what I saw there completely unsettled me. Their entire house was filled with taxidermy. I was also warned not to go into the backyard because her dad had a boar hanging up that he was in the middle of skinning.
After that, I ended the friendship pretty quickly, and my mom didn’t object.
93. The Music Audition
Years ago, I worked in a tobacco shop and put up flyers saying I wanted to meet local musicians and make some noise together. What happened after that was a parade of very unusual people showing up at my door. One of the most memorable was a kid who was clearly not doing well. He was 16, and his mom drove him over to my house.
She stayed out front in the car while he carried his bass inside. He barely said a word, played a weak Nirvana riff out of time, and then just sat there staring at me with his hand in his mouth. I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do with that. I hope he got the support he needed and is doing great now, but the whole situation that led to that moment was deeply uncomfortable.
94. After The New Year
I threw a New Year’s party once. Just once. It turned into a complete disaster. Someone I invited brought along a group of people I knew, but never really liked having around. At some point around one in the morning, I realized my keepsake urn necklace with my brother’s ashes in it was missing. Then I found a couple of small lines of powdery material laid out on my bathroom counter.
Those people had tried to snort my brother’s ashes and had taken the necklace they were in. I was furious.
95. We Got Burned
We had someone staying with us who kept insisting on cooking dinner. First, he burned the steaks. Then he insisted on making hamburgers. I told him I didn’t like onions, but he still made the burgers with chunks of onion mixed in. I tried to eat one, but big pieces of raw onion were not something I wanted. He also made beans in a crockpot and didn’t refrigerate them overnight. He just left them sitting out in the crockpot.
The next morning, he plugged the crockpot back in and let the beans cook all day again. He said that if there was any bacteria, cooking them would fix the problem. This kept going for a week. My spouse and I ate the beans the first night and refused every leftover after that. On top of that, we were having record heat, so we were running the air conditioning.
He also wouldn’t fully close the outside door, always leaving it cracked open, which let the cool air out and smoky air in. Every time I walked by, I’d shut it until it latched. Even worse, we had indoor-only cats, and they would sometimes get out because he couldn’t understand that the door needed to stay closed.
All those little things added up and made him a nightmare to live with.
96. Psycho Visitor Qu’est Que C’est?
I had a houseguest—invited by one of my roommates—go through a serious mental health episode. He actually went into all our rooms, dug through our drawers, and left anything even slightly revealing sitting out on dressers or nightstands, like he wanted us to know he had looked through everything. He also kept finding ways to expose himself and walked in on my roommates while they were being intimate.
We got him out within 48 hours, though honestly it should have happened sooner. We even changed the locks. The strange part was that we all knew him, had hosted him before, and he’d always been great. But even after we got him out, he still managed to leave one last disturbing surprise. A few months later, while cleaning the house, we found a bag filled with his body hair.
97. Uninvited Guests
When I was a kid, I invited another kid over to my house when we were around 10 years old. When he arrived, I was shocked. He brought four or five family members with him. None of them were parents, just siblings and cousins. They stayed only a few minutes, said they had to go, and insisted on finding their own way out.
That seemed to be the end of it—or so I thought. About two or three minutes later, I went into the kitchen for some water and found all of them still in my house, crouched behind the counters and stuffing our silverware into their pockets. The funny part is that my family was pretty poor, so it wasn’t even real silver. They all ran for the door, and the kid never really explained it at school. As it turned out, they were poor too—just kids making a really dumb choice.
98. The Mattress Mess
In college, a girl who was a friend of a friend had gone through a rough breakup earlier that day. She got completely drunk and started crying. During a party, I let her have some time alone in my room so she could calm down. Later, when I went to bed, I realized she had peed in my bed and soaked the mattress foam. I ended up throwing it out, and she bought me a new one the next day, so it could have been worse.
I didn’t want to embarrass her, so I talked it through with her and we worked it out. I already knew she was kind of spoiled, but still—come on.
99. All In The Family
We welcomed my uncle, his wife, and their child into our home while they were visiting from abroad. Without telling us, his wife also brought around a dozen of her own relatives, including several young children. It was an absolute nightmare. We had to rush to put together extra beds, make enough food, and get the bathrooms ready for all of them.
Later, we found out she had actually been charging her relatives to stay in our house.
100. More Than A Pain In The Back
A friend came over for a sleepover and never mentioned ahead of time that she had “back pain.” At the last minute, she told me she couldn’t sleep on the couch because of it and needed to sleep in my bed instead. I didn’t want to be rude, so I agreed, and I ended up sleeping on the couch. Maybe it’s just me, but asking to sleep in someone else’s bed when you’re a guest feels really rude.
The next day, I was planning to see my boyfriend in the afternoon, which is why I had asked my friend to leave that morning. As it got close to 1 p.m., I asked when she thought she’d head out because I had plans. Her answer made me so annoyed. She said, “Oh, but I start work at 2 p.m., and it’s closer to your house than mine, so I’ll leave at 1:30.”
I’m not a hotel, and even hotels have checkout times. And one more thing: while she was staying with me, we went to the nearby Dollarama so she could buy a gift for her mom. On the way back, she wanted to charge me $5 for gas. The drive wasn’t even worth more than a dollar, and I had only gone in her car because she asked me to.
101. Their Stay Went Viral
We had some close friends stay at our house while we were away for the holidays. When we got back, the house was clean—possibly even cleaner than when we left. But two nights later, our toddler woke up and started throwing up nonstop. We ended up taking her to the emergency room. After about five hours, she had stabilized enough for us to spend New Year’s under the bright hospital lights.
Then things got even stranger. A few days later, I started feeling like I had a kidney stone or something. It began with pain, then turned into fever and chills. I ended up in the emergency room too. They ran a bunch of tests and pumped me full of IV fluids, but they still didn’t know what was wrong when my wife called to say she wasn’t feeling well either. At that point, I knew it had to be connected.
After a week or so, we were all feeling better and got back to normal life. Then, about a month later, we were telling a mutual friend about everything. That’s when we finally found out what had happened. He said, “Oh, wasn’t that around the time our friend was visiting? We never got to see them because their whole house had Norovirus that week.”
That definitely explained why so many sheets had been changed and why there were a couple of damp spots on the bedroom carpet. A little warning before we got home would have been nice.
102. A Walking Red Flag
I was a kid, probably nine or ten, and my mom had a friend over for lunch with her son. At one point, the kid disappeared for about ten minutes. I assumed he had gone to the bathroom, which was annoying because I really needed to go too. So when he came back, I hurried past him into the room before the bathroom, where we kept a fish tank.
That detail would mean nothing if the fish tank hadn’t been cloudy and churning. At first, I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. Then I realized there were torn-up little fish faces swirling around in the water. The kid had reached into the tank and crushed every single fish.
103. Clean And Clear And Out Of Control
My uncle and his wife came to stay with us for a while. They took my room, and I slept on the couch for a few months, which didn’t seem like a huge deal when you’re a kid. What really upset me was what we found after they finally left. We opened the door and stepped into a disaster. They had completely trashed my room. Everything smelled awful, there were crushed peanut shells ground into the carpet, cigarette burns on my mattress, and more.
We couldn’t figure out why the room smelled so terrible until we lifted the bed and found dried cat poop stuck deep in the shag carpet. Either their hygiene was so bad they didn’t notice, or they knew and just didn’t care.
104. Make Yourself Less at Home
I asked a couple—friends of my boyfriend—to watch my home for a little under two weeks. I left the place spotless, stocked the fridge with all their favorite snacks, left movie tickets, gift cards, drinks, and even my car for them to use however they wanted, since neither of them had a car or their own place. When I got home around 10:00 p.m. after more than 20 hours of flights and travel, I walked into what looked like a complete disaster.
The house was filthy. There was dirt all over the floor. The counters were piled with stuff like they had emptied the cabinets and never put anything back. Empty drink bottles were sitting on every surface. Pistachio shells were scattered across the floor, my bedside table, and my bedroom dresser. And that was only the beginning.
Their dirty underwear was left on the bathroom floor. The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes—almost all of them mine. Most of my food containers were now in the fridge holding their leftovers. They had dragged my patio furniture into my bedroom and turned it into some kind of gaming setup, moving my bedroom TV in the process. And somehow, it still got worse.
They left massage oil on my nightstand. They broke my washing machine. They threw away all my regular cleaning supplies and replaced them with “organic” ones—basically vinegar and water. When we came in, one of them actually said, “Wow, it’s so weird having you here. It’s like this was our house, and now it’s yours.” I was stunned. It had always been my house.
They didn’t seem eager to leave, either. They just sat in the living room and opened drinks. I was too exhausted to push the issue, and I definitely wasn’t about to clean up after them. I fell asleep on the couch while my boyfriend made awkward small talk. The next morning, I thought the whole thing was finally over—until the girlfriend sent me an unbelievable text. She said it was rude and inappropriate that I hadn’t worn a bra when I fell asleep, suggesting I was trying to get her boyfriend’s attention.
For one thing, I was wearing a bra. And even if I hadn’t been, I was in my own home. There were plenty of other things they did that bothered me too. These are just the ones I remember right away.
105. Hotel Havoc
I used to work as a front desk agent at a boutique hotel. One day, a guy came in with an online reservation he had booked at an unbelievably cheap nightly rate. He was obviously very impressed with himself and immediately started giving me a hard time about everything—from insisting he shouldn’t have to provide a credit card because he had prepaid, to snapping, “I’m pretty sure I can find the elevators. I’m not stupid.”
He was rude from the start. About ten minutes after I checked him in, he came back down and demanded a bigger room with a king bed and a view, even though he had booked a standard queen online. We happened to have extra king rooms available, so I switched him. Ten minutes later, he was back again, this time complaining that the room was too small.
Then he told me, “I’m only giving you one more chance to make me happy,” and demanded to speak to the general manager. After a long argument with my manager, we ended up upgrading him to our nicest suite and giving him free parking because apparently we had “caused him trouble.” And all of this was for a rate of about $40 a night. But somehow, he still managed to make it worse.
Not long after all that, while he was heading out to dinner, he told us he wouldn’t even be using the room much during his stay because he was in town visiting friends and would mostly be staying at their house. I couldn’t believe it. From that point on, I made it my personal mission to make things difficult for him.
Every time I saw him leave the hotel, I reset his room keys—which was often, about three or four times a day. It was especially satisfying when he came back exhausted late at night and had to come all the way to the front desk to get them fixed. By the end of his stay, he was clearly frustrated. I’m guessing he won’t be coming back.
106. Future Serial Killer Alert
I was a kid, probably around 9 or 10, and my mom had a friend over for lunch with her son. At one point the kid disappeared for about 10 minutes, and I assumed he had gone to the bathroom because I really needed to use it too. So when he came back, I hurried past him into the room just before the bathroom, where we kept a fish tank. That detail would not matter at all if the tank hadn’t looked cloudy and stirred up. At first I couldn’t tell what I was seeing, until I noticed torn-up little fish faces swirling around in the water. The kid had reached into the tank and crushed every single fish in it.
