There are a lot of jobs in this world that let you peer behind the doors of other people’s houses, and I feel like this should be described as one of the perks.
I don’t know one single person who isn’t at least sort of nosy when it comes right down to it.
If you love hearing about the weird s*%t that goes on behind closed doors you’re in luck – these people are all about sharing the love.
1. In the flesh.
A woman who built an aluminum foil tent over her bed so “they” couldn’t control her dreams or thoughts while she slept.
I found out later that she been a member of the Branch Davidians.
2. You never forget that.
We worked on this guys house, he was in advertising, beautiful trophy wife.
When you walked in, you we greeted with a 5 feet × 3 feet , zoomed in, close up of said trophy wife’s vagina.
My eye’s were deliberately going from picture, to wife, to picture,…
3. Definitely not normal.
Just recently had a client who was fairly normal on the outside: clean cut, steady factory job, decent car, etc. Inside his house, the roof was rotted through, there were holes in the floor, dead rodents in the kitchen cupboards, etc.
The weirdest thing was that he kept talking about his “wife”, but it was abundantly clear that no one lives there with him.
This guy has a completely normal life on the outside, but is definitely off.
4. Bless her heart.
I used to volunteer for a wildlife rescue and did a pickup at a very elderly woman’s house where she had found a baby bird.
When I got there she carefully uncovered it from the towel she’d placed it in, and it was just a chestnut.
5. I…don’t know what to say.
Went into a woman’s house that had a lifesize replica/mannequin of herself mutilated & murdered.
Turns out, she’s a semi-pro actress. She’s been an extra in a dozen or so motion pictures. One of which was a B level hack film. The special effects crew made a latex replica of her for a couple scenes in the movie & let her keep it afterwards.
It was very real looking. From a foot away, you’d think it was a real mutilated corpse. Creepy, but I can’t blame her for wanting to keep it.
6. Don’t freak out.
I was at a house for a cable TV service call, customer wasn’t home so I called him. He said, “I will be home in five minutes, and don’t freak out, but I have a tiger on the truck”.
When he got there, he had a tiger in a cage on the back of his truck. I got to pet the thing, feed it a little, and then went on to see his venomous snake collection, his hand grenade collection, and his hot sauce collection.
The very next day, I was at another service call, and asked the customer to get to the pole in the back yard, and he told me that he has a tiger in the back yard, so don’t freak out. I got to pet the thing, and feed it a little.
I had been working cable for 18 years to that point, and had never encountered a tiger in all that time. I have been working cable 7 years since, and have had no further encounters with tigers in that time. But, for two days consecutive, I visited homes with tigers.
7. A horror show.
When I worked as a building inspector we saw a house that had not paid their water bills and had their service disconnected. So naturally their solution was to get a bunch of big blue storage bins from Walmart, cut a hole in one end of the lid, and shit in those.
They had 5 lined up in the living room. There was also 4 dead dogs in a closet. I puked for the rest of the day. We condemned the house.
8. That poor man.
Not weird but really really sad. Had to go check an apartment because we’d had a tip that there could be moisture damage. The apartment belonged to a retired older man and apparently when he had a nurse visit him at home, they had made the report to building maintenance.
When we got to the bathroom, me and my partner saw something that haunts me to this day. The ceiling was black. The walls were black. Everything was covered in a solid black wall of mold.
The man living there had no sense of what it was or what it meant. That mold had to have been growing for quite a while, and I have no idea how long he had lived there breathing it in, without no one even coming to visit to see and report it.
I have no idea what happened to the apartment or the resident but I’m sure the bathroom had to be fully made anew and I’m hoping the man is living somewhere safer.
9. Definitely a lot.
As a loan officer I had to go to a person’s home to get loan docs signed. She was a surgical nurse in a big hospital.
The house smelled so bad. I had to use the restroom and there was a huge cockroach smashed on the wall just above the sink, literally 2 inches from a toothbrush.
The tub and toilet had a black ring of dirt like they had never been cleaned. The dining room table was full of trash and empty cat food cans where they just opened the can to feed the 4 cats sitting on the table.
It was absolutely disgusting!
10. A whole lot of nope.
Ex-geek squad. One house I went to was a retirement home. The guy had to be in his 80s? Had used condoms everywhere and womens underwear on the floor. Had the biggest porn collection I’ve ever seen.
Floor to ceiling book shelf 12 feet long of just porn.
Wanted use to set up one of those shitty 5.1 home theatres in a box things. After we were done and left he called and said there was an issue so we begrudgingly went back and it was just a ruse as he wanted to show us porn :/
11. Six. Kids.
I shadowed a home health therapist once. We went to a house where we had to tuck our pants legs into our socks because of fleas. We drove down this dirt road, and I thought we were going past these abandoned single wide trailers, but then we parked in front of one.
This trailer didn’t have steps to enter, you had to boost yourself up. The floor was rotten through to the ground in places, and there was a grandmother with 6 young kids in there.
Including the one we were seeing who had hydrocephalus, but the mother never got it treated, and neglected the child nearly to the point of death till grandma found them and took the “baby.”
Grandma was really trying her best, but this place was the most unsafe place I had ever ever seen
12. She is not ok.
My husband’s experience relayed to me: he was renting a small two bedroom apartment with his now ex wife. Her sister came to stay with them for a while trying to get on her feet and get into school, work etc.
After a heavy storm the landlord came to check on the apartment and went into the basement. It was completely flooded with several feet of water. He said there was no way the storm did that and found that there was a burst pipe as well coming from the bathroom.
Turns out the sister was flushing those wet wipes down the toilet and it finally overloaded it. They found her closet full with wet wipes, used. Hundreds.
She never showered apparently, just wiped down with wipes, piled them in the closet or tried to flush them.
13. IT in college.
Not me, since I never went in student rooms when I was on college staff … but the other folks in the IT department would be called in to fix someone’s network connection (wired Ethernet) and occasionally come back with stories. Usually just bongs and porn. Sometimes really filthy rooms. It turns out that some students not only don’t do laundry, but enter and exit their rooms through the ground-floor window, meaning that the door is actually not navigable for the dirty clothes and other kipple on the floor.
Department policy was that staff would not enter a student’s room alone. More than once, the student who wanted their network connection fixed was glad to see the IT people … but the student’s girlfriend, who just woke up naked in their bed (and may have been looking forward to a lie-in and/or wake-and-bake before morning classes), was somewhat surprised to see the IT people. The IT people were never warned that there would be a naked person in the room. Not even with a scarf on the doorknob.
14. Pig!
I did a call where the family had a full size pig, living in their house.
Just chilling in a room right off the living room.
Another call where the older couple had VERY anatomically correct drawings of themselves on all of the walls. That was awkward.
15. IN THE HOUSE.
Delivered pizza to a house where I was greeted by a man and what I thought was a large dog.
Until it neighed at me and I realized it was one of those miniature horses.
16. Right in the living room.
Vet tech here…..went to an at home euthanasia. The people were very wealthy. They had huge abstract art painting in the living room (probably 12 feet by 4 feet) that said “I like putting my dick in anuses”
Not too shocking, but, just enough information where anyone in their living room might feel a little bit uncomfortable. Heh heh.
17. I think I would have left.
I did residential HVAC for a few years I’ve seen a few hoarder houses. The worst was an older lady who had most rooms full of what seemed like garbage. At the end of the day I was working on the thermostat placed my screw driver on a random pile because I needed both my hands for a second.
Went to pick up my screw driver and finish up, right next to it was a bowl of used sanitary napkins. After when I was leaving the lady reminded me to vacuum. Wouldn’t have bothered me if I had actually made a mess but I know I did not.
I know this because I put down a drop cloth to avoid placing my tools in cat vomit and anything else that was on her disgusting floor.
18. You don’t know whether to laugh, or…
Install tech for AT&T here.
Aside from nasty hoarder houses, the weirdest was a kid about 3 years old went into his mom’s bathroom, dug through the trash, and came out pretending her used tampon inserter was a slide whistle
19. I hope she was telling the truth.
I worked for a moving company and we went into a lady’s house and kept finding needles everywhere. Behind the furniture, down in the couch and chair cushions.
We stopped after a couple min and refused to finish the job. Turns out her teenage daughter was diabetic, and would just toss the finger prick needles, and syringes everywhere.
She honestly didn’t understand why we refused to touch the furniture after one of the guys carried some cushions and wound up with a needle stuck in his shirt.
20. Did the bathroom not work?
When I worked in pest control, I went to a house that called us for roach problems (shocking). As soon as I entered the home, I knew it was going to be bad. The smell nearly knocked me down. I had to make an excuse to go back to the truck right away, just to take a breath. I returned with my mask on. Inside the house was the mother and 3 small children. The smell was something that I really hadn’t smelled before, and in this business, you smell a lot. The house was dirty, but not in the hoarding way,at first glance. Just basically a typical house that was obviously run by the kids and lazy parents.
Kitchen was dirty, looked like about a week of dishes piled up and scraps of food on the counters. But still nothing explained the smell. As I started up to the attic, the little girl ran by my latter started to pull down her pants as she ran to her room. I looked away, but she left her door open.
As I climbed into the attic I noticed that she was squatting and taking a crap in the middle of her room. After she left I looked in her room and saw piles of human feces all around her room, dried up .
I checked the other kids bedrooms and found the same thing. The mom didn’t even bother to clean up, knowing that she had an appointment with me. I made some excuse to schedule another follow up later.
I left. Before I even left the driveway, I called child protection service.
21. So creepy.
I was a paramedic and then later a police officer for many years. I’ve seen enough hoarders situations to last me 10 lifetimes. Probably the most odd thing I’ve ever seen was in the home of a sweet old elderly couple. Their home alarm went off in the middle of the night due to a malfunction of some sort. This is a very common call. My partner and I showed up and the couple was very nervous that someone had broken in, so they asked us to do a check of the inside of the home which we agreed to. The house was pretty big, including a very large finished basement with lots of rooms in a crazy array. It actually reminded me of Buffalo Bill’s basement from Silence of the Lambs, but cleaner.
We opened one door and found a square room, about 12×12 feet. Walls alternating pained blue and red. But the odd bit was the room had nothing in it but a single chair directly in the center, and eyebolts in the concrete floor – one on each corner of the chair.
The chair was one of those old school chairs you’d find in a 1960’s office or waiting room. It clearly looked like this room was designed for some odd sexual fetish or interrogating Al Queda. I remember when I saw it, I stopped dead and stared. It was so creepy,
I felt like I walked into the set of a Kubric film. My first thought was I’d turn around and find the old homeowner with an axe, ready to take my head off. My partner, who was directly behind me looked in and said “well we just found the discipline chamber.”
Fortunately he didn’t grab my shoulder first, or I might have shot him.
Had we not been given permission to search the entire house, I’d have worried there were people captive somewhere in that home.
22. That’s a rough day.
I do pest control and when I climbed an attic ladder and switched on my flashlight I saw a person up there waiting for me. Turns out they kept a mannequin in the attic to scare squirrels. Didn’t work, the squirrels were nesting two feet away. Scared the s*%t out of me.
Also found Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of England, in life sized cutout form in a basement closet. Also scared the s*%t out of me.
23. Eyeballs.
This one lady that we called eyeballs had contact lenses everywhere… every other week. She just flicked them when she took em out.
24. At least there are protections in place.
I worked tech support for a major telecom provider and a big part of my job was dispatching technicians for on site issues. I’ve worked for enough telecom companies to know that they are all evil, profit driven, borderline cartels without a shred of decency or compassion, but I was pleasantly surprised by one thing:
Technicians had an absolute ability to just nope the fuck out of any call at their own discretion. If the customer made them uncomfortable, made them feel unsafe, interfered with the job, refused to take instruction, didn’t clear the work area, conditions were unsafe, unsanitary… anything.
The techs could walk off and the company wouldn’t bat an eye. A note would be left on file for that residence and the customer would get one chance to rectify the issue. If it happened again a denial of service would be issued for the address. In some very rare circumstances they were not given the second chance.
The company even went so far as to instruct their techs that if they encounter an infestation they get right into their service vehicle, strip down, bag their gear, put on their spares and file a reimbursement claim for a full set of new gear toes to tits.
Probably more of a liability thing than a corporate decency move, but I was surprised regardless.
25. Never went back.
An endless collection of dildos and sex toys of course.
The worst thing was an elderly woman confined to her bed in a FILTHY house. There was trash everywhere, roaches crawling around, her bedding was filthy with excrement on it.
I walked right out there, told the guy who called me that I was running for parts. Called the police and NEVER went back!
26. Infestations galore.
Not mine story, but my wife’s. She was what amounts to a very well degreed social worker. Her job was to do in home assessments on people with mental health issues. She has lots of stories of filthy homes, but she had one client that she visited and the house was absolutely disgusting. Spoiled food and garbage everywhere, unimaginable smells. Clearly the client did not clean.
My wife noticed they had small, open sores all over her ankles and wrists. She was super concerned of picking up bed bugs at this time as one of her coworkers had that happen. She noticed a tiny bug crawling on her slacks, tried to brush is off and immediately competed the assessment.
She ran to her car, took off her pants and shoes in the parking lot, tossed them into the trunk and got into the driver seat and called me. We left her car outside in sub-freezing temps for the next few days.
Afterward, she found out it wasn’t bed bugs, but fleas. The place was infested with fleas.
27. Huh.
Lots and lots of people don’t have beds. Doesn’t seem to matter if it’s a $500k house or a $500/month apt, there are a ton of people without a bed.
28. Nice tip.
I delivered pizza at a drug dealers place. Building was locked down with kids monitoring the entrance. They told with floor to go and which door to knock on then followed upstairs.
The guy that answered the door looked basically Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2. Another guy was playing fifa with a gun casually left on the couch next to him.
Mickey paid me, the kids escorted me downstairs and gave me a bag of weed as a tip.
29. The newspaper couple.
I used to work as tidy-up man [german speaker, sorry for strange words sometimes] and saw a lot of really strange things in houses, which had to be normal for the people. Maybe the behavour is considered as illness, but its really strange anyways. So the people were already dead when we cleaned the houses. I was younger back then and I forgot to make pictures (it was 10 years ago).
The newspaper couple. An old couple lived in a small flat and the only thing they did, was to sort and organize the free newspapers you find in fornt of your door. But hey had a special way to do ist. They cutted every headline, every picture out of a bunch of these newspapes and put them into ring folders.
They did for over 40 years (we found papers form the 70s); every (every) wall in the flat were ringfolders. But because and some point they didnt manage to do it right, they startet to put the newspapers they still have to do on the floor. The floor in the entire flat was full of newspapers up to 50cm. (In their basement we found a small box of plastic fileld with stones, sand and water
It was labeled: scoured and packed 1968. In german this hits the humor my college and I had and we still giggle about that “abgekocht und eingepackt”).
The bottle lady. She was an retired gynecologist and lived in her old doctors office. The interior was from the 70s and there was everything like in a normal doctors office. But she she lived in this thing with no bed, no kitchen. She slept on a couch in the waiting room; the only non-doctors-office thing was a TV she placed there. In the laboraties was a fridge (for medicines) she also used for food now..
She was an alcoholic and drank Gin only and brought the same small bottle from a small supermarket, but she didnt throw the empty bottles away. She placed them all over her the doctors office, her home.
Everywhere, Gin Bottles on every surface, mountains of gin bottles. She only had a small path from the door to the couch, to the TV, to the toilet and the fridge.
30. Gross and weird.
Late to the party here but I worked as a pest control tech. So many elderly folks with pets have portions of their house that they cant get to or dont get to very often and their pets have figured this out. Tons of elderly folks have a room/hallway/2nd bathroom that is just full of feces and urine their pets go in. Its really terrible.
Weirdest thing was a house full of folks who were from somewhere in Asia that had converted their backyard into a full garden of vegetables and fruits. Just massive, 2000+sq ft of yard that was rows and rows of food. Go into the house and this 3bd/2bath house with a basement has maybe 12-13 people living in it. Just people on top of people, and throughout the house, in the kitchen and on other hard surfaces like tables and counters there is just raw meat sitting out.
I got called to this house for a roach treatment and they were everywhere. All around the house, in the yard, crawling up the siding, and the lady who I was communicating with just couldnt grasp why she shouldnt leave raw meat out of package all over the house that was infested. Maybe more gross than weird.
I cannot with some of these. They’re just too tragic.
If you regular go into other people’s houses and have a story that belongs on this list we want to hear it in the comments!
