Bad roommates are a rite of passage. Everyone has one at some point in their lives. These folks took to Reddit to share the tales of the weirdest things they ever caught their roommate doing. Content has been edited for clarity.
Who Knows What Was In That Cup
“She had this cup full of…liquid…by her bed. There’s no better way to describe it, really.
She kept her toothbrush in it, bristles down in the liquid and when it came to teeth-brushing time, she’d basically just take the toothbrush out, brush her teeth, spit into the cup and shove her toothbrush back into her cup.
I’m retching just thinking about it.”
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping, He Knows When You’re Awake
“My old ‘roommate’ (he was technically the homeowner but lived in a shack in the backyard) would come into my room early in the morning and watch me sleep. I was a bartender at the time so I would get home about an hour or so before he would be leaving for work. I was always thoroughly passed out when he’d leave, and I’m a heavy sleeper, so I did not notice this was happening for MONTHS until a guy I was seeing stayed up and caught him opening my door.
There was also a second door to my room that I could not open (it was locked from the other side). I don’t know what was going on in there, but I’m fairly certain he was spying on me from that room as well. He was a complete crazy person. I was afraid for my life.
I found out he also beat his dogs (this made me want to murder the man) and his ex-wife had a protective order against him. I found out about the protective order when the cops came by banging on the door at 4 am looking for him because he had violated it. None of which I knew before moving in, of course.
His shack/home was his studio. He would paint these HUGE pieces of mostly black/dark background with his father standing in tighty whities looking like he was being attacked or suffering somehow. There was always a different woman in each painting looking like they were causing the suffering too. So, so odd and unsettling. Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.”
His Obsession Was Also His Deepest Shame
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“I had a roommate in college who had a thing for making love to very, very large women. He had a room on the ground floor off of the living room where we would all hang out. He was too embarrassed to admit his preferences in women, so he would force his hookups to exit through his window.
The only problem is our house was L-shaped and his window was visible from the living room. So on numerous occasions, we got to watch large women fall out of his window. He was very manipulative, and most definitely a sociopath who preyed on girls with low self-esteem.”
They Made A Disturbing Discovery About His Chinese Food Habit
“My friend told me the most insane thing about his roommate in New York.
The roommate would always bring home Chinese food every night and go up to his room. Like every night. He was kind of quiet, didn’t really socialize with the other roommates. One day my friend and the other roommates started to notice a smell in their apartment. They took out the trash, ran the garbage disposal, etc. Nothing seemed to be helping this smell.
They finally decided to check out the quiet roommate’s room, as they suspect this was where the smell was coming from. So when he wasn’t home, they went up the stairs and slowly opened the door to his room. What they found was shocking.
As they opened the door, they saw mountains of Chinese food take-out boxes stacked to the ceiling all around the bed. Hundreds of empty boxes everywhere. The smell was now overwhelming as my friend stepped closer to the bed. His foot bumped into something, partially hidden by the take-out boxes. This is where it gets weird.
My friend crouched down to get a closer look at what was under the bed. He clears some take-out boxes out of the way and is taken aback by what he is seeing. A fully clothed, human-shaped, mass of noodles was shoved under this kid’s bed. What’s worse is that it looked like the kid had been doing it with the noodle mass every night as there were some suspect stains on noodle women’s clothing. My friend reported it to the landlord and the kid moved out the next week.”
A Mix Up Identities Almost Led To An Interesting Roommate
“In college, we had a house with five rooms and for a while had a bunch of roommates come and go pretty quickly. This resulted in ‘Steve,’ a random friend of a former roommate moving in, and shortly thereafter, Steve’s brother ‘Kevin’ moving in, and a couple weeks later, Steve moving out. So we’re now left with an empty room and Kevin, whom we really don’t know and who seems like a really sketchy guy. Turns out, he really was a sketchy guy, very heavy into substance abuse and just generally trashy.
One of my other roommates, ‘Carl,’ let me know the morning after a party that someone was coming by to check out the room later, so we started cleaning up the cups and crap leftover from the night before. My little brother had stayed the night, so we were cleaning the upstairs and Carl was out front cleaning up some things in the front yard when the person coming to look at the room pulled up.
Carl went and introduced himself and started showing her around the house. He brought her upstairs and introduces her to me and my brother and then showed her to what would be her room. Finally, he walked her out, and my brother and I started talking about how she seemed kinda trashy and a little bit old to be interested in a room by a college campus like we had, but whatever.
All of a sudden, Carl came running up the stairs laughing. He explained that after he’d finished the tour and walked out with the girl, she stopped him and said, ‘I don’t think you know why I’m here.’
Carl responded, ‘You’re interested in the room we have, right?’
She responded, ‘Umm no, I’m a pay-for-play girl. Someone named Kevin called for me.’
It turned out Kevin had called a floozy and we just gave her a tour of the whole house. I can’t imagine what was going through her head as he was saying things like ‘and here’s your room’ and ‘this is my roommate and his brother.’ She must have thought she was getting into some crazy freaky stuff.
Needless to say, she didn’t move in and we encouraged Kevin to move out shortly thereafter.”
It Wasn’t Catching Them In The Act, But What Came After That Scarred Her
“I’ve caught my roommates (who are married) sleeping together, but that’s not the weird part.
I was home sick one day and I’d let my friend borrow my car. So, my roommates thought I wasn’t home and figured it was a good time to bang in the kitchen. My room, being downstairs with the kitchen, was in earshot, so I peeked outside and saw them getting it on.
It only lasted for about two minutes, then the wife started yelling at the husband about how pathetic he was in bed and how he couldn’t please her and he climaxed too quickly. It was brutal. I’m pretty sure the husband started crying.
Later that day, when I ‘got home,’ the husband started bragging to me about how he and the wife did it all over the house that day. I said nothing and let him have that moment. He needed it.”
Not Even The Cat Could Match Their Nastiness
“I used to live with what I’ve decided was one of the most disgusting couples ever.
We lived in a two bedroom, one bath apartment. They would use my dishes and leave them in their room, unwashed, usually with food in them. They didn’t want to buy a litter box for their cat, so they took a plastic gallon tub and just dumped litter in it. Their cat constantly peed in their closet on their shoes and they’d just continue wearing them.
But the worst: when we moved out, I had to clean everything or I knew we wouldn’t get our deposit back. They had cleaned out most of their things and I let them know I was going to clean their room. They said cool (they were never going to do it), so I went in, armed with gloves, a scarf covering my mouth, and a bottle of bleach. Boy, was I unprepared.
I walked in and this stench just hits me. Their bedroom door was always closed and they always had incense burning so I never smelled it. They had a couple cardboard boxes filled with poop and toilet paper. I ran out of there so fast and called them, screaming and demanding to know what was going on. They said that sometimes I would be in the bathroom, and instead of knocking or holding their bladder, they would crap in the boxes. They tried to play it off as, ‘We take it out once a week,’ like it was changing the litter box.”
Even In The “Party House,” He Was A Legend
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“Many years ago, I lived in a ‘party house.’ Always a crazy scene. One night was a typical Saturday bacchanalia. I went to bed relatively early and got up in the morning. My roomie was asleep on the sofa in a sitting position, snoring away. In one hand, he had a fully cooked pork chop. In the other hand, he had a salt shaker.
My walking around had roused him. He woke up, glanced around all bleary-eyed, then looked at his hands. He slowly shook some salt on his pork chop and started eating it.
Breakfast of champions.
I never asked where he got the pork chop or how he slept for six hours without dropping the pork chop or the salt shaker. It was what it was.”
Just A Couple Of Buddies, Hanging Out Doing Straight Stuff
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“A couple years ago in college, I got matched up with a random roommate. He was a cool guy at first, so things worked. After about the first week, he just stopped speaking to me like I could see him after class and say, ‘What’s up?’ or ‘How are you?’ and he would act like we were rando’s on the street who don’t live together. So that turned into no words after a bit but whatever it didn’t cause problems so eff it.
Now, this is the weird event. It was around 3 am and I heard talking and laughing coming from the living room. It was loud enough to wake me and keep me up. I got, annoyed, and walked out to tell them to keep it down. As I walked into the living room, I saw him and his buddy sitting next to each other watching gay adult videos. I kind of just stopped, still drowsy, trying to figure out what is going on and just said, ‘Hey guys, I’m trying to sleep keep it down, yeah?’ They both just stared and nodded, then I went back to my room confused and passed out. I came home after class the next day to see his girlfriend, who I had met before, just sitting on the couch relaxing. I said hi and walked to my room, trying not to make eye contact with her. We never mentioned that night nor spoke really at all the rest of the time we lived together. I still wonder if he was just super in the closet or something—guess I’ll never know.”
Her Secret Drinking Wasn’t The Worst Of Her Behavior
“My roommate, who was my best friend at the time, was secretly making mixed drinks alone at night, which is odd because we were both drinkers. But it got weirder. One day, I opened up the cabinet that stored all the fancy Waterford drinkware from my failed first marriage and half of it was gone.
After looking through the other kitchen cabinets, I decided to break the roommate code and look in her room, mainly because it just seemed really odd.
I opened her door (her bedroom was the typical constant mess she’s always lived in) and saw two tumblers on her bedside table. Weirded out, I went to grab them and notice a sudden stench of dog poop.
Against my better judgment, I looked under her bed and see the rest of the glasses and random piles of dog poop amidst other debris. Pretty horrified, I grabbed all the glasses and got out of there.
When she got home, I decided to tell her immediately what happened because, of course, she’s going to notice the glasses are gone from her table. I asked her why she had the glasses in her room, and she told me about her nightly mixed drinks. Then I asked her if she was trying to hide her drinking and she got very defensive. So I dropped it and asked she not use the glasses anymore since they’re expensive and fragile. She agreed and that was that. Nothing about the dog poop was discussed.
About two months later, she moved out and stopped talking to me. Her bedroom carpet and room were so gross that the apartments charged us almost $1,000 for repairs—which she did pay.
To this day, I’ll always wonder about why the fancy glasses? The secret nighttime mixed drink? The dog poop? I cannot confirm the poop was the dogs, though she had a dog, a Maltese. I was always sad about how the friendship ended and genuinely worried about her mental health after all this happened.”
Colby’s Night Terrors Were The Talk Of The Bunk
“I didn’t really catch my roommate as I discovered this.
In my first barracks room, while I was in the Navy, I had a roommate named Colby. Colby survived off of chicken patties, smokes, and Mountain Dew and would play video games and watch movies that were rather disturbing. This kid slept with a K-bar under his pillow, but he was super nice.
Six months into living with this character, at 2 am, and he woke up screaming bloody murder.
I hopped out of my little bed terrified; I thought we were about to die.
As quickly as it started, it ended. So I went to wake him up cause I was sweaty and scared pantsless.
He woke up, annoyed. I told him what happened and he told me he gets night-terrors.
Great.
So this would happen like once every month or so and I’d gotten used to it. I kept a football by my bed and would throw the football at his head as hard as I could every time. It drove me nuts.
Fast forward to my first deployment. Mind you, in the Navy, you sleep in ‘racks.’ Basically just bunk beds but worse, and they are about six inches above your face in those things.
Colby had his first night terror on the ship; it wasn’t as dramatic but way funnier.
Basically, it was SCREAM followed by an immediate BONK.
Colby knocked himself out every time. Probably not good for you, but not much is in the Navy. Everyone in the berthing got a kick out of it every time it happened.”
She Was Red In Two Sets Of Cheeks
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“This one scarred me for life.
I moved to Dallas with a girl I had been roommates with during flight attendant training. She had a balcony through her room that connected to the living room but we always kept that door locked.
One day, she woke me up early and told me I had to go somewhere—she had a guy coming over and needed the place to herself (I got it). Before he got there, I went to the balcony through her room to smoke before leaving. I must have been outside longer than I intended though, because when I took my headphones out, I heard a slapping sound and light moans coming from her room. I was like, great, I can never get this out of my head.
It gets better…
I went to let myself back inside but realized that the door leading to the living room was locked, and the only way back into the apartment would be through her bedroom. I wasn’t even supposed to be there, so I climbed over the railing and stepped onto the downstairs neighbor’s balcony and down from there. I thought the whole thing was so funny that when I got home later, I told her about my mishap only to be met with the truth. The man she had invited over was from a fetish site, who she had invited over to spank her.
Not judging her interests, but I caught my roommate being spanked by a stranger.”
He Was Definitely A…Quirky Fellow
“I rented a room from an old, gay man. I was 24-26 when I lived there, he was like 73-75. He ran a ‘massage studio’ out of his bedroom. I’d often see naked men walking through the hallway, which I assumed meant they were just ‘serviced.’ He also would watch adult videos on TV like normal people would watch Netflix or something. You know, as background noise. One time, one of his customers came into the bathroom while I was showering and opened the curtain. I installed a lock shortly after.
Once, he told me, ‘All I want for Christmas is 10 inches and black.’
He was banned from all of the local coffee shops because he would look at adult videos full volume on his iPad while in the store. He didn’t understand the big problem.
When I first moved there, I didn’t have a TV but I did have an Xbox 360. He said I could put it on the TV in the living room. One day, I was sitting there on the couch and he sat next to me, watching me play. He was scratching away at his chest. I should note he was one of those dudes who was hairy like a gorilla. He then informed me he had somehow picked up crabs in his chest hair. Until that point, I didn’t realize that was possible.
Needless to say, it was always an adventure…but hey, the rent was only $250 a month including utilities.”
Craig Was A Little “Special”
“I had a roommate in college, ‘Craig,’ that had traumatic brain injury from getting his head put through a windshield by a dealer. He was a little off before the injury, but this made him even more erratic.
He once thought he could get back at one of our roommates by urinating in a cup and putting it in front of another roommate’s door—his thought was that opening the door would spill pee everywhere, but he didn’t realize that the door opened inward. The other roommate found the cup, and proceeded to put it in front of Craig’s door, which opened outward. He was livid when he spilled a cup of his own pee all over the floor.
He would also start cooking food and forget about it. When I was living with him, he decided to boil an egg, then decided to go out drinking midway through boiling. I came back to my house to find a pot with an egg on fire at the bottom of it.
Before I moved in with him, Craig also decided to make a pot of beans, then decided to go out, forgetting he was making the beans. Ended up doing thousands of dollars of damage, as his beans ended up lighting the kitchen on fire and created a ton of smoke damage.
For what it’s worth, living with him was an experience. I haven’t heard from him in some time, but I’ve been told he’s functional and doing pretty well.”
“I Didn’t Know It Opened!”
“I knew one of my roommates was using my coffee maker because the pot would sometimes be really gross and stained, like someone had made tea in it or mixed something in with the coffee. Eventually, I came into the kitchen while it was happening. I asked if she was making tea, but she said no it was coffee. So I asked how she was making it and that’s when it got weird.
Apparently, she had no idea how to make coffee and instead of asking someone or googling it, she decided to just wing it by putting the grounds and the water all right into the pot and then turning it on. Basically, she made warm grounds water. And she had done this multiple times, so she either didn’t realize anything was wrong or she didn’t hate it enough to stop.
Naturally, I showed her how to make actual coffee. I showed her where to pour the water (‘I didn’t know it opened!’), but when I got to where to put the grounds, she said that it was too complicated for her and she’d just buy coffee on her way to work.
So, it’s not only that she didn’t know how to make coffee, but that learning how to make coffee was too complex for her. Hands down the stupidest person I have ever known.”
He Was Going For The Long Con
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“My roommate was catfishing his former roommate. We shared a computer in that house and I came across a chat window he left open revealing a very lengthy and graphic session where my roommate was pretending to be a Japanese girl and getting nasty with the other guy.
When asked, he claimed it was to get revenge on his old roommate over a security deposit thing. He said he was going to print off all of the char sessions and mail them to his roommate’s mom.
I never used the computer again.”