You never know what goes on behind closed doors. Service workers who have to enter a client's home have seen it all, from strange hobbies to truly disturbing behavior. However, some things are just so out of the ordinary that even they can’t believe their eyes. These Redditors shared some of the weirdest house calls they have experienced—and their stories are so bizarre, they’re unforgettable.
1. It Was Gross—Period!
When I was 13 years old, I visited my friend’s cousin. The cousin dragged us to her bedroom and started pulling grocery bags of something rotten out from under her bed. It was jam-packed with these lumpy bags, which released a noxious stink as she opened them. When she told us what it was, I nearly fainted. She proudly shared that they were her used sanitary napkins and tampons.
She kept them there so her dad wouldn’t know she was menstruating and have to see them in the garbage. There had to be years’ worth. The stupid thing was that her dad was a mortician and funeral home owner. I’m pretty sure he had seen much, much worse. To this day, I wonder how long she kept those bags. It was gross.
2. Hot Dog!
I'm a professional plumber, and one time I showed up at a house for a "clog job". They had a room called the “Dog Room”. They told me not to go in, but I was pretty sure the pipes went through there, so I opened the door to check out the pipes. I’ll never forget what I saw in there. There were hundreds of hot dogs on the carpet, all perfectly lined up in rows about one inch apart.
The entire room was full of them and at the edges of the room, it looked as if they had cut the hot dogs with scissors to make them line up. I never found out what the Dog Room was, but I billed them an extra $30 for a manual inspection, which is what I put down when something weird happens. It's just free money for me when something happens that I hate.
3. We Were All Shook Up
It was my first week during freshman year. My new roommate, and default best friend, told me we were going to a board game night somewhere. It was at some sort of church house. The people seemed a little weird, but not enough to really throw me off. The game wrapped up and my roommate and I were about to go home when the pastor said, "Wait! You haven't seen the bathroom yet! You've gotta see it; everyone sees my bathroom”!
So, we opened the door and walked into this little bathroom where every single square inch of the walls, sink, toilet, ceiling, and the floor was covered in Elvis memorabilia. There were posters, tickets, photos, albums, lyric sheets—everything you could imagine. And, mounted above the toilet was a creepy, mostly realistic Elvis animatronic, singing head.
I had never felt such discomfort ever before. It was beyond being a fan or obsessive—it was really frightening. We turned around to him, holding a guest book for us to sign. I made up an email and phone number so he wouldn't be able to contact me. Then my roommate, a devout Catholic, told him he appreciated it, but he's Jewish and he just wanted to come with me while I checked out their small group. It was a weird night.
4. A Steamy Situation
After high school, my friend was working for a moving company and entered an apartment they were about to clean out. However, the tenants were still there—and what they were doing left me stunned. They had set up shower curtains around the stove, with the full heat on, and were using it as a sauna. The people were just sitting there in their undies, throwing water on the stove.
5. This Job Was As Good As Gold
I was once called to a Nascar driver’s house in Tennessee. I got to the house, and it was huge but only partially finished. His very young girlfriend was the only one there, and she met me at the front door wearing just a bikini bottom and was sloshed out of her brain. She said the bathtub was clogged up, so she took me up to it.
It was a worse-looking scene than any fraternity house after party I had ever seen. There was weeks’ worth of dinner plates and food all over the bathroom. Mind you, this bathroom was the size of most people’s garages. The bathtub was filled with smoke butts and candy wrappers. The entire bathroom was covered in these gold foil Reese's miniature wrappers.
There were hundreds of them, but they were not normal. They were 24kt gold wrappers that had been special-ordered from the factory. I asked her what she wanted me to do with all the trash, and she said just to throw it away. So, I gathered everything in big leaf bags and got the tub, and other fixtures all cleaned out. I even cleaned the entire bathroom.
I tossed all the trash into the back of my truck and handed her the bill. As she went to get the money, I made a comment about how much they must really like miniatures. She just screamed out that she never wanted to look at another peanut butter cup in her entire life. When she came back, she had a handful of money all wadded up and said here you go.
I told her it was probably too much, but her reply was, “I don't care, your cute. Consider it a tip”. Then she took me to a side room and asked, " How much do you charge to throw all this in the trash for me”? There were 18 big cases of special edition miniatures made just for him—all in 24kt gold foil. I tossed it all in my truck and headed home.
6. Free Press
I used to work cleaning out houses after people had died. There was an old couple who lived in a small flat, and the only thing they did was sort and organize the complimentary newspapers you would find in front of your door. But they had a special way of doing it. They cut out every headline and every picture out of the papers and put them into ring binders.
They had done this for over 40 years’ worth of newspapers. There were binders by every wall in the apartment. At some point, they put the newspapers they still had to do on the floor. The floor in the entire place was full of newspapers. Not only that, but in their basement, we found a small box of plastic filled with stones, sand, and water. It was labeled, “Boiled and wrapped 1968”.
7. She Wanted One Last Hurrah
When I was 18 years old, I worked at the same healthcare company as my father, selling/fixing electric beds, chairs, mobility scooters, etc. I was in the house of a couple who were in their 80s. The old guy looked fairly healthy, but his wife was on death's door. We had been there to replace a motor on her bed that had failed.
As my father was explaining to the couple how they could avoid the same thing happening in the future, I saw him pause mid-sentence. His eyes darted around the room before shifting over to his right and continuing the conversation. I then realized that his line of sight had been straight up the old lady's robe, which was fine until she'd shifted her weight and opened her legs slightly.
I could only guess by his response that he'd gotten quite an eyeful. I thought this happy accident was absolutely hilarious, but I kept calm and didn't show any kind of acknowledgment. That was, until she shifted her weight again to line up with where my father was standing. That’s when I made a chilling realization.
I couldn't believe it, but this tiny, cancer-riddled old prune of a woman was intentionally giving my old man a show. To prove it, he moved around four to five times before he stopped speaking, and she course-corrected every time. I guess the dirty old bird wanted a naughty rush before getting to the pearly gates.
8. This Place Was Nuts
I used to do tree removals all summer, and in the winter, I got a job cleaning houses. I went into this old lady's house and opened the toilet. There was a deceased, bloated squirrel floating in there. I told the old lady, and she was not even a bit surprised or phased by the situation. She said, “Okay, what you’re gonna do is grab the bugger with this plastic bag and then turn it inside out and throw it out the window”.
There were also mouse droppings covering the basement and mice running on her kitchen counters. I never went back.
9. Monkey In The Middle
I was a test prep tutor for very, very wealthy families. One time, a mom answered the door with a gibbon monkey with a diaper wrapped around it in her arms. It was a very surreal moment as I was thinking, “These people are so rich, they have a monkey”. The daughter came downstairs and hugged the ape before our tutoring session started.
It turned out the mom was a zoologist, so I guess it was normal?
10. Dr. Doolitte
When I was in college, I cleaned windows. One house was the home of a pediatrician, who had his kids and their grandparents living there, along with a small zoo. He had ten dogs, 20 cats, multiple birds, lizards, aquariums, etc. The smell of the animals was so bad we had to wear masks dabbed with cologne. That air was anything but safe.
11. It Was Sno-Eggageration
I went to help my great aunt’s neighbor haul all her shopping stuff inside her apartment because she was really old. She had eggs everywhere. The whole kitchen was just eggs. Not even Easter decorations or a chicken theme like some old people would have—it was just eggs. There were tiny porcelain figurines of eggs, egg wallpaper, and egg magnets on the fridge. The living room had framed eggs on the walls.
She had egg-shaped latch hook rugs and pillows. A fancy metal bowl on the coffee table was full of different eggs. My great aunt said that the lady was a weirdo and that her bathroom was egg-themed too. What was even stranger was that amid all of the eggs, this woman had another smaller collection all set out on a coffee table against a wall—a series of about 50 snowmen. And, as a thank you for helping her, she gave me an egg timer!
12. What I Saw Was Bananas
One of the plumbers I worked with told me his most memorable—and gruesome—story. He went to a blocked toilet and found three banana skins and one large purple vibrating toy down there. The occupant calmly told him that he had been in the middle of pleasuring himself and the device had fallen out of him and into the toilet.
There was no explanation for the banana skins, but it doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination.
13. What A Bunch Of Turkeys
An old co-worker of mine was a volunteer firefighter. He once entered a family’s rental house where the smoke alarms were actually hooked to a central system that went straight to the fire department. One day the smoke alarm went off in this particular house, and in addition to that, they got two calls from neighbors who smelled and saw smoke coming from the place.
He and his guys arrived to find that these idiots were attempting to deep fry a turkey in a giant homemade deep fryer in their basement. Sure enough, a fireball erupted and lit the drop ceiling on fire. The basement was cluttered with all sorts of flammable stuff, and the drop ceiling was noticeably lower than a standard ceiling.
14. Something Didn’t Compute
We were installing internet at a house when a woman greeted us. She was busy with her kids, so she directed us to the basement where the cable would be. Going down the stairs, we opened the door to an empty room that had no windows. It was just a concrete floor and walls, with the only piece of furniture being a small wooden chair in the middle of the room—but that’s not the creepiest part.
On that chair sat an older man with a pipe. He was surprised but greeted us and told us the thing we were looking for was in the next room. We thanked him and quickly closed the door.
15. He Was A Bit Testy
The company I used to work for built new homes but also owned a trailer park. I would occasionally have to do utility maintenance at the trailer court. On a sweltering summer day, I got a call to check out why the electricity wasn't working at one of the lots. Upon arriving, I knocked and was told to enter. I saw a 400+ lb man sitting on the couch about five feet from me without any clothes.
He was holding a bag of frozen peas on his groin and started screaming at me, saying, "Look what they did to my boys”! He removed the peas to show me his business which was a grotesque looking purple and swollen to around five times the normal size. Apparently, he had a vasectomy, and it had gotten infected. He decided it wasn't worth going to the emergency room quite yet.
16. It Was Quite A Dalek-table Sight
I did painting and decorating with my brother. One day we went to paint an apartment at an assisted living facility. It was a nice-looking place with two bedrooms and was occupied by a single guy in his 50s. His bedroom, living room, and kitchen were normal, and we had no issues painting them. However, when it came to painting the second bedroom, he informed us not to touch it.
Inside was full of Dr. Who memorabilia—VHS tapes, DVDs, posters, as well as a life-sized Dalek he was rebuilding. The guy thought he was the real Dr. Who.
17. This Was His Dream
I did warranty work on PCs and laptops for years. The absolute weirdest thing I came across was a 70-year-old guy who was OBSESSED with My Little Pony—both the original and the newer show. This went far beyond what even a "Brony" would do. He had every toy he could get his hands on, posters everywhere, and three TVs all playing different episodes on repeat.
He even had a mural painted of all the ponies from the newer show on the wall of his living room. When his PC booted up, it played the theme song, and every icon was changed to one of the ponies. During the whole repair, he kept asking if I liked the show, who my favorite pony was, and so on.
18. It Was Pandemonium
I was staying at a house pet sitting. The home was pretty cluttered because the woman was a compulsive shopper. There were unopened boxes everywhere, including the garage, which was a complete cube of random stuff. I opened the cabinet to get a pan for dinner and made a disturbing discovery. I found they had put dirty pots and pans back in the cupboards, all crusted with food.
When I called the guy to find out why they were like that, he said, "Oh, the pans are seasoning". I had to tell him that's not how that works. After that, I just came over to feed the animals. There was no way I was going to stay there any longer.
19. He Boldly Went Where No Man Had Gone Before
Many years ago, I did customer service work for a cable company and ride-alongs with a tech. We went to one house where the guy there was clearly obsessed with Star Trek. He was watching a special or interview about it on TV and was sitting in the middle on the floor, almost unresponsive. The walls were covered in memorabilia from top to bottom.
The guy had some really cool stuff, but the sheer amount of it, plus his near-catatonic state, gave me some weird vibes.
20. Art Is Definitely Subjective
I was working for a house clearance firm. We were at a repossession and the tenant had already left. As soon as I entered the front door, I was greeted by a mannequin torso that was attached to a wheelchair and had been painted with red paint to resemble blood. I assumed it was some new-age art piece as there were paints and canvases everywhere.
We kept bagging stuff up, emptying drawers, and found more weird Frankenstein contraptions. There was a dummy with pacifiers that had the teat thing removed and replaced with a small plastic wiener. The whole thing was then painted gold and mounted on string, like a necklace. There were multiple of these. After some more digging and bagging, we found more disturbing things.
There were also numerous pairs of underwear with jelly candy crudely stapled to the crotches. I reported this to my manager, who told me it was none of our business what the previous tenants had done, and for all we knew, he could already be in prison. It was a horrible job, and as a father, it shook me to my core. I haven't taken contracts with that company since that job and won't ever forget those weird things.
21. We Got Dragged Into The Closet
I used to be an electrician. We were called to move a service panel out of a walk-in closet at an apartment. The young couple that lived in the place were super nice, and they took us to the closet in question. It was packed with their drag outfits. They had the most amazing collection of lame, animal print, feather boas, and boudoir clothing that I had ever seen.
We all moved everything out and got the job done in about two days. As we were wrapping up, the tenants brought us a little cake congratulating us for coming out of the closet.
22. A Life Consumed
My job was to do household chores for an elderly woman who lived alone. She had a Christian type of "shrine" dedicated to her daughter in her living room. She said she had lost her 40 years prior and kept her pictures and small items in it. I guess that would be normal, except for the fact that her whole house was filled with similar items. But there was also a seriously heartbreaking side to it all.
She had written things that she wanted to say to her daughter on small pieces of paper and taped them all over the walls and the cabinet doors. They were everywhere, and it was clear from what she'd written that her daughter had been on her mind 24/7 for the past 40 years. One day, she asked me to look for some items that her daughter had made.
She had misplaced them and was worried that someone had thrown them away by accident. I couldn't find them at first, but she looked so defeated that I went to look for them again and actually found them in the back of her storage room. She said that I reminded her of her daughter because I searched so adamantly and didn't give up. It was all very sad.
23. I Squealed Like A Pig
I had to enter the basement of a house to reconnect the electricity. Using my flashlight, I slowly made my way to the electrical panel. I crouched low while ensuring I didn’t trip over or step into a hole. As I followed the path my light created, I pointed up to see how much further I had to go. The light emitted its glow on a pig hanging and curing from the beams.
I screamed like a little girl on a schoolyard playground. When I asked the owner how come he didn’t warn me, he said, “I thought you were only asking about live animals”!
24. Hiding In Plain Sight
I worked for DoorDash, so I wouldn’t go into people's houses, but sometimes they would request I hand the order to them, so they would open the door. I made a delivery to a business. The building had a very fancy lobby. I went up to the receptionist, told her I had a food delivery, and she called the person. The woman showed up, and was absolutely gorgeous—but she was wearing revealing lingerie.
Then, another woman walked by, and she was dressed the same way. It was a “house of ill repute”—a high-end place from the looks of it. I handed over the food, she tipped me $20 in cash, and I left. It was bizarre because that building was the last place you'd expect a place like that to be—which I suppose was the point of it being where it was.
25. House Of Horrors
I was a social worker. When I did in-home children and family services, I got a case that was reported for environmental referral/safety hazards. The house was in a new neighborhood that required all to pay HOA fees and had pretty extensive rules regarding maintaining the upkeep of yards, so I was slightly confused—until I reached the door and rang the doorbell.
A roach fell from the covered porch into my bra. I quickly pulled and flicked it out before the family could see, as I didn’t want to embarrass them. We are told to bring a plastic chair into every home. We would do this to prevent transferring bed bugs into our office and our homes as they are costly to treat. I rarely did this unless it was specifically stated bed bugs were an issue, and when it was, I called the family before to explain.
I hated to see the humiliated looks on their faces as they perceived that I might think I was above sitting on their furniture. However, this time, I wished I had brought the chair to this house. The door opened—it was a hoarder case. There was lots of food, trash, and a room filled—measuring about 4 feet in height—with dog poo.
It would have been impossible for the dogs to enter this room; therefore, they would let their dogs go elsewhere and place the poo in the room. I assisted in shoveling the poo for hours, trying to prevent the removal of the children. I got the kids and parents a hotel with resource funds and begged supervisors to give me a week to clean with a professional crew for the hazardous waste to prevent removal. That was, until I found out what they were really hiding.
We found multiple severely preterm babies that were stillbirths frozen in the fridge. I was, fortunately, able to place the kids with a loving aunt.
26. Three Strikes And I Was Out
I used to work for a furniture rental company. On my last day on the truck, my partner and I had to deliver a fridge to an older guy that the company had had problems with in the past. We got there, and I took the fridge out of the truck while my partner went up to the door. He came back and looked me in the eyes and said, "be ready".
I was standing there next to this huge fridge thinking, "Come on, man, this fridge isn't gonna be that heavy". Little did I know, he was not talking about the fridge. We got up to the door, pushing the fridge on a dolly, and the dolly wouldn’t fit in the door. That was problem number one. My partner was on the inside, and I was on the outside trying to figure out how to get this thing inside.
Then it hit me—problem number two—the foul stench of cat urine. I had been in many houses that had a cat pee odor, but this house was very different. Problem number three is where the more disgusting aspects came into play. I was walking through the house carrying a two-door fridge with the biggest smell of cat urine entering my nose when I stepped into the kitchen.
The floor was covered in dog poo. The entire floor had brown and black skid marks all over it. Then the customer looked at the fridge, then looked at us and said, "This ain't the right fridge. The one I ordered was bigger". That house still haunts me to this day.
27. This Blew Me Away
I went to a house to look for a problem they had in the kitchen. I had to walk through the living room into the back room and then to the kitchen. The living room and backroom were completely devoid of any furniture. The only thing that was in the room was approximately 40–50 inflated balloons just scattered all over the floor.
28. She Was Rolling In It
In the 80s, I was a real estate appraiser. I was appraising an elderly woman's neat, well-kept home. The basement was empty except for about ten 55-gallon clear plastic bags filled to the brim with toilet paper cores. As I was leaving, I innocently asked, "What is your hobby? What are all the toilet paper cores for"? Her answer floored me! Her response was, "You never know when you will need one"!
29. We Weeded Out The Location
I showed up to replace an HVAC system. The homeowner ran out for coffee right before we got there. We beat him there and called the shop to say no one was home. They phoned the homeowner, and we were told to go on inside and that he was on the way. We knew the equipment was upstairs but didn’t know where.
While looking for the pull-down attic door, I opened the door to the bonus room. Plastic was hanging from the walls, misting systems and grow lamps were everywhere. There were large Tupperware drawers full of weed and plants everywhere. We grabbed our tools and hauled ourselves back to the trucks minutes before the homeowner got home.
Our helper didn’t understand why we were freaking out. He wanted to talk “shop” with the guy since he dabbled in growing. The homeowner's wife was a surgeon, and he stayed home growing weed. His clientele was probably doctors, lawyers, judges—who knows. All I knew was this guy didn’t need sleepless nights worrying about whether or not some blue-collar guys would rat him out.
He pulled up and was very friendly. He followed us up the stairs, and we knew not to go right, so we just went left and found the unit. He did make a comment about us just knowing where the equipment was—we said, “Lucky guess”.
30. Something Was A-Foot
My dad was a dog trainer and would go to his client's homes, and I often went with him. This one family had four massive dogs. They towered over my 6'2” tall father when on their back legs and had paws the size of my six-year-old head. They were very aggressive, and my dad didn’t want me near them, so he had asked if there was anywhere I could sit.
The clients stuck me in their bedroom, so I went snooping and wriggled under their bed. I found a box and pulled out at least fifty doll feet. They were porcelain and plastic, had been hacked off, with a letter and number on the sole. I took one because I thought it was cool—but the story didn’t end there. Less than ten minutes after we left, the guy was screaming on the phone at my dad and made us drive back. He was purple in the face, and I gave him the foot back.
31. He Disappeared And Went Undercover
I was an electrician, and I had a job in a rental apartment building to replace all the vanity lights and exhaust fans in every bathroom in the place. My apprentice and I were in the bathroom of a bachelor apartment. When we got there, an “interesting” looking man answered the door to let us in. He didn’t say much and didn’t seem pleased for us to be there.
After replacing the light and exhaust fan, the new fan didn’t work. I said to my apprentice, “Ask the guy if it worked before”, assuming it was a problem with the switch. The apprentice came back and said, “he’s not out there”. I said, “It’s a bachelor; he didn’t leave”. The apprentice stepped back out of the washroom and came back and said, “He’s not there”.
I went out and said, “That’s so weird; he didn’t leave. Did he jump out the window”? After talking about this guy for a minute, he finally sat up in bed and scared the absolute daylights out of us. He was lying completely flat on his bed with the covers up over his face, not moving and not saying anything while we looked for him.
32. She Had Some Serious Pen Pals
I used to repair/troubleshoot PCs. One time, the internet had stopped working, so I got to the house, where a lovely little old lady in her 70s was wearing a cardigan and slippers. I went into the back bedroom, which was her office and where the PC was. All the walls were covered in US mugshots of prisoners in classic orange or white jumpsuits.
She talked and wrote to death row and life prisoners in America. There must have been about 60 to 80 pictures on the walls. Over the course of the three or four years that I went back for various updates and fixes, some photos had been taken down, and new ones added. She never asked about what they did, didn’t preach or try to convert; she just asked them how they were doing and told them about her day.
I got the internet up and running, and away she went.
33. She Had A Bug In Her System
I went to service a computer when I worked for a Dell service provider. I kept feeling things fall on me. I looked up and saw a brown ceiling. That brown ceiling was full of roaches. The falling things were bugs, and the computer was fried because of them. I called my manager, and he told me to leave and not worry about grabbing my equipment. He also told me to ditch my clothes before getting in my vehicle.
34. Crowded House
I used to clean houses. There was this one lady who was very attractive—the definition of a “rich milf”—and she knew it. She would always walk around the house in see-thru tops without a bra and requested that only guys be sent to clean her house. She was a very flirtatious, very friendly lady and, at most, 42 years old.
She had just gone through a pretty messy breakup with a guy she had been with for a few years. One day, we went to her house, and there was a young woman lying in the master bed beside the homeowner. They were both wearing incredibly revealing outfits, but the young woman was also wearing shoes. The homeowner acted as if nothing was up as they lay in bed together.
However, my coworker and I didn’t feel comfortable cleaning her room while the pair was there together, so we decided to start in the basement. When we turned on the light, we revealed a 30-something-year-old man that we had never seen before, wearing just his boxers, who then ran up the stairs to the master bedroom. It was a very weird experience for us.
35. What A Bonehead!
I worked in HVAC and have had to enter people’s houses for a long time. I’ve been down in basements, under houses, up in attics, in the backseat of closets, basically where anyone would try to hide anything suspicious. One of the strangest things I have seen was under someone’s house. I was crawling under the house with my coworker, and he yelled.
So, I crawled over there to check on him, and there was a large pile of bones—not small animal bones but large ones. There were a couple of deer skulls, a couple of ribs and legs from what I assumed were deer, and a couple of large skulls that I didn’t recognize. The weird part was that it was the farthest away from the crawl space that it could be, meaning this guy crawled down there with that stuff and put it there.
36. It Was Spooktacular
I was dog-sitting for a couple who also had some chickens that needed tending to. They took me out to this creepy-looking storage shed—the size of a double car garage—to show me where the chicken feed was. It was filled with floor-to-ceiling mannequins, all covered in gore, masks, chains, etc. I froze. There were around 75–100 mangled gory mannequins in there.
The wife could see I was shocked and laughed. She said that they were huge Halloween buffs and every October, they have a huge Halloween party for the whole block. They asked me to help them hang them a few months later. They had a two-acre backyard with a trail, did hayrides through "the haunted forest", and even had a little cemetery with spooky stuff.
37. I Couldn’t Sink My Teeth Into What I Saw
I was a patrol deputy working in a somewhat rural area at the time. I got a call from someone whose phone was taken from a bar, and the find my iPhone app was showing it inside of a residence. I knocked on the door and no one was answering. So, I got the homeowner’s phone number from the neighbor, who also mentioned the homeowner’s daughter was a troublemaker.
I called the homeowner and told him what was going on and that the phone’s location was showing inside his house. The homeowner said I could search the residence if I could find a way inside because he was out of town. The residence was a trailer and I found a window on the side that was unlocked. I climbed in, briefly looked around, and didn’t find anything.
I walked out the back door and found a shed. I figured I might as well search it real quick, just to be sure. I opened the shed door, and I saw tools and a workbench. On the workbench, I saw teeth and dentures scattered all over. They were all artificial. It was very apparent someone living there had an odd fascination with teeth.
The creepy part was that they lived pretty far away from any city, and to my knowledge, no one living there worked in dentistry.
38. We Sat This One Out
I was a paid employee for a nonprofit that would resell furniture to fund the food pantry. In my town, you were either dirt poor or millionaire rich, so I had been inside plenty of run-down studio apartments, as well as mansions. One day, we had a stop at a really nice house in the middle of nowhere. The place was absolutely huge, and some old couple greeted us at the door.
Upon going inside, we heard squeaking but assumed it was a faulty washer or dryer. We were so, so wrong. The man led us down a staircase in the basement—which had a 90-degree turn—so we couldn’t see down. The moment we popped that corner, we saw an infestation of mice. There was no visible floor in the basement at all.
They were running up the walls and raining from the ceiling. We didn’t take his couch.
39. The Secrets Of Man
I’m a pool guy. I used to service five pools on one property. The guy who owned them invented something, so he was loaded. He looked like an old Viking getting ready to go to a rave and was one of the weirdest guys I had ever met. He was really into racy things, and one day I went into this one particular building of his.
There were vibrating toys everywhere, nude statues, and beds with beaded curtains on them. It was strange.
40. An Aquatic Paradise
I was a delivery driver for a building supply company, and this man asked me to come inside his house to sign the invoice. It was a massive house in a wealthy neighborhood. As I walked through the foyer, I looked down and realized I was standing on top of a massive aquarium. I could see the fish and coral under my feet. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.
41. Something Was Cagey
I was involved in a project doing water testing for lead. The test required water sitting in the lines overnight and inspecting the main water line at the meter. I went to this nice older house downtown. The guy answered in a big fluffy black bathrobe. The house had a sunken living room with an ebony grand piano, and downstairs there was a workout area with a mirrored wall, ballet barre, and white vinyl gymnastic pads on the floor.
I went through a door to the utility side of the basement. There was a washer, dryer, and a floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence enclosure in the corner. It was about 10'x12' with four-inch posts and a secured main gate. I thought it was a dog kennel until I noticed a twin-sized bed, a small table, and a single wooden chair. I got freaked out and kept an eye on the guy as I finished up.
42. Indoor Campground
I was a home healthcare worker. I met with a patient who refused to let me enter his house. Our first visits were conducted on the street, between his car and mine. As he grew to trust me, we graduated to sitting on his front porch. The outside of his house had seen better days and could use some fixing up, but it really wasn't all that bad.
However, the inside was a problem. A big one. At some point, the roof had progressed from "needs work" to "caved in". He essentially had no roof, as it was all hanging down in his living room. He didn't have the money to fix it or a good tarp, but he did have the money for a tent. So he lived in a tent inside his house. He still had electricity and a partial roof over the kitchen.
43. A Fish Out Of Water
I worked at a job where I sometimes had to deploy equipment in people's homes. I was doing a project where I had to set up some stuff in the kitchen of a very nice vacation rental, which was unoccupied due to the fact that it was February in northern Michigan. The whole thing was decked out to the nines in cutesy, wealthy Grandma-type décor—except for the kitchen.
The only artwork in there was a painting of three fish with photorealistic male schlongs and testicles instead of tails. It was hanging above the stove, so it was the first thing you saw when you walked in. I have never been so disappointed that our project instructions forbade the photographing of property owners' belongings.
44. His Idea Of Toilet Humor Was Unnerving
I cleaned houses for a while. I had one client who was an elderly funeral home owner. He lived alone in a big place. His master bathroom was carpeted, which is gross in and of itself, and had a urinal. Then, directly above the urinal, at eye level, was an oil painting portrait of a man staring right back at you.
45. It Was Far Out
I did a window replacement on a big house in an expensive old area of town. An elderly lady lived in it until she died. Her death was recent because all her things were still there. The place was a perfect time capsule of the 1960s. Each room had a different theme/vibe, and there were mannequins set up, all wearing 60s clothing in every room and in different scenarios.
It was extremely bizarre. It almost seemed as if the lady was lonely or something.
46. It Was Not A Breath Of Fresh Air
I worked in fire/flood restoration and have seen some crazy things, but the most memorable was at an older lady’s house. She had two small dogs, and while we were talking, one of them pooped on the living room floor. Her reaction was truly deranged. She "Febrezed" it like nothing happened and kept chatting. I looked around and there were multiple urine stains and about a dozen droppings, just in that one room. I got out of there quickly and refused the job.
47. Startled In The Shower
I was a housekeeper. I once had a client, who was also a friend, who lived alone in a smaller house. I pretty much always started with the kitchen or bathroom. I went into the bathroom with my cleaning bucket, pulled back the shower curtain and gasped. I totally thought there was a deceased body in the tub. It turned out to be a very realistic high-end doll, and he forgot to warn me she was there.
When I asked why she was there, he said, "How else am I supposed to clean her"?
48. Pin-Up Princess
We had this one old lady we were delivering a sauna to who was in her late 70s. She had some open live wires sticking out from the porch where we were removing an old hot tub to make room for the sauna. She didn't know how to turn the breaker off to cut that power. So, I walked into her living room. As soon as I walked in, I stopped in my tracks.
She had dirty magazines all over her table and undressed pinups of this woman all over her walls—but that’s not the craziest part. It turns out they were pictures of her when she was younger. She stopped me so we could "admire" them together.
49. A Drop In The Bucket
I worked as a house cleaner for a really sweet elderly couple with two houses, their main home and a smaller cabin by a nearby lake used mostly as a summer home. For over a year, I saw nothing unusual. The second spring, I went to their lake cabin to clean it after it had been closed up for the winter. The husband met me there and was puttering around doing little tasks.
I ran out of the window cleaner they liked me to use, so I found him in the kitchen and told him I was going to run into town to grab another bottle and I’d be right back. On the way to town, which was a good 15-minute drive, I noticed a local gas station/convenience store and decided to stop there on the off chance they had it. They did, so my whole errand took 20 minutes less than I thought it would.
When I got back to the cabin early, I made a bizarre discovery. I noticed that a large rug had been moved in the living room, and a trap door was open. I didn’t want to get caught being nosy, so I didn’t look long, but from above, it looked like a basement full of at least 40–50 identical sealed white plastic 5-gallon buckets.
They all had a three-inch circular red mark on them. I went upstairs and continued my cleaning. When I came back down, the rug had been replaced. The next day, I went back alone to finish my deep cleaning. I moved the carpet to look at the trap door. It was a metal grate with a built-in lock, and it didn’t budge. I shined my phone flashlight down in it.
I couldn’t get a good view, but I could see that there were definitely fewer buckets than before. To this day, I am puzzled over that whole thing. I can’t imagine that fragile old man being able to move even an empty five-gallon bucket up a flight of stairs without falling. These people lived in a safe area and didn’t even lock their garage with expensive vehicles and a boat in it.
They weren’t preppers, and they weren’t hoarders. In fact, they were almost religious about getting rid of clutter and extra stuff. Their hobbies were mostly ceramic figurine collecting and jigsaw puzzles. I always felt a little antsy around them after that. I still wonder what the heck was in those buckets.
Sources: Reddit,
