Day to day, we walk past countless windows, doors, and homes. From the outside, they all look ordinary enough. But behind those walls, there’s often more than meets the eye. And sometimes, what’s hidden inside can be downright surprising.

Reddit users arnujr, RexDane, and EternityPrevails- asked workers whose jobs take them into strangers’ houses to share the weirdest things they’ve ever come across. From an eyebrow-raising number of celebrity photos to unusual animals and even a Frankenstein replica the size of a basketball player, their stories don’t disappoint. Scroll down and check out some of the wildest ones!

#1

I’m a cop so I go to lots of different houses and see different stuff. Lots of hoarders.

One guy had a house full of framed pictures of Emma Stone. Like she was family. Then photoshopped Emma Stone head on to naked girls. Then pictures of Emma Stone on the red carpet, then blown up pictures of her feet while on the red carpet.

I took a hand sanitizer bath afterwards.

Image credits: Caleb33

#2

A talking parrot with no feathers. Just like a raw chicken yelling at me.

Image credits: dignified_fish

#3

A lot of hoarders and just filthy homes in general. As far as weirdest items, a 7 foot replica of Frankenstein. Standing right in the corner of the living room. As we were clearing the house in the middle of the night because the alarm was going off and the front door was open with no one answering inside. I screamed like a little girl.

Image credits: anoncop1

#4

A snake coiled in a big glass jar full of brown liquid. Apparently it’s a traditional home remedy for people of this ethnic background.

Image credits: lauralei99

#5

They had found a pet kitten that they kept in a cage. It was a raccoon.

Image credits: anon

#6

Placenta from all the home births (7 kid family) in the freezer. In the spring, they plant it as fertilizer in their veggie garden.

Image credits: flightofthecondor

#7

They lived in a huge house and had one room dedicated to Christmas called “The Christmas Room.”

It had a massive fake tree, unopened gifts, garland and lights and the creepy factor: Christmas music playing year-round.

Image credits: Dreamcrusher69

#8

[I’ve been doing electrical for almost a year now, mostly commercial, but every now and then we’ll do a remodel on a home. A few weeks back, we did a remodel on the home of some surgeon and I found this in her closet. ]

Image credits: jonnybanana88

#9

My sister’s ex’s family were part of a repo service. One house was empty and filled with blood and messages on the wall, and doll heads on sticks and such. Turns out the blood was fake, but still pretty weird, I’d imagine.

Image credits: anon

#10

Going to get buried at this point, I’m sure, but I’ll throw my bit in.

I work as a cabinet installer with my dad. He’s been doing it for 30+ years, so he’s seen some stuff. A client called from a job he did about 10 years ago wanting some repairs and some advice on how to freshen up their kitchen since the style is very much out of date at this point. As we’re working, I happen to notice an odd little figure standing on half wall between the kitchen and living room. This is hands-down the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in a client’s home.

Image credits: kohnslaw

#11

Plumber here, I have seen some disgusting, and some sketchy things, but by far the weirdest encounter I have had is when I had to fix the pipes under this woman’s sink and the moment I stepped into her house I was greeted by hundreds upon hundreds of statues and pictures, and even a mural of pigs with wings.

I told her that check was the preferred payment option and she told me “let me go look in my piggy bank”

Additionally I was offered a porcelain pig with wings for “doing such a great job”
It might be worthy to note that she couldn’t have been more than 45.

Image credits: MIKEl281

#12

It’s amazing how people can just let their cats treat their whole house as a litter box.

Image credits: Bmc00

#13

They had a room that was off limits to touch. It was made up like a living room but you weren’t allowed in there.

Image credits: jnt81101

#14

Chickens and roosters strutting around the house like they owned the place.

Image credits: anon

#15

Rats. Dozens of them. In and out of cages.

Image credits: Canuckleball

#16

I used to do onsite computer repair work in a small rural town. I saw a lot of very strange [stuff].

The craziest thing was I went to a clients house to do a diagnostic, his computer wouldn’t turn on. Well, I get to his house and he lets me in and everything seems find until we get to the room where the computer is. There is a cage with a naked woman in it. It was not a very big cage, enough room for her to stand up in, but not enough to really move around. The guy completely ignores the woman in the cage like it is no big deal and starts showing me the problem with his computer. I must have had a huge WTF look on my face because he stops, glances at the woman, and says, “Oh, ignore her… she has been bad today and is getting her punishment.” Well, I don’t want to end up in a cage either… so I fix his computer) As soon as I left I called the police and told them about the situation. They know the address and it turns out they are married, are really into some crazy BSDM, and she was in the cage voluntarily. That was a strange day.

The SCARIEST time was when I got called to do a diagnostic and windows install and the house was empty. The guy was there, there was also a single table with his laptop on it and a single chair. But the rest of the house was empty. No other furniture, nothing on the walls, nothing in the kitchen… The whole time I was there he kept offering me orange juice. I must have said no 5 or 6 times but he kept insisting. He even poured me glass and set it next to me. Well, there was nothing wrong with his hardware so I just repaired his windows installation and got his computer back up and running, all the while he was insisting that I drank his orange juice. Well, I was getting ready to leave and didn’t want to be rude, so I drank it anyway (probably pretty stupid, but I just wanted to leave) and got out. I kept waiting to pass out on the drive home, but was totally fine… turns out he was just a nice guy with some OJ and wanted to share, he even sent me a nice email a few days later thanking for for fixing his computer…

I have quite a few crazy stories… good times

**TL;DR** Naked cage slave woman in house, police were in on it. Also, almost got roofied, but he was really nice and I didn’t after all.

Image credits: nachocheeze246

#17

When I was in social work, I had to help this guy move out of his apartment. He was unstable, off his meds, etc.

His apartment had one of those old-skool refrigerators that was basically just one door and 10 shelves. It was like 8 feet tall, 3 feet deep, 4 feet wide.

The entire refrigerator was full of gallon milk jugs full of this dude’s urine. Like, 6 wide, 4 deep, 10 tall. 400 gallons of crazy dude urine.

I had his brother take them down to the communal bathroom and dump them out.

Image credits: AcrolloPeed

#18

Part of my job as a nurse is to visit elderly people in their homes to check out how they’re doing, see if they need any services or aides so we can help them stay in their own homes as long as feasibly possible.

It’s unbelievable how filthy their homes can be, simply because they can’t see the cobwebs coated in dust and grime on their dishes and debris on their carpets. Their houses are usually *tidy*, as in, cups are all lined up in the cabinets, just not washed properly and stained.

I think the strangest was a little old lady living in a one bedroom unit by herself, widowed over a decade ago who had had all her pets taxidermied in various positions and then placed around her home as if they were still alive. She had a Pekenise curled up on a cushion on the couch, a chihuahua with it’s head bed down, plastic bowl filled with kibble on the floor to make it look like it was forever eating, a tabby cat with it’s paws tucked under it sitting on the windowsill, forever watching and even a cockatiel with it’s wings outstretched, beak open on the kitchen bench, claws permanently wrapped around a wooden free standing perch.

She introduced me to each of her “babies” by name and talked to them as if they were still alive.

I always wondered if she tried to get her husband taxidermied.

Image credits: SakuraFerretTrainer

#19

I went into the home of a customer who had over 20 cats. I had to go into the basement to fix a wiring issue and before I opened the door she told me to ensure the cats upstairs don’t get downstairs. Apparently the cats downstairs all had feline AIDS. There were also an undisclosed number of dogs present in the backyard – as far as I could tell at least 5 or 6.

Image credits: superericla

#20

I love all the religious stuff I see. There must be a service where you send in a paint swatch and have a Jesus of that hue sent to your home.

Image credits: s**ttiestcarpenter

#21

As a Geek Squad employees I visited a mans home and he had paintings all over the walls of him [ending] Geek Squad employees in different ways.

Image credits: tylertneal

#22

Once had someone’s male roommate open the door wearing a wig, makeup, jewelry, fake breasts, a little dress showing off his muscular hairy legs and high heels. It was a little surprising, not who I was expecting to open the door.

Image credits: MRSA_nary

#23

Working as a handyman in a very upscale residential building in Manhattan you sort of get used to seeing strange art in apartments. Most of it isn’t worth looking at twice, since I’m not really into art. But this apartment had one of their living room walls covered in Popeye erotica. Maybe two dozen nicely framed paintings and drawings of Popeye and Olive Oil doing various acts. It was such a strange thing to see in one of the overall fanciest apartments I’ve ever been in.

Image credits: PM_Me_Your-Lifestory

#24

Jars filled with giant bloated tics “swimming” in rubbing alcohol.

They picked them out of the ears of their dog and thought it was totally normal to display them on the kitchen counter!

Image credits: zipzap21

#25

I sometimes do closet clean out/organization for people as kind of a freelance side job…there was this lady from my mom’s church who had a couple of closets, which actually isn’t unusual. One was pretty standard, and the other had a lot of different clothes, mostly dated or cheesy sweatshirts or whatever, and I figured that’s what she needed help getting rid of. Nope. That was the closet of stuff she wore when roleplaying with her husband. She went through each outfit and explained what fantasy was behind it…Apparently, they got off on things like “dorky 80s preschool teacher” and “frazzled stay at home mom”. I mean–iron-on decals of cats on sweatshirts and bright white Keds. It was super weird.

#26

Not necessarily completely weird but a strange thing happened once, I work for a moving company and was making a delivery to an older gentlemen. He was clearly well off, and living by himself in a new apartment.

It was all bare, but as we brought stuff in, he was setting it all up, which is pretty normal. Until we brought in the sound system.

Dude was blasting Silent Night, on repeat to the point that we couldn’t hear each other inside. On repeat. In June.

He then became rather frantic, claiming pieces of furniture was gouged where there were no marks, things like that. We appeased him, moved on.

We drive away in the truck, I make the joke that we’ll get a mile down the road and we’ll look back and see him chasing us, like in the movie The Other Guys. I look in the mirror and behold… he’s chasing us down the road. To bring us in to show us another phantom damaged piece of furniture.

I felt bad, I wasn’t sure if he really should have been alone, but he clearly had family he was speaking to on the phone.

Edit: I have to mention out of all these professions, I’m the luckiest. Installers and such don’t get much choice when going into a customers house. As a mover, we can basically say no because of health concerns and such. Also hoarders tend to not utilize movers all that much.

#27

I used to install satellite dishes. One house was disgusting, every surface was covered in one dirty thing or another. Dishes, clothes, garbage, you name it, it was there. There was not enough flat space to set down the box that the receiver came in. This guy happened to be a hoarder/collector and had some really cool old [stuff] hung in the walls though. Anyways we went through the kitchen to get to the basement and there was a pile of pillows on the floor in front of the stove which doubled as a terrarium. I stepped on the pillows and nearly fell over because they didn’t move. They were solid, hard as rock. Disgusting.

#28

Not terribly strange, but as an hvac I went to a home to do a check up on an old oil furnace that had been sitting in the house unused for about 6 years. Opened up the burner box and ended up scooping out 2 crispy fried bats that had been sitting in there for who knows how long.

#29

Wife is a mental health therapist so she some sad ones

1. A family left their butter out on the counter and it would get flies in it. They’d pick them off like seeds and still use the butter.

2. My wife stepped on a roach in an infested house and a kid freaked out because she said they were her pets.

3. A family had a group of 7-8 Guinea pigs they’d let roam around the house, on counters, kitchen tables, etc.

#30

Im a decorator, i once went to give a quote for a job at an old ladies house. This woman had spent her whole life exploring the world and researching various animals and lost cultures. Her house was like the mansion in the intro to uncharted 4, filled with historic artifacts and exotic animals like piranhas. Also there was a secret hallway system that ran through the house, bookcases moving to uncover a small entrance etc.

#31

I am a courier and once I delivered to an elderly lady who was watching what seemed to be her grandchild. Anyways after the delivery I got back in my vehicle to fill out paperwork. Suddenly my back door opens and sure enough the little boy “probably 3 years old” climbs into my back seat and locks the doors while his grandmother is screaming at the top of her voice to get him out. Banging the window too. I turn around and we make eye contact he says straight faced let’s get out of here. I ended up unlocking the door and said sorry buddy. I felt bad, hope he didn’t get spanked too hard…
Many crazy things have happened but this one is at the top of the charts for me lol.

#32

Rotating for home care agency:
Stuffed animals!!! Omg!!! Elephant legs, a full monkey, a giraffe head, multiple zebras, and two elephant ivory whatever you call it at the entrance! Even the coffee table was carved with African animals, and windows were custom elephants etc.

#33

Homicide detective in large city here. A surprisingly large number of people use a feces/urine receptacle of some kind in their bedroom when a functioning bathroom is nearby.

#34

I was working collecting donations. Some old man donated so i went to his apartment to get it. 2nd floor walking up i began gagging on a heavy urine smell. Halfway up he yells “come on up, the door is open.” I walk into his apartment and get blasted with the urine stench and see the old man has no pants on or underwear. He’s free-balling and they were swollen. I didn’t blink an eye. I told him I was there to pick up the donation. He pointed to it, I grabbed it and told him to have a nice day. The End.

#35

I can contribute, but at this point I don’t think anyone could see it.

I was a water meter reader. Many of the homes (at the time) had their meters in their basement.

There was a large, old farmhouse that was 25% an apartment for a guy who rented, and 75% a house that was SOLELY for all her dogs. And there had to be at least a dozen if not more in there. The dude who lived in the apartment was nice enough, but the meter (naturally) wasn’t in his apartment. I had to be escorted through to a basement in the dog house. It was horrifying. Dog feces was everywhere. The dogs peed on the old wood floor, so the basement was essentially a catch-all for excrement. Worst part was that my first (and subsequently only) time I went in the house was Mid-July.

I promptly notified my boss to call animal protection and left. I also told my boss I wouldn’t be returning to that home. Ever.

#36

Couple of things:

At one house, a microwave on top of a toilet. You couldn’t enter the kitchen due to the amount of hoarding, so if they were hungry they would plug the microwave in, place it on the toilet and microwave some food.

At another house – lots and lots of empty boxes. Stacked in every corner of the house, in case they ever had to return items. I can somewhat understand that mentality but when you’ve used that item for years, return policies don’t apply anymore.

#37

This one old lady I took care of had all of her pets as taxidermy statues in her living room.

Also had all her late husband’s teeth in a cup on her coffee table.

#38

Window washer here. I’m in a mansion’s downstairs guest room and this (extremely well groomed) dog is just staring in my general direction from the middle of the guest bed. I realized something’s wrong: the bed is perfectly made around him, not so much as a crease. Give him a poke and yup, stuffed dog. I have seen this done TWICE now, yikes.

#39

I went into someones house (recently evicted) and their bathtub was full to the brim with used cat litter. Opening the door to the bathroom almost knocked me out.

#40

I do volunteer disaster recovery work.

I was once attacked by an elderly man who didn’t want me to remove his floodwater soaked drywall. It turns out that he had 60 year old canned goods stored between the studs.

It was just sad. He was clearly terrified of of going hungry or being robbed for his food stash.

#41

I had to sample drinking water a few years ago. There once was this weird lady and when i knocked at her door she literally said “you seem to have bad mojo today, come back tomorrow” naturally we made her pay for the inconveniences and i came back the other day and she let me in. She had 19 cats

#42

Not me, but my dad works for a delivery company. He went to drop off a package and an older lady answered the door in a panic. Her husband needs an air tank to breathe, but she couldn’t turn the handle on it to turn on the air. Her husband was sitting in a wheelchair suffocating. So my dad ran in the house and turned on the air tank.

He got a write up for entering a customers home, and an award for great customer service when the older lady called his company and left a review.

#43

I went to a company employee’s house because the company-owned, high-end graphics workstation at their home was flakey. There was not a spot of dirt in sight, nothing in the house was out of place, and their four kids were cute and polite. I have been on calls where everything at the employee’s house was messed up, but it was this one that freaked me out.

#44

HVAC Technician reporting in the strangest thing that comes to mind is also the most disgusting, homeowner had 3 huskies and lets just say his carpets were all made from shedded fur, literally could not see the carpet underneath it all.

#45

It’s not that strange but it was pretty cool. I painted this guy’s house and after the job was finished on the last day he showed me and the rest of the crew this bar he had in his basement. When I say bar I’m not just talking about a counter to make drinks with storage behind and underneath. I’m talking like booths and tables etc. It was designed like a bar in the belly of a ship. We referred to it as his “Pirate Bar”.

I’ve seen dirty houses, hoarding etc but this was the coolest(and a little weird too I guess).

#46

An old Asian lady had quarters in every corner of an exterior wall throughout her house. There had to be at least $20 in quarters.

#47

Just general filth. I no longer judge myself when my house gets “dirty.”.

#48

Well, as a luxury condo high rise manager, over the years I’ve seen some [stuff]. The list below is a sample, and probably not that weird with how the world is now.

Encountered a giant python about to escape it enclosure; a wolf; mini saw mill; every type of cross dress, S & M, drag dress apparel (hidden identities); some guy set up ramps, trapizes, hand holds, toe holds, etc., everywhere on the walls/ceiling of his unit so he would never touch the flooring, even the kitchen and bathroom (I don’t know if he was a rock climber, the real Spiderman or a circus freak) — I’ve thought about this on and off my whole life; I kept looking for a guy with no legs, huge forearms, tongue like the Toad or something, but never saw him/her.

#49

Carpet cleaner, guy was a nature photographer and had a lot of pictures of n**e girls holding snakes or standing next to horses.

#50

Little girl asleep on the couch in a house full of adult cr**kheads. The roaches were so bad they were falling off the ceiling onto her while she slept.

#51

Disclaimer: This is not my story, it was found by my girlfriend on Quora, however it is one of the more sad and disgusting things I have read relating to this topic

“One job I held during school was working part-time during the days for a company which manufactured window coverings. They made custom-fitted mini-blinds, wood blinds, curtains and vertical blinds for sliding glass patio doors.

Sometimes, the job required making a service call to the client’s home, either to measure their window frames before placing an order, or to install their blinds after their orders were completed. Customer service number one, you know?

On one such call, the installer and I drove up to a very run down, dilapidated house and parked in the trash-strewn driveway. As the truck’s engine idled we double-checked the service order thinking we had the wrong place, but we didn’t. We were at the correct address.

We thought it was decidedly peculiar that people who had such a ramshackle home, in an obvious state of decay and disrepair, would order thousands of dollars worth of beautiful, custom blinds to put in their windows. Strange.

It only got weirder from there. And much more sad, too.

We exited the truck and made our way up the driveway, past discarded tires, buckets filled with stagnant water (breeding grounds for mosquito larvae) toys and naked dolls with various amputations, missing limbs and sometimes heads. This completely disturbed me because I hate baby dolls, especially scary headless ones, abandoned without reason in creepy yards. Boo boo jeebees.

A rottweiler, chained to a tree, barked a warning at us, as we carefully climbed up onto the porch, avoiding several loose planks which served as steps; Clouds of flies buzzed us and our shoes sunk into the carpeted entryway, soaked in an unknown liquid, squish, squish, squishing as we rang the doorbell. Disgusting.

Ding-Dong! A lady pried open the door, scooting a pile of newspapers and debris away with her foot as she peered out at us. The door only opened up part-way, such was the pile of junk behind it, blocking us.

As the door swung inwards, the vapors of a heavily fetid, sickly-sweet cloud, smelling of sadness and purifying rot, wafted out and instantly punched me directly in the face. I nearly puked. The stench was overpowering.

“Hi, I’m Bea.” I was looking at a forty-something lady in a dirty housecoat, as she smiled a big, toothless grin. That’s not true, she had one tooth. In the center. Smack-dab in the middle of her smile. A great big yellow, rotted incisor. I wondered how it got there. Right in the middle of her head like that.

“I didn’t really have time to clean up,” she said (uh, no kidding, lady- you didn’t have threeyears to get this mess under control, I thought to myself) “so you’ll just hafta follow the trails through the house to get to the windows. I made you a pathway.”

I almost turned around right then. I wished I had. I didn’t have my hazmat suit with me, and the horrors I saw in that home nearly broke me.

I’m not kidding.

Great armies of fleas leapt up from the carpet and attacked my legs as I trudged through ceiling-high piles of boxes and broken furniture, junk, hats, dirty clothes broken appliances and family photos carelessly discarded upon mounds of garbage and cobwebs, trash and debris.

We gagged as we silently installed the “blackout blinds” in the living area. We didn’t dare talk, for fear flies would invade our mouths. They were so thick in that room they actually sounded like a television set left on one of those static channels: VOLUME +53. We quickly got those blinds installed and moved on to the next room.

It was a child’s room. There were dirty diapers everywhere, feces-covered wallpaper, sporting brown bunnies, probably once pink, or blue, or green, a moldy baby blanket so crusty it actually stood up in the corner, a sippy cup filled with black stuff that would end a baby if they happened to sip it, and broken lamps and more furniture. I don’t know where the kid was, or if the child was even buried in that room at the time. Lost forever, and stacked underneath all that junk. So depressing.

We got that blackout-blind up in record time, too and moved down the “path” through the hallway to the next room.

However, this proved a more difficult spot. We actually had to climb a mountain of garbage to get there. Bea demonstrated her technique to us: “Put your foot on this box, pull up on the rocking chair here, then lift your other foot over this pile.. “

We got over the mound of trash, but on the other side of that blockade was the bathroom.

The bathroom.

The floor was covered in human excrement!

Shopping bags were stacked all over the floor, some lying halfway open, spilling their contents and filled to the brim with s**t! The walls were so smeared with poop and the flies so thick, it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting! The bathtub was completely full of water, or [urine], or both. Liquid horror, with its flotsam of stinking [excrements]. A swamp of strep decay and MRSA infection. The sink was, too! There was a pile of discarded underwear in the corner literally four feet high, which looked as if it was the convenient substitute for toilet tissue, but disgusting as that scene was, it wasn’t what broke me, for it was at that moment that I noticed I was standing on something crunchy.

I looked down and immediately recognized the fur, the desiccated bones, the structure of a beautiful creature who once was. A kitten had crawled up onto that pile of debris and died, alone and forgotten, and nobody in the house had even noticed. And I was standing on it.

I retched and puked right there on Bea’s lovely pile of treasure-garbage.

Sorry Bea.

I had to get out of there right then!

I panicked.

I scrambled over the Everest of junk. I mazed my way past the baby’s room, and I wove my way through the trail of trash, felt my way past the now-darkened living room and the army of fleas, squish, squish, squished over the wet carpet on the porch and down the treacherous planks which functioned as stairs, ignoring the rottweiler and headless dolls in the driveway, and dove into the truck, slammed the door, and locked it.

Panting. Panting. Trying to breathe and feeling my skin crawl.

I felt my heart beating out of my chest as I sucked the sweet, fresh air from the outdoors. And broken, I wept.

My partner wasn’t far behind me. He made it all the way to the truck before he vomited in the driveway. He had much better manners than I did and was able to spare violating Bea’s precious garbage trove.

He’d abandoned the hardware and tools inside the house, as well as the blinds. We wouldn’t be back to collect the tools.

As for the blinds, they could put them up themselves. We weren’t the people for the job. We weren’t mental health professionals. We weren’t trained to deal with situations like that.

We didn’t get it. We didn’t understand what hoarding was back then or what a terrible mental illness it was.

Back in 1992.

We just did as we were told. And we had this particular order of blinds. Blackout blinds. Window coverings which would completely black out the sun, neighbors or anyone else from looking in. Blinds which ensured complete privacy and which were completely opaque so that no light would be able to invade the room. Blinds which would only further imprison the occupants of that home and make certain they continued living their desperate, lonely lives.

Alone.

Forevermore.”

#52

I am in the social services business and work with mentally ill adults the strangest thing I have seen while doing a room inspections was two pairs of anatomically correct prosthetic breasts. The client was a male.

#53

I used to build furniture in-home for a major office supply company, and I had this happen a couple of times: I was called to a home in the ghetto, and it was rough as hell outside. I get past the barred screen door inside…and it’s palatial inside. Beautifully decorated, spotless, paintings, African artifacts, religious artifacts, expensive furniture in perfect condition. Family had money, but kept it well hidden.

#54

This is more disgusting than weird. But as a cable installer for DirecTV, I went to a guys home and it was infested with cockroaches. Literally everywhere. Running around on the floor, hiding behind picture frames on the wall and inside the ceiling fan. And this house was a pig sty. I moved his entertainment center to look behind his outdated tv, and there were hundreds of them scurrying away and INTO the tv. I told him I couldn’t do the job until he hired an exterminator, called my boss to explain, and luckily he was cool about it. A couple weeks later I went back, he said he had the house exterminated, and when I first walked in it looked better, but all he did was clean up because the roaches were scurrying about in no time. It was so bad, his neighbors started to complain about the filth and smell of the home, so the city got involved, and ended up condemning the home. Now this house wasn’t in the middle of town, this house had 2 acres of land and in a spread out neighborhood. The infestation was so bad, exterminators couldn’t even help. They ended up digging a 2-3 foot trench around the entire house, burned the house down, and lit the trench on fire while the house burned so no more bugs would get away from the property.

#55

So I’m 15 years old. Working for a family HVAC business installing air conditioning units, and it’s hot and humid as hell in the middle of July in Tennessee. We go to this old man’s house, I wouldn’t call him a hoarder, but clutter was all over the place. The walls were lined with all kinds of black depictions of Bible stories and figures. Black jesus, black noah, black Abraham, etc….

Best part, I get outside and a metro bus stops at the house next door. Next thing I know there’s a huge mountain of a man, truly looked like an NFL lineman, 6’5 300 plus, wearing a hot pink dress, platinum blonde wig, and huge heels.. and guy in the door behind me waves and goes, “that’s my little brother”.

#56

Sold residential real estate for a couple of years. Couldn’t believe the number of homes with no books.

#57

Casually spitting directly into their carpeting.

#58

Giant standing stuffed bear in the bathroom. Pretty funny, but the first time I saw it I screamed.

#59

Not me personally, but I guy I know… (My brother) is a plumber and he got called to a house. His always telling me stories about toilets over flowing with poop. This one couple had a toilet overflow with so much waste that it had flooded out into the kitchen.

Their child had been playing in the waste that day and was covered in it. When he asked them about the kid, he swears they responded with “she will be fine, it’s organic and will help her immune system”

He says the smell was shocking.

#60

Used to deliver and install appliances for a hardware store. I’ve been in houses that make horror movie sets look tame; floorboards so saturated with dog urine that they warp when you walk on them, houses in extreme rural areas with gaggles of rat-faced, fish-eyed kids who stare at you like they’ve never seen a human with the proper amount of chromosomes before, etc. Not sure I can pick a weirdest one definitively, but there was one nerd lair with a coffin for a living room table, and a framed picture of Kate Beckinsale’s character from Underworld on the hearth. Whole place smelled like sweat and dollar store incense. And cat urine.

#61

Delivering pizza. Knocked on the sliding glass door and heard, “COME IN!” Slid the door opened and walked into the living room(?). Man with no shirt, and no legs, sat in a chair in the corner of the room. Next to him was a burn barrel filled to the tippy-top with cigarette butts. And surrounding us were thousands of empty Coke bottles.

#62

Not me, but my mother used to be a maid. She told me once about some of the houses she worked at. Most of them were huge houses with rich stay at home wives who would follow her and the other maids from room to room, trying to catch them stealing something. A few of them even left ridiculously expensive rings or earings in the middle of the floor as a lure to tempt them so they could bring it up.

One of the places she went to was different though. She said it was the creepiest thing she’d ever seen. They didn’t tell her the client’s name. Apparently, the guy was pretty wealthy, but lived in a filthy apartment. It absolutely reeked of rot and was completely trashed, with garbage and mold everywhere. They found change everywhere that he said they could just keep if they found (not pennies, think loonies and toonies, $1 and $2 coins), and my mom was getting like $40 a day just from that. In the livingroom, there were bags full of mail order bride catalogues, but the worst thing was the room in the hallway. They were told not to go in that room at all, and that they wouldn’t have to clean it, but every time they walked by, the smell of rotten meat would be unbearable. Eventually curiosity got to one of the girls and she opened the door and a few of them peeked in. The room was completely filled with garbage bags and the whole floor was sticky with a rust coloured liquid. They closed the door and didn’t talk about it. Thinking back on it, the guy could’ve just been some 90’s neckbeard type, but it really freaked my mom out.

#63

Went in a house once that my daughter was housesitting at, and every single inch of wall space was covered with photos of the owner from the 80’s. She apparently used to be a model. It was wild. Floor to ceiling, down the heads, in the bathroom. They were all n**e-ish or provocative. The only place in the house that didn’t have pictures of her was in the kitchen. That was covered in 80’s pictures of her husband. Same sort of semi erotic vibe.

#64

EMT

It’s hard to pick just one. Many nasty houses but, I had to drop a lady from the hospital to her house. She weighed over 300 pounds and couldn’t stand up on her own. Her husband and daughter would be home to take her in. My partner and I had to help her off the stretcher and carry her in. Her husband almost shoved us out of the way to carry her in and closed the door.

I needed a signature and knocked and the door opened from me knocking. They had no carpet, just the foam underneath in patches. One light, which was just a hanging bulb. All the kitchen cabinets were open or falling off with cast iron skillets and pots. In the living room was one twin blow up mattress. In the hallway was a small portable charcoal grill with heavy black residue underneath. But the part that I’ll never forget. A life size cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan in the empty back room.

#65

So many trashy women have rubbish quotes painted/stuck/nailed onto their walls, you know, ‘live laugh love’ in cursive. The other day a lady had a cheap wooden cutout of the word ‘bathroom’ on her bathroom window sill. The weird part for me is how all of these women have the exact same [stuff].

#66

I delivered groceries to the homes of elderly people who had no way to do it themselves. Local volunteers would fill orders at the store and as a driver for that location once a week I spent the day delivering food to these people. Very few of these visits made me feel anything but very sad. The conditions for living for these people without family or friends or a working mind was never good. People who couldn’t get their own food couldn’t clean or change cat litter or empty garbage. Some clients homes you could not enter the smell was so bad. Some clients never refrigerated the food. It was heartbreaking how many elderly people I met living in abject squalor. Some you could tell we’re alone because they were lifelong [jerks] but others just outlived everyone they knew. Awful to see. Glad we were able help out.

#67

Am carpenter who does custom/remodel. The way peoeple leave their homes knowing we’ll be there is disgusting. Also, finding [deceased] mice in/under cabinets and other places is nice.

#68

In college for a bit I used to work cleaning homes, like super rich people’s mansions. And one day I was dusting and vacuuming the upstairs master bedroom. I totally forgot that the owners told me NOT to clean the big walk in closet….I opened up the door and to my surprise I found the craziest kink clothing, it was super [bad] Renaissance wear. I know it sounds crazy, I was like wow they must be into some interesting role play. I felt super guilty for seeing that. Then later as I was vacuuming the downstairs finished basement, I found a sewing room! With gorgeous and elaborate handmade Renaissance dresses. So all of it had been handmade. Someone in the family must work making costumes, and I was super impressed.

#69

I work part-time at a local cleaning company. My job is to go into empty apartment units that people have just moved out of and clean every square inch. After cleaning the majority of the unit, I go into the kitchen to finish up. I climb a small foot stool to reach the top of the cabinets, and I notice something on top of the cabinets. This isn’t unusual. People forget things. It’s a tiny bag filled with a variety of pills. Okay. Still not too unusual. As I make my way to the end of the cabinets, I notice something else on top. It’s a small plate with a white substance on it, a small bottle of unidentifiable liquid, and an unused (thankfully) needle. At that point, I almost lost it. I wasn’t sure what to do with everything, so I just threw it all in a trash bag, and threw it in the dump.

#70

I used to be a carpet cleaner. Went into this fairly large house (3,500 sqft) and was given a tour of places to clean. As I went around setting up at my first room I noticed a pole, in the child’s bedroom, she was about 14.

#71

Working for Comcast it was amazing how quickly people opened up to us technicians as we laid cable and installed boxes. We were the guys that made the TV, the phone and the cable work. To some we were just magicians. Also, I think most people knew the chances of them seeing us again were rare, so they could say anything without worrying about a future run in.

So, I’ve seen a lot but this one time stands out the most. I was doing a late night install around 7-8pm and this lady’s house is nice and clean but full of animals…birds, dogs, cats, ferrets, and putting a box in the basement, I met one of her roommates, a mentally disabled lady. Nothing too crazy, but I noticed a blender like thing in the kitchen bubbling and swirling with water in it. The woman explained it was an oxygenator and that it also filtered and removed lead everything out of the water until it was just plain H20, but that that it was like 99% O. It took oxygen out of the air and put it into water. She said she was a healer and that every pet and two humans, her roommate and another woman I didn’t meet were all drawn to her because of their injuries or disease. Cats and dogs would follow her home or show up at the door and people would be drawn to her too. So she pointed to some of the animals like a big mutt by the fireplace and said it had like 50 tumors and they were all gone and then said the woman in the basement was struck in the head with a softball and that she was aiding her back brain back to normal function. All of this with oxygenated water because it sped up the healing process. She gave me some and it was great. Invigorating to say the least and I was infused with energy and even felt the effects the next day. It was like she was running her own weird little hospital there. She said she’s seen the oxygenated water cure tons of cancer in her animals and people. I got a used one for about $150.00 on ebay and lost interest after awhile. The one she was using was like $500.00 Anyways, that was an interesting thing I remember from that job.

#72

Little baby angels. Everywhere. I knew that if I looked away I would be stuck in another dimension.

#73

Guy in a filthy trash filled apartment with blood smeared all over the walls had let his fish tank crash and left it to stew for a long time. It could be smelled from several apartments away as you approached. My business partner spent they day dry heaving cleaning it out. He had broken his interior doors and had a huge bullet proof barrier just inside his bedroom door. No visible guns… but you know they were there. After hearing about his day I told him just to keep all the money from the job and to walk away next time something like that happened.

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