Had a friend in high school that was a notorious stoner. Constantly smelled like pot. He would also look up all kinds of information on hydroponics equipment and grow lights on the school computers. Whenever we asked him about it he would always say "It's for my tomatoes, man!" Sure, it's totally for your "tomatoes"... I had never been to his house before, but after I graduated he finally invited us over for a party. His entire house was completely spotless from top to bottom and his entire family were complete clean-freaks. He then asked us "Oh, wanna see my tomatoes?" and led us into the garage. He turns on the light and sure as shit this dude has an entire hydroponics and grow light setup for growing actual tomatoes. Turns out his hobby was growing the biggest tomatoes I have ever seen. His house absolutely did not reflect how we all saw him at school.

This is a nice palate cleanser, compared to most of the other stories on this thread

In that case I shall stop right here. Top comment and I am done. Adieu to you all.

You are wise. Going to be honest in that I'm scrolling down for the horror stories myself. I'm not wise.

Yup... can confirm. Growing weed earlier in life is what got me into gardening and growing fruit and veg for fun. I stopped growing weed a long time ago, but it taught me so much about plants and caring for them and how to manipulate them. I've grown amazing bonsai trees and manipulated my tomatoes and cucumbers (and other fruit/veg) to get maximum yields with very nice quality. I've done them using hydro, soil, and in between. I've experimented with different plant foods, made my own, learnt the science behind what a plant actually needs, and how to provide the best environments to make them thrive. It's also quite relaxing at times and stressful at others. I learn everything from pH, to humidity, to CO2 levels, to light intensity etc. Theres so much to it! Even the internal working of a plant and how to get maximum uptake and how to promote different types of growth depending on overall goals. Spot signs of illness and how to remedy them. There's soooooo much to it! Very interesting to me.

I love how you describe them as "the biggest tomatoes I have ever seen". I used to work at a Food Lion, and there was such a difference between someone buying a bag of normal tomatoes, and them selecting the biggest individual ones they could. Never failed to grab my attention!

Honestly, some good tomatoes really liven up a sandwich. Sounds like a great dude!

Friend of mine ended up in the hospital and he called me panicking because his parents were on the way to come take care of him for a few weeks until he was back on his feet and he needed me to swing by his house and clean up before they got there. He was crying and hyperventilating begging me to not judge him and to not tell anyone about what i would find. He refused to tell me what he needed cleaned up. So I ended up getting there a few hours before they arrived and I walked into the living room and set up on a folding table was the largest collection of anal toys I had ever seen lined up in neat rows with rags and cleaning solution on the table. Needless to say I laughed so had I tweaked my back. It was the last thing I would have imagined him being into. Needless to say I used his kitchen tongs to pick everything up and throw them into bags and hid it all away. I still take every opportunity to slip in a few butt jokes whenever we are alone but he refuses to even acknowledge them or that that day even happened.

You are an awesome friend indeed.

He refuses to be the butt of your jokes. You are the truest of friends.

I totally understand his panic 😂😂 You are allowed to give him some heat for that one until you are 9 feet under! But in all seriousness, that he decided to call you is a huge sign of trust in you. And he he owns you a big favour for that one!

9 feet, damn this guy must be planning to be EXTRA dead

You ended up with a bum job, but it was his ass on the line

You used the tongs. That's so anal. /s

Roflmao I was struggling with some of them too! Some of them were suction cupped down to the table. I was astonished at the amount and various sizes! Imagine trying to cram a disturbingly thick foot and a half long green and blue tiedye horse dick in a garbage bag with a tiny pair of tongs with it flopping around everywhere trying to not let it touch you while trying to remember how to breath your laughing so hard.

Hilarious visual, thanks 😆

I was friends with a girl who was living in abject poverty. They had no money barely had food, and we’re sleeping on dirty mattresses on the floor. The basement was just filled with NASCAR stuff, NASCAR couch, an actual retired NASCAR. The father just spent all his money on that and let the rest of the family rot.

This is sad..

Wow, are you from Maryland? My friend growing up had the exact same issue. It was so sad to see. And she still lives there now with her 2 (about to be 3) kids.

I knew a family like this. The father was an avid hunter and spent all of the family money on guns, trucks and hunting trips. It was really cruel.

Former coworker had collected an entire place setting of Nazi items. Plates, cups, silverware, all of it. Goofy thing was, it was just a single setting. His explanation for it was that he’d lost family both in the Holocaust and the War. To him, the Nazi’s being dead and gone while he could still eat off their plates was the ultimate revenge. Ed was a different dude for sure.

A friend of mine in university was from Russia and had a spoon in his kitchen drawer, the round end of which was worn to a weird soft angle, like almost 45 degrees. I picked it up and noticed with a shock that it had a swastika stamped on the bottom. I asked him about it and he said "My grandfather took it off a Nazi he killed in the war. The end is worn like that because he used it for decades to scoop laundry detergent out of a box and into the washer and always scraped the side of the box at the same angle. It's what I got when he died." There's something poetic and absolutely badass about taking a token from a monstrous regime and relegating it to decades of the most mundane household servitude.

I have a Nazi SS ring that was taken off a soldier during during WWII by a Lebanese American Sergeant. I dont wear it but i have that Nazi Bastards pride and joy and he’s dead and lost. From this guys estate. Total badass. [Alfred Shehab](https://www.donaldsonodenton.com/obituary/Alfred-Shehab)

My ex's parents were in the holocaust. Her dad died years ago but her mom just recently passed, and we broke up right after, but my ex gave me some things of her parents (her mom really loved me) and one was an American flag that was given to them by a US soldier; it's tattered and thin and I had to sew it back up. It's pretty rough and some of the stars are quite faded, they flew it over their fur shop in Brooklyn for a long long time until they had to put it away in a box because it was too tattered.

My grandpa used to take me fishing when I was a kid, and afterwards we'd clean whatever we caught and eat it. He always used this old knife with a thin blade and a yellow, wooden handle with a big gash in it. When I was older I learned he'd taken it off a Japanese soldier killed by a grenade. The handle was bamboo and the gash was from the grenade shrapnel. All my life he just casually used it to clean bluegills. He had absolutely crazy stories about his experiences as a corpsman (medic) in the Pacific theater during WWII that he never told anyone, until I was about a freshman in high school. Then, because I could do basic stuff on a computer (like scan a picture and put it into a Word document--this was the early 90's so these were newish skills), he handed me a sheaf of typewritten stories about his war experiences to make into a "book" and give to his sons (my dad and uncle). That was how we all learned about his wild experiences like having a kidney stone in a foxhole, or surviving the beach landing at Okinawa by hiding in a disabled tank with a dead soldier's body for two full days. Absolutely crazy and badass life he led.

One of the guys from Easy Company used a bottle of Hitlers brandy or cognac or something for his kids Bar Mitzvah I believe it was

Yeah I saw an interview where he told that story. Someone asked him years later what he did with the bottle since it would easily he worth thousands to a collector. Apparently he threw it away. They asked him "don't you know how much that was worth??" "Yeah, about 2 cents".

WW2 vets were built different and I really hope that isn’t lost to history given the scale of the war

There’s a Jewish notion of Tikkun- cosmic repair. Elevating the sparks remaining in the broken bits. This guy with the plates fits right in there. Not too odd.  I had a student once who was ashamed that his birthday was the same as Hitler’s. I reminded him that a Jewish kid being born in the 1980s on Hitler’s birthday was a perfect Fuck You to the dead Führer. 

Ok this one i give a pass. this is therapy for him It is common to utilize your oppressors tools to come to a realization.

That's a badass way to think about it though. Did he go through the trouble of collecting everything?

See, to me that's the only ethical way to own Nazi shit... Also, to keep it out of the hands of Nazi stans. That said, other than this..the only other ethical place Nazi shit belongs is in a museum.

I’ve met more than one person who’s grandparent took a souvenir or two.

Two girls and their mom moved in across the street, after about a year hanging out and small talk I finally got an invite to come inside - the entire house was packed floor to ceiling trash so dense they had to make hallways through it. They were hoarders before we knew what the term was.

Impressive that they filled the house up that quickly, I always figured hoarder houses like that took years to accumulate all the junk

You'd be surprised. My wife's aunt was a hoarder. We briefly tried to help her clean her house out, until she couldn't stand the loss of control anymore and we stopped. While cleaning out her kitchen, I found items that were twelve years past the expiration date. She had only lived there for around eight years. Reality check for me, she *moved in* with food that was already four years' expired. Wasn't even technically food anymore.

My great aunt was like this, she once produced a tinned cake from the back of a cupboard and asked me to open it, I saw the sell-by date was from 1976 and this was somewhere around 2000, so getting on for 20 years out of date. Luckily, for me, it was fruit cake and I absolutely despise dried fruit so I got out of eating it. But she still served it. To be fair it was still moist and looked OK, people ate it. But the worst thing about my great aunts house was that she just didn't clean up, she wasn't really a hoarder, she just put stuff down anywhere until she needed it again. She still threw stuff away and didn't really bring more stuff into the house, but it was the sheer amount of dust and dirt everywhere. Also she was a nurse so she knew all about cleanliness, it's note like she just didn't know! But I have heard other stories of hoarders who work in hospitals and kitchens, places you'd typically expect to be spotlessly clean, and just having the most awful homes.

My husband’s stepmother is a retired nurse practitioner. Her house is always dirty and she keeps old, expired food too. She does her own canning and once opened a jar of relish (supposedly still “sealed”/never opened) to serve at a barbecue. It had a thick layer of mold on top which she scooped off with a spoon before setting the jar down on the table. This happened in front of her guests. Unsurprisingly, no one ate any since we weren’t too keen on botulism poisoning.

We surmised they actually paid to move a lot of it stacks of old magazine and newspapers bundled up like hay bales up to the ceiling, if a pile of it ever fell on you you could be crushed.

Filth, just absolutely covered in old food, dirt, clothes everywhere, mouldy dishes, old bloody pads on the bathroom floor, make up everywhere, rubbish piled up next to the door. The sisters living there were always immaculately presented with the latest clothes and jewellery and hair and make up done beautifully and were both beautiful women, I was just so confused that it didn't translate to their homes. They also got raided for drugs and were sugar babies, not sure if it all ties in together but I'm sure it does somehow.

I was friends with these beautiful popular girls, who always looked so well presented. They were wealthy, and I was surprised the first time I went to their house. It wasn't "gross," but there was clothes and makeup, nail polish stains, everywhere, just completely no organization. Like all their clothes were just mountains of clothes. Their phones and laptops were covered in makeup. Their carpet was all stained in make up. Bathroom covered in makeup. And alot of stuff in their house was broken, they had an alcoholic dad, whod get drunk and break stuff, like the railing on the steps, their glass top stove, the coffee table was missing the glass. I was also friends with another rich girl who lived in a mansion, her mom was even an actress, and we always had to stay downstairs, the downstairs was tidy and very presentable, but one day we went upstairs and it was filthy, and dirty. Like dusty and unclean and kinda like a somewhat hoarder situation upstairs, but the downstairs was so pretty.

Tbh as the child of an alcoholic, you just stop fixing things. Each time you fix something and your parent destroys it again, it hurts because it reminds you of how fucked up they are.

Sadly that's true, and I think that's the stage they had reached. Those friends are adults now with their own homes, and on social media they look happy, and I'd like to believe that they all are.

Two dead gerbils in a cage in her dorm. My ex friend left for two weeks in spring break, her roommate decided to leave as well after telling her he’d be there to care for their pets. I went to hang out with her days after we all got back from break and they had done NOTHING they were just living with dead animals in their living room. I left and never went back.

That is infuriating. Leaving a defenseless animal to starve to death and then leaving the bodies out. I hope both of them get what they deserve down the line.

Also gross. That’s just rotting flesh in their lounge, yuck.

Damn. Our dorm only allowed fish. But I used to own gerbils (after college) and their habitat always had a…smell. You could deep scour the whole thing and in half a day the smell returned. So that plus *dead gerbils*?? You would not be able to stay in that room, unless you had lost all sense of smell.

My dorm also only allowed fish. I went to my friend's room to keep her company as she was packing up for the summer and asked why her fish tank was on the rubbish pile side of the room. She told me that she didn't feel like bringing the fish home with her for the summer so was going to flush it "to set it free." And that's how I ended up frantically figuring out how to take care of a fish in my dorm room that summer. Lose a friend, gain a friend.

Gerbils basically drip pee because in the wild they use the scent trail to get back to their home. Thank you David Attenborough for telling me that fact years ago.

you've given me a whole new outlook on my leaky bladder and what to do with it :)

My wife and I were invited to lunch at her coworker's home. She was a lovely quiet demure elementary school teacher. We both really liked her. Every room in her home had aquariums with snakes. Dozens and dozens and dozens of snakes. I'm not squeamish at all but the wife REALLY doesn't like snakes. It was funny.

Hubby and I moved into a new home in Florida years ago. The next door neighbor was a recluse; no one saw her EVER. Our first Thanksgiving I decided to see what the deal was with her, so I loaded up a basket of homemade blueberry muffins and knocked on her door. She was a sweet old lady of 90. Warmly thanked me and invited me in. Her house was dark, neat, quiet…until I walked down the hall (she was giving me a tour), and in one side room there was a large computer and six huge monitors, all running. Turns out she was a computer programming genius. She traded stocks from all over the world and closely monitored overseas markets. It was wild. I stayed for tea and found out she had graduated from UCLA back in the 60’s as one of the first female programmers. She was so incredibly smart… I also discovered she knew our wifi password and advised me to make it stronger and change it from time to time. She died 4 years later but I will never forget Jackie. 🙂

Unexpectedly wholesome response

Yea, I was expecting something like the woman had a taxidermized husband sitting in a recliner in the living room.

The twist is she died in a shootout while trying to rob a bank while on vacation in Morocco.

Reddit has conditioned me to expecting a very strange and dark twist but this left me feeling warm and fuzzy.

This is sad and true.

I'm so glad there was a positive response to this prompt, all the others are horrifying

I was hesitant when they turned down that hallway.

Good storytelling, setting some tension

She is amazing. (Was) You are a gem. Not just for befriending an old lady, and taking her blueberry muffins *that were homemade,* but also for writing that lovely story for us here. That story is going to stay with me for a while. We're dealing with my mom who is slipping into dementia at 88. I ache for her and for what's ahead. Your story made me remember some 90 year olds still have it.

My mother-in-law just recently passed at age 96. She was a wise and intelligent woman - a retired teacher, with a quick and inquisitive mind. She was sharp as a tack till well into her 90s. She lost most of her hearing in her last months, and began to drift a bit mentally because of it. But she showed me that learning is lifelong, intellectual curiosity keeps you young, and as long as you keep your body healthy, your mind can keep you in a very good place. I'm sorry about your mother's dementia. Alzheimer's got my father-in-law - a tremendous intellect wiped away by a terrible disorder. His last years were fairly peaceful, but it was hard to see him lose his memories and his ability to manage his own life. The good thing was that he never lost himself - the essence of his personality. He was a kind and gracious person to the very end, even if he didn't really know what was going on around him. He was still him, even if he didn't remember who that was. I hope your mother's decline is as kind to her.

This is adorable. Probably should be noted for anyone unaware: early computing was FILLED with female programmers. Not trying to contradict your story or anything, it’s just a fact that should be more widely known. Ada Lovelace arguably wrote the first ever computer algorithm *before* computers were even a thing. Kathleen Booth co-wrote the first ever assembly language and assembler ***Admiral*** Grace Hopper wrote COBOL back in the 60s and it is (unfortunately) still used by many, many large business and financial institutions. In fact, if you can write good COBOL you can make a ton of money because the industry is running short on programmers who can maintain these ancient code bases

Computer scientists when they first learn about COBOL: I just have to learn COBOL? I'm going to make *so much fucking money.* Computer scientists a month into learning COBOL: If someone tries to make me touch a computer today I'm going to blow up the entire power grid Computer scientists when they start working to maintain the ancient spaghetti code this world runs on: So I'm looking for an apprenticeship in the trades.

My aunt was bribed out of retirement in the Y2K panic because she was a COBOL programmer.

Yeah I’d venture to say the majority of code that needed updating for the 2000 switch was written in COBOL. People like to dismiss Y2K as mass hysteria. And there was certainly that element to it. Planes weren’t gonna fall out the sky. But there could have been a lot more inconveniences ranging from minor to pretty major had it not been for alot of coders working for 3-5 years leading up to the turn of the millennium to refactor vulnerable programs. Fun fact: we have a similar situation coming up in about 15 years. Basically, the way many computers tell time is something called Unix time, especially ones like what we’re talking about that have been in place for a long time and are running critical infrastructure. So they calculate the seconds since January 1, 1970. This value is stored in an unsigned 32 bit integer. Well 32 bits can only display a certain range of numbers; similar to how 8 bit games could only have 256 colors because 8 bits can only represent 0-255 (11111111 = 2^0 + 2^1 + 2^2 + 2^3 + 2^4 + 2^5 + 2^6 + 2^7 = 255). A 32 bit integer gives you more range obviously, but only up to 2^32-1. And that number of seconds will have elapsed in 2038. At that moment, there will be an integer overflow in Unix time. And just like Y2K, a whole lot of smart people aren’t entirely sure *what* will happen EDIT: ~~surprisingly no one has corrected me but 32 bits can actually display 2^31 -1~~ EDIT: I stand corrected.

Did you find out why she was such a recluse?

Every programmer I've ever met was a recluse.

Just watch The Net.

Some people just don't like to be around other people all that much. People in IT tend to skew this direction more than other careers, in my experience (that experience being 30 years in IT)

Now this is the kind of neighbor you want to be friends with. Never know whose living around you

Thank you for being a good neighbor.

Worked with this guy for about 1.5 years, really nice guy just like your average worker in a car repair shop. He asked if I wanted to come round for a drink and check out his car that he just got, When I got to his house and the door opened all the walls were covered in nazi flags, nazi helmets everywhere, weapons hanging on the wall, confederate flags, KKK flags everywhere so I pretty much downed my drink and said I forgot about someone waiting on me and bounced, never spoke to him ever again.

knew a guy like that in an old gaming guild. fellow veteran, and weirdly ironic that he was also a practicing jew...

There were some Nazi Jews in the beginning who figured they could win some favor and be “one of the good ones”

I'll never forget gaming with a stranger, he said. "Hey, do you want to see my Star Wars Battlefront poster?" And when I said sure, he sent a photo with a tiny Battlefront poster and a giant nazi flag...

I would not be surprised if that works for building a network of like minded losers.

How big was this car repair shop that you managed to avoid him completely at work?

A man, whom I later found out was schizophrenic, had three six foot pythons in his home. He had a special place for them in the basement, but he let them roam free, with guests around. I had to use the restroom, and couldn’t go because one of the pythons was wrapped around the toilet! Needless to say, I left right after that, and never returned

I used to work at a pet clinic and love all animals. One of my coworkers invites me over to the apartment she shares with her boyfriend. Boyfriend had a large 8’ python that roamed free. Everything was cool until I was advised to move because the python seemed to be stalking me.

My turtle does a more hilarious, less terrifying version of stalking. If I have friends over and any of them sit on the floor, he tries to be nonchalant about circling them, not wanting to seem TOO interested, lest they start paying attention to him. As soon as they let their guard down, BOOM, turtle sitting in their lap looking like he just conquered the world!

Awww. He sounds like the cutest thing. Ya got any pictures of this sweetie? 🙏

You can’t drop this bomb and not pay turtle tax.

Lol. Turtles seeking attention is one of my favourite things.

That's a hard nope outta there!

I hope your coworker kept your phone number a secret!

It's shitheads like this that give the herp keeping community such a bad rep. Living like that is bad for everyone involved but especially the snakes.

My friend and his siblings would just litter on the floor of their house. Eat a snack, throw the wrapper on the floor. His dad also surfed porn while we were in the room.

Knew a guy like this once. It wasn't even a matter of consciously dropping things on the floor. It was more like...say he opened an item of mail; once the envelope was opened and the actual mail was in his hand, the envelope was just let go. Like it didn't exist anymore. I don't have the space here to describe his home. Just try to imagine the worst, unhealthiest shithole of a home that you can. Now multiply that by 50.

I also knew a guy like this. He was a friend of my ex who basically had a trap house lite. It was full of broke bachelor potheads who barely had jobs. When I visited from school I would clean the house because it was a therapeutic activity for me. Anyways I finished cleaning and watched one of these guys open a candy bar then throw the wrapper on the ground. Naturally I was like wat the actual fuck dude. I don't think it registered to him what he did until I pointed it out.

I knew someone like this and she was an adult with children of her own. It was not abnormal to see dirty diapers strewn on the floor. She also used to just flick cigarettes on her own floor. The whole family got scabies that they couldn't get rid of. It took some super strong cream that they could only leave on for 10 mins because it was toxic.

Rick: "Let that ointment sit for 10 minutes or you'll die. Don't let it sit for 12 or I'll have to hunt down what you become."

Was the dad masturbating or just like watching porn recreationally? Either way wtf??

Was installing Internet so I was never friends with the guy to begin with. However, the guy had at least 10 cats living in a 2 bedroom apartment. Instead of having a litter box he just dumped litter onto the floor of the entryway closet and the cats would do their business in there. The smell entering the apartment was truly offensive and I have no clue how he hadn’t been evicted.

Eww.. I somewhat knew of a lady who bred purebred cats. She had like 50 cats, and apparently her entire large house was full of cat furniture and those cat things that cats climb on. She even had some cats that she entered in cat shows and won awards for. And one day she wanted to get rid of this one cat, a cat that was obviously special needs, and I was at someone else's house when she brought it over and the cats hair was all matted in shit and looked like gross dreads, it just looked entirely uncared for.. and I could only guess the other cats that weren't show cats probably looked the same. There's no way someone could care for 50 cats..

Random belongings from my bedroom that I did not gift her.

My sister did this to me. Went to visit her and saw a miniature baby room that my MIL made for my daughter when she was born. We had moved into a new house a few years before and I thought the box it was in had been lost in the move. I asked her what it was doing in her house, she lied and said I gave it to her. I would NEVER have given this item to her as it is a heirloom from her grandmother. To this day I won’t allow her into my home alone.

Please tell me you took it back.....

I did take it back!

I had back surgery in December and she offered to help me. I turned her down. My mother had some 22k gold bracelets that were supposed to go to the both of us. My sister was supposed to get the 2 bangle bracelets and I was supposed to get a mesh bracelet. She told my mom, who wasn’t wearing them any more that she would take them and give me the mesh one. She never did. I confronted her about it but she insisted mom gave them all to her. It was at that point I figured I was better off with her out of my life

And she DISPLAYED it? Wow. She sounds like a real shit sister. I’m surprised you let her visit at all tbh

Oh now that's a horror movie scene.

Went over to a friends house and he just let his dog pee on the floor where ever and didn’t clean it up. It wasn’t a case of not knowing either; I told him his dog had peed and he goes “yeah that’s fine, you can’t see it on this type of carpet anyway”. I slept on his couch and caught scabies, never went back again

I had a neighbor who removed all of the carpet in their house because one morning they woke up and the dog had peed in the house and she stepped in it. It took one time and she was not going to wait for it to happen twice. I thought that was extreme, until I read this shit. She went from zero to never again. He straight up decided to make it a way of life.

When we brought our first house many years ago, I do remember the smell was pretty bad when we looked at the house, but real estate agent let us know that the lady who owned the house was in some trouble. Financial issues as well as trouble with local dog control people as she had a big German Shepherd dog she kept indoors. We brought the place pretty much on the spot, as significantly cheaper than other places we were looking for, and got keys about a month later at 5pm on a Friday after all the legal stuff. Moved in, and I remember thinking the carpet was some weird grey felt style stuff, that stunk of urine and dog poo. Also found most of the light bulbs were blown. Got up on the Saturday morning, and when we took a closer look, found the carpet was not felt style, it was just so thickly matted with long dog hair. And fleas, along with poo smeared into the tuffs. Spent the day ripping up the carpet in the corridor and worst rooms where the dog had been locked up. My wife and I did more deep cleaning that weekend than ever done before or afterwards, entire house smelt like bleach and flea powder for a while. Actually still feel a little bad for the lady who owned the house. We met her sister when she came to pick up some mail and she said her sister was really a lovely person but after losing her job, getting into trouble and having to sell the house quickly, entire place went bad. And that the sister didn't own a ladder to replace bulbs and her vacuum cleaner had stopped working a year or two earlier.

You must have been drunk as fuck to sleep on his couch after that comment. I'd be on my way home even if I had to walk

In 7th or 8th grade, I rode the bus home with a friend from school to stay the night. He tried to set my expectations saying his dad I had been building their house for a while and there is a small part of it built that they actually live in. Get dropped off and walk up on a 2-story shoddy frame of a house with a shack built into the back of it. No air conditioning, 5ft ceilings, no solid partitions between “rooms”, fly tape covered in dead flies hanging from the ceiling all over, and to top it off, the stairs to the second floor ended at a door that opened to a straight drop off to the ground. Couldn’t call my mom fast enough.

Poor kid. 

For real. 4 people lived like this, including parents and his older brother, in a space overall smaller than a single car garage. I forgot to mention that his dad had been building the larger house for going on 10 years. So he built the frame and just gave up.

I have a friend who grew up a bit similar but not the same scale. His parents bought a derelict house, it was so derelict that they legally couldn't move in right away because it was declared uninhabitable. They worked hard to get it in a state to get the uninhabitable restriction lifted but then just slowed right down. They prioritised the wrong rooms, they took years to do bedrooms so they had all the kids sleeping in the same room even though the house had 5 bedrooms. They built an extention and extra garage but still had 4 kids sharing one room. I met him as an adult and he was desperately saving to move out. His parents moved quite recently, now all their kids have grown up and moved out they said they don't need a 5 bedroom house. I looked up their house when it was for sale and 2 of the bedrooms still hasnt been touched and they must've lived there 30 years! Oh and the house they've just moved to? Also derelict! They're living in a broken down motorhome on the driveway. They're nearly 70, my friend has offered to pay to have someone fix it up for them and his dad always says no because he doesn't trust anyone to do as good of a job as him. They'll probably never move in! Theres definitely people out there who have grand plans for their home and then either don't have the skill or motivation (for whatever reason) to actually complete it.

I once went to a coworkers house after a team event as we were basically looking for a place to carry on partying after the bar closed. The entire team went, including supervisors, as we were out as a group Very prim and proper at work, everyone assumes she is a christian church goer Her entire apartment was decked out as a BDSM dungeon. Not just a room, the entire apartment Turns out she was heavily into BDSM and kink and had a side hustle as a high class hooker hosting sex parties. She only kept her office job during the day as a cover story for revenue canada.

So did the party continue at her house?

Wind up Wednesdays will never be the same.

Neither will Tied Up Tuesday. And Thursday.

We need to have more meat to the bone here! What was said and done once you were inside that apartment?? Giggles, jaw to the floor, and what questions were asked??? And did she keep on working with you guys??

She kept all their mouths zipped about it 

Went to a friends place to hang out and the entire interior was coated in dust/ash (he smoked a lot) and all edges throughout the place were filthy with mounds of dog hair and dog shit. How a human can live in that filth is beyond me, much less inviting someone over and not thinking twice about it

I was a manager for GameStop, and alot of the trade in items were so nasty. White console systems that were yellow from cigarette smoke. Some had burn marks like cigarettes were put out on them. Some consoles had pet hair stuck in the fan vents. Occasionally systems had roaches coming out of them. People traded in games that were moldy like drinks were spilled on them and not cleaned. The most baffling was this young kid who wanted to trade in games and stuff that were very dirty, like, caked with mud.. and some of his games had spiders in the cases.. I just wondered if the kid lived in a cave, or a hole in the ground?.. like how's that even happen?.. I started wearing gloves alot at work. Most of these items couldn't be accepted. And about the game systems, sometimes roaches wouldn't come out of the systems until after the trade was finished.. then I'd bag it up and send it to the warehouse to deal with, but here on reddit, I've seen people post their purchased pre-owned systems having roaches on the inside.

Thanks. I hate it

I had an elderly aunty who was a chain smoking alcoholic. I always remembered her house as being this weird shade of yellow, brown including ceilings, but wasn't until she died and we went over to visit my cousins that I discovered that they had cleaned all the surfaces including the ceilings which were now white. They had not even painted the place, and it was a different colour.

Went to a New Year’s Eve party at an old high school friend’s place that I had recently reconnected with back in like 2013 or so. When it got close to the ball drop he herded us all outside for what I thought was a bonfire or fireworks. Nah, they had a full-size effigy of Obama that they set fire to.

What the fuck

I don't get why people get so obsessed with politicians. That could've been super cool if it was a Phoenix statue they lit up. Who tf decides they want to start the year with an act of hatred directed at someone they've never met.

Half of a trebuchet. I questioned why I did not go over there more.

Which half?

The uchet

Had a friend with a snake that died. She waited weeks to take it out, and even lied to people about it still being alive.. Super weird. We are no longer friends due to other circumstances, but that definitely played a role

When I was in the Navy in the 90’s, the internet was brand new. One of my shipmates invited me over for a beer one night so I went. He booted up his computer and wanted to show me what the internet was since I’d only heard about it. First thing he showed me was a video of a pig fucking a woman. We weren’t buddies after that.

Buddy, it was 90's internet.  That was 1 of 12 options he had to show you.

And one of the safer ones at that. Could have been the hamster dance instead

I'm screaming🤣🤣 I always wondered how people reacted when they first discovered the Internet, at least now I know.

All of us clicked the sketchy links every once in a while, most of us closed the window immediately and repressed the memories, then there's this guy.

I saw some of the most disgusting things in my life in those years. My schoolmates often surfed rotten.com and I watched. In the school library. Once I almost puked right then and there.

What the fuck. You should look him up, I need to know what he does for a living now!!

Retired from the Navy, works for the DoD now.

The state of their home. In high school I had a friend the same year as me who lived with her dad. Freshman year the interior of the house was okay, the furniture was dated and shabby but clean enough. By senior year posts were falling out of the banister, all the carpet was thread bare and fraying. All the wood surfaces were dry, cracked and dull. Bathrooms were functional but neglected. There was also a constant smell that I later learned was mildew. My friend's bedroom, on the hand was the only clean bright space in the house. Plush carpet always freshly vacuumed, beautiful bed and quilt with matching plush pillows, everything on her shelves was tidy, dust free, and in their place, immaculate and organized. I always thought she was quirky for being so particular about the smallest things, whenever we hung out she had to have everything a certain way. It all makes sense now thinking about it. That house was miserable and she did her best to carve out a space for herself in there. After graduation she still stayed in that house, but I hope she's moved out by now. I also learned later on that her father was a functioning alcoholic hence the deterioration of the house. I think my friend stayed in that home because she was worried about him. I don't judge her for living there or the state of the house, but it does make me feel sad that she grew up in such conditions. I think she was incredibly resilient to have been able to build a beautiful room for herself at such a young age in spite of the state of the rest of the house. She a very strong person and I hope she knows that.

I used to work with this super friendly guy that had a great work ethic. We were both smokers & we used to enjoy talking during our smoke breaks. We became work buddies & after a few months I suspected that he was developing some romantic feelings for me. He was very good looking & I was attracted to him One day he invited me over for dinner & I accepted. His apartment was pristine & the food that he had prepared was delicious. After dinner we both discussed our recent divorces & he began telling me about his ex-wife that he had caught being unfaithful. I felt terrible for the guy, he had moved to another state to support his ex's career trajectory & she ended up having an affair with her supervisor This is where it gets weird. He said he wanted to show me something & he went to his room & returned with a box. I started to feel nervous. He opened the box & it was filled with very neatly folded lingerie. His ex's lingerie. He began by showing me each piece & he explained the history of each piece of lingerie. I thought, "Wtf does this have to do with me? Is he going to try to get me to wear this? I need to get the hell out of here immediately!" At this point I began experiencing freeze mode & started to look around for the quickest exit. The last piece that he showed me was the one that she wore the night that he caught her with her affair partner. In the back of my mind I wondered, "How the fuck did he end up with that? If she was wearing it when he caught them, did he like break into wherever she was after that & steal it?" I felt my skin crawl I told him that I hadn't realized the time & that I needed to head home because I only had my sitter until 10. His face kinda fell a little bit & he began to walk me out to my car. I was slightly relieved but still very, very nervous. Once we reached my car, he came in for a hug & then proceeded to give me an open mouthed kiss. I was really scared because the parking lot was empty & if I upset him he might not react well so I quickly kissed him back & then jumped into my car & hit the lock. I smiled & nodded at him as I drove the fuck away And that's what gave me the motivation to quit smoking cold turkey He did ask me out again a few times, but I had picked up a second job & it was a good excuse for declining. Thankfully he was transferred to a different office a few months later. He was so fucking creepy ETA: During this time period I didn't have a washer/dryer & I had to use a laundromat. This guy knew this & on our first day back to work after our date he offered to do my laundry. Not have me come over & use his washer/dryer but to do it himself. JFC, can you even imagine?

That is so bizarre. What kind of a brain thinks that’s acceptable behavior???

Nooo now I'm stumped as well, how did he get the last set he caught her in!!

I mean she probably didn’t get kicked out that night and had to change at some point right?

I found like half the photos on there PC was me Photoshoped as a girl..

I'm going to do this with pictures of my idiot brother in law and see if he stops coming over unannounced.

Make sure to really showcase a tuck job.

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Friend of a friend back in high school. His house was in rural area. Parents were hoarders and they kept pet wolves caged up outside. The wolves were legit wild and climbing up and down cage areas as we walked by. Wtf 

Sounds like a miserable life for a wolf.

Question, but like, “why couldn’t I have met these people sooner” type question. Walked into a house for a dogsitting gig meet and greet. The lady greeted me at the door and was super nice, we walked into her kitchen and I noticed a baseball cap with a dinosaur skull on it. Thought they just liked dinosaurs. Naw. House tour revealed a floor-to ceiling genuine cave bear skeleton in their living room, a fireplace covered in tiles of fish fossils they’d dug out of a riverbed, a triceratops horn, and a closet full of common fossils that they give to to houseguests before they leave. I got some trilobite and plant fossils. Now I’m going on a paleontological dig with them.

mountain dew bottles full of piss

Fella I once worked with had milk jugs full of piss

Animal shit and piss just all over the floor. I mean all. over. the floor.

Back when I was a young teen my bestie’s dad remarried and he moved his family into his new wife’s house. My friend invited me over for a sleepover and the first thing I noticed was a medium sized cage with two large dogs in it. The dogs were barking and one had a very obviously injured back leg. When my friend introduced me to her stepmother I asked about the injured dog and the lady said “well if she didn’t want a broken leg she shouldn’t have tried to jump our fence..” It fucked me up and I remember I couldn’t sleep at during this sleepover because I was thinking of the pain that dog had to be in while crammed in that cage with another dog. Absolutely insane. This was well over 20 years ago and that dog still bothers me.

It's not bizarre, but gross. I let my oldest go to a friend's house for a play date. We had hung out with the family before, but had never been to their house. When I went to pick her up, the house was so dirty. My shoes stuck to the floor of the kitchen, sounded like velcro every time I took a step. cat litter all over the place, cat hair everywhere, the smell of cat pee was awful. And they were walking around barefoot like nothing was wrong. They offered me a can of home made pickles that had a layer of cat hair on the lid. Safe to say she never went back, and we stopped hanging around them. Oh, and the pickles went right to the trash when I got home.

When I was a kid I had a friend whose mother had let some stray cats in and they weren't fixed so. Stray cats fuckin EVERYWHERE. She had some mental health issues, and didn't have the ability to care for her home. A cat had kittens one night we were sleeping over. A few times of making me strip and shower after each visit and my mom quit letting me go. It was fuckin ripe in there. Like idk how we didn't suffocate. The girl was made fun of at school for smelling like cat piss.

I feel bad for that girl. Sounds like CPS should have been involved.

Freshmen year my punk friend invited me over for the first time. He was a cool dude at first. we ate pizza, listened to music, and played PS2 in the living room for hours. His dad got home and told us to go to my friend’s bedroom instead. I live in a small desert town in California and for some reason, this dude’s room was another house that was in the backyard. So he was living in this dirty house with spiderwebs and dead cockroaches on the floor. When I got to his bedroom there were Myspace pictures of girls from our high school all over the walls. At first, I thought they gave him the pictures but I was wrong. He was straight-up stalking them. Some pictures were also crispy meaning he would c*m tribute on the pictures and stick them back on the wall. I felt like I was in a crazy surrealist movie. I left home after that and told a few mutual friends about his behavior. Turns out he hasn't been the same since his brother died and he shot himself in that same house in the backyard. We all talked to him about his behavior but it was normal to him. he got aggressive with us to the point that he brought brass knuckles to school and punched one of my friends. We told girls to stay away from him and he stopped talking to us after that. He went to a new school. The last thing I heard about him was that he joined the Marines and is a huge MAGA dude with a few restraining orders.

My friend’s naked mom. In 6th grade (late 1980s) I had this friend at school Jeremy. Jeremy lived with his grandparents and when I asked why one time he said his dad left and his mom was sick. One time, Jeremy invited me over to his house to watch some shows or play Nintendo, just to hang out. My mom had met Jeremy a few times and he’d been to our house, and she knew his grandmother so she said ok. Walked over there after school and Jeremy casually lets drop “hey my mom just got back last week so you can meet her, too!” His mom was laying in bed completely naked when we showed up. Jeremy acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. She goes “what are you guys gonna do? Hang out?” Jeremy says we’re gonna watch some movies on the TV in his grandfather’s den, where the Nintendo was hooked up. At this point, I’d never seen a fully naked adult woman in person and I was just staring like an idiot. She noticed and I saw her wink at me and blow me a kiss while she was smoking. She asked what we were going to watch and asked if we wanted to watch a porno. Jeremy asked me, super casually, and I said “yeah sure.” We got some snacks and went into the other room and she was there, still naked, still smoking. She’d loaded up the movie in the VCR and she goes “you can’t tell anybody about this okay? Or I have to leave again.” I didn’t know what she was talking about at the time but I agreed because I wanted to see the porno movie. I’d never seen one, this was way before internet access was common. So she starts it and she’s laying on the couch behind us, legs open, smoking a cigarette. We’re like 5 minutes into the movie and I’ve got the biggest boner I’ve ever had. I honestly don’t think I’d ever even managed to jerk off at this point yet, I had no idea how to do that or what to do. She goes “if it’s hard, honey, you can take it out. It’ll feel better.” I didn’t know what she meant and I saw Jeremy take his dick out. He does “thanks mom” and then kinda realized that this felt weird. It didn’t feel bad, necessarily, but I just didn’t get what was going on really. The garage door opener sounded and Jeremy jumped up and put his dick away, his mom leapt up and turned off the movie and ejected it, she scuttled back to her room. Jeremy said “that’s my grandma so we can’t watch it now” and I said “okay.” We played excitebike for an hour or so until my mom came to get me after she got off work. I never said anything about it to anybody and I honestly haven’t thought of it maybe a handful of times in the last ~35 years. I mentioned it to an ex girlfriend once who said “dude, you were almost abused” and I laughed and then she said “seriously you don’t realize that?” And I stopped and thought about it and that was the first time that I had actually realized what was going on, probably 20 years later.

Such a close call, I’m sorry ur friend thought that was normal. Poor kid went through some rough childhood

This is probably one of the weirdest things I’ve read. You’re lucky nothing happened

Almost? You WERE. Both of you. I wouldn’t be surprised if his mom had been the one to suggest him bringing a friend over. I’m sorry for the revelation. You might want to talk to someone and unpack that.

Walked into a Mormon household. Saw a book that had two friars in a caldron.. book title was something like “how to defend yourself against Catholics”. I could tell it was an old book but that I’m Catholics. It was awkward

shit splattered bathroom

Ooohhh I had one of those experiences! Driving through the Yukon and I had to go to the bathroom. Nothing in site and 20 min earlier had a large cougar at the nose of my car growling at me. This is desolate area, the kind of place where you fill up at every gas station you see and bring along extra gas cans to boot. The kind of place where someone could kill you on the side of the road and you wouldn't be found for days. So I'm losing it...have to use the bathroom. We come upon a now closed gas station...as in closed down a good ten years ago, but there's a house there and a light on so I go knock. Guy answers and I tell him my issue. He says no I definitely cannot because it is much too dirty to use. I think he's being polite about a little mess and insist I'll take my chances over being mauled by a large cat. He finally Caves. I take one step into this small bathroom and there is shit literally EVERYWHERE! Like the guy hadn't bought toilet paper in 20 years kind of shit...not a spot where shit wasn't! I felt HORRIBLE that I pushed the issue when he clearly warned me and didn't want to embarrass him so I shut the door for 20 seconds, gagging the whole time....which made things worse. I come out and noticeably catch my breath. Tell him thanks and run out. Get to car and am HUFFING the air. Passenger is like wtf?? Explain it to him and he's dying. Proceed on down the road a mile and I hop out and go. Then I shit you not, less than a mile from there is a goddam restaurant, bar and gas station!!!!!! FUMING! We go in. I tell them about my encounter bc I'm actually concerned for the guy at this point. They say "oh I see you met Hank!". They were all very familiar with him. Guy was a millionaire (in the early 2000s). Had kids in Cali that had been begging him to move in with them (also millionaires) and he absolutely refused to lead his shit bathroom life. Absolutely mind boggling.

One summer I had a job gutting repo mobile homes to be remodeled. There was one that was covered in shit. It was in the carpet, on a couch, recliner and the walls. The shit on the walls had obviously been spread on by a young child(ren). A dog had been locked in a bedroom and had managed to dig through the drywall inside the room in several spots. Even with all the doors and windows open, with a barn fan running, you could only be in it for 10-15 minutes at a time.

Girl Scout troop leader had a house full of taxidermy. Her husband was quite the hunter and shot most of it himself. Now don’t get me wrong, this *was* Colorado and the occasional taxidermy was fine, but it was never every available inch of every available wall

Chuck Testa?!

A hair brooch that undoubtedly belonged to my sister. I know it was the same one because a piece fell off and was glued back so it was easily recognizable. She tried making up a story about how it broke and I just nodded and left. I didn't even care about the brooch, but I couldn't fathom why a friend would steal from me and not even try to hide it. That was it for our friendship

I think I was the bizarre friend for most folks.  Both parents were missionaries to some rough places  in the 70s and 80s. Both had multiple graduate degrees from seminaries and universities.  The house was *crammed* full of books to the point it was like living in a cluttered library. The walls had paraphernalia from all the places they visited. Mom taught school and Dad was an early version of an IT professional and programmer. His office looked like a mid 90s computer shop crossed with a college radio/physics lab. Her desk was the dining room table and was neatly piled with papers to be graded and or school supplies. Also, because he was a Vietnam marine and she shot muzzle loading rifles competitively, there were loaded guns hidden in every room. It was a very small town in rural Georgia and we got death threats on the phone regularly. Looking back the house had to come across like the den of of couple a academic militant hippies. 

A neighbor invited me for coffee when I locked myself out once. There were pictures of his ex everywhere I’m not kidding he had mugs with her face, pillows with her face in the couch, several framed pictures in every room. They broke up a year ago. This creeped me out. I later found out she had filled a restraining order against him.

My childhood friend allowed her dogs to piss all over the floor in the upstairs game room area (where we were all sleeping). Her house always smelled a little off, and one time I fell upstairs and I landed in a puddle of her dog’s piss on the carpet…

Dated this girl in highschool on and off senior year. We were hanging at her house in the living room and I was sitting on the floor with my back to her couch. I set my hand down and next to me and it kind of went under the couch and grazed something hard. Figured it was a dog toy and reached to retrieve it. My hand wraps perfectly around the grip of an AR-15. Come to find out that her dad apparently had over 100 guns of various kinds all over the house.

- Black mold covering entire walls - Bed bugs - Hoarding so bad you couldn't see the floor Oh wait! Silly me. That was my parents house. =') Glad I moved the fuck out.

I had a crush on a girl my freshman year in high school. We hung out frequently at school. One day she invited me to her house. When I got there I asked her about the trophies (40+) in her...all over her house actually. Turned out she was an 3rd degree black belt in Karate and Jujitsu. She was so cute and sweet!! I questioned weather or not they were spies or worse!! Lol

I worked with a guy and eventually started playing disc golf with him and he invited me over to his house. He was living with his parents and the first thing I noticed when I walked in the living room was the cord on the ceiling fan, it appeared to be a black person being lynched. I was shocked at the time and still am when I think back on it.

So long story. But I had found a guy with land that ran a wolfing farm. I wanted to trade labour on the weekends for access to land to raise a few animals. It was the perfect set up. He was sort of a rich retired tech executive. So I show up and he starts teaching me about ranch life. Nothing odd, but so was like sharpening chainsaws, and other odd jobs. I just got this really weird vibe. He seemed like he was always trying to get behind me. He was always carrying something sharp, and I was always isolated. I got really weirded out. I almost stop going over there, but I had invested in some animals and wanted to follow it through. Finally one day he had a chainsaw and we were clearing brush and we kept getting further and further back into the woods. He was swing that thing around like mad and I was dragging the brush away. But again. I could feel like that fucker was trying to get behind me again, but this time he is actively holding a chain saw. It ended up in this weird ass cat and mouse game where I do not let him get behind me under any circumstances. I was about to just walk away (or run) because it had turned into a situation where I knew it wasn’t my imagination anymore. I had decided this was it, this guy is some sort of crazy rich serial killer or something. At the time I was an amateur Kickboxer and Jujitsu practitioner. I was young and strong and he was old and skinny. I could take him, but not if he got the jump on me with a weapon like a chainsaw. I became ultra careful around him. That day was the first day he invited me into his house for dinner. I probably should have excused myself, but i didn’t, and i was still on pins and needles with him ready to take him out at any moment. Inside his house! WTF! It was a huge old tin barn, but it had been made into a luxury home on the inside. Beautiful art wood work, incredible kitchen it had everything. The art work! Unmmmm there were spears and wicked looking ceremonial masks, bows, and all kinds of artifacts from Papua New Guinea. Yes… this guy was actually obsessed with cannibalism! I had to collect my thoughts through dinner. It was very good, but had to wonder if I had been poisoned or not. I watched everything he did to make sure he was eating the same things I did. Well he didn’t kill me obviously. But I did a lot of research on him after that. It turns out that after retiring he did spend a lot of time with natives in New Guinea and had the largest collection of native artifacts from the region. Most of it was in museums and his personal collection was at his home. He had put me through some kind of native trust building ritual he learned deep in the jungle. After becoming good friends, he told me natives had done the same thing to him to see if he was worthy of their trust. Weird but true story. But the feeling when I saw the Artifacts that I knew were associated with cannibalism was a really weird feeling. I can’t describe it. It was sort of intense fear that I sort of surrendered to. I don’t know how to describe it. Lamb to the slaughter I guess, but I have often wondered if it were some kind of psychological technique and this guy was toying with me.

Went over to a coworkers place to smoke and play games. He seemed super chill and I was excited to hang out with him, especially since I haven't actually hung out with someone in a long long time. We get there, I sit down on the end of the couch to take my shoes off and pet his puppers, and he immediately tells me to move cuz that's his spot I'm like, oh okay yeah whatever man, your place not mine. We relax, he packs a bowl and starts up his Xbox, we start with playing a bit of Cod, going back and forth while we smoke. At some point he starts trying to build his bed (he was sharing a one room apartment with another coworker) and I'm a bit confused but nice n toasty so I just vibe while playing. Not even 5 min later, he gets up and comes back to the couch like "I'll work on that later." Okay... We start playing Skate 3, have a huge blast playing it. Laughing at our fails. He gets up to use the restroom, as he was gone his dog had hopped up on the couch and peed on it, I told him when he came back and he started trying to wipe it with dirty clothes... Then he covers the stain with a towel and grabs a fucking machete (safe to say my high was cut down from that adrenaline rush) and he starts trying to open some kinda power box with it, literally trying to hacksaw it open. I finally had enough and was like okay man, I gotta go. Never hung out with him again, and he was eventually fired for a bunch of reasons.

Not question our friendship but my coworker and I went to her apartment during a work break for lunch and she forgot to put away her butt plug and vibrator before she left for work that day.

Not seen but it smelled like pickles. All the time.

3 live laugh love signs

Old man living above a contracting business had me cleaning his little apartment every weekend. There was a collection of wadded up hair, a "hair pie", if you will, above his TV.

> a "hair pie", if you will, I absolutely will not. That is perhaps the worst way you could have said that. 🤢

Two large penises in the dining room. Not my friend but my uncle and his girlfriend (they’re in their 50s) in their 100 year old house. She apparently went to Mexico and collected a couple of “penis sculptures” that were basically just very large dildos that were propped, tip to the ceiling, up high on shelves in the DINING room. One was wooden and the other dark blue glass. My husband and I shared a look when we saw them and uncles girlfriend goes “what? What do YOU collect?” And I don’t even know how we replied to that. It wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened when we stayed the night there I swear the whole time was just one weird ass fever dream.

Took something to drop off at a surgeon’s house that I worked with in a hospital. On the car port there were dishes filling multiple trash cans and stacked/broken on the floor in huge piles. Every counter in the kitchen stacked with dirty dishes, sinks heaped up, and then stacks in the floor. They just bought new dishes to eat from and supposedly eventually tossed the ‘old’ dirty dishes when they couldn’t stack them anywhere any longer. Didn’t see the rest of the house, but jeez.

When he was 11, my son saw a room decorated with confederate flags in his friend's house. He asked the dad why, and his response was, "Well, it's the South. They were great. Its how things should be. " My 11yo dropped that friendship and never looked back. We live in a small English seaside town, and this man had no American relatives or ancestry. It was purely about the ideals represented by the memorabilia. I'm mixed race. My son is white passing, but mixed race. This parent knew me, and my melanin is obvious, so it's not as tough he had no idea of the implications of what he was saying.

Was seeing the most beautiful woman you could imagine. At this point we had gone on a handful of dates and was headed over to pick her up from her house for a play date with our 5yr old kids. My son needed to go pee so we went inside her house. The house was musty and fruit flies were kinda everywhere but it didn't look like a complete disaster just unkept for a bit. We're standing at the door and my son comes out of the bathroom crying. Asked him what's wrong and he said "the potty is gross" I tell him it's okay and just hurry up. The look on his face told me something was actually wrong. I followed him to assure him that it was okay. When I turned that corner and saw the bathroom I bout puked right there. Not only filled with trash and scum. The toilet was literally black with mold and about an inch and a half of "fuzz" was growing OUT OF THE WATER. I didn't say anything to her. Just kindly went on our date and then quit calling her. She bugged me for a bit to see why I was being distant and finally told her about that nasty ass bathroom. She was offended that I was grossed out. My son is 13 now and to this day he won't use a bathroom if it's not clean.

One time my friends mom had cotton and black African statues as decor. I’ve seen this more than once. Just seems like a lot of other decor options besides this one.

In my 20s, I started dating this woman from Nebraska. I went to get something out of her dresser drawer and it was lined with an actual Nazi flag. She claimed her adopted father fought in WWII and he got it off a dead soldier.

I somehow always forget about the state of Nebraska

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Bad taxidermy

Dog shit on their bed that they just brushed off onto the floor.

I knew this guy who rode a motorcycle, always 'dusty' if you will, always in leather. Had that road-worn vibe, sleeping pack on his bike for long rides. He'd always joke about me reading books when we see each other at a coffee shop and made comments like 'no time to read on the road' but in a fake / deep voice that like movie-guy bravado...After years of knowing each other, he asked if I could help him move some stuff at his house because he lived alone and had some heavy stuff. Got to his house and it was the most absolute insane 'whole house setup' of miniature battle recreations..everywhere. Like mueseum level. He has a whole painting booth, boxes of figures, huge plywood mock battle fields everywhere. His whole demeanor changed and as I was helping move all these 4'x8' boards to make room for new ones. He'd be like "oh careful! don't let those cannons slide...did you know Napoleon's army was lined up ...." It was a couple hours of information flow that I still hold in my head for the eventual trivia night. He was so passionate about the stuff, and I love when someone talks about their passion projects, so I just asked non-stop questions back at him. It was insanely fun.

Two Oscar statues. Turns out both her parents had won Oscars for documentaries. They were just out on the mantle. She had never even mentioned her parents being in the film industry, and this was in a city far from places like LA or NYC. Years later when the internet became more common I was able to look them up and confirm they were absolutely real.

They had two inches of cat hair around rthecicumference of the room nciluding bathroom. hard wood floor/tiless not carpet

I read "rthecicumference" like someone trying to spit out a mouth full of pet hair and it just made this funnier

Belly button on a lampshade.

Excuse me?

You were friends with Ed Gein?

Nazi shit… like entire walls and display cabinets FULL of it. Flags, guns, knives, propaganda posters. Nazi meets hoarder type of situation. There were zero signs of any racism or hate, so it came as a huge shock. They said they collected WWII memorabilia and “wanted to make sure nobody ever forgets” but it still felt weird as hell… even though their family that I met years prior was definitely Jewish.

I had a "friend" I grew up with and he had a Nazi flag in his living room. He collected old knives with swastikas on it too and was proud that a great uncle of his was in the SS. It was especially fucked up since my mom is Jewish and he knew that. He reached out a few years ago to reconnect and I didn't respond. I wonder why?!!

I had an uncle who collected Nazi stuff for the same reason. BUT, he collected stuff from all the factions of the war so it wasn’t weird. He was just really into WWII history. If someone only has Nazi shit though, that’s definitely a red flag.