Did you ever grow up thinking your family was weird, only to meet another kid's family that made yours seem way more normal? Here, people share the creepiest thing they noticed growing up about another kid's family.
Seals in Freshness
I had a friend whose family kept each child’s first poop from their potty training days in Ziploc bags. I was in the eighth grade, and baffled. I thought they were the most normal people ever, but looks can truly be deceiving.
When I asked why he looked at me perplexed and said he didn’t see what the big deal was.
“They keep it in the fridge.”
I was stunned. He backtracked and said it was in a “special” freezer.
Lookalikes
How similar his mum and dad looked. Not incredibly similar, but their facial structure was pretty uniform. Well, turned out his father was his mother’s uncle. So there we go.
No Toilet Seats
None of the males in the family used a toilet seat. They all believed that it was meant only for women to use because of something involving their anatomy. It didn’t matter if they were in public or at home, they would put the lid up and sit on the rim.
Damp Cloth
I once stayed at a friend’s house and they had this dirty cloth by the bathroom sink. It’s what I would have used at home as a ‘face cloth’ and people would usually use it to wash their faces or hands.
Turns out, when they use the toilet, they wipe their bums as normal, then use this damp cloth to get the remnants so they’re “really clean.”
Cruel
My friend’s sister had a dog who they forced to live in her room. There was poop everywhere. It was on her bed, floor, dresser, etc. My parents called CPS.
Puzzled
Not creepy, just… puzzling. My best friend’s family when I was about seven or eight didn’t drink anything with meals. I remember asking for water or milk or something and they were all like “?????”
I didn’t think much about it at the time, but to this day I’ve never met anyone else who as a rule doesn’t consume liquid at the same time as solids.
Odd Babysitter
Noticed my babysitter was a bit off.
She would call 911 from the phone in our house, say weird things about her mom, and tried to claim she never had a father. Like ever. Other than those few things we just had a gut feeling that she was creepy.
She ended up conspiring with her boyfriend in her late teens to kill her mother and they followed through.
Jesus Clock
Friends had a Jesus clock. It was a creepy kookoo style clock with Jesus and the apostles. It rang on the hour and his mom would gather all us up and make us write thank you notes to Jesus thanking him for what we did the last hour.
Example: “Thank you Jesus for letting us play with legos and eat cookies for snack.”
His mom would them edit and critique them. Saying things like, “You had milk too, do you want to make Jesus sad because you are not thankful for the milk.”
Nazis
When I was four, my friend invited me and my family to his beach house for memorial day weekend. When we got there, I noticed the house had lots of pictures of old planes, in the hallway and in the living room. My parents were acting weird, and we left really quickly.
The planes were all Nazi planes from WW2. They had decorated their beach house with family photos and Nazi memorabilia. And then invited Jews to said beach house. After that weekend, I was never allowed to talk to him again.
Dairy Farm
I had a friend in grade school/junior high who lived on a large, working dairy farm with her brother, mom and dad, and a revolving assortment of foster kids. Guess who did ALL of the work on that farm? These were mostly city kids who’d probably never touched a cow up to that point, getting up at 4:00 a.m. to milking, mucking, feeding and god knows what else. Then they got to go to school.
When they got “home”, it was more work until bedtime. Their bedrooms were on the 3rd floor, very plain, hot in summer, freezing in winter. The “birth” children, in the meantime, were treated like the little prince and princess. Never lifted a finger and you NEVER saw cow crap on their shoes.
Bullseye
When I was younger, I used to play with this kid on my quiet street. One day he asked me over to his house which literally one street away, and my mum let me go.
I went over and we played everything was cool, but he was really harsh on his little brother who was just a toddler, it didn’t seem weird at the time, just odd.
Until he asks me if I wanna see something funny, I said yeah. So he grabs his 2-year-old brother and picks up this toy gun, that shoots out small rubber darts, kinda like an age appropriate nerf gun.
And just blasts his brother straight in the eye from point blank range. The kid started screaming with tears, and my “friend” just started laughing his head off, completely in hysterics.
I just remember running home. My mum was annoyed that I walked home, and crossed the street alone, but I think understood I was scared.
He was some weird kid, I’m so glad I never saw him again.
Chain-Smokers
My friend’s parents chain-smoked in the house and the car. Sadly, smoking indoors and around kids was not uncommon then, but this poor little girl essentially lived in a cloud of smoke.
Bathroom Door Open
The dad would crap with the bathroom door open and the mom just hung out with him in there while he was doing it. It’s not that the mom was in there brushing her teeth or otherwise occupying herself; she would simply lean on the wall opposite the toilet, arms folded, and watch him as he smoked n’ shat. Weird.
Naked Walk
I was 12 or so and got invited over my friend from baseball’s house to go swimming. He told me they had a diving board so this was a big deal. We had a blast and when it was time to get out, I’m drying off and he shucks off his trunks and hangs them on the clothesline and we stroll in the house with zero craps given.
He walks right past his mom who doesn’t say a word and pours two glasses of Hawaiian Punch. I get changed and go in the TV room and my friend is still naked. I understand being comfortable in your own skin and nudists and all that…but not when company is over! And why wear a suit at all?
Babysitting
I babysat at a neighbor’s house. The parents locked us in the house. I called my dad because I was worried about what to do if there was an emergency. He gave me permission to throw a chair through the window, I would not get in trouble.
I asked the young girls I was watching if they wanted to play a game. They said yes, they wanted to play murder. Nope. I said something else. They suggested master and slave.
We ended up watching the oldest girl practice the piano for three hours. Afterwards, I told my dad and he said I was not allowed to babysit for them anymore. I was fine with that.
Potty Training
I had a friend whose parents were under the belief that in order to potty train their dog they couldn’t clean up after it if it had an accident indoors.
The logic was that if the area was already soiled, he wouldn’t do it again. Within a month of getting their puppy their house was covered in dried up poo and pee crusted into the carpet. They just got rid of the dog saying it couldn’t be trained.
De-Louse
I once went to a classmate’s house in Kindergarten, and her mom had the maid follow me around with a bottle of bleach immediately disinfecting anything I touched.
Weird photo
This one family I use to hang out with: in the parents’ bedroom on the nightstand was a framed photo of the mom/wife with one breast exposed.
Super weird.
Deaf
Mine isn’t exactly creepy but my mother is completely deaf and I would get weirded out when my friends parents would ask us questions from across the house.
I.e.,”What do you kids want for dinner?!”
Little old me was like, “But you cant hear me?”
Queen of Egypt
A girl at my school used to say her mum was the Queen of Egypt. Whatever. Weird thing was whenever I went over to play at hers, her mum would try and convince me that due to distant relations she was the actual, literal Queen of Egypt and that the government would come and take her if they knew. Their whole house was decked out in weird Egyptology type stuff too.
No Talking
In 4th grade I went to a friend’s house for dinner. His parents didn’t allow talking during dinner. They didn’t want you to make any noise at all. It was so uncomfortable because it was spaghetti and his mom mixed the pasta and sauce in a bowl so when you scooped it out it made, well, the sound that pasta mixed with sauce makes when scooped out of a bowl.
Every sound and Jeff would look at his dad. His dad was just chewing slowly and breathing deep. As soon as I could I got out of there and never went back.
Took his bed away
When I was in 7th grade I had a friend who was from America but moved here (Canada) because of his dad’s work. The one weird thing was how strange and unfair his mom’s punishments were.
One time when we were walking back from the mall, he was late home by 11 minutes. His mom was so floored that she grounded him for 2 months and TOOK AWAY HIS BED AND ALL OF HIS CLOTHES. That’s right, he slept on the floor and wore the same clothes for 2 months. His punishments made my mom look like an angel.
Feet
When we moved to a new neighborhood when I was 6, I went over to a kids house. Automatically the first smell I got was like something sour.
Being as it a boy, we played with nerf guns and stuff for a while. Then it got gross.
Out of nowhere the kid takes off his socks and starts trying to get me to smell it. I could tell they were wet and nasty and of course I ran from him. Sounds like typical little kid stuff, right? Until then it turned into a weird sock smelling party with the mom, dad, and kid gladly sniffing each others socks like it was Febreze. The dad cornered me and forced me to inhale his putrid martial.
Only went back one other time and left before the socks came out because I could tell this was a daily occurrence, as dirty socks lined the floor everywhere.
Perfect
I visited a kid in high school, he lived in what I thought was a very interesting house – a three story atrium, a kitchen with hideaway appliances, all kinds of cool things. They even had an attached garage, that you could get into without leaving the house. Swanky!
I noticed that every inch of the house was perfect. Nothing was out of place, every chair and end table lamp was just so. Even a book left on coffee table was placed like it was window dressing for a photo shoot in an interior decorating magazine.
Then I saw the kid’s room, he wanted to show me his butterfly collection – and I noticed that every bit of his room, right down to the line of shoes in his closet and the butterfly collection case under his bed, was just as perfectly placed as every other place in the house.
Skin Picker
One of my childhood friend’s mum used to pick all the skin off her athlete’s foot and just leave it on the carpet. And there was A LOT of this skin. It was in little piles where she had been sat.
Odd Smells
The smell of others’ homes always struck me as odd. My friends all had really nice looking homes but they always had crazy odd smells like fried foods or bleach, while some people’s really nice homes always smelled like weird stuff like piss or mildew…
I half expected these odd smells to be related to something recent in the home but after years of coming over most smells never changed.
Guinea Pig Turd
My creepy neighbor’s sons made their little sister eat a guinea pig turd on a cracker. I think about it every time I see her.
Borderline Jealousy
My friend’s mom would constantly judge my appearance, or the way I walked, or the people I dated.. almost borderline jealousy.
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Never washed their hands
Neighbors. They never washed their hands. The oldest brother would hang out naked in the garage. The youngest brother ate play-dough. There was play-dough stuck to everything. The house smelled like breath. Shag carpets needs to be cleaned every couple of years, but theirs’ were matted and sticky. The entire house was shag carpet except for the bathroom and kitchen, which were peeling brown linoleum.
The father was a massage therapist, so people were always coming and going and wandering around the house in their undies. The oldest brother showed the younger brother and I porn when we were 9 and 5. The doorknobs were always sticky. Once, their house was broken into. The intruders smashed all of the mirrors that lined the walls of the 70s living room, and the family never fixed it. Their cleaning lady always looked really overwhelmed and sad, and we weren’t allowed to talk to her.
Diary
I went to a friend’s birthday party and her parents gave her a diary as a present. A week or two later, I stayed the night at her house and the parents called her downstairs to lecture her on what they read in her diary.
Not only did they give her a diary for the purpose of violating her privacy but they also read out loud something negative she wrote about me. With me there. They were a very strange family to say the least and that was the last time I spent time with her.
Monsters
They mixed ketchup into mild salsa because it was too hot. Monsters.
Quiet Brother
I used to go play with the girl who lived up the street with me when I was about 12 or 13. Her brother was eerily quiet all the time. He always had a blank expression on his face. Never spoke, never smiled, even when I tried to talk to him or be friendly.
One time my friend and him got into a fight and I remember he grabbed her by the neck and pinned her up against the wall. I didn’t know what to do so I just ran home. That happened a couple times. He always scared me so I stopped going over there.
Sharpie
I visited a neighbor kid’s house to play one afternoon, and noticed that all of the family portraits had a kid blacked out with Sharpie. I asked him who colored the pictures and he said his mother did it, but wouldn’t elaborate.
Hungry, but polite.
When I was a kid I was invited to my friend’s house and when they had dinner I wasn’t given any. They all ate at the table, in front of me.
I thought this was odd since I had been invited to the house, but I remained polite. Hungry, but polite.