This article is based on the AskReddit question “What’s the weirdest thing that you’ve seen at someone’s house that they thought was completely normal?”
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
When I was a kid, a friend and i found a full KKK outfit (hood and robes) in her grandpas closet. She didn’t think it was a big deal.
_McBaby
Friends mom had a picture of a sun on her wall. If you looked up close at it the picture it was a collage of a bunch of penises cut out from porno magazines in the shape of a sun.
Pluckyducky01
At a friend’s house, the family would toss a spaghetti noodle at the wall to see if the pasta was done cooking. Apparently if it sticks to the wall, it’s done. But they don’t remove the spaghetti noodles so there’s just a crap ton of old pasta sticking to the wall.
xoxoxgirl
A few years ago a kind of weird situation ended in me helping a guy down the street move into the house next door to mine.
While we were there, he pulled out a coffin. Like, who casually keeps a coffin in their garage?
Obviously this is strange, but he went on to tell me that he’s had people get out of his house when they see it thinking he’s into some weird stuff. Turns out he just knows a guy who makes coffins, and it’s pretty comfortable to sleep in.
Or he’s a vampire.
_Skitttles
My girlfriend’s dad leaves the leashes attached to their dogs while in the house. The first time I came over, it was the weirdest thing and nobody batted an eye at it. The dogs would just run around the house with leashes dragging behind them still clipped to their harnesses. He never took them off or put them up.
GalraPrincess
They had a substantial aquarium with larger, aggressive fish visibly killing and eating the smaller ones right before our eyes as we sat in their living room.
When asked why they’d mix incompatible types of fish in the same tank, they said “It’s like the dog-eat-dog existence we live in, too.
Back2Bach
I have a really old, kind of not-all-there aunt who loves thrifting and in the entryway to her house she has a “vase” of artificial flowers, but the vase is really a bong with a missing stem.
legendofzoloft
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Growing up, I was at a friend’s house, getting ready to pick a movie to watch. Was told to only pick from the bottom shelves as the top held her dad’s porn collection.
measch
My friends sister and her boyfriend had her lingerie shots in their photo album (before digital) on the coffee table. A little uncomfortable for me very uncomfortable for my friend.
uome1
Went to a friend’s house when I was 14. His mom didn’t allow shoes in the house so it was bare feet or socks. Used his bathroom and my socks got soaked when I walked on his bathroom rug. Thought it was strange and maybe a pipe might be leaking. Washing my hands notice a garbage can full of toilet paper and some other stuff. Go back to his room and explain what I saw in his bathroom. He looked at me like I sprouted a second head. Told me he’s not allowed to flush toilet paper because it may clog the toilet. Ok bad pipes, cheap apartment, whatever. The rug though, he would put cold water on it all the time because it felt good during the summer on his feet.
BlowsBubbles
My uncle leaves his Christmas tree up year round. Good reason for it though, his son put it up and decorated it the day before he died (totally out of the blue heart attack). He says it’s the last thing his son did and he can’t bring himself to take it down.
Izmeralda
When I was a kid my parents were looking for a new house. Our realtor showed us a place owned by a well-known local TV reporter. The house was beautiful, but it was covered in vanity shots of the reporter. Like, old Hollywood glamor photos and they were everywhere: walls, coffee tables, mantle, dressers. Each one was completely different and there were no photos of anyone else in the house even though she was married and had children.
T1tanArum
Next door neighbors growing up. The dad was an extremely frugal guy and didn’t want his family flushing the toilet too much in an effort to save money on water. One day I’m over there and ask to use the bathroom. I go in, lift up the lid, and see just a heaping pile of poop in there. It appeared as though they just stacked them on top of one another. Turds were sticking up almost to the rim of the bowl.
But it gets grosser. I return to my friend’s room, horrified, and he says “sorry, I forgot to tell you about the pooper situation. I’ll ask my dad to get the poop stick to break everything up so it will flush.” Poop stick? It was a potato masher. So out comes his dad, Marlboro red dangling from his lips, no gloves, and he just starts going to town in the toilet. Amazingly, everything flushed. After he was done chopping the poop up, he comes and says “if either of you go #2, don’t flush.” I never went over to their house after that.
mylandfillaccount
I went round to a mate’s house and he dropped his pants before sitting down, he just sat there with them round his ankles but didn’t say anything or even acknowledge he had done it.
When I asked him what he was doing, it turns out, the sofa was new and because it was cream leather his mum made him take off his jeans before he sat on it so it didn’t stain.
beardhero_ben
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My grandpa’s girlfriend had a bunch of bras and underwear hanging on random objects throughout the house, for no apparent reason. There was a bra dangling from a fireplace poker. A pair of underwear hanging from the bathroom door handle. Another pair were just chilling on the arm of the couch. That was the first and last time I ever stepped foot in that house.
beard_lover
Once when I was kid (maybe 10-11) I went to a mate’s place to play video games. Walk into his living in room and on the walls are 4 giant framed semi-nude pinup photos of his mum (who was very average looking). They were done in a super cheesy 80s way but I suspect they were taken much more recently. They weren’t like full frontal nudity, but like soft-core promo shots.
I was like “Who is that?”
my mate was like, Who do you think?”
I said “I dont know, pornstar?”
He was like, “No, that’s my mum
TheBluesmaster
A massive display case in the living room, full of little Scottish Terrier figurines. Also two or three life-size Scottish Terrier statues throughout the house. And Scottish Terrier pictures, fridge magnets, floor mats, sequin pillows, etc.
They didn’t even own a dog.
846285102739350
I knew a family where the sister, every other day it seemed, would put together cake mix but not bake it. She’d mix it up and eat like three spoonfuls of it, and then leave the bowl wherever she was at the moment. Moldy bowls of cake mix with raw egg everywhere and no one says a thing. (Once, she left one in her brother’s room one week and his girlfriend used it to put her old tampons when they had period sex. He stuffed the bowl at the back of his closet for several weeks. You can probably imagine the rest).
Anonymous
One was a guy in grade school whose house was a hoarder’s paradise. Garage full of old broken crap, hallways with stuff stacked on each side, rooms with crap strewn all around/behind furniture, like 3/4 of the house was like that. His bedroom was worse, had 2 fish tanks with nasty water and dead fish in them that he never cleaned, it was the most disgusting and disturbing thing I’d seen and smelled.
Other was a girl that was obsessed with dragons – we’re talking an adult woman in her late 20s with an entire living room and bedroom covered in dragon stuff. Paintings, pictures, sculptures, candles, mirrors, you name it and she had it. She was also kind of a nerdy introvert so that didn’t really help her cause, although she was cool once she opened up and had a couple beers.
unibrowfrau
My wife has a branch of her family who live in Florida.
I haven’t visited them, but my wife told me the worst is this one cousin of hers and his wife who live with the wife’s mom in some big house they got through some kind of fraud. The wife’s mom has some weird bowel issue and has a tendency to poop all over the house accidentally. They aren’t really all that meticulous about cleaning it up.
eumaximizer
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When I would go to a friends house his dad would get super pissed if he drank anything that was not half diluted with water. Orange juice, soda, lemonade, anything. I’m not talking just stuff from concentrate that you mix with water. I am referring to actual bottled drinks you buy from the store. I cannot remember how many times I would hear his dad come home and immediately first thing go check the levels of all the beverages in the fridge and ask my friend if he drank anything without mixing it with water. This was not for health reasons and they did not have it hard off. They are very well off and if anything, have too much money for their own good. So this never made any sense.
Jrob420
To flip this on it’s head, for some reason we had a bag of plaster of Paris mix in our bathroom (no idea how it got there, it was being used for model making) with a spoon in it.
Eventually we get a guest over and said bag has been forgotten about, he walks in there, sees what looks like a massive bag of cocaine with a spoon sticking out of it and quizzically asks “how rich are you guys then?”
We removed it pretty quickly after then.
DJ1066
I was raised by my dad in a single parent household. His father was a very good musician, painter, and well paid doctor. He had friends that also painted. One friend loved to paint sad clowns. My dad kept some paintings as a reminder for his late father. I never thought much of it as a kid, but can now imagine how horrifying any woman he dated would be to enter our home for the first time and see giant paintings of depressed clowns in every room.
noonequestionsthedog
My aunt has/had an old baby mattress. It was degraded and pretty gross. They offered it to my family for our dog to use, so we figured it was somewhat disposable. It was kept in their basement. We were staying in their basement for a few months (their son slept in a little utilities room in the same basement). Eventually, their basement flooded with sewage and the mattress was soaked. I was only ~13 or so and thought it would be fun to throw pencils at it because the mattress was so rotten and disgusting that pencils actually stuck into it really easily. When they figured out that I threw pencils at their rotten mattress they were furious. They actually screamed and threw the mattress at me because of it. They acted like it’s some normal thing for people to keep sewage soaked mattresses forever because it’s sentimental.
Plausible_Reptilian
This is actually about my house growing up. So first thing, my mother is seriously mentally ill. She idolized her mother and sister and anytime they took an interest in something she had to not only join in their interests but surpass it. By miles. So at one point my grandmother bought a 30 gallon fish tank. My mother went out and bought a 55 gallon one that took up half a living room wall. The thing was massive. My mom quickly lost interest in it and just let it go to pot. She never emptied it or anything. So for months we had a very large pool of algae as the centerpiece of our living room. We never had guests and the rest of the house was a pest ridden garbage heap so it wasn’t exactly out of place. But still we just passed by that festering mess every day. Eventually it was cleaned out and a single angel fish had been living the saddest existence possible in the murkiness. He was re-homed and actually lived for several more years.
Primaphedre
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When I was a probation officer, I had to do home visits, leading me into some pretty interesting places. We always went in pairs. I was at the home of one of my coworker Jeff’s probationers, and we were let into the home by a random person and were waiting in the living room for the probationer to come in. The house was in total disarray, dirty dishes and garbage everywhere and people sleeping all over the place. It was like noon, too.
Anyway, Jeff is poking my side desperately while I’m standing there quietly to get my attention. He gestures toward this armoire and I look at it, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. He “whispers” loudly, “on top! Look at the top!” So I do, and there’s dog poop there. On top of a huge armoire that was taller than me, and I’m 5’9.
The whole rest of the day we hypothesized how the dog poop got up there. Did someone put a dog up there to poop? Did the dog poop on the floor and they picked it up and put in there? Either way, why?!
Violetsmommy
Used to have a neighbor whose house I did maintenance work on occasionally. They had photos of the wife in the living room and hallway. She was naked, pregnant, and had her other kids in the photos too. The ones with kids were innocuous in that there was zero sexual context. But the ones of just her were very suggestive and revealing. All just framed on their walls… Strange.
Ace_Ranger
In middle school I made a quartet with the girl I had a huge crush on. She had a huge house so naturally we go rehearse at her place. However, upon entering the first thing we see as the front door opens is this huge detailed painting of a naked woman on the wall. So much shock and awe. She treated it like no big deal, saying it was her mother (art major)’s biggest piece in college or something like that.
youthetom
Was around 14 years old and went to a friend’s house. On her wall she had a clock that was from Ann Summers so instead of numbers it would say ‘blow job’ or ‘reverse cowboy’. I laughed and asked what her mum says about her having that on the wall. She replies, Nothing, shes the one that bought me it.
kohiya
My ex in-laws had a large outdoor style garbage can in their bathroom. This was an old farmhouse a few minutes outside of town. I saw the garbage can (and the general state of filth in the rest of the house) and decided to steer clear of the bathroom. I asked my dude what was up with that and he said the plumbing/septic system was completely messed up and they had to throw all their used toilet paper in the trash can rather than down the toilet.
aylandgirl
My boyfriend will shower instead of wiping his butt after taking a dump. Which I thought wasn’t so bad… just a little gross. What I found more gross was the fact that if/when he does wipe his butt with toilet paper, he throws it in the little trash bin next to the toilet. I asked why and his reasoning was septic which was understandable, I have septic at my house too. It can get mighty full and stinky sometimes if it isn’t draining properly. But, umm really??
sweetsournsassy
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I once was staying at a friends house for his birthday party. Another person throws me a video game controller and it goes under his couch. I go down to get it and its sitting next to a pencil half enveloped in cheese.
When my mom picked me up the next day, she asked to use the bathroom. She said that there was human poop in the cat’s litter box.
Never stayed there again.
brochill111
I’m a telecoms engineer. I went to a customers last week to repair his line. The wiring went all over the house, so I had the job of going round and checking, repairing and replacing the wiring. No big deal. The weird bit was that he had sex toys (dildo’s, butt plugs and the like) all over the house. They looked like they had been used and left. The thing that bothered me most was that this guy just did not seem to care. I was replacing a socket about three feet from a large butt plug that was auctioned to a side table and he did not move it, mention it or even attempt to cover it up. That was quite possibly the most uncomfortable 45 minutes I’ve ever had in someone’s house.
scrappy1982
My ex’s dad wouldn’t let anyone flush the toilet in the middle of the night because the bathroom was by their bedroom and he said it woke him up. I hated staying at their place because I always ended up having to poop in the middle of the night, and was caught in some terrible predicament where I didn’t know if I should just let it sit through the night or risk flushing it and waking him up. He was a pretty stern and mean guy, too.
wowowmowow
When I was about 15 I spent the night at a friends. I got up the next morning to pee while everyone was still in bed. His mom came into the bathroom and sat down to pee while I was washing my hands. All she had on was panties and a thin bra.
HowPoorAmI
Weirdest experience:
I went to a friends house for a sleep over and before we went to bed he would go under his bed and pull a box out. In this box there were two silver containers (not sure the real name) full of his Cats (5) ashes and he would go through each of their names kissing the container as he did.
FranTic311
Hung out with a guy in school for a couple of years whose home life could really only be described as chaotic. Basically his parents really only bothered babysitting his 8 year old sister. He (14) and his 19 year old brother could come and go as they pleased, day or night.
Inside the house was just chaos. They had two dogs, a sweet female spaniel and a huge loveable male lab. The dogs basically did what they wanted, went anywhere. The female dog was fine, she was neutered. The male wasn’t and spent most of his time humping everything, and as a male, sprayed everything. The dog wandered around the house, cocking his leg and peeing on everything, furniture, doors, the other dog, people. Nobody ever stopped him or corrected him.
They also had a cat that slept on the kitchen table. Not on a removable cover, but on the tablecloth on the table. Which was predictably then layered thick with cat hair. I never ate there, but did arrive one day while he was finishing his dinner. On the same tablecloth.
I remember him remarking one day about how clean my house was (it wasn’t really). It only occurred to me in later years how messy his house was. To a certain extent as a kid you think, “Hey that’s weird, but I guess this is how they live. You don’t really consider the actual weirdness around it.
His parents were actually very intelligent. His Dad was a professor of something, but a bit odd. There were some rooms with books and academic magazines piled high, but they weren’t hoarders, just big into reading. Ironically his mother was a guidance councillor helping parents with troubled children.
seamustheseagull
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