Hosting people is always a kind gesture but these folks may never have guests over again after what happened to them! People share unbelievable houseguest stories. This content has been edited for clarity.
Caught On Camera
“My roommate started seeing a guy who didn’t have a car and lived in the town over which was a twenty-minute drive. She would pick him up and bring him to our apartment but didn’t always drive him home the next morning because she went to work early. This quickly turned into him staying at our place full-time, despite protests from my second roommate and me.
After about two weeks, I noticed over 100 dollars missing from my wallet. He and I were the only two in our apartment that day. My wallet had been in my bedroom while I was watching TV in the living room. He’d been locked away in her room all day but I also can’t see down the hall that led from the living room to the bedrooms. This made it easy to figure out that he had snuck down the hall and gotten into my wallet. When I told my roommate, she refused to believe me.
I kept my bedroom door locked for a while and kept my valuables inside until I was able to get a camera set up. I then left my door unlocked one day with a small amount of cash in my wallet in front of the camera to lure him. It worked like a charm and I got him on camera stealing from me again.
Showing both of them the video got my roommate to believe me, but he still tried to deny it. In the end, he got dumped and kicked out but I’ll never see that 150 dollars again.”
Neglect
“I went on a week-long trip up the east coast when I was younger with my boyfriend at the time. His sister had been staying with us for about a month because she fell into some hard times. Everything was going well so we asked her to watch the house for the week as we had three dogs.
We told her she could use the car, do whatever, have some alone time, and get a little vacation from the very tragic event that happened in her life. We also said we would pay for her food as she didn’t have a job- all she had to do was take care of the dogs.
I’m sure you can sadly see where this is going.
We decided to get home one day early and I’m not sure if that was a blessing or luck.
The first thing I noticed was the 330i I had purchased that month had side-swiped a yellow pole of some sort. So naturally, I’m fuming. I then open the door to find three random people on the couch smoking in my RENTED townhouse. The hardwood floor had random spots all over it with some covered in towels. Lastly, there was a baby/doggie gate up blocking all 3 dogs in the kitchen who were almost screaming instead of barking at the excitement to see us.
Immediately, I threw everyone out before walking farther into the house. Of course, my boyfriend’s sister used this opportunity to get out while I was not paying attention and running around in a frenzy. She must have had a bag packed like she was going to leave just before we came back anyways.
When I say the house was destroyed, I mean it was disgusting.
We came to find that all of the spots on the hardwood floor in the living room/entry area were dry/semi-dry spots of dog pee that weren’t cleaned up and caused the floors to ripple. Under the towels throughout the house was wet dog pee that was left to dry on its own. I assumed they were so angry with the dogs peeing in the house that they gated them off in the kitchen for what looked like the entire weekend.
In the kitchen, the piles and puddles of dog poop and pee were ABUNDANT. We had two full-size Dobermans and those things ate like horses and pooped like them too. The grout in the kitchen reeked of dog pee for months. There was so much of it that it flowed together in a huge puddle making a literal six-foot-long creek of dog pee. It even leaked behind the stove and absorbed into the drywall.
The worst part was that one of the Dobermans ended up with a UTI! We noticed it because within the puddles of pee in the kitchen, some were pink. I cried for hours holding my dogs.
The cosmetic list just kept growing but I wasn’t angry about my belongings/townhouse. It was the utter neglect and disrespect for my animals that depended on me/us/humans, in general, to take care of them that disgusted me to my core. I felt their personalities shifted a bit around anyone who ever came over. It was heartbreaking.
My dogs were sleeping in their own poop and pee the entire weekend, at minimum. I don’t know if they were ever let outside or fed. It was clear they were not taken care of at all. I was never able to go on another trip without taking them because I was afraid they would be neglected and I would come home to them dead, no matter who watched them!
It was hands down the worst experience ever and was the last time I ever had a houseguest/someone watch my animals. She left some of her belongings and I threw every single thing away. It was never worth trying to get her to pay for anything because she didn’t have a job and I probably would have blacked out from sheer anger if we ever crossed paths again.”
House Fire
“A former friend of ours called us and said that her house caught on fire so naturally, we offered a soft place to land while she was dealing with the fallout. We went and picked her up, brought her home, and got her set up for the night.
The next day, she grabbed what she could from her apartment and brought it over to our house. My wife washed all of her clothes, which smelled the way you’d expect from being in a house fire. Unfortunately, that scent is really hard to get out so our house smelled of fire for a long time as my wife was washing the clothes multiple times.
Eventually, we realized she was not trying to get her life back in order at all. She also wasn’t helping at our house with getting her things together. She apparently decided that she was just going to stay with us and coast. She then started being really critical of anything we did, tried to start drama, and was generally unpleasant to be around.
What finally broke the camel’s back was when I returned one day to find her and someone we had never met smoking on our front porch. It wasn’t really a big deal, but it was odd that she didn’t let us know that she was inviting anyone into our house. The next day, I went to take my Adderall that I had just filled and noticed that there were only five left from the prescription. She and her friend helped themselves to my medication!
After that, she announced that she was going to stay somewhere she was ‘welcome,’ and that we could throw all of her things away at our house as she didn’t want them anymore because they smelled too much like smoke.
The best part came after she moved out. We read a story about the fire in the newspaper and it shared the cause of the fire. She had started it by smoking on the back deck of her apartment and carelessly not putting the butt out.
We never really saw her again after that. When she tried to make contact with us, we just noped out. She ended up moving in with some of our other friends and we tried to warn them about our experience. They ended up kicking her out after she almost killed their dog on accident due to carelessness. Yeah, she sucked.”
Secret House Guest
“Our dog walker of five years was secretly squatting at our place every time we left town. These were around five-day trips once a month. At some point in year three, she excitedly declared she could do ‘stayovers’ for an extra 25 dollars per day instead of twice-a-day visits for potty and feeding. I happily paid her the money like a fool.
We had no clue she had been staying there all along until the COVID lockdown hit.
We lived in a high-rise loft with increasing positive cases and shared ventilation. My husband got spooked so we went to an Airbnb out of town for the rest of the lockdown. It turned out she was staying at our loft the whole time and had the front desk believing she was house-sitting. She had a key and they knew she was the dog walker, so it raised no eyebrows.
One day, I decided to drop by to check on things unannounced and she had flat-out moved in. Clothes in closets, toiletries organized in drawers, pantry filled with her staples, the whole shebang.
We immediately ended the relationship and sent her packing. She was blacklisted from the building and we had our locks changed. Nothing was stolen, but it was the violation of the space and how long she was using us. I couldn’t believe I had let her be alone with my dogs for all that time. How could I have known, though? She was this cute little Mormon girl that let on like cookies were her downfall. She knew exactly when we were coming and going and the dogs loved her. The funniest part was finding Mormon literature about rules in marriage intentionally shoved deep under our bed like some magic talisman when we moved out. We’re two men.”
“Just Passing Through”
“I had a roommate ask if the rest of us were okay with their high school friend crashing for a few days on their way through town to a festival. They gave us the dates and it was less than a handful of nights so we were all fine with it under a few conditions: they didn’t get a key for the place, they left when we all went to work, and they organized with the roommate when they were off work to come back. It would be a great way to visit a city that you don’t live in for a few days, right?
It turned out it wasn’t just the friend, it was the friend and her boyfriend and their other friend. My roommate gave them a key and told them to just make it look like they were following the arrangement we’d all agreed on. They sold their festival tickets to buy acid and weed and didn’t tell us they were no longer going to the festival until the night after they were supposed to have been gone.
We later found out that our roommate said they could stay for as long as they wanted without pitching in because they were both actually homeless and jobless and trying to move to Vancouver. Everyone who actually lived there left for work, still unaware that our roommate had given them a key, and then came home to them having a party with a bunch of people over, none of whom lived there. They got the boot, and thankfully we had to renew our lease right away so we renewed it with one fewer name attached.”
Bro, You Gotta Go
“My friend asked if her brother, who I’d never met, could crash on my couch for the night because he didn’t have a place to stay. My roommate and I agreed as long as it was just for the night. The next day, he got in a fight with the person he was supposed to stay with and had to crash on my couch again. Stuff like that kept happening and eventually, he stopped trying to find somewhere else to stay. He started taking our spare key, staying out until I went to bed, and then coming in and crashing on the couch. His phone was off so I could never reach him when he was out unless he was connected to wifi. He got a job at a tattoo parlor and would brag about how much money he made but never contributed or saved money to move out. He spent it all on weed instead.
He stayed for almost two months before he lied and snuck in a girl he’d met in rehab who had felony arrest warrants out for her (I’d said I didn’t want her in the apartment and caught them sneaking out the next morning five minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off). I got upset with him and said it was not okay to lie to me and hide things. He then freaked out and made a bunch of stuff up that he told my roommate and my friend (his sister) like saying I called him a useless junkie etc. I’ve had a lot of friends struggle with addiction and I’d never say something like that.
After having my roommate scream at me over the lies he told, I was done. He wasn’t allowed back.
It was a good thing I made him leave. Turns out he was slipping back into old habits. The next person who let him stay with them got robbed and he’s been in and out of jail. My friend asked if I could help put money on his commissary thing. I hope the guy eventually gets cleaned up, but it’s not my mess.”
Don’t Forget To Flush
“A friend I haven’t seen in a year or so called me last weekend wanting to catch up so he came over. I didn’t realize he was wasted until he walked in and it was too late to diffuse the situation. It started with him stinking up my bathroom and instead of flushing it he just put both seats down. Next, he got into my fridge and grabbed a craft IPA that I had been saving for a rainy day and drank it. He then went outside and out of nowhere, started saying racial slurs. At that point, I told him he needed to leave or calm down but was afraid he might crash his car on the way home because he lived an hour away.
He then said he was going to go get smokes so I offered to drive him. As soon as we got down the road he yelled at me to pull over because he had to pee. I told him to wait three minutes but instead, he starts peeing into his can and makes a mess in my car.
By that time, I’m livid and he grabs my arm to apologize but his hand was soaked in pee. I knew I was going to punch him in the face if I didn’t get to the gas station fast. Once we got there I told him to go inside and I peeled out of there. I called his girlfriend saying she needed to pick him up from that gas station. I took a shower and an hour later his girlfriend called me and said he was in the backseat of a cop car because he called 911 asking for a stimulant. Needless to say, that’s the last time I ever saw him.”
Who Are You?
“I had a really old/good friend call me and tell me they needed a place to stay for a few days or a week when I lived in the Pacific Northwest. I of course said yes and then she told me her girlfriend was coming too. Okay, great.
When they showed up on my porch, my friend told me her girlfriend had strep throat. At first, I thought ‘ok, whatever.’ But then I stopped and thought ‘isn’t that highly contagious?’ But it was too late because they were already at my house. I just decided that I would have to try to keep them in my spare bedroom and sterilize everything I could.
I began wondering why my friend didn’t tell me in advance or if she didn’t know how contagious it was. If it were me, I would have gotten a hotel and not subjected my friend to that.
After about a day, my friend told me via text that she had to leave. At first, I was relieved until she asked if her girlfriend could continue staying at my place (I didn’t even know her). I told her I had another couple that needed to come stay with me (which was true) and that I wasn’t comfortable housing someone I didn’t know who was sick. She said that was fine but then when she came to get her stuff she acted ticked off and said,
‘Well, see you sometime maybe.’
I didn’t hear from her for a long long time after that. Kinda messed up she put me in that situation.”
An Expensive Lesson
“We had a house-sitter once who wanted to bring their own dog for the week. They assured us the dog was well-behaved and housetrained. This was a pretty close friend, and their house is nice and clean so we believed them.
When we got home, we saw that every rug was destroyed. The house smelled funky when we walked in and I immediately found wet spots on our living room rug. When I lifted it up, it had more stained areas than not. The same thing happened with the kitchen, hallway, bedroom, and guestroom rugs. I guessed their dog didn’t pee outside a single time it was there.
They tried to blame it on my dog and kind of acted like they hadn’t noticed. I didn’t believe any part of that for one second. My dog had only had two accidents since we had gotten her six years prior. Plus, she only weighed 15 pounds whereas the other dog was a 75-pound lab mix. Based on the sizes of the stains, it was not the 15-pounder. Oddly, there was no evidence of poop in the house so I really don’t know what was going on.
Unfortunately, I had already paid them via Venmo before we got home and I ended up not confronting them. We had a lot going on at that point in our lives with planning a cross-state move and a wedding. We felt it was best to silently sever the relationship and learn an expensive lesson.”
Ghosted
“My girlfriend was pregnant and we were taking a little vacation. We let two friends who are brothers use our house while we were gone under the condition that they maintained the yard and garden. They borrowed our truck without asking which wasn’t a big deal except they immediately wrecked it by driving head-on into a garbage truck. Then, when our very best friend stopped by to borrow something and they were extremely rude and told her to leave.
When we got home, we found a pile of soaking wet towels and linens which had grown mold and had to be replaced. They had stolen around 100 dollars and broken plates. Believe it or not, they did make an attempt to mow the lawn but somehow broke the lawnmower and never fixed it. The garden was never watered and many flowers were dead. I had been collecting exotic varieties of heliconia from the Big Island of Hawaii and they were all dead. Some of those flowers were worth 80 to 100 dollars.
The boys had completely vanished without a trace and wouldn’t ever – EVER answer our calls again. We were five months pregnant with no vehicle and a trashed house.
I think the worst part was that we really did think of them as friends until they ghosted us like that. It felt like we were disposable and our pregnancy and lives didn’t matter.”
Garage Guest
“I lived in a two-unit house, and we were the back unit that connected to a shared garage. The garage was used for nothing other than laundry and storage and had a mattress in it from a previous tenant.
One day, I went into the garage and nearly jumped out of my skin upon seeing some man sleeping on the mattress. I freaked out and fled back to my unit just in time for two of my male housemates to come home. They went to confront the guy and came back to tell me that he was friends with our other male housemate. Apparently, our housemate told him that he could crash in the garage as he was ‘in between leases for a few days’ without bothering to inform the rest of us.
Despite that bad move by my roommate, I offered to let the guy sleep on my living room couch instead of some sketchy mattress in the crummy garage. A few days turned into a few weeks/months. I, the administrator of our utilities and rent payments, demanded that he chip in at that point. He agreed, but I was moving out soon because I finished a term early. The couch and WiFi router were mine and I was leaving them behind to pick up at the end of the year as a favor to my housemates.
He shorted me a few hundred dollars after I left. Another housemate ended up having to pay for this guest because I was about to go reclaim my couch and router if I didn’t get my money. A year later, the guest had the audacity to text me to ask if he could ‘take me out’ the next time I came into town. Yuck.”
House Thief
“I had surgery and was on bed rest for a week. I asked my cousin who was living with me at the time to keep an eye on me because I was on heavy painkillers. I stayed on the couch and let her use my bedroom to ensure that she would do this one simple task (she wouldn’t be able to get to the bathroom or kitchen without passing the couch).
When I recovered, I found used hair weave piled up on clean towels in the bathroom cabinet and female hygiene products behind my nightstand. In the kitchen, there was trash piled all the way up the wall, dirty dishes everywhere, a plate of rancid food in the microwave, and ketchup and mustard smeared on the floors.
I then discovered that she had stolen a bunch of clothing, CDs, and one of my iPhone chargers even though she had a Windows phone. The last straw was when I noticed she poked a hole in my 2,500-dollar sleep number bed. I kicked her out immediately.”