People Mention Their "Not So Hot" Roomie Experiences
18. He Never Took Care Of His Pets
“Firstly, I’d like to preface this post by saying that if your living situation is genuinely making you a miserable person, moving out will make a substantial improvement in your life.
I was in this living situation for roughly three years after one of my “friends” from the college dorms offered up a house that his dad owned. He seemed normal enough, and he had also extended this offer to two other people in our friend group. It developed into an awful situation for a plethora of reasons that I could write at length about, but this post is about one specific aspect of it.
So, the landlord’s son, “Jay” was one of those “ghost” roommates that were hardly around.
Typically, he would be spending time with one of those Christian student groups that are pretty common on college campuses. However, when we first moved into our house, Jay made a big deal about driving home to his parents to pick up his sugar glider that his brother had been taking care of because our dorm had a very staunchly enforced “no pets” policy.
I was pretty indifferent to the concept of exotic pets, and I literally had no idea what a sugar glider was, so I didn’t really feel that much about it initially.
Jay put the cage (a repurposed birdcage with a bunch of baby toys) for his glider in the room that shared a wall with my bedroom. For a while, it was actually a little bit cool.
When we would have guests over, the sugar glider would always be a major topic of conversation and entertainment when let out and, of course, college girls would absolutely fawn over the little, gliding marsupial.
This all came with some transgressions, though. Jay would let the glider out for some free-roaming time at night. (They’re nocturnal.) This quickly became problematic because Jay would neglect to watch it closely or at all, and it would literally get into anything and everything.
More than once, I would walk into the kitchen to see it running around on our countertops or trapped in our trashcan. (It had an affinity for discarded pieces of raw chicken.) To Jay, this was always pretty hilarious, but no one else was pleased with its ratatouille-esque, late-night culinary escapades, especially me because it would climb all over my utensil holder, which is like the decorum of uncleanliness in a house where I was already doing all of the cleaning.
Additionally, the glider was small enough to crawl under a bedroom door, so isolating yourself was not an option against the little menace. This culminated into a situation when it crawled into one of my roommate’s bedrooms while he was elsewhere and ate through packaging to eat his Baconator burger. Once again, the roommate was sorely vexed, and Jay thought it was the pinnacle of comedy to see a palm-sized possum ferociously trying to eat a burger.
During these free roam sessions, we were unable to even direct or wrangle the animal because it was aggressive to anyone other than Jay.
Picking it up would result in it biting the life out of you (it feels like someone pinching you with a nail clipper as hard as they can), peeing on you, or climbing onto the back of your head and literally ripping your hair out.
This got old pretty fast for us, and the aforementioned guests and Jay finally picked up on this and restricted free roam time to just his bedroom.
During this period, he acquired a second glider from his brother because he intended on breeding them and selling their offspring as a side hustle.
Early after we were all introduced to the first sugar glider, Jay had mentioned to us that he would feed them one grape a day because “it’s basically a watermelon to them” but also mentioned that their diet had to be supplemented with other food and vitamins (which he showed us in the same room as their cage).
Occasionally, Jay would go out of town for the weekend and just ask us to distribute only the grapes to his glider gang, and one particular long weekend, he knew he was going to be traveling with his Christian group, so he asked my other two roomies to look after them.
One day after he left, all broke loose. One of the gliders was dead, face-down, in their cage.
Jay never asked me to look after them. So I hadn’t been in their room in a long time, but when we walked in to check on them, Jesus freaking Christ, the stench.
Jay hadn’t been changing the tray for their “leavings” under the cage, and you could see the piles of glider poop and discarded grape skins. I’ll never forget that smell. Even when I moved out more than a year later, that room still freaking reeked of musky animal feces.
Obviously, we removed the dead one and set it aside. The one that was still alive looked very sickly and extremely lethargic (literally barely moving).
My roommates take it to the vet to find out that the survivor is extremely malnourished to the point where it was impossible to even draw b***d for a b***d test.
The entire time, the vet tech is just glaring daggers at them because of the sorry state of the animal, and they keep stating that it wasn’t in their care until just now.
The vet gives them a $500 dollar bill, medicine, and a whole packet of info on sugar glider care. They come back, and we find that the vitamins and supplements had never even been opened, meaning Jay had just been feeding them grapes the entire time he had the gliders. A bare minimum amount of research shows that these animals need a pretty diverse diet that includes insect-based protein and a lot of fruits and veggies, so we were all flabbergasted.
We worked together the best we’re able to and try to save the glider’s life with the medicine and a proper diet. Unfortunately, three grueling days later, it died in the same fashion as its companion. I’ve never seen an animal suffer the way that one did, and after reading through the vet’s stack of papers, we were all, needless to say, shocked that Jay would neglect so many basic tenets of a pet that is apparently well known as extremely high-maintenance.
All of the experiences with them running around the house suddenly made sense; they were starving and trying to find any morsel of food possible. They attacked anyone unfamiliar because they were absolutely terrified and probably sickly from the lack of care and proper nutrition.
We put the poor guy in its cloth carrying pouch with its friend’s corpse. Jay had been in contact with my other roommates throughout this, but they didn’t mention the undernourishment outright because “Jay already seemed pretty upset about it.” When Jay returned from his trip, he didn’t talk about it; he didn’t even bury them for months.
(It literally took us digging a hole in our backyard for him to even do it.) That’s when it cemented in my mind that he never actually cared about these animals. He didn’t mistreat them out of a lack of knowledge because he clearly knew enough about their diet and general care; he did it because he only cared about appearing as “the cool guy with the flying squirrels.”
I hope those little sugar glider ghosts haunt him forevermore. Screw you, Jay.”
17. Could Never Get Enough Sleep
“This kid, when I first met him, seemed alright. He was a little quirky, but I thought, hey, what the heck? Maybe he’s alright. Should’ve seen the warning signs early on.
For starters, this kid never showered, and he never left the room.
Like didn’t do anything other than go to class and eat outside the dorm (and half the time, he couldn’t even be bothered to leave, so he would just order delivery). He ran a Minecraft server, so he was on his computer for legitimately 10 hours a day minimum, until 2 in the morning at least every night, school nights. Screw it, scamming children online is more important.
And I never could’ve imagined the toxicity and abuse some 18 year old could direct to a bunch of kids. The dude would literally go on 30-minute tirades where he told some kid not to do this or why not to trust this user, and it was some of the most cringe-worthy stuff I’ve ever seen in my life. Like he thought he was the coolest freaking kid because he had rich parents to set up a server that everyone else does the work on, so he was making decent dough off other people’s work/ideas doing not much other than calling PayPal every week to try to get back cash people were rightful to demand refunds on.
Don’t think he had a single friend outside from the computer, and you could see why with the condescending nature he talked to everyone be met.
When I asked him to not freaking keep me up every night, he finally agreed to stop talking on his headset all night, but still freaking clicked away and mashed his keyboard 24/7. Literally lost a solid 100 hours of sleep last year.
Failed my first exam and got a B in a class that I was otherwise very good at. All thanks to some inconsiderate power-hungry punk.
And when I thought he was annoying on his freaking computer, then I saw him in public. Every time we wanted to go out, he would always just tag along without asking or even us mentioning that we were leaving.
He would always try hitting on the most inebriated girls he could find while he himself didn’t drink a thing. And when I confronted him about basically attempting an illegal act, he told my RA I was harassing him because I told his Minecraft friends he didn’t shower, and he smelled like poop 24/7. (He told on my RA about me all the time about the smallest bull, but that’s whatever).
I witnessed some of it, but I had several girls tell me a story about how creepy he was X night and what he did. I couldn’t even hang out with my female friends in my room because he would always try hitting on them, and make them uncomfortable.
I got a tv in my room to try to distract myself from him being annoying, but what do you freaking know, he started playing on my PS3 when I told him no when he asked to.
Freaking his gross hands got my controller all dirty because he never washed his hands after he ate. Not to mention, he started playing in hacked lobbies on MW2 and lost literally everything my friend and I had gotten playing for a while and had made it almost all the way to the max prestige. All gone because he was an idiot. We tried to watch movies, and he would shout over the speakers on his headset.
Not even the TV’s maximum freaking volume could drown out his freaking cackle laugh. Jesus Christ, I can hardly explain how much I despise this kid with every bone in my body.
And he had this freaking stupid alarm system. Apparently, he was a heavy sleeper (despite complaining that I was too loud in the mornings since I had real classes and he had undecided major nonsense that didn’t start until 12:00).
So he had this flipping vibrating bed alarm that shook the whole freaking room. And you might think he disabled it on weekends right? Well, dang, I know only a reasonable person would do that.
Honestly, if I hadn’t met my best friend the first week, I probably would have failed out of sheer insanity dealing with this loser.
The worst part was, nobody ever really could understand why he was so bad.
Because even describing how annoying he was and how painful he made it to live with him, it mostly sounds like me complaining.
But then they spent a few minutes in my dorm. And that was enough.
But I lived in a suite-type dorm where two rooms shared a bathroom, and thank freaking god my suitemates were some cool people that I really got along with.
I spent twice as much time in their room as I did my own. He was so objectionable that I literally only slept in my room. One time he went someplace for the weekend or something (I don’t freaking know; didn’t listen when he talked after a certain point), and legitimately my entire floor threw a party celebrating that he wasn’t around. FYI, two dorm desks end to end make a pretty good pong table.
Overall I think this kid suffers from the fact he never knew any form of respect or power other than online. He’s a complete loser, and if you play Minecraft, message me, and I’ll let you know his server, so you can stay away. Like far far away.”
16. Your Arm Isn't Broken, Dude
Maybe it was the attention that he wanted.
“Two rooms, two people to a room. The University of CA at Irvine.
I, a 20-something male Southern California native, was paired with (names changed):
1: W – Very shy kid who spoke poor English but was a great person. Moved to the US at 18, did his junior college in the states, and did well enough to get into a competitive 4-year uni. Great kid and the person who I enjoyed the most. Spent most of his nights reading Japanese anime or watching the Dark Knight 3x in a row (watched it at least 3x a week).
2: Apu – kid from Missouri or STL or some midwestern somewhere that’s not CA state. Was pretty meh. Wasn’t annoying, was respectful, went about his business. No issues.
3 – The star of our Story: Abe – Abe is Polish but on an exchange program from a French Uni. He has a wireframe, thin blonde hair, a mild French accent, and the worst attitude on the planet.
Our story begins day 1 of us moving in. I arrive first and accordingly pick out the spot I want. I sleep with a fan at night; I like the white noise, whatever. Abe shows up second and decides that as a So Cal native, he’d really like to share a room with me. I explain that works for me, so long as he’s alright with the fact that I sleep with a fan on all night, every single night.
He says no problem, Apu and W share the other room.
In the middle of the first night, I wake up in a sweat, and my fan isn’t on. Weird. Turn the fan on, go back to sleep; repeat x3. Wake up in the morning to Abe telling me he just couldn’t deal with the fan because it got so cold. (This is Irvine in 2010, the temperature is consistently 68 minimum, 80 maximum year-round).
I explain that I told him I sleep with the fan on every night and like the cold. I end up sharing a room with W because he’s fine with the fan.
Anyways, I also play hockey. We have a small apartment, and hockey stuff is smelly. I leave used gear in the sun for several hours after spraying with Febreeze, store up, spray with a ton of Febreeze, and hide it best I can in our pantry (next to dinner table no one uses not in the kitchen).
He complains every single day without fail, eventually to the point he says it makes him gag every time he goes to the kitchen. Tries to get to RA or counselor or whatever, they ask me to come talk to them, and I explain I do everything I can, they tell him to quit being such a jabroni. I honestly did do everything I could do to not torture him with my hockey gear, but there were times he complained, and my gear was in my car, for reference.
And the real story. One day, while preparing to go to an important class, I suddenly hear a crash outside of our front door. It’s Abe. He’s somehow fallen while either trying to get off or get onto his bike. He is just about screaming in agony from a maybe 3 ft drop going zero miles an hour. I’m stifling laughter already, but we dislike each other so I’m not trying to be a jerk about it.
Abe is now convinced he has broken his arm (he doesn’t even have a scratch, for reference). I, knowing he’s a giant baby, don’t believe it. He has no car (exchange student); I do. He begs and pleads with me for the next ten minutes to take him to the emergency room because his arm is severely damaged, and he might need immediate surgery or whatever, I’m just saying no and not listening.
Finally, I relent and say, “Look, my uncle is an emergency room surgeon (he is). I will call him and tell him you think you broke your arm, and he will tell me how to check how hurt you are. If he suggests there’s even the slightest chance you need medical attention, I’ll take you no problem.” He agrees.
I call my uncle who proceeds to have me poke and prod at his arm in various places.
After a few different pokes and prods, Uncle says, “Well, I don’t hear him screaming out in pain at all, so he clearly doesn’t have anything close to a broken arm, maybe a sprain tops.” Uncle leaves me with, “He’s just being a giant baby; don’t bother.” I later text him that I didn’t even see a scratch.
Upon hearing the bad news that I’ve confirmed his arm is not broken, he gets up from the couch in disgust and storms over to the kitchen to get his good booze.
As he puts the booze down onto the table he lets out the most prima donna dramatic sigh and exclaims in the most serious and upset tone I’ve ever heard, “Why does everything bad in the world have to happen to me?” I proceed to completely lose my marbles. Falling off of the couch in laughter. Apu heard this as well, and we proceed to laugh and make fun of him for the rest of the year.
W is too nice, but even he can’t help but laugh at the situation.”
15. She Had A Crazy Stalker Ex... Who Didn't Exist
How do you confront your roommate who’s pretending to be stalked by an ex that she doesn’t have? I guess you don’t… Just run, and never look back!
“Current college student here. I moved in with a girl I recently befriended. All her roommates transferred to other schools, so it was just her in a 2 bedroom suite. She didn’t have many friends and was frequently judged for her weight and her looks. However, she was a nice girl. I moved in with her and had her hang out with my friends. Let’s call her Kate.
Not too long after I moved in, I noticed things around my room started moving around. Along with that, she started talking about an ex she had in high school who was stalking her. Let’s talk about this ex of hers. He was a guy who she slept with for the first time and was an awful partner, according to her. It sounded believable. Okay.
We all have that horrible ex. Wait. He happened to have a twin sister with who Kate was best friends from back home. Maybe that’s possible? I still believed her.
Anyway, one night, I come back to my dorm, super intoxicated with a note that her “ex” left on the door. I open the door, and there’s Kate waiting for me at 3 in the morning.
She looks at the door and has this surprised look on her face. She walks to the door and says “Oh my god. I think Dave left this note at the door. What a creep!” At that point, I knew it was nonsense. This guy supposedly lived 2 hours away from the school and was able to find her dorm room and somehow slide into the hall without a problem?
I don’t think so. My intoxicated self looked into the trash can and found clippings that matched up to her fake note. Her note was printed out, and she left all the evidence there. Just as I walked into my room, “Dave” calls. How convenient. Also, kind of funny since it was her alarm that went off. I hear it every morning. I know the difference.
However, she goes on with the anger and yells into the phone about how Dave needs to move on. I’m freaked out, so I lock the door to my room and go to sleep.
The next few weeks, I notice more things that are off in my room. My stash of brownies goes from 11 to 2. I just thought maybe I was eating them but forgetting about their goodness.
Nope. I also noticed I had $20 out of $200 missing from my room. Maybe I miscounted? I became paranoid in my own room. I’d sleep with the door locked while she chilled in the living room. I swear I could hear her footsteps go down the hallway towards my room. She would slightly jiggle the doorknob and leave. I didn’t feel safe in my room, but I also didn’t feel sane.
Things with “Dave” escalated with Kate, and she would bring him up daily. She would talk about how he impregnated some girl and how she felt jealous and used. I was curious, so I found this Dave guy on social media. I sent him a message asking if he knew Kate. He said he did. I asked if they were ever together. Dave said they didn’t, and they were only acquaintances.
I knew right then, I was rooming with crazy.
That very day, I set up a free surveillance camera I found online using my webcam. I set it up with a clear view of my door and fridge. I left my room to hang out with friends for 2 hours. I came back to find the girl eating food from my fridge. Okay, I’m mad. But it wasn’t a terribly big deal. I continued with my day and got ready for the night.
I kept the camera on to see what she did whenever I left to go out at night.
My plans ended up flaking, and I went to In-N-Out instead. I came back a bit early, so I could change into my pajamas and have a movie night with friends. When I entered my room, Kate was asleep. I quickly and quietly went into my room.
I played the surveillance tape. I was out for 3 hours. Within that 3 hours, she had gone into my room a total of 8 times. Each recording had her doing something different. She looked through my purse and stole from my wallet. She sat on my bed and touched my things. She got close to the desk and webcam and took the change on my desk. Throughout the entire ordeal, she smiled. She would pace back and forth, taking my things, and touching my belongings.
As I watched the first recording, I broke down and called my friends. I grabbed my computer and slept on my friend’s couch for a week. I roomed with crazy, and I am so glad to be on spring break. Don’t give people the benefit of the doubt when you think about living with them. I wish the GA had told me about her issues, but it is possible that nothing was on file for her.”
Another User Comments:
“Um, why are you not taking the evidence to the police?” Raincoats_George
Reply:
“As stupid as it may sound, I chose not to get the police involved because it’d ruin her life. I think she needs actual psychiatric help that maybe the school can offer. I don’t want criminal charges brought upon her, but rather I want her to get help.
I’m pretty sure she’s not mentally well. Her social life is already ruined since I was her only friend anyway. Plus, from my understanding, they’re making it, so she will not be allowed to live with anyone on campus.” rumblytummy
Reply:
“It doesn’t sound stupid at all; you are a very kind person. I hope the school takes steps to make sure she gets help, and I hope you get reassigned to an awesome dorm/roommate.” VividLotus
14. He Had The Worst Manners
“I had a roommate come back to our dorm room from one of the many rush week frat parties he attended, wasted out of his mind. He stripped down to his stained white briefs and passed out on his bed.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to find him standing, totally unclothed, inches from my bed, his butt literally right in my face.
He proceeded to fart in my face and then start peeing in the trash can next to my bed.
After he was done peeing in the trash can, and all over the floor, he promptly went back to his bed and passed out on his bed, face-up, with no covers.
I got up, got a bottle of Febreeze, and sprayed my trash can and the rug.
I then realized why he peed in my trash can. It’s because he had puked in his. So, I sprayed his trash can too.
Then, for good measure and because I was ticked, I spent about 30 seconds spraying his unclothed body with Febreeze while he snored and drooled.
Yeah… I hated that guy.”
Another User Comments:
“I think I had the female equivalent. The girl had no idea how to handle her time of the month properly.
Instead of walking the ten or so feet to the bathroom, she’d fill up our bedroom trash with used tampons and pads. Once a month our room would take on a peculiar smell because of this. Me being unable to handle confrontation, I let it slide… until one day I found a huge, long twisted-up roll of paper towel covered in b***d just sitting on the floor in the corner of our room.” [deleted]
13. They Had A Very Weird Way Of Living
“My freshman year, I got into a bad fight with my current roommate and left in the middle of the night with all my stuff. I lived homeless around campus for the rest of that semester and don’t regret it. However, this story isn’t about him. It’s about two guys with who I moved in for a short time.
We’ll call them Steve and Wolf.
Now I grew up with Wolf; he went to my church, and I had known him since we were fairly young. He offered me a bed in his apartment with his roommate Steve, seeing as it was a 3 person room. I moved in and asked for my key.
“Oh. We don’t have one.”
“But I work on campus. I work late, and don’t get back until 2 AM!”
“We know. But our door is always locked. We leave a back window open though. Just come in through that.”
So we’re off to a great start. I move in, and a day later, they adopted a cat. Pets aren’t allowed on campus, and I’m allergic to cats. However, I still liked the little guy… until he bit me. I asked if he was up to date on his rabies shots, and they replied they didn’t know.
Apparently, this was a cat they just found on the street and took in, so we had no idea if it could give me a disease.
Now would also be a good time to note that my college is rather strict on drinking, being a private school. I don’t have a problem with this, but at the same time, don’t care if people break the rule either… except for these two, who were attempting to brew their own booze in the room.
It never produced anything that remotely resembled the drink, but they both chugged it almost constantly. Then came the utterly horrifying moments of the last two weeks I had in that apartment.
I came home from class one night and found that all of the doors in the apartment had been taken off. The door to my room, the door to the bathroom, even the shower curtain had all been removed. When I asked Wolf what was going on, he replied that they wanted to create an “open environment” so that no one could hide stuff from each other.
This meant that if I wanted to take a shower, I had to undress with the door open, while both of them could walk in and just talk with me while I try to shower. It was around this time that they both started living “naturally” and going unclothed around the apartment the entire time. Despite the lack of privacy, this didn’t stop them from doing anything inappropriate.
I was already trying to find a way out at this point when the true horror hit. They came back to the dorm one night with a new couch… which they had stolen from the lobby of one of the upperclassmen dorms. Public safety was looking for it, and they decided it would be a great idea to send a photo of it to Public Safety, with them holding airsoft guns up to it.
They got caught, and it was at this point I was let in on the true madness of these two. Neither Wolf nor Steve had been to class in two months. Steve mostly spent his time playing Smite and WoW on his expensive gaming PC at all hours of the day, and Wolf spent most of his time either in his room skyping his girl back home or driving around campus in his truck trying to pick up chicks for a “quickie.” They confided all of this in me only on the last night I was with them before I once again packed my bags and got out of there.
Last I heard, Wolf tried to join the Army but was kicked out due to poor performance. The school is requiring him to repay full tuition, and now he has a 40,000 dollar debt over his head. Steve, as far as I know, never went home. He sold his huge gaming PC for 300 bucks and just left campus. I never knew what happened to him.”
12. Psycho And Unapologetic About It
It’s like she didn’t even realize how crazy she really was.
“Junior year of college, I sign an apartment lease with two other girls I know in my sorority.
One roommate is a close friend of mine to this day, but the other… let’s call her K. K was my friend’s best friend at the time. They had lived together in the dorms and were looking for a third roommate off-campus, and since we were in the same pledge class and hung out a lot, I decided to go with them.
So we move in before school, our parents come and help us.
K had an older brother, but her parents treated her like an only child, moving in all her stuff while she sat on the couch with the dog. Now at our apartment complex, pets were allowed, but it was a huge fee to keep one, along with a monthly fee. But it was an older dog, and K promised her dad that she would take care of it.
So far, so good; we settle in and start the school year. Here’s where things get bad.
On top of school, K had two jobs, so she would be gone all day, like 8 am-10 pm. Instead of letting the dog roam free in the apartment, she would put it in a carrier and hide it under the bed, under the duvet cover. This poor dog was stuck in that carrier without food or water, howling for hours until I or my friend came home.
We felt sorry for it and would let it out and take it for walks outside, so it could do its business, eat, etc. K found out and told us to leave the dog alone; it was her pet, and she would take care of it. Nothing changed though, except sometimes she would forget and just leave the dog in her room, where it howled, peed, and pooped everywhere.
On top of the pet situation, K was probably the nastiest person I’ve ever lived with, and I come from a family of hoarders. She would hang her shirts out to dry on the living room furniture but would leave them for weeks, causing them to get moldy and dirty all over again. We couldn’t sit down anywhere, and if she caught us moving them, she would yell at us and move them back.
My mom came to visit one time and moved a shirt, so she could sit on the couch, and K had the audacity to yell at her. Mom ended up folding all of her shirts and dropping them by her door, and after that, K got the hint and stopped leaving her laundry everywhere.
The kitchen was another battle; her plates and utensils were there for months, filming over with mold.
But of course, we were forbidden to wash them, even though we both offered to do it with our own stuff. She never took out the trash either.
By this point, it’s mid-late October. K had turned into a complete troll and was convinced that I and my friend were out to get her. Trying to be nice we had a movie night with some other girls, where she: 1.
Complained about the movie, even though she insisted we watch it. 2. Physically picked me up from the couch and moved me because I was in “her spot” on the couch. And 3. Proceeded to trash talk to our other friends after they left that night, which was not ok.
By this point, other girls in our sorority had come to us saying she was trying to spread rumors about how we were out to get her, but we figured if we could last through the semester she would try to move out anyway, as she wasn’t getting her way.
Her parents spoiled the life out of her, and she would loudly complain about how hard her life was, even though her parents paid for everything. It all came to a head when the dog, who she finally let out of her room, peed on my carpet and pooped on my friend’s. My friend brought it up to her after she had the carpet cleaned, only to be screamed at and called a liar, because her dog never did that and how dare she make up stuff?
(At this point, I had a candle going in my room 24/7, as I lived next to her and the smell was obnoxious.)
At that point, we brought out the complex’s roommate agreement and tried to get her to agree to some things so we could all get along. (We should’ve done it earlier, but she wasn’t like this at the time.) She refused for two weeks until suddenly agreeing, and just sat there the whole time crying about how it wasn’t fair, she wasn’t abusing her dog, and accused us of being bullies, which made me want to punch her in her fat face, as I had been bullied in school to the point where I got depression.
She flounced off to her room and locked herself in, calling her dad and telling him about how awful we were.
Not surprisingly, we got a call from her mother that night asking what was really going on, and we explained everything. K was a jerk, but her parents were really sweet people. Her mom confessed that the dog was actually the family dog and not really K’s to keep, but K had begged them to take it and they gave in to her.
The poor thing was used to a big backyard and lots of attention, not a cramped carrier under a bed in a student apartment. That weekend, K’s dad came and took the dog back home, and K cried and whined to him to let her keep it, that we were lying, and she was really taking care of it. But her room’s smell told the story, and after that, she barely left her room except to eat and glare at us if we were in the kitchen.
By winter break, she was gone, breaking her lease and leaving behind a room so smelly that it still stunk when we moved out. We saw her at sorority events, but she refused to speak to us or apologize for the psycho nonsense she did. She left the sorority after a while, and even my friend now realizes how much of a witch she was while they were friends.
I guess it takes an abused dog and moldy shirts to find out how people really are.”
11. Trading One Bad Roommate For Another
Sometimes, you just can’t win.
“I had two horrible roommates back-to-back in the same apartment. Well, one bad roommate and one horrible roommate.
It was a 3 bedroom apartment; each bedroom had its own bathroom, basically sharing only a kitchen and living room/dining area. One bedroom was a friend of mine, one bedroom was mine/my girl, and the last bedroom was initially filled via a roommate matching service.
This girl was a bit odd but not awful. What made her a bad roommate was the fact that she didn’t know how to handle having roommates. For example, we had some people over one night, not a party, just 3-4 people over for dinner and a board game. Of course, 5-6 people total (the guests plus myself, my girl, and other friend living there), all talking and joking, can be a bit rowdy.
We did ask her beforehand if it was alright to have people over, and she said it was fine. Fast forward to ~9:50 PM, and there’s a cop knocking on the door with a noise complaint. I knew she called them because this was a two-story building, and the top-floor apartment hadn’t been leased yet. Whatever, fine, you can’t deal with confrontation… Don’t call the police on people you live with; bring it up in a neutral manner at a later time then.
Anyways, this girl called the cops again about 2 weeks later – at 8:30 PM when we were having my parents over for dinner. She moved out shortly afterward.
The real crazy starts here. We looked for another roommate to split the rent with and thought we had a good candidate in one of my girl’s coworkers. He was a little odd, liked to shop at Hot Topic and wear eyeliner… but I was into wearing skinny jeans and flat ironing my hair at the time, so who was I to judge.
He moves in, and at first, everything is okay.
That changed fast. He really loved Pokemon. Now, I play video games and understand fandom; this guy had an obsession. He was the 23-year-old guy who would go to Pokemon Card Battles and trounce the 12-year-olds while declaring how he was a “Pokemon Master.” Around this time, Pokemon Battle Stadium for the Wii came out. He went out and bought a Wii immediately.
Subsequent nights in my apartment followed a certain routine. He would come home from work around 7-8 PM, and begin drinking from a large bottle and yelling at the TV while he battled Pokemon online with his mega ultra-all legendary lineup. I don’t even play pokemon, but I know what a Darkrai is since enduring my roommate monologuing about his Pokemon. I also caught him rocking back and forth talking to himself while staring at the loading screen for this game.
Also, he didn’t like to clean. AT ALL. I mean, not only did he never wash dishes he used in the communal kitchen, but I had to go into his room once to grab something for him and… ugh. The floor was covered in pokemon cards and dead leaves, and the smell was like Axe and fermented urine.
Somehow, he got himself a girl during this period.
She was actually pretty chill. The problem was that about 3 weeks after they started seeing each other, they broke up. Not a problem in and of itself. The reason they broke up, though? He started sleeping with her sister… I promptly told him she was not allowed in our apartment.
At this point, I was fed up with him, but the lease was up in about 6 weeks.
Prior to moving, we had to ensure that the apartment was cleaned out. He left earlier than the rest of us by a couple of days, so of course, I double-checked his room. He had left the bathtub FULL of standing water, in Florida, in the summer. A breeding ground of bugs. When I texted him to ask, ‘What the heck?’ his only response was, “The bugs are my friends…”
Last I heard, he had been committed after several run-ins with the law for stalking and violating restraining orders.”
Another User Comments:
“Reads first story
Okay, so this is the horrible one, right?
Reads second story
Nevermind nevermind nevermind.” Reddit user
10. He Stole My Car And Drove Like A Maniac
“I’ve got a good one.
In the mid-2000s, I moved out of the house, went to college, and started my life of living outside the nest. So, as is customary, I moved into the dorms with a few roommates.
I had to get used to a number of things – cooking with others, waiting in line, taking turns in the shower, rationing food, etc.
To give you a sense of place – I was going to college to study a form of art (I won’t say which, not important). I had two ‘official’ roommates.
They were both older, one who smoked a lot and another who was just a cool, laid-back guy.
Things were going smoothly for the first month or so, and in general, I was getting used to things.
That’s when things started getting weird. More and more, roommate 1 started bringing over a partner of sorts. A girl with a hefty gut (not overly obese, just chunky). I’d go off to visit friends back home every weekend, and I’d come back and something would be off.
The girl was always there, but I never saw her sleep with the guy.
One day, when they had class, I did a little exploring.
I looked into his room, found nothing, and was about to leave when I saw a little bit of cloth sticking out of the closet. I open the closet (2’x4′ mind you) and there’s a wad of blankets with a pillow.
The crazy bee with an itch had made a NEST in her partner’s closet – hiding it from me and our fellow roommate. This story has a bit more to it but there are other fish to fry.
So, after finding out about the bird girl, I tried to mind my own business. I’d say hello to our roommate, close my door, and try to ignore the fact that I had roommates.
One night, I come home after class and walk in on my roommate.
He’s staring at the wall, which stands firmly two inches from his face.
He’s doing this on the stairwell, and my room is up said stairs. I stand at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, planning my next move, when I see bird lady from atop the staircase.
She informs me he’s on some substance and I nod, making my move up the stairs. He doesn’t notice me move past him, and I promptly shut my door and try to get some rest. I fade off into a dreamy sleep….
Flashlights. Two inches from my face. This is what I wake up to.
I shield my eyes and look at the clock.
It’s 2 AM and I now realize there are 2 cops insisting I get out of bed and come talk with them.
Shocked, I get out of bed and throw some pants on, following them downstairs. I may have asked what was going on, but this part is somewhat foggy.
I get downstairs and the cops are asking me if I realize I nearly hit a cop, ran a red light, and rode a curb, parking at my dorm sideways, half on the grass.
I tell them I have no freaking idea what they’re talking about. Now, it’s important to note that bird girl, laid-back roommate, and scumbag are all sitting with their backs against the wall (as am I). Bird girl informs the cop that I had nothing to do with it, looks at me, and says she’s really sorry.
Scumbag speaks up and apologizes as confirming the truth as well.
Laidback roommate just nods.
The cops proceeded to tell me that they picked up my name because apparently FREAKING SCUMBAG STOLE MY CAR and did those things that were previously mentioned.
I moved out the next week.
Screw that guy.”
9. She Didn't Want Me Alive
“My freshman year roommate attempted to get “rid” of me. She was awful for many reasons, but that was the last straw.
The administration and her parents failed to tell me she had anger and impulse control issues that she took medicine for.
To make matters even worse, she had freedom, terrible freedom, so she either skipped taking her medicine or combined it with enough adult beverage to tranquilize herself.
I tried to make the best of it, but I inspired her to psychotic new heights for several reasons: her parents loved me from the start even though I was country hick to their Greenwich; I was in the geeky School of Foreign Diplomacy honors program, which they fervently hoped their daughter would transfer into (their favorite, her older brother was a diplomat); I did her a good-intentioned favor which ultimately put her over the edge.
That favor was completely overhauling her way of dressing so she could get into a sorority during what many of you have heard, better known as Rush. This girl really wanted, more than anything, to be in a sorority. She came back from her first social event to sign up for Rush, a bit depressed. Her Number One and Two choices were visibly disinterested in her.
It didn’t take a genius to see why: her cotton elastic waistline pants were pulled up to her bra line, which was only slightly less disastrous than her Laura Ashley ruffle blouse with huge flowers on it.
So I did what any roommate desperate to get along would do: I revamped her wardrobe with mine. We played up her best assets, her figure and her eyes, tossing the blue eyeshadow, and my advice was to act shy and say as little as possible.
When she left for her first mixer, I discretely called my older sister, who was in the same sorority, but a different college than mine, and asked for her to try to help my roommate. (Yes for those who know the jargon, this made me an easier “in” as a “Legacy” to that sorority, but that’s another adventure.
Long story short, this girl got her second chance.
She was ecstatic and put her passive-aggressive hate on hold. Her parents were thrilled. All was well. I was down to dealing with merely annoying typical behavior: her nearly drowning in her own vomit after parties, then leaving the stale stench of it to linger until I washed her bedding; her wearing all my clothes and taking over my makeup. (Her parents ended up buying both of us new wardrobes when they discovered to their chagrin, during a visit that their daughter was wearing my clothes).
That actually was the beginning of the end. Putting it together, her mother made a snarky comment that she would never have gotten in without me dressing her, and thank goodness that finally somebody had given her a little polish. (Thanks, Mom.) That triggered new, serious hate.
While all this happened, she alienated the entire floor of our co-Ed dorm by hiring a popular well-liked guy to construct a loft for our room, (which I paid half of), and then never paid him.
Mortified, I dug up the rest of the cash and stammered an apology in freshman angst. He refused to take it and eventually she paid him, but only half of her half, claiming his work was shoddy. He set the entire floor against her. To compound matters, she began seeing a creepy dude nobody liked, and her grades went into the toilet. Still, I was happier with a vomiting, socially messed up slob, than dealing with hate.
Unfortunately, my roommate unraveled during hazing and her entire sorority hated her. A guy on my floor who was seeing a girl from that sorority told me my roommate was scaring the other recruits and behaving strangely. I shrugged it off. She blamed me for being hazed. I told her they all hazed (this was the 90s).
To retaliate, she destroyed my computer, threw all my shoes out the window, made any snack or drink disappear, and was just awful.
I complained to the RA. The RA was in a rival sorority, so the problems got gossiped about not only in that sorority, but got back to my roommate’s sorority. This resulted in a gleefully malicious campaign of unprecedented inter-sorority cooperation: not only did they force her to clean our room, but they forced her to clean both sororities’ meeting rooms as “punishment” for making her sorority look bad.
Soon after, she quit and didn’t get out of bed for a week. I felt terrible.
I had an early class that day, and out of habit grabbed my water bottle. I drank some on the way to class. It tasted a little off, but I ignored it. Five minutes into class, I collapsed.
When I woke up, the ER doctors said I was poisoned. Campus Security had been given my bottled water which had tipped and spilled some contents onto the floor.
A nerdy Encyclopedia Brown saw an iridescent sheen on the surface of the spill, so he basically set the wheels in motion, and within days, my roommate was arrested.
As a result, I found out from her parents that my roommate had anger and impulse problems she took medicine for. This wasn’t the first time she had been in trouble. While I was angry, I wasn’t permanently affected, and the promise of a paid room for the following two semesters, without a troubled roommate, led to me not cooperating with the prosecutors, who dropped the case.
Looking back, I should have demanded a lot more, but there you have it. To my knowledge, she still lives with her parents.
And that’s the most awful freshman roommate, ever.”
8. He Got Paranoid Over Our New Roomie
“For the year of Fall 19/Spring 20, I have been living in off-campus apartments near my university in the city.
The room was a standard 4 bed, 4 bath with a shared living space, kitchen, and balcony. The roommates were randomly selected, it was: myself M/20, (Edwin) M/25?, (Derek) M/20, and (Alex) M/25+.
The entire school year had gone by with no problems with any of us roommates.
All of us were clean with our dishes and such, weren’t loud, and talked when we saw each other in the common area ensuring a peaceful living situation for us all.
Edwin decides to go home to his family in another part of the city as well as Derek, leaving Alex and me still staying in the apartment. Alex always was my favorite of the roommates as he always had something to say when he saw you and was just a very friendly guy, so I wasn’t too whacked out when the other two guys decided to go back home for a while.
During this time, we get messages in our apartment GroupMe that Derek is bringing in a friend to sublease and take over his room for the rest of his term which ended in June. Also, the sublease would be a girl. Although I was hesitant, she moved in any way, and I decided to keep my distance. The first thing I noticed about this girl was that it wasn’t only her in the apartment.
She moved in with two other women and a man. They were moving stuff in all day which was confusing to me since the room was to be moved out of in less than a month, and they had basically all of their possessions I thought. Anyways, they move in, and sometimes the other people are there, and sometimes they aren’t and it is only one girl in the room.
Additionally, out on the balcony, a grey, plastic bag with something in it appeared. A few days in, I am leaving to go hang out with my sister and her partner, and I walk out of my room to see the girl in the kitchen. She looks at me weirdly, but I wave and say my name, and she slowly gives me hers (Miranda) before I leave.
Miranda was nice to me then, but I didn’t really like her because of her introduction of constant messes, smoking in the apartment, using other people’s dishware, and her generally loud lifestyle.
This hit a head when, one day, I happened to look out on the balcony because I rolled the blinds up to let light in. The bag was covered in maggots and had slightly deflated into the concrete floor and was oozing a strange, dark liquid.
I dare not open the door to investigate further and promptly went back to my room. Later, I was cleaning all of my dishes in the sink because they had used them and put them into their cabinets when Alex comes out of his room and starts to talk to me.
We talk like regular since I hadn’t really had the chance in a minute since he had been staying in his room too to avoid Miranda and her friends.
I finish my dishes talking to Alex and start to go to my room; however, I think of something first. Alex is near his door which is next to the door to go out to the balcony. I whisper to him if he knows what is in the bag out there, and that it’s getting to be a problem.
He is disgusted and says he hadn’t noticed it up until that point.
Again, we both promptly go back to our rooms.
That evening, Alex messages me that he wants to talk about the Miranda situation out in the parking garage. I meet him there to talk. We discuss our displeasures with the way things are and agree that if it gets any worse, we will report them to the office and hopefully have some kind of punishment put on Miranda and her crew.
After about an hour of talking, we go back to the apartment and split up.
The next morning at 6:30 am on May 24th, I wake up to my phone blowing up with messages from Alex for me to call the police and to pick up the phone. I had just woken up and was feeling confused but go with it anyways. I tell him to go out to the hallway, and I’ll meet him out there.
When I do go out a minute later, he is absolutely losing it.
He grabs me and tells me, “Call the police! They came here just for me! They know me! They’ve come to kill me! They put something on the wall to watch me. They can see everything I do, and I can hear them talk about it.” Obviously, this is shocking news to me, and not understanding the situation myself, I told Alex that if he wanted to call the police, he would have to do it himself.
I dialed 911 on his phone and told him that if he felt it was a genuine emergency that he can call the police. He did. He told the police about the spying and Miranda and her friends. After he hung the phone up, he told me the police were on their way, but so was somebody to pick up Miranda’s friends for them to get away from the police.
I go along with what he’s saying for now because, up until this point, he was a really intelligent and trustworthy guy.
We waited outside of our apartment in the hallway for this girl, who Alex said was coming to get the others. Eventually, a girl did show up with a shower cap on. I grabbed my phone and began taking pictures of the girl because his phone died. The girl is knocking on the door and messaging, but Miranda isn’t answering to let her in.
A few minutes later, the police roll up. Of course, Alex’s eccentric behavior puts the cops on edge as soon as they see him since he at that point seemed like a crazy-talking, 6’2” man. They get a semi-coherent story out of him and find out he hasn’t slept in, he says, 2 days.
They go on to ask the shower cap girl why she is there.
She replies that she’s there for a hair appointment with Miranda. She shows a bag of hair care products along with the shower cap to argue her side. At this point, Miranda still hasn’t come out even after the police began knocking on the door, and I, meanwhile, decided that I was too tired to stay standing up for all this and sat propped up against a wall until the police wanted to talk to me.
Eventually, four other cops show up, and a few finally talk to me. I basically just say that, yeah, Miranda is a bad roommate, but I don’t know about stalking or anything. Eventually, a higher-ranking officer talks to me after having me open the common living space and him yelling in there without a response. He asks if I believe what Alex is talking about.
I eventually come to no conclusion, and the officer tells me I can go back to my room. I go back and instantly fall back asleep.
45 minutes later, with no evidence of a crime, the police promptly left to go tend to other matters. Once they do, Alex comes back into the apartment and begins yelling at Miranda’s door saying that he knows what she’s doing and that he’ll get her.
I decide I need to intervene and go out and tell Alex to go back out into the hall, so we can talk. He complies and follows me.
He wants to go talk out in his car with me and explain the situation in full he says, so that I understand because nobody else is listening to him.
In his car, he tells me that late last night, he overheard them talking about what they were going to do to him.
He began explaining his theory that Derek had been in on the scheme the whole time and had intentionally let them into the room to take over Alex in exchange for payment.
He says he recognizes one of the girls that comes to Miranda’s place. He goes on to say she’s fat and unattractive, so she’s trying to put a love curse on him so that he will be a slave to her and a living zombie.
He thinks a lot of people are in on this and often refers to it as “a big job.”
I convince him that another route of action is the leasing office and that if he wants to try it, he should. He calls them and explains his story while I finally get permission to leave his car and carry on my day.
Later, however, I got a call from the office getting my side of the story.
Apparently, the sublease wasn’t through the office and was therefore illegal resulting in fines for Derek, and Miranda moved out the very next day with most of her stuff. The rest was later picked up by Derek.
For the entire time since that point, Alex has not given up on his fear of hit-men coming after him, and his paranoia of the situation has only been getting worse to the point where I don’t feel comfortable sleeping within the apartment.
Alex has woken me up many times late at night and early in the morning convinced that some mundane aspect of his room was in actuality a spying device installed by people to monitor his actions. (I don’t buy it.) A recent example of this activity is when he woke me up at midnight by banging on my room door and forced dismantle his ceiling smoke detector as he didn’t believe the occasional blinking red light coming from the unit was supposed to be there.
Of course, I found nothing other than an ordinary smoke detector.
When I went home for a weekend, he called me frantically and asked if I was at the apartment. I, of course, told him I wasn’t. He then went on to question why I had not told him I was leaving and that he needed me at the apartment for protection. I instantly came back asking why I had to tell him what I do because, in all honesty, it’s none of his business.
He apologized and asked if I had anybody else he could room with for the night or if he could come stay at my house and sleep on my couch. I, of course, told him no.
I came back a few days later to no Alex. His stuff was there, but he wasn’t. I figured he might’ve gotten a hotel or something and that he might just need some time away.
After a few more days, I messaged to check up on him and he answered after a few hours.
He said he was fine, and he was coming back. When he did he told me how he was followed the entire time and that he flew up to Kansas and back to try and lose them. He also claims he saw people looking at his window from the parking lot in the next lot over.
I spend more time away from my apartment these days. I try not to be there too much as I know he will be monitoring me while I’m there.
I have made the decision to move to another room to end my involvement in this once and for all. At this point, my room transfer hasn’t been accepted yet but should be in a few days, and hopefully, after that, I’ll be able to move in right away.”
Another User Comments:
“Yo, real talk, but a lot of severe mental disorders tend to develop when people are in their early 20s. It honestly sounds like he’s experiencing paranoid delusions especially if he was a pretty reasonable person previously.” Jaggerjawfull
7. My Abusive Roommate Didn't Believe My Depression Was Real
“I have bipolar disorder and mild autism. Before diagnosis and medication, I would have these intense bouts of depression or mania, but I would always attribute it to my current living situation.
My last job was a sales job, and I only lasted 3 months before my weak social skills were exposed and ridiculed. Frankly put, I was way too introverted to be a salesman; it’s even more embarrassing when I remember how confident I was going into the job (I was on the end of a manic phase).
So now after that experience, I was at the bottom of the barrel and started slipping into a severe depression, and after a while, I was having regular dark thoughts.
I started therapy. My roommate objected; he said therapy is a scam, and mental illness is just something you can simply shake off and that I just need to use the money for my therapy to go on vacation.
Clearly, there was something off with his thinking, but we didn’t argue further at that point.
Every day, I was miserable, could barely get out of bed, and felt completely dead inside.
After a couple of weeks, he ”got tired of it” and started harassing me:
”If you’re gonna waste your life away, at least give me some moolah so I can enjoy it.”
”You’re not sick; you’re just lazy and weak.”
”Don’t lock the front door before leaving the house. No one is gonna break-in. You’re stupid for doing that.” (On that one, his tone was super judgmental, trying to order me around.)
”This is just a game you’re playing; you want attention.”
I accidentally dropped a bedsheet on the floor. Then he comes in the room right after, immediately starts to literally yell at the top of his lungs at me over that bedsheet and how I purposely dropped it to spite him when I did no such thing; I was trying to explain, but I couldn’t do it over him yelling.
He was at max volume over a flipping bedsheet.
While riding in his car, I’m in the passenger seat with takeout food we bought. I had been friends with him for over 2 years, and I never dropped anything ever in his car. I almost dropped one of the bags, and he exploded at me, even worse when I told him to chill out and that this never happened before.
He just got more mad at me for even talking back. He even said the words, “Don’t talk back to me; this is my car.”
While smoking, he passed the smoke to another person while I was next. I tell him it’s my turn; he starts telling me I’m wrong and stupid.
That was the last straw. I was completely enraged soon after the smoking incident.
I did some minor damage to his car, broke the A/C he had in his room, and burned a bunch of his mail in my bathroom sink (including a letter that was telling him to pay a fine for a parking ticket).
Now here’s some important stuff to know about this guy:
– He used to sell credit cards but often would lie to the customer telling him or her that it was just a gift card they were getting.
– He was a door-to-door salesman for about a year. He would sit in his car with his buddies all day and just do the minimum amount of sales to not get fired while pocketing a good base salary; though, eventually, he got fired anyway.
– He was pretending to be a manager at a company owned by his friend’s uncle. He had them pay him a salary, and he would repay them with intention of getting approved for his permanent residence.
So, in conclusion, about a week after moving out, I called immigration and gave them his name, address, the details of his fake employment, etc. That was 2 years ago. I have no idea what happened to him since.”
6. Aggressive In More Ways Than One
“My roommate was a defensive lineman for a national championship team. Among other things:
Would steal our food until we started buying stuff with bacon on it.
Would steal our debit cards and order himself pizza; would steal cash if it wasn’t directly on our person.
Once choked me out against the wall because I changed the channel while he was in the bathroom.
Broke cinder blocks and scattered the shards on my bed.
Pretty sure he was wiping his butt with my tee shirts, but I can’t confirm that.
Caught him stealing my papers and turning them in as his own work.
Brought a girl back to our suite, and he started grabbing her, totally wrong, and tried to pull her into our room – never saw her again.
Would pull me out of my bed in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and throw me on the floor.
Accused me of being a snitch (although for what was never clear to me).
Had a friend who he yelled at for being my friend; said friend refused to come to hang out if he was there.
This was only for a second semester my freshman year, and he terrorized us (this was just what he did to me, I’m not even including the other roommates in the suite, four of us in all).
By the second month, I was begging friends to let me sleep on their couches. I really, really hate to admit it, but he screwed me up in the head for a long time.”
5. The Devil In Him Came Out Of Nowhere
“Junior year of college. I had to lease through an agency and get random roommates. Prior to the summer, I met my two random roommates and they seemed cool.
We had everything settled: who was bringing what, who got the parking, yadda yadda.
The day before we move in we each get a phone call from a very nasally, stereotypically nerdy sounding guy named Chris. He screams into the phone “I need the parking space!” before even introducing himself. And that’s how I met my third random roommate, Chris.
Over the first month of moving in, Chris proved to be weird as ever. The first strange thing was his overall appearance.
Didn’t take care of himself, smelled like a gorilla’s butt, and was pretty obese.
Next, his room. He had the creepiest family portrait on his desk next to his collection of bullet casings. Yep, many used shells were just chilling on his desk.
And then, even from the moment, he moved in, his room just had the foulest odor. It literally smelled like decaying something or other.
And then the events started happening…
Event 1: Almost immediately we would hear voices. Chris would talk to himself in different voices all day, all night. Then the voices would stop and we would hear pounding. It legitimately sounded like he was repeatedly throwing himself against the wall. Then it would stop. Then it would start. Stop. Start. All the freaking time.
Event 2: I was home for Labor Day weekend and only my roommates Adam and Chris were at the apartment.
Adam’s partner came to visit and Adam had a few friends over. Whenever we had parties (or even a few people) Chris would storm out of the apartment in his basketball shorts with no shoes (even in the middle of winter) and not return for some time.
Well, he stormed out in the middle of Adam’s get-together and didn’t come back. Everyone left around 1 so Adam and his partner went to lay down in his room, which faces the front of the apartment.
Adam’s room is right next to the front door. So as they’re laying there about to fall asleep, Adam and his partner hear a man’s voice audibly say, “I’m going to FULL ON murder you all.” His partner freaks, Adam jumps up and throws open his door when he sees Chris reentering the apartment.
Adam asks Chris if he saw anyone outside and that he just heard someone blatantly whisper through his window.
Chris’s response? “I would be scared if I were you.”
Event 3: About a week after Labor Day, I was in the living room doing homework.
There is a wall separating the living room and kitchen and Chris’s bedroom is on the side of the kitchen where if he walked out of his room, he wouldn’t be able to see into the living room.
As I’m sitting there, I hear Chris’s door open.
In the most demonic, deep voice (not nasally at all) I hear him shout “Who the flip left the light on?” He then turns the kitchen light off and returns to his room and slams the door. He then begins shouting in this demon voice, but then it changes to this soft feminine-sounding voice and then back to this demon voice.
In these two voices, he was having an argument with himself. At one point, he would be demon screaming, and then the next he would be softly crying “I’m so sorry, Chris.” When he started apologizing, he also started slamming himself so hard against the wall that the whole apartment shook.
I was sitting on the couch in awe at what I was hearing.
I then hear his door slam open and he’s still shouting when he turns the corner and sees me sitting there in awe. The moment he sees me, in his nasal voice, he says “Oh…” and left the apartment with no shoes, no keys. He never acknowledged it again, even when I brought it up to him when he later returned.
Anyway, I went to the realtor and tried to move or get him removed to no avail.
Adam and I installed key locks on our doors and I personally propped up my desk chair in front of my door every night (pretty sure Adam slept with a hammer by his bed for protection purposes).
Adam’s partner never came back over but we learned to deal with it. We would have parties, Chris would leave or sometimes stay (and our partygoers would hear him throw himself against the wall for hours and we would explain our weird roommate Chris).
Last I heard Chris was in Texas working as a teacher and Adam and I live to tell this tale to this day.”
4. Everything Was Broken
He. Went. Ballistic.
“Living in a college student-only apartment building, I requested a move to a new room because of party animal roommates.
Rooms are all five-bedroom suites with shared bathrooms, kitchen, and living room.
As it’s summer, three of the bedrooms in the new room are rented but empty by students not there for the summer, and only one roommate is actually present.
Meet the new roommate, seems normal, chill, talk about video games and music a lot. Honestly seemed like he could be a great friend at first.
One day a few weeks later, I start hearing random screaming and crashing coming from his room.
At one point he knocks on my door, asking for a broom, as he’s broken a few things.
I give him a dustpan and broom and ask if he’s okay, he mumbles something to himself as he walks back to his room and slams the door.
A few hours later, more screaming, more crashing, and again he knocks on the door, this time asking for some tape.
I give him some and again ask if he’s okay, and he replies he might need to go to the mental hospital but I don’t need to do anything.
I go to bed with some earplugs in (a habit I’d formed because of previous party animal roommates), and the next morning our shared kitchen and living room are TRASHED.
Broken furniture, drawers, and cabinets torn off the wall, a knife sticking out of the wall, TV cratered in as if it was punched, the whole nine.
Luckily for me, I’m leaving for a family event that weekend, so I decide to head out early and leave right that second (after taking pictures of the damage.)
On my way out of the building, I stop at the building manager’s office to tell her everything.
She already knew something was up, as apparently a window from his room was smashed and objects were thrown onto the sidewalk below.
She asks me to write up an email detailing what I’d seen, and provide her the pictures I took. I do so and bail.
A few hours later, I get a text from a friend who works near my building saying “LOL bro there’s a ton of cops surrounding your building, did you kill someone or something?”
I emailed the building manager to ask what happened, but she tells me the police were inside our suite, but she can’t detail what happened with him due to privacy concerns.
A few days later, going back to the building, I pop in her office to ask the building manager for details or warnings before I go up.
She’s not there, but her assistant is. I ask the assistant, whose only reply to my concerns is “You know, the eviction process takes a really long time.”
I go up to the room, pooping myself, expecting the worst, but luckily he’s not around at the moment.
I didn’t see him again for a couple of days, and once I did, he acted completely casually and as if nothing had happened. Casually asking about video games and random stuff standing in an apartment with completely torn apart cabinets and furniture.
A week or so later, he’s gone without a trace. Apparently, his family forced him to move back home and defer going to college so he could get better.
Apparently when I’d left for that weekend, why the police showed up, the building manager contacted the roommate’s father, but when the father showed up, the roommate possibly threatened to kill someone (people who were nearby/present differ in stories) so the police had to show up and break into the room.
He seemed to have a history of mental illness and had a few events in his life that caused this breakdown.
Good news, a year and a half later I see on social media he ended up finishing college, has a full-time job, and seems to be functioning very well.”
3. Nobody Would Expect A Drag Queen To Do Something Like This
“Can’t say this was my roommate, but he pretty much was. He used to live right below me in my old apartment complex.
The guy moved in a few months after I did, so I was still meeting people in the complex.
I met and hung out with the guy that lived right across the hall from him. Anyway, so one night I’m out on my balcony with a friend from work, smoking and having a few drinks.
The next day, I’m walking down to my car and he’s bringing stuff up from his truck (he was still unpacking and getting settled) and immediately says, ‘Hey!’ and all that and cuts to the chase saying, ‘Hey!
I smelled that smoke last night and heard you out on the balcony, was that you?’ and I looked at him and thought he seemed cool and told him, ‘Yeah from time to time, I partake in that. Last night was one of those occasions.’ He then said he’d love it if I could get him some so he could celebrate him moving in and christen the place pretty much.
I agree, told him I was gonna be working that day but that night I would knock on his door and give it to him.
He said that was cool, so I left, went to work, picked up from one of my coworkers, headed back home. Walking up the steps since he lived below me, I knocked on his door to take care of that before I went to my apartment and kicked back and started to relax.
I knocked on the door, and he opens, and he has lipstick that looked smeared on his face by his lips, and his hair was all messy, he didn’t have a shirt on, and the music was blasting, and he looked excited and out of breath. I’m thinking this guy is getting it on no doubt. I give him his stuff and walk back upstairs.
It wasn’t till I got upstairs where after a few minutes he turned the music off and I didn’t hear anybody hooking up below me.
I also thought, ‘This guy just said he moved from out of state, he didn’t know anybody here, he hasn’t started his job yet.. who is he with? This guy must-have skills for picking up women.’
Anyway, a few weeks passed and I didn’t really talk to him that much but weird things started to happen.
Like outside our front doors in the hallway there were these plastic benches, and you could lift the seat part up and put your trash bags in them and close it. They had some maintenance guy come once a week and take all the bags.
Anyway, I noticed it started to look like someone was going through my trash. I had a certain way of putting the bags in there so they would fit, and when I would come home sometimes the seat part wouldn’t even close all the way and it would stick out and catch my attention. I thought hey there’s a big freaking tree right there, might’ve been a squirrel or some rodent.
Then, one night I came home and there was a huge scratch on the door, completely chipped the paint off and everything and the scratch was right next to the doorknob. I immediately thought someone tried to break in. Said screw it though and went inside and that was that.
Anyway, one night about a couple of months after our first conversation outside his car when he was unpacking, I wake up at about 3 or 4 in the morning.
I was just laying in bed, couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I decided to go outside, smoke, and then go back to bed.
I go out on my balcony, and I see this chick in the parking lot in a bright red dress and a long curly blonde wig. I’m trying to get a better look, that’s when I started to notice this chick was pretty masculine, the way she moved, her shoulders… wait..
is that?? is that hair on her legs???? wait… does that chick… does that chick have a goatee?
Needless to say, I saw ‘her’ walk back up the stairs, and of course ‘she’ walks into that guy’s apartment.
I immediately thought about the time he had lipstick all over his face and his hair was all messed up and his shirt was off. He was obviously in drag a few moments before I knocked on the door.
Then thought this guy is probably an addict or just mentally unstable and is going through my trash looking for stuff or just garbage he could put in his personal ‘shrine’ to me. I thought about the big deep scratch on my door next to the doorknob, and a number of times I felt someone was watching me.
It all made sense at that point.
Anyway, a little while after that happened, since I don’t really judge people and always look for the best in people, and I know how to defend myself, one day he invites me and my neighbor to watch the basketball game and drink a couple of drinks. We go but my friend and I bring our own drinks.
We start to drink our drinks first. In the 4th quarter, we finished the drinks we brought and start drinking his drinks.
He rushed to the kitchen, immediately opened them up, was in there for a couple of seconds, and came back out with a smile and handed them to us like he was in a marathon or something.
We drink the drinks and by the time we finish them the game was just about over and we call it a night.
I go back to my apartment, lock the door, and take a shower.
I get out of the shower and no lie I just collapsed and fell into the cabinet doors under my sink. I looked around and thought that was really strange, and when I was about to get up I got really lightheaded and dizzy and it began to be hard to breathe.
I stay on the floor for a moment, take a few deep breaths, start to feel kinda normal, and get up and all that.
My heart was still racing because just collapsing like that scared the heck out of me. I didn’t know what that meant or why that happened and if it was anything serious.
So, I go to bed, and as soon as I close my eyes I start to see weird freaking images pop up in my head and they seemed so flipping real. Sometimes it scared me because I couldn’t determine what was real or what wasn’t, then I passed out sometime after that.
The next day I woke up feeling a little weak and just shake it off and I go over to my cell phone and see a text from my neighbor, the guy who came with me to that guy’s house to watch the game.
All the text said was ‘Dude, I think I need to talk to you.’ I immediately called him and I’m just like ‘I think I know what you’re about to say, but just in case..’ and told him to tell me what he needed to tell me.
He was pretty disturbed by it, like devastated. No emotion in his voice, his voice was just flat and weak. He’s like ‘man, last night I came home and I started to cook something in the kitchen. He said out of nowhere the room started spinning like crazy and he fell back and hit his head on the sink. He said after that was a blur.
He’s like ‘I didn’t have that much to drink last night.’ After I told him about my experience, he starts to open up more about this guy, and being that he lived right across from the guy, he was more likely to witness things this guy was doing more than me.
He told me there were some times very late at night this guy would come home and he would be sleeping on his couch, and the guy would come home and wake my friend up, my friend would get aggravated and look in the peephole and admitted to me he saw him in dresses before, sometimes carrying TVs or computers, all that.
I was just thinking darn, what if we drank his drinks first, both of us would’ve passed out in this dragqueen’s apartment.
Still, can’t believe it.
It still seems surreal that something like that almost happened to me.”
Another User Comments:
“Something similar happened to me, but it was a neighbor/roommate thing.
I was living in a small town and was fairly new there.
Some people I worked with asked me to a party and being new I was happy to get out and hang out with some people. So I show up, and it’s this strange scene for a small town. Kind-of goth and a bit like a really small rave. So I have a few drinks and am chatting with some people, and all of a sudden, I start to feel really weak.
At first, I thought it was diarrhea, like the kind you get really bad where you have like cold sweats and all that. But then I didn’t really have stomach cramps or anything.
So I go outside, and it’s the middle of winter, and the cold air just hits me like a ton of bricks. Everything started getting super hazy, and I couldn’t really see well.
Out of logic, I decided it was time to head home, and I knew I couldn’t drive, so I just start walking in the general direction of my house.
The next thing I know, I’m sitting at the police station in the tank. Since it was a small town, I was pretty much the only person there besides the officer watching me. I decided to just sleep until the morning and figure stuff out from there.
The next morning, the officer wakes me up and starts asking me what happened. I told him how I only had a few drinks expecting him to pretty much assume that I was lying, but he started asking me who I was with and where. Then he told me that they picked me up sleeping on a bench on the sidewalk. They managed to breathalyze me, and I wasn’t even close to the DUI limit.
He then tells me that someone in town has been spiking people’s drinks randomly, and I was not the first person that they’ve found like that. To my knowledge, they never caught the person.” nujurzy87
2. She Picked The Wrong Man To Be With
“Made the mistake of renting my first apartment with a chick who I’d only known for about 3 months, but with whom I’d become very close very quickly.
I was 20 and she was 23.
She ended up seeing some scumbag dude from a very sketchy neighborhood on the opposite side of our city.
He was an absolute jerk.
They fought often and I received not a few phone calls from her in the middle of the night, intoxicated off her butt, and begging me to come to pick her up. She usually didn’t know where she was but wanted to get away from him. It was always on nights when I had to be up early for either school or work.
He also punched 2 holes in one of her bedroom walls when they got into an altercation in our apartment. Thankfully I wasn’t home for that one.
What sealed the deal for me not wanting to live with her anymore was when we had a Halloween party and only a few folks showed up.
She went down to a neighborhood bar to rally a few more people to come over.
I stayed at home and drank some drinks that she’d gotten for us. Her partner was there and was angry that she’d left to find more attendees, some of whom were guys… one of whom had a blatant crush on her.
The partner ended up sitting on her bed, crying and ranting that he thought she was two-timing him, and I sat on the floor with a buzz and covered in makeup, trying to reassure him that she wasn’t and attempting to calm him down.
It didn’t work and eventually, he said, “screw this!” and reached into his overnight bag and pulled out a semi-automatic weapon.
He racked the slide and left the room. He went to confront my roommate and this other dude.
I sat on the floor in a daze, thinking that I’d somehow just made myself an accomplice to a murder. That the cops would be called, and that I’d be in even MORE trouble with the cops for drinking underage.
Thankfully, the situation somehow deescalated and no one was hurt, but that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. It took about a week for me to summon up the courage to tell her that I didn’t want her partner to come around anymore. She insisted that she paid half of the rent, therefore half of the apartment was hers, and that she could invite over whoever she wanted.
It took about another week for me to tell her that I didn’t want to live together anymore. She was FURIOUS.
She refused to leave and told me that I’d have to be the one to go. I ended up calling the landlord and explaining to him everything that had gone on in that apartment with my roommate and her partner. He came one afternoon while she was at work and I had the day off.
I showed him the physical evidence (holes that she’d covered up with posters) and filled him in on the rest (there’s more to this story, but I’ve mentioned the biggest indiscretions).
He called her and told her that they needed to talk, giving her the heads-up that he’d be at our place when she got home.
She arrived and tried to avoid him, even though she had to walk past him through the living room to get to hers.
He demanded that she come and talk to him in the living room. She eventually relented once he’d asserted his landlord authority. He called her out on the stuff that had happened, she denied everything at first until he told her that he’d seen the holes in the wall and was, therefore, more inclined to believe me.
She started crying and fessed up to everything.
He told her that she had a week to vacate.
I left for that week, moving back to my mother’s with my cat and valuables (in case she decided to exact some sort of revenge on my pet or possessions, which wouldn’t have surprised me in the least).
I came back to find her things gone… along with some of my art supplies and half of my dishes.”
1. Nothing But A Big Baby
“I (F26) have three roommates (M29, F31, M30). Person C (M30) has no relation to either of us prior to moving in, and I also interviewed for the room as a random as well.
Person A + B (M29, F31) are the best of friends, and their circle of people is their shared friends.
Person A was straight-up disrespectful to me when I initially moved in. I placed a box in front of my room that I planned on moving down to the basement because I couldn’t fit it in my room, and I was told that “it is okay to take my time as long as I move it down eventually.”
A week passes after the readjustment, and he is annoyed and offers to help me move it down himself, and I was thankful because I’m very weak but while doing this, he eyeballs me so hard and does a loud groan. It baffles me.
I haven’t had much interaction with this person or the two others at this point (so we hadn’t even really talked about personal lives or politics), and I wasn’t really sure what I had done that could’ve possibly upset him because it has only been a week since I moved in.
And when I would talk about a topic while all of us were in the same room, he would noticeably cut me off abruptly and change the topic very quickly.
This happens a couple more times on other topics.
I try to be conscious of when I make people feel uncomfortable and avoid double down-ing (but am guilty time to time), so I’m weirded out because I’ve really tried to accommodate him each time, and I’m not sure what is making him uncomfortable or annoyed.
Even if the topic is slightly uncomfortable for me, I’m the type of person that lets a person finish what is on their mind before gently transitioning into a different topic.
I know we are two different people, but it’s just annoying coming from a man-baby. I also make an effort to be receptive to feedback when a person tells me something I’m doing or saying is making them feel eh.
I know that everyone is different, and you can’t really judge someone’s personality from an interview, so he obviously wouldn’t know any of this about me, but I also hadn’t expected him to blatantly eye roll me….
We also have an ant problem every summer in the kitchen, and the first summer, I tried to take care of it.
He saw I was using disinfectant and loudly, passive-aggressively said “CHEMICALS.” I immediately said, “Is this bothering you?” and he was just… surprised I called him out on it.
There were other minor interactions in between.
A couple of months later, person A’s partner comes by, and they are preparing food in the kitchen. He loudly complains to his partner about how his knife is being used while I am in the kitchen and said, “I already talked to the other two about it.” This was also really strange that he said it while another person was there and couldn’t directly address the situation prior.
I have no knowledge of this whatsoever, and I’m just utterly confused and unaware that the problem existed in the first place.
He proceeds to complain about the same issue for what seems like ~5 minutes, and I turn around and say, “Is something bothering you….? You can tell me about it…” He is surprised that I am directly addressing him and says, “No, nothing at all.” He doubles down and complains, again, and I ask him, again.
He is still surprised.
He starts complaining after the second ask, and I just lose it. I address him head-on and just tell him, “You need to say something to me and stop being a passive-aggressive jerk” and leave the house to go to work.
My room is on the second floor facing the set of stairs going up the third floor, and he would kick my shoes outside of my door while climbing up or down.
I figured it must be the number of shoes, so I limited it to one or two, but he kicked those too, no matter how neatly I arranged it and made sure it didn’t get in his way.
His room is directly on top of mine, and he would stomp and jump after I had made it clear many times that it bothered me, whenever something I did or said bothered him.
I don’t even know what I’m doing because I’m trying really, really hard to stay out of his way because he’s just an unpleasant human being…… He also conveniently neglects to flush the toilet after doing #1 after I group chatted it before and I for sure know it’s him bc I’ve caught him leaving as I’m going in.
If you pee facing the toilet, it’s really hard to forget…..
I didn’t know what else to do, so I went to person B (who I’m on okay terms with) to try and mediate the situation, but she gaslights me and makes excuses for whatever weird things he does. Sigh. She also thinks I have ill intentions even though 1) I lose when I directly confront him, and 2) I lose when I try to non-confront with group chat because texting him is too “confrontational” too.
Approaching her was the last resort….
After every time my close friend would come over, whatever person A did before would be worse for a few days and calm down after. We talk about everything, primarily activism within the person of color community and whiteness.
We are both people of color, and my three roommates are white progressives who are “allies,” but they’re very uncomfortable about us talking about any of this, even though they talk about being white themselves.
Once again, I’m unaware, and I would’ve avoided this had I known they’re not cool with it.
I’m also confused about what point person A is uncomfortable with.
I get that people don’t like certain things you say or do and have different opinions, but most people just avoid interaction with that person instead of acting like this.
He recently cut my dishwashing glove a few months ago (no one uses those gloves except me, and it was after a slight disagreement we had on something so I know it’s him), and I’m just done at this point.
We disagree about what racism is and certain issues within politics, but to be honest, it’s just whatever to me. When that happens and it makes me uncomfortable, I don’t do anything to him or his belongings, and I just avoid the topic. But he will do this nonsense and loudly, passive-aggressively talk to his friends and family about it. I literally walk 10-15 mins away from my house to talk to a therapist about the issues I have with him (walls are thin; I want to be considerate and make sure I don’t provoke him).
Person B found out I was talking to my therapist about it and informed him. He repeats all of the above and loudly, passive-aggressively complains to his fam again.
It’s really annoying, and I’m not sure what to do. I have been dying inside for the past two years and I can’t move out bc $$$, so I try to be civil and diffuse potentially difficult situations.
I’ve cried about this x amt of times out of frustration. No matter what I do, he double retaliates, and it’s an eye for two eyes.
He is a total, straight-up bully that everyone thinks is a nice person, and I feel crazy. My friends and family know about it, and I’ve decided to stop talking about the situation to them and instead process it with my therapist, so I can move forward in life.
There are other things I am at fault for of course, so I’ve tried to sit him down once in the past to work out our differences, and he just… sneered at me.
He’s a belligerent man-child who interprets everything I do or say as an attack towards him, and he has a deep victim mentality.
I’m ready to hold myself accountable and hear him out about anything I’ve done that may have upset him, but he has closed that so I left him alone.
The passive-aggressive behavior has accumulated into hostility and can be classified as aggression now. I’m typing about this while he is jumping and stomping in his room.”
Another User Comments:
“I would start recording every interaction. This guy sounds like he will eventually resort to violence. Watch your back.” pashamom
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