It's no secret that every family has its own weird little quirks and traditions. Yet, there are some seemingly normal households who communicate on a whole new level of weird. While often such behavior seems natural to them, outsiders often see it as completely bizarre.
In this viral thread, user TheCastro asked what's "the creepiest thing" people have seen other families do without realizing how strange it was, and thousands of replies started pouring in. Whether it's mandatory cuddle time or weekly family adult movie nights, these stories sit pretty high on the oddness scale.
Bored Panda took some of the wildest answers from the post, so continue scrolling and upvote your favorite ones. Also, if you've encountered anything similar, be sure to share it with us in the comment section below.
#1
I went on vacation with my buddy when we were kids. They weren't religious but before ever meal they would all say the same chant about being a better person and trying your best. It was really creepy because they would all say it in the same monotone voice.
It turned out the mom was just tired of everyone eating before she got to the table so she made up the tradition.
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233points
#2
In my first few weeks of high school I made a new friend who quickly invited me to his house. He and his family were extremely down to earth, normal people it seemed. When we sat down at the table I dont remember the finer details of the meal but.. after a while I noticed my friend and his younger brother licking every last crumb and bit of sauce from the plate, nothing out of the ordinary I thought, long day I supposed. This was until an hour later, when his mother brought my dirty plate into his room and demanded to know who hadn't licked their plate clean. My friend nervously pointed at me. She was furious and asked how the next person was supposed to eat from it if I had not licked it clean. She left the room, surely what I was thinking couldnt be true? I asked my friend if they actually wash their plates and he replied 'of course, we use our tounges so the next person can use it?' Needless to say, I never returned to that house.
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228points
Being close to your family is great, in fact, it’s often encouraged since having strong ties with your loved ones can make you feel safe and appreciated. However, there’s such a thing as being too close. Families that have blurred boundaries or completely erase the line of one’s personal space are often referred to as enmeshed.
Enmeshment can involve an expectation that the children will have the identical belief system as their parents, which often means controlling and knowing every thought and feeling the kids have. Also, they heavily rely "on the children for emotional support and may even try to live their lives through their kids' activities and achievements."
#3
My friend's mom used to bust in on her daughter's friends using the bathroom and quickly snap a picture. She proudly showed me the photo album of random kids using the toilet looking surprised/confused as hell. Didn't really kick in how f*cked up that was until later in life.
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220points
#4
I am told it is a little disconcerting at first, but people warm up to my very mixed family.
Here is the background, both of my parents have divorced parents that never spoke to each other and never wanted to be like that when they divorced. So we have large family get togethers where all my siblings and all my step siblings hang out with my mom, dad, step dad, and stepmom. This includes international vacations, various birthday parties, and Valentine's Day. We just all get along and we are from a small town. It's especially helpful because last year my stepmom was paralyzed from the chest down and my mom helps take care of her.
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194points
#5
I knew a girl in high school whose parents were obsessed with dinner plates. They had such a huge collection of collectible plates in their house that every room was full of them on display. Their entire house was basically a library set up for these things. Her bedroom was a mattress on the floor surrounded by display cases of plates. You couldn't even lean on any wall, they were all like this.
The last time I went over there, I knocked one off the wall by mistake. I caught it and it didn't even break, but my God the rage her dad flew into was f*cking horrifying. He was inches away from punching me. Never went back! They tried to nervously laugh it off like, "Haha, good ol' Dad being funny, hahaha!"
The one time I asked my friend why they had so many, she want on a passionate tangent about all the cool plates they had and why they were so awesome. It went on for an hour. I never asked again because hearing about neat dishware for an hour was like torture.
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177points
It seems that when enmeshment occurs in families, it's hard for children (and their parents) to develop a sense of self, control their emotions and engage in relationships with others. But how do enmeshment and closeness actually differ?
"In healthy family relationships, however, closeness does not mean sacrificing identity or self-esteem for the sake of the family as seen with enmeshment." A wholesome household supports one another while still giving the needed space.
Enmeshed families are too close and sometimes the members find it difficult to distinguish "where one family member ends and another begins so much so that they often report being able to 'feel' one another's emotions." Such habits are incredibly hard to break, but with proper guidance, it’s possible to change them.
#6
My best friend's family has a life-size cardboard cutout of Sarah Michelle Gellar. They would adorn it with accessories like scarves and sunglasses, then hide it just behind closed doors and around corners to scare each other and their guests with it. I was caught by it many times, and it was always a laugh hearing a random loud gasp or scream in the house.
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173points
#7
I had a friend who would never let me come over to his house. I didn't know why because I'd met his mother and father and knew his siblings and they seemed like a very happy normal family and they had a nice home which I'd see often from the outside and inside through the living room window a couple times. One time however I managed to convince him to ask his mother if we could have a sleep over and she said yes. After a few moments of being there I realised why he was reluctant to let anyone over.
There were locks on every single door in the house. But not only that, every door required a different key and there was a set of keys for each door for each member of the six person family. In the Entrance Hall alone there must of been 30 keys on a rack.
To give one "short" example of how to get to the Bathroom from the Living Room and back again, you would have to:
Take Living Room - Entrance Hall key from its specific place in the Living Room.
Unlock the Entrance Hall door. Go through then lock the door behind you.
Store the Living Room - Entrance Hall key in its specific place in the Entrance Hall.
Take Bathroom key from its specific place in the Entrance Hall.
Unlock the Bathroom door. Go through then lock the door behind you.
Unlock the Bathroom door. Go through then lock the door behind you.
Store the Bathroom door key in its specific place in the Entrance Hall.
Take the Living Room - Entrance Hall key from its specific place in the Entrance Hall.
Unlock the Living Room door. Go through then lock the door behind you.
Place the Living Room - Entrance Hall key in its specific place in the living room.
Every. Single. Time. And it was a large house. Sometimes requiring going through 3 or 4 doors to reach the room you wanted.
It honestly felt like I was playing real life Resident Evil, collecting keys to open doors to progress. My friend was the only one who found it slightly embarasing his sisters and brother and parents didn't seem to think it was odd at all. I asked my friend why it was like that and he just said his Mother thought it was safer for them all that way. I never stayed over again and all sleepovers after that were conducted at my house.
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171points
#8
I went to this guy's house once after school. I wasn't friends with him, but we were assigned to a project together. We'll call him Gary. Anyways, we were working on this project when he excused himself to use the restroom. Fifteen minutes later, he returned. A little while later, I decided to use the restroom while he was making snacks.
I walked into the bathroom and behold! Before my eyes, floating like a manatee through the brown estuaries of Florida, was the result of Gary's earlier bathroom excursion. I shrugged it off (I mean, we all forget at least once, right?), flushed for him, took a leak, flushed again, and went to work on the project.
Gary's mom gets home from work a couple hours later. She nods to us and says hello politely before heading towards the back of the house. A few seconds later she returns to the kitchen where we were working and screams, "WHERE IS IT?" I jump and am confused, so I shoot a "WTF" look to Gary. Gary muttered, "It wasn't me, it was [name of Redditor]." His mom glared at me, huffed, and walked out.
Gary later explained that every day after school, he would take a dump and was required to leave it in the toilet so his mom could check it. He wasn't even sick or anything, she just wanted to check it to make sure he was healthy or something.
I never went back to Gary's house.
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161points
Creating a routine or a family ritual can bring meaning to your celebrations or even to your everyday. Not to mention the memories you’ll be able to keep with you and pass on to your own children later on. Having this connection with your parents, siblings and children can help you become a part of something extraordinary and unique.
However, there’s a fine line between extraordinary and disturbing. Reading through these stories can make you cringe, scratch your head and wonder: why on earth would someone think that these odd traditions are a good idea? Surprisingly, most of the families seem to be looking at them as a simple opportunity to bond. So if you believe that your family is weird for making you sit through music or game night, these stories will make you think again.
#9
“Okay. Brace yourselves.
I went on a picnic/barbecue thing with this family. Mom, dad, three or four kids, i don’t remember. We light the barbecue and start preparing food. The main attraction is chicken wings. Yum. The wings are covered in sauce. They are placed on the barbecue and the mother tends to them. After a forever, the food is ready. She brings the huge platter of chicken wings, sets them on the blanket. Everyone is taking plates, fixing drinks for themselves etc. The woman picks up a chicken wing. Holds it with two hands, as you do, and starts licking it. She’s licking it, turning it over, keeps licking. I think, ‘umm weird, but okay’.’ Then she puts it back on the platter. I am stunned. She picks up another one. Does the same. Puts it back. All the while, she’s talking. Saying things like ‘alright kids, come on, get your chicken wings, eat’.’ As if… she’s preparing the wings for our consumption by licking them. I am still in shock. I can’t say anything. I’m looking at everyone else. No one, none of them is reacting. There is no sign on anyone’s faces that something weird is going on. She licks and licks and licks and they just eat it.
I had salad that day.”
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149points
#10
My best friends family growing up... They all slept on the living room floor together. (The mom, dad, two teens, two toddlers, 2 dogs and a cat). Their house was so full of clutter, none of the kids had their own room. They ate, played and slept in the living room. It was so hot in that room everytime I stayed over, none of them used blankets. They used their favorite stuffed animal as a pillow and that was it! I bought my friend (age 13) a sleeping bag and pillow for her birthday and she cried- she was so happy. Really sad now that I think back on it...
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148points
#11
Whenever the father would come home from work or some errand, every family member would greet him by the door, and then stand around silently for a minute or so, blankly starring into space as if they were thinking about their next move. Then, the father would go sit in the same spot, and they would follow and sit down... there was absolute dead silence during dinnertime, and they always ate the exact same meal each night.
The mother also saved the children's dried-off belly buttons (the small piece of the umbilical cord that dries and falls off) and every tooth that fell or that was extracted. The children's hairs were tied into knots or braided and hung around multiple parts of the house.
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147points
#12
Uhhhh, this is actually abuse, and my mom did call CPS on them, but I'll say it anyway.
We knew a family growing up that the father would time their showers, literally 15 seconds under cold water, he would stand there and watch and then grab them out, one after the other.
They were not allowed to poop in the house. He had toilet paper for emergencies and guests. If they HAD to poop, he would pass them 5 squares of TP total, and watch them wipe. They trained themselves to only poop at school and church.
Summer would get to be 100 and still not air or fans in their bedroom, no open windows.
Probably about 20 more insane rules. Weird food rules. Very very very sad.
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145points
#13
I hung out and played with these three siblings. They were all pretty normal kids, but the mom seemed kind of clingy. During the summer we would play outside a lot; baseball, hockey, go karts, swimming, the norm.
Every single day at about 12:00 pm, the mom would call the kids back to the house, one at a time. They would have to go inside for about a half-hour, and would then come out while the next kid would go in. Never thought too much about it, until one day I was actually in their house with them and found out why she called them.
She had mandatory cuddle time with each of the kids. They would lie on the couch and she would spoon them in the quiet for about 30 minutes each. Weirdest thing I've ever encountered.
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137points
#14
Growing up my best friends family didn't have traditional snacks like fruit rollups, gushers, etc. They ate sticks of butter. Sticks of f**king butter. Whenever they offered me some I always told them I wasn't hungry. They had multiple packages of butter in the fridge and freezer. They didn't consume the entire stick rather would cut off pieces. They weren't poor, they weren't fat, but they were f**king crazy.
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130points
#15
I had a good friend in elementary school. They lived in a farm house that looked like it belonged to the Adams Family. Every wall in this house had a crucifix on it. Not a small handheld-size crucifix, these were two or three feet tall. On EVERY WALL; bathroom, bedrooms, closets.
They had a room upstairs that we were forbidden to go into, so of course we had to sneak in and see. I didn't know why it was forbidden, but it was basically a Vatican-style church chapel complete with burnt offerings, candles, pews, alter, and [a] six-foot-tall crucifix with Jesus hanging on it. But this was not the most WTF thing.
They had a cuckoo clock they called the "prayer clock." The clock had the 12 disciples for the numbers on [the] dial. I never knew what came out of the clock on the hour (probably Jesus), but every single hour that clock would go off. My friend's mother would round up all the kids and make us write thank you prayers and place them in the "prayer jar."
We had to write down thank you notes to Jesus for everything we did in the last hour... If we were playing with Legos and had a snack, I would have to write down, "Thank you, Jesus, for letting me play Legos and eating string cheese." His mom would read them and usually would have us edit them, saying things like, "You had apple juice, too, you don't think Jesus would be sad if you didn't thank him for the apple juice, too?"
By about 4th grade, I refused to go over anymore. It was just too weird, especially since their mom had just had a new baby and they "didn't believe in diapers." They let the kid crawl around naked and piss/sh*t on everything.
Twenty-four years later, what happened to the kids? The roaming pissing/sh*tting baby became a Catholic priest, the second youngest moved out and is a transsexual "entertainer," and the oldest (my friend) became a programmer in Silicon Valley. The father eventually left the mother.
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129points
#16
There was a family of girls I went to church with and none of them were allowed to cut their hair. They had to wait until they were 16 so they wouldn't get a haircut they'd regret, because the mother had. They also weren't allowed to talk at the dinner table.
One time one of the daughters was laughing at something and coughed on her food. The mom was afraid of one of them choking and dying, so talking was banned. No one told me that when I came over for dinner. I just talked and they all stared at me.
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123points
#17
Not other family, but still - one day my parents decided I'm big enough to start coming back home from school on my own. But apparently I wasn't old enough to get my own set of keys. I used to spend 1-2 hours every day sitting on a doormat, waiting for my sister to come back from school and let me in. I was often really hungry and peed my pants at least five times. I was around 10 at the time. Our neighbours, who saw me there every day said nothing. Wonder if it was creepy for them. Oh, and we were a middle class family!
After half a year my parents decided I am trustworthy and made this big 'funny' ceremony of giving me the keys. Made me sign this 'funny' contract of the key bearer and s**t. Wasn't that funny for me. They still sometimes make jokes about me not being responsible enough at the age of ten to even keep the keys.
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119points
#18
I went to elementary school with this girl and every year she would have a big sleepover with all the girls in the class (only about 10 girls. It was a small school.). Anyways her parents believed in an early bed time, which isn't crazy. However they also were super paranoid about robbers and had the most intense security system I've ever seen. This system was very sensitive and her parents would turn it on after everyone got into their sleeping bags. You were not allowed to get up during he night. You couldn't even roll around without setting the thing off. They would send people to bed at 7pm and expect all the kids to be silent and still until the morning.
Every year someone would move, the alarm would blare, and the dad would run downstairs with his shotgun while the mom called the cops. Every. Single. Year.
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116points
#19
Something that I have witnessed for years only began to hit me as the realization slowly unfolded. A family that I visited frequently (all adult children who still live with their parents) would coincidentally always have the same movie on every single time I visited. They all huddled around as though they are watching it for the first time.
Once, when I actually stayed over for a longer duration, the TV was finally turned off when the movie ended, only to be turned on again and the "play" button pressed for the same movie. I finally realized that this movie is watched multiple times a day, every single day, almost like a ritual, and all the members of the family react the same way to the same scene repeatedly as if they have never seen it before.
...for all those asking what movie, it was called Just Ask My Children [about a couple accused of child exploitation].
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108points
#20
I was babysitting for a girl and noticed weird furs on her bed. She explained to me very matter-of-factly that they were her cats. Her parents skinned her pet cats after they died (presumably of natural causes) and put the pelts on her bed. That was the only time I babysat for them.
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106points