#1

One day I'm in the kitchen with her, She opens a drawer A mouse darts out.
With ninja-like reflexes she snatches up a fork and spears it, Then looks at me, and says "you can't tell anyone about this."
I'm sure my eyes were huge. I said, "Cool! Can you do it again?"
She was so nice to me, I cried a river when they took me out of her house,.
#2

They had roaches everywhere. Kitchen. Bathroom. Living room. My sister wouldn't even sit on the couch - she sat on an ottoman in the center of the room, as did I.
We only did that a few times before we weren't "available" anymore.
#3

Painted nicely, trim was painted, yard in okay condition. Totally no idea why it was being torn down, or why it could possibly be condemned. It looked fine. All we knew were that the residents no longer lived there, 2 had gone to a mental facility, one to a hospital, one to jail, and the house was doomed; earn your pay an' take 'er down. (Half a week into the job, we learned the one that went to hospital was a lady around 85 or so, she died of sepsis complications...I believe that.)
I did notice, breaking our way in with no keys, it's got a peculiar scent to it that seemed to get stronger the closer we got to getting the door open.
Got inside. Jigglin' Jesus on a jungle gym. Hoarder house from hell. Previous residents had found the house abandoned and had done a lot of work to make the outside presentable. Presumably if someone visited they didn't want anybody mental alarm to flip out. Did nothing internally and were chronic hoarders. House had no wiring, no plumbing. One room had a couple gas generators rigged up to provide electricity, exhaust piped out the window. (Small miracle they hadn't fumed themselves to death.)
For plumbing, they got creative. One room had about 200 empty gallon milk jugs which they filled with water somewhere and used out of.
When you're looking at a house, you really learn about the previous residents. We learned they used paper plates and didn't throw them away. Matter of fact, didn't throw anything away. I think they'd been afraid to do much with garbage for fear of tipping off that someone lived there, so they just kept it. Every other room was piled floor to ceiling with junk. Garbage, cardboard, old newspapers, kitchen trash, everything.
Main living space was kept fairly clear of junk, four bedding setups on the floor. Picture "cowboy movie bedroll" style bedding on the floor. No mattresses, just right flat on the floor. (Bet that was toasty sleeping in winter.)
The paper plates did double duty as bathroom receptacles. In the bathroom there was a 6" hole cut in the floor in a corner, looked like with a chainsaw. The outlet for #1; you stood/squatted there, aimed best you could, and let flow. (I guess the women aimed with their rear-facing third eye?)
For #2 there were 8 or 9 stacks, floor to ceiling in the shower, of paper plates, each with a BM on it. Thousands of dumps on thousands of paper plates. They'd jammed old newspaper with what looked like white elementary school glue on it down the toilet and shaped a little ledge in the toilet to set "eat off it but aint pooed on it yet" plates on.
I've encountered some "redneck white trash" stuff in my time. Hell, I ***am*** redneck white trash by misfortune of birth...but I aint never had even one paper pooper plate in my house.
A few years ago, a thread appeared on AskReddit, the author of which asked netizens a question: "What's the grossest thing you've ever seen at a stranger's house?” Today the thread is no longer collecting new comments, but there are already quite a lot of them: 1.3K with twice more upvotes. So today we, Bored Panda, offer you a selection of the most popular stories from this thread.
I want to give a small disclaimer right away - if you’re too impressionable or simply have a good imagination, it’s better to switch to some other, cuter and calmer post. Like this one, for instance. Because, despite my good emotional stability, while reading these stories, I also needed a break a couple of times to calm down.
#4

I briefly lived in New Orleans, LA, entirely for work. It was a 60 day contract. I was put up in an old, and quite rink-d**k old house not far from the levies. The house is gone after Katrina.
Anyhow, my neighbor through my back-yard, always had this god-awful stench coming from his yard. He had anywhere from 2-4 dogs in the back yard that were almost always chained up. The dogs look sickly, mangy, and abused. I couldn't stand looking at those poor puppers that way.
There was this large sheet-metal shed he'd called his "dog house". I found it very strange though the dogs never went in there. If anything, they wouldn't go anywhere near it. I was doing just a little bit of yard-work in my back yard, and began to notice small swarms of bugs all over that sheet-metal shack. The stench was so over-powering that I could barely finish. My neighbor to my house's left (*if facing the front door*) peaked over my fence asking if I was okay. I said I wanted to barf, and pointed to the shack. Lets call this neighbor Bill.
Bill said he'd lived in his house about a year and a half, and it had always smelled horrible. He noted the presence of strange flies he'd only seen on the shed, and what he thought were Beatles. We discussed what it could be, and we decided to confront the owner about it politely. Lets call the shack-owner Mike.
Mike answered his door. Think kid-rock, but with a far more pronounced mullet and beer-gut. We asked him to do something about the smell, and he wasn't having any of it. Gave us the "get off my property, or I'll get my gun and shoot you both". Bill suggested we listen, as he knew that wasn't an empty threat.
We decided to call the police about 2 days later, after Mike had left for work. A single officer arrived, and we guided him to my back yard. They noticed the smell, and said it smelled like decay, and rotting bodies. They noted that the bugs on the shed, were carrion vermin, often seen around dead bodies, and they'd seen it on many calls before. Within an hour or so, other investigators arrived, and with a warrant they c*****d open the shed.
Dead dogs. Nearly a dozen dead dogs that had died from abuse, and he'd just thrown the bodies in the shed to bake in the sun. Bill and I watched from our back yard as seasoned animal control veterans, and detectives alike nearly lost their lunch from having to cart away the corpses of those poor pooches.
Mike would be arrested, and eventually imprisoned for nearly 24 counts of abuse of an animal. There were just that many bodies in there.
#5

Sat down on the couch, dog jumps up onto the cushion next to me and unleashes a TORRENT of p**s, soaking the other cushion.
Before I can do anything he shoos the dog off the couch, flips the cushion and hands me a beer like nothing happened.
Needless to say I got up, chugged that beer and bounced within about 2 minutes.
#6

As it turns out, many people have complete chaos going on at home. From hordes of insects to mountains of rotting garbage right on the floor, from real collections of old and unnecessary junk to "nurseries" of animals, like that old lady mentioned above.
By the way, if you’re interested, a couple of years later she was caught trying to catch stray kittens and feed them to her huge Cane Corso dog... So all the animals that were found in her apartment were sent to a pet shelter, and I do hope that they found a new, much happier home.
#7

#8

I could smell the inside from the driveway as I walked up. I get to the door and one of the most rotund humans I’ve ever seen greeted me. I get inside and immediately see why it smells so bad.
This place was horrific. Take the worst episode of Hoarders and multiply it by 1000x. There is trash piled to the ceiling. Old food strewn everywhere left to rot and mold. There is feces (I dare not ask from what species) so old on the floor that it’s turned white from mold. The only “clear” places were the walking paths these creatures had made to get from room to room and the areas on the furniture in which they sat. There were three of them; mother, father, and daughter. Not one was under 300lbs (poor daughter was probably 14-16).
I’m completely aghast while trying to keep my composure and be professional. I was doing good until the daughter did something that has haunted my dreams for a decade.
This girl grabbed a filthy and moldy bowl of god knows what off the floor and takes it to the kitchen. I had a brief glimmer of hope that I was about to witness her actually clean a dish. I. Was. Wrong. Oh god was I wrong.
She goes to the sink, takes the spoon that was on the bowl and scrapes the contents of said bowl into the sink, then, without so much as rinsing the bowl, proceeds to pour new cereal and milk into the bowl and eat it.
I. F*****g. Lost. It. Bailed outta there faster than a politicians morals and did everything I could not to throw up on my way out.
#9

A middle aged man reached out to hire me to come watch his 2 labs while he went overseas for a week. I would always go meet the person/s and pets before accepting the job, just to make sure all parties were comfortable and so I was able to meet the dogs before coming to take care of them. I agreed to meet at the mans house because he wanted to show me how to work his security, where food was kept, etc. My boyfriend came with me but waited in the car while I went inside.
This guy lived in a very nice neighborhood, in a very large, beautiful house. Well, on the outside at least. He tells me to come in and sit down at his kitchen table. I sit down, and notice there is dog hair everywhere, on the floor, on the seats, on the table. But then I look closer and realize it’s not dog hair, but thousands of FINGER NAIL CLIPPINGS. All over the table he prompted me to sit at. I look around and see that there are nail clippings on every surface of this house. The island, countertops, in the floor vents, everywhere.
There were MANY other weird things about this situation that made me decide to not accept the job, other than the finger nails like him wanting me to sleep in his bed. Dude was weird.
Some professionals - for example, electricians, plumbers or cleaners, when they get into such houses, are forced to face such blatant unsanitary conditions and dirt that it’s time to ask the higher-ups for a special chemical protection suit or spacesuit. But seriously, for many people the origins of such behavior lie, of course, in the mental plane.
#10

That or a guy that died and layed in the heat for 2 weeks.
#11

#12

"Sometimes the roots of many strange habits in people should be looked for in their childhood, because it is the situations that a person faces in this period of their life that usually leave an indelible mark on their behavioral patterns,” says Irina Matveeva, a psychologist and certified NLP specialist, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here.
"For example, if a person in their childhood faced a shortage of food or some household items - like, for example, clothes, then in adulthood this can develop into excessive hoarding. When a person is simply afraid that they will not have enough food - and as a result this food literally rots in their home.”
"Interestingly, when such a person is asked about the reasons for such behavior, they often simply say that they want to provide themselves with food ‘just in case,’ without considering their behavior as something strange. Therapy can help in these cases - however, by the way, such patients rarely seek specialists themselves,” Irina summarizes.
#13

You'd think that was the worst part, wouldn't you? You'd be a fool, just like me.
We go into his bedroom. Every flat surface has a combination of five to twenty plastic cups and beer cans, each one packed with ashes and cigarette butts.
This dude goes, "sit down". Sit down? On what? I'm afraid I'm getting dysentery just breathing in this room.
Still not done.
He says, "let me clean up a little". I'm thinking to myself, "should we come back in like, four hours? Cuz you're gonna need more than a Swiffer in here", but I keep my mouth shut. He starts clearing things off of his bed, where some of us are expected to sit. He moves his pillow, and from underneath, tumbles the pièce de résistance - this dude's crusty f*****g j**z rag.
I pretended I didn't see it. So did everyone else who saw it. He kicked it under his bed, as we all silently bargained with each other about who was sitting on that full-size colony of toxoplasmosis with him. I stayed for another five minutes, standing, before deciding enough was enough.
#14

Used for child discipline. A very old-fashioned thing, but still used in parts of the US. You just pop the lid and hold it under the child's nose. It stinks.
Easily bought from goat farmers online, apparently. It gets the smell from male goats.
I was at my girlfriend's house at 16 and didn't believe her dad really owned one, so she showed me when he wasn't looking.
A disgusting rag that clearly used to be white, but was thoroughly yellowed/greyish and discoloured and slick-looking. Double-sealed inside 2 glass jars.
I almost smelled it out of curiosity (though she urged me not to) but got cold feet when I pulled it out of the drawer...even without opening the jars I sensed something smelled slightly...*funky*. I'm not sure if I was imagining it or if it was really that strong but I didn't want to experience it any more than that.
#15

I had a Mountain Dew 2 liter bottle in my hand...it was full of p**s.
By the way, if you want another story from my personal experience - here’s a tale about one of my friends, whose home I visited for the first time about fifteen years ago. I was absolutely gobsmacked that the door to the kitchen in his apartment didn’t open at all - simply because the kitchen was completely filled with empty plastic beer bottles.
When I asked him why he didn’t throw away these bottles, he answered quite sincerely: "I'm just too lazy, and I can just make a sandwich or eat pizza in another room!" The most paradoxical thing is that he was a very clever and interesting person to talk to - and all his friends were incredibly sad when he passed away a couple of years ago, having undergone two liver transplant operations…
Yes, such stories very often end quite sadly.
#16

#17

#18

Be that as it may, we are pretty sure that you might be interested in reading this very specific selection of tales. In the end, all genres of books and movies have their fans - so please feel free to hold your breath and read these stories to the end.
By the way, if you remember any similar story from your own life experience as well - welcome to the comments under this list!
#19



