“If Lost, Please Mail To The FBI”: 30 Bizarre Things That Have Been Found In Hotel Rooms

This story was told by a housekeeping manager during orientation. An old couple who are regulars would always stay at the hotel every summertime and the lady would always bring her teddy bear. She’d request that the housekeepers make sure to change its outfit daily. Odd indeed for the housekeepers to adhere to those rules, but not until they realized how well this couple would tip and anyone who happened to clean their room for the day would be so lucky. Bear had a name, forgot what it was, but the staff eventually started greeting it lmao.

Managed several hotel when I was younger, here’s a few weird bits:

A guest left a briefcase with £35k within it, tried to contact them several times to no avail, after 6 months the police advised us it was now ours - this went to the staff bonus pot.

One guest fell seriously ill and was hospitalised. The situation didn’t sit right and locked their companion out of the room (they were given an alternative room for free). Found the companion trying to break into the room (despite our offer to get stuff for them). Police were called and they were wanted by them, also transpired they’d poisoned the guest and were after their wealth.

An urn with someone’s ashes.

Most disgusting is this. Heard the most blood curdling of screams coming from the rooms. Ran up and found a very traumatised housekeeper. As she flicked the bedding (to change the bed), unbeknownst to her, was a used condom. This flicked up in the air and landed on her head. She was frozen in fear and screaming. Had to help her by picking it off her. Understandably she had the rest of the day off.

Have a slew of hospitality tales like these.

As a guest, checked into a room in CA. I turn on the wall-mounted AC unit and a dirty needle falls out the bottom. Then we order a cot for our kid. We roll it in the room, open it up, and multiple cockroaches fall out and scurry away.

We got our money back and adios immediately.

A few years ago I was staying in a remote part of Oregon for work. Staying all by myself.

I get up in the morning and go into the bathroom to take a shower. The curtain had been bunched against the wall.

I get undressed, turn the water on, and pull the curtain fully across tub. When I do, it exposes a bloody handprint on the white curtain.

Scared the living s**t out of me. I nope hard out of there and skip the shower leaving as fast as possible.

As I check out I tell the front desk employee about the handprint. She sighs, rolls her eyes and says, “Probably just some hunter cleaning his kill in the bathtub. They’re not supposed to but they do it all the time.”.

Had a lady check in early & ask for a late check out. She still hadn’t checked out by 2pm & wouldn’t come out of the room. When we were about to have her escorted out she finally left. In the room was 100’s of little white out bottles everywhere. She had painted every reflective surface with white out including all the plumbing under the sink, all the fixtures, every screw & had started painting the mirrors.

Friend's wife runs a mid priced hotel. She tells stories about what her people have found - everything from dead bodies in the bed frame (yup someone murdered their spouse, wrapped them in plastic) to d***s, adult toys (so many toys), to stolen cars in the parking lot. Anything you can imagine she has found.

Oh just remembered - cams in room. They have to scan every room now to validate that there are nothing communicating in the room now because of how many they have found.

Oh I have one!
Worked at a motel on the outskirts of the city that used to be down the street from some pretty well known strip clubs in Eastern Ontario. There was a performer had an extra special act and left it in the bathtub during the day. The housekeeper wasn't too thrilled about finding a gigantic python in the bathtub first thing in the morning.

A bathtub full of turnips.

I worked in a cheap hostel in Lisbon about 10 years ago. We had this very odd guest who'd speak in a super low voice and walk really slowly. He'd also leave random bits of TP around the hostel. Once the cleaning lady found him in his room completely rolled in toiled paper.

For me it would be about 16 gallons of urine stashed underneath a bed we found while cleaning, it was stored in tons of plastic water bottles varying of different brands like Polish Springs or Dasani. once I also found 16 severed fingers in a trash can in a guys room.

Not me, but my wife worked as a night front desk attendant for a very budget hotel. She had some stories.

The saddest was a couple who were celebrating their wedding night/honeymoon at her hotel. They had been drinking at the reception and came in very happy and friendly. The man came back down after couple of hours because he couldn’t sleep due to backpain. He talked to my wife for a bit and offered her some cake before heading back to the room. He proceeded to take some of his wife’s morphine pills, which interacted with the alcohol in his system. His new bride woke up the next morning a widow.

Then there was a time when the cleaning ladies found a blowup doll a guess left in the room. One of the ladies was super excited to bring it home to her adult son….

My aunt was a cleaning lady for a nicer hotel for most of her life. She once found 75k in a bag under a pillow. She turned it in.

Former Motel 6 employee outside of NOLA. Dead bodies always bothered me the most. Almost always recently dead not the hidden body trope you always hear about. As far as weirdest I’d say the room covered in smeared butter and syrup. Literal piles of empty syrup bottles in the bathroom.

Been workinh hotels for almost 20 years. A dead person, suicide. A safe full of dildos. A briefcase that had "if lost, please mail to the FBI". A half melted ice sculpture for doing shots of a double penis. A couple of guns. A person's dog that they left behind.

Former hotel front desk. At a mid range business hotel ($200+ nightly) we got a frantic call on the radio from housekeeping about a room being nasty.

Yeah, it was nasty. Poop thrown on the ceiling, smeared on the walls, on the floor. The bathroom had poop in the tub.

The room was declared a biohazard, we preauthorized about $2k on the CC, and a specialty company was brought in to clean it.

Customer wasn’t even mad when we called them to inform them of the charges, and the ban from the property.

Edit: let me clarify for those thinking this was explosive diarrhea: the poop wasn’t just in the bathroom, most of it was in the living area.

I’m not a worker at a motel but I have a relevant story. About 12 years ago my wife and I arrived in Savannah GA at 11pm to our motel after driving through a thunderstorm for 3 hours. Exhausted and rest to get some sleep, I grabbed the key from the front desk and headed to room #7 while my wife finished the paperwork. I heard noise coming from the room so cautiously opened the door. That was when I found three men and one woman, naked with the exception of some random biker gear like vests and boots were in the middle of making a p**no. They were all in their fifties and none were lighter than 300 lbs. There were two cameras on tripods and the bikers looked to be just went to get into the thick of it. I quickly shut the door once I was no longer in shock. Then ran back to the desk and let them know some people were in our room and the desk clerk set us up in room #1. I didn’t tell the clerk what I saw, but my wife and I had a great laugh when we were in our room.

A giant pocket knife like one of the Swiss army ones but it was the size of my arm under a bed.

A live fish in a bath thub.

Same year, different hotel, fresh bear meat. Twas a hunting season.

A loaded .45 on the bedside table after checkout. I worked at a resort in northern Minnesota. The guy just left it there after checking out. We had to call him and he had to drive back to pick it up. When asked he said he was worried about the bears. He was staying in our main lodge building on the second floor which was essentially a hotel.

Not a worker but use to travel for work. Once we were checking into our rooms and me and a coworker were going to her room. She open the door and there was two people living in the room. They were prostitutes who were friends with the house keeper. They were given keys to use empty rooms.