57 Times People Went To A Friend’s House And Instantly Realized “Oh… This Family Is Different”

My then-boyfriends, now-husbands parent’s house- no photos on the wall, no clutter, no furniture really. Totally blank space. No personal items at all. Nothing. Asked if they just moved in? No, been there four years. Looked like a safety shelter with all the concrete. Totally impersonal. Just like my in-laws are!

My best friend and her family believed their house was haunted. One time I knocked on the door to play with my friend and a priest was in the house sprinkling holy water everywhere.

Another time they had some people come with machines to get readings about paranormal activity; sadly, I didn’t get to witness that one.

I saw my friend’s mother chase her teenage daughter around the house with a straight pin to pop her pimples.

The parents both chain-smoked in the house. There was a wispy cloud of smoke perpetually hanging in every room.

In order to get into the backyard pool you had to go through the master bedroom. The mom had boudoir photos of herself all over the walls.

Another friend had an ice cream at her house and they asked if I wanted ranch on mine. The whole family would put ranch on top of vanilla ice cream.

Their dogs didn’t have a water bowl, they just kept the toilet lid up.

Even as someone who grew up in a hunting family, I thought it was weird that my friend Lana's trailer was FILLED with taxidermy and pelts. There were coyote pelts covering the furniture and on the floor, made up as rugs. They had coyote pelt blankets on their beds. Her father was a big-time coyote hunter. They had full-size coyote mounts as well as raccoons and opossums. The raccoon furs were sewn together and turned into throws for the sofa.

The whole thing was kind of gross.

Three locks on the basement stairs door and the smell of formaldehyde and air freshener.

They only had bottled water in their fridge. No food, no condiments, no take out containers. Only water.

Hundred of frame quotes on the wall.

The family dogs slept in the laundry room. They were three flea infested smelly bloodhounds and the laundry room was a doorless bedroom with a few feet of wall to wall unfolded laundry.

I was friends with the girl whose house shared our back fence. During high school her parents went through a messy divorce and her dad got primary custody of the kids and kept the house. All seemed well and once it was final, even her parents started getting along better, as long as they didn’t have to share a roof.

Some time in our junior year of college, her dad got hastily remarried. The woman had 2 kids of her own and moved into his house. My mom reported that they seemed nice enough but a bit odd.

When our 10 year reunion came up, my friend and I agreed to go with each other. We settled it that we would meet at her dad’s before going to the party. When I got there she answered the door with an odd forces smile and she said under her breath “you gotta see this” and yanked me through the door.

The living room was painted a very dark teal and all the furniture was either painted black or was draped in black. There were blood red curtains over the windows and on the wall was a large framed portrait of her step-siblings at ages maybe 6 and 8 years old. The older boy was dressed as Dracula (white face, widows peak, cape, etc) and he was leaning in like he had just bitten his sister’s neck. The sister was dressed in a frothy white dress and was posed swooning with two bite marks on her neck. This picture was probably 24x36.
I had no words.
I said hi to her dad who was sitting kind of dejectedly in the dining room (which was the same awful color combination) but I didn’t see the step-mother or her kids (who were early 20s by then).
When we were on the road to the reunion I asked my friend “what was all that?” and she said she had no idea; she always stayed with her mom when she was in town since her old room at her dad’s had been ‘commandeered’, and she hadn’t been in his house in a few years.

Their dad was super healthy. He had super weird rules. Like they HAD to eat a fruit everyday by noon. It was bizarre. He was intense about so many random things. He was a very fun dad though and very involved.

I'm the weird friend. I know I am because when I was a teen my friends would come over, and at one point my parents left me there with no utilities and an eviction. So they would hang out with me in a pitch black house with roaches crawling around, THEN when me ans my dad were homeless, they slept over with me in a house my dad was doing construction on, on a bare wood floor.

When my husband met my family he said they reminded him of shameless, except not everyone was scummy.

Poverty is a jerk.

Pineapple in spaghetti sauce.

Went to a friend’s house with a telescope to see Hailey’s Comet. The comet was cool. The pasta was not.

The bath was filled with cold scummy bath water, and toe nail clippings were left on top of the toilet. I played dumb and asked my friend if someone was about to have a bath, they told me that in the family they wouldn’t empty the bath after they’d finished, the next person to have a bath would empty it and then fill it for themselves. Whether they cleaned it before filling it again was up to the person having the bath. (I suspect no one cleaned it apart from maybe the mother).

The house smelled like cigarette smoke and stale beer when I went for a sleep over. Later on we saw her dad stumbling around with a beer in his hand and he clearly wasn't able to walk properly. She rolled her eyes and said, "just ignore him" like it was an everyday thing. Probably did happen everyday for her, but growing up in a religious home, I'd never see either of my parents drink.

We also had had alcoholism on both sides of the extended family, so all family functions were strictly alcohol free - I think that was my first time seeing an adult consume alcohol. We were 8.