Fires, Loud Sex & Theft: Real Housemate Horror Stories

“Senior year of boarding school my roommate stole my prescription Adderall, Oxys from getting my wisdom teeth out, and alcohol I had hidden in a chest under my bed while I was away for the weekend. She ended up overdosing and then told the school I gave it all to her.

I got suspended, lost my scholarship for the remainder of the semester, and almost had my college acceptances rescinded.”

Additional-Force-795 – reddit forum

“I was in a house share with 5 other people. It wasn’t a social house share and everyone kept themselves to themselves and had their own lives. After around 6 months of living there a guy moved in. He too kept himself to himself I did think something was quite strange as he did not seem to have a job, like I never noticed him going to work or having any particular routine, he did have multiple girls come over to stay him quiet regularly though. A couple of months after he moved in, the police raided our house and arrested him. Turns out he was done for an armed robbery!”

– Amy, 26

“Myself and my friend decided to move in with one another because we couldn’t afford to rent on our own. We ended up getting a nice apartment to rent. Within a week of moving in, we argued about furniture, because I ended up buying it all when we both agreed that we would go halves. We didn’t speak for the remainder of the tenancy, which was 12 months! When the 12 months was up I could leave any faster if I tried! It was one of the worst years of my life, everything was so awkward because we didn’t speak and it just didn’t feel like a home at all. It put me off moving in with friends!”

Mariah, 36

” Every single month if was a battle to get bill payments from one our housemates, he would either be late, underpay or not pay at all! Eventually the house all made him but all the bills in his name because we got sick of our credit being ruined!”

-Tommy, 22

“I had three at the same time. One was a severe alcoholic and a pervert that would often pass out on the floor of the kitchen and quite frequently left the stove on. I fed his poor cat a lot. When he was pissed drunk I was careful not be alone with him bc hed try to grope me.

The other roommate was fu**** filthy. He never washed clothes and just bought new ones. Whenever we ran out of dishes I would have to go collect the hoards of moldy plates and cups from his room. He never ever cleaned his bong and it had that awful smell. He’d get offended when he offered to smoke me out and I declined because of the bong water. Worst of all, he left his personal sex toys in the shower that we all shared. When I asked him to please be considerate he said “I thought we were sex-positive in this house.” Dude, idk how to explain that leaving your maturation toys in the common shower is just gross.

In the midst of all this, my boyfriend that I shared a room with developed a cocaine & video game addiction and started pissing in jugs. I was so miserable that year and when I finally saved enough to move out & dump the bf, my cat and I went on to live our best single lives.

I do not miss my early twenties.”

Shadowcat304 – Reddit forum

“I moved into a house share with 2 other girls who were already living in the flat. They were good friends, and I mainly kept to myself for the most part. I worked night shifts, so I would often spend a lot of the day sleeping, whereas my housemates had a normal 9-5. One day, a couple if hours after finishing a night shift, I was sleeping and got a call from a friend who was having a bit of an emergency, so I agreed to go round and assist her. I could not find my car keys for the life of me; only one of my housemates was in, so I asked her if she had seen them. She told me that she hadn’t. Thinking that I’d probably left them in the car, or dropped them, I went outside to find my car missing. I rang back inside telling my housemate I needed to ring the police as someone had stolen my car, she looked like she saw a ghost and told me not to because the other housemate had ‘borrowed it’ and was on her way back. I went crazy at them both! She apologised profusely, but the two other housemates eventually fell out, and one of them told me the other one had taken my car on multiple occasions and not just once! I made her cough up some money for the used petrol!

-Kelly, 34

” I lived with a girl who would go out partying every weekend and always bring a different guy back with her from one of her nights out. Every time I would always wake up to her having loud sex. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but she sounded like a cat being strangled. I used to dread the weekends as I knew my sleep would be disturbed, so I always had the headphones at the ready. I got sick and tired of telling her so, because she would say she would keep it down but then never did, so I eventually gave up !”

-Tia, 25

“I had a housemate whom I didn’t get on with. He was really noisy and messy, and so when I would challenge him about it, we would argue. One day the argument got quiet, next thing I noticed was that he cut the wires on my toaster. I demanded he buy me a new one, but he refused to do this, so I took his headphones and didn’t give them back. Things got really bad where would have blazing rows over this, and we ended up just avoiding one another to avoid any more conflict. I ended up finding someone else to take over my tenancy as I didn’t trust him with my things anymore”

– Kara, 21

” I lived with a girl, and her boyfriend practically moved in because he had nowhere to live. It was a nightmare. He used to take up rooms in communal areas. When I mentioned that he needed to pay the bills, my housemate told me that I needed to be more compassionate about his situation. I didn’t realise I had signed up to take care of someone else’s partner. They eventually agreed that he would pay towards the bills. I hated the whole experience, they would treat the flat like it was theirs and was just some lodger. Looking back I should have told the landlord that he was living there!”

Vanessa, 25

“I moved into a house share just last year. There were 3 other people in the property. There was one housemate who used to freak out when everything wasn’t spotless. If you cooked and left the kitchen untidy when you were eating your dinner, she would send aggressive messages to the WhatsApp group for minor things like leaving a few plates and cups in the sink and even went so far as putting dirty dishes in one of the other housemates’ rooms! I could understand if the house was dirty and none of us cleaned or tidied up but it was not the case at all, she was just excessive and wanted the house spotless all the time, which is ridiculous because we have to live. I moved out when the lease was up. So thankful I have my own space now, and I don’t have to share with anyone.”

-Amira, 23

” I left the UK and lived in Australia for a couple of years. I lived in a house share in Sydney and one of the housemates was a DJ. Every time he had a DJ gig he brought the party back to the house and even got the DJ decks out! I mean, who can sleep through that? So I just used to join them the majority of the time. I challenged him about it a couple of times and he would respond saying that I knew what he did for work. It was laughable because I thought his job was to Dj in a venue not bring the party back to his abode. What made things worse was that he moved din girlfriend in too, and she was basically living for free, not contributing to any bills until me and the housemates said that she needed to start paying or leave, so she did. I found a new houseshare that was calm and chill and when i left i took the toothpaste and toilet roll with me, it was petty but I wanted to get my own back for all the sleepless night and I knew that would annoy him!”

-Ingela, 33

“I used to share a flat with a party girl who would go out every single weekend. There is obviously nothing wrong with that, but she would be all about the party. She would be the kind of girl who would rather spend her money on an outfit than things she needed for the house She never did food shopping and used to mainly eat packet noodles. Bearing in mind, I wasn’t living with a student or a young person, this girl was in her 30’s and had no life skills at all. I had to tell her to not put hot food in the fridge as she could make herself seriously ill. I don’t think I had ever witnessed her eat a piece of fruit or a vegetable. I caught her multiple times looking through my cupboards and would notice food of mine going missing, like yoghurts, crisps or even chicken legs that I would cook. At first I ignored it, but then I confronted her and told her that perhaps she should spend less money on going out and more money on putting food in her cupboards. It worked cause I noticed any food go missing again. I wouldn’t have minded if she had asked first!”

-Aliyah, 29

“I lived with an alcoholic, she would deny being an alcoholic, but drank every day and was a very sloppy drunk. She would pass out in the communal areas whilst drunk and would sometimes act a fool, not remembering what she did the next day. She was also a hoarder and had loads of things stored on the balcony. One night, she got so wasted that she set a box on fire with her lit cigarette by accident. She woke the whole house up screaming instead of doing anything to try to put it out. We had to call the fire brigade and evacuate the apartment, as did the whole block. Luckily, nobody got hurt, thankfully. She was so embarrassed afterwards that she could barely look at us, and the landlord evicted her. This was a few years ago, and I hear she is sober now and doing quite well, so I hope that was a wake-up call to her because she put ours and her lives in danger. Accidents happen, but this was just careless and completely preventable!”

Tara, 22

“I had a housemate who would smoke weed in the house. He didn’t see a problem with it since he was smoking in the bedroom that he pays for, but everyone knows that it smells really strong and it lingers across the whole house. I used to have to rewash my clothes if they had been on the airer in communal spaces for fear I would go to work smelling like weed, and I genuinely couldn’t stand the smell. The worst thing about all this was that we had a small garden he could go in to smoke if he wanted to, but he was just too lazy and entitled to do this and thought he had the right to smoke in his room when the whole house would still smell! The day I was moving out of the property, I noticed he had left a small bag of weed on the counter, and I threw it in the bin. He messaged me asking I took it and I blocked the loser!”

-Jason, 23

” I lived with a man that was a raging narcissist, he would would constantly play all of the housemates off against one another and manipulate people and situations for his own entertainment. He even went so far as making up blatant lies that we had said things we didn’t. He would then act like he was the peacemaker, and prented to be there for you if any of the housemates were mad at you for problems he had caused. It’s like he got a kick out of watching the house be in disharmony.

I was the first one to clock on to his bullshit and he gaslit me and managed to turn the whole house against me. Everyone eventually started to notice what he was doing and then the whole turned against him. He ended up leaving shortly afterwards, knowing that nobody had the time of day for him anymore. He probably went on to ruin someone else’s house share!”

Eva, 37

“I am currently in a house share now, we have both lived here for about 2 years now, and to be honest, it has not been that bad at all. We are not the best of friends but we get on for the most part and genuinely lead different lives. The issue is that she is now pregnant, the baby’s father is not around, and it appears that she is not making any efforts to look for somewhere to live and says that she will figure it all out when she has had the baby.

The issue is that I don’t want to share with her and a newborn baby in such a small space. Nobody lives in a house share with babies, and I think she should move out and get her own place, for the sake of her baby! If she is still here when she has the baby, I guess I will have to move out, but she will need the best of luck, trying to find someone else”

-Chloe, 26

” We had a housemate who used to tell lies all the time, and the lies were not even necessary. She would lie about where she was going on holiday, lie about where she had been and even lied about health conditions that it later turned out she did not have. She even faked a pregnancy”

– Tara, 33

“In college, I rented a room in a house from a slumlord, my roommates were heroin addicts (and twin brothers) who would constantly steal my food.

I baked a batch of brownies with a whole pack of ex lax in em, figuring they’d take one or two, get the squirts, and I’d tell them not to fuck with my shit anymore

One ate the WHOLE PAN.

Overnight I heard puking, followed by dry heaving. It went on for a while.

He told me the next day he had food poisoning and everything came out other end.

I never told him.”

–bigleafychode, Reddit forum