People Whose Job Requires Them To Go Into Other People’s Houses Reveal 55 Of The Weirdest Things They’ve Seen There

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Our homes are our kingdoms, and no one dares to take that throne, I mean the sofa, away. So no wonder in the comfort of their home, everyone can do whatever they please, whether it’s hoarding stuff, keeping a full-size pig, hosting an exotic animal shelter or having anatomically correct drawings of oneself hanging on the walls. And I did not just make these up.

In fact, this is some of the stuff that people keep behind their doors. After Redditor superfleh posted the question “Redditors whose job requires them to go into other people's houses, what is the weirdest thing you've seen?” the thread blew up with 22.9k upvotes and 5.4k comments.

It turns out that the weirdest things they have seen vary from spine-chilling to totally wholesome, so you can never judge an owner by their house exterior. Read on for some of the most interesting answers below!

#1

A full ceremonial dungeon. In an otherwise incredibly gorgeous, multi-million dollar home on the beach in Hawaii.

The home had no solid corners in the entire thing - only colored glass windows in every corner as to have no demonic entities trapped within.

And when I say a ceremonial dungeon, I am not talking about an S&M dungeon — I am talking about a full blown literal dungeon room carved out of stone with medieval candle holders on the walls and an enormous, long table with high-backed chairs.

The chair at the end of the table had a round window in the ceiling overhead that looked up to ANOTHER window in the next ceiling above which we were told aligned with the full moon on a certain night of the year.

So, I’m at least in the top 10 here right? Because I’ve been trying to figure that sh*t out for like 18 years what I saw.

Image credits: kula_shakur

#2

Went into a woman's house that had a lifesize replica/mannequin of herself mutilated & murdered.

Turns out, she's a semi-pro actress. She's been an extra in a dozen or so motion pictures. One of which was a B level hack film. The special effects crew made a latex replica of her for a couple scenes in the movie & let her keep it afterwards.

It was very real looking. From a foot away, you'd think it was a real mutilated corpse. Creepy, but I can't blame her for wanting to keep it.

Image credits: Tgunner192

#3

A woman who built an aluminum foil tent over her bed so "they" couldn't control her dreams or thoughts while she slept. I found out later that she been a member of the Branch Davidians.

Image credits: LordPimpernel

#4

Had a client who did exotic animal rescue, she had a whole bathroom dedicated as a habitat for a sloth

Image credits: Ilikepoojokes

#5

I was at a house for a cable TV service call, customer wasn't home so I called him. He said, "I will be home in five minutes, and don't freak out, but I have a tiger on the truck".

When he got there, he had a tiger in a cage on the back of his truck. I got to pet the thing, feed it a little, and then went on to see his venomous snake collection, his hand grenade collection, and his hot sauce collection.

The very next day, I was at another service call, and asked the customer to get to the pole in the back yard, and he told me that he has a tiger in the back yard, so don't freak out. I got to pet the thing, and feed it a little.

I had been working cable for 18 years to that point, and had never encountered a tiger in all that time. I have been working cable 7 years since, and have had no further encounters with tigers in that time. But, for two days consecutive, I visited homes with tigers.

P.S. South Carolina

Image credits: loonidood

#6

I (electrician) did a call where the family had a full size (7-8’ long) pig, living in their house. Just chilling in a room right off the living room.

Another call where the older couple had VERY anatomically correct drawings of themselves on all of the walls. That was awkward.

Image credits: Swanster0110

#7

Socialworker. A split personality schizophrenic autist with ocd. He loved many things and each thing has a separate part of the house dedicated to this single thing.

A Mercedes wall with hundreds of Mercedes models and merch.

His mother's hand painted plates. 50 odd pieces.

Romanian traditional leather dancing belts. 75 odd pieces.

70's gay pornography of husky men. An entire wall plastered with cutouts and a decent collection of homoerotic retro sextoys on display. He was straight though. No homo.

An impressive collection of bibles signed by hundreds of priests, bishops and even royalty.

He loved herb jars too. Had hundreds, all neatly sorted.

An entire section of his apartment dedicated to various ceramic cooking ware. Crockpots and the like. Apparently German Crockpots are the best. Who'd had thunk?

Imagine this and more, all in perfectly ordered sections in a house. Like a museum.

And god help the fool who would touch or even worse, move, ANYTHING. I bumped a model car and his caretakers told me it took him 3 weeks to fix it and forgive me. I'm still not allowed near the Mercedes wall.

Good man though. Many funny stories. Smoked like a Chinese industrial park too.

Image credits: ColonelBadgerButt

#8

Delivered pizza to a house where I was greeted by a man and what I thought was a large dog.

Until it neighed at me and I realized it was one of those miniature horses.

Image credits: Tee_hops

#9

At least 30 bicycles in the living room and a wall of car radios in his bedroom. I quickly figured out what my client did for a living.

Image credits: joik

#10

Oh wow... ummm , former EMT here checking in...

I'm gonna have to go with the man who collected/ hoarded led lights and toys. Might not sound all that interesting but imagine walking into a house full of boxs and boxs of led light pens, light up fidget balls, light up cat toys, ya dig? I'm talking an Edison wet dream.

He also slept on an inversion table , didn't have a fridge, no TV, no radio, 1000's of books and magazines and a hot plate with rows and rows of canned food.

I miss him sometimes.

Image credits: tatersaugratin

#11

Velvet picture of the devil smoking on the toilet, hanging in the dining room

Image credits: Strict-Ad2250

#12

Working as locksmith, get call to rekey house. Talk to client before I show up, she seems like a completely normal lady. I show up, we talk for a moment outside, completely normal house from all looks, she's an RN, 0 warning signs. She goes to open the door and let me in and starts acting sheepish, she starts apologizing and says something like excuse the mess. The door can't open all the way, there's 3-4 FEET of trash everywhere. Not hording boxes or collecting weird stuff but just garbage, rotting stuff, piss, sh*t, piles of it. There's a 9inch wide walkway through the garbage that's 6inch deep of compressed garbage, togo boxes, fast food bags, magazines, you name it. She goes in walks through to the living room sits down on a couch that cant be seen, garbage everywhere, a cat appears out of nowhere and sits on her lap lovingly. She seems for all practical purposes like a completely normal functioning adult. I looked it up it's some weird form of the hording condition but just rotting waste. She seemed so normal. I did the job and left, felt bad for her. still kinda freaks me out like there's no way you're guessing this nice nurse lady is actually a garbage troll.

Image credits: Confident-Lack5153

#13

I used to install Dish Network for a living.

I was installing for an elderly lady, who complained that her "sister's" TV always showed the same thing hers did. I had a 2 tv installation order so I figured that would be OK.

I finished the installation and was demonstrating the system when she looked at the full length mirror and complained that her sister's tv was still showing the same thing.

Noped out of there as quick as I could, and left notes on the account in case she called in.

Image credits: Stephenburnett98

#14

Older women that are home alone love young repair guys. Some were pretty bold about it, like not wearing any panties and sitting in a way where their bathrobe just happened to lay in a way to not cover anything that should be covered if her husband was home.

#15

I think this counts. When I was a delivery driver in college, I delivered like 8 xlarge pizzas to a sorority on campus. The girl who answered the door was completely naked, and the rest of her sorority sisters were standing way back, dying with laughter. She quickly grabbed the pizzas, said “this is your tip”, and shut the door. Cue rapturous laughter from inside. I didn’t mind one bit.

Image credits: CelestialMollusk

#16

This one lady that we called eyeballs had contact lenses everywhere… every other week. She just flicked them when she took em out.

Image credits: iTNB

#17

I worked for a moving company and we went into a lady’s house and kept finding needles everywhere. Behind the furniture, down in the couch and chair cushions. We stopped after a couple min and refused to finish the job. Turns out her teenage daughter was diabetic, and would just toss the finger prick needles, and syringes everywhere. She honestly didn’t understand why we refused to touch the furniture after one of the guys carried some cushions and wound up with a needle stuck in his shirt.

#18

I was a paramedic and then later a police officer for many years. I've seen enough hoarders situations to last me 10 lifetimes. Probably the most odd thing I've ever seen was in the home of a sweet old elderly couple. Their home alarm went off in the middle of the night due to a malfunction of some sort. This is a very common call. My partner and I showed up and the couple was very nervous that someone had broken in, so they asked us to do a check of the inside of the home which we agreed to. The house was pretty big, including a very large finished basement with lots of rooms in a crazy array. It actually reminded me of Buffalo Bill's basement from Silence of the Lambs, but cleaner.

We opened one door and found a square room, about 12x12 feet. Walls alternating pained blue and red. But the odd bit was the room had nothing in it but a single chair directly in the center, and eyebolts in the concrete floor - one on each corner of the chair. The chair was one of those old school chairs you'd find in a 1960's office or waiting room. It clearly looked like this room was designed for some odd sexual fetish or interrogating Al Queda. I remember when I saw it, I stopped dead and stared. It was so creepy, I felt like I walked into the set of a Kubric film. My first thought was I'd turn around and find the old homeowner with an axe, ready to take my head off. My partner, who was directly behind me looked in and said "well we just found the discipline chamber." Fortunately he didn't grab my shoulder first, or I might have shot him.

Had we not been given permission to search the entire house, I'd have worried there were people captive somewhere in that home.

Image credits: Tland19

#19

I am a Realtor, I was showing a client a house that was occupied by some renters. Right in the middle of the living room floor there was an atm machine that somebody had been beating with a sledgehammer.

#20

Im a nanny and I went to a new job one morning and the little girl showed me what she got for her birthday and it was a windshield cover for a car

Image credits: nikkiradtoo5

#21

Thousands of bed bugs. Crawling all over the walls, the resident, and his motorized scooter. There's a reason some Home Health workers take an umbrella or large brimmed hat (think classical sombrero) into the home until they can a*sess for such issues. For those curious, I believe the home was eventually demolished.

Image credits: HuskyLove92

#22

Aluminum foil on the windows to keep internet predators from molesting her children.

Image credits: Looter629

#23

My dads business partner bought a home on our street after the lady who lived there passed away— she didn’t have any living relatives. My dad was tasked with getting the place cleaned out and ready for contractors since we lived across the street. The woman who passed was always a nice lady and we’d often go hang out with her on her porch, where she taught my sister and I to knit. We were never invited inside and never really asked to be— at my age I didn’t really think anything of it. Anywho, my dad was REALLY excited to show us the place but kept a secret what was so “crazy” about it. We walked in to find out she was a hoarder! The entire house was filled with 6 feet tall piles of junk, save for the walking paths thru each room which were actually quite neat and the bathroom which only had a pile as tall as the toilet seat. What was strange is that it didn’t even smell much at all! I’d seen hoarding tv shows and they always noted the horrible stench. It definitely didn’t smell good but all the junk was basically brand new things still wrapped up in their packaging or their store bags. It seemed she just had a shopping addiction but was still a neat lady?

Image credits: esco159

#24

I do pest control and when I climbed an attic ladder and switched on my flashlight I saw a person up there waiting for me. Turns out they kept a mannequin in the attic to scare squirrels. Didn't work, the squirrels were nesting two feet away. Scared the sh*t out of me. Also found Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of England, in life sized cutout form in a basement closet. Also scared the sh*t out of me.

#25

You could say that. Guy was out of his mind tho. He wrapped all his appliances in garbage bags and caulked up the sprinkler all because he was afraid the government was listening to him.

#26

I think I can contribute a less horrific but cute and quirky one.

During Covid a family did life size cutouts of other members of this large and close family that couldn’t share in the holidays due to lockdown. They arranged them around the thanksgiving dinner table, sharing family time in the living room, etc. and sent the pics to the grandmother who was stuck alone and couldn’t partake.

It was very sweet. I could forgive them when I’d go by at later appointments and nearly piss myself coming around a corner to an unexpected cutout.

#27

Hundreds of porcelain dolls in a lady’s living room. Shelves stuffed with em, some were on the chairs and the couches. The living room had no room for actual humans to sit. They were all facing the front door. Dolls. F*cking everywhere. Still creeps me out.

#28

I’ve been waiting for a post like this.... I renovate homes. Upon tearing out a kitchen we found all kinds of small bones in the wall behind the drywall; in addition to a funky smell. Turns out the homeowner was into black magic. Every single meal requiring an animal needed to be honoured by dropping a bone into the wall cavity.

#29

I wouldn't say weirdest but thee laziest and most disgusting thing I ever had to deal with was when I worked for the housing community. We were installing all new boilers for all the houses every set of rows had a dumpster , well every resident was given a month notice that we would be entering the houses and would need access to the closets to drill holes for the pipes. We go into a woman's apartment it's a girl I went to school with and she tells us we can't come in so we had to get the property manager and when we enter we get blasted with this horrible oder then we get to the closet and they are 6 ft wide 10 high and it is floor to ceiling garbage bags and dirty diapers. We had to call off the job till the place was cleaned. This girl was paying $30 a month for everything and couldn't even walk 30 yards to the dumpster with her trash so nasty so lazy

Image credits: Randumbthoghts

#30

I went to a patient's home, and her address was 666. When I met her she was the biggest bible thumper you've ever met. Everywhere in her home was bibles, crucifixes, and she was the sweetest lady.

#31

Just recently had a client who was fairly normal on the outside: clean cut, steady factory job, decent car, etc. Inside his house, the roof was rotted through, there were holes in the floor, dead rodents in the kitchen cupboards, etc. The weirdest thing was that he kept talking about his "wife", but it was abundantly clear that no one lives there with him.

This guy has a completely normal life on the outside, but is definitely off.

Image credits: MadameBurner

#32

When I worked as a housekeeper there was this one airbnb we would clean and in the office there was a giant bookshelf full of books, but upon further inspection we realized that they were literally all books about Hitler and the Nazis

Also not a house but the mechanics of a car dealership we cleaned would ROUTINELY sh*t on the bathroom floor instead of the toilet

#33

The whole family watching adult movie together like it was just another Netflix series. I’m talking an actual adult movie they had either hired on DVD (this was over a decade ago) or bought. It was weird. Husband, wife, young child about 5, and a teenager around 18. It wasn’t just playing in the background either, they were all sitting in the lounge watching it.

There was something about the wife that was a little strange, more than any of the others. The teenage boy seemed relatively normal, was into cars etc. They all seemed like quite happy people.

#34

Current realtor, former cable and fiber optic tech. Chicken intestines. Just draped over a wooden bar hanging from the ceiling, dripping onto the floor in the basement. From the looks of the stains, this was not the first time they’d done it. The smell was indescribable.

#35

Lots and lots of people don't have beds. Doesn't seem to matter if it's a $500k house or a $500/month apt, there are a ton of people without a bed.

Image credits: Lumber_Tycoon

#36

Once carted off 8 garbage bags filled with mostly foam take out containers from the cabinets of a clients kitchen, also thinned down their receipts they had to just the last year or two. They had about 10 years worth! Had dozens of Raid cans at their front door. Found out why soon! Was bitten all over my legs by fire ants!

#37

I’m a Realtor. Within the first month of getting my license, I showed a house that had stairs going to the basement made out of literal pieces of granite countertops, and bathroom floor tile on the wall beside the stairs. Made for a very careful walk down those stairs.

#38

I shadowed a home health therapist once. We went to a house where we had to tuck our pants legs into our socks because of fleas. We drove down this dirt road, and I thought we were going past these abandoned single wide trailers, but then we parked in front of one. This trailer didn’t have steps to enter, you had to boost yourself up. The floor was rotten through to the ground in places, and there was a grandmother with 6 young kids in there. Including the one we were seeing who had hydrocephalus, but the mother never got it treated, and neglected the child nearly to the point of death till grandma found them and took the “baby.” Grandma was really trying her best, but this place was the most unsafe place I had ever ever seen

#39

Parents owned a rental property. After the tennants moved out, I found human sh*t in the oven and hypodermic needles everywhere.

Still had to clean it up though. Parents can always have another kid if I die.

#40

I did home hospice nursing for a few months. You’d be surprised how cluttered and dirty even homes in nice neighborhoods can be.

I had one house I went to the patient had vomited all over the carpet hours before. The family member said they didn’t clean it up yet because they were waiting for someone to bring them carpet cleaner. So they laid a towel over the vomit pile/chunks. Mind you this carpet was matted and stained all over. It didn’t need specialty cleaner. They could have used any cleaning product they had on hand and it would have been better than waiting hours.

Bleh.

#41

Walked into a house to sell them a home security system. In the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.

See a big muscley guy with his skinny wife, turn the corner their 2yo son is playing on the floor of the lounge room. Next to the son is a cabinet of... rifles. Ok. And the biggest wall in the house, maybe 4 metres wide and 3 high, has a flag the full size of it, with a big, proud, swastika.

They did not buy my home security system.

#42

When my dad bought his first duplex I was involuntarily 'employed' to help him restore the property to a livable state. We filled up 2 20 yard dumpsters which were filled past the brim, and still had to put garbage in the cans out for a few weeks. The previous tenants of both units wouldn't take their garbage to the street, instead they would lob the garbage bags (not everything was bagged) into the garage, behind the house, and in the side yards. On the plus side I found my first adult magazine collection there in pretty good condition, as well as a crossbow.

#43

Oh God I have so many. The one that springs to mind first is the house where the firefighters already on scene pointed to the carpet and said "careful, there's poop on the floor...but, uh...I haven't seen evidence of pets."

The whole place was bad.

Then there was the old man whose only "clean" part of the house was a small portion of his bed where he slept. Everything else was COVERED with clutter and filth. I have no idea how food was made in his kitchen or how he used his bathroom to either bathe or sh*t, the bathroom was similarly covered with junk and filth. There just wasn't a clean surface anywhere. Think about the ruins of buildings you see in post-apocalyptic video games like Fallout. Think about how dirty, stained and cluttered those bathrooms and kitchens are. Then, quadruple the amount of dirt and random junk in any given room so it covers every flat surface, and you're getting pretty close to this guy's house.

I took pictures and filed a report with Adult Protective Services; this guy couldn't care for himself. It was really sad.

#44

As a loan officer I had to go to a person's home to get loan docs signed. She was a surgical nurse in a big hospital. The house smelled so bad. I had to use the restroom and there was a huge cockroach smashed on the wall just above the sink, literally 2 inches from a toothbrush. The tub and toilet had a black ring of dirt like they had never been cleaned. The dining room table was full of trash and empty cat food cans where they just opened the can to feed the 4 cats sitting on the table. It was absolutely disgusting!

#45

My direct job was not to go to client’s households, but I have been “asked” to do it before. The worst place I went to was a house filled from top to bottom with cat carriers. It smelled like urine and you only had a small walkway that lead to the kitchen. Of course, we had to get a fridge into the house. To do that, we had to take the doors off. The client told us to take the old fridge away, and we said “no, that’s not in the order.” Left as soon as we put the doors back on.

#46

I used to work pest control. I felt so bad for this guy because it was clearly not his fault. He called in for a roach problem. I walk in and the house is filled with German roaches (also called apartment roaches). They covered the walls, were on the ceiling, everywhere. There must have been thousands. The guy had only just bought the house and hadn't even moved in yet.

#47

Not me, but I know someone who run a cleaning operation. Once they were contracted to "clean" a house that was the home of some kind of cult.

He sent us the video: knee deep in filth and garbage in every room, they couldn’t see the floor. Walls were covered with sheets of paper, news clippings and extracts from the bible…

It was unsettling.

#48

Not mine story, but my wife’s. She was what amounts to a very well degreed social worker. Her job was to do in home assessments on people with mental health issues. She has lots of stories of filthy homes, but she had one client that she visited and the house was absolutely disgusting. Spoiled food and garbage everywhere, unimaginable smells. Clearly the client did not clean. My wife noticed they had small, open sores all over her ankles and wrists. She was super concerned of picking up bed bugs at this time as one of her coworkers had that happen. She noticed a tiny bug crawling on her slacks, tried to brush is off and immediately competed the assessment. She ran to her car, took off her pants and shoes in the parking lot, tossed them into the trunk and got into the driver seat and called me. We left her car outside in sub-freezing temps for the next few days. Afterward, she found out it wasn’t bed bugs, but fleas. The place was infested with fleas.

#49

Worked pest control in the 80s. We were sent to some rentals one day. Basically single story one or two bedroom duplexes. One lady had 3 large Great Danes that she didn’t clean up after. Piles of cr*p every few feet throughout the house. This job was in the southeast US during the summer and required work on both the inside and outside of the house and being the new guy, I always got stuck doing the outside. Took one step inside smelled the stench did an about face and was happy to be on outside duty.

#50

Had a client who had two full closets of clothes, but said they had nothing to wear! I cleaned, organized their clothing in each closet, providing them with many outfits to choose from. They also had 3 drawers full of socks, hundreds, many of which were one of a kind in a different drawer. Took me hours to sort and match, and get rid of the ones that had no match! I was a CNA there to provide Heath services, but many people needed a lot more than that!

One lady had 3 closets, many clothes no longer fit her, worked every time I was there to try to organize her things, provide her some outfits put together for her to choose from!

Also could never get used to finding wads of money stuck everywhere! One lady had me looking for her social security card, which she thought someone from our agency had stolen! I found it in her safe, stuck in her deceased husbands wallet. While looking, I noticed a large amount of money there. She was wanting me to take her to the bank to get money! I advised her she had cash in her safe! She asked how much? I told her I didn’t touch it, but went back and counted a few hundred dollars and gave her her social security card! She was one of the meanest people I ever met. We called ourselves the “survivors”, as she fired people all the time! She lived to 103

#51

Stripper pole in the living room surrounded by mirrors

#52

I was installing a security keypad in the master bedroom of a couple around Dallas, TX. I was instructed to put the damn thing right next to a collage of nude fotos of this guy's wife. Luckily she wasn't home and I tried to get out ASAP. Just as I finished the job his wife made it home and I nopped the f out of the there.

#53

Install tech for AT&T here.

Aside from nasty hoarder houses, the weirdest was a kid about 3 years old went into his mom's bathroom, dug through the trash, and came out pretending her used tampon inserter was a slide whistle

#54

I’m a building inspector, in and out of people’s houses all day long. I’ve seen hoarders, people with way too many pets, Nazi paraphernalia, but the one that creeped me out the most was a guy with a bunch of mannequins in his basement dressed in lingerie, dog collars, bdsm outfits. Got real Buffalo Bill vibes from that fellow.

#55

A confident early teen girl with no body issues or wearing clothing. I was freaked out and didn't want to look. Was she still there? Yep, still there. She was standing on upper floor about 10 feet away so there was nothing obscured. Longest minutes of my life.

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