25 Workers Share The Strangest Things They’ve Found Inside Other People’s Homes
Plumbers know things about your family that a lot of your closest friends don’t.
That’s a strange amount of power for a person you found to fix your toilet. They’ve been in the basement and have seen the room you keep closed during parties. Now they’re at lunch with a coworker saying, “You are not going to believe this house.”
I want to hear that conversation. Tell me what the electrician found when he needed access to the breaker box.
These workers shared the strange things they encountered inside other people’s homes, and I appreciate that they finished the job before telling the rest of us. That’s professionalism.
1. The Locked “Special Room” Had A Surprisingly Good Explanation
Few years ago I was volunteering with the city council helping people clean their houses after the neighborhood I lived in had been flooded.
One house belonged to a Chinese couple who ran the local convenience store. They had asked our crew to help remove water damaged carpet from the ground floor rooms of their house so it could be thrown away.
As we were removing this carpet, we realised that it ran in one piece under a closed door and into a locked room, so we asked the lady of the house if she wanted us to cut it off at the door and leave whatever was in the locked room behind, or if she wanted to open the room and have us remove the carpet in there also. She responded, “I’ll check with my husband what to do. That’s his special room.”
This led to some nervously puzzled looks from our crew. What does a middle aged Chinese man who owns a convenience store keep in his “special room”?
Eventually the wife came back with a set of keys and told us that we could remove the carpet in the room and she unlocked the door. We all crowded around as the door opened to reveal..
A room with carpet up the walls, a mirror ball on the ceiling, a stage at one end with a PA standard sound system, a projector, and in the corner just about the fanciest karaoke machine I’d ever seen. Special room indeed.
— hU0N5000
2. Someone Was A Very Big Fan
I work in apartment complexes and constantly go into people’s units, once we were taking over a property and doing this we had to go into every single apartment and room to check for the conditions of things. One of the apartments I went in to had a room that was covered in nothing but pictures of ceiling fans. There was a bed in the middle of the room, and a small computer monitor in a corner, and hundreds of pictures of fans, big and small, all over the walls. Fans from magazines, fans printed out, fans fans fans.
3. The Baby Bird Rescue That Wasn’t
I used to volunteer for a wildlife rescue and did a pickup at a very elderly woman’s house where she had found a baby bird. When I got there she carefully uncovered it from the towel she’d placed it in, and it was just a chestnut.
— Ed98208
4. The Hidden Room Behind The Bookcase
Construction inspector here. I was looking at a house about to be renovated by new buyers. The basement was all wood-paneled walls, Spanish tile floors, and tons of animal heads mounted on the walls; very old-school “hunting lodge” style.
Except there was also a room off the basement, behind a bookcase “hidden door” that I only noticed because I was trying to understand the relationship between the foundation and the main floor. Small room, maybe 80 SF. The ceiling had a single fluorescent fixture, recessed, with a heavy steel grating over it. The floor and walls were covered in sheet vinyl, and there was a single metal chair in the room. It was sitting over a floor drain.
I got right out of there. The renovation never happened; the owners tore the house down and built a new one. I still can’t drive by that site without feeling a chill.
5. Bathroom Snacks Were Apparently An Option
I used to do pest control. While baiting a house for roaches I made my way to their bathroom…and on top of the toilet tank there was a decorative bowl. Nothing out of the ordinary right? Well the bowl wasnt full of extra tp or washcloths..it was full of white-cheddar cheeto puffs.
— Anonymous
6. Someone Had Been Standing Behind Them The Entire Time
Community mental health nurse. Visited an elderly lady in London one evening. She lived in an attic/loft apartment. It was winter and starting to get dark outside.
I spent about a half hour with her talking. She was talking at me for ages really.After a while I asked her if she was going to cook some dinner for herself. She said that her friend was going to do it. I asked when her friend was coming over. She said that he’s already here and looks over my shoulder. I turn around and there’s a man standing up in the dark corner of the room behind me. Just standing there staring at me. I didn’t see or hear him for the whole half hour I was there.
— Anonymous
7. A Familiar Face In A Very Unexpected Drawer
Not my job but I guess I was working. Been divorced for a couple years and I was helping my girlfriend move into a new apartment. I’m putting stuff away in a kitchen drawer and I find a 15 year old photo booth pic of my ex wife and her sister. They looked to be in their early teens.
Just turns out my ex sister in law was the previous tenant and that was her junk drawer.
Edit: Was creepy for about an hour. Showed it to the girlfriend and asked if it was hers. She went to the same high school as me and the ex so it might make sense, nope. It was a basement apartment in a kinda wealthy dude’s house so next time I saw him outside I showed him and he confirmed the sister in law was his last renter. Mystery solved!
— Ctrlplay
8. The Fireplace Turned Itself On
Last summer, I was taking care of a pair of cats. I went out at 8 pm to stop by the grocery store and pick up some dinner. When I came back, the fireplace was lit. I was terrified, because either someone entered the house and lit the fireplace, or it’s malfunctioning and somehow managed to light itself. I went back to my car and called my client to ask if that was a known issue. Woke her up (oops), and she explained that the fireplace was connected to the heating system, and it would turn itself on if the temperature inside got low enough.
— Anonymous
9. A TV Problem The Cable Technician Couldn’t Fix
First day as a field tech for a cable company. My first real customer looked like Marilyn Manson and an evil wizard had a baby. Black long wavy hair, long finger nails, one glass eye, wearing a long robe. He claims he just came back from a decade long war for our souls. Inside his house smelled like death but the worse part was the crow in the corner. I still think about that crow and how it just stared deep into my soul.
So I go to try to fix the TV and he states that his issue is that certain shrooms makes his TV say his name. He offered me the shrooms so I can verify I said no thanks and left. The crow gawked as I was leaving.
10. A Room Full Of Clocks And Mirrors
A couple of years ago I worked for a cleaning company. One of my first days on the job, I was cleaning a woman’s house and entered a room on the second floor that – I kid you not – was full of only clocks and mirrors. I’ve never been so aware of my own mortality.
11. The Mansion Visit With An Unexpected Obstacle
I was working as a social worker for a home health agency. I got called to a mansion in the most exclusive area of Miami, It belonged to a department store heiress. She was a hoarder. The mansion was filled from top to bottom with racks of clothes and lots of assorted garbage, I finally found her in the garage apartment with just a narrow path through the litter to the bedroom where she was lying in a huge canopy bed. She wore bright red lipstick and told me of her days as one of the first female aviators. Best stories ever. On the way out I almost stumbled over an alligator coming out of what had been the pool but was now a swampy mess. Got relatives from the north to come and get her. She had been out of touch with them for years.
12. There Was Something Under The Couch Cushion
Not me but my mom. She’s a visiting physical therapist
She used to work in a small city in the area, with some bad areas, and she had to do therapy for a guy who was pretty paranoid about the people in his complex (granted most of us would be too) but my mom sat down on the couch and felt something hard underneath the cushion.
She had the guy get what it was, and it was a stick, with a large knife taped to the end. She had almost sat on the knife too. She asked him if there was anything else like that in or around the area she needed to work in, and he managed to remove multiple knives, makeshift spears, and a syringe based weapon.
My mom discharged him shortly.
13. The Boss Had One Question
My helper and I were at an old ladys house working outside for a few hours. When we finished, I went to give her the bill but she was dying on the kitchen floor. I could see it through the window. I went inside and started trying to get her to wake up but she was dead. I called 911 and my helper performed cpr. He brought her back to life, slightly.
10 minutes later the ambulance showed up at the same time as her caregiver, the daughter I think. The caregiver seemed more upset that we performed cpr than anything else. She said the lady had a dnr order and we were not supposed to do cpr on her.
I called my boss to tell him what happened. He says “was this before or after you gave her the bill?” I said before. He said “leave the bill with someone and get to the next call”.
14. Money Piled From Floor To Ceiling
Went in to clean his house and found floor to ceiling money. Hundreds of thousands just piled up every where – a lot of it no longer in circulation. Had to get the police in to make him and it safe.
15. A House Left Exactly As It Was
Work in restoration construction. There was an old lady who still had the plate that she had fixed for her husband on the counter for him when he got home.
She told us it had been there for like 7 years. It was really gross looking. Also the WHOLE rest of the house she kept EXACTLY like it was on the day he died. Same towel hanging on the bathroom door. His work shirt laying in the hallway floor. As we worked she kept a close eye on us to make sure that we moved NOTHING. She was adamant about the whole situation.
16. Some Customers Have Tanks In The Backyard
Brother went to a guy’s house who had a lot of land. He collected old WW2 vehicles and had a tank or two in his back garden. Showed my bro around.
17. A Fully Stocked Bar In The Bathroom
They had a floor-to-ceiling liquor cabinet impeccably stocked (anything you could think of) and ordered (all labels facing out) in their bathroom directly opposite their sink.
18. A Discovery Behind A False Wall
Multiple bottles of serious acid hidden behind a false wall. Police had to be called and such.
19. A Sales Call Turned Into A Winery Tour
One dude decided to give me a tour of the giant backyard shed he used for fermenting wine. It was actually pretty interesting, he explained a lot about how he did it and what it was like running a home winery. Didn’t buy anything from me, though.
— Anonymous
20. The Party Ended Without A Tip
I work in catering. The only time i felt weirded out was when we were setting up in the garage of this house and 3 kids get home from school with their nanny. They are shuffled upstairs for only a half an hour or so and then back down and leave for the rest of the night.
The weird part was there was no evidence in the garage nor the first floor of the house that any children lived there. No toys, no bikes, no shoes and zero family photos anywhere.
And then the house party took a weird turn when it turned out to be some sort of fundraiser for as they put it during the toast ” the poor unfortunate colored children”.
They did not tip.
21. The Inspector Needed A Change Of Equipment
I perform Home Inspections, and I’ve see a lot of pretty disgusting/creepy/and strange stuff. But the worst is when the home is still occupied by a renter. This one house had at least 4-6 cats, black mold all over every window and bathroom fixture (and the children’s beds were directly next to in the bed rooms), and the house had a vomit inducing, musty and poop smell. Within seconds of entering the home, I told them I was going to inspect the crawl space first (which I ALWAYS do LAST), so that I could suit up with my full face respirator. I did the entire inspection in full organic bio-hazard gear. I gag a little just typing this.
22. Decades Of Smoking Had Left Their Mark
Just the other day I was in a apartment so stained by nicotine and other chemicals from smoking that you could literally scrape the residue of the walls and doors. Pounds of it collected over decades of smoking more than a couple of packs a day.
— Virginin
23. An Easter Visit They Never Forgot
Police officer, so it’s kind of cheating for me.
Back when I was working for a youth corrections/residential program I had to take a kid home for a home visit on Easter (2013), it was a supervised 4 hour visit so I had to stay. This house was in the worst neighborhood in one of the worst cities in the country. It was hot that day, probably low 80s which is hot for this part of the country in the spring.
In this tiny apartment we crammed 14 adults, nearly all of them smoking, and this house probably hadn’t been cleaned since the day they had moved in. They still had their heat blasting inside so it was probably closer to 90 degrees. The walls were literally dripping with tar from their cigarettes, I’m sitting there sweating and desperately trying not to touch anything while crammed into a couch with three other people. I still hate easter because of that day.
24. The Windows Had An Unpleasant Surprise
The creepiest thing I saw was nicotine goo running down the aluminum parts of the windows and sliding glass door from all the smoking they did.
— sbhikes
25. The Missing Books Were What Stood Out
I sold residential real estate for a couple of years in the mid-80’s. I was surprised by the number of homes with no books.
— dyuhas