13 Roommate Stories That Will Haunt People Forever

Living with a roommate can be an adventure — sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, and occasionally straight-up terrifying. From strange midnight habits to hygiene nightmares, these stories will make you grateful for your own living situation, or maybe remind you why you swore off roommates forever. Here are some true tales that are so unsettling, they’ll make your spine tingle.

• One day, I came home late and saw my roommate quickly entering her room, wrapped in a wet towel. I said hi, but she ignored me and avoided eye contact. I shrugged it off, assuming she hadn’t noticed me. 5 minutes later, I heard her coming home from outside. Confused, I asked, “Weren’t you just inside in your bedroom?” She turned pale and told me to run immediately to the car, lock it, and call 911.
  That day, I was horrified to discover that my roommate is actually schizophrenic. Sometimes she skips her medication, causing her to dissociate and become paranoid. In her dissociated state, she had left the house without realizing it and then re-entered, believing she was dealing with an intruder. This explained her odd behavior—ignoring me initially and then asking me to go to the car—thinking there was a stranger in our house when it was her all along.
  I had been living with her for two months and hadn’t known this about her. I still love her and consider her a friend, but needless to say, I moved out quickly as I couldn’t feel safe living there anymore.

• We had a shared kitchen, the three of us. We had cleaning schedules, but they never followed them; they just piled it up until it was my turn. After numerous complaints that I was the only one cleaning, I stopped cleaning. Three weeks later, there was rotten food and fungi all over the kitchen and even a cockroach infestation.
  A cleaning company had to be hired, the costs of which were spread over the people living there. I objected to the bill on the grounds of my earlier complaints. They didn’t argue, and I did not have to pay. I even got compensation for eating out every night.
  They got kicked out a week later. It was a win for me eventually, but a horrible time before that. © Mezame_Drgn / Reddit

• I kept smelling something sour in the apartment but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I checked the trash, the fridge, even the laundry. Finally, I found several half-empty glasses of milk hidden all over the place — on bookshelves, behind the couch, even in the bathroom cabinet. By the time I found them, they were chunky and yellow. She said she just “forgot” where she left them.

• I once scrubbed down the whole apartment because the landlady was coming by. It took literally all night. He didn’t help at all. I scrubbed pots that had more culture than a classical concert.
  Five minutes after the landlady left, he went into the kitchen, created lots of noise, and when I awoke from my coma and went in there, it looked exactly the same, minus the mold. © cyberpudel / Reddit

• I had a roommate who refused to wear deodorant. He also worked in a labor-intensive job and went to the gym, so basically, he stunk a lot. He’d swear he showered twice a day, but no one ever witnessed that.
  He then started scamming our other roommates (in a 4-bedroom apartment) by borrowing money and never, ever paying it back. Then he started skipping out on his share of the bills, and then the rent. Eventually, he got kicked out.
  While he was there, we had this running joke that the safest place to hide our money from Mark (his name) was under the soap. © Overall_Draft_9416 / Reddit

• I had nice porcelain dishes for fancy dinners that were left to me as an inheritance, along with everyday dishes. She went out of her way to reach for the porcelain dishes and then literally threw them into the sink, shattering them.
  I spoke to her several times about it, and she would say, “It’s your fault for owning nice things.” She was a weird hippie type of person. So I packed them into a box and kept them in my room until the lease was up. © mencryforme5 / Reddit

• Every night after showering, my roommate would walk around without any towel on her, dripping wet, leaving puddles and stains wherever she sat. Once, she sat on the living room couch for an entire episode of a show, soaking the cushion through. When I asked her to please dry off with a towel first, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “It’s natural. Your couch should adjust.”

• She would come home, fill the fridge with a ton of food, then leave a couple of days later for months on end to stay with her 50-year-old boyfriend. Her food would sit in the fridge and rot, so I would have to toss it all out. She would complain that we ate her food when she would randomly show back up.
  When she left to go to her boyfriend’s, she would hand me anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 for her portion of rent for the coming months. I’d have to babysit her money, which made me paranoid. © Sirduckerton / Reddit

• When she would “wash” our dishes, she would run everything under cold water with no soap and place them on the drying rack. I got tired of reminding her that utensils and food-caked plates needed to be scrubbed with hot, soapy water, so I would just rewash them after she was done.
  To make things worse, she also never washed her hands after using the bathroom and claimed to be a germaphobe (i.e., she wouldn’t let people sit on her bed with outside clothes). Oh, and she wants to be a pediatrician... © f**nissjuverdeen / Reddit

• My older brother lived with me for a while when he was getting back on his feet. He had a pet snake, which he lost in my apartment several times. © Amy_G***linger / Reddit

• My roommate and her boyfriend fought constantly, shouting and slamming doors until 3 a.m. One night, the fight escalated, and she locked herself in the bathroom. After things calmed down, I went in to grab my toothbrush and froze. On the wall, carved into the paint with a razor, was his name in big, jagged letters. She never mentioned it again, and I never asked.

• She took a fork with her lunch to work every day. The forks never returned. We mentioned it because it had never been a problem before she moved in. We bought a box of more forks—just forks. They started to disappear as well.
  She denied it until we caught her one day, taking her lunch, and asked to see her bag. She apologized and bought us a box of plastic forks. We asked her to move out shortly after, as she was just weird and not a good match anyway. Strangely enough, we never had the fork problem again. © wlane13 / Reddit

• My roommate was obsessed with essential oils and constantly claimed the apartment had “bad energy.” One day, while I was at work, she decided to pour an entire bottle of lavender oil into the carpet to “cleanse the space.” When I got home, the smell was so strong it made my eyes water. Weeks later, the landlord charged us $600 for a deep clean. My roommate swore she had done me a favor.

Whether it’s stolen food, bizarre rituals, or chilling late-night encounters, these stories prove that sharing a space can test your patience and your sanity. And while not every roommate situation turns into a horror story, these definitely show how quickly “normal” can spiral into unforgettable.