15 Roommate Stories That Will Make Your Spine Tingle

Having good, reliable, and responsible roommates is crucial since we see their faces every single day. However, not everyone is so fortunate. In the compilations we’ve gathered for you today, people share their worst roommate and flatmate stories. These are tales of living with individuals so chaotic, awful, or even frightening that their lives felt like scenes from a horror show.

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 / RedditI 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 / RedditShe would brush her long hair and clean out the brush. Then, to dispose of the hair, she would stuff it in the sink drain.
Normal people throw it in the trash. She clogged the sink constantly. © blackday44 / RedditI 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 / RedditHe had severe, undiagnosed OCD. He had a laundry list of rituals that would consume his entire day and annoy me.
One of his rituals was to play a movie and music at the same time on his laptop and then go take a two-hour shower. We shared a room, so I would close his laptop when he left, and after his shower, he’d come out and ask me, “Why did you touch my laptop?”
I would tell him that the noise was really distracting, and he would tell me to just use headphones. This happened every Tuesday and Thursday night. © Burrito_Loyalist / 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 / RedditShe 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 / RedditShe would decide something was dirty and throw it away along with everything else it was touching.
Then she would demand that I buy replacements for everything (both hers and mine) that she trashed without advising me beforehand. © KiddPresident / RedditWhen 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 / RedditMy sophomore year of college, my roommate and I had bunk beds. I had the top bunk, and he had the bottom bunk. If I was in bed, I could tell when he took his shoes off by the smell. He hardly showered, so he was a smelly dude.
He also had raging mental health issues that he refused to get help for. I’m talking: narcissist (nothing was ever his fault), manipulative, and a pathological liar. He moved out partway through the year, thankfully. And he was going into education. © celloman78 / 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 / RedditMy roommate for one semester in college was the smelliest person I’ve ever met. His day would consist of drinking half a gallon of milk, then sitting in his room, whispering to himself in the dark while playing video games. He showered about twice a month if we were lucky, and every time I walked past his room to get to mine, I would gag from the smell.
It was the worst semester of my life, especially since I was dealing with that plus pneumonia during my winter abroad in Canada. © Toronto_Phil / RedditHe had a window AC unit instead of a fan like a normal person because he wanted his room to be an icebox. Even during the winter, he would run it in complete opposition to our furnace, so we were just running up the electric bill. He didn’t care, though, since his rich dad would just pay his portion at the end of the month. © Nickelas / RedditShe 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 / RedditOur significant others live with us under the same roof, and even though we think we know them well, we might one day be shocked to discover a hidden, disturbing side. This is what happened to the people in this article, and they were brave enough to share their poignant stories with the world.

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