People Around The World Share Weird Stuff They Witnessed At A Friend's House

I had a friend in high school. We're still friends today actually. His mom was a hoarder. There were little pathways throughout the house but it was filled, from floor to ceiling, with junk. In the hallway to the bedrooms, she had stacked every newspaper she ever got. They were tied up in bundles. When you walked in that hallway he would caution you to not touch the papers because if a row fell, it would take a couple hours to dig yourself out.

My family was very comfortable and my mom always babysat lots of kids from around the neighborhood. Basically her place was just where the kids hung out. Once there was an emergency with my dad and my mom really needed somebody to watch me overnight and I wound up with one of the families that she babysat for. They were really nice people and I was close friends with their kids obviously because they were at my house every day. It was a new experience though.

This was the first time I’d ever seen people living in real poverty. I was kind about it and I didn’t say anything, but parts of it were a real shock to me. The toilet didn’t work, but they had just continued to use it to the point that it was piled up to the seat. We had to unscrew the lightbulb to turn off the lights because the switch would shock you if you touched it. I felt really bad for them.

It was just a real eye-opener for me as a kid and it gave me a much better understanding of exactly why my mom babysat and fed all those kids.

15 years ago, I was on a visit to a friend’s house who lives in San Francisco around 3rd street (a bad neighborhood area) . Upon entry, I pass by the kitchen and 4 gas stove flames were in full blast, not cooking anything, no vent. You can literally see a big burn hole in the ceiling all the way through the second floor room. His mom was upstairs in one of those rooms far away from the bottom floor kitchen, watching TV in full blast. Long story short. They are basically using their gas stove as a centralized heater for the whole house. I’m a certified fire safety director at my work. This almost gives me a heart attack.

I went to a sleepover at this girl's house and her mom was obsessively taking pictures of us all night. At one point, we were watching a movie and my friend passed out and her mom, I kid you not, pulls out a huge newscast-type heavy duty camera and starts recording her daughter sleeping for a solid 5 minutes .

I have trouble sleeping and so that night when us kids were in the bedroom to sleep, I was on the floor, just staring at the wall in the dark. I was facing away from the door, laying on my side. I hear the door creak...some footsteps and then the darkness of the room lit with a sudden flash. I got up just in time to see the door close. I know it was her mom taking pics of us. The weirdest part to me is that it was about 3am when that happened...meaning the girl's mom either had an alarm or just stayed up that late in wait....

I'll be the weird family. My dad is a doctor and one day my friend came over who had a totally blackened toenail from getting stepped on by a baseball cleat. No problem, my dad says, just some blood underneath the toenail. We can relieve the pain by puncturing a hole in the toenail and letting the blood flow out. Well he proceeds to get out a dremel (tiny drill), sterilize a new drill bit, and drills a small hole in my friend's toenail. Blood shoots out of the hole into the air. My friend and I were screaming and laughing the entire time. It worked, he was instantly relieved of his pain.

My friend asked if this was a normal occurrence in the house. I told him that my dad has always been the go to for caring for friends, neighbors, etc., but this did indeed take the cake for being the best "procedure" he's done in the house.

My cousin once dated a guy who scoop ice cream so weirdly. We were at my aunt's house for a birthday party and when it was time for cake and ice cream this guy refused cake and said he'd just have ice cream. He walked over to the table, popped the top off the ice cream carton, grabbed a handful of ice cream and was walking around with his handful of ice cream dripping all over the place like it was totally normal.

Went with a few friends to one of their family's houses for a birthday party when I was like 15 or 16. We ate, swam, and had a great ole time.

After eating we settled in to watch a horror movie and at some point I looked around me and everyone in that family was sitting in the same criss-cross-applesauce position and slowly rocking back and forth while watching tv.

Definitely not the weirdest thing on this thread by far, but something about it was extremely creepy. They were nice as hell, though.

I babysat for a family on occasion and the kids would always ask for a "cool cup" and I had no clue what it was. They asked for them constantly but were too little to really describe them enough for me to understand. I mentioned it to the mom in passing one day and she started laughing and cut the tops off of some bell peppers and took out the seeds and then filled the peppers with tap water. The kids went nuts over them like there were treats. It was really weird to me that drinking water out of bell peppers was a thing to beg for on the regular.

Growing up in rural East England, I had a friend who lived on a working farm. They had the stereotypical big English farmhouse, lovely old place, no flat floors or straight walls anywhere. Anyway, downstairs was an interesting layout, they had a room that was almost hidden away that you could easily miss unless you knew it was there or noticed it from outside.

So, this room, I only ever went in once, maybe twice in many years of being friends and going over their house quite a lot, it was their "Christmas room" it has decorations up all year round, and during the year when they bought presents they'd wrap them and just put in the room and leave them there until Christmas.

It was awesome in a sense though, a whole room for this is great, often when it came to Christmas time they'd forgotten what something was that they got for another family member.

Had a friend who’s family lived on a huge property and kept cows for the property tax exemption, not odd.. he told me to come by and get some purple ringers he collected for me.. invited me in to meet his parents and I swear, there was a full size cow chilling on one of their couches in the living room. That sight was way more wild than any of the hallucinations later experienced. Really nice people though lol..

My friend and I all went to our rich friend’s house to play. Then they said they needed to do something and would be back in an hour. So we all just played in the room and waited. Turns out the entire family had lunch and just locked us up in the room so they wouldn’t have to feed us. Once we found out we all felt hurt and decided to never play at their house again.

Went to my friend's house after a high school exam. Walked in and his Dad and step-Dad were playing “Sorry!” while smoking cigars and his Mom was making out with some random dude on the couch. She gave us $20 and told us to go get a couple large pizzas and come back.

I don't know what was weirder, that my friend was like "It's not even my Dad's week with me!" all incredulous, or when we got back that his Dad and make-out dude was gone, table all set for pizza, and his step-Dad and Mom acted like it was just a normal Wednesday.

When I was seven, I went over to play with a new friend and she asked if I wanted a snack. I said sure and we went into their playroom where there was a mini fridge just stacked with candy, full bars of everything, and she casually tossed me a pack of Rolos. Now, the house was a manufactured home— not a trailer per se, but definitely not like the usual house either. I know this doesn’t indicate how much money the family had, but this was not in an upscale neighborhood or house.

I marveled at what was, first, the largest amount of candy I have still to this day ever seen and, second, the fact that she and her siblings all just had free access to it at such young ages.

She was surprised at my surprise and asked what I kept in my snack fridge. I told her I didn’t have one of those, and then it was her turn to be absolutely gobsmacked at the idea that I didn’t have a mini fridge full of candy just at my disposal and whim.

This happened when I was like 6. I needed to use the bathroom at a friend’s house and he led me to his parents' bathroom. The place was filled with crap of all sorts. Boxes, magazines, an inflatable pool, lots of other stuff. You could barely get in there. He pulled out a drawer from the installed cabinet by the entry way and said to pee in there. I thought he was joking until he went ahead and peed in there himself. I couldn’t argue with that, so I too peed right in there. Then he shut the drawer and we went and played more ninja turtles. I have no idea what became of that drawer/house/family.

One of the first times I met my husband's family, I was over at their house and husband gestured for me to sit down and be comfortable. Their house was really very cluttered. Not quite hoarder cluttered, but close. They had a couple of couches facing each other and then some other chairs.

Not knowing the 'rules,' I sat on one of the couches, which had a lot of stuffed teddy bears on it. OMG, you would think I had sat down on live bears. There were probably 20-30 small - medium stuffed bears on this couch. Husband's mother and twin brother both visibly reacted as if I had damaged the bears. (Not antique bears either). That was when I was told that the couch was for the bears, and only for the bears and that no one was allowed to sit on the bears' couch. Just the bears. The bears all had little beaded necklaces with their names on them to tell them apart because they were all the same brand and style.

I have an opposite one because I had the weird family. In high school I had a sleepover and one friend went to the kitchen in the middle of the night and saw my dad inebriated, in his underwear and stained shirt, on his knees in front of the fridge drinking mustard out of the bottle. Monday rolls around and the rumors have spread and I was like “WAIT! All your dads don’t do that too?!” Lol Btw he did in fact have his own separate mustard bottle.

Stayed at a friend’s house when I was probably 10 or 11, and we had a sleepover one night, and we were up really late playing games and just talking. Around 3-4am, his dad comes in, frantic, saying that he heard someone breaking in upstairs, and that we needed to leave immediately.

Anyways, we walk out of the house, and he tells the neighbor that they need to leave too. The neighbor looked extremely worried, and pulled her phone out. We drive to a place and he gets us some food, and eventually an ambulance comes, and so does the neighbor along with it, because apparently the father was schizophrenic and having an episode. There was really no break in. Obviously my friend NOW knows this, but back then, we genuinely believed him.

When I was 15 I was doing this nature program over the summer. I made friends with one of the girls there. We hit it off really well. When we found out that we lived near each other, she invited me over for a sleepover. Her family was cool and I didn't have any issues until later on.

I had to use the bathroom and asked where it was. The mom told me that they were having a little problem with the toilet. I didn't think anything of it until I went and saw the toilet. The toilet did not work at all!!! They just had a plastic bag in it. There was so much stuff in it. It was just there for everyone to see. I almost started gagging. I don't know how long they kept the bag there, but it smelled awful!!! Everyone there acted like it was a casual thing. Till this day I never found out if it ever got fixed.

I went to a friend's house as a kid. Sitting at the dining table for lunch. House phone rings. Everyone falls to the floor around me including the mum and dad. I'm the only one left sitting there. The dad informs me that I now must answer the phone. "Hello... Johnson's house". I hold the phone out to the dad. "Ummm it's for you". Everyone laughs. I am so uncomfortable. The next time that phone rang. I was the fastest to the floor I can tell you that. Such a fun loving family. Loved going around there!

My friend invited me to sleep over, and the next morning we were eating and talking with her mom. Her mom asks if she wants to prank dad again and my friend's all "yes! he was SO MAD" I thought they had maybe swapped shampoo with nair or something, so I regrettably asked what they did last time.

It turned out they had tied string around his male appendage while he was passed out from pain meds and woke him up by tying the string to the bedroom doorknob and then slamming the door. My friend was a 9 year old girl, and her mom got her in on that. Doing it at all was f-d up, but you are gonna put your kid in the mix? They assured me they 'messed with him' like that all the time, it was fine. Took a hard pass on staying over again, because I did not wanna know what they tied a string to for sleeping females (or what other crap I might walk in on).

I went to this girl's house in primary school. I'm ashamed to say it was because I felt bad that she was getting bullied at school, and in hindsight she had a learning disability. She was nice though, just sometimes said really uncomfortable things for an 11 year old.

Anyway she had a 3 year old brother and I saw her mum reading a book titled "How to be a good mum" or something similar. She started screaming at this toddler for not vacuuming his room and referencing the book. I was like?? Ma'am? You expect this infant to vacuum his room?!

To be fair he did end up doing it but mind blown. Their family had a really weird dynamic.

One time I was at my friend's house while his dad was working late. His Mom brought home two Little Caesar’s pizzas for us, his brother & his parents. By the time his dad got home from work, there was no pizza. So his dad did the most unexpected thing! He just made himself a salad for dinner & no one got screamed at until they cried. I had never seen that happen before.

When I was about 10, I was at my friend's house with a few other girls our age. We stayed up late watching tv. At one point my friend's mom came downstairs and told her that she had just got done clipping her nails. She then gave my friend the clipping from her large toenail. My friend put the toenail clipping in her mouth and began chewing on it while continuing to watch tv with us. When asked about it she just stated “it’s good” and acted like it was not a big deal.

Was on a date with a guy who was cooking dinner for me and his dog peed in the middle of the living room. I jumped up, a bit panicked, trying to get the guy's attention to what just happened. The guy didn't even look up when he said "Oh yeah, she does that sometimes" and that was it.

I asked him if there was a towel and disinfectant I could use to help clean it up and the guy says, "I'll just throw some Febreeze on it after dinner". I suddenly realized the musty smell I noticed earlier wasn't from his cool and rustic cabin being under a canopy of trees, or that the floor in the same location that bowed when you stepped over it was because it was old.

Ate dinner at a table that was a couple feet away from the dog toilet. Left. Very gross.

I celebrated Christmas with my high school girlfriend's family one year. It was her mother's turn to open her presents and she opened one from her daughter, then one from her other daughter, then finally one from her husband. Then her husband started pulling tiny hidden gifts for his wife from everywhere: earrings from the couch cushions, necklaces, bracelets, a bag of candy, and flowers. He had at least a dozen presents hidden everywhere from behind the curtains, in a lampshade, behind the TV, in a closet...they just kept coming and he had the biggest grin on his face. When he was done he wished her a merry Christmas, told her he loved her and kissed her right on the mouth in front of me.

It was wonderful but extremely weird to me. It wasn't until that display of love and joy for his wife that I realized I had never once seen my own parents act the least bit affectionate towards each other. That I had never heard them say I love you to each other. That's when I realized it was my family that was weird.

It wasn't until that display of love for his wife that I realized that it was manly to be romantic and to show love and affection. Her parents were wonderful people and I will always regard them as role models. I hope they're doing well all these years later.

I had a friend in 4th grade and it was my first time going to his house. I took my shoes off outside as that was indicated clearly by all the shoes in a shoe rack outside. Before I stepped in the front door I was literally blocked by his mom while she yelled at him in their native language and then she slammed the door.

I asked him what she said and he told me 'I forgot to tell you the rules. You need to have a clean pair of socks to change into before you walk in the house.'

I said 'oh... well, I can definitely do that next time... we don't do that at my house. '

I then asked if he'd rather go to my house and he said that he couldn't. His mom also just grounded him for 2 weeks.

Shoes outside... normal for some households. But can't even go back inside without clean socks or freshly washed feet? Crazy!

I had a friend in school whose parents had a very eclectic decorating design around the house. They'd been all over the world on trips so they had collected lots of unique, really cool pieces. Part of the collection included weapons from different cultures. Well, being two 13 year old boys we decided it would be fun to have a sword fight with some curved scimitars.

Of course we were too loud and eventually his dad came in and caught us. Rather than get mad and yell that we had notched up the blades, instead he grabbed a long sword off the wall and started swinging at us like he was literally going to duel to the death. We spent the next 30 minutes running around the house and deflecting blows from a grown man with a sword.

I went to visit my girlfriend at her parents’. I live far away so I get invited to stay on the couch for the night. I was into this girl so I’m hoping she’ll slip out of her room to visit me at night. I fall asleep and wake up to the sound of heels on hardwood coming from their kitchen. I’m thinking she put on heels and was looking to get frisky before I had to leave. I walk into the kitchen. It’s pitch black but my eyes start adjusting. I see a figure but the calves above those heels are massive, too tall and wide shouldered. It’s the dad in a dress and heels at 3 am walking around in the kitchen. He doesn’t see me. I go back to the couch and pretend to sleep.

Small southern town. When I was probably like 10-12ish, a friend had a big sleepover for our friend group. Probably 12-15 dudes. We were mostly jock/preppy kinda kids. Future frat boy types. Upper middle class with some rich kids sprinkled in. Host kid is a recent-marriage stepson of a chiropractor. His mom was a trashy milf before we knew that word in the early 90s. Anyway.. we start to arrive and we're messing around their place and making plans for mischief for the night. Host assures us that we can do whatever we want because his mom and stepdad are going out on a nighttime bicycle ride all night.

Nope. That's not what was going down at all.

The parents came out in full blown BDSM slave gear. Leather daddy zippers and all that. Stepdad didn't have the head part fully zipped up, but mom was being led by a leash. Right in front of us. He said a few kind words instructing us to behave for the night, and then led mom to the car and drove off.

After a moment of stunned silence, we then had a big group argument about WTF we just saw. Host, who thought this was perfectly normal, assured us that it was just a biking thing. We didn't know everything, but we knew enough to call bullcrap on that. But a half hour later, it was behind us and we proceeded with normal tween boy stuff playing night wars outside in the woods/yard.

I spent a summer in Sweden once visiting a friend, and one weekend we stayed at his sister's house. She and her fiance lived pretty deep in the woods, and when I first walked in, I noticed that they had a small stack of round, empty butter containers in each room. And when I asked, they said: "Oh, those are for the snakes."

Turns out they had two silly cats who would bring in live snakes from outside and just drop them randomly in the house. The snakes were pretty small and non-venomous, and were mostly just desperate to get back outside.

During the day, if you saw a snake, you would just pick it up and put it outside, but at night it was easier just to drop a butter container over it and deal with it in the morning.