A while back, I posted about people's "can't eat at everyone's house" horror stories. They were so disturbing and nightmarish that they prompted many more of you to share the horrors you witnessed in someone else's kitchen. Here are a few of the worst, most disgusting ones.
1. "Back when I was in high school, one of my friends wanted to have a sleepover at her house. I knew she owned a lot of rescue animals, but I didn't think she'd be so neglectful. I arrived at her house, and it smelled so bad. There were multiple cages of chinchillas against one wall, even more cages of guinea pigs against another in her damn living room, and two dogs and one puppy running around that were riddled with fleas. Their puppy hopped onto me, and within seconds, I was finding fleas on my body."
"I was horrified but didn't want to be rude to my friend or her mother, so I stupidly stayed. They made me dinner, and I noped out of it, claiming I wasn't hungry, when I saw more fleas hopping around their kitchen.
"They insisted that it wasn't a big deal and you could just brush away the fleas. I still don't get why I still stayed over. Later, when she asked if I could come for another sleepover, I pretended to call my mom and faked a conversation where she said no so I wouldn't have to go."
2. "Because I rode a bus to school, I had to spend the night with my grandmother in town to participate in any before- or after-school activities. She fixed vegetable soup one night that included macaroni. There were shells from weevil larvae floating in the soup. She was easily offended, so I pushed them aside and finished that bowl. No refills, thank you!"
3. "In college, we went to a friend's house for a Super Bowl party, and he was roasting or smoking whole chickens outside at a barbecue. They looked really good, but when we started cutting into them, we found they were truly WHOLE CHICKENS. By this, I mean they still had all of their guts, intestines, and vital organs inside FULLY intact. It was as if he had found some chickens (maybe his family owned them, or he stole them?) and simply cut off their heads and feet, plucked them, and put them on the BBQ. We immediately stopped eating, and I don't believe I ever went back to that dude's house."
4. "I have this neighbor across the street with kids a bit younger than I am, and when I was little, I loved going to their house. One time, I went over for a birthday party. They have lots of cats and dogs, so hair was everywhere. When it came time for dessert, her oldest kid dropped her cupcake on the ground. Her mom picked it up and made her eat it even though it was covered in cat hair. My mom took me home immediately after."
5. "I went to a friend's Thanksgiving one year. They neglected to tell any of us that they'd decided to be vegan for Thanksgiving (a whole other POS move to make). But they had no idea how to cook vegan food properly. Halfway through a roasted acorn squash with no salt, seasonings, or anything except a troubling amount of vegan butter, my stomach decided to alert me that there was a problem. I switched to something else: mashed potatoes, which they'd decided were just a matter of overboiling potatoes and smashing them."
"My stomach alerted me again that trouble was afoot. I decided it was just too much starch. Took a bite of the unseasoned, unsalted, microwaved Brussels sprouts. Then I immediately took a bite of 'stuffing,' a lovely way to refer to croutons drenched in no less than half a tub of vegan butter and ONLY black pepper — nothing else.
"Finally, my stomach decided we needed to talk about the looming situation IMMEDIATELY, so I excused myself to the washroom. I will spare you all the details of what fell out of my body, but I urge you to remember the scene in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. live-action film where he discovers the substance covering Dinohattan.
"I was in there for half an hour and only returned because I felt awkward about the time spent. Turns out I was not alone. Out of seven of us, we all took turns occupying the three bathrooms in his home for roughly that same amount of time before I feigned being exhausted and asked my carpooling friends to take me home, pretending to be a major inconvenience for them.
"We got in the car, and the first thing my friend said was, 'The shit I have already shat showed me the ghost of Thanksgiving yet to come.' Horrible. HORRIBLE."
6. "I was babysitting at a house that had an older dog. I was watching TV with the 8-year-old boy I was caring for when the dog started moaning and turning in circles. Then he let out a huge gloppy poo on the rug right in front of us. The kid sighed, got a spatula from the kitchen drawer, scooped up the poo, and flung it out the front door. Then he just tossed the unwashed spatula back in the kitchen drawer. I never ate anything in that house."
7. "I found out that my grandfather licked silverware clean and put it back in the drawer...when I was 20 years old! I wanted to vomit when I caught him doing that. I could only think about how I used silverware he had 'cleaned' probably hundreds of times. I recently saw the episode of Friends where Joey does that with a spoon. I guess it's not a completely unheard-of disgusting behavior, but dear lord."
8. "Parents went out of town and left us kids at a friend's house overnight. For breakfast, they served cereal, orange juice, etc. I was excited to see they used full-size glasses for orange juice instead of the small glasses that we used at our house. Everyone had a full glass, but I was the only one who had polished mine off. So much waste, I thought. But nope — I watched in amazement and horror as their mother went around and poured everyone's remaining orange juice back into the pitcher. I tried to wrap my head around how many iterations of backwash I'd just had and that they had every morning."
9. "I dated a girl whose grandmother sold delicious tamales out of her trunk. I picked this girl up at her grandma's apartment but used the bathroom before we left. She was washing all her panties, bras, and pantyhose in the bathtub. No big deal. When we returned later that afternoon, the dirty clothes had been replaced with her soaking the corn husks for the tamales in the bathtub."
10. "My mother-in-law saves used napkins if they're only a little bit dirty and USES THEM FOR GUESTS. Like, WTF, mate?! She tried teaching my daughter to save her used napkin once. I found out later and told my daughter that is something she SHOULD disobey Nana on. Never mind that she was teaching my daughter this during COVID. It's nasty on its own, but dang!"
11. "When I was around 10, we went to my parents' friend's house to eat dinner. He also invited a couple who offered to make venison stew. We all sat down to eat; the venison was chewy and gross. Being polite, we kept eating, and my dad asked where they got the deer meat. The couple proudly announced that IT WAS ROADKILL. They were feeding us a dead deer they'd found on the side of the road. In the summer. Who knows how long it had sat there? My parents gave me a look not to eat anymore. Thankfully, we didn't get sick, but we never ate anything they made again."
12. "My grandma was invited next door to have pie and coffee with her neighbor. When she entered the kitchen, she saw the pie on the counter and asked, 'Is it raisin pie?' The neighbor said, 'No, it's pumpkin.' She slapped her hand on the counter, and roaches ran off the pie and scattered all over. Grandma just said she was allergic to pumpkin, turned around, and went back home."
13. "As a kid, my uncle was the last one up in the family and would let the dog lick his ice cream bowl clean at night, then put it back in the cupboard because it 'looked clean.' My dad had a paper route and was always the first one up, so he always grabbed that bowl for cereal the next morning. He didn't find out that the dog regularly licked that bowl 'clean' the night before until he was an adult!"
14. "I was dating a guy I liked a lot. I started spending the weekends at his house and noticed he didn't have hand soap in the bathroom. I brought a bottle over, thinking he's a bachelor who lives alone; he probably uses the soap in his shower to wash his hands after he uses the bathroom. The next weekend, it was gone. Then I met his friends, who informed me he didn't wash his hands because he was trying to build up an immunity to germs. They told me this as he was preparing a fish dinner for us...with his bare hands. We broke up shortly after I found this out."
15. "I helped clean a relative's house once when they were in the hospital. Everything in the fridge had expired years ago. All the salad dressings were at least five years past their expiration date, and they had served them at a dinner maybe six months prior. I never liked eating there due to their cats on the counter and the generally dirty house, but we were invited for occasional meals."
"Ever since the fridge incident, we've only eaten at restaurants with this person. The idea of three-years-expired cheese sticks possibly fed to my kid is appalling. I check my own fridge way more often now, especially before guests come over. It's so easy to miss dates on condiments that hang out on the door for a while."
16. "When I was a teenager, one of our friends had a mom who was known as the neighborhood chef. Anyone who was over could always grab a plate, and the food was always delicious. While on Christmas break from school, my friends and I all gravitated to our friend's house. We played pool, watched TV, and had a great time as usual. There was a plate next to the pool table full of delicious banana bread that a friend and I stuffed into our mouths all afternoon."
17. "I was friends with this nightmare of a person (for many reasons, including this one) who had a mother AND a sister with a bit of a hoarding/hygiene issue. Every time I'd go over, there'd be cat piss or vomit on the floor that looked as if it had been there for days, probably weeks. There were always dirty dishes in the sink and litter from litter boxes all over the floor. The last time I ever ate there was when I went over while her dad and sister were making dinner and, at the same time, her mother was feeding all of their cats."
"All seven cats, most with long and shedding hair, jumped on the same counter that her dad was prepping a chicken on, and they were immediately fed while their food and hair were FLYING through the kitchen.
"It landed on the raw chicken, and the dad just thought it was funny and said, 'Man, this house is sure a zoo, LOL.' After that, I told them, 'I'm actually not feeling too hot; I'm gonna go home.'
"I told my family, and they all said, 'Ew.' Never again."
18. "Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's house. I'm standing in the kitchen, talking to my sister-in-law's mother, and she's making stuffing. Her bowl wasn't big enough to mix the ingredients in without overflowing, so she dumped everything into the kitchen sink and proceeded to mix with her bare smoker hands. She then scooped it all out and put it in the serving bowl like nothing was unusual about the situation. My brother-in-law and I locked eyes that were bugging out of our heads with silent vows of abstention exchanged. To make things more fun, she's a regional manager for a string of large diners. Yum."
19. "In school, during cooking classes (I think it's called home economics in America), kids would often get sick after eating the stuff they prepared. Well, nobody bothered to check the expiration dates, and during a fridge cleanout, we found several things that were at least six years past their date. The teacher thought that if something was in the fridge, it could never go bad. This woman was teaching us how to cook and take care of our homes. She's still working there, and I fucking bet that the same chili sauce jar is still in the back of the fridge."
20. "My partner's coworker works in a food safety lab. She was famous around the office for making homemade cupcakes. One day, someone asked her for the cupcake recipe. A key ingredient was something called 'sweet milk.' When asked what 'sweet milk' was, she revealed that it was the leftover cereal milk after her family members had finished eating their bowls of cereal."
21. "When we were visiting my in-laws, my husband saw his father wipe the kitchen floor with the dishrag, then go right back to the dishes with it. When my husband called him on it, his dad argued with him. This isn't the only problem we have had there. On the same trip, the dish-drying towel literally smelled like vomit (I wonder why...). Now we jump in and wash all the kitchen towels daily when we visit (which annoys my in-laws, but we don't care) and bring our own sponges to trade out when they're not looking, as well as disinfecting wipes for all the surfaces. We refuse to allow them to sicken us and our children just to keep the peace."
—Anonymous
Have you ever witnessed something disturbing in another person's kitchen? Tell us about it in the comments or fill out this anonymous Google form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.