Living with another person can have its ups and downs. Some people get lucky with awesome roommates, and others...not so much. And every now and then, someone just so happens to have a pretty entertaining — aka, brutal — roommate experience that can basically pass for a horror story.
Recently, redditor u/Phoenixkillerx asked the question, "What are things your roommate has done that [are] pure evil?"
Fellow Reddit users didn’t hold back when it came to their responses. Here are some of the wildest — and most horrific — roommate stories:
1. "I had a roommate who I caught rubbing her snot on my bedsheets.
"She also ate a burger I brought home to eat later, never cleaned (but demanded that I clean her side), and was just unpleasant overall."
2. "An ex of mine had a roommate who just irrationally hated her. On my ex's birthday one year, her roommate was acting unusually nice and brought her a cake that she made for her and said she was trying to 'smooth things out.' She thanked her and waited until she wasn't around anymore to cut into the cake because she felt that something was up. When she finally did, the knife hit something hard in the cake, so she dug into it and found that she'd put a bunch of screws in the cake. She left immediately and completely cut ties."
3. "After I confronted my roommate about her messy habits and asking her to clean, she smeared a thin (almost invisible) layer of peanut butter on the counter so that seriously allergic me would rub my arm and belongings in it. She also threatened to set us on fire for cleaning up her messes and putting her junk in her bedroom when she left for the weekend and I wanted to have friends over."
4. "He threatened to stab me with his used needle to give me hepatitis...that was quite a shitty thing to do, in my opinion."
5. "I finally lost it when he broke the water heater and almost started a fire. He kept it from me, and the next time I showered, it started a gas leak — which made me pass out from monoxide poisoning. He laughed when I mentioned that I almost died from that.
"Kicked him out and never talked to him again after 25-plus years of friendship."
6. "Replaced my shampoo with hair remover."
7. "My worst roommate ever, of course, had to be someone I found off Craigslist (never again).
"Took two- to three-hour showers at times I needed to get ready for work (we shared a bathroom); would cook and leave leftovers just sitting on the countertop until it got extremely moldy — and we'd have to yell at him to clean it; would use the dryer — washer and dryer were right in front of my room — only late at night as I was going to bed; and wouldn't pay his portion of the electric bill, which got shut off twice in my less than one-year stay. Rotting food in the fridge was a norm, he kept the apartment at 65 degrees constantly, and he wouldn't shut off [the air-conditioner] even if no one was home, so our bill was sky high every month."
8. "Against my will, he 'borrowed' my clean underwear for a date and returned it dirty."
9. "I had a roommate rearrange our living room to make it less obvious that he was stealing all of our stuff.
"He also broke into my room while I was at work and stole dumb shit, like my copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, some yarn I hand-dyed, and the book I was going to use as my guestbook for my wedding, which happened a year after we moved out. He stole my GST cheques and sold my computer and a shit ton of my stuff. The police did nothing, and my landlord dragged her feet evicting him. Shocker."
10. "I want to preface this by mentioning that he had his own perfectly working bathroom. That didn’t matter, though. He decided, when he inevitably got opiate-constipated, that he would go to MY bathroom with his laxatives, take a huge shit, and not flush it. I know because he'd leave the laxative bottle. I moved out immediately."
11. "Flew his brother out from Florida to spend two weeks in our apartment in the middle of the pandemic — and didn't tell me or the other roommate until 9 p.m. the night before. I assumed that he would at least leave his kid, whom he had partial custody of, with her mom while his brother was there, but no — the kid also stayed with us for the majority of those two weeks. That gives a grand total of three adults, a teenage boy, and a baby in an apartment with one bathroom. In a pandemic."
12. "He tried to break up my friendship with two people because he wanted to sleep with the girl."
13. "I had a housemate who never returned utensils to the kitchen after using them. When I moved into that apartment, we had something like 20 forks, and by the time I moved out, there were no forks left in the utensil drawer. I was keeping one in my room so that he wouldn't steal it."
14. "I lived with someone I was dating, and they broke up with me over the phone at Christmas while I was away. Even though I was unable to move out for six months, they started dating one of our other roommates while I was still living there."
15. "My roommate just had COVID and refused to wear a mask or sanitize after himself, while I lived in the basement and never went upstairs for two weeks. Now that his quarantine is done, I’m pretty sure he's out tonight at the same bar where he got COVID."
Which of these stories shocked you the most? Do you have any bad roommate stories? Let me know in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.