We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the worst thing that ever happened to them living alone. Here are their horror stories.
1. The girl who found her neighbor masturbating into her laundry.
"I caught my 50-year-old neighbor, naked, masturbating into the dryer where my clothes were." Submitted by sarahg4121aa725.
2. The person who woke up to find a strange man in their apartment.
"I was living in a studio apartment and rarely locked my door for some dumb reason. I woke up one morning at like 6 a.m. to some 85-year-old senile man walking around in my living room. When I woke up, I said, "Uhh, hello?" and he responded, "Is this Suzie's house?" Me, being half asleep just said, "No, sorry, wrong apartment." He just walked out. I locked my door and went back to sleep. I hope he found Suzie." Submitted by Alyssa Noel Mehler (Facebook).
3. The girl who found out the hard way that her upstairs neighbors were hoarders.
"My first apartment was in a super-old building that looked like it would have been dangerous to live in, so of course it was perfectly affordable for a 19-year-old. It turned out the people upstairs were hoarders, I found out when maggots started falling through a crack in my kitchen ceiling. It was fucking raining maggots. Needless to say the property managers were not the least bit concerned about the situation. I ended up patching the crack in my ceiling myself." Submitted by Melissa Castro (Facebook).
4. The poor soul who discovered their shower pipes exploded with human feces.
"A week after moving into my first apartment, actual human shit exploded up from the drain in my shower. It was horrendous." Submitted by bridgete4b8da824.
5. The one individual who had mice as roommates.
"My first sublet was a room in a large apartment. It was a beautiful big room and even had a fireplace. On my first night I saw movement in the corner and it turned out to be a mouse. I lived there for four months and ended up killing 21 mice in my bedroom. The place was INFESTED. Another night I woke up from a loud noise. I sat straight up in bed and saw a mouse run from my bed to the closet. The mouse had been scratching on my bed comforter!" Submitted by Nicki Snodgrass (Facebook).
6. The one tenant who was threatened by their neighbor.
"My first time living alone was in France and my next-door neighbor was, quite obviously, mentally ill. He used to play the same chord on his guitar for hours and hours, to the point I got used to it. Anyway, my friend stayed at my place for a few days while I was out of town and the night I returned, my neighbor tried to break down my door while screaming about different ways he wanted to kill me. I was so terrified, I couldn't remember how to call the police. The next day, I found out my friend had put a note under my neighbor's door asking that he not play the guitar after 9 p.m. and that's why he was trying to kill me." Submitted by marycatherineh3.
7. The one girl who discovered an army of spiders under her floor.
"When I first moved into the apartment, I kept noticing that in every room there was a block of wood duct-taped to spots on the floor. Of course I couldn't help my curiosity and I pulled them all up to find perfectly round holes. While I was wondering what the heck those holes were for, something started crawling over my foot. I looked down and it was a big-ass spider and there were more coming out of those holes! I ran around the apartment slapping those pieces of wood back in place and re-taping the crap out of them. I haven't seen a spider since and it's gonna stay that way!" Submitted by Lauren Santerre (Facebook).
8. The one person who found out the spiders in their apartment were poisonous.
"About a month after I settled into my apartment, I discovered that it was infested with large, extremely poisonous spiders called hobo spiders. If one bites you, you need antibiotics and the skin around the bite dies and turns black. My landlord refused to believe me, convinced I was just a flatlander who wasn't used to large bugs. She asked me if they were June bugs. I had to capture one in a trap and bring it to her so an exterminator could come to my house." Submitted by katyfaye.
9. The one brave individual who had to kill 20+ insects on their own.
"I moved into my first apartment where I lived on the bottom floor of a two-story building. My entryway had cobwebs and moths so, being a resourceful 20-year-old, I vacuumed up all of the bugs. As I was putting the vacuum away, the moths began to escape and flap around my tiny apartment. I picked up the vacuum to see what the hell was going on and spiders dropped from the end of the vacuum and dangled in front of my eyes. There were nearly 20 insects in the inside of my apartment and I was completely alone, responsible for killing them all. After I killed everything I sat on the floor and drank boxed wine until I forgot about the whole ordeal." Submitted by kyliebayer.
10. The girl that found spiders laying eggs on her ceiling and missed the chance to stop them from hatching.
"I was sitting on the couch one evening when I noticed some little brown dots on the corners of my ceiling. I stood on a stool to get a closer look, only to discover those little brown dots were fresh baby spiders that just hatched. There were hundreds crawling everywhere and even more that hadn't hatched. I started bawling my eyes out and ran to the store for a can of Raid." Submitted by natalieh4f25111d9.
11. The one guy who experienced a ceiling leak because his upstairs neighbor died in the bathtub.
"The guy in the apartment above me died in the bathtub with the tap running so his whole apartment flooded. I woke up to water leaking through the ceiling in five different spots. I had to move out because the whole apartment needed to be renovated because of the contamination from the dead body." Submitted by jthemac.
12. The one person who almost burned down their apartment making dinner.
"I was cooking a casserole in my crappy oven when the juices started to bubble out of the pan. I discovered a lovely fire in my oven! And I also discovered that opening the oven door made the flames larger. I think I just ended up letting the fire burn out — but man, did I panic!" Submitted by Krista Van Laren (Facebook).
13. The one guy who thought it was a great idea to use the microwave as a dryer.
"I was getting ready to go to the gym when I found that my socks were still damp from the laundry. Being the creative young man that I was, I decided to dry them in the microwave. As I gathered up the rest of my kit, the fire alarms started blaring and I ran to the kitchen to find the microwave on fire. Luckily, I was able to put the fire out before any serious damage was done to the building." Submitted by jamesl474b5862e.
14. The one individual who found out their bathtub was clogged from previous tenants.
"I had stomach troubles from the stress of moving into my first apartment. I was on the toilet but felt the need to throw up. I hadn't bought anything for the bathroom yet except toilet paper, so my only choice was to throw up in the tub. When I went to rinse the tub out, it started filling up. I had to reach into the puke-water to clear the drain, which was clogged with the hair from the previous tenants." Submitted by kalamcquistion.
15. The tenant that couldn't even trust their maintenance man.
"When I lived in my first place, the apartment down the hall from me was infested with fruit flies. It got so bad that the flies would hit you in the face as you walked to the elevator. I had to stuff a towel under the door to stop them from coming in. There was also a maintenance person there who apparently found out my schedule and would watch TV when I wasn't home. I knew because the TV was on the Spanish channel (I don't speak Spanish) and he left a 'present' in the toilet on several occasions. No one else but maintenance had the key to my apartment." Submitted by kimf4cdd008b1.
16. And the one person who had to deal with getting strange gifts from their neighbor.
"I got my first apartment at 19, and there was a very creepy alcoholic living downstairs who was completely obsessed with me. He used to come up to my apartment and give me random things. Once it was a small flashlight, and another time it was a picture of a tiger he had taken at the zoo. He totally creeped me out to the point that I had told everyone I knew that if I ended up dead or missing to please make him the number one suspect." Submitted jessicachadwickc.
