30 People Share The Most Ridiculous And Crazy Roommate Experiences You’ll Ever Hear

Sometimes two is a crowd.

Jesse

• Published in Interesting
• September 23, 2022

Adulthood comes with a lot of different experiences, including making some difficult financial decisions like getting a roommate. When the price of an apartment is ridiculously high, it's easier for people to split the cost with another person. 

Getting a roommate can be a fantastic experience, with some people starting as strangers and then becoming best friends, but it can also be the worst decision you will ever make. 

For some people, it's great to have a person always available to talk to and come home to. Others, on the other hand, would prefer to have more privacy than they can get with a roommate around.

Simply put, it's different strokes for different folks. However, some roommate experiences defy personal preferences and the need for privacy and are simply crazy. 

One Redditor wanted to hear all about them, and you can bet that people had a lot to share. And share, they did.

From the good to the bad and the ugly, this Redditor's simple request garnered a lot of responses. And we bet you're itching to take a peek.

Well, we've compiled some of the strangest and most hilarious roommate experiences people had to share. So, sit back, relax and grab some popcorn because you're in for a treat.

Let's get right into it!

1. Some serious mental health battles. We hope she got the help she needed

"She was majorly depressed. She worked a lot and for very little money, so she would mostly come home and lock herself in her room. At some point, she stopped cleaning or doing laundry.

She worked at a childcare center, and at some point contracted impetigo. Gross, but treatable. She wouldn't get it treated, however, because it was too expensive.

So I lived in fear I would contract it, let alone the other kids she was watching (she told her work it was being treated and was no longer contagious, they just believed her). She had these massive, crusty patches all over her face and just didn't care. After five whole weeks, she FINALLY went to the doctor.

Things were tense until her mom came to visit a few weeks later and convinced her to be committed. She had been sending suicidal messages to her mom every day for weeks. Her mom paid her rent for the next three months until the lease was up, and she moved back home. Never spoke again. Hope she is doing better."

2. Little miss poopy

"Came home from my first day of classes to *poop everywhere*. Toilet seat, tile, bath mat, toilet paper holder, sink, carpet.

Had a long discussion. Not acceptable.

Happened again, took 6 weeks to get her out."

3. One word; gross

"First college roommate rarely did laundry and would "borrow" my underwear - especially for dates - and return them dirty (unwashed).

I told him in unequivocal terms to keep his hands off my junk, but he'd borrow whatever he needed anyway."

4. Blame it all on sleepwalking

5. A soapy mess! Everything's better with more soap

"My college roommate didn't know how to do laundry before we started school. We had a community washer and dryer on our floor. Probably the third week of school, I went down to get a soda from the machine and I walk in and there are bubbles four inches deep on the floor.

My roommate walks in behind me to check his laundry. He had put 3 full scoops of Tide in the washer with his load. I had to take him to an off-campus laundromat to wash all of the excess soap out of his clothes."

6. You can do anything, but never touch another man's gaming PC without permission!

"Freshman year of college, I was randomly assigned a roommate to share a tiny room (11' x 15', I think?). I was a quiet comp sci student from the San Francisco area who liked video games and D&D. My assigned roommate was a huge Mechanical Engineering major from the South who liked his lifted truck, dip tobacco, and getting drunk as often as possible.

Needless to say, the next 6 months were not fun. He left his spit cups everywhere, constantly played loud country music, and messed around with my stuff (including scratching a nasty slur into my Office Space-esque stapler). As the year went on he seemed to get worse, probably due to finding a group of like-minded people in the dorms.

Long story short, he was kicked out of the dorms about 2 weeks before the spring break - he and another guy went on a rampage through the dorm with Airsoft guns shooting the little whiteboard on everyone's door.

For some reason, though, he was allowed to stay until the break. I stupidly left for home before he did, and when I got back my very nice gaming PC was missing. I reported it missing, and told the police exactly where I thought it was (at his new place). They apparently searched it, and though they didn't find my computer, they found enough other stolen goods to get him expelled from school.

Thankfully, my replacement roommate was a very nice, quiet guy, and the rest of the year went well."

7. Reality unchecked. He was in a completely different world.

8. The beautiful journey of a 50-year friendship

"We met when we showed up for dorm room assignments our freshman year of college. Almost 50 years later, we're still the closest of friends. I recently attended his daughter's wedding. A grand affair, because he happens to be uber-wealthy.

At one point I found myself choking up, and it wasn't for the bride and groom, it was for John and me. How far we've come from that first awkward handshake a half-century ago."

9. Dashed hopes

"My roommate once create a whole new lifeform by leaving beans in the fridge until they molded so bad they became pure white. Then she got mad when I threw it away because she was going to use it later."

10. All-you-can-take relationship problem buffet

"I spent over a year falling asleep to the angry, muffled, whisper-but-not-really arguments between my roomie and his girlfriend. Just muffled enough that I couldn't understand what the problem was, but they were clearly not happy together.

So I'd just lie in bed wondering, *what's my duty of care here?* Like they weren't violent with each other, and it wasn't like one person was terrorizing the other, it was just two young people in a consensual and mutual spiral of despair."

11. It’s all fun and games until it’s not

Grandpa certainly got the shock of his life.

12. The kind of roommate we’d love to have

"I’m pretty sure I used to live with a hobbit.

-Man about 5'1", curly brown hair, constantly cheerful demeanour

-Never wore shoes, inside or out

-Literally slept on the floor in what can only be explained as a nest of blankets

-Started a garden and encouraged me to eat his tomatoes all the time

-Would bring home samosas and other goodies, always giving me half just because

-He and his wife had a dream of living off the grid in a tiny home on a truck

I hope he’s doing well."

13. The nosey roomate

14. Too much happening in one person's life

....the story continues

A happy ending…of some sort. Hopefully, he's fine.

15. It seems like this roommate may be a doctor

"My South Korean roommate in college played StarCraft (2? not sure) welllll into the night. We're talking like I'd be getting up to go to class and he'd be logging off.

It cured my insomnia. Listening to a game in a language I didn't understand was very soothing, apparently, and I went from taking 3-4 hours a night to fall asleep (if I would at all) to falling asleep within 30 seconds of laying my head down."

16. “Weaponised incompetence”

17. That escalated quickly. But everyone loves a happy ending tho

18. Shoulda took the cat

"This is my only roommate story. After this, I swore never again.

A childhood friend and her boyfriend. He was a "chef" (line cook at a chain restaurant) who would cook mediocre meals when the urge took him, which took damn near every pot and pan in the kitchen to make, and f****d off without cleaning up after himself. He also had a cat, a kitten really, who he never bought food for, so I had to feed it because I'm not a monster.

She was an unemployed student, like me, who would use the cups from my dinner set as ashtrays, and load up a single plate of food, take it to her room, eat from it throughout the day, and keep it. Rinse, repeat every day until we were out of plates. I said I'd clean them if she just brought them back to the kitchen, but nah. I'd have to wait until she was out then go get them, complete with moldering food remnants.

Eventually, my boyfriend joined our happy little household, and I started setting boundaries because it was no longer 2:1. That led to a blow-up screaming match, and me and him moving out.

My only regret is that I didn't take the cat."

19. Gollum the second

"I woke up around 5:30 am and made my way to the kitchen, groggy and barely awake. As I turned the corner, I stopped in my tracks because my roommate of 3 months was crouched on the counter, wearing a speedo.

In a Gollum voice, he said "My precious!!!" and mimicked Gollum's weird movements. I refused to react to it, said nothing, and made breakfast. It's been 10 years and we're still great friends."

20. Creepy much

"He started watching me from dark corners of the house at night if I was in the common areas. Super f*****g creepy."

21. Sleep cleaning? Now that’s a superpower!

"There are PLENTY, but one of my roommates used to sleep walk and sleep talk almost every night and I was the only one who'd be awake whenever it would happen.

I'd witness her cleaning our fridge, sealing our opened bag of chips, and i'd hear her quote Shakespeare in her sleep. What made her go back to bed was me asking her to sleep and she'd look at me and close her eyes. Whenever I ask her if she recalled any of it, the answer was always no."

22. Three times the crazy! OP has had quite the experiences

"I had a college roommate who was obsessed with CSI. She had a CSI pillow and sheets/blankets. She refused to turn on any lights and kept all blinds shut. She hated light and would sigh loudly if I would turn the lights on to do anything.

I went to college right around when you needed a college email to make a Facebook, and she would tell me that Facebook is how they spy on you… she said she would never have a MySpace or anything of the like. (She might have been right on that one) and she would always say I was a sheep and that I would have my identity stolen by 'them'.

My other roommate (we were 4 with two bedrooms and a common area) was extremely loud at all hours, and if you ever asked her to keep it down, even very politely, she would purposely start doing cartwheels and banging on things and singing. She claimed to be Jay Leno’s niece.

One more: I had a roommate that slept with a new guy every weekend and we could hear her LOUDLY through the wall. We would tell her we heard her and she vehemently denied every time that she slept with anyone. Come on, girl."

23. When your roommate has some mafia links. Scared sh*tless!

"My roommate in college claimed he was involved with the mafia. He was constantly sweaty, was very jumpy, and always had a lot of cash in his car. He never was around on the weekends, and I never saw him drink.

Strangest of all is that he never once slept in his room. He was always on the couch by the door. He eventually told me that it was because if someone ever broke in looking for him, he wanted "them" to find him right away, so no one else would get hurt. I still don't know if he was telling the truth but nonetheless, I ALWAYS locked my bedroom door at night."

24. Scaring the missionaries off! They made the house a no-missionary zone

"I used to live with two strippers. Needless to say, they weren't early risers.

One Sunday morning, we get a knock at the front door. Jehova's Witnesses.

So, K goes to the door and invites them in for coffee. While buck naked.

K is pretty, ummm, impressive naked. built like Chyna in her prime,lots of tattoos and piercings.

Needless to say, they left, quickly. And we never had missionaries at our door again."

25. An unfortunately fortunate situation

"My freshman year college roommate was a random pairing. This kid partied all night and slept all day (legit wouldn’t wake up until 5pm) He goes MIA for like a week. I call my mom because I’m not sure he’s even alive. She searches to see if he has been arrested. Before she can call me back the cops are knocking at our door and ask 'have you seen ____' and I say no.

Mom calls me back a few minutes later, he had been booked for robbery at a convenience store which was in our dorm building! He tried to hide in an air vent…he made the front page of the campus newspaper, was expelled and I got the whole dorm to myself for the rest of the fall & spring semester."

26. The pigeons took over. And it doesn’t seem they are planning to leave anytime soon

"A few years back my former roommate and I let our downstairs neighbour move in with us because the guy he was living with had taken up a new habit.. he’d befriended the pigeons that hung out on the rooftop outside his bedroom window and eventually started taking them inside and caring for them like pets. S**t got real dirty real quick."

27. A "sexually repressed" dorm mate

28. A “professional” exorcism

"I had a very religious roommate once named Mike, who thought I was religious too, I guess, and he would often exclaim things like, 'OMG KITTENKLYN! There's so many people outside! We should be EVANGELIZING!' He would never read any books except the Bible, literally, and he would often pray right in the middle of the common space on his hands and knees. Weird guy, but he always paid his rent on time, kept his dishes clean, and it's hard to find roommates.

Anyway, one day while I was reading a book in the living room, Mike came out looking very concerned and asked to talk.

'I think there's a demon living in this house,' he said.

I'm the kind of person who likes to 'Yes/And' people, especially when they say something a little crazy. So I asked him to tell me more."

'Well,' he started, 'Last night I had a dream- no, not a dream, a nightmare. A snake was choking me, and I was fighting with it-' he exaggerated hand movements a little aggressively to demonstrate his wrestling. 'Finally I threw it off of me, but then I realized I was awake, so I sat up and looked over at your side of the bed, and that's when I saw it'

'Saw what?' I asked, more excited by the second.

'The demon. The dark cloud man was just standing next to your bed, watching you sleep. He was like a cloudy shadow with white eyes. I think it's possessing the house.'

Amazed by what he was saying, I asked what we should do about it.

'Have an exorcism'

I almost spit out my drink. 'Well, I've never done that before -'

'I have,' he interrupted. So I was like, well if you say so.

Anyway, basically he had blessed holy water (from the tap) and was walking around the room tossing it here and there yelling, "IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, I COMMAND YOU TO LEAVE, DEMON!!'

Meanwhile, I'm trying not to laugh for the whole 30 minutes until he finishes, he's literally sweating in prayer, and finally stands up to say "It is done," and walks to his room. We never talked about it ever again."

29. The end of an era and the beginning of another. How beautiful is this story? A soapy mess! Everything's better with more soap

"Mine starts off a little sad but is also quite sweet.

In 2007 I went backpacking around Australia and lived in a house share in Sydney for a bit. I shared my room with a guy I had met at a hostel previously.

Sadly, my best friend at home in the UK died very suddenly and unexpectedly which obviously left me completely devastated. I really wanted to get home quickly to be with my circle of friends and support system, so I booked the first flight I could afford which was about a week later.

My landlord at the time was not at all sympathetic to my situation and told me he was going to keep all of my deposit, so in an effort to try to appease him and hopefully get some back, I immediately set about finding a new room mate via sites like gumtree so that my room wasn’t left empty.

There were a few applicants and after a few days I found a girl who seemed cool and like she’d fit in with the rest of the household so we made arrangements for her to move in. (Despite this my landlord still said he wasn’t going to give me my deposit back, so I nearly didn’t bother, but I really liked all of my housemates and I didn’t want them to end up with a lemon).

I go home and obviously have a very sad time for quite a long time. But I stay in touch with my housemates and they love this new girl, who fits into the household perfectly.

Next thing I know, she and my old roommate from the hostel start dating. Then they spend the next two years travelling the world together. I was so happy for them. They then move to Canada together. I visited them once and it was cool to see my old roomie again and get to know his girlfriend that I had unknowingly picked out from gumtree applicants. It’s now been 15 years and not only are they still together, but they have two beautiful children together.

I still miss my best friend after all these years, but it brings me a lot of comforts to know that the chain of events caused by her passing resulted in a beautiful love story and two new babies."

30. Free boiling lessons

"Mine starts off a little sad but is also quite sweet.

In 2007 I went backpacking around Australia and lived in a house share in Sydney for a bit. I shared my room with a guy I had met at a hostel previously.

Sadly, my best friend at home in the UK died very suddenly and unexpectedly which obviously left me completely devastated. I really wanted to get home quickly to be with my circle of friends and support system, so I booked the first flight I could afford which was about a week later.

My landlord at the time was not at all sympathetic to my situation and told me he was going to keep all of my deposit, so in an effort to try to appease him and hopefully get some back, I immediately set about finding a new roommate via sites like gumtree so that my room wasn’t left empty.

There were a few applicants and after a few days I found a girl who seemed cool and like she’d fit in with the rest of the household so we made arrangements for her to move in. (Despite this my landlord still said he wasn’t going to give me my deposit back, so I nearly didn’t bother, but I really liked all of my housemates and I didn’t want them to end up with a lemon).

I go home and obviously have a very sad time for quite a long time. But I stay in touch with my housemates and they love this new girl, who fits into the household perfectly.

Next thing I know, she and my old roommate from the hostel start dating. Then they spend the next two years travelling the world together. I was so happy for them. They then move to Canada together. I visited them once and it was cool to see my old roomie again and get to know his girlfriend that I had unknowingly picked out from gumtree applicants. It’s now been 15 years and not only are they still together, but they have two beautiful children together.

I still miss my best friend after all these years, but it brings me a lot of comfort to know that the chain of events caused by her passing resulted in a beautiful love story and two new babies."

There is no telling how living with a person can turn out as the possibilities are endless.

You can start as strangers and find that life is just better with your roommate, or you can start living together after being best friends and end up as enemies.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever experienced with a roommate? Let us know in the comments section below!

Jesse