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I don't any more but I used to.
The one that comes to mind was an elderly lady who got into some kind of finch-type bird (canaries maybe) instead of cats. She had obviously been letting them breed because there was flock of about 40 of them in the house, all flying together from one piece of furniture to the next.
I found it pretty alarming to begin with but after half an hour or so I could appreciate the beauty of it.
Plenty of bird shit in places though.
I found it pretty alarming to begin with but after half an hour or so I could appreciate the beauty of it.
Unexpected wholesome twist. I was expecting floors rotted through with shit or dead ones in corners.
Did she have a procedure for dealing with people coming in and out of doors? I’d be terrified one would make a run for it!
I don't remember... They might have been institutionalised and afraid of the outside world anyway though! We had that with some chickens once after they spent a long time in an enclosure. All the baby ones came out flapping their wings and running around but the grownup ones were scared to come out.
Weirdest thing I've seen was a house that had no books. It was surreal that there was a TV in each room, even small ones mounted in the bathrooms, but not a single book in the house. Mister was a bus driver, wife was some kind of a school administrator. But not a single written word anywhere under that roof that wasn't on a label. It made me sad for the kids.
Grossest was a guy's computer was misbehaving and I showed up to fix it. Every single icon and image was porn. Every. Single. One. The background was a rotating slideshow of various porn images. The worst part was when I felt the mouse was sticky, I got up to wash my hands and the faux leather chair was sticky too. Everything around the porn computer was sticky. It was honestly too much and I took an early lunch, called my boss that I wasn't feeling well, and explained I wasn't going to work on that computer. My boss was mad at first, came out to finish the job, and then added the guy to the fired customer list. Fuck that house. It also smelled weird. Like off fruit. And I can never forget that call. Nice neighborhood, great house, nice yard - absolutely disgusting person behind it all.
I have no books in my house and have tvs in most rooms (not the bathroom). I do use an ereader though.
I don't have any books anymore. I took them all, several hundred, to Goodwill a few years ago. I hadn't bought any in years because I've buying ebooks exclusively for a long time now. I have about 700 in my reader and almost any Internet connected device I have access to. My reading list is too long to reread anything, I thought others might get some use out of them.
Not having books in the house doesn't mean what it once did.
Even I have at least three books
I delivered pizza one summer in college. I was 19. Didn't see anything too weird. Three memories have stuck in my mind.
I had to deliver to THAT house. It was at the extreme radius of our delivery area. Picture a scene from a horror movie. I drove out to a rural area, left the road for a dirt road that was essentially their driveway. It was pitch black on a probably two acre, for lack of a better description, junkyard. I get to the house, which is a mobile home. The illuminated window, the only source of light for what seemed like miles. The guy that answered the door was an older angry guy. He wore a black Harley Davidson t- shirt that did not successfully cover his belly. He had some pretty hard core tattoos and a chain holding his wallet to his filthy jeans. Behind him were a couple of dudes that looked just like him, watching TV. One hand was holding the sprung door from slamming shut. The other was restraining the Rottweiler by its choker chain attached to the spiked collar. I'm pretty sure he was doing this to keep the dog from tearing me apart and burying my bones under the rusty truck with the grass growing out of the tires. Over the noise of the TV, the dudes behind him and the barking of the attack dog, he yelled for his "old lady" to get the fucking money to pay for the god damn pizza. I hated going to that house, because they never tipped.
In the '80's and '90's there was a place downtown Orlando called Rosie'O Graddys. At its height it occupied a fairly large chunk of the downtown area and had an old time theme. Beautiful model T Fords parked out front for effect. Lots of brass and mahogany inside. The place was expensive. I went there one time with some friends and a drink was $14.00. It was huge and you got to keep the glass but, damn. Could not afford that as a student. Anyway, one day I deliver a pizza to an apartment and it was for one of the waitresses that worked there. I guess she had just gotten off of work because she was still dressed in her costume. It was quite revealing and she wore it well. She turned around to get some money and forever burned the image of those fish net stockings with the line running down the back into my mind. At that moment I was wishing that those porno movies where the pizza guy gets swept up in the story were real. Nope. She did give me a nice tip though. Makes sense since she worked for tips too.
I was delivering a pizza to a house in a nice neighborhood. The rain was coming down in biblical proportions. In fact it wasn't falling from the sky. It was being driven sideways. So I'm standing at this guy's front door digging through my change bag trying to find, literally coins, to give him his change. Finally, with my hands full of the empty pizza bag and my change pouch that the wind was trying to rip from my hands, and getting soaked by the horizontal rain, I finally just pulled out a dollar and essentially tipped the customer, just to get back to my car. Sucked.
So nothing too weird, but hey, I figured you were just looking for some stories anyway.
You write well dude, I feel like I was right there for all three of these.
Oh, thank you. Nice of you to say.
That was a great read!
Thank you.
I used to do HVAC work. About twenty years ago, I had to fix something in an attic, and the only entrance to that attic was through a large, messy room that obviously belonged to a teenage boy. At first, it seemed normal. Eventually, though, I realized everything in that boy’s room was kinda outdated. The CDs and magazines lying around had all come out a few years before, for example.
After finishing the job, I asked my boss about it. He told me that the kid had died a few years before from autoerotic asphyxiation (he accidentally strangled himself to death while jerking off), and his mother had found his body. She insisted that his room remain just as it was. She maintained it as some kind of shrine, unmade bed, jeans on the floor and all.
I couldn’t even imagine the emotional toll that must have taken on the family. Every. Single. Day. She refused to let them heal and move on. I only met the mother briefly, before I knew the whole story. I never met the husband or sister. I’m glad. Even if I was bribed to go back in that house, you couldn’t pay me enough to go upstairs. That kid’s room was, without exaggeration, the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.
Wow. That is really sad.
Yeah. So sad that I didn’t like writing about it, but HAD to get it right, ya know?
The daughter’s room was way at the end of the hallway, so she had to walk past it every day. She was the younger of the two, but had become older than her brother was when he died. In fact, she was ready for college. I hope she got out of there and lived on campus.
I'm not getting it. Creepy how?
Creepy in the sense that keeping the room intact was a monument to pain, and handling that pain in an incredibly unhealthy way. It’s just too sad.
If they just moved on and cleaned the room out, it would be fine. I’m not talking about ghosts or any crap like that.
You know, I don't really see the harm. How is this not just a scaled up version of keeping pictures?
There’s a difference between some photos and keeping an entire grungy room as a shrine.
To me personally, it's a difference in the function of a room versus photos. Photos were always intended to capture memories, whereas a room was meant to be used and lived in. The idea of keeping the room as it was, permanently, feels like stagnation to me. I worry once it stopped being a comforting space, I still couldn't bring myself to do anything with it because it would reopen the wound, so I'd just ignore it and live around it, and the feeling of stagnation would grow heavier.
But also everyone grieves differently, and I've never lost a child, so I can only guess how I'd grieve based on how I've grieved other relationships. It's possible no one in that family feels the way I described. That's just my best answer for why it sounds creepy to a bunch of us.
NSFW INCOMING…
Tap for spoiler
I once saw a boner!
Was delivering pizza and after knocking on the door, and no one answered, I took a few steps back and looked around to see if anyone was at home. I saw two people on the couch in the living room, naked, face to face.
Well fuck! They’re home, but busy, and if I leave we lose a sale. So I knock again, a but louder.
Door opens a he’s standing there in the buck with a wet, raging, erection. I can smell the sex on him. “Yeah!?” he says…
Now I’m there, in uniform, holding a pizza delivery bag, and my running car is behind me with a big ol’ corporate pizza logo lit up.
“You ordered a pizza?”
“Oh yeah, right!” He hold out his hands.
“That’ll be $18…” He looks confused. “You have to pay for the food sir…”
Light bulb goes off. Weed smoke starts wafting out the door.
He looks down, laughs to himself and just turns around and walks away. Leaving the door open. I hope he’s going to find his wallet, so I stay there.
A few minutes later he returns to the open door, smelling strongly of weed and pussy, his dick now dripping wet. He hands me a $20, and waits for his change.
and waits for his change.
Haha of course.
guy shows up high, naked, mid-coitus with an erection and you still do the job. meanwhile i step away from the pool to open the door for the landlord agent to conduct move out inspection; he walks away and i get a nastygram from the landlord later on that i was exhibiting inappropriate behavior making their agent uncomfortable and they're going to fine me $150 if i do it again.
strange world.
According to r*ddit, naked guys happen semi-often if you deliver pizza. This is kind of next level, though.
I did get an obvious booty call once when I was going door-to-door, although the guy kind of tried to hide behind the couch in the background.
I'm saving this thread to show to my wife later. She was mortified that I let the cable guy into our house with dirty dishes in the sink. And I'm not talking about an overflowing sink. I'm talking about 2-3 plates and maybe a couple of forks.
That's adorable. I'm that way. I feel my house is a mess because I have an AC and some cat toys around. My friend insisted it's not messy. I go to a friend's house, 20 inches deep of garbage.
Not exactly op's scenario but I had a client once who was a landlord. I was delivering some papers for him to sign off on some stuff, and he had me come into his kitchen to go over them. On his dining room table was piles of cash, like a foot tall, at least 200 stacks. Had to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. He casually walks past the table and throws a sheet over the money like "nothing to see here." Years later I read he got busted with several hundred pounds of drugs and illegal guns, so guy was into some pretty bad shit.
I wonder which was his original business.
I once had to fix someone's heater. Went up a stairs around some corners and this apartment was just.. so different from anything I had ever seen before. It was like entering a movie set.
I am talking pink fluffy walls and crystal beads hanging in the doorway. Like just imagine the gayest possible and multiply by 10.
The craziest part was that this is in a tiny village, very conservative and religious even compared to the area it's in. We are talking bible belt in the bible belt kind of territory. We had a freakin polio outbreak! Because vaccine bad. During corona a corona tent was burned down.
This guy just didn't give a fuck and I love him for it.
There seems to be two responses if you're weird in the backwoods. Push it down inside or... this.
I know a guy who has pride flags everywhere and no-shit dresses like he's a prospector straight out of the gold rush.
Not me but an HVAC associate I dealt with. We had a shared customer that was a Masonic Temple. HVAC guy had to tour the building checking steam traps. Caretaker of the place is visibly uncomfortable as he has to unlock a door. Inside is an altar with a skeleton on it
"this was our last HVAC guy"
"they're... they're good people."
And I thought they were a lame secret society. /s
Well, probably not what you're looking for but I used to work yard maintenance for a property management company.
I was sent to rake and tidy up the back yard of some house. In the back, there was an entrance to a root cellar that was separate from the house and had crappy wooden doors covering it. I was told to open it up and sweep the steps leading down to the cellar.
I don't have a problem with dark places, or bugs. But that was the first time I'd seen camel crickets. They were big, hump backed and striped. And there were dozens of them. I dutifully swept the steps, from the dead center of them, my eyes darting around constantly trying to gauge whether or not the weird ass bugs were about to launch themselves onto me. They didn't. They were super chill.
I told my dad about it later and he laughed at me for not knowing what the crickets were because they were so common. I've only seen a few more since then, and they still kinda weird me out.
I've only ever seen camel crickets in one location, a house we moved into when I was around 12 or 13. None of us had ever seen one before. We called them spider crickets because at a glance they look very spidery.
You got lucky. Their mode of defense is actually to launch themselves directly at the threat. So we used to have to mentally prepare ourselves before walking into the basement because there would always be at least one spider cricket jumping right at us.
Holy moly, that sounds like a very unpleasant basement to have to deal with.
"Whelp, time to do laundry. The fun part is when the creepy mutant spider cricket launches itself at my face, yay!"
Clearly I was very lucky. I highly doubt the tenants ever used the place either. It just belonged to the crickets.
Fortunately, the laundry was in the kitchen, so we just used it for storage for things we didn't use much, like Christmas decorations.
They are one of few bugs that freak me out. Too many times did I have them jumping from all directions....
Too many times did I have them jumping from all directions....
Yikes. Well, at least is was mostly just a fun holiday tradition 😬
As a teenager, my parents would only let me have a PC if it was situated outside of my room, so naturally, I put my setup in my basement. I was excited to play games in the coolest (temp-wise) room in the house, up until the day a camel cricket decided to jump up my pants and continue to work its way up until I smashed it against myself.
Yuck.
Oof, that sucks.
I kept expecting one to jump from the walls above me as I went downstairs, get into the back of my shirt, and get squished as I try to get it out. It's happened with house centipedes, and it's not fun. Especially when their legs keep moving after their dead.
I have seen just lots of trash, but honestly I'm not one to talk.... I've seen house numbers hidden from view by decorations, often wreaths. Basically: Merry Christmas! Go fuck yourself.
There was one lady that had probably a hundred+ boxes on her front porch, stuff gets ordered & apparently never taken in. Old, molded boxes. You just add to the pile & walk away.
Not sure why, but I find that the abandoned boxes are more disturbing than the skeleton comment.
It reminds me of stories about people who are so addicted to slot machines, they don't even check for payouts anymore. They just feed money into several of them continuously for the little dopamine rush.
Installing a set of patio doors a decade and a half ago I saw a LARGE indoor grow tent in the client's garage. This was before my state had medical so I didn't bother to ask.
High pressure sodium ballasts and a very redundant air filtration system told me everything I wanted to know.
I once saw a decorative bowl containing five apples!