36 Completely Bonkers, Very Bad Roommate Horror Stories That'll Keep You Up At Night
We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their "roommate from hell" stories. Their replies were infuriating and definitely grabbed my attention! Here's what people shared:
1."My roommate borrowed a leather jacket from the girl down the hall. We went out, and she threw up all over herself and that jacket. When we got home, she put the jacket in a garbage bag and just threw it in her closet. Like a month later, the girl down the hall asked for it back, and my roommate had to find it in that closet. It was still in the garbage bag. So disgusting. It was green and smelled like death. Just the worst."
—Anonymous
2."I was visiting family for Christmas and was in a serious car accident. My one-week visit turned into a month-long recovery. With a broken arm (right), broken collarbone (left), and other injuries, I returned to my shared apartment. It was filthy, and my roommate was gone for a few days. She had left what looked like weeks of dishes and dirt around, and her boyfriend's things were everywhere. It was filthy, dusty, gross, and sticky. The first thing I had to do with both arms in slings and on pain meds was clean the toilet just to be able to use it safely. She knew I was coming home that day with injuries, but she did not bother to clean up after herself for the month I was away."
—Anonymous
3."She left PERIOD BLOOD everywhere! I would see clots in the tub, or blood smears on the floor and on the counter! She left her used tampon on the edge of the bathtub. We had a roommate meeting and discussed this with the other woman living in the house. This girl's reaction? 'Well, you leave toothpaste in the sink sometimes...' I told her she leaves the bathroom looking like a crime scene! She tried to say that she was seeing a doc for a heavy period, but I told her that that didn't mean she could leave blood everywhere. One day I opened the closet in the bathroom, where we kept the trash, and was hit with the smell of HER MENSTRUAL BLOOD. The trash was literally piled over the top with bloody tampons and a period cup FULL of blood."
"She was 30, by the way. She also didn't brush her teeth. Her meals were popcorn chicken drowned in ranch with a side of an entire bag of candy and a 24-oz. Mountain Dew. In the year we lived together, she had eight teeth pulled for being rotten."
4."My new roommate showed up with a ton of roaches in her boxes, and when she unpacked, they went all over the living room and kitchen. She told me, 'Some people just live with roaches.' The landlady had made a point of telling me the apartment had no bugs when she rented it to me."
—Anonymous
5."I was 21 and needed a cheap apartment. I rented a room from a woman who had really bad, crippling arthritis. She said she would rent me the room, but I would need to help her around the house. No problem! First week in, she asked me to clip her toenails. I moved out a few weeks later."
—Anonymous
6."My roommate refused to flush the toilet or wash his hands. It was disgusting."
—Anonymous
7."My roommate and I would smoke weed together. It was cool until she would leave food out on the counter, in the microwave, in her room, everywhere. I would constantly clean up after her. She would leave the bathroom disgusting all the time; she would NEVER CLEAN UP. Then, once I started dating my girlfriend, I would spend the majority of my time at my girlfriend's house, and I eventually moved in with her. My roommate got mad and said I abandoned her, even though I gave her three weeks' notice. When it came time for her to move out, she never did, so I paid rent to be nice because she wasn’t making a lot, and she still complained."
—Anonymous
8."My roommate is still a really close friend of mine, but when we lived together, she made dinner for her and her boyfriend in her crockpot, and she decided to leave whatever she made in it for days. It started to smell, so what does she do? She takes it and puts it in a garbage bag AND PUTS IT OUTSIDE ON THE DECK. Months and months later, I finally took it and put it in the dumpster. She was sooooo lazy."
—Anonymous
9."My roommates told me they were having a home birth in my home three days before the due date. They had been sitting on this information for nine months and didn't find it important to share with me, their roommate, and owner of the home."
—Anonymous
10."I was working at a camp in college. My roommate called me while I was at said camp. She proceeded to tell me that they found someone’s poop in the oven. Turns out another one of our roommates had a small get-together the night before with some friends. Some friends they were, taking a crap in her oven. I was just happy I wasn’t there to help clean up."
—Anonymous
11."I had a roommate who would hook up with sketchy guys, and my stuff would get stolen. Then, one night, the same roommate (who was a complete control freak) got mad because I stayed over at my family’s house for the night. She left a note attached to my bedroom door, written in red lipstick, that said, 'Thanks for calling, asshole!' All because I didn’t call to get permission. I started packing immediately!"
—Anonymous
12."The super spiritual roommate. It started off fine (who says no to sage and candles?), but it escalated quickly. She would 'interpret the signs from the universe,' telling me how much time I should be home the following week. Arguments would end with her telling me I was 'only saying that because I'm a Pisces' or that we would resolve things in a different phase of the moon. One time, she woke me up at 3:00 a.m. because she thought she heard her dead grandmother talking outside her window and she was too scared to go outside and find out by herself. The final straw was when our dog accidentally knocked some crystals and things off her bedside table and broke them. She decided the dog was channelling demonic energy and attacking her by ruining her protective crystals. I lost the roommate and kept the dog. No regrets."
—Anonymous
13."I moved into a sort of terrible, little apartment with a friend the summer after freshman year of college. It was 2003, so Wi-Fi wasn’t really a thing, so she came into my room anytime I wasn’t home to use the internet and, I later learned, shop my closet (without my permission) for anything she might want to wear. She then got a dog, which she often left locked in her bedroom all day, where it would eat my clothes and shoes that were borrowed. She let some random guy she met online move into the apartment, and he immediately began selling drugs. After we got rid of him, another dude moved in, she got pregnant, and they got engaged and wanted to still split the rent so that I'd pay half and they'd each pay a quarter. I decided to cut my losses and just move out, because HELL NAH."
—Anonymous
14."First year of college, we didn’t get the privilege to choose our roommates like some colleges allow now, so I was placed with a stranger. She was really nice at first, and I felt like we could really get along...until about the second week. There was only one bathroom in our dorm, and I noticed she never had her toothbrush in the cupboard. I asked her just out of curiosity, 'Hey, where do you keep your toothbrush?' She looked me in the eyes and said, 'Oh, I left like at home, so I’ve just been using yours until I get a new one.' She then continued on like she didn’t just drop the most WTF statement of all time. We were sharing a toothbrush for two weeks, and I had no idea. I requested a roommate change the same day."
—Anonymous
15."Some highlights (yes, this is all the same roommate): She would use box dye for DIY hair color and would get it all over the bathroom (and stained my towel). She and her boyfriend would have screaming matches frequently and late at night. She would borrow things without asking, like clothes and makeup, and my stuff would often just go missing. When I got them back, they very often had rips or stains. She left clothes all around the house, including in common spaces. One time, when I tried to do her laundry, she got very mad that I touched her stuff."
—Anonymous
16."After living together for a year, my roommates and I were drinking wine and sharing how we felt when we first moved in together. One of my roommates admitted to peeing in our kitchen sink because she was too afraid to knock on the bathroom door. I’ve seen the girl clean, and I have zero confidence that she cleaned the sink after. Blah!"
—Anonymous
17."I did a room rental. The homeowner, a widow, was 38 and rented her rooms out to younger women. We became good friends and hung out a lot. After two and a half years, she started acting weird. She would get upset with me for not taking care of her if she was sick with a small cold, or not leaving my job when she hurt her toe. If I went out with a friend, she would question where I was going and with who. She would ask why she wasn't invited and would accuse me of not being a 'true friend' by not inviting her. I started wearing gym clothes all the time and would tell her I was exercising because that was the one thing she wouldn't do. If she found out I saw a friend without her, she would punish me by taking away my TV privileges."
"She didn't do this stuff with anyone else. And, one time, I was having a panic attack as I told my housemates about a date who had just forced himself on me, and she laughed and accused me of making it up because she thought the guy was too hot to have even gone on a date with me."
18."My roommate kept bringing her boyfriend to stay the night and forced me to sleep on the couch so they could have their privacy."
—Anonymous
19."I was 18 years old, and a family friend offered to rent her house to me. I needed a roommate, so I did what most did in 2014: Craigslist ad! I found a 21-year-old girl who seemed to have similar interests as me, and I allowed her to move in. The first night, she said she was bringing over a friend named Poncho. He came in and was at least 50 years old, went to her room for 15 minutes, and left. I hid in my bedroom, terrified for my life. A few days later, she brought more guy friends over — more 50-year-old men who didn't speak English. One morning, I went to get ready for work, and there was a used condom on the bathroom floor. I immediately pounded on her door, telling the man in her bed to come clean up his mess."
"I let her know I didn't think this was working and that she needed to move out. I locked all my things in my bedroom and went back to my parents' house for a few weeks until she left. When I returned, I found her tablet without a password, and I checked some things out. Sure enough, she was a sex worker with a Backpage Portland profile. I had my suspicions, but didn't think that could actually be the case. For weeks after, I had friends stay with me because I was so worried those men would come back to find her or something. Never find a roommate on Craigslist!"
20."We had a lot of issues with this guy, but this, by far, was the worst thing he did. We all did a fairly good job of keeping things clean, but one roommate was very particular about everything being spotless. One day, apparently we didn’t live up to his standards. While everyone else was in class, he gathered everything from the living room and kitchen into a big pile on the living room floor, including my other roommate's really nice guitar. Additionally, he took the garbage bag out of the garbage can (about three-quarters full) and dumped it over the pile in the living room. When confronted, he started crying and said we forced him to take drastic measures because there were unfolded blankets on the couch. Apparently, two unfolded blankets was enough to set him off."
—Anonymous
21."I moved in with an older lady from a church I used to attend named Karen (should have been a red flag). Karen had a history of renting her guest rooms out to women in the church, and despite being in a rough neighborhood, the house always seemed like the place where all the parties and Bible studies and such took place. During COVID, we used it as a house church. So, I was totally stoked when I was able to move in. It was just me and Karen at the time. Turns out the house was actually infested with roaches — the small kind that hide in every crevice. Somehow, in all the times I had visited, I never noticed, and none of the women who had lived there previously thought to warn me about it."
"Karen is a super holistic, granola kind of person, and apparently, she had been using essential oils to ward off the roaches. Within the first month of me living there, Karen went out of town, and I came down with COVID. I ordered the harshest cleaning and bug-killing supplies money can buy and did my best to kill and clean up all the roaches. It was seriously so gross. They leave feces and egg carcasses everywhere. My friend brought over a new vacuum cleaner (Karen’s was broken), and I was vacuuming up dead roaches, all while fighting COVID. I was exhausted.
When I picked her up from the airport weeks later, I brought it up to her, and she apologized for not giving me her essential oil formula, as if that would have saved me all the trouble. I convinced her we needed to call the exterminator, but she wouldn’t let them spray in her bedroom. I get being wary of harsh chemicals, but I’ll take my chances with them a thousand times before I settle into a roach motel. Roaches carry so much bacteria and diseases and drag them wherever they go, not to mention the feces they leave everywhere. Absolutely not. Never again."
22."My college roommate would 'borrow' my jewelry without asking my permission. I had a pearl ring that was a gift from my parents, and when I went to put it on one day, it was missing from my jewelry box (this was before I knew she was taking things). I asked her about it, and she said she didn’t know anything about it. Her boyfriend was with her, and later, when he wasn’t around, she told me she had it but didn’t say anything because she had worn it so that he would think it was a gift from another man and get jealous. She also 'borrowed' a silver cross that my parents had given me. That time, she just nonchalantly said, 'Oh yeah, I think I lost that at the swimming pool.'"
—Anonymous
23."My college roommate would get up on Saturday mornings at 5:00 a.m. and wax and polish our floor with a loud machine."
—Anonymous
24."My roommates told me I needed counseling because I liked to keep our front door locked (both while we were home and when we were away)."
—Anonymous
25."My current roommate is a nightmare. I asked her to please put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher when she had a chance, and she responded by shutting off the Wi-Fi for three days, but only for my devices. She also does this fun thing where she doesn't pay her full rent and then claims because the utilities are in my name, she shouldn't have to pay. I am actively looking for a way to break my lease because she's threatened to damage my property and harm my pet. I can't take seven more months of this."
—Anonymous
26."The worst roommate I ever had was a suite-mate of mine in college. She was whiny, dramatic, immature, and would take offense at everything, hence us being unable to effectively deal with her biggest flaw: She was a HUGE slob. She would let garbage pile up in her bedroom to the point where it would stink up the rest of the suite if she left her door open. We (there were four of us total in the suite) would always have to shut her door when she inevitably left it open when she went to class, lest the stench consume our suite. Her garbage dump of a room eventually overflowed into a large box in one of the shared bathrooms, which ultimately was photographed by our sorority’s house mother and placed on an anonymous shame board to encourage people to clean up their messes."
"This was the last straw for me, and I took my tiny 5-foot self up to that room and dragged that giant trash box down two flights of stairs to throw it in the dumpster since that girl refused to clean up anything for herself. She ended up moving out that semester, thank god."
—Anonymous
27."Freshman year of college, I had just moved into my dorm halfway across the country from where I grew up. I'm an only child and a very private person, but I had more or less wrapped my head around the idea of sharing a small space with someone. I was glad she was cool with me being a lesbian, which I had disclosed during the roommate selection process to make sure no one would be uncomfortable if they found out partway through the year or something. We met briefly upon moving in, and she seemed nice enough, but then she disappeared for the rest of the day. At about midnight, having not seen her since the morning, I start wondering if I should call someone to make sure she was okay."
"As I'm considering this, she reentered the room, seeming somewhat inebriated, and flung her shirt off directly in front of me. 'Check it out,' she half-shouts, 'I just got my nipples pierced! Do they look even?' Keep in mind that I have had all of a 20-minute conversation with this girl so far, so I am fully nonplussed. I tell her they look fine. She asks if she can sleep with her shirt off while they heal, or if I wouldn't be okay with that. I'm thinking, as far as whether I'm okay with you being topless in the room or not, we're WELL past that, considering that you just asked me if your nip piercings were even. Anyway, she was actually fine. We got along pretty well and mostly did our own thing, but it was a hell of a first impression."
—Anonymous
28."Freshman year, my college roommate had sex with her boyfriend while I was in the room, multiple times, even after I told her I wasn't okay with that. Senior year, a different roommate was having a physical fight with her boyfriend, so I called campus security on them, and she had the audacity to scream at me in front of the officers and call me a bitch. It was so bad, I had to move out."
—Anonymous
29."My first college roommate moved her mattress out of the room and proceeded to sleep on someone else's floor for a week before she moved out without telling me."
—Anonymous
30."I (female) shared a bathroom with a male roommate. We were not on good terms because he was mad at me for turning him down for a date. He randomly told me one day that he knows when I shave my legs in the shower because the water stops running and then starts again...so he basically sat outside the bathroom listening to me shower. The lock on my bedroom door was temporarily broken, and he came to class one day and said he went into my room to use my hair dryer. He barely had any hair. It was just so creepy."
"We eventually had to move out when he lost his mind on me and my [other] roommate and threw a beer bottle and a pot of mac and cheese at our heads. This was all in law school, so naturally after we moved out because we were scared of him, he took us to small claims court and tried to have us pay for utilities and internet for the full year, despite us not living there. The judge threw the case out."
—Anonymous
31."I moved to a different state for college and only knew my roommate. She invited me to go to a football game with her. About 15 minutes after we got to our seats, she saw some friends from her sorority and told me she was going to go say hi. She sat down and never came back to our seats. I left after about 30 minutes of her sitting with her friends. She didn't say anything when she got back to our room."
—Anonymous
32."I had two roommates my freshman year of college. The first one moved out two weeks into the semester to move back closer to home, but had screwed so many things into the wall that I LOST MY SECURITY DEPOSIT. My second roommate was so messy and unstable that I transferred colleges after living with her. She would never clean nor take out the trash, and she would constantly borrow my things and lose them (like a custom pair of tennis shoes my mother had gotten me). I was so done that when she moved out, I didn't reply and sent her a Venmo request to buy new shoes."
—Anonymous
33."My boyfriend’s longtime friend moved in because his girlfriend kicked him out. He was a sweetheart, but a rather dodgy guy. We knew he sold drugs, but not to the extent that he did. He ended up getting busted in a sting and arrested. We went into his room, and it was a sight. Totally trashed and paraphernalia galore. Needles everywhere. Had to go in with full-on PPE to clear it out. The worst part was having to paint over blood splatters on the wall because even Mr. Clean magic erasers weren’t good enough. He got out and tried to come back like nothing happened. Suffice to say he wasn’t welcome back in. The whole apartment was so tainted, we moved into a one-bedroom to avoid any other friend begging to live with us."
—Anonymous
34."I had a strenuous eight-hour shift at work, so I cooked and cleaned the kitchen before I left so I could come home to a warm meal and hit the bed early. The shift extended by two more hours, so I got home past midnight, very hungry and tired, looking forward to eating my dinner and passing out. But, my food was gone. My roommates didn't cook enough for friends who were coming over, so they decided that their friends had to eat my entire dinner. Everything was closed, there was no food at home, and my roommates offered me cereal and a Snickers as a replacement, then went clubbing. Too tired to do anything or even argue with them, I made myself some tea and went to bed hungry that night. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of my roommates regularly using/stealing my kitchen/grocery supplies."
—Anonymous
35."I lived with two girls who were pretty close. Although we were from the same country, I would often hear them mock me because I didn’t speak their language (Hindi), and people from my region were dark-skinned in general. Initially, when we used to buy groceries to cook and eat together, they would finish it all and leave me with nothing in the kitchen. After that, if I made something for myself, and, let's say, it took an hour to cook, they would say that I consumed more electricity, so I should have to pay more for the times I cooked for myself. I got a monitor sent to me when I started a remote internship, so they said I had to pay more rent for 'using more appliances/gadgets throughout the day.'"
"They would use my dishes and never clean them. I was the main lease holder, so I would pay the rent and they had to send me their shares. There were times when they said they wouldn’t send me their shares until I did something around the house that they believed was my chore. I moved out over a year ago when I got a good-paying job, but they still owe me more than $100 each and have ghosted me.
The day I moved out, they took out all their crap that they neglected or left dirty around the house and sent me photos claiming those were all my things and I need to pay them to call cleaners or 'fly my butt back from across the country to clean it.'
I had bought some furniture to use in the house because I started living there long before they did and was more than happy to share with my flatmates upon the agreement that when we all moved out, I would sell them and take the money. Time came for me to leave, and when I brought it up, they first said that they would sell it after they moved out and send me the money, essentially using the stuff for free. But, when I heard from a friend that they were moving out, I reached out to them regarding the furniture, and they claimed it was all theirs. They sold some of my things after they moved out and split the money between them, and they still use the rest of the stuff.
If I ever brought a couple friends home, they would look at them with disgust and make them uncomfortable to the point of my friends wanting to leave. I was gone for a few months to live with my family to get away from my roommates, and when I came back, I saw one of their male friends living in/using my room. I brought this up with them, and they said they didn't have to ask me because 'I wasn't even there.' I was paying my full share of my usual rent + my equal share of all utilities. The boy was using my bedsheets, pillow, and comforter, and basically my whole setup. They also had one of their male friends 'crash' in the living room for two months (even though he had his own place down the road) because he ranted to them about how he felt bored and alone at home by himself.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything because that was one of the cheapest options to live in around the area as a student."
—Anonymous
36.And: "My freshman roommate moved out of her original dorm room because she wanted to be with someone the same year as her. About a few weeks later, she was muttering in her sleep, and I heard my name. Next, I heard her say something along the lines of shoving a towel in my mouth. I later found out who her original roommate was, and first thing I said was, 'Did [roommate's name] threaten you in her sleep?' Yes, she was threatened with a knife. On a positive note, this original roommate and I are best friends now."
Sheeesh. What's your nightmare roommate story? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
