Study Abroad Students Are Sharing Horror Stories About Their Host Families, And I'm Truly Speechless
We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share their horror stories about living with a host family or housing a foreign exchange student. Here are their most shocking stories:
1."I was staying in England as an exchange student back when I was in high school. I had a wonderful experience, and my host family seemed so nice. In the last week of my visit, the mother and father casually informed me that they were also siblings."
—Anonymous
2."In my junior year of college, many years ago, I spent a year abroad in Nantes, France. The wildest thing that happened, though, came after my host family had been away for the weekend and got home late on Sunday night. I blearily made it down the two floors to the kitchen for breakfast. I opened the refrigerator and encountered a whole rabbit and a whole pheasant stretched out right there on the refrigerator shelves, nestled among the other food."
"Needless to say, I was taken aback. Apparently, my host father had gone hunting. Those poor little bodies stayed there for a few days. There was a cold water pitcher in the fridge, and after a few days, the water started tasting a little “off.” I waited several days to drink from that pitcher, hoping it had been changed once the rabbit and pheasant were gone. And now that I think about it, I didn’t even get an offer to taste them! I assume they were cooked. Now, whenever I visit an art exhibit that has a still life of a pheasant lying on a table, I have flashbacks to opening the refrigerator door and seeing my own real still life."
—Anonymous
3."One of my friends who I studied abroad with had a host mom who read their diary and wrote comments on parts she disagreed with or didn’t like. Luckily, once our program director found out, they got moved to a different host family."
—Anonymous
4."My mom used to host exchange students to help me and my siblings learn about other cultures and languages. My mom got tricked by the exchange company and ended up hosting three adult brothers. She didn’t even have room for that many people. The brothers went on an excursion to a nearby town and decided to set off a homemade smoke bomb in the center. The police came around and did bomb checks on their room and belongings. Needless to say, my mom asked the exchange program to relocate them that very night and never hosted students again!"
5."I did a French exchange program in the mid-'90s. My exchange partner picked me up with her boyfriend, who smoked like a chimney. They dropped me off at her mother's house, made out for a bit, and then left me alone with her mom. Her mom had recently divorced and cried—a lot. She asked me if I liked Bruce Springsteen (I was 14), so I tentatively said yes. She then played The Streets of Philadelphia sixteen times (I counted) in a row, then sat on the floor and sobbed over her ex-husband. I awkwardly patted her shoulder. What was worse was that my exchange partner not only left me but left me to go to a welcome party the school was throwing for all the Brits who had come over! I eventually called my mom in despair, and she got me transferred to a different partner and host familiy!"
6."I lived under the stairs like Harry Potter. My room was separated from the rest of the house via a courtyard, and I did not have access to it. There was no kitchen, no TV, and no WiFi (this was also pre-smartphones). Just a bedroom and a bathroom. My host family would offer me dinner, and when I was done, they would eat together. When my host mother went away for a weekend, I was given a bag of sandwiches and some juice boxes. I stuck it out because the location couldn’t be beat."
—Anonymous
7."My host family went on vacation and forgot to tell me. They went to the mountains, where cell service was bad (this was back in 2009 in Peru), so I thought the worst until the program managed to track them down two days later."
—Anonymous
8."I studied abroad in France for a semester, and my assigned host family got switched to a different one before I got there. The new host family was supposed to be a couple and their two kids. When I moved in, I met the husband and two kids, but not the wife. I had been told it was a couple, not just one parent, but I didn’t know them, and it seemed rude to ask. She was in all the family photos around the house, but no one mentioned her or why she wasn’t there. A few weeks went by, and I started wondering if the parents had gotten divorced or if maybe the mom had passed away. Then, one day, I came home, and there she was, sitting in the kitchen like she had been there all along. They didn’t explain the situation until later when I asked outright, and I think they would have never told me what happened if I hadn’t asked. They were fairly normal after that, but it was a weird start to the semester."
—Anonymous
9."I studied abroad and lived with a family in Quito, Ecuador. They were very nice, but two odd things happened. The first incident was arriving home from class and seeing that my host mother’s son or daughter had gone into my room and used my razor."
—Anonymous
10."While studying abroad in Ecuador, I bought weed on the street. I took my weed back home and kept it in a plastic bag in the desk in my room. One day, I got home from class, and someone had taken at least half of it."
—Anonymous
11."I studied abroad in Ghana, West Africa in 2012. I stayed with a host family for the entirety of my stay, along with another woman from my college. It was…interesting. I was an African Studies minor, so the culture wasn’t a complete shock but the treatment from the family sure was. The family was the mother (who we called Auntie), the father, and one adult son. The adult son was the WORST. He was attracted to me and constantly proposed marriage to me. It was extremely uncomfortable. Once I made it perfectly clear I was uninterested, he did a complete 180 and made my time there very difficult. He tried to get me deported!! He stole my headphones and spread lies about me to the community."
"Auntie had also promised a local seamstress all my business before I even landed in West Africa. I didn’t like her designs so I found my own seamstress. Auntie and her seamstress confronted me on the street one day yelling at me about how I needed to give them money. One time I had malaria and needed a ride to the university hospital but the father claimed he only used the car for Auntie’s hair appointments so I had to walk to the hospital!"
—Anonymous
12."My family hosted a girl from Paris, and she was a major pain. She and I were 16, and she had a friend staying with a host family a half-hour drive away. She pretended to be my friend at first so that I would drive her and her friend around, but I quickly figured out she was making fun of me behind my back. She refused to speak French except with her friend and would mock me when I tried to speak French to them. When I told her I couldn’t drive her anymore, she demanded that I do so. I laughed at her. She didn’t attend a single class the entire time she was here. When it was time for me to go to Paris (it was supposed to be an equal exchange), her family suddenly "moved into a smaller apartment" that didn’t have room for me. At that point, I didn’t want to go anyway, but there were no other host families available. I still haven’t been."
13."There are SO many Spain hosting problems. I had some too! I had two different host families. The first family would leave me alone with their seven-year-old child, who would hit, bite, and scream at me. Being afraid of getting in trouble, I didn’t fight back. They also wouldn’t turn on the warm water for me to take a shower. Eventually, I got in touch with my chaperone and got sent to a new host family, who was absolutely, utterly amazing. I was so grateful to have at least a partially good experience."
14."I lived overseas doing volunteer work for a year after college. One of my host sisters stole from my room constantly. She would take money, clothing, food, a camera, and even my vibrator. My host parents refused to do anything, so my organization got me a lock on the door. I came home to find her unscrewing the lock from the door to get in."
—Anonymous
15."I studied in Gijón, Spain for two months in the summer of 2022. My host mom was a 63-year-old woman who would work as a nanny for a couple of hours a week in the morning, nap all afternoon, and then go out to the bars from 5 or 6 p.m. until 1 a.m. every night. I barely saw the woman. Sometimes I’d wake up and there was a man in the house that had stayed over. She’d go on about how sorry she was a bad host, but she was so 'in love.' I also discovered I have a stomach disorder because her food, which she rarely refrigerated, constantly made me feel sick."
"The best part was when my professor asked how my host family was. I told him not the best, and when I told him the name of my host mom he was confused. 'We don’t have any host families with that name,' he said. It turned out, this lady was the mother of the lady who was supposed to host me."
—Anonymous
16."I studied abroad in Europe in a few countries. In France, my host mother told me within five minutes of us meeting that her husband had left her for his secretary and that her son had died. She was convinced the ghost of her dead son lived in the attic and anytime there was a noise in the house she would chuckle and say 'Oh, that's just Fabian.' She thought I should find that comforting."
17."I went on exchange from Canada to France in grade 12. One night, my host took me to a country party and then left me alone all night to hook up with her ex-boyfriend. I had to sleep in an unlocked car because I didn’t know anybody and there were adult men who kept trying to hit on me. I was terrified."
"I also go extremely ill when I was there. I woke up one night to go to the washroom and fainted. When I came to I was covered in my own vomit, urine, and poop. I had a seizure. It turns out she heard me pass out and never came to check on me. She told me later she watched two episodes of Gossip Girl before she heard me wake up and crawl back to my room. Her mom was great though."
—Anonymous
18."I was doing a two-month internship in England and the local secretary from my program helped me find a place to stay. She invited me to stay at hers in the meantime and introduced me to her boyfriend. They were both in their late 40s and I was 19. They offered me a threesome but I declined. Later that night, I heard them come into my room and I pretended to sleep so they left. I found an apartment soon after but still had to see her every day at my job."
—Anonymous
19.And finally, "I studied in Germany back in the 1990s and one of my classmates knocked up his married host mother. She ended up pregnant and it resulted in her marriage ending. She actually came to the US and he totally ignored her."
—Anonymous
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
What's your horror story about living with host family or housing a foreign exchange student? Let us know in the comments below (or use this Google Form if you want to be anonymous).
