We’ve all heard stories about nightmare roommates – the ones who never clean, steal your food, or blast music at all hours of the night. It’s hard to imagine living with someone like that, but for many people, it’s a reality. That’s why we’ve collected some of the craziest and most cringe-worthy roommate experiences out there.
We’ve got tales of messes you wouldn’t believe, roommates who never leave the house, and even some horror stories that will make you grateful for your own living situation.
Whether you’re currently sharing a space with someone or just looking for a good laugh, these stories are sure to make you shake your head in disbelief. So sit back, relax, and prepare to be shocked by some of the worst roommate experiences you’ve ever heard.
Spooky Sleepwalker
The worst story I have is just really creepy. She was a great roommate but i couldn’t sleep right for a month after.
So it’s literally the first night we are sleeping in the same room, so things are already a little awkward since we only know each other’s names. But night falls and we go to sleep. I wake up to the sound of her yelling “NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and then she flings all of her blankets off of her bed and onto the floor.
At this point I’m freaked out so i ask if she’s okay and she doesn’t reply. Instead she sits up and looks around, sees the window and kind of whispers “not the window…” then she stands up and walks to the window. At this point i realize she must be sleep walking, or crazy.
She gets to the window grabs the lock with both hands and is locking and unlocking the window over and over again while whispering to herself. She never opened it, but after about 3 minutes of that she let’s go and says “that’ll do”. And then starts walking back to her bed, but when she was passing by my bed she stopped and turned to face me.
Then she just stood there sleep (i hope) staring at me for a good 2 minutes. Then she started whispering to herself again walked passed her bed to the door, dragged her hand down the middle of it, turned around and walked to her bed and went back to sleep.
I was terrified, but i never told her about it. She never did it again.
(deleted)
Image Source: Pexels/Craig Adderly
Snoozer With An Attitude
My freshman year, I had a crazy roommate. He was a bigger guy with a stache who thought all the women around him desired him. He tried very hard to make people like him, and failed miserably. He also had some s***** roommate habits.
For example, he would set multiple alarms in the morning and not wake up when they went off, which forced me to get up and wake him up every time (it was a college dorm where we slept in the same room). He would also drive like 80 MPH on residential roads to to try and impress people.
Anyway. After 4 weeks of creeping everyone out in the hall and alienating himself, someone took his iPad as a joke. He freaked out and threatened multiple people, saying he would hack their computers and destroy their lives. Eventually someone told him his iPad was in one of my friend’s rooms.
He went inside, grabbed the guy, put a knife to his throat, and asked him where the iPad was. The cops came and he was expelled. But after that I didn’t have to share my room the rest of the year, so that was cool.
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Vile Vagrant
I made the mistake of living with someone who had no regard for the way they lived. He would complain about his lifestyle from time to time, but wouldn’t do anything to fix it. In the year I lived with him, his room was cleaned once.
That one time sent a wave of stench through the apartment after he awakened it from it’s slumber. This was also the type of guy who complained about not having cash, or constantly felt sick, but chose to spend a majority of his nights at the bar.
Not sure what he’s up to now, he wanted to become a teacher, so good luck to him.
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Was Just Trying To Help A Friend
I made the mistake of living with friends, and it all went to s***. They were all slobs and I got really tired of cleaning up after them, but that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst of it was my one friend’s boyfriend. You see, she had previously been in a bad relationship, and all of us we would say if we thought she was in another bad one.
Did that work? lol no.
Everyone hated her new boyfriend but I was the only one that flat out told her she was being used and she should get out. I became Enemy #1, as suddenly everyone else was so supportive of her relationship. They plotted ways to get back at me. I actually overheard them saying what they were going to do around the apartment to piss me off.
Jokes on her. They’re divorced now, and one of the others in a spiraling-to-hell relationship. The one I remained friends with (she didn’t plot, she was just a slob) is still contently married.
I did get a half-hearted apology one time, but it was cut off when I said I wasn’t sorry for anything.
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Thank The Frogs
Hope I’m not too late. I had a roommate who was extremely conservative and really religious. She was also VERY frugal. She insisted on doing the dishes every night, but would only use 1 drop of soap for the entire load. It got to the point where it became habit to pull “clean” dishes out of the cabinet and quickly wash it before we could use it.
I also had pet frogs that summer. Frogs that like temperature control. Well this frugal roommate went on a rampage during the hottest week of the summer and tried to ban us from using the air conditioning to save money. We would all fight back and turn it on when she wasn’t home. After a few weeks of this, one of our other roommates did some research.
Turns out, the breed of frog I had likes to get frisky when their environment gets too warm. So we all agreed to let her control the a/c for awhile. We also moved the frogs to a more prominent location.
About 2 days in, little miss conservative walked in to see the nicely displayed frogs humping each other to no end. She screamed, demanded to know why we were letting this happen. We told her about the research and that if she wanted it to stop, then let us have air conditioning.
We spent the rest of the summer in air conditioned bliss. The weird thing is that she was pretty well off, so we don’t know why she was so cheap.
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Terrible Trumpeter
I lived with a guy who drank rum like water and played the trumpet. But that’s just the beginning. Although he couldn’t play the trumpet. He would play the theme to “The Flintstones” but always got stuck on one note, I wanted to take a shovel to the trumpet right at the moment he would mess it up, put us both out of our misery.
In addition, he had a salt water fish tank. No fish could live in it because it was a green algae cesspool of filth. The smell was that of a soggy swamp sneaker in a hot gym locker. He would stand and stare at it and chuckle to himself.
He also cooked pounds pounds and pounds of kale then would try and get the stalks down the garbage disposal, which alway broke it. He would wear a purple robe with no clothes on under it. Granted the guy meant no harm, he was just so annoying to live with.
I still wonder to this day where he is. He went by a name other than his original so I don’t know how to find him.
(mfwater)
Image Source: Pexels/Mart Production
Cleanliness Is Optional
Refusing to buy toilet paper for several days when it was your turn because she didn’t “feel like” going to the store, even though she had literally nothing on her schedule that day. No work, no school, no outing with friends…
Like toilet paper is optional, or is something you can skip for a few days with no repercussions.She also refused to call maintenance for any issue, ever. Ceiling leaking right beside her bed, onto the carpet? Nope. Toilet severely clogged? Nope. Air conditioning broken? Nah.
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Extreme Makeover: Roommate Edition
My housemate (who owned the house) asked me to swap rooms with her, she was moving out in a month and used a lot of my cupboard space as storage so it would (apparently) be easier for her to pack up if she was in my room (turned out she actually just wanted the better room for when her boyfriend came to stay).
I said I’d really prefer not to, the thought of having to go through everything and move rooms, just to move out again in a month, was a bit much. But I said I had no problem with her coming in and out of my room to pack, as that would be way less of an inconvenience, and she agreed to that.
The next day I went out for a few hours with friends and when I came back she announced ‘surprise’ with a big smile on her face… she had swapped our rooms.
(Zinzidec)
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Bringing Chemistry Class Home
My roommate in college wanted to clean the silt stains out of our shared bathtub so he poured bleach and vinegar (don’t even know why we had that in the dorm) for a “super potent cleaner”. After using the restroom and getting light headed I asked what was in the bathtub and when he told me I didn’t think it sounded right so after a single search the first result said it was deadly. It produces chlorine gas which can kill in minutes. So while he’s done some stupid s*** that takes the cake.
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Flood Warning In My House
I had a roommate who absolutely refused to buy toilet paper. After weeks of her stealing ours, the other 3 of us started hiding it so she would be forced to buy her own. Instead, she started taking heaps of napkins from restaurants and stealing rolls of our paper towels.
One night we all went out to dinner, came home, and the entire basement was flooded because she backed up the toilet with god only knows how much s*** that shouldn’t ever be flushed. That and she would keep piles of old food laying around her room…never did laundry…most disgusting human being I’ve ever met.
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We Know The Culprit
Got a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue for my birthday from a friend. I went out of town. Roommate proceeds to drink half the bottle and then fill it up with water like I wouldn’t notice. And then had the audacity to lie about it and continues to til this day.
I do believe he doesn’t remember though. He got laid off after getting a dui. Proceeded to drink himself stupid for eight months and was eventually taking our rent money to pay his car bill. Didn’t realize til we had an eviction notice.
Forced him to get his parents to pay for our three months of rent he didn’t pay but I still have an eviction on my record. I have a copy of the notice that says I was not evicted so wherever I go I have to show that to future landlords or when I buy a house so we don’t get denied.
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How Many Roommates Does It Take to Change A Lightbulb?
I had to work abroad for three months. I came home to discover the bathroom light bulb had blown just after I left. Roomie felt she couldn’t change it herself so called an electrician. Electrician laughed at her and told her she could save a fortune and do it herself. She still hadn’t done it by the time I got back.
Needless to say I fixed it in about 5 minutes. It would have been sooner but I couldn’t stop chuckling at the thought of her s***ing in the dark for months.
Image Source: Pexels/Burak The Weekender
Perhaps A Vetting Process Next Time?
Circa 2001. It was my first apartment and I wasn’t a good judge of roommate character back then. I was working at a welding shop and had befriended this big Mexican guy after driving him home from work enough to start hanging out at his house after work for a few beers and his mom’s excellent biscuits and gravy she’d make for us.
Naturally, we thought it would be a good idea to roommate at my place to cut down on expense. Little did I know, he was one of those drinkers that black out and destroy everything. Each day after work was him with a case of beer and getting in arguments with kids in Yahoo chat rooms over a mic until he would pass out.
It escalated. He quit going to work and I’d come home with him passed out, vomit all over the floors, p*** in the corners, half-eaten pizza face down on the couch, the works. I started telling him he needed to leave but he wasn’t hearing it.
Eventually he got arrested for something and ended up in jail. I was free. For a while. He got out and I woke to banging on my door. I didn’t let him in. (His mom collected all his things when he got locked up)
Fast forward to recently, I’d been overseas for 6 years and moved back to my home state afterward, and recently stumbled across his Facebook page after not having seen or heard from him in 13 years. We talked. He’s doing really well now, training to be an addiction counselor, and I’m happy for him.
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House Up In Smoke
She was making pie (great baker, great person – just kinda…not all there in the head), had some extra crust & decided to cook it up as a sort of crispy cookie-like snack. Put said extra strips of dough on a pan on the bottom of our oven & proceeded to give a friend a ride home.
I was on my way home from work- about a block away, and wondered why my neighborhood smelled like toast all of a sudden. Open my door to be greeted by a plume of smoke & my terrified dogs who probably would’ve been goners if I had stopped somewhere on my way home.
Great times trying to air that charred dough smell out of the house & comfort scared animals.
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When Were You Going To Tell Us?
Walked out without a word one day (fairly common). After a few days my other roommate and I realize he hasn’t been back at all in days. How do we contact this f***ing kid. His phone is shut off (didn’t pay) and he doesn’t log onto facebook. We don’t know how to contact his family either. What the f***.
Over 2 months after he just left, he shows up again, apparently lives with other people now, and wants all his stuff. And he doesn’t have any money for us, despite ditching out and missing bills. F*** that kid. It turns out, he can just take his stuff after disappearing and not paying bills, because us keeping it would be stealing. But him not paying? Gotta take him to court to get that back.
F***ing lame.
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Selective Listener
I had a deaf roommate who used to steal my pillows because his sucked. When I tried to tell him to knock it off he would pretend not to hear me. Finally I threw his bedding out the window. He would also wash his chicken or trim veggies in the bathroom sink instead of the kitchen which had a garbage disposal.
For the longest time my other roommates couldn’t figure out why the sink kept clogging until we caught him. The worst was he kept cooking strong curry and extremely pungent chili peppers. For 6 months after he moved out my place smelled like curry.
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Living With A Night Owl
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.
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My Roommate, The Mafioso
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.
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Late-Night Snacking
I used to cook dinner and always made enough to offer to our room mate. He paid his bills and rent always but sometimes he didn’t have enough for food so I would cook and say “hey man, wanna have dinner with us?”. He would usually say he didn’t like whatever I was making. Fastforward to morning…all the leftovers were gone.
His explanation? He must have been sleepwalking and ate it in his sleep. This happened 15 to 20 times over a year period. Minimum. He would make these big song and dances about how what I was making was gross, so I would put up enough leftovers for two (my boyfriend and I) then go to bed.
What was to be lunches for work gone and often dirty utensils in the sink. Fast forward another 5 years and he called me at 3 am after not talking to me or my partner for 3 years, and told me my now husband (aforementioned BF)was doing Crack in front of our 4 year old. I called my husband, who was asleep.
Neither of us had talked to him in years…what was this? Fast forward another 5 years. He’s on death row for killing his roommate. His defense? He did it sleepwalking.
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Where Did All Of The Groceries Go?
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.
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There’s Been A Robbery
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 and spring semester.
(Rich_2)
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Should I Say Something?
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.
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That’s Just Disgusting
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.
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You Should Definitely Get That Checked Out
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.
(deleted)
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A Collection Of Unpleasant Roommate
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.
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The Cat Was (Almost) Worth It
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 fucked off without cleaning up after himself.
He also had a cat, 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 mouldering 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.
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Two-Faced Two-Timer
My last two roommates were a married man and his side chick. We lived in a shared house and the man recommended his girlfriend to the landlords after another roommate left (I had no say in it). His wife lived and worked in Germany while we live in the US so he easily got away with it.
They were cool with me but it was very uncomfortable to watch, especially since I met his wife when she came to visit him (before I knew about the girlfriend). He was so much meaner to his wife too-he’d complain about her cooking and make her cry but with the girlfriend he was Mr. Nice and Mr. Helpful. I don’t know if the girlfriend knew he had a wife or not.
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Working During The Most Unnecessary Times
Had a roommate freshmen year in a shared room who was training for a bodybuilding competition. He would wake up at 5, make a ton of noise, go for a run, come back at 6, go to the gym, come back and pose in front of the mirror (sometimes in the nude) all while I was clearly awake.
He would also go to bed at 8pm and get pissed if any noise was made, the clicking of the keys on my phone once set him off because he needed beauty rest.
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Bunch of Bullies
I’ve posted this before, but my first roommates invaded my privacy by stealth installing screen viewer software on my desktop and cyberstalking me. They would do shit like ban my MAC address from the router (which belonged to me), type while I was trying to do homework assignments on my computer, harass me by typing expletives, putting a hard drive in my computer and cloning my main drive onto it, and out me to other roommates and online friends to a certain fandom I was part of at the time.
I genuinely believed I was being targeted by an online hacker. I was just a naive, sheltered child with social anxiety. It wasn’t until the only decent roommate I had opened up to me and told me what was going on. There were other things, like threats of ganging up on me, and shit like saran wrap on the toilet seat and peanut butter in my shoes.
(deleted)
Image Source: Pexels/Mart Production
Those Aren’t Yours
When I first moved in with my roommate, everything seemed fine. But then I started noticing that my food was disappearing. At first, I thought I was just forgetting that I had eaten it, but then it started happening more and more frequently. I confronted my roommate about it, but she denied taking anything. I even labeled my food with my name, but it didn’t help.
One day, I came home to find my roommate eating my leftovers straight out of the container. When I asked her what she was doing, she just shrugged and said, ‘I was hungry.’ I ended up having to buy a mini-fridge for my room just to keep my food safe. Needless to say, I didn’t renew our lease.
(FoodThiefNightmare)
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These People’s Airline Stories Prove “Flightmares” Are Real
Forget Snoring — How About Screaming!
I’m from the United Kingdom and was working at a summer camp in Pennsylvania. After travelling around the United States for a few weeks, I had to take three planes just to get home. I was so tired. I fell asleep on the last flight back to London.
I woke up with the flight attendant’s hand on my shoulder asking if I was okay. I then noticed that the woman next to me was very heavily breathing. Turns out I’d just started flat out screaming in my sleep. Naturally, this woman was freaked out. I didn’t go back to sleep on that flight after that!
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The Worst Travel Day Ever
When I was going back home from Tomsk, Russia, I experienced a horrible day of travel.
I was supposed to get on three different planes: Tomsk to Moscow, Moscow to Chisinau, and then Chisinau to Rome. The first flight was late, and I ended up missing the other two
I somehow got a refund for my ticket by screaming and crying a lot in (poor) Russian. From there, I ended up booking a direct flight from Moscow to Rome.
The catch is that this other plane departed from the OTHER Moscow airport, so I had to pay over $200 for a taxi to get there on time. Even then, I almost missed my flight again.
I was supposed to be home at 2 p.m. However, I didn’t get home until 11 p.m. I was almost dead after a day of dragging two heavy suitcases around. Not to mention, I went the whole day without eating!
(melmoths)
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“Sir, You Need a Ticket to Board This Flight”
I was flying to Toronto from the UK. We boarded the plane, and I heard some dispute going on. Eventually several armed police boarded and told everyone to get off. Turned out a guy had got on-board without a ticket. He was then sitting in someone else’s seat. We were delayed for almost 10 hours.
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A Lesson I’ll Never Forget!
A flight instructor was showing me for my first time how to do a takeoff from a grass strip. At this point, he has the controls. I notice as we are picking up speed he’s distracted by the gauges. He’s then looking inside the plane.
We lift off at an extremely slow speed, and he starts banking to the right — making us drift off the runway. We then start falling back down and bounce hard off the grass before finally climbing out. I don’t think he ever noticed the entire time what was going on. However, I was scared! I then proceeded to do three perfect landings and take-offs on the grass.
(3800L67)
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GET ME OFF THIS PLANE!
I was flying from Toronto to Dallas in August, and then got diverted to Oklahoma due to storms. Sat in the plane for two hours on the tarmac with no air conditioning. It was over 100 degrees that day.
While waiting, the plane engine caught on fire. It caused a mass exodus of all passengers to leave the plane. We waited in an abandoned office building on the airport grounds. Air Canada was trying to figure out what to do.
3 hours later, we were bussed down to Dallas. The bus had no air conditioning — which wasn’t pleasant considering the fact it was still 90 degrees out at night.
I sat next to a very loud woman who spent the entire trip talking about what food she was going to eat when we finally got to Dallas. Everyone was starving, and having to listen to hours of someone loudly gush over burgers, fries, and ice cream was torture. Another hour, and I think me and the other passengers would have killed her.
Longest day of my life.
(deleted)
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“So, uh…where’s the rest of the tire?!”
I took a plane once from Mexico City to go to Acapulco with the Mexican state airline. We’re taking off, when one of the tires explodes. Due to this, the pilots turn around to get it fixed. We have to wait in the airplane without air conditioning for about 3 hours. Then, we are ready and take off, but have to turn around once again –because they forgot to remove the dowel pin from the landing gear as it doesn’t retract. The passengers were really annoyed.
Then, there was the time flying from Miami to Bogota that a fire started in the passenger cabin. Smoke was coming out of the panels on the side of the plane. There weren’t many passengers on the plane, so there wasn’t much of a panic, but we had to turn around and go back to Miami. We were about half way to our destination, but the pilot felt it was safer landing in Miami than in Bogota in the mountains. They took us off the plane and put us on another, and had to do the trip all over again (we had just done the equivalent of the trip since we were halfway there and came back). It was kind of tense sitting there with the air getting more and more full of smoke.
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Put The Cap on The Water
4 hour flight.
Some fellow passenger put a water bottle in the overhead compartment.
It was not capped.
Water bottle spilled and leaked all over me through the bin’s latch as soon as the plane was in the air.
Airplane was FREEZING. Since it wasn’t an overnight trip, there were apparently no blankets. I was wearing a thin blouse and was shivering so hard I wanted to die.
I now take a waterproof, insulated jacket on every flight I board.
(daitoshi)
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Get Your Hands Off Me!
I was on a late night flight from Las Vegas to Charlotte. Clearly, the best thing for me to do during the flight was to sleep through it. Maybe about an hour before we were scheduled to land, I was woken up by a grab on my breast. Then, a hand down my side. I remember jolting myself upright (I had my head down at the time).
I came face-to-face with this man, grinning and absolutely REEKING of alcohol as if he had bathed in it. He started to reach towards me again, so I pushed him away. He turned and walked away after that, but after a few steps this dude collapses. The flight attendants scrambled over to see what had happened, and of course there was a nurse on board who hopped up to see what was going on as well. Feeling guilty, I put my head back down to “sleep” so I could eavesdrop on what was happening an aisle behind me.
Apparently this dude was so drunk when he got on the plane the attendants had refused to serve him alcohol multiple times during the flight. Also, he was on all kinds of crazy heart meds, and shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place.
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A Truly Poopy Surprise
I was flying back to the upper Midwest from Jamaica (fairly long flight) and hit a big storm over the ocean before hitting the mainland. My buddy was sitting next to me, and had just gotten back from the bathroom. We hit some major turbulence, and he didn’t have his seat belt on when the plane dropped a good 20 or 30 feet.
It was like a full freefall moment out of the movies — everybody’s drinks and all — and he flew up and hit the ceiling before coming back down. Meanwhile, a lady that was part of the one of those Jesus trips — like the groups all wearing the same t-shirts, in the row next to us — starts hyperventilating.
She then starts screaming that she doesn’t want to die over and over. She also straight up pooped her pants. Turbulence eventually went away, but the smell of her poop lasted the remaining 3 hours of the flight…
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Excuse Me, Can I Move Seats?!
I flew direct from Moscow to Houston on a Singapore Airlines flight. Behind us sat an an elderly Singaporean couple who took off their shoes, and used our armrests to put their feet up. The smell was unbearable. I was in the middle seat, my boyfriend on the window side and an older guy on the aisle. The older guy starts by complaining nonstop about the smell. He’s berating the flight attendants over it.
They keep asking the elderly couple to move their feet but they keep putting them back. The man eventually decides to calm down. He introduces himself to me by telling me that I better not have to use the restroom during the 13 hour flight because he won’t feel like moving. He spends several hours telling me, through my headphones and obvious disinterest, about all the languages he speaks, the places he’s worked and all the money he makes.
At one point, he was telling me about his childhood in Louisiana and I (having no idea what to say because I don’t want to talk) mention I have family in Shreveport. He takes the opportunity to make it clear how stupid I am because it’s not relevant because it’s several hours from his hometown.
About half way through, I told him to let me out to use the restroom and watched him storm around the cabin like a toddler in anger. He berated me about my timing (?) when I returned to my seat.
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What Does The Fox Say?
My dad was a first officer (co-pilot) at the time. I won’t disclose the airline or the airport.
They had lined up the plane on the runway, ready to take off when a fox ran across the runway. It stopped in between the runways to hunt, and my dad and the pilot called into the tower telling them they were gong to have to wait for a fox to exit the premises before they could take off (don’t want to suck it up in the engines and crash the plane as you pass).
Tower asked them to confirm it was a fox, and asked which area they were in so they could send someone out to take care of it. They said they’d had prior experience with said creature and would get out there right away. The captain responded and the plane waited. So after watching the fox jump around a bit, the captain got on the intercom and informed the passengers why they were being delayed. The captain then indicated where the passengers could look to see the fox.
Suddenly, an airport maintenance truck drove into view and headed towards them. This is no big deal (most airports have dogs or something to chase off wildlife that they can then call back). My dad and the captain noticed that the truck wasn’t slowing down. The truck hit the fox going at full speed. My dad said it was terrible and sent the fox tumbling. Obvious that it was dead, the truck drove off.
Awestruck with horror, my dad and the captain turned to look at each other. The captain then got on the intercom and apologized to the passengers for what they had just seen. They indicated that was not the standard practice they’d been expecting, and gave out numbers to the passengers that witnessed the event so that they could call the airport staff and report what they had seen.
My dad told me that both he and the captain felt terrible because they had, unknowingly, called in a hit on the poor little guy (the airport clearly had some strange past with it). Unintentionally, they then let all of the passengers watch.
Clearly, not a great flight for anyone.
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A Very Cruel Joke
I think I was about 7. It was right after I’d started flying by myself when visiting both of my parents separately. I was sitting next to this older kid when the plane started rumbling. I didn’t exactly know what turbulence was, so I asked the kid. “Oh yeah, we’re going down,” he said. I was like… “What?” And he goes “Yeah I’ve done it a couple times, only a few die every time so you have nothing to worry about.” Amazingly I didn’t start crying, but the idiot was actively trying to scare a 7 year old girl travelling alone.
(deleted)
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The Worst Seat Neighbor
Have you ever thrown out your clothes in an airport bathroom?
I have.
You know how certain passengers are forced to buy a second seat? You know how sometimes do to issues of improper hygiene or excessive drinking, some passengers are prohibited from boarding?
I was seated next to a woman who managed to evade all of these restrictions. She was drunk, unwashed, and overflowing her seat (occupying most of mine).
Through the duration of of the flight, she sweat, spilled, drooled, sneezed and coughed all over me. By the end of it, I was covered with a stranger’s bodily fluids and about three rum and cokes.
It was horrible. It was also a fully booked flight, and moving was not an option (I checked).
I should also add, my television was inoperable for the duration of the 5 hour flight. The ample girth of my neighbor had enveloped the controls, and my feeble attempts to access them were met with drunken aggression.
Needless to say, at the end of it. I tossed my favourite hoodie and jeans in the trash of an airport bathroom. I changed into some dirty shorts from my luggage, and ventured out into the Canadian winter to brave my journey back home.
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Flight School is No Joke
I was doing one of my required five jumps in airborne school during Army training. It was a combat jump, so we had our weapon and gear strapped to our harnesses (which made it difficult to cinch up the harness properly). Later when we were on the plane, we had to circle the drop zone because of some ranger candidates ahead of us. During that time I got the worst motion sickness I’ve ever experienced. I was sweating profusely and fighting the urge to vomit with everything I had.
We finally got to jump when my parachute caught me in a very bad way. It fully bunched up on my groin area. All hell broke loose and I vomited all the way to the ground. Still had to gather my parachute and run to the rendezvous point.
(shnozdog)
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Don’t Fly During a Monsoon
Usually pilots inform the passengers if the aircraft is going to experience turbulence in the near future. The pilot on my flight to Hong Kong during the peak of the monsoon season didn’t do that. We encountered some turbulence midway through the flight, but the flight attendants began serving the vegetarian meals to passengers that requested it.
All of a sudden, we hit a massive air pocket and dropped a few hundred feet. The meals went everywhere and nearly all passengers near me began praying to every God they knew. I more or less accepted my fate and continued watching Braveheart.
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Is There A Nurse On-Board?!
When I was an infant, I was sitting on my fathers lap. The flight attendant leaned over him to give coffee to the person sitting next to him. Her hand slipped, and the boiling coffee spilled on my bare chest. I was bare-chested because my father happened to be changing my shirt right as the coffee fiasco occurred. I had a massive scar for a year or two after. Apparently, the flight attendant broke down crying during the flight.
(ut2018)
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Get Some Air Freshener in Here, ASAP!!
The woman sleeping next to me started to convulse. From there, she then began vomiting all over my right arm and lap. All I could do was reach up and hit the call attendant button. After 30 seconds, she woke up with no recollection of what happened. She acted as if it had never happened.
They relocated the woman, and I excused myself to clean up.
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Where’s the Pepto-Bismol?!
I just boarded a flight from Sri Lanka to Singapore. I noticed that something smelled funky. I looked around and saw an Australian tourist looking very uncomfortable. This dude ran to the restroom and came back to his seat a few minutes later. Unfortunately for him, he needed to go use the restroom a minute before takeoff. Flight attendants didn’t left him and he ended up vomiting. The cycle of pooping and vomiting continued for 2 hours until he passed out. In the meantime, the flight attendants were tending to him and spraying the cabin with air freshener because the smell was unbearable for everyone.
Well, everyone except for me because I had similar symptoms a little more than a week before the flight. I had gotten used to endless cycle of pooping and vomiting. My guess is this poor man caught whatever virus me and thousands of other people had at the time. Unfortunately for him, sickness came during the flight.
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Sitting Next to a Giant
I was coming back to the United States from Korea. It was the second leg from Japan to Texas. I had a bad stomach flu, and I puked into a large garbage bag. I am 6’8″ and 340. When I throw up, I wretch LOUDLY. Multiple times. The poor Japanese people around me were trying to move as far away from me as they could. My wife was sitting behind me, and wouldn’t take the bag so could fill a new one.
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DON’T TELL MY BOYFRIEND!
Oh boy. My boyfriend will KILL me if he ever knew I posted this. It’s bad but HILARIOUS.
The whole day was chaos. I was on my period and emotional, and wanted pizza more than anything on Earth. I literally cried when we got to the pizza place. They said it would take 30 minutes even though I wanted a slice right away. So after my meltdown we got on the plane without pizza, and I naturally needed a nap after crying. Well, reason we didn’t get pizza is because my boyfriend needed to drink a bunch of beer with his brother who was going to another city. It’s understandable…drink with your brother but make sure you get your crazy girlfriend some pizza!
I slept hard. Woke up to the pilot saying we’re on our final descend. My boyfriend was gone. I assumed he was in the bathroom, so I looked to the front and back at the overhead signs and they both said the bathroom was free. I was thinking “Where is he then?!” Panicking I was looking front to back as the ground was getting closer. I asked the stranger next to me, “Where is he?!” And he says, “[Your boyfriend] went to the bathroom like 30 minutes ago.” Even the male flight attendant knew he wasn’t in his seat, so they checked the bathrooms. Grounds getting closer, and here comes my boyfriend. He sits down just in time for landing and he smells God awful! Like the worst smelling person ever.
I was like “God you stink!” He says “Stop. We’ll talk later.” I literally cannot breathe next to him because he smells so bad. I feel bad for aisle guy. We get off the plane and he tells me. He accidentally pooped his pants trying to get to the bathroom. Knew he needed to go pronto and nearly passed out trying to make it up to the bathroom. However, someone went in ahead. He turns around heads to the back and doesn’t make it.
Now if you remember, I said the signs said they were vacant. He didn’t lock the doors during this panic. Naturally, he needed to get rid of the evidence so he was trying to flush his boxers down the toilet and IN WALKS the male flight attendant asking him to return to his seat. Catching him flushing his poop covered boxers! I died when he told me this. It’s now an on-going joke to not poop his pants on the plane.
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Sandstorms Are No Fun
Flight I was on attempted landing in Abu Dhabi in the middle of a huge sandstorm. Winds rocked the plane, visibility was pretty bad. The pilot had somehow come in too fast, as he was rocketing down the runway we were supposed to land on. The tires touched ground a couple times, but suddenly he guns the engines and we take off back into the air. It’s a few minutes before he gets over the intercom and tells us we’re gonna try that again. Second time around, it’s rocky as hell but we eventually land safely. Also apparently the stress of the botched landing sent a lady a few rows up into a seizure or stroke, so it exacerbated the panicky feeling around us and then we had to stay on the plane while the EMT’s came aboard.
(hmm103)
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An Embarrassing Situation
So I fly a lot, and can probably fill a book with my stories. However, there’s one specific situation which totally stands out among them all.
I don’t get to travel internationally a ton, but last week I was traveling through Heathrow Airport (London, England) on a layover. I had to naturally go through security. They made me take all my electronics out — including my big UE Boom Bluetooth speaker. When taking it out, I accidentally turned the speaker on by accident. I had been watching the show The Expanse on my phone, and they synched as the speaker was in the machine.
The dialogue that came out at max volume: “NO NO, OH MY GOD…HELP ME HES DYING!”
Very embarrassing as heads whipped around.
(lemongrenade)
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Parents Who Weren’t On The Same Page
It was my first time flying on Southwest (this is like 8 yrs ago) and didn’t know about the open seating thing. As such, I didn’t check in ahead and got stuck with boarding as C59 or something. Basically, I was the last person on the plane.
I took a seat in the middle because that’s all that was left. Turns out I was sitting between a couple that was fighting. They had an infant with them. It was a redeye from San Francisco to Baltimore, so I was really trying to get some sleep.
Instead, the couple was super passive aggressive to each other the whole flight. They kept passing the baby back and forth in front of me. They never once said anything to me either. It was like I was invisible.
I also unexpectedly got my period half way through the flight.
(vvml)
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“Sir, Can You Move Your Fake Leg?”
I was in a puddle jumper for a shortish flight (less than 2 hours, I think). The man seated next to me had a prosthetic leg, did not speak English, and slept for most of the flight.
We were on a tiny plane, and this guy took up most of my leg room with his prosthetic. He was sleeping and didn’t speak my language, so I had no way of asking him to move his leg.
The only open place to put my right foot was covered in freshly discarded bubble gum. It was an uncomfortable flight.
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Horrible Experience Before It Started
“Go to Thailand!” It would be fun they all said.
Traveled from my small hometown to Albuquerque to fly out of, and stayed in an airport Ramada Inn the night before. I thought I would eat something light and healthy the night before, and had a salad. Unfortunately, for me, the tomatoes were bad.
I woke up feeling a little nauseous and pale. Made it to my 5 a.m. flight, and the flight attendant barely let me on the plane. I convinced her I was just hungover. I spent that entire flight to LA puking on an airplane toilet…for literally four hours.
I then flew from Los Angeles to Beijing. I spent the entire flight dry heaving, freezing, then overheating, then freezing, and wrapped around the worst Air China flight ever. This took 14 hours.
Flight from Beijing to Bangkok was spent curled up in a ball on the floor of the plane trying to sleep, and still dry heaving. Another six hours.
24 hours of absolute misery. I got to Thailand, and wanted to puke at the smell of everything. Anywhere I went, everything smelled disgusting. I didn’t eat anything for an entire week. The next week I barely drank any water and ate a few teaspoons of rice and broth. After two weeks I could finally eat Thai street food.
(luouixv)
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A Flight Feast!
This is more of a funny story than anything. My family and I were on our way home from a cruise trip, getting a plane from LA back to Toronto. It was a fairly long flight, and I was sitting beside my mom on the plane, while my brother, dad, and grandparents were seated further back in the plane. None of us hadn’t eaten dinner before getting on the plane. Given that it was a lengthy flight, my mom had made the assumption that the plane was preparing full meals to hand to the passengers.
Every time a stewardess came around asking if we’d like anything to eat, my mom assumed they were talking about snack food, said no thanks, and waved them off. After getting off the plane with no food in our system, we found out that the rest of our family ate like kings. They had gotten stuff like full-sized cookies, pretzels, chips, apparently full slices of pizza, sandwiches, plenty of soda, etc. My mom and I still joke about it whenever we get on a plane.
They also shipped our luggage to the wrong place, which sucked because it was right after Christmas, and it had some of my brother’s presents.
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An Unintended Marathon
Flying from Hong Kong to Vancouver with my 6 month old son who cried inconsolably the entire way. I never sat down except for takeoff and landing, possibly becoming the first person to walk across the Pacific Ocean. Nearly everyone was very understanding. I was mortified, grateful and exhausted.
(jobrody)
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What…uh…Happened?!
The woman sleeping next to me started to convulse, and she began vomiting all over my right arm and lap. All I could do was reach up and hit the call attendant button. After 30 seconds, she woke up with no recollection of what happened, and it had never happened before.
They relocated the woman and I excused myself to clean up.
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The Worst Flight Ever
I was on a school trip to Ecuador. On the way back, we flew from Quito to Manta, to Bonaire, to Amsterdam, and then to Cardiff. All in all that’s about 17 hours of flying.
Anyway, since I always have like fifty books with me, one of the girls I was with asked to switch seats with me at Manta since she was sitting on her own. I ended up in the window seat next to a screaming toddler and his exhausted mother. Over the course of the flight, the kid knocked coffee on me, knocked his soda on me, and headbutted me so hard in the face I got a nosebleed while his mom was sleeping. I didn’t want to wake her up, so I was kind of screwed. Someone passing noticed and handed me a tissue. However, my nosebleeds are terrible, so I soaked through it. In the end, I had to use a spare T-shirt to stem the flow out of desperation.
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Paris Isn’t a Vacation For Me
Tough call. Either my emergency landing in Paris where I swore I was going to die (and accepted death quite quickly). Or — the time I had a fever and passed out for 8 hours straight. That also felt like death, and happened to be a flight out of Paris.
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Getting Squeamish Mid-Air
On an eight hour flight, I began watching a movie they offered. The movie showed someone getting a needle. I ended up passed out (I have an issue with blood). But for whatever reason, I first got deathly white and threw up all over my family. The last thing I remember was my dad rolling his eyes, and my mom was yelling for flight attendants. She then demanded that they land the plane. The rest of the flight went smoothly, I think.
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Come See The Cockpit…And Watch Us Crash
My dad is a pilot. We were coming into Sydney Airport when he called me up to the cockpit to tell me that the landing gear light wasn’t coming on. That meant maybe the gear was down. However, the light was broken — or maybe it was not fully down. He said he’d make two more attempts. If that didn’t work, he’d then wing it by hand. If neither of those things worked, we would have to ditch into the ocean.
It was very, very nerve-wracking. Eventually, we had the light come on and ATC confirmed our gear was down. Fortunately, we landed without a hitch.
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