16 Of The Gnarliest, Strangest, Most Unbelievable Roommate Horror Stories That'll Convince You To Live Alone, Even In This Economy
We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their roommate horror stories, and boy, did they deliver. BRB, gonna go hug my roommate and thank her for being lovely and also normal!!! Here's what people shared:
1."My roommate in college was an absolute slob. Her part of the room was just nasty. At one point, the room started to smell weird. I detailed my side (found nothing) and asked her to do the same. She found a loaf of bread jammed against the wall of her closet that had turned several shades of green and was starting to liquefy. This was on top of her dirty laundry, just strewn around the room. She would also thunder in and around in the middle of the night after sneaking out (it was a private Christian college, so there was a strict curfew). It was an absolute nightmare of a year. I left the school after that and never looked back."
2."I had this roommate my first year of college. She was from a town about 10 minutes away from our dorm, so she went to eat dinner and see her mom a lot. She would often just stay at home, but she would come to our room to change out of her sweaty clothes after rowing team practice. By the end of the year, I had accumulated about 12 bottles of cleaner and air freshener because her stack of dirty, sweaty, smelly clothes was taller than our lofted beds. I'm talking at least six feet of sweaty clothes. She would also microwave fish and leave dirty dishes on her desk. It was disgusting. None of my friends would come to my room, and, honestly, I spent as little time there as possible, too."
3."I let a friend move in with her two kids for free because she was leaving a bad breakup. Two months in, she got a new phone and left her old one at my house. It kept buzzing, so I picked it up, and it was my then-boyfriend. They were texting back and forth, talking crap about me, and professing their love for each other. All their texts were also going to the old phone. They were sleeping together behind my back. I kicked her out, and they were together for a year. She recently texted me to apologize, asked to meet for coffee, and went on and on about how toxic he was to her. LMAO. No thanks."
4."My first college roommate had her favorite song play on repeat on her laptop. Her laptop would be shut, she'd be gone, but the song would still be on repeat. I didn't want to touch her things, but I was often tempted to throw her computer out the window. I eventually asked her to shut it off, which went how I thought it would. She was very unhappy because the song reminded her of her long-distance boyfriend. I ended up switching rooms a bit later."
5."I moved to NYC and found an apartment off a Craigslist listing. My roommate was 10 years older than me, didn't have a job, and was collecting disability for acid reflux (no lie). She would have sex with the door open. She'd come home late at night and slam into my walls. She tried to be physical with me when I said I wouldn't pay the electricity until she gave me the bill. It was a three-bedroom apartment, and I paid half the rent. She had the entire apartment, and I was only allowed in my bedroom, and her guest had to use my bathroom. I moved out early, and she put raw chicken in my boxes because the landlord kicked her out."
6."I lived with three other girls in college, two of whom were close friends then. After a while of living together, the two girls decided to 'team up' and text me and the other girl horrible and cruel things regarding our lifestyles. It started a civil war in the house. After we went back and forth arguing about what needed to be done around the house and how our lifestyles were, etc., there was one incident that was the last straw for me. One of the girls harassing me and my friend decided to lock our cats in the bathroom one night and take the key with her. I woke up, had to use the toilet, and found out the door was locked. That's when I heard the cats meowing. My friends and I had to pee in the kitchen sink and outside on the lawn! I packed up my things and left the next day."
7."My college roommate was a master at Photoshop. This is important later. She moved in and paid rent for a month or two, and then things got weird. Random stuff started going missing, but at the same time, random stuff would start appearing — like magnets on the fridge — and she would swear up and down that she didn't buy them or put them there. Same with groceries. I thought I was losing my mind. She came and went at odd hours, not normal school hours. She was two months late on rent and wouldn't answer my calls, so I called her parents. They told me that she was responsible for her own bills. And then I got a $400 pay-per-view bill for FURRY PORN! It was not my bill. And then I started getting weird MySpace messages from her friends telling me I needed to stop harassing her. My parents got involved, and we went to student services."
"Turns out, she had been expelled from the college a year earlier for a racist remark, had warrants out for her arrest, and restraining orders against her too. She had faked college transcripts, faked herself onto the official university track team photo, stole my identity, and went to the ER claiming she had cancer. She really screwed my credit up, as I ended up getting billed for all of that. She finally got arrested when she trespassed onto school property, and I was able to ID her. There is a lot more, but that's the gist. She spent seven years in jail."
8."She faked a robbery to have a reason to move back in with her parents. I was so mad I had no notice! Fortunately, I could cover the bills independently, as I had done for a month, and she moved out owing me. I heard a year later that she had a baby. So, instead of telling me she was pregnant, she had me filing a police report."
9."My first-year college roommate and I met when we toured the college the same day. We decided to room together since we already kind of 'knew' each other. We turned out not to be super compatible; we had different interests and different friends, but we were always friendly. I thought the whole time that even if we weren't 'besties,' it was nice to have a roommate with whom I was comfortable and knew I was on good terms. Well, I had to go home early when the college closed (during the beginning of COVID-19), and I couldn't take everything home with me, so some of my stuff stayed in the room. She ended up staying there longer and texted me one day saying she moved everything of mine from our room out into the hallway!"
"She said it wasn't 'my room' anymore, and she hated having to look at my stuff, so she just put it all out in the hallway, even knowing I couldn't come to get it. Oh, and she texted my then-boyfriend to say she liked him but always hated me."
10."My roommate asked to use my Keurig. I told her no since the coffee she had was one I was allergic to, and it would make it impossible for me to breathe. The next morning, I woke up and saw her making her coffee in my Keurig. She said it was 'a coffee emergency' and got upset when I flushed my Keurig multiple times before making myself coffee. I offered to let her use some of mine or get a coffee I'm not allergic to if she needed to use my Keurig. After the weekend, she returned and made coffee in my Keurig again. I was sleeping when she left, so I only knew because she had left the used pod in the machine. I contacted the RA, who helped us have a mediated conversation."
"I explained that it would be dangerous for me, especially if no one else was in the dorm because I'd gone to the emergency room because of the allergy before. She told me it was selfish not to share my Keurig and that I could always buy a separate Keurig for myself if it were that big a deal. The RA reassigned her to a different room. When she moved out, she tried to take my Keurig with her. I had to replace all open food containers because she told me she had put almond powder in some of them but wouldn't tell me which."
11."When I moved abroad for uni, I desperately needed a flat. I befriended some people and met this girl through them who was also looking for a flatmate. We met up, and she seemed nice enough, so I thought, why not? It would be much cheaper for me rather than renting the whole place alone. Fast forward a few months, and she asked to borrow money because her family was sending her money late, and the banks had problems. I spoke to my father because, at the time, he was supporting me financially, and he said it was okay. She was a young girl just like me, and he understood, so he said he'd pay her share until her money arrived, then she could pay us back. She paid me back for the first month, and then the situation repeated itself for two more months. She didn't even bring it up this time after the rent day. She just asked me to pay, and I did."
"When the third month was approaching, I thought enough was enough. She wasn't paying rent and didn't even mention that she owed me her share for two months. Plus, she kept treating me like crap in the house I was paying for by myself. So, one day, after she told me not to type on my laptop because the sound irritated her, I asked her to pay me back what she owed because I needed the money. She went wild and started screaming, yelling, and cussing me out. She started trashing my stuff and threw my laptop, phone, and pans around, breaking them, then picked up a knife and attacked me. Some neighbors called the cops, and they came and threw her out. I had bruises and scratches all over. The landlord came and took her stuff and sent it to her, and I rented the place alone after that. I've never shared a house/apartment with anyone since."
12."Two friends and I moved into an apartment our junior year of college with a girl who already lived there. She was the messiest person EVER. One night, she made fried chicken and left the mess. It was so messy, in fact, that some of the grease spilled and dripped into one of the pans under another coil on the stove. A few days later, my best friend was making her dinner and left me to watch the pot for a second while she went into her room. I looked away for 30 seconds and started to smell smoke. I looked up, and the kitchen was filling with it. I yelled to her, 'IT'S SMOKING!' I moved the pot off the heat, and the burner was on fire. Thankfully I knew what to do, but it was our roommate's freaking mess that started the fire."
"She also left mayo out on top of the cabinet for a week. Once, she took my butter without asking and put the (EMPTY) wrapper back in the fridge."
13."My sophomore year of college, I roomed with this girl with whom I did a project during my first year. The first red flag should have been that she did none of her work. After a month of school, my roommate's girlfriend practically moved in. That itself wasn't really the problem; it was the entire dynamic of their relationship. They were constantly fighting and rolling on the floor, and her girlfriend was constantly meowing or talking like a baby. I was awoken several times at 2:00 a.m. to them fighting or making shadow puppets with their feet above my bed. I was severely uncomfortable. Not to mention, they both SMELLED and were so messy. They did not attempt to remedy that. Their relationship was already extremely toxic, and they were constantly yelling at each other."
"Long story short, they got engaged after five months, she was honorably discharged from the military for PTSD, they ended their engagement, and then they had a messy breakup. I don't speak to anyone from that apartment anymore."
14."I once moved in with a new work friend. We connected immediately, despite knowing each other for a short time, and we both needed to move closer to work downtown in a huge urban city. I paid the deposit and rent for the first and last months. She wanted to pay me back with a check (this was around 2016). The check bounced, so I got charged for that, but that was just the beginning. She brought an ex to our apartment who brought bed bugs, and there was an infestation in her room. They ended up in my room, and now I am so wary about having anyone over, EVER! Bed bugs are the worst, y'all."
15."At first, my college roommate seemed pretty cool. For financial reasons, I ended up having to move out of the dorms, but I had told her for the year, she could use my TV, rug, etc. She got all sorts of weird afterward. I started hearing rumors of things missing from other rooms on our floor. I still had a key to the room and decided to take my stuff back, and some of the other girls helped me. We found everything that was missing. My roommate had been stealing and/or saying she 'returned' things she borrowed and tried gaslighting the others into thinking they had lost their items. Boy, was she shocked to return after class to a bunch of angry girls and a near-empty dorm room."
16.And: "I made the mistake of living with my best friend (don't do that, ever). She was unemployed, didn't bother looking for a job, and slept all day. Once, we got into a huge fight, and she threw a potted plant at me. After I told her we were done being friends, she drove to my house and stood in my driveway, called me a C-U-Next-Tuesday (in front of all my neighbors), and told me to have a nice life. I never regretted ending my friendship with her. She's the most selfish person I've ever met!"
What's your most unbelievable roommate horror story? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
