Housemates from hell: you share your stories

Bathrooms and the horrors they contain - or couldn't contain - are a recurring theme (Image: Archant)

“We had a room going so the newish boyfriend of a blonde friend of ours moved in. The second night he was there we all went to a party in one of the neighbouring flats. The next morning all the housemates slept in but started to stir as we heard some strange sounds coming from the living room, which was right next to the bathroom. As each of us got up to perform our various morning ablutions we were faced with our brand new housemate and a brunette at it in what was by then broad daylight on the living room floor. As if to add insult to injury, not only was he cheating on our friend, but he wasn’t even doing it in the privacy of his bedroom. We asked him to move out that day.”

“I had one housemate who wouldn’t let me vacuum or open the windows, so the house just got super dusty. She didn’t like the sound of the vacuum or the feel of fresh air. She also never left the house, which meant that I could never sneak a vacuum in.”

What's that smell? The case of the food sniffing housemate (Image: Archant)

“We had one housemate who managed not to pay a penny of rent for nine months. We only found out when the rent for the entire flat went into arrears of two months and our landlord threatened to evict us or get the bailiffs round.”

“I was living in this big house, sharing with 10 other people. I’d seen this guy naked several times and once he had sex with his girlfriend in the bathroom – with the door open! When I opened it I was so shocked I just stood there looking. He saw me, laughed, and carried on. I moved out shortly afterwards.”

“We had one housemate who was very nice to our faces but got increasingly passive aggressive behind our backs. Household objects became sentiant and tried to communicate with us via post-it notes. The oven asked to be cleaned before and after use, the leaky downstairs tap begged to be turned off. It all came to a head at a house meeting and they decided to move out, presumably somewhere cleaner or more accepting of their annoying behaviour.”

“I live on the top floor of a house that has a separate basement apartment, the inhabitant of which I had never met. At around 2am one morning I woke up to see a shadowy figure closing my bedroom door. Terrified, I went out into the hall, wearing just my boxers, to find a very shifty looking guy who reeked of booze. He appeared very confused and seemed to have no idea what he was doing trying to get into my room. After a while I managed to work out that he lived in the basement, but was apparently so drunk he had managed to climb three flights of stairs in the wrong direction. I ended up helping him back to his room. I’ve passed him in the hallway or outside the house a couple of times since but he doesn’t seem to recognise me and I haven’t wanted to bring it up.”

“I had a housemate who couldn’t eat or drink anything without giving me a lengthy breakdown of all the different smells in it. He would regularly thrust a block of cheese in my face while I was eating breakfast with the instruction to “Smell it!” I still can’t watch the episode of Alan Partridge where he starts yelling “Smell my cheese”, without having flashbacks.”

“I had someone who pooed on my dinner plate. They were going to try and clean it and give it back to me, but luckily their girlfriend told me what had happened so the plate went quickly in the bin, never to be used again.”

“We all went away for Easter one year and I got back first, a week later, to find my housemate hadn’t done any washing up before she went away and there was mould growing through a huge stack of plates. It was one of the most depressing returns from holiday ever.”

“She would make me watch Songs of Praise on a Sunday with her.”

Got a housemate horror story of your own? Tweet us @hamhighproperty or email us ham&high.property@archant and we’ll add it to the piece.