Landlords Reveal The Strangest Discovery They've Made About Their Renters
I've never been a landlord, but I did run a property management company. Part of our job was to clean up and clear out properties after tenants had been evicted or abandoned the place. They say you can tell a lot about a person based on what they leave behind and how they live. Sometimes, though, you'd honestly rather not know.
There was one elderly gentleman who passed away, leaving his entire home full of his stuff. His neighbors all liked him, but his adult daughter told us he was a creep and she wanted nothing to do with him or his stuff. She even let us keep his car when we found his keys. We learned a lot clearing out that home. For the first three hours we thought the walls were painted seafoam green. Then we started taking down art. The walls were actually blue but years of smoking inside of the home had left a thick film of yellow nicotine all over everything.
They needed to be steamed and scraped before they could be painted.
He also had an alarmingly large collection of neon man-thongs which he kept stored with lotions, lubes, body washes, hair gels, and jelly - anything slippery.
It was ... interesting. One Reddit user asked:
Landlords of reddit, what's the strangest discovery you've had renting out to people? [Serious]
And yeah, our racist closet neon thong dude was NOTHING compared to some of these tenants.
40.
After evicting a tenant, I found multiple adult toys in a birdcage in the garage. I'm guessing it was art or something.
- Slappy_J
39.
Several years ago I rented to a Chinese family that had moved to town and opened a restaurant. One day they told me that the bath tub was clogged. I hired a plumber and went over there. While snaking the tub or whatever it is that a plumber does, it was full of chicken feathers and bones. They had been slaughtering chickens in the bathtub, presumably for the restaurant.
- drmzbig
38.
GiphyWhen a guy moved out of my parent's rental property, they found out he had a beach party before leaving. There was a wrecked boat in the backyard and the lawn and carpet were completely covered in sand.
37.
Rented an apartment for a 6 month lease. tenant paid all 6 months in advance as well as a deposit. never made a sound and never really saw him. One day the upstairs neighbor said he heard someone leaving in the middle of the night.
We went expecting the worst. Apartment was immaculate. Looked like no one ever lived there apart from some food in the fridge. Cleaned it out and went to the dumpster out back where we found parts of a hydroponics set up. Plastic sheeting, tubes, empty nutrient jugs. Guess they would rent a spot, grow and leave after a harvest or 2. Genius and not mad really.
Took the PVC pipes bout 8in diameter with 4 inch holes every few inches, put dirt in it, and turned it into a hanging outdoor planter for flowers.
36.
A few weeks ago the maintenance guy at my apartment complex brought me a guinea pig. I answered the door and he was like "hey, I know you have one of these hamster things. It looks like the one you have. Do you want it? I have no idea what to do with it." Apparently, the people next door had a guinea pig and didn't want it anymore so they just let it loose in their apartment and left. He found it in a closet hiding under some clothes they left. I was afraid it might a girl because my boy guinea pig started freaking out, he was hopping around his cage and squeaking really loud. I took the guinea pig to my vet who told me it was a boy. He was just excited to have a friend. They're best friends now.
- Zastance
35.
This was after said tenant was arrested, we had to clean out his place and it was full of garbage, used condoms, more clothes than one man ever needs, needles (used ones were in those nice biohazard containers at least but unused ones were strewn everywhere) and illegal testosterone + weight gain drugs (guy was a bodybuilder)
He had 14 Miley Cyrus shirts, and all 3 walls in his living room were plastered with her posters. It was very weird.
34.
My parents rented out their empty house while they were staying out-of-state to a couple who really needed a place to stay. The couple ended up trashing the place completely and my parents had no experience as landlords and were totally taken advantage of. Their small dog chewed up all the siding up to his height level in the backyard, all the fans were missing blades somehow (we found them in the bathtubs), they dropped a weight on the floor and it went straight through the subfloor (they covered it up with a sticky tile), they had their bedroom set in the living room and used the bedrooms as a living room because the wife said she was diagnosed with Claustrophobia...it was all really weird.
But the strangest thing we found when we helped my parents clean it up to sell it was that they had been using one of the bedrooms as a home gym and we couldn't figure out why there was grease stains all over the walls. It was like a border of grease all at torso height. We later found out from the neighbor (who the renter tried to get to join CrossFit in his home gym) that the husband would do handstand push-ups in that room and the grease stains were actually all sweaty butt prints.
33.
Poop sticks.
We did AirBnB for a while (>2 years) and had a variety of people come and go. One person did not listen to us when we said you need to hold down the handle when flushing a #2, just because our plumbing was old. A diet consisting largely of milk, butter, and bread resulted in lots of clogs. This person thought plungers were dirty, though. So they would go to the yard, get a large twig, and break up the clog with that then re-flush. The stick would then go into the trash.
When they (finally) left our place, we found a bunch of sticks in their closet for just that reason, waiting to be used.
32.
GiphyI worked for a company with rentals many years ago, and they had rented to a South-East Asian family after they had been relocated to the US after the Vietnam war (and subsequent violence there).
One day I went to the property and went downstairs which was ENTIRELY flooded (I'm talking like 5 feet of water) where they were raising hundreds of Carp and other fish... presumably for many years. Complete with other plants, rice, and as a result many other living things in there.
They didn't really know any better... old men and women ripped out of their homeland after 50-60 years, and transplanted to the Midwest. They did what they thought was completely normal.
- alecks23
31.
There was one lady, not a move-out, but was a welfare-check due to a really bad smell in her apartment. She had barricaded the door to the wall opposite it. Six cops couldn't take it down. Finally maintenance had to disassemble the lock from the outside (which means basically prying it open and destroying the siding). Come to find out she's alive and fine (albeit bat-sh!t crazy). She had gotten a frozen turkey and left it in the kitchen sink for three months. The carcass was the source of the smell, and the reason for the welfare check.
- cmarin17
30.
Some trashy tenants got evicted and they left behind pretty much everything they had except their TV. I found a cookie tin with old military photographs that I guess were their grandpa's along with two pipes and a lighter.
They also left behind a few hundred VHS tapes that were ruined and several of those huge gas station rolls of toilet paper.
29.
My mother-in-law had rental property on the poor side of town. Most tenants were welfare recipients and though the rent was paid by welfare The money was given to the tenant to pay to the landlord As a result she had lots of people take the last 2 months of rent a skip out to Ontario or Alberta (she was in Newfoundland ). Her garage filled up with really sh!tty furniture after a Couple of years.
Funny footnote my girlfriend needed a toaster so I check with now ex mother in law. And sure enough she has one I can take for gf. It's an antique from the fifties one of those upright ones that can hold 6 slices. Gf is delighted at this beautiful appliance..... until she makes toast with it and instead of toast when the sides snap open it flung 4 fireballs across the counter. Lucky no damage was done.
28.
A long time ago a fellow rented a store from my parents. Was an artist he said and was going to paint landscapes . After 3 months he stopped paying rent and was ducking out and hiding. After a while mom loses patience and changes the locks and confiscated everything in the place. We found he was living in there ,no furniture ,no bathroom ,no water. All that was in there was sheets of masonite (some made into really shitty paintings ) a bunch of painting supplies and paint. There was several months worth of garbage ( think bread bags full of shit) and for some reason a deep freezer full of ice cream and nothing else. man did the place stink.
27.
I was the resident manager at the 'Y' for many years. Because we are right downtown next to the bus station and by all the social service agencies, we end up with people whose first step to structured housing is at the Y. We also have people who just left treatment, prison, etc - I strongly believe in second chances and for the most part, people didn't take advantage of that. However, there were so many incidents that would come and go with the times. Most recently, and the most heartbreaking was the amount of syringes and those orange needle caps I'd find. Everywhere. Others had hundreds of empty oxycontin and klonopin prescription bottles all over their rooms. Some were people I knew had a drug problem, others were people who I had no idea were using (or selling - I never could prove it).
I first arrived in the winter and the week after I started this job there was a woman on the top floor who we all knew would smoke with her window open and look out at the city. One morning I was woken up with frantic knocking and I went running outside to discover she had jumped. Sadly she was in her early 80's, found out she had cancer about a month earlier and decided she didn't want to go through all the treatment. Her life was not easy; she was one of the women on the 'women's-only floor' who moved in when she was in her 40's and never left. By the time she hit her 80's she couldn't get around much, and we had one of those old sliding cage elevators you don't see much anymore. When the elevator would break, she was trapped on the 5th floor and couldn't go anywhere. We would all chip in and bring her groceries, meals, etc. When she jumped it was especially difficult for me because it had been snowing, and there was blood and other fluids in the snow - that image has never left my memory.
We had an 18-year-old diabetic woman who moved in who had a very serious drug (oxycontin) problem. She told me this from day 1, she just finished treatment and wanted to start her life. She was estranged from her parents, but they sent the money for her deposit and first six months' rent. She was a small-town girl and I tried to look in on her to see that she was okay. She befriended this man on the 2nd floor who was in his 50's and very shady. Before I knew it she was spending the night in his room and he became more and more controlling. He came running down the stairs to the lobby one night and said she was very sick and needed an ambulance. We called and later on she died in hospital. Turns out he was withholding her insulin and not letting her leave his apartment...but we couldn't come up with anything to bring charges against him. It was just our hunch. The worst part yet was when her mother showed up and - didn't ask about her daughter's death or anything just 'where is the deposit money?' got it and left.
There were many interesting people who weren't addicts or sick or criminals. I'll never forget how many people I met from all over the world just starting their lives here, and just listening to their stories of where they came from or what they had to do in order to come to Canada; their lives back home and many held very prestigious jobs that unfortunately didn't have the credentials to transfer to a similar job here. Many who were white-collars back in their countries were night shift workers at 7-11 here or sold tickets at Greyhound or something. A LOT of the young girls were strippers who made decent money, but their drug problems ate up most of that money. Many of the young people moving in were gay/lesbian and had no family support, so we were the only sense of 'home' they had. Many evenings I'd be working at the desk and I'd invite them down to eat in the lobby. I think that gave them some sense of home - at least a home where they could be who they were without fear.
For the most part I liked that job, but such a dramatic change in the last 3 years in particular - so many overdoses, so many thefts to get money for dope or pills - that energy that I saw when I first started was gone. The drug problem here has been massive and has claimed a lot of lives. Many of whom were people I didn't even know had a drug problem. And I think that's one of the biggest problem we take on today working in housing. Especially in big cities in the middle of downtown in SRO (single room occupancy) places like the 'Y', you have people who sit in those little rooms and don't talk to anyone and never go anywhere. The loneliness is palpable. It's not hard to see why these addictions to substances that make someone feel happy and euphoric begin.
26.
GiphyI have a ton of stories about crazy stuff...there was a 3rd story apartment that was empty, or so I thought. I got a call from the cops asking for permission to the apartment so I go over there to find out 3 drug dealer squatters were living there. I kicked the door open since they had barricaded it. they then jumped to the next buildings roof and made a break for it. but left goodies behind. which included a ps3, 4 games, 3 remotes, a 42in Sony flatscreen tv, a fridge full of food. needless to say I got a free rv and ps3 that day.
25.
I lived in an apartment building and my next door neighbors were a Japanese family that owned a sushi place around the corner. One day I noticed them moving all their stuff out and asked the caretaker what was going on. He said he figured out they were cooking all of the restaurant food in their apartment and then carrying it around the corner.
24.
I've had a tenant renting a room for a month before the other tenants and yours truly discovered that she was a prostitute working from home.
Took me 3 weeks to realize that a new person coming over every day between 1 and 2:30 in the afternoon was suspicious.
23.
We rented apartments with autonomous heating and in one apartment from one time and on the usage of heating in the winter was minimum ( the tennant lives over 5 years in the same apartment).
After he left we found out that he had disabled the regulator in order to have hot water when the rest of the apartments used the heating. So every one paid his comfort.
22.
Guess strange might not be the most accurate word. Wild maybe.
We had a family in one of our houses who we struggled to get rent from regularly before they eventually got evicted. Which landlords know is a goddamn awful process when they want to resist.
Well we end up having to get an entirely new water meter installed when they're finally gone.
Turned out they were never paying their bills and cooking meth. When the power got shut off they stole it. Which isn't unheard of.
But they somehow stole water too and the water company came out and removed the entire water system. We spent a lot of money getting that fixed.
21.
My grandparents:
Rented an apartment to a nice family; mom, dad, three young kids. Always paid rent, were always easy to deal with, never reported any problems. Model tenants, right?
A week after they move out, grandfather goes in to check the place out to sign off on security deposit and get the place ready for next tenants.
Everything was gone. Everything. Little stuff like curtains and light bulbs, but also the curtain hooks, rods, and light fixtures. Carpets. Interior doorknobs. Light switches, power outlets, and most of the associated wiring. The dishwasher, oven, kitchen sink, toilet. An attempt had been made on the bathtub, and that ended up being the only fixture in the place not taken.
Court happened. Grandparents were awarded almost the entire value of the apartment in compensation.
20.
My parents bought a place that they were renting to my brother and his friends throughout university and they would sublet it out for the summers. Anyways... some random day when I was in high school there was a knock on the door. Standing there was these two incredibly gorgeous women and their boyfriends. They explained that they were subletting from my parents and handed me an envelope of cash containing the damage deposit and all four months of rent for the four of them... in cash. I assumed they were involved in organized crime somehow. Nope. They were porn stars. 6 months later one of my brother's friends found all the pornos that they had been filming all over my parent's house.
19.
GiphyMy dad rented out a property a few years back where the tennant just stopped paying rent. Eventually she gets evicted and dad goes in to clear up and dispose of her stuff....
Well turns out she'd be using it as a brothel.
Loads of 'sexy' costumes. Oodles of porn. Just what you'd expect really. And a little black book of clients.
18.
Evicted a hoarder tenant after some serious issues with their cleanliness and late rent issues. Their hygiene was so bad that other people in the complex were actually complaining, and upon walkthrough I found some serious issues that were causing mold and other damage to the unit. One being that the toilet had fully over capacity and was filled with stagnant old feces.
Anyways about a week after cleaning out the unit, fixing the damage, and assisting the old tenant with finding new residence, the owner of the other unit called me Concerned because the smell coming from the unit was still present. I Realized we hadn't cleaned the garage.
When we went over, we opened it up, we found trash bags. Many. Old moldy fast food. Some trash. But lots of sh!t.
17.
Father-in-law and I are landlords; mine are upscale places, but his are more lower rent types. Anyway a murder had been committed in one of his small two room cottages. The coroner had removed the body and the police had finished their investigation so we were cleared to clean up the place.
There was no one you could hire to do this cleanup back then so we did it ourselves. The victim had been stabbed in his bed so the mattress was a huge sponge soaked in blood. The perpetrator had dragged the body off the bed and out to his car. There was this long blood smear across the bedroom floor, through the living room floor and across the porch where the body had been loaded into a car.
The police had gone through the rooms with a huge black marker pen making big circles around anything they thought important; like holes in the couch could maybe be bullet holes, they put a big felt marker circle around the holes. Sofa is now junk, it and the blood-soaked mattress went to the dump. Blood cleaned off the floors.
A suspect had been pulled over, the empty trunk of his car was filled with blood but NO BODY, so he wasn't charged. Never found out if anyone was charged or convicted for that murder. Cottage cleaned up we put it up for rent again.
16.
When I was younger, my mother rented out our basement suite to a woman and her grown son. She was dressed well and had great manners, the whole nine yards. After a while we noticed people coming all hours of the night, but no excessive noise, so my mom had no issues. After two months she didn't pay the third months full rent so my mom decided she'd just add it to the next month as a little leeway. The next months rent was the same, just a little, not the full amount. This is where things started to get weird and go down hill. One night my mom was taking out the garbage and saw the woman and her son making out behind the garage in the alleyway. My mom was shook and I remember her coming into the house as white as a ghost.
The next little while whenever she saw them they were really touchy feely and I remember the woman didn't look like how she did when she first showed up. She was haggard and her eyes looked sunken and her hair was ratty. She became pregnant soon after and I remember my mom and grandma talking in hushed tones about how she's having her son's child. It was scandalous. It took my mom close to a year to kick her out, she had to go through the courts and a lot of the rights are in favour of the tenants so we had a long uphill battle. But we finally got her out where the bailiffs came and she could grab whatever she wanted to take with her.
She left a lot behind and my mom had to clean it up and this place was a mess. Dirty clothes, diapers, and best of all, needles. So many needles all over the place. It looked like a dump site for junkies.
15.
Manage office buildings. One that comes to mind is a tenant that knew for some time they were going bankrupt and handled it in the worst possible way. Rather than tell us they moved out in the middle of the night. So instead of happily finding a new tenant in the several months they paid (building was 100% occupied and new tenants were about 10% above their rent) our legal team went after them. Ended up getting in to personal assets of the owner because we were entitled to several more years rent and unamortized costs under their lease.
They also left furniture electronics and supplies worth about two years rent in their space for us to claim and sell. Yet they took some rented or leased OT and office equipment and had vendors hunting them down.
14.
Had a tenant that was raising birds and would just hose down the bird poop and the water would cause a leak for the neighbour downstairs. And left a bad smell in the building. We asked him to leave so before he left he poured cement down every hole in the apartment (sinks toilets. Bathtub. Gutters). Needless to say repairs to get the apartment ready for the next tenant wasn't easy.
13.
Rented to a family (mom, dad and son) that practiced Santaria. My wife entered the property and found a decapitated sheep hanging in the garage. There was a pentagram drawn on the floor beneath the carcass. She ran home screaming "Call 911 call 911!" Turns out there's no law against sacrificing a sheep in our town.
12.
GiphyAlright boys and girls, hold onto your hats cuz I got a story for you.
The tale of Two dead bodies.
- There was this one particular property I was involved with a few years back... it wasn't a particularly bad property, but it wasn't necessarily a great one either... mostly due to minor stupid things... like people stealing random sh!t like two large blue recycling bins went missing one summer... we figured it was most likely local university kids using them for some drunk stunt or whatever... Jackass was popular back then and it was a university neighbourhood.
So on one fine summer weekend the on-site super gets a complaint that there is a horrible stench in the hallway on one of the floors. He heads over to investigate, upon arrival the smell is overpowering... anyone that has experienced decomposing bodies knows the smell all too well. The super proceeds to enter the apartment that the stench seems to be emanating from, and he immediately discovers a guy keeled over, back of his head bludgeoned to smithereens, face down on the couch. Blood is splattered everywhere and it was pretty recent by the looks of it.
So the super calls the cops who come in, cordoned the apartment and do whatever it is they need to do, the coroner removes the body, and everyone is gone after several hours. The body had ID, and it was NOT the renter. This is an important detail... the renter was nowhere to be found. The cops obviously peg the renter as the main suspect, they now need to find him. Low and behold they find him a couple of blocks away at a bar having the time of his life. They pick him up for questioning, he admits to the murder of random dude, and that's that... case closed right? Na uh... now when the police inform him he's being charged with one account of murder supposedly he responded by saying something along the lines of "Ay, just one?! That's great, there's at least one more in there."
... the cops were completely bewildered... there was a second body and somehow NO ONE seemed to have noticed it. Very odd considering they had cordoned the apartment and conducted an investigation or whatever. So confused they quickly called the on-site super to stand by and unlock the apartment when they arrive, they're coming back to take another look around the apartment. Long story short they show up, cops and super enter the unit, stench is still as strong as ever and finally the super makes the discovery. In a closet is one of the missing large blue bins, the second body (female) was inside. Why the cops didn't think to look inside of an obviously out of place giant blue recycle bin that clearly doesn't belong in an apartment and is hidden (barely) in a closet is beyond me.
So what was the story here... simply the killer's girlfriend was cheating on him, he finds out and kills both. Stealing the buildings blue recycle bin and stuffing the girlfriend in it and shoving it in his closet.
Now the part that still irks me to this day... we had two blue recycle bins stolen... we only found one of them... and the killer admitted there was "AT LEAST ONE MORE IN THERE"... as in there is at least one more in the apartment, but also maybe Hinting at the possibility there's another body (in a blue bin?) somewhere. What are the chances we had two bins stolen around the same time by different people... too much of a coincidence if you ask me.
Now for those very perceptive readers out there... how is it that the woman's body was decomposing and rancid, but the dude was freshly bludgeoned? I left out some details that I will now share with you. Apparently the killer discovered his girlfriends infidelity several weeks prior... when he found out, he killed her, stuffed her in the bin and shoved it in his closet. Knowing he was running on borrowed time and not giving any f***s about life from that point forward, he gave his notice that he was vacating (60 days legal notice is the requirement in my area) and planned to bugger off into the sunset at some point. Meanwhile, for a couple of weeks our leasing staff proceeded to show the unit to prospective renters... and one peculiar issue that was discussed was that the unit had a very bad odour when entering it, and the renter always apologized for the smell making excuses that it was his girlfriend and some such nonsense that honestly the leasing staff weren't paid enough to care. They had several apartments to rent, they eventually focused on others and figured they'd let maintenance sort out the smell issue when the resident moves out.
So initially for weeks people had been entering the apartment smelling the rancid smell of a decomposing dead body that had been shoved hidden away in the closet. Oh my god yuck...
As for the dude who got killed, after not being able to contact the girl, he must have been concerned and come looking for her... which is when the killer exacted revenge to the back of his skull.
I got plenty more great stories, but this one by far stands out as the most insane/interesting/funny/cringy story I have from my days in operation.
11.
I had a tenant I had to evict. Found that he had taken out the electric hot water heater & installed his own (not approved for houses) gas hot water on demand. He replaced the electric dryer and the electric stove with gas units all by himself without a certified professional. All in 4 months. Cost me $4000 to fix the damage
10.
My grandma was renting out the bottom half of our duplex for a long while. We ended up evicting the tenants for not paying rent. Well several days after they left we heard strange noises coming from down stairs. We thought they had broken in the house.
Finally after looking around we found an older black cat. They gave their cat a bowl of water and some dry food and left the poor thing there for us to find. They had stashed the water and food in the back of the closet and we didn't see it when we changed the locks. Cat lived with us for a year or so until it got out the house and became an outdoor cat.
9.
My Mom rented our old house to a nice young couple with a newborn. A year later the wife called to say she was moving out because the husband was shot and killed in a bank robbery in Florida. Apparently he travelled around the country robbing banks.
8.
I had a restaurant rent my storefront for their dining room. They did a quick renovation of the space to repaint and remove all the shelves and counters from a small pharmacy that was there before. Instead of hiring a dumpster they piled all the construction debris in my basement.
7.
I was doing a property investigation at an apartment complex for new purchase. The second floor tenant tore out the entire kitchen and lined the floor with plastic and filled it with water, 18 inches deep for an orgy. It was nsane. We noped out on that property after that.
6.
I've had family that worked in property management, and the one story that sticks with me, was that one tenant managed to get a jar of peanut butter into the toilet pipe.
We're not sure how this happened, because we're pretty sure a couple laws of physics were broken doing it. It was a plumber hired to fix the toilet and... he was the one that found it.
5.
GiphyTenants skipped town owing one month's rent. Left a ton of stuff behind, including: a bottle of HIV meds, several perfectly good mid range watches, lots of special edition gaming merch, and the entire back wall of the garage was lined with heavy duty trash bags that were filled with used kitty litter.
4.
My parents had rented out an apartment to an Indian couple who had a 5 year-old boy. When it came time for them to leave my parents went to do the routine check and found all the corners of the walls were chewed roughly three feet up from the ground.
Turns out their son would gnaw on the walls because he had some sort of calcium deficiency. The parents tried to argue that it wasn't their fault and that they wouldn't pay. Eventually my parents got them to pay for the damages and then sold the apartment.
3.
My grandparents rent out rooms in their house. They rented one out to this guy who kept all of his dirty dishes in a suitcase in the closet with empty BBQ containers from fast food spots. My grandparents provided all the dishes and had a dishwasher they just asked that the tenants rinse and they would load them. It was odd.
2.
Dudes mom in the unfinished basement that wasn't fit for human habitation. It was sealed off, and had to be accessed from outside. Basically just the furnace room. She was in a hospital bed and buckets laying around.
1.
I got a great deal on a house because of one of these.
My former landlord showed up to an empty house needing a complete renovation. Broken windows, blood. Walls had been knocked down. Electricity rewired to bypass the meter. Remnants of a grow-house.
And a nice friendly note from the DEA demanding that he proved he was not involved.
The funny part to me was that he had a security screen door on the front of the house that apparently was too hard for the DEA to bust through. So they broke down three doors on the side of the house.
The next door neighbor was a sheriff and had no idea until the raid.
Indigenous Americans Share Their Tribe's Best Ghost Stories And Legends
Reddit user A_KULT_KILLAH asked: 'Native Americans of Reddit, what are your or your tribes ghost stories, legends, or supernatural occurrences?'
People the world over develop their own specific folklore, heavily influenced by the natural world around them and their own culture.
The North American continent was no different.
Reddit user A_KULT_KILLAH wanted to know about the myths and legends of the Indigenous peoples of North America.
They asked:
"Native Americans of Reddit, what are your or your tribes ghost stories, legends, or supernatural occurrences?"
Here are some of the interesting legends and superstitions of North America's First Nations and Indigenous tribes.
Uktena
Brice Cooper on Unsplash
"Uktena. It's a legend about a horned snake in Tsalagi [Cherokee] legend. Uktena is said to be very large and round like a tree trunk, with horns on his head."
"The only way to wound him is to shoot at a singular spot on his forehead that emits bright light. It's similar to a diamond. If you defeat Uktena, you become a miracle worker."
"A great warrior. Yet, once you see the light of his forehead, you run toward it instead of trying to escape."
"Even to see Uktena sleeping is death. Not to the hunter, but to his family."
~ Faith-Hope-TacoBell
Dog Tails or Why They Sniff Each Other
gotdaflow on Unsplash
"Lenni Lenape story about why dogs sniff each other's butts."
"When the humans slept, dogs would get together and party, but not before taking their tails off. They'd dance the entire night, put their tails back on and return home."
"But one time a wolf found them and all the dogs had to scramble away to their homes for safety, but a lot of them grabbed the wrong tail."
"They never danced again at night because they were afraid of the wolf, so they were stuck with weird mismatched tails for the rest of their lives."
"This is the reason that dogs sniff each other's butts; to see if the other dog has their tail."
~ ChurroChick
Haida Raven Brings Light to the Earth
Cristina Glebova on Unsplash
"In the beginning there was no light in the world, because an old magician kept it hidden in a box inside his house. Raven, who was always hungry, didn't like the darkness because it was difficult to find food."
"One day he was looking for food near the old magician's house. He heard a voice saying, 'I have a box, and inside this box is another box, and inside this there is another box, and inside the smallest box is all the light in the world'."
"Raven decided to steal the light."
"Raven waited until the old man's daughter went down to the river to collect water. Just as she was dipping her basket into the river, he changed himself into a hemlock needle."
"The needle floated into her basket. When the girl drank some water, she swallowed Raven too."
"Inside the girl's belly Raven took the form of a human baby. He grew and grew, and in time she gave birth to a funny looking child with black eyes and a big nose."
"The old man loved his grandson so much that he gave in to the child's every wish. Raven became spoilt and greedy. He was bored with all his toys, and wanted to play with the box that held the light."
"Finally the grandfather opened the box and tossed the glowing ball of light to Raven."
"As soon as Raven caught the light, he immediately changed into his bird form. Holding the light in his beak, he flew up the chimney hole into the dark world."
"The magician was angry. He wanted to get the light back into his box."
"He flew after Raven."
"The light was heavy in Raven's beak, and he was getting tired. The magician was coming closer."
"Raven broke off some pieces of the light and threw them into the sky. They became the stars."
"The magician was still coming closer, so Raven broke off another piece of the light and threw it into the sky. It became the moon."
"Finally Raven became so tired that he tossed the last and biggest piece of the light into the sky. It became the sun; and that is how daylight came to the world."
~ deviety
Nakani
Oliver Roos on Unsplash
"Dené from northern British Columbia here, my mom used to always tell me stories of the Nehgunni [Nakani], or bushmen/wild-men when I was young."
"They were people who lived in the forest and took away people who wandered too far out, specifically children."
"I always figured these stories were created by my people to serve two purposes, first to teach young children to not wander far off, and second to give explanations to kidnappings or missing people."
~ spanishLION
See-at-coh
green trees near lake under blue sky during daytimePhoto by Jasper Gronewold on Unsplash"See-at-coh (don't know the translation in English) is a Cowlitz legend. Lived at this lake and it was his spot."
"We DO NOT go there or he will kill you. Used to have nightmares about him based on what I was taught as a kid."
"Like how you could stand at the edge of the water and be looking in and he would come out of it and just grab you. No whistling at night and keep windows covered."
"But then the mountain blew up [Mt. Saint Helen] and filled in the lake so don't know if he's still around or not."
~ kalimah1
Nahual of Mexico
Joshua Wilking on Unsplash
"I live in rural Mexico. There are many, many different Indigenous peoples in what's now Mexico."
"The ones who settled here speak Nahuatl—the language of the Aztecs. This legend took place in the early 1900's."
"One of my favourite Nahuatl myths is the Nahual."
"Some people were thought to be able to turn into an animal. Most of them could only turn into one, but the most powerful Nahual could turn into different animals."
"There was a man who owned a hacienda where my town is, and he had a sort of overseer that everyone was afraid of."
"Said overseer could take a message all the way to the next state (think hundreds of miles) and bring back a sealed response in a single day."
"He also seemed to know everything everyone did, all the time. He was rumoured to be a Nahual that could turn into a coyote and an eagle."
"His quarters were heavily warded in his absence, which only added fuel to the rumor. You can only kill a Nahual if you find the human skin he sheds to transform and burn said skin."
~ CTalina78
Yamǫ́rıa & Yamǫǫ̀zha
Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
"Yamǫ́rıa & Yamǫǫ̀zha—the giant twins [of the Dené]."
"There are landmarks all around the territory I live in that is exhibited as 'proof' they were alive."
"In the middle of the Mackenzie river( biggest river in the NorthWest Territories) there is a large stone sticking out of the river which looks like the petrified guts of a beaver, there is a giant branchless, leafless tree sticking out of the top of this stone."
"It is said that Yamǫǫ̀zha had hunted a giant beaver and gutted him there in the river. He used his spear to anchor down the cuts so fish may feed on them. They are still there to this day."
"Yamǫ́rıa's body can be seen laying down, it is essentially a mountain range that looks like a giant human laying on his back, completely with face and feet. This can be seen from the peak of the hill as you enter a town called Ft. Liard, the southwestern most town in the NWT."
Walking Sam of the Pine Ridge Reservation
Boston Public Library on Unsplash
"'Walking Sam' skulks in the shadows of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and convinces people to take their own lives, especially young people."
"He's 7 feet tall, very thin and has no mouth. When he stretches out his long arms, nooses hang down with Lakota children hanging from them."
"Walking Sam finds you when you're alone and puts thoughts in your head until you feel worthless and kill yourself.
"Sometimes Walking Sam is depicted looking like Abraham Lincoln, complete with the stovepipe hat. 'Walking Sam', 'Uncle Sam', I don't know if that's where the name came from."
"But Walking Sam is an evil infected upon the people when the Oceti Sakowin were forced onto the reservations; he isn't a legend of the people before Pine Ridge Reservation existed."
"Lincoln was President when the Lakota were being forced onto reservations. Lincoln also ordered the execution of 38 Lakota men the day after Christmas in 1862. It's the largest mass execution in U.S. history."
"I always thought Walking Sam was Lincoln. They carved his face onto Ŝa´kpe Tuŋkaŋŝi (Mount Rushmore was called Six Grandfathers) in the Paha Sa´pa (Black Hills)
"My Father attended Holy Rosary boarding school at Pine Ridge in the 1940s & 1950s, but our people didn't live on the reservation. My Grandmother said evil stalked the people there."
"My Father never wanted us to ever even visit any of our cousins or his Uncles there."
~ LakotaGrl
Este Lopocke or Este Lubutke
Morgane Perraud on Unsplash
"Miccosukee [Seminole] tribal member here (South Florida) and for us it's the little people."
"Essentially really small people (like barbie doll sized and smaller) that live in the trees. They play jokes and stuff mainly, unless you piss them off."
"Had family members get tricks played on them that couldn't be explained."
"And then we have our fair share of stories that circulate our reservation like a tribal member being taken by the little people."
"All on the reservation in the Everglades (like 40 mins west of Miami)."
~ SSBMBabyCakes
Haudenosaunee Rules
Chris Chow on Unsplash
"I know the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois Confederacy] rules."
"1. If you hear someone you know calling your name, but you also know they are not supposed to be there, DON'T respond. Especially if they are out of sight and insisting you come to them."
"2. Always play group games in counter-clockwise order, otherwise your playing with the dead."
"3. Also don't eat in the dark, this is considered inviting the dead to eat with you. If you can extend your hand all the way out and still see it clearly then your fine."
"4. Don't play card games past midnight. If you do, and someone knocks at the door, don't answer it."
"5. Try not to drop your cards, if you do then don't bend down to pick them up, or you will see hooves under the table. That's bad."
"6. Say thank you after meals, even if you're the one that made it. Even better if you say it in native tongue."
"7. If someone finishes their meal and says thank you, you say 'you're welcome', even if you didn't give it to them. Even better in native tongue."
"8. After someone dies, you should gather family as quickly as possible to have feasts for 10 days. The first dinner is large, then every meal after that is a smaller feast meant for portions of the family to come at different times to help.
"The last feast on the 10th day is the closing dinner, which is the largest, with the entire family expected to show up and help. For every meal of these 10 days, put out a plate of the deceased's favorite foods first."
"Contrary to rule 6, you do not say thank you at any time during these 10 days. This is because it is believed that it takes the dead 10 days to relive their lives before they pass on, so this is your last chance to eat with them."
"Saying 'Thank you' during this time will make them stop before they're done because you're saying you're done. This will have bad consequences."
"9. Don't try to contact spirits, especially with board games. This is not a tribe custom, it's more of an unspoken common sense among the Rez people."
"10. If a bird flies into your house, someone's going to die."
"11. Pregnant woman should not hold any child that isn't theirs."
"12. It's accepted that if you actually try to curse someone, literally going through all of the steps with the intention of harm, not accidentally wishing them bad luck, then your family will also be cursed horribly."
"13. If you play with fire you'll wet the bed."
~ kinda-always-hungry
To learn more general information about Indigenous mythology of the United States, visit the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian website.
For Canada, visit the First Nations in Canada website.
For information about specific tribes, visit their tribal government website for recommended resources.
People Break Down The Most Disturbing Thing They've Ever Casually Been Told
Every now and again, when talking to a friend or family member, a rather shocking piece of information might casually slip out.
Information one imagines they wanted to keep secret for as long as they possibly could.
In some cases, it's something embarrassing, that everyone will be able to laugh about with the passage of time.
In other cases, however, it's information that stuns us silent.
Learning something we wish we hadn't.
Redditor DarthAbhinav11 was curious to hear the most disturbing information people have ever been casually told or overheard, leading them to ask:
"What is the most disturbing thing you've heard said casually?"
An Acquired Taste
"I work in a deli and some lady asked me to cut her ham extremely thin to the point of seeing through it."
"I heard her justify it as 'so you can get rid of the ham taste'."
"I still think about this one."- Alternative_Net8931
Utterly Horrid
"When I was walking to my front door."
"My neighbor had their window open and was scolding their 3 year old adopted child."
"She was howling crying."
"'Do you want mommy to send you back?'"- BoredBSEE
It Arrives Sooner Than You Think...
At Macy's, two teen girls: 'Women over 30 have the ugliest elbows'."
"'OMG. I know'."
"'Very disturbing'."
"'I always ask my mom to wear long sleeves when we go out to eat'."- CapitalPhilosophy513
Never Too Late
"I when younger I worked at a pool and had to lifeguard senior aerobics classes."
"Most participants where 65+."
“'Where’s so and so'.”
“'Oh he won’t be here, his wife was put into hospice'.”
“'Well I feel bad for him, but we do need some more single men around here'."
"'He’s not bad looking, has a retirement too'.”- CuriousOne9320
Round And Round It Goes...
"'If the Earth is spinning, then why my front door is always facing east?'"- SuvenPan
"Something I once heard a passing stranger say for which I have no context: 'He wears a scarf around his neck so you can't see where he's decaying'."
"I've been curious for years and it annoys me that I'll never know."- xyanon36
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
"An ex after I ended things 'I don’t understand, if I want to be in a relationship with you but you don’t want to be in a relationship with me why do you get to win?'"- TinyFurryHorseBeak
Not His Decision To Make
"Was at an end of season event for my kid's baseball team when he was little."
"The coaches brought Italian ice for everyone."
"Mom has just served her kids and husband and comes back with her own."
"As she's sitting down to eat, I hear her husband loud whisper behind her something like 'absolutely not'."
"'You don't need any more calories'."
"I just watched her face fall."
"I can't imagine what their marriage must look like behind closed doors and what life must be like for her."
"Heartbreaking."
"Note that this woman was already probably a size 2 at most so this was not a scenario where there were serious weight-related health problems."
"This guy was just a jerk and this really wasn't the first time that season, but his reminders that they aren't living up to his standards were usually aimed at his kids on the field."
"I try to assume the best of people but that guy sucked."- littleirishpixie
The Truth Hurts
"I was in an accident once and was hospitalized."
"The accident left me severely disfigured."
"I was out of my mind on pain meds when I arrived at the hospital and told my family to call my girlfriend and let her know what happened and where I was."
"My mom called my girlfriend and my sister not knowing the particulars of my life called my ex."
"Neither knew the other had called and both ended up showing up."
"They arrived within an hour of one another while I was asleep."
"Since someone was there with me it gave my family a chance to go home and take a break."
"So I woke up to my ex and my girlfriend talking to one another."
"Obviously my girlfriend was mad my ex was there and things got heated between the two."
"My ex being level headed suggested they step into the hall since I was half awake and in no condition to deal with the drama."
"As they're arguing in the hall voices are being raised until finally a nurse comes to reign the situation in."
"The nurse breaking them up made my girlfriend leave."
"As she was leaving she yelled 'you can have his a**'."
"'It's not like I wanna be with some burnt up scarred dude anyway'."
"'He's f*cked'."
"At this point I was still bed ridden and hadn't seen a mirror."
"I was aware my body was f*cked but had no idea what I actually looked like."
"Hearing that was such a gut punch and it really messed with my head at the time."- Burnvictim49percent
Where To Even Begin?
"I am a tutor."
"I heard some of my students say ;What's the point in learning history? We should live in the present'."
"We are German."- GentlemanPirate13
Most of the time, when a friend or family member warns us or apologizes for sharing "too much information" or "TMI", what we've heard isn't that shocking in the grand scheme of things.
Indeed, as evidenced by the sad and shocking stories above, when people really share TMI, they often have no idea they're doing so.
There are rules in life where people are expected to just know how to operate without being told.
For instance, if someone falls down... help them.
When you like a sweater in a store... get money to buy it.
Just leaving with it won't go over well.
And there are more rules, or guidelines to adhere to...
Redditor christygl7 wanted to hear about what is expected in people's homes without words, so they asked:
"What's an unwritten rule in your household?"
If you have to pee... lift the seat cover.
The people in Port Authority always miss that one.
Routine
Cleaning Chores GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"Either my wife or I can do any chore when noticed. We thank each other for routine chores as we appreciate each other."
cwsjr2323
"That’s how my fiancée and I handle chores. Whoever’s around when the core needs to be done does the chore, typically. I find she does more regular cleaning of the whole apartment while I do more dishes and cooking."
radtech91
Trashed
"Replacing the trash bag IS PART OF taking out the trash."
UndiagnosedReptard
"Similar to this, in my house, the rule is if the toilet paper ended on your turn (or there’s barely enough for the next person) then it is your job to procure the next roll and put it in the bathroom. It is NOT acceptable to let it run out for the next person."
wavesnfreckles
"We have extra stored in every bathroom. I make sure of it. However, if it runs low/out on the roll, my wife will 100% of the time take the new roll and set it on top of the empty tube on the spindle, refusing to replace it. I actually called her over and shamed her into changing it in front of me the other night (not in an abusive way - we were both laughing about it)."
on_the_nightshift
Finder's Keepers
"If you find money in the laundry while you are doing the laundry, it's yours."
Rich1926
"Yep. My boyfriend learned that lesson the hard way when we first started living together. He had a bad habit of just crumpling up bills in a big wad in his pocket, usually just ones, but sometimes he accidentally leaves a twenty in there. I tipped myself the twenty. It took him a couple of days of trying to figure out where it went before I took pity on him and told him."
"He now both turns out his pockets and washes his own clothes. I still find the occasional single dollar in the dryer."
Head_Razzmatazz7174
Dropped something?
"If food is dropped on the floor it becomes the property of the dog. The dog knew this rule before we did."
Altruistic-Bit-9766
"That was one of the hardest things after our family dog died. Dropped something? Who cares! Riley will get it. But then he didn’t."
"Also, I don’t live at home anymore but coming home to him barking and crying out of excitement and greeting me always made my day and I looked forward to it every time I opened the door and could hear him wiggling in excitement on the side hahaha. It’s a little less exciting coming home now."
ohno807
Obligations...
Water Stay GIF by Kinda FunnyGiphy"If the water you take from the Brita pitcher leaves what’s left below a certain line, you are obligated to refill the pitcher on penalty of death."
halcyon3608
If you stay in my home and don't refill the Brita pitcher...
I'm setting your hair on fire at 3 AM!!!
Flushed
Go Away Pink GIF by HacklockGiphy"Check the toilet after you flush."
NANNYNEGLEY
"This. My brother-in-law never does this. It's annoying and disgusting! You don't want to clean up after yourself because you think it's gross? How do you think it makes me feel to clean up after you?"
purplestarsinthesky
WAKE UP!
"Wake someone up if their alarm goes off. It's a pretty weird one but setting up alarms is a conscious and deliberate decision for all of us and you want to wake up when it goes off, so we just help each other out."
DonMartiniMacaroni
"I'll do this a few times, but my roommate needs to learn not to hit snooze because he's taught his body that alarms don't need to be woken up to. I don't wake him up anymore. He started waking up to them."
stumblinbear
"I’ll wake them up because it annoys me when people snooze especially if I’m next to them in the bed and I don’t have to get up."
chill90ies
No Exceptions!
"Shoes off at the door. No exceptions."
Next-Dark-4975"
"Shoes-on people must not be using the same public bathrooms that I do. 100% of them have a lake of dirty urine in front of the urinal. They must also be amazing at finding two urine-free spots that are shoe-sized on the shores of said lake. It’s fine if they want to bring that into their homes. It’s not allowed in mine, though."
Bmadray
Table Manners
"No tech at the table."
"Even with a teenage daughter this has proved eerily easy; we all love food though!!"
"Also murder is out of the question, it is non-negotiable. If any of us kills another then they are outlawed in the true sense."
"Other than this, we are pretty cool."
Dante2005
Woof
Well Done Applause GIF by MOODMANGiphy"Let the dog out to go potty before you use the restroom. (Seriously, the dog is asking to go out and you think she can wait while you take a 30-minute poop first? Not cool.)"
InfiniteBackspace
Always let the dogs go first.
If you wait, you won't like the surprise they leave!
Products That Don't Really Work But People Still Buy For Some Reason
Sometimes we look at a product and think "who would buy that, and why?"
For me the "Flowbee" home haircutting tool comes to mind. If you're unfamiliar, it's a shaver you attached to your vacuum cleaner so you hair was pulled past cutting blades.
It was sold on late night infomercials in the 1990s.
Who wouldn't want to style their hair like this?
As fabulous as that looks, results did vary with most veering toward "yikes!" yet by 2000 the company reported 2 million were sold.
And *surprise* you can still buy one—for about $150.
It seems no matter how bad a product is, someone will buy it.
Reddit user NoBridge255 asked:
"Which product doesn't work as it should, but people still buy it?"
Unflushable Wipes
"Septic tank safe flushable toilet wipes."
"The gentleman that pumps our tank brought me outside to see the evidence when his hose clogged. Sorry about that, Clint."
~ TwinkleToesMamaFox
"Amen! I work water and sewer for the town I live in, 80-90 percent of the sewer issues are from a huge chunk of 'flushable wipes'. Yea, they went down the toilet then gathered up in the city's main!"
~ Uhhhhhhhhhusername
Don't Tear Here
"Any cardboard package with perforated 'Tear Here' lines."
"They never tear there."
~ nino2244
"As an engineer, one of my peeves is a product where the perforation is the structurally strongest part of the whole thing."
~ UlrichZauber
Useless Cleanse
"Anything that is supposed to cleanse, flush, or remove 'toxins' from one's body."
~ MR_NIKAPOPOLOS
"People forget that we have organs in our bodies that do this already."
~ augdog71
Brace Yourself
"Those silly copper bracelets that supposedly do everything from healing things to fixing your golf game."
~ cmparkerson
Printless
"Every printer I have ever purchased no matter how expensive is the flakiest of products I ever own. Wifi constantly disconnects, PC's constantly have connectivity problems with them no matter if it is USB, WIFI or ethernet or all three."
"When you finally connect to them unless you print on them every week they will no longer work, ink will leak, or be dry and the printer is destroyed."
"Get a laser printer? You now skip the ink drying issues but the other issues still remain. That device has dementia."
~ Slobbadobbavich
Lowest Bid
"Whenever something is marketed as 'military grade', I recall the DOD-procured wrench that broke on me right after I removed the tape from it."
~ QaPlaH1981
"Military grade simply means 'made within our generally vague specifications for the lowest price'."
~ richwarlockfinger
The Glitches
"The Sims 4 expansion packs."
~ imperialviolet
"I miss the days where games had to work out the box and didn't rely on day 1 patches or, hell, with The Sims it's like 6 months after they finally patch out 25% of the glitches."
~ McRibSucks
Bladder Uncontrolled
"Living with my mother who was incontinent near the end of her life….all 'medical supply' style adult disposable diapers. Depends and McKesson ought to be a shamed of themselves for putting out such godawful products."
"Thank God for the folks at Northshore Care. They actually made products that did what they were supposed to do."
"And it allowed my mother to sleep soundly at night and function throughout the day without having to worry about feeling embarrassed in front of others."
~ Flynn_lives
Ax The Axe
"Pretty sure no woman has smelled Axe body spray and thought ‘I really wanna have sex with him, he smells amazing!'."
~ frodosbitch
"As a woman I can confirm, I despise the scent of Axe body spray."
~ GirlMayXXXX
"Can confirm, makes me nauseous and want to run away."
~ Myhairison_fire
Can Mangler
"Every can opener ever purchased from a dollar store."
~ Theearthhasnoedges
"Man, it feels like every can opener these days. Growing up we had the same can opener for YEARS and now I feel like I need a new one every year."
~ dougielou
Fire Hazard
"Gas cans with their mandated safety spouts. It takes two hands to operate them."
"Very unwieldy, especially when filling small tools like chain saws. Often leads to spillage."
~ Fablabster
"The annoying irony is that they were created to stop spillage, yet they are so difficult to operate, that I have spilled far more fuel since the change than I EVER spill with a regular old funnel."
~ CivilRuin4111
Don't Tell Snuggle
"Fabric softener dryer sheets ruin the absorbency of your bath towels."
~ Other_Molasses2830
"Also ruins wicking fabrics—clothing that is designed to dry quickly"
"And ruins fleece—destroys the soft/fluffiness."
~ 0ttr
Viral Load
"Personal AntiVirus software. It all sucks and doesn’t effectively work."
"And even then, the most effective is actually Windows Defender which is built in and free."
~ pentesticals
Close Shave
"Disposable razors. Especially the 3-5 blade ones that cost a ton of money."
"I avoided shaving because anything other than a single pass from a trimmer would irritate the hell out of my skin."
"I tried out a unbranded basic safety razor, and the difference is unbelievable. Far less irritating that an electric razor and the disposable razors. Takes fewer passes to actually get shaved. And the blades cost pennies, so you can literally use a fresh blade every time if you heart so desires."
"I have no idea how the advertising industry convinced us that modern 3+ blades nightmares are remotely good."
~ SelectCase
🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦
"Memory soles. The ones you put into your shoes."
"I bought them, put them in my shoes, went upstairs and STILL forgot what I went up there for."
"Don't be fooled people. They do not work."
~ KittySpanKitty
I never bought a Flowbee, but I have fallen victim to can openers.
Many, many can openers. Pull-tops are my friend.
What products would you add to the list?