what is the oddest thing someone has done when you have visited their house?

When I was little, I lived in a block of flats on an estate in London. In the block opposite, there lived a girl who was about my age, but I didn't know her because she went to the Catholic School and wasn't allowed to play out in the street. She had what seemed to me a mysterious and exotic name: TARA.

One afternoon, Tara came and knocked on my front door and asked if I wanted to go and watch her have her tea. For want of anything better to do, I followed her back to her house.

Tara had a mug of Ovaltine and a digestive biscuit for her tea while I sat and watched. She pointed out a few things around the room while she ate and drank. After a while, she showed me to the front door and I went home.

She never knocked for me again after that and we never played together again, though she would sometimes wave at me from her window.

A few years ago whilst dating now DH, in laws invited us round for dinner. Not unusual, we'd normally pop round for dinner or take them out every couple of weeks.

Normally she'd have done most of the cooking by the time we'd arrived so I'd help with whatever was left, DH would help FIL set the table. At the end of the meal DH and I would clear the table, wash up etc then we'd all watch a bit of rubbish telly together.

On one bizarre occasion we were a little earlier than usual so I helped with more of the cooking. Evening proceeded as usual until after we cleared up and went to sit in front of the TV - MIL started screaming at DH that I treated her house like a hotel/restaurant, who did I think I was, etc etc. The rest of us were baffled, DH and FIL calmed her down then DH and I left pretty sharpish.

None of us could figure out what prompted the outburst, and it never happened again. FIL called me a few weeks later and handed the phone to her so she could apologise, which she did. But no explanation offered.

Have loved reading my way through this thread during night time feedings so thought I would add mine to keep it going
my BF was One of those people who makes friends wherever he goes. He had a gig in a town quite a few hours drive away, but said he had a friend who lived there so they had invited us to stay overnight.
the gig was fine, very normal evening and the couple were very friendly and nice. In the morning we were sat eating breakfast when the wife suddenly snatched my BF's plate away and said he wasn't allowed to carry on eating until he tidied up the crumbs he had made. Dutifully he went and got a cloth, wiped down the countertops and table top. Sat back down and she shook her head all mournfully and said "you are useless. You have forgotten the toast". In the end she walked him over to the toaster, pointed inside - she meant that before he was allowed to eat breakfast he had to clean all the crumbs out from inside the toaster. It looked like it hasn't been cleaned in years! He was a bit shocked so just cleaned it and then we all carried on as if nothing had happened.

On the drive home I asked him how well he knew this very tidy couple.... Turns out he'd got talking to the husband in a toilet on a drunken night out and they added each other on MySpace (this was a few years ago!) I have been reading this whole thread waiting for one saying "my husband met a man in a toilet in a club who then came to stay with us and didn't empty his crumbs out of the toaster"

Love this thread! Spent the last few days reading it! Whenever we went to my exmils for dinner, She used to put the meal out on the table for, then make us do all the washing up from the cooking before we were allowed to sit down and eat it whilst she ate her nice hot dinner!
Another time, my ExBIL was travelling in New Zealand. Obviously having the time of his life and not care in the world. He said he was going to Skype her at 9pm our time whilst we were over for dinner. 9pm came and he didn't call so she totally lost the plot. Saying we all hated her and were all against her (even though she left exFIL as she was having an affair....) BIL literally skyped at 5 past 9, to get bombarded with all this crap about how horrible he was for keeping her waiting, how he was a waste of space and then she shut the lap top on him. Last I heard the poor boy moved out there for good!

My (older) DSis asks you to show her the soles of your shoe before entering the house, even if you’re about to remove them. I end up saying “FFS, am an adult. I don’t walk around with dogshit on my shoes”.

LOVE this thread!! Anyone anymore to re-enact it?!

I once went to a party where the dh popped out to get some ice or something with a couple of the guests and after an hour or so they hadn't returned. The dw / hostess packed a bag, got in her car and left him. Leaving us guests there in her house with no dh around (turns out he was at the pub.) Spent all of the next day worrying about them, By Monday at work all was back to normal like nothing had ever happened. Very very odd.

I know it's an old thread but it should never die, so here's mine (and this happened just last week)
Visiting friend and her DD, who is the same age as my DD. Her DD has just begun potty training and was running round nappyless, there was a strong smell of wee and a towel spread on the carpet near the doorway (all natural, assumed her DD had an accident and the towel was there after cleaning the carpet).
Friends DD says "wee wee" to friend who replies with "on the wee towel". Tbf her DD did make it to the towel, which friend folds in half and leaves there. My face is pretty easy to read. Apparently potties are too confusing, and it's hard to get kids to then go on the toilet. So friend was/is training her dd, as you would a puppy, to pee on the towel, moving it closer to the bathroom each day (thank fuck she lives in a small flat). She's normally a sane person too, and was so blasé I genuinely thought for a minute that I was the odd one!

Loved this thread. Gutted I'm at the end. Anyone else got any??

Had a friend round, sat opposite me on the couch. Heard her take a picture. Handed her a cup of tea and saw her phone over her shoulder, it was open on a Whatsapp thread. She had taken photos of my living room and worse of all, of my kids from weird angles like the back of their heads and similar and was sending them to someone...I was genuinely freaked out but a few days later I just had to ask her what it was about. Apparently she was taking pics of my living room and kids to show her ex boyfriend as proof of where she was. Hmmmm

We live overseas, went to visit family in friends in old country.

My sister inviteds us to stay- she is very OCD so we were reluctant, but agreed to keep the peace. My sister is the high side of 50 (and is a grandmother)
We had one DD aged 5 at the time. Sister spend lots of time teasing DD and torturing her toys, being generally very unkind and making DD cry a lot.(DD is not usually a cryer). So we said DD could draw a loveheart on her aunt's mirror in lipstick as payback. It was a small heart, easily wiped off.
My sister went absolutely mad, shouting and crying that her house was ruined and took her self off to bed and would not come out as we had 'wrecked' her home. Her husband had wiped the lipstick off in about 30 seconds.

We gratefully left (booked into a hotel) as it was a real strain staying in her pristine home. She even made DD eat outside in the garden ,in case of crumbs- obviously the tiled kitchen floor could not cope with crumbs.

The few days were horrendous and very stressful. I realise my sister has a few control issues.

Sister has invited us to stay since, but we just meet out somewhere neutral. Sadly I think she has masses of issues and this is only a tiny snapshot of her weird behaviour.

When I was 11 I went with a school friend to stay for the weekend at another classmates house. It was a very cold spell in winter - below freezing during the day too, and this house was an isolated old farmhouse. This was the 1960s so not having central heating was the norm. We had a lovely first evening in front of the fire, then it was time for bed. I was shown into a bare uncarpeted room with no curtains, and on the bed was one thin blanket. It was well below freezing in the room. I shivered all night, despite putting on all my clothes. I discovered that my friend had been lovely and warm with an eiderdown and a hot water bottle in her bed so the next night I said I had been cold, so could I have the same? I was told I was making a fuss, but she would put the 'bed heater' down the bed, which was like an electric sausage shaped thing. She left it there for five minutes, and I spent another terrible night, blue with cold. It has given me a lifelong complex about insufficient bedding!
Another one. I visited, with my mother, an old friend (and her more recent husband) I hadn't seen for years, although we had been close as kids. Quite a journey, driving, a flight etc. When we got there no sign of her husband, although we had been invited for a special dinner cooked by her. We had drinks, sat down to eat, and my mother asked if husband had been delayed at work? No, he was in bed! He hadn't agreed with the menu she had devised, so decided not to attend the meal, but was lying in bed behind a closed door ignoring us. He never appeared the whole evening. Weird. The marriage didn't last, total control freak he was.

Jesus ttbb. 😱

Once had a consultant at work. I invited him to dinner with my husband and I as he was staying at s local hotel and doing some work with me. He got totally and utterly wankered drunk. Very quickly. Before dinner even served. Husband and I had had literally no more than s glass of wine. He'd clearly been drinking before he got to us.

Proceeded to pick up his dinner without even trying it and put the plate on the floor and give it to the dog. When he left he said goodbye on the doorstep, facing into the house, and literally fell back, poker straight onto the ground. Was like a comedy fall.

We bundled him into the taxi and off he went. We were in our twenties, he was late fifties. Very short bloke, As wide as he was tall. Was Such a weird evening.

Hitting their child with a belt in front of me (I was a child at the time too).

I know it's an old thread but it's a good un' !

A friend from work had moved to Guernsey and invited me over to stay for the weekend. I jumped at the chance as if never been and imagined it was full of frenchy glamorous yachting types so was quite looking forward to it.

Friend picks me up at the airport and only at that point does she tell me that she's recently moved into a bed sit!! She lived with her DP at the time. So I was and said I'd book a hotel but friend insisted that I stay, and her DP was going to stay at a friends house. All fine. So that evening we go out all together (me, friend and her DP) we have a few drinks and her DP gets absolutely hammered. He's making no move to go to his mates at this point and says he'll sleep on the sofa (in the bedroom). So all 6ft 5 of him is dangling off this sofa and me and my friend are sharing the double bed. All fine. Until I hear him trying to get in the bed with us in the middle of the night!!!!

Next day I say to friend I'll book a hotel, she says nooo her DP is going to friends house. All fine. ... we all go to the pub and her DP proceeds to get wankered AGAIN, goes home crashes out on the only bed...wakes up puking all over the only bed.....

Me and my friend had to sit in the kitchen ALL NIGHT as there was no where to sleep!!

I couldn't wait to get out of there it was all very odd.

When I was about 17, I was going out with a guy who lived alone with his mother in a huge house that had a room out the back containing a very old lady. Said boyfriend or his mother used to go out to the back of the house and take her a meal three times a day. I heard her occasionally but never saw her as long as I was with him - a good couple of years - and nobody was allowed out the back except him and his mother. I never found out who she was. I think she might have come with the house.

I'm sure I've posted this before but didn't see it on this thread so I'll do it now.

Pre kids, holiday in France. Arranged to visit very old family friends of my parents who I had grown up with - a lovely lady and her odd son, who was in his mid-late 20s, a few years younger than DH and I.

They lived rurally, we drove over. They had a big house which was converted into flats for travelling workers. It was empty as up for sale.

We had a nice afternoon, went to a hypermarche to get lots of lovely food. When we got home we are it all, nice cosy friendly dinner. I had one glass of wine as I was driving. Then lovely friend asked if we wanted to stay over and I could therefore have another drink. We were having such a lovely time this was a great idea; they obvs had lots of rooms so sleeping arrangements wouldn't be a problem.

Literally 20 minutes after we accepted their invite to stay, lovely friend turned on the tv to get her bbc fix - while she watched The Bill no one was allowed to speak!

Then her son give us each a bum-skimming dressing gown, said 'don't mind me' and insisted dh get changed in front of him.

They made up a sofa bed in that room and insisted we go to bed while they still watched tv.

The next morning I got up to go to the toilet to fix that they had locked us into the front room. We couldn't get out or get their attention and were bursting for the loo!

I can't remember exactly how we got out but it involved leaving without seeing them and possibly climbing through a tiny window.

Haven't seen them since.

I used to go out with someone (oldest of a large family) and we were at university. We were staying at his family's house and his mum laughingly told him to go stand on the mat for 5 minutes. He DID

Another boyfriend's family: they took a dim view of mixing sauce with pasta. You had a pile of sauce on top of pasta and were allowed to carefully transfer a spoon of it at a time to be mixed with the pasta as required. I got such a glare when I cheerfully mixed mine all up at the outset, unaware of this rule

My PIL have a visitor book in which they (nicely) expect you to write loads - I think it's rather sweet

About the only one I have is from years ago. DH and I went for a uni reunion at an old friend's house. Wine was had etc, and eventually we all staggered off to bed. Except that our hosts had turned the heating up, and their house was super insulated. We were boiling, and the window in our room was locked shut with no key to be found anywhere in the house (we searched!). We couldn't find the central heating controls so couldn't turn it down, and we didn't want to rudely barge in on our hosts to demand they did it. All external doors locked, keys hidden.

So we spent a very sweaty night lying starkers on top of our sleeping bags, occasionally sponging ourselves down with a purloined towel and drinking pints of fluid. Come the morning and our hangovers were monstrous. As soon as our hosts woke up, we begged the front door key and shot outside to stand, in t-shirts and jeans (no shoes or socks) in the blissful frosty garden.

Sounds ungrateful I know, but sheesh it was hot.

I used to babysit for a family who seemed fairly normal. One day, the wife noticed that I had been doing my Chemistry homework at their kitchen table and asked to have a look at my handwriting (she said she'd done a course in analysing handwriting). They never used me again. Clearly I have the handwriting of a psychopath.

Must keep this going, so here is my contribution although it is about guests as opposed to hosts. Which is odd considering I was visiting someone at the time.

So I'm about 18 and around at a friends place with no intention of heading home at any point in the near future. We're both half soused and planning a night of it.

Get a call from my father sounding pretty pissed off asking when I'm coming home. Pretty confused about why he sounds so angry, explain that I'm not coming home bit drunk and had planned to stay over. He then asks me to explain that to my friends, at this stage I'm and wondering if I've drunk more than I thought.

Turns out that at some point in the afternoon my BF her boyfriend, and another random male decided to come visit me. They didn't txt or anything just showed up. No one was home so they decided to climb in my bedroom window, knocking a whole bunch of stuff off my bedside table in the process, raid the kitchen and make themselves at home watching TV in the lounge. By the time dad got home they had been there for 3 hours, and had still made no effort to contact me.

I still have no idea who the other guy was, what the hell they were thinking or how my dad managed to stay calm enough while kicking them out that both friend and her (now ex) boyfriend still love him. Seriously the ex will visit dad and take him chocolates when hes in town, and helped set up his 50th.

Neither of them has ever acknowledged that this was odd in any way.

At a party, a man came over to me and said out of the blue "I don't fancy you much myself, but my wife does, so why don't you come home with us". Er, no. Thanks.

Marking place - this is mumsnet gold. Have missed this sort of shizzle lately!

No - that can't be the last one! More!!!!

FIL was having a birthday party/anniversary celebration at his very nice country home. DH has never actually lived with his dad and things have always been awkward (FIL was a total dick to my MIL, didn't sign birth certificate, treated DH and his half brother totally differently etc etc).

One of FIL's favourte things to do is to invite people to his house and then expect the guests to bring EVERYTHING. Each person or group is instructed to bring something different: drinks, puddings, cheese etc. He seems to thing this is totally normal behaviour (student years notwithstanding) even though they are very comfortable own a beautiful country home. At a previous family gathering I was sent to Coventry by Step-MIL for forgetting to bring fruit for a fruit salad WHEN THEY HAVE AN BLOODY ORCHARD.

Anyhoo... There were a lot of people at the party, maybe 80+ and the marquee was set up with lots of tables. In the middle was the family table... we looked for our names... umm, no, DH and I would be sitting at a seperate table to his dad, wife and half brother... in fact we would be sitting with the gardener (who was very nice). When conversation started flowing it turned out that lifelong friends of FIL were rather surprised to hear that he had another son. Then came the speeches about what a wonderful dad FIL was to his darling wife and son (singular). By this point I was basically shaking with rage and trying not to cry.

As soon as we could we left to the Marquee to go sit in the kitchen. Some guests came in and they thanked us for a lovely evening... turns out they thought DH and I were the hired help!

Worst of all was the fact that we couldn't escape as they live in the absolute middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from home and we had no transport. Terrible evening!