To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

The J W family mentioned up thread hired a van and helped me leave exh. Forever in their debt.

When I went to my best friends house (ages about 15/16) we had to go outside for 2 hours a day. No matter what day it was, because his parents needed to nap
No matter what the weather was like we had to leave! A few times we were allowed in their car, a few times in their garage and once just stood on the doorstep.
We only ever used to be sat quietly watching a film anyway and never asked for anything or did anything wrong. Bizarre.

I remember a friend whose parents were divorcing. Her mother just cried the whole day, doing chores and everything it was so sad.
The friend also made me get into bed a be the 'boy's snogging her. It was gross looking back on it, I think we were about 8 or 9.

Alligator in garage
Zebras- a different house
a lions (same house as zebras)

Pink loo roll (best friend)

I have lots of different stories but two stick in my mind. I'm 50 now so these were over 40 years ago.
The first was going to a little friends house at the bottom of our street, I must have been about seven. She was the eldest of four and her mum always had bruises on her face. The carpet around the fireplace had lots of bits, clearly I know now they mustn't have had a vacuum cleaner. Upstairs on their beds they had coats over the blankets, and, horror of horror in my eyes then, they had bottom sheets but no top ones just scratchy blankets.
The second was going to sleep at a friends house when I was about 9, they only had one bedroom which my friend shared with her mum so we slept downstairs in sleeping bags. I woke up early and went to the kitchen to get a drink and her mum had her back to me but was drinking out of what I assume was something like a sherry bottle. She was an alcoholic I found out in later years.
Both very sad and now I look back on my childhood with a realisation I was very fortunate. We didn't have much money but our house was clean and warm and we had plenty of food and fresh clothes.

Hilarious

My ds befriended a J W . He asked the df how did it feel having us knock on their door?
Omg I died...

Oh gawd. I remember my best friend at school was a Jehovah’s Witness and wasn’t allowed to my birthday party. And I was never allowed in their house.

Being served boiled pig trotters as a kid by my friends mum. The skin was slimy wet with hairs on

I had a friend at primary who’s mum was never, ever dressed. Always in a nightie and dressing gown, and the curtains in the house were always shut. It was dark and gloomy in there.

My dad told me years later that they’d had a 5 year old son who’d been killed in an accident, would’ve been just a few years before we knew them. So looking back now, she was grieving and depressed I imagine. Really sad.

This is pretty outing, but our house must have been the weird one in our street. My Dad was a total dippy hippy. Harmless, but bonkers. He was part of a spiritual cult, and used to meditate in a cardboard pyramid in the loft. We were allowed to climb the ladder and play in there when he wasn’t meditating.
If we were ill he cured us with crystals and pungent herbal remedies. His friends were all weird and wonderful too.
We were raised vegetarian and ate lots of lentils, chick peas and buckwheat. There were five siblings and we all squashed in the back of the car to go anywhere, sometimes he’d let us and our friends ride on his rickety piano trailer on the back of the car. It was so dangerous!
I can’t imagine what someone from a ‘normal’ family in the 80s would have thought visiting us. I had friends from more mainstream families but I thought they were the strange ones!

Nothing crazy really, I remember going for a sleepover at a friend's house and half the doors had been taken off and were just randomly leaning against walls. They weren’t decorating or anything, it just seemed to be their ‘normal’.

I had one friend who didn't have a television or telephone in the house. This was in the late 1990s. The family weren't poor, but did have quite an alternative lifestyle. I thought it was very strange at the time!

Another family all stood up when the national anthem was played on TV, and insisted that I did too, because if I didn't I'd be disrespecting the Queen.

I was a student in Moscow in the early 1990s. There were plenty of weird toilet arrangements outside the city, mostly outhouses, but I was surprised when invited to someone’s city flat to find that the normal plumbed-in loo was full of dried leaves. I was too embarrassed to ask how one was meant to use it.

I had a half-presian cat Dowser - she was a blue tortoiseshell, vicious as fuck, but adorable- so beautiful! Her hair wasn't particularly long, but incredibly thick, with very long guard hairs, and the softest coat I've ever touched - she was beautiful. . . . we lost her six years ago at the grand (very grand!) old age of 23 and three-quarters.

I stayed at my friends house at about 12, i was amazed they had sinks in their bedrooms never seen that before.

More recently

I went to my freinds house, he was a renting a room from thr landlady. The house was vibrant and eccentric which i loved, but what really got me is she had a dildo as a door handle right in view of the main entrance, she had young kids (no prude, but maybe a little bit wrong)

I had so many odd experiences. The kid whose house I was sent to after school who used to wee on the carpet in his mum’s room and blame the baby. It stank

The friend whose parents and friends of the parents drank cider from tea mugs and swore a lot. I was scared stiff. Pretended to be ill and went home

The friend whose mum had no food in fridge except for m and a sandwiches. I thought this was amazing and so extravagant.
Some of these are so sad though. And some disturbing.

Best friend used a fridge as a wardrobe. Was brand new as well
This has reminded me, my best friends mum used a brand new dishwasher to keep old letters and post in. Absolutely hated the thing, I didn't think it was that weird because her mum was generally a little bit eccentric and we just laughed about it!

We were the weird family. My parents had their own 3 seater sofa each but we had to sit on the floor, there was a banned tv list depending on how zealous my mother was feeling about her ‘faith’, the house was perpetually in a state of “being decorated” with rotten old carpet or no flooring or unpainted walls, and was filthy except when my Nan was coming round when we’d all be made to clean. My parents would generally find something I needed to be punished for (usually ‘showing off’) while my friends were round, and were happy to smack me or send me to my room, or both, so my friend would be awkwardly hanging around downstairs waiting for me to be let out, or until they were picked up.

I used to love going to other people’s houses as their parents actually seemed to like them and their houses were always lovely and tidy. I remember being given fish fingers at one friend’s house and not being able to eat them as fish made me sick, and her mum was lovely about it but when I told my mum that I hadn’t eaten them I was yelled at and made to feel so embarrassed at being so rude that I never accepted an invitation from them again.

I stopped inviting friends over around starting secondary school, when I couldn’t face the embarrassment. Unsurprisingly I didn’t have many friends, and have struggled to form friendships ever since. This was the mid 90s, so not that long ago really but my childhood was pretty archaic.

Friends of my parents collected those Pierrot dolls. The whole living room was dedicated to this collection. They had sitting dolls, prints on cushions, music boxes, pictures and paintings on the walls. The colour scheme was set to coordinate with it all.

I had nightmares after each visit. Hopefully the memory of it won’t affect my sleep tonight!

When I was 11 I was given a pint of strong cider (which I pretty much downed as I didn’t like the taste, but didn’t want to rude) at a friends house one Saturday afternoon. I had a good time that day.

One thing I did learn from the last visit
I loved Persian cats.
This friend had two..they were adorable..again these cats weren’t really welcomed and lived outside

As soon as I had my own house, I got my first Persian.
I went on to have 5 over several decades and my daughter has had 3 with one half Persian

A big stack of VHS tapes, all in order, of all the eurovision song contests. I was only very young but I thought "their dad is strange".

@Patroclus it's not uncommon here to be fair, but this couple were young, like late 30's young. Assume they heard it from their parents.