To ask you about your worst flat sharing stories?

[MonaLisaDoesntSmile]

I had in the past lived in flat/house shares for quite a few years.
My worst by far was a girl I was in halls of residence during my postgrad year at uni. It was a 5 room flat in a big halls building, and the room right next to mine was occupied by a girl whose boyfriend lived on the same floor (flats were not mixed sex, so they could not live in the same flat).
For whatever reason, they never went to his flat for anything, but kind of lived in ours, both of them. They were both extremely loud and expressive, talked like if they were shouting. Also leading an owl lifestyle, they would eat late and stay up until early hours of the morning, hangind around between her room and the kitchen, banging the door every time they entered/left the room making my whole wall shake. She didnt have to wake up until 10/11 am, so had plenty of sleep.There were no earplugs that could cancel the noise and vibrations, and I had to also hear the alarm clock in the morning. My degree was super intense and I had to be up every morning very early, and worked until late and the whole year I hardly could get any sleep, it was so miserable I don't know how I actually made it through the year on 4 hours of sleep a night (if I was lucky).
Funnily enough when the exam session was on, she banged on my wall when I was skyping my family at 8PM as she 'had to study,' the only two weeks of peace I had between September and July. I spoke to her a few times, to no avail, she was actually louder out of spite.
The other girls in the flat did not experience that as none shared a wall with her, so they never got how stressful it was.
I had had great experience of living in halls up until then, but that year exhausted me.

Mine seems so tame in comparison to these!

My worst was when I’d been let down by two flat shares and had to move into a room - it wasn’t strictly speaking a lodger type situation I don’t think.

Anyway, the landlord (who also lived there so maybe I was a lodger?) was very persnickety - I recall being asked if I was going to do the dishes as I was dishing my dinner up. No reason to believe I wouldn’t. He also definitely used to go in my room - I went to Canada for a week, got back a day early and he walked into my room as I was napping. Also wanted us to both do laundry together - which as relative strangers I found odd and declined.

I moved out after he walked in on me.

@GammyLeg

I lived in a houseshare of six and one of them was a phantom shitter.

They would creep into someone’s room at night (generally at the weekend after everyone had had a big night) and poo on the carpet. So weird. There was much discussion and speculation and we decided that it was someone from another flat - our house was chaotic, with lots of people coming in and out). Eventually one of the housemates was caught red handed one night.

Grim! What was their reason?

I used to go out with a guy who who shared a house with a raving alcoholic. We were woken up one night by him after he’d come in from a session. He’s gone into the living room and started watching porn on full volume on the telly. We went in together to ask him to turn it down and found him supergluing his teeth back in 😱 turns out he’d got into a fight on the way home and had them knocked out.. I always kind of wish we hadn’t stopped him... can you imagine if he’d got handy with himself inform of the poem and had forgotten about the superglue 😂

I rented out a room in my flat to a male lodger in his twenties who seemed quite normal to start with (obviously). His first day/night passed uneventfully and I went away for the weekend. When I came back late on Sunday evening, he was very worked up and rushed to meet me, saying "Oh thank goodness you're back, I need some advice. My former landlord is threatening to kill me". He then went on at some length, very agitated and worked up, and being tired, I told him I couldn't deal with it there and then and needed to sleep for work tomorrow.

I went to my bedroom but some sixth sense told me to put something heavy in front of my door. I heard him trying the door handle in the night. Troubled, I went to work the next day wondering what to do about him. That evening was pretty much the same as the previous, and I resolved to ask him to leave.

The following evening, I told him that the flatshare wasn't working out and asked him to leave, although he could have a months' notice if he really needed it. I should point out that he hadn't even signed the lease at this point, as he had some reason for not transferring the deposit and first months' rent into my account, and I was holding off until he did that.

Anyway, he really kicked off and told me that I couldn't do that, he had tenants' rights, etc.. I told him I could, because he was a lodger. He then phoned his friend, a thuggish looking 6 feet 2 heavily built bloke who came and stood menacingly in my living room, not saying much, refusing to leave. So I had these two men in my flat that I was really uncomfortable with.

By this point, I was really sympathising with his previous landlord!

Anyway, I called the police, who really were excellent. They warned the thuggish friend to disappear unless he wanted to be arrested, had a stern word with the lodger and told him that as he hadn't signed the lease, he would have to leave that night, and that he better phone someone to stay with. They obviously believed that I was in danger. They told him once he had arranged to pick up his belongings, he had to contact them first and they would accompany him. This is what happened a few days later - he was accompanied by the police while he emptied his room and fully moved out. They really were excellent.

It doesn't end there! His MOTHER phoned me a few days later, begging me to reconsider as he "was a really nice boy really and upset at the misunderstanding".

Woke up to find some random bloke about to pee on my face.
One of the girls in the bedrooms on the floor above mine was in the habit of bringing random blokes back. To be fair, my room was next to the bathroom and unfortunately unlockable from the inside. So glad I didn't wake up a second or so later.

@IncandescentSilver ! Id have been petrified!
And what did you say to his Mum?!

"Richard" was a 3rd yr student and was staying on in a flat. My mate from halls and I moved in as 2nd yrs.

We moved in while he was away, and had to have the entire flat fumigated including thing beds and mattresses as he'd sublet it to someone all summer and it was flea-ridden. That took weeks to sort.

He's painted the hallway - including the ceiling - dark green, so you had to feel your way down the steps and the hallway as he's also taken the bulb out the light and it was a very high ceiling we couldn't reach.

Richard like the latest fad. Atkins diet, veganism, marathon training, martial art arts of various types.... None lasted more turn two weeks. My personal favourite was his decision he was coeliac, which lasted precisely as long as it took to try his first gluten-free pasta dish (2002 - GF has come a long way since then).

He flunked the first semester and left uni, but he'd prepaid the room so it stayed empty.

HillyJilly shock @IncandescentSilver* ! Id have been petrified!
And what did you say to his Mum?!*

I just didn't engage, and just kept saying no, as nicely and firmly as I could. The poor woman had obviously been told the sanitised version!

Can you imagine anyone thinking it was ok to invite someone to stand menacingly in the house of someone else they had only been staying in for 5 days!

Aforementioned druggie housemate came back as per with a load of dodgy looking with various lacks of teeth and broken noses etc mates he had been with in the pub.
1am, I'm mid twenties and slim/fairly attractive and in a nighty. He comes in my room to get me up to have a drink with them all like he did often but Id usually decline . This time I couldn't sleep anyway and felt like a couple of beers so I get up and get dressed and go have a drink with them. I remember knowing a few of them and they were okay but I was still wary.
One of them, was fairly decent looking (I'm gay and I don't mean fanciable but he looked decent and I overheard him asking one of the others about me and how was I okay with this and it wasn't safe for a young woman to have all these unknown males and he felt uncomfortable being there etc. I thought that was quite sweet. I always kept cheap beer and wine in being a student and liking to be able to invite people round but he gave me £1 for every cheap supermarket can he took. I got talking to him and he was lovely.
Few weeks later, I asked housemate about him and mentioned he seemed a nice fella. Housemate told me he was dead, and when he was in my house he was fresh out of HMP for murder. Now out, friends of the murdered had killed him! I can't remember the details but he had apparently stabbed someone through their eye with a biro.
Still makes me so bemused and feel a bit odd!

Flatmate 1 - she was a flamenco dancer who sometimes practiced at 2 or 3am! I was living in Spain. She would also have really really loud sex with a variety of men. Her mum owned the flat and she never thought too much about the lodgers.

2 - Very quiet flatmate, pleasant but kept to herself. One day we opened the front door and a cat ran inside. It ran into her bedroom and the door was ajar. I peeked my head round the door to usher the cat out - to my surprise there was a sign warning that if I came any further there was a camera set up recording everything.

@IncandescentSilver I cannot! Kudos to you for being firm
Nowt as queer as folk. Glad the police were good!

I lived with a guy who ate nothing but Fray Bentos pies (I didn’t even know they were a thing) unless he ate my food. After six months with him I begged my parents to lend me the deposit to buy my own flat.

I lived with an EXTREMELY skinny guy, seriously he looked ill, who would steal my food all the time
He once stole an entire bag of potatoes overnight. Who only knows how he managed to put them away, I'd cook a weeks worth of soup to freeze, leave it to cool, come back to it to find it gone. So odd.

I had a perfect flatmate once. He was unobtrusive, happy equally to chat or not, cleared up after himself, paid his rent on time. OK, he liked his stinky curry take-aways, but he really was a perfect flatmate.

Except for his bath towel. He was convinced that bath towels did not need washing, as you were clean when you used them after a shower. He'd buy a ginormous, dark, fluffy towel, not wash it before first use so it shed dark fluff all over the bathroom for several weeks, and keep using it without washing for several months. The towel would change colour as it got increasingly skanky. Eventually, when it got too smelly, he would buy a new one, and the cycle would start again.

I think I've been very lucky

I was living with another girl while we were in our NQT year (hard work, long hours and stressful). We both went home for the holidays and when I came back she announced she had adopted two cats. We lived in a city centre on the second floor. She then fell pregnant and was unable to look after the cats as it was dangerous for her to touch cat litter. The number of times I came home to poo and wee all over the flat. Never spoke to her again when we moved out.

I also shared a house while I was travelling. It was a bit of a strange layout. The current tenants (a couple) had their bedroom on the ground floor, the first floor was the living room and kitchen and my room was on the top floor. The current tenants told me there was a bit of an issue with the floor boards but it was getting sorted. It turned out that when you walked across the lounge floor the noise in their bedroom underneath was deafening so they asked me not to walk about too much once they were in bed. This would have been fine but they went to bed at 6pm. I moved out after two weeks.

Met this guy through my friend as she worked with him, we were both looking for a place to rent and we seemed to get on great, he was such a laugh (or so I thought) so we decided to rent together.

The morning I was due to move into flat I had this gut feeling of dread, it was really strong and I wish I'd listened to it.

It was fine at first but then he started getting really moody, stomping around the flat, constantly tidying up and ironing but banging about whilst doing it to show he was pissed off at me and refusing to speak to me. Then the next day he would be fine. I was constantly walking on eggshells.

He would also never, ever buy food but instead eat all my food and I would find the wrappers hidden in random places like the utility cupboard.

He would go out partying mid week - which was fine, we were young and I sometimes did but it was literally every week and I had to work, he would bring men back to the flat and have very loud orgies. I once walked into the living room and there was just two random naked men in the living room.

I once was awoken with an older man standing in my doorway looking at me, he claimed he'd gotten the wrong room. It gave me the fright of my life but I was locked in a lease and young at the time so didn't know how to get out of it.

After 3 months of living there I received a letter from the estate agent telling me we were 3 months behind on rent. I had been transferring my half of the rent to him but he had been pocketing it and had not paid a penny in rent. My mum ended up having to pay 2000 pounds so I could continue living there but he was told to leave.

I came home from work and he had been in to get his stuff but he'd taken with him my DVD player, iPod and had gone into my room and taken a few perfumes that were still in the boxes which I had gotten for Christmas. I was really really heartbroken to be honest as it's the first time I'd really had the realisation that someone that you trusted and considered a friend could be such a nasty piece of work, that someone could keep up such an act for months on end and then turn out to be so rotten.

He left his room an absolute bombsite also, used condoms everywhere and in his en-suite there was shit EVERYWHERE! I don't know what the fuck he was doing but literally shit everywhere. It was revolting. Me and my mum had to clean it.

I never tried to contact him for the things he stole, maybe I'm a pushover but I just wanted it to be done with. I still would not piss on him if he were on fire.

@allfalldown47, your experience mirrored mine, me and five lads (I was the only lass). Lads were ace but one new creepy housemate peeled through a crack in bathroom door. He got drummed out by "big Paul" sharpish. (There were two lads of the same name one tall one small)

I shared a flat for a year with my best mate, i didnt need to but he had no were to live so did him a favour, i had just brought a new car when we moved in, he was having car problems, so i gave him my old car and told him he could pay me back at a later date, he never did, we also had a £1200 electric bill at the end(everything was electric) he said he would pay half, he never did!

We no longer speak

Never flat shared with anyone but I always remember that Chris Manby book “Flatmates”, at the start she says no matter how well you get on with your friends, never flat share with them because it’ll all go wrong!! I’m sure that’s not always true but everyone I know who has shared with a friend has ended it on bad terms.

Sorry to leave you all hanging re the phantom shitter!

She was caught mid shit one night. The housemate whose room she chose that night woke and shouted something like “Annie, you’re the shitter!” And Annie silently scuttled off.

And for the life of me I can’t remember what happened next - it was 25 years ago and my memories of those days are hazy. I think the shitting stopped. She didn’t leave the house and she is still friends with a couple of the others. She is a deputy head of a secondary school now I believe.

It is such a horrifying story now but back then, it was just one small part of a chaotic and hedonistic early 20s existence.

One cut keys and gave them to their siblings and mum. I came back from unit one day to find two of them (who didn't live in the flat) having a blazing row.
Never cleaned. Ever. We got mice and that still didn't stop them leaving food everywhere.
Made international phone calls and refused to pay bills. Any of them.
Claimed dole and worked. Claimed housing benefit for being single occupant and said she would put in larger proportion of rent. Did not.
Possessive over washing machine, would take out wet clothes and leave on filthy kitchen floor , wash their clothes, then put other persons wet clothes back in machine.
Took other people's wet clothes off radiators and dryers, dumped on filthy floor.
Generally aggressive to neighbours.
Played music so loudly neighbours windows rattled. Refused to turn down. Even at 3am.
General bullying behaviour.

Another one tried to get me to pay for a precious occupants phone bill. I was living in a different city when their international calls were made.

By the way has anyone read He Died With a Falafel in His Hand? It’s a horrifying and very funny account of a guys worst housemates.

Had a real charmer who ran up a huge phone bill which she refused to pay and threatened us that we’d be ‘pushing up daisies’ if we weren’t careful. She moved out, we refused to pay her bill. The ll hadn’t taken a deposit from her.

In halls, we had a sleepwalker. He was a rugby player, built like a brick shit house and regularly woke up in the corridor, without his pass to get back through the security doors. He slept naked. Always fun.

I shared with 2 sports students one year: they brought home an old wooden trolley and used it as a can/bottle repository. They got a cat which was never litter trained so there was shit everywhere. One guy cut a hole in his bedroom door so the cat could come and go. The house was absolutely disgusting.

@angelcakebananabrain

Never flat shared with anyone but I always remember that Chris Manby book “Flatmates”, at the start she says no matter how well you get on with your friends, never flat share with them because it’ll all go wrong!! I’m sure that’s not always true but everyone I know who has shared with a friend has ended it on bad terms.

I'd agree with this. After I left my house share in second year and moved into halls, I never spoke to any of them again. Two of the girls blanked me when I walked past them in the student union. We were all on good terms when we moved in together - two of them already knew each other through Manics fandom, not sure how they met the other one but I found them through the university women's group when I was looking for housemates. Everyone else in my halls had already found people to live with and none of them had room for me, and a friend from high school who was in my year already had housemates as well, so she was out.

I freely admit I wasn't an easy person to live with and I had a lot of mental health issues culminating in a suicide attempt and a mental breakdown, and had to temporarily drop out of uni and live with my parents. I'd already been stressed out with my course and extracurricular activities, but then my gran died and that pushed me over the edge as I was really close to her. Then one day, the flatmates left a note on the fridge, something about not washing single items in the washing machine (I think i'd washed a towel or something), and I knew it was aimed at me and I felt they'd be happier without me, so I bought some pills on my way home and took an overdose. One of them caught me eating the pills and called an ambulance, but I stupidly told her why I was doing it and she told the other two, and when I came home that night one of them opened the front door to me and just gave me a dirty look and walked off. I did apologise to her later on but the atmosphere in the house had got so bad that I had enough and left. I'm glad I did. I am not good at living with people.

@GammyLeg

By the way has anyone read He Died With a Falafel in His Hand? It’s a horrifying and very funny account of a guys worst housemates.

No, that sounds hilarious. I do have a book called I Lick My Cheese featuring signs and notes put up by housemates, though. It reminded me of my second year housemates because they were ALWAYS putting notes up.