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

[BillHadersNewWife]

Inspired by a Reddit thread...there were some absolutely weird things that people experienced or saw at their mates' houses as children.

There was a man who said he hated eating at his friend's house because they weren't allowed to drink water with a meal.

There was someone who said their friend wasn't allowed in any other room but the kitchen and their bedroom.

That kind of thing! I'm thinking myself and can't really dredge much up. There was one friend who lived in a huge mansion...think National Trust style place...and it was empty!

Just room after room with less furniture in the place than in an average semi!

Normal-ish family...I think they were broke due to having 5 kids and privately educating them all!

[RevolvingPivot]

Ah I didn't want this thread to end.

@PandemicAtTheDisco that is horrific

[Mags5Bia]

I don't remember anything strange at other folk's houses.

I did have one very strange thing take place on a day trip with a friend and his dad. I would have been about 6, I think and we went to visit my friend's granny who lived near the coast. It was October and she had her Christmas tree and decorations up which was odd to me at least. That's not the odd bit though, the weird thing was that my friend's dad asked me to pretend that his family had adopted me and I was part of the family as she had always wanted a granddaughter and only had grandsons. I felt uncomfortable doing this but at that age you do as adults tell you so I went along with it. The granny seemed very confused throughout and looking back she must have had some sort of dementia. She died not too long after and the charitable side of me wonders if I was asked to pretend to be a granddaughter to fulfil a dying wish, the other side of worries that I was unwittingly part of a prank on a confused elderly lady.

[MumDad1958]

.

[Needsomethingtoread]

Was invited for a sleepover at my friends and told to bring my pillow and a blanket. Fine. However we slept in front of the fire with only my pillow and blanket. This was early 90s and I thought it was a little strange.

[Bearnecessity]

An open coffin on the stairs landing, utterly terrifying when the child I was babysitting started crying and I had to go past the coffin to see to the child.Never went back...

[Athrawes]

All those people reminiscing about the coal deliveries in the 1960's and 70's.... Welcome to New Zealand in 2020! Except you have to drive your trailer to the coal mine and get it filled, before you take it home and fill your own coal shed. Makes for lovely heat and water so hot it bubbles up the overflow and into the roof. On a cold night when the fire is really roaring you can step out your back door and have scalding hot water raining down off the roof.
No central heating, insulation is hit and miss and double glazing is considered a modern invention.

[PandemicAtTheDisco]

Weirdest things at another child's house?

Extremely odd furniture arrangements, all children's bedroom doors removed. Lock on door at top of stairs to keep children locked upstairs. Locks on windows that were never opened. Lock to keep people out of the kitchen.

No one talked much when we went inside their house when the father was there. We had been playing outside and I urgently needed to use the toilet. No lock on the bathroom door. Door wouldn't close properly and the father followed me up the stairs and waited outside whilst I used the toilet. He yelled at me to wash my hands so had been watching.

Another time we were watching TV and the father was out, the atmosphere was much better but no one could sit on their parents sofa and we had to sit on the sofa that wasn't facing the TV so we had to watch at an angle.

Years later the father went to prison for raping his daughters. He used to lock the mother and other children upstairs and then rape whichever child on the parent's sofa.

[Ddot]

Called round my friends to go play, her dad had just come in from work. Presented with two slices of toast with pot noddle on top. I was maybe ten and thought wow the wall would have been wearing that if my mam gave that to my pa

[ColdCottage]

I've read most of the thread now as some parts are just harrowing. So so sad that anybody had to live through these things. Feel very lucky to have the childhood I did.

[ColdCottage]

In the 90's I went to a friends house at secondary school. Friend asked if I'd like a snack, yes please.... she went to the fridge and took out cold - plain pasta and offered me either salt or grated cheese on it. Cold

[Camphillgirl]

My granny used to give us “port wine” in warmed egg cups at bedtime. We drank hot milk with a big knob of butter in it and a good pinch of black pepper. We ate thick sliced bread which she cut from a whole loaf with a huge carving knife, she spread “dripping” from the beef joint and sprinkled salt on it. We loved it.

All the kids in our neighbourhood knew who the odd men were and we avoided them. We didn’t know what they did but our native cunning told us to steer clear.

However we also knew the kind old ladies who gave us sweets or coins when we did errands for them. They’d make is lovely hot chocolate with Jersey Islands milk that had about 4inches of thick yellow cream on the top of the milk.

We must have been hardy we had no warm anoraks or fleeces, just gabardine raincoats in winter. My friend’s dad had been lost in the war and she only had a hand knitted cardigan gloves and knitted scarf to keep her warm going to school. We didn’t really notice or feel sorry for these children there were lots of them.

[tiredmedic]

@ Shplot......this stands out as much as any other post here. Have some flowers and I really hope things are better now.

[Mintjulia]

My parents didn’t get on and I was used to angry bad-tempered rows that simmered on for days.

I was about 6, at a friend’s house, and her parents started an argument. But their arguing involved my friend (and me) taking cover under the coffee table while her parents threw shoes at each other above us, called each other silly names and laughed a lot. It was a revelation to me. I loved it.

[Smileandtheworldsmileswithyou]

When I was a teenager about to do my GCSE’s a small group of us had a few sleepovers at a friends house. We never really saw her dad, he had his own room and would be in there with the door closed and strange music playing but never came out to say hi. One morning while we were waiting to be collected by our parents me and another girl were the last two left and were sat in the front room. He must have thought we had all gone home as he walked in, looked at us and silently left the room. It seemed very strange. A few weeks later he killed her mother by stabbing her multiple times at home.

[enchantedspleen]

I still sometimes gave a mugful of green water! I was always told it would clear your skin up, so I drank it religiously as an extremely spotty early teen.
Always make gravy from it too, and stock if I'm making it.
I also love marrowbones, my granddad and I would literally scoop the marrow from lamb bones from Sunday roast. I love it but prefer to keep them to make stock these days. We're very much an east London family so it might be a regional thing.
My brummie in laws are often quite surprised at these little interesting ways, and I them!

[Dryadia]

Strawberrycreamsundae

They didn't live in dorset did they? I had a friend who's dad was an antique dealer, furniture was always changing. They also lived in the oldest house in the village, with original wattle & daub behind wallpapered boards. A pony in the back garden.

My friend was a member of the local drama group and they had a massive box of costumes and material they let us play with. Some of the material were obviously from a number of dresses that had been taken apart. This was stunningly beautiful, heavy with stunning embroidery, what looked like pearls and gemstones, silver and gold threads. We mentioned it to them in passing, turned out to be some very important, very old court gowns.

Not sure if they were sold or ended up in somewhere like the V&A. This was in the 1980's.

Strangely shortly after, they converted the outbuildings into a super modern house, with sliding walls to change the layout at will and moved out of the main house. I assume they sold it.

[Santana2000]

When I was 7- 13 I had a friend whose parents were obsessed with the Sopranos and would stay up watching it and other shows until like 3/4 am and we'd stay up till 12. The whole while we'd be overhearing gunshots and loud Italian men yelling. Her family was very Christian and it seemed weird at the time for them to be watching movies about the mafia late at night.

[oldbagface]

Fascinating thread

[MisfitNinja]

This thread is hilarious in parts and above art breaking in others. The abuse and neglect some witness makes me truly thankful for my fairly stable and normal upbringing.
The only thing that I can remember was going to a school friends house once. We were primary school age. About 9/10. She shared a room with her older sister who was about 15/16.
My friend was excited to show me her sisters diary. Inside it was some very graphic Polaroid photos of her sisters vagina. This was mid to late 90s so pre camera phones. I could t look her sister in the eye after that.

[ThorsMistress]

Sorrento2014 I remember delivering ‘spot the ball’ to people with my mum and step dad when I was younger. I used to love giving them out and collecting the money! Made me feel really grown up.

[karencantobe]

@YicketyYackMamasBack I find I remember incidents that I could not make sense of as a child. Some of them as an adult I fully understand, but others I don't.
I suspect as a child you knew it was odd. I doubt anything else happened, but yes the man may have been getting off on bouncing you on his lap. Or he may not have been.

[YicketyYackMamasBack]

Something weird happened at my brothers friends house when I was young. My brother is 4 years older than me, they were in secondary school and I was in primary school. DB friend had a sister a year or so younger than me so I got invited round to play with her.

All I remember is DB friend in the living room with their mum and he pulled me into his lap (straddled) and was bouncing me up and down, and wouldn’t let me get off and the mum laughing about it.

That’s about all I remember and it’s never rang right with me but I just can’t remember enough to warrant knowing if it was something significant or not, but what little memory I have of it always makes me feel a bit queasy, probably because now I’m mid 20’s looking back it just seemed such an odd situation.. but that said it could have been nothing and him just thinking he was keeping me entertained? I don’t know. Odd and I suppose I’ll never know unless I remember more.

[Mimishimi]

When I was growing up in the early 80's one of my school friends lived in a commune just down the road. It got closed down by police in the late eighties. It wasn't that weird - a lot of hippies but most were kind and intelligent.

My dad had a 'rod of correction' with the corresponding Bible verse on it but I don't ever remember him using it. He would whack us on the butt with a wooden spoon sometimes but not very often.

When I was 13/14 I was babysitting for a family where the mum was openly flaunting her affair by bringing her boyfriend to the house in front of her husband. I'm not quite sure what the story was. He was just a high school history teacher and she was a 'potter' but they had this fabulous architect designed home which was so beautiful and cosy at the same time (I detest 'cold' homes). It must have cost a fortune.

[selmabear]

When I was around 8 I remember going to a friends house and the friend had a bucket to use as a toilet just for number 1s at night (dont recall why) and she demonstrated how she used it right in front of me then she asked if I wanted a go 😶

[Lanurk]

My house was the weird one. Rarely had anyone round because it was forever being “done up”. We didn’t have flooring on the bathroom for years, when they got the new kitchen in there was holes left around the sockets and it was a mess and we went over two years without windowsills. On the rare occasions I had friends round I was mortified.

When I was younger I used to go visit my dad. Next door neighbors had a girl my age who was lovely. She used to climb the wall and play in my garden because I had a swing and toys. Her folks didn’t like her having toys because it distracted her from Jesus. Anyway, one day she fell and skinned her knee and didn’t want to go back over the wall so I took her inside and up to my dad. He was in the bath. He was mortified. She was horrified and I genuinely had no idea why everyone was so upset. She never appeared in the garden again when I was round after that