8 Roommate Horror Stories That Will Make Yours Feel Normal
Having a roommate is a rite of passage: a necessary stepping stone from childhood — with our parents’ protection and rules, our siblings’ constant companionship — to adulthood. Sharing a space with someone you don’t know requires navigating a minefield of etiquette quandaries, knowing when to compromise and when to stand your ground, and facing the fear of the unknown. And for most of us, the first time we find ourselves thrust into this prickly situation is in college.
No one’s college living situation is perfect: Even those lucky enough to bunk with their BFF aren’t immune to the skirmishes, annoyances and everyday hassles that arise when sharing a space with someone else. But some have it truly worse than others. We asked a variety of college students and graduates for their roommate horror stories. Some are amusing, some are unbelievable and some are downright terrifying. And all names have been removed, to protect the identities of the pathological liars, party animals, pill-stealers, and the just plain messy.
Bloody Hell
“The summer between freshman and sophomore year, I roomed with a girl who had a mini Dr. Evil poster over her bed that stared at me, left a pile of literal dirt next to her bed and claimed it wasn’t hers, and then left period-stained underwear in the middle of our floor. I kind of lost it after that. I found her in the common area, walked up to her and told her rather loudly, ‘Your bloody underwear is in the middle of the floor! You have to have some common courtesy and clean up after yourself!’ We didn’t talk much after that, but the room was [cleaner], except the sink: It was like she shed all her hair into the
sink each morning and left it there just to spite me.”
The Party Animal
“Freshman year, my roommate was a bit of a party animal. On one occasion, I had asked her to come home quietly because I had a psych exam at 8 A.M. After midnight, I got multiple calls from her phone, and when I finally picked up, a man I didn’t recognize was on the line. ‘I have your roommate downstairs. Can you come get her?’ She’d passed out at a party, and the guy had carried her home unconscious to the dorm on her ID. I was in her phone’s favorites as ‘roomie,’ luckily. He carried her upstairs to our door and I dragged her into her bed. She also hooked up with my friend from high school when he came to visit
me. It was an interesting year!”
Lie & Deny
“My freshman roommate was a year ahead of me. Other people told me she was a pathological liar, but she was always nice to me. Throughout the year, she might borrow clothes but would always ask first. But about January or February, a bra of mine goes missing. I looked everywhere for it, and I suspected that she took it. I asked her if she did, and she denied it. After a late night practicing session, I went back to our room. She wasn’t there, so I looked in her hamper. Sure enough, there was my bra in a shirt that she had worn that week. When I confronted her about it, she STILL denied ever taking it & didn’t understand why I was mad.”
Drug Case
“I actually lived with my crazy roommate for three years. Freshman year at NYU, there were three of us living together. We all went to bed at the same time one night, when Crazy woke up in the night, went out and picked up a random man (not boy: a grown man), brought him back to our room and had sex with him. When me and the other girl woke in the morning we were standing there puzzling over the naked man sleeping in our room. We frequently would borrow each others’ stuff, and Crazy always let me borrow this one black handbag: It turned out she kept a big bag of cocaine in a hidden pocket, and I was running all around New York City with coke not knowing it! We were actually friends in spite of the crazy. She didn’t do anything bad to us, unless you count the possibility of arrest for cocaine possession. And I’m pretty sure she stole my Percocet after I had my wisdom teeth out. But she was our lovable, crazy roommate.”
50 Cent’s Biggest Fan
“Freshman year, I had two roommates who shared a bunk bed. I got along really well with the girl who had the bottom bunk, but the top bunk girl was just ridiculous. She insisted on playing 50 Cent’s "In Da Club” ALL THE TIME, day in and day out, at FULL BLAST. Even if I was in the living room area with the bedroom door closed and the TV volume all the way up, her stupid music would drown out the TV. She even had her alarm clock set to play it as her wakeup song. She refused to use headphones even at night, even after repeatedly being asked to turn the music off or down. One time Bottom Bunk got out of bed, slammed a pair of headphones onto Top Bunk’s desk, and yelled at her, ‘Here, use these!’ So Top Bunk plugged in the headphones, but turned the volume all the way up and left them on her desk like a set of mini speakers. To this day, I have to leave the room if that song comes on.”
Naked & Afraid
“So, my freshman roommate had a number of weird habits that put her into bad roommate territory, such as hoarding trash under her bunk and not understanding personal space. But by far the worst was her habit of staring at herself naked in our full-length mirror. And I don’t mean that I once walked in on her doing this when she expected to be alone. I mean that I woke up in the middle of the night and heard her talking/singing to herself. When I opened my eyes, she was standing a few feet away from me, completely naked, just staring at herself in the mirror. She did this for HOURS. She would do it at least a few nights per week, for the entire year we lived together.”
The Lock-Out
“I was placed with my freshman year roommate in a corner room. The room was so small, the beds had to stay bunked. I was on top (assuming we’d switch halfway through the year — we did not), and EVERY night she would turn up the heat to full blast. On many occasions, I asked her to turn it down, to no avail. I would wake up in the middle of the night short of breath from the rising heat. She would also wait until I left the room to shower, leave and lock the the door behind her, knowing I didn’t have my key. She actually yelled at me. Additionally, she would bring guys to the room for hours and never let me come into the room. Even more uncomfortable was watching her wear the hook-up’s basketball shorts around the dorm. Then she befriended my ex-boyfriend and was regularly handsy with him in public, though she insisted they never hooked up. Partway through the year, I ended up sleeping on an air mattress in [my friend’s] room.”
The Princeton Reject
“Roommate: <crying> I only came here because I didn’t get into Princeton.
Me: UVA was my first choice, so….yeah.”
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