“I work in mortgages and see lots of appraisals. I once saw a bedroom which was a shrine to Jennifer Aniston. There was a wall of framed photos of her in various poses. Candles (like Yankee candles not religious ones) and a kneeler like a Catholic Church. So weird. ”
“College kid from large famous private university. Filthy apartment, pretty normal student shit. Until we got to the bedroom. Was literally covered with glass dildos. I mean hundreds of them. Turns out (he brought it up) he had some kind of a deal with a manufacturer in Asia somewhere and was the middleman. Kinda freaky seeing them all there like that. ”
“Not a mover, a welder. but worked in lots of peoples houses over the years.
This one house had me thinking I was on drugs. Alas, I was not.
This lady was a granola in ojai, went to put a handrail in. Walked in the house to be greeted by a wall of dolls. Just fucking dolls everywhere. Thought well that’s weird but whatever. Went into the next room, this is where things went from weird to wtf.
The ENTIRE ROOM was full of animals in glass containers. Not stuffed, not mounted, just dead. The first one that caught my eye was a squirrel in a giant lightbulb. It was slumped over a stick and left to rot. That’s it. No attempt to embalm, no attempt at any realism. Just haphazardly shoved into a giant light bulb to rot.
And there was more, lots more. all local animals like she was going around picking up road kill and shoving them into glass containers to watch as they decomposed. I was in that fucking room all day. All I could think was imma be in a big glass tube soon. That’s how imma go. Not a car crash, not cancer, I’m going to be this nut jobs greatest art piece. Perfect. ”
“Rich family, 10k sq. Ft. House, the whole works. Picked up the mattress and something like 10k in cash falls out in a wad. Don’t know how much, didn’t count it. But it was a lot. Brought to owner, said “I forgot about that, thanks” He later tipped us all about $200 each. ”
“I did this for a summer a number of years ago, and there was house one in particular that will always stand out.
Family of four. Normal looking people. 2 story single family home, no basement. Thought to myself “thank God, an easy gig today. ” Oh no. No no, I was very wrong. We walk in and lots of stuff is already in boxes (thanks! ) and were told to head to the kids rooms first.
12-year-old kid who likes rocks. REALLY likes rocks. Like, is obsessed with rocks. There are rocks EVERYWHERE in his room. Big ones, small ones, gravel, sandstone, bits of clay, seashells, bits of concrete, asphalt, and a pile of what looked like bone fragments. “Hes a rock collector,” Mom says.
No fucking kidding, there were so many rocks in the room that you couldn’t only see narrow paths between the door, the bed, and the closet (which, indeed, was full of rocks).
His sister’s room was fine and mostly packed beside the furniture and the boxes full of belongings. The parent’s room was similar, everything normal and somewhat neatly packed.
We shoveled the rocks into wagons to clear the room. Dad was upset that the shovels were going to “stretch the carpet. ” Ok dude. We loaded several hundred pounds of rocks into our truck that day.
Business as usual after that felt odd that the family didn’t seem to be bothered by it. They gave us each an extra hundred in cash for our troubles. ”
“I wasn’t a mover but doing demo work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It was in the old French quarter, not the touristy French Quarter, and it was an old home that had been abandoned and then squatted in. The place was beyond a wreck, is was more likely a biological hazard zone. Not just from the storm, but it’s inhabitants. The neighbors said they were there for at least six months. Inside there was mainly three things: a lot of women’s clothing, creepy dolls made from said clothing and piss jugs. Everywhere there were piss jugs. Soda bottles, milk jugs, you name it. The smell still haunts me just thinking about it. ”
“Moved a couple in their 60’s who had 3 cats and 2 large African Grey parrots. All of these animals roamed freely in the house, and every surface in the house was coated in a thick layer of dust, birdshit and cat hair. I would estimate that the house hadn’t been cleaned at all in about 5 years or more. The bedposts were caked in about a half inch of birdshit which ran from top to bottom, I assume the birds perched on top of the bedposts at night and shit all down along them. The smell was fucking atrocious and the air felt thick and heavy inside the house.
While packing up the master bedroom, I found thousands of Xanax pills. Like WAY more than a person would ever be prescribed by a doctor. The house also stank of weed, like they had been smoking indoors for years and never cracked a window. The husband was disabled and wore an adult diaper, and there was a very strong smell of shit coming from him as he showed us around the house.
Overall, a fucking bizarre and disgusting situation. ”
“I worked as a mover with friends for a summer job while in college and there is definitely a horror story which sticks out in my mind. I show up as relief help to a crew which had already been at a house for 7 hours and as I arrived I was greeted with wide stares of the “You aren’t going to believe this” variety from. The boys tell me to check out the basement. I got about 4 steps down the stairs before I was punched by the most pungent sour smell that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I buried my face in my shirt and took another couple unsure steps down the stairs to where I see a chest high shelf which runs around the whole room.
The shelf is covered with bottles containing varying amounts of liquid. what was in the bottles? Piss. so many bottles of piss. There was an old beat up chair and a tv with an xbox surrounded by more bottles of piss. So much piss. I immediately left the job site but that visual and smell is seared into my memory forever. Fuck, so much piss. They also found a dead cat behind a couch later. So I guess I didn’t have it too bad. ”
“My grandmother bought a bank seized hoarder house and we all helped her clean up. It was 1-2 feet of just… stuff? . . in every room. We just shoveled it out windows into a dumpster and were allowed to keep anything we wanted. Unfortunately, my grandmother kept the FULL SUIT OF ARMOR ON DISPLAY. ”
“My company was working with a guy trying to develop a modern player piano before Sony basically mastered the technology. His house was full of antique music playing machines.
One of them was a player violin. I can’t remember exactly how it worked, but it had solenoids for finger positions and some complex mechanism for manipulating the bow. All kinds of interesting shit at that house. ”
“Not really weird but…
I moved a hoarder family once. They had a 2 story house that had a 1ft deep layer of crusty clothes and garbage through all 2 floors and the basement. We brought snow shovels and shoveled it all into wardrobe boxes. The two teenage boys were there smoking pot and being generally in the way the whole 2 days it took us to shovel their shit into boxes. I found their bong collection and put it in a box labeled Christmas decorations. ”
“Moved this family out of their house. The entire house had been pissed on everywhere by cats and dogs. The daughter had a room that had rats, hamsters, mice, who knows what else roaming free destroying her room… she didn’t care. She had a couch in there they named “the rat couch”. Had to make an edit… this was in her bedroom, and she was totally cool with it. ”
“Worked moving one summer. We were pulling a guy’s entire life out of a giant mansion and one of the items was the glass top to a dining room table that must have been 15′ long. It got crated up and moved outside and leaned up against the truck. Somehow, it got knocked over and we were all sure we were totally fucked and it would be shattered when we opened it up. The guy pretended to be SUPER pissed at us until we finally unloaded it at the destination and yelled at us to open it up before we moved it inside.
As soon as we cracked the crate he started laughing his ass off. This motherfucker’s dining room table was custom built around the pane of bulletproof glass from a bank’s drive-thru window, which he’d purchased when the branch closed. It was completely fine! But certainly, a ~15×4′ piece of bulletproof glass was very peculiar. ” – ihatecruises
“I worked as a mover for a few summers in college, and the worst one was this family of 4 that was moving from one unit in a complex to another unit in the same complex. My boss told me it should be a relatively easy move because the stuff wasn’t going far and no stairs.
We show up and walk into the apartment and it was a complete mess. The carpet was stained dark brown, the paint was peeling off the walls, there’s crayon drawings all over the walls, and it smelt like absolute shit. It looked like no one had cleaned in years. We had to take constant breaks cause the air was just heavy with a stench of piss and shit. We finally get everything out, when the dad tells us there’s one more room we need move, and need to be extra careful. He walks us to a door that had pad locks on it, and he opens it up. Inside are giant, intrinsically designed dollhouses. These things were about 6′ x 3′ x 4′ and had every tiny detail perfect. It was also the only room in the apartment that had clean carpet and didn’t smell like hell. ”
