Roommate horror stories that will make you want to live at your parents’ house until you die

Starting college is an experience filled with wonder, possibility, and reveling over living away from home for the very first time. Whether your future roommates are old friends or randomly assigned, it’s hard not to imagine perfect scenarios of lifelong friendships forming from compatible living conditions.

That is, until their crazy comes out and the perfect shared life you dreamed of melts away into a living nightmare. We’ve collected some of the most horrendous cases of insane roommates who thrive in delirium.

The one with a curious disposition

“I set my freshman roommate up with my best guy friend who I thought would be perfect together. Unfortunately, he lost interest after a few weeks and totally ghosted her. I had no idea why he did it, but she didn’t believe me. One night, I couldn’t fall asleep so I just laid in bed staring at the ceiling. In the middle of the night, she woke up and I pretended to be asleep to avoid conversation.

“To my shock, she got up, went to my desk, took my laptop, and went through all my messages with him. I confronted her in the morning and she lied about it.

“Since then, she was so rude to me, gossiped about me on the phone while I was in the room, and spread rumors about me. I started to hear stories about her high school life, where she stole from her classmates and kept denying it. Total psycho, awful year, not OK." – Courtney, 22

The one who lacked self-control

“On the third night of my first semester, my roommate came back from some weekday clubbing with a girl. They went over to his bed and so I turned and faced the wall, but I could hear their drunk grunting and mumbling…then all of a sudden I hear the girl scream, 'Oh my God are you pissing right now?' And he’s so drunk he doesn’t even realize, so she gets up and runs out of the room while he’s like, “Wait, baby!” Anyway, he gets up, in his soaking wet underwear, and tries to go after her. Before he can get to the door, he stops and decides to go to the bathroom — but he doesn’t make it, and instead throws up on the bathroom door.

“When he’s finally done he goes back to bed without cleaning it up. Ten minutes later gets back up and says he’s going to find her and leaves the room in his pissy underpants." – Kaleb, 22

The ones that go WAY too hard

“My roommates were such stoners that cops came and searched our room at 3 in the morning because they were convinced our room was the reason the entire building smelled like weed. Most of us were naked and asleep when they came pounding; for once, it wasn’t us, but it took forever to convince them that.

“Another time, I was babysitting a roommate at a party that got busted. Leaving the area, he whipped out his penis IN FRONT OF COPS because apparently he needed to pee that bad. I don’t know how he didn’t get arrested." – Monty, 20

The one that let the room turn to rot

“My sophomore year roommate and suitemate were randomly assigned, both international students from China, and both collectively made my sophomore living situation an actual nightmare. My roommate had super long, thick black hair that got everywhere – and I mean EVERYWHERE – even clogging up our vacuum. Neither of them cleaned anything, ever, so I had to clean our gross bathroom by myself. My other roommate had this adhesive butt pad thing for our toilet seat that she stuck on there and left for about a month. It got to the point where there were period blood stains on the seat and I had to confront her and make her throw it away.

“Also, my suitemate would eat a ton of food in her room, let it sit and mold for a week or so, and then dump out her rotting food into our toilet AND sink. There was constantly food in our drain. Our bathroom smelled like rotting food constantly, it was horrendous."

The one who keeps using the ‘n’ word

Last year, a Temple student tweeted several screenshots of her roommate using a racial slur. After being asked to stop, an argument ensued on Twitter where the roommate tried to justify her action by claiming that the “n”-word has assimilated into everyday society, and was no longer considered it a product of slavery. Because apparently if you’re “laid back,” racist comments are trendy.

The tweets blew up, with a shower of support for the student who wouldn’t tolerate her racist BS.

The one that never actually lived there

“I came home at 7AM from sleeping at my friend’s apartment. I walked in and there was a guy laying on the couch. I assumed it was just my roommate’s friend, and so I went to the bathroom to get ready for class and there was a a large yellow spot on my bathroom mat…

“My roommate woke up and asked me who was on our couch, and I replied that I didn’t know and thought it was her friend. Then he woke up, stared at us, and then asked us who we were. We asked him who the hell he was. He said his name was Juan, and he began to walk over to my room and I asked him where he was going, to which he said to his bed to sleep. I told him he doesn’t live here and to get out. He then went on and on about how this was his apartment, apartment 201, and I was like 'no it isn’t.' We found another yellow spot of throw up next to the couch which he claimed wasn’t his. We then pointed out that these weren’t his Christmas decorations or his starfish-themed bathroom and to get the hell out of our place.

“As he was about to leave we asked what he did last night, he didn’t know. He claimed that he hadn’t drank much, but then said that he did drugs, he did a lot of drugs. He then proceeded to run across the street, so I can only assume that his apartment was 201, just in a different building. He later came back that afternoon and cleaned up the vomit, I still had to throw away my bathmat though." – Caitlyn, 19

The one who subtweeted everything her roommate did

In an outstanding downward spiral of events, Jessy, a freshman at Penn State, discovered subtweets her roommate had made about her, and decided to print and hang them in their dorm with heart decorations. Attempting retaliation, her roommate called her out for pettiness in a series of text messages and called the cops on her for possessing weed in their dorm. Fed up with the situation, Jessy continued to rant on Twitter, receiving much support from others.

Eventually, their RA became involved pleading for both of them to remain “neutral” until they could speak. The drama brought a crowd from the hall wanting to watch the chaos unfold, upon her roommate’s final arrival the posted subtweets were torn down, and campus police supposedly arrived to investigate the situation. And a week later, Jessy got kicked out of her sorority.

The one with relationship issues

“My first semester, my roommate and I got along pretty well and were good friends. When I got back from winter break, he was hanging out with a lady friend who he wanted to ask out. Later that week he did, but got rejected. This is where the downfall began. A few weeks after, we went to a party together where he was determined to meet a girl. He ended up hanging out with one, kissing her, feeling her up a bit, and they went back to our room and he immediately felt bad about it, saying he had a lapse in judgement.

“That’s when I convinced him to use Tinder like I did. We’d do it together, and he ended up getting mad that I was getting more matches than him. Then, I met a girl and we started dating and he was very rude to her and became insanely jealous that I’d spend more time with her than him. He’d complain to our friends all the time which drove us away from him. We always told him to stop acting like a child, but he never did. Basically his inability to deal with my relationship drove him to push all of his friends away and get with girls just to be more like me and fill the void." – Andrew, 20

The one who will move you in your sleep if you snore

Matthew is an incoming freshman this, and it already seems like he’s in for quite a ride. He got an email from his future roommate that stated all his demands for living, almost all of which were “no bargains.” According to the roommate, Matthew isn’t allowed to bring anyone in the room, stay out late, play music at night, not snore (or he will be moved in his sleep), and other odd requests. Luckily, his roommate got switched a few days later.

The one who considers joy her sworn enemy

“I lived in a double dorm room (which meant my roommate’s feet were two inches from my head when we slept), and she was a nightmare. She hated me and was so antisocial that she’d get mad if I left the room to hang out with any friends. If a friend knocked on the door, she’d tell them to go away. She was obsessed with Minions and they were her theme for her side of the room. She once yelled at me for being Jewish, she said having boys over to our room was a sin, she walked in on me in bed with a guy and she called my RA 'to tell on me' and my RA laughed at her. She had her parents stay over in our room without warning, they slept on an air mattress on the floor, and I had to listen to her dad snore all night. She stole my underwear. I tried to get her to lighten up so I got her wine drunk and we ended up having a lot of fun that night, but then the next morning SHE REPORTED ME TO THE SCHOOL FOR SUPPLYING HER WITH ALCOHOL (we were both underage) AND I GOT IN SO MUCH TROUBLE. Oh, and she also threw a vase at me when she got rejected from a school after apply to transfer there and ate my Valentine’s Day candy I got from my parents." – Sam, 20