I provide mental health counseling to children and families in their homes. I’ve seem some interesting things, but this one still creeps me out.

I worked with a family for three months, Mom and daughter living in their own home. Mom was a doll collector. Antique dolls, Barbie dolls, doll furniture… she collected it all. The house was full of dolls in every room. In the dining room there were two curio cabinets with sheets draped over them. Full of vintage Barbies. The original one in pristine condition and most of the other valuable ones as well. The spare bedroom was full of dolls in boxes. Floor to ceiling. In the living room, where we sat for sessions, there were antique dolls, cradles, chairs etc. Next to the chair I sat in was a small antique wooden cradle. It contained a handmade mattress of sorts, a doll without an arm, a dolls head and one without a leg. Just sitting there.

The daughter was about 14 and explained to me that she does not like dolls. Mom gives her dolls for Christmas every year and they are in boxes that are placed in the spare room. Never to be opened or touched. I don’t recall the specifics as to why I was working with them, but I never suspected anything odd. The dolls were odd, but Mom was a collector and often bought/sold them at antique markets.

Six months later I was talking with a therapist from a residential treatment center. We ended up figuring out that we both knew the same girl. I was shocked she had landed in a treatment center. Then the therapist let me know why. Mom and daughter slept in the same bed and she had been sexually abusing her daughter for years!

Dolls haven’t been the same for me ever since.

During the pandemic I wasn’t working so I decided to pick up a Doordash gig. Lord have mercy that was TERRIBLE! Highly do not recommend. Anyway, I got a delivery out in the middle of nowhere but big tip so ok away I went.

When I arrived I pulled up to some sort of metal building/warehouse. No cars in sight. Nothing. Creepy as hell. I get out to deliver the sandwich? I think it was and there are barrels and bags of weird chemicals outside. Weird stuff to be sure. I knock and a guy dressed only in his underwear, rubber boots and rubber gloves answers the door opening it just the tiny bit to grab his stuff but I could glimpse a bunch of some kind of plastic tubs in the background? No idea what the hell was going on there. I took my money and ran!

I did in-home insurance consultation. I was invited into the livingroom of this very nice, very normal seeming, couple. As they ushered me into the room, they cautioned me to not pet the pig. What?

Lying there, on the nice carpet was a pig, a sow, weighing at least 500lbs. It had been a gift, but was not the miniature Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pig it had been represented to be. This was a full-sized, barnyard pig, who was somewhat territorial. As long as I left her alone, I'd be fine.

The pig rang a bell to be let outside and then to be let back in. The pig didn't bother me, and I certainly didn't bother her, though it was a very abbreviated consultation!

It was the strangest, weirdest thing I've ever seen. 🐖🐷

I worked grading farm properties for the county tax assessment. While looking at an aerial photo, I saw several buildings on the property I was working which weren’t on the property card. If a building isn’t on the card, no taxes have been assessed.

Using the aerial photo, I followed the hint of a path through the woods, and the path ended near a gate. A few hundred yards down a hill was an old farmhouse, barn, and a few lean-tos in a small meadow. Everything looked to be in better shape than some of the farms I assessed. But there was nothing which suggested it was in use for farming or a residence. The grass was high, but not very. No visible road, light pole or electric lines. Overall, it looked like a depression era abandoned farm.

Being diligent, I climbed the gate and inspected the buildings. By the materials and construction, I estimated the buildings to have gone up in the late 1800’s and were in good condition. I spoke to the property owner and he told me I was the first person from the courthouse to bother walking that far back. He said the buildings were there when his parents bought the place and they let them be. He didn’t bother them either. I decided to follow suit and left without putting them on his property card. In fact, the place unnerved me and I just wanted to leave.

I’ve been in the electrical business 45+ years…I’ve seen some pretty strange stuff, but since most people don’t know any better it is what it is..

oh yea this too …looking for your pet rat?

Somebody thought this was really cool work..the Romex jungle

I was selling very cheap rubbish diy home alarm systems with equally rubbish motion sensors. The company I worked for at the time had some fantastic products, this most certainly was not one of them.

They were so bad I would go to a customer’s house to replace parts with multiple spare parts because the replacement was often faulty too. Argh, I hated that product.

This one day I knocked on the door to be greeted by a very attractive young lady wearing gym clothes. She told me straight up that she was heading to the gym just as soon as her partner arrived. I was told he would arrive imminently and that is how it turned out. However before he returned home I was asked if I would like a glass of water, it was a very hot day and I said yes.

I followed her into the kitchen at her request. She went to the refrigerator and prominently displayed on her refrigerator door were nude photos of her. Several of them. I think they were professionally done and presumed she maybe was a model but I didn't ask and didn't even mention the photos. That was something I hadn't seen before.

Very hot day that because I remember being so very thirsty. Must have had 4 or 5 glasses of water before I finished that job. Yes it was hot and I was thirsty.

That answers the question but that wasn't even the weirdest part of that call out. The partner strikes up a conversion with me, while I'm working and asked me how well I knew people at my company's head office. I told him I knew most everyone. He then asked me if I knew such and such which, believe it or not, was my boss. My boss was this guys ex-wife!

I am pretty sure I didn't blurt out loud, “You traded up nicely!” but I do know I at least thought it very loudly!

That was a weird house call, a very weird day I will never forget.

I was hired to do a job for the real family portrayed in the Kirstie Alley movie “Family Sins”, a story about a family of serial arsonists and child abusers.

Years ago, I was contracted to install a 9 foot diameter satellite dish for the Walter Burt family in Cumberland, RI. They owned a house on Mendon Road next to the Cumberland, RI high school. I should probably say “houses” as they actually owned 3 or 4 of them that were built to provide a “U” shaped, common backyard. Walter Burt lived in the main house which faced the main road and his children lived in the surrounding homes which faced the side streets. The news later referred to their homes as a “compound”.

Mr. Burt made his living by buying and renting apartment houses. He and his wife, Frances, also had several foster children. He had lost part of a finger on one hand, a detail which always stuck in my mind. His wife was a short, unattractive, no nonsense woman who seemed to run the house. (He once told me “you don’t want to mess with her…”)

During the installation, I needed access to the basement to run the connecting wires. Walter Burt told me “I don’t want you going down there. Give me the wires and I will do it. It’s a mess and I have a specific way I want them run.” Of course, I had no problem with that as it meant less work for me. I gave him the wire and let him do it. During the wire run, a woman came up the stairs and walked into the kitchen. She was unkempt and very uncommunicative when I said “Good Morning” to her. On hearing my voice, Mr. Burt came upstairs and quietly told me not to speak to her. He explained to me that she was a grown foster child with mental health problems that they were taking care of. Overall, he presented the image of a caring man who just wanted to help unfortunate children by caring for them and a responsible parent who gave his children land and helped them build their homes.

About a year later, Mr. Burt was on the news, He, his wife and several of their biological grown children had been arrested. It seems that, over the years, this family had been systematically physically and mentally abusing the foster children they cared for. In additional, Walter had been sexually abusing one of them. The adult woman I had seen was a “mildly retarded” (according to the terminology used in the news reports at that time) adult woman in her early 50s who was kept in a locked room of cage like proportions in the basement and was never allowed to leave the house. They used their foster children as free slave labor and pocketed the monies the state gave them to raise these children for their own, personal use. They were also accused of insurance fraud involving arson-related fires at their apartment buildings (which he would instruct his children to set).

Walter, Frances, two of their children and their son-in-law were arrested and held without bail. They were convicted in 1994 and served prison time. Frances Burt, in particular, was eventually convicted on charges of kidnapping, extortion, arson, sexual assault, racketeering, welfare fraud and disability fraud. Burt was later convicted in 1994. Frances Burt was sentenced to 30 years, with 11 years to serve in prison and 19 years later suspended. She was released from prison in June 2001 and served 19 years of probation. Walter was sentenced to 25 years. Their two sons were sentenced to 12 and 6 years. The daughter was released on time served. Although all have since been released on extensive probation, some members have since violated their terms and were returned to prison.

Their property was sold at auction and was purchased by the family that originally built the house for under $100,000. They then donated it to the town. The houses were razed and the Moran Family Park was built on the site.

In 2004, a made-for-tv movie was released about them starring Kirstie Alley. In the movie, the family name was changed to Geck and the rather homely Frances Burt became much glamorized with Ms. Alley.

One of their children (who was not connected/involved with any of this) also wrote a tell-all book about growing up in this family titled “Fifth Commandment Atrocity”.

I still shudder when I think of being in the house with those unstable people. The interior of that house and the images of Walter and Frances are as clear in my mind today as they were years ago. God knows what might have happened to me if I had entered that basement!

Truth.

Worked for a company that sold, installed and repaired C-Band satellite dishes. Back in the 80’s, this was the only way you could get decent TV channels if you were outside of the “Cable TV” footprint.

We had two male customers who were gay couple. Very nice people. Absolutely terrific.

I had to use their restroom during a service call when there big 10′ Satellite dish got struck by lightening. (service call - insurance job)

When I went in to their bathroom, there was a huge tub of Vaseline on the toliet and it had shit stains all over it.

True story.

(don’t care, or have any issues with their lifestyle, happy for them…..but IT WAS GROSS!)

The strangest thing I’ve seen was work in an apartment complex. We only had to install an outlet in the utility closet and add fiber internet connections in each unit. When we would do this, we would hang door tags to let occupants know we were coming the next day, so they had time to prepare/hide stuff/whatever.

Well, this person either didn’t read it or didn’t care. When we came in, the place had a ton of sex toys strewn about in plain view. The whole time my male coworkers were giggling and making jokes. I guess it made for an interesting day.

The other strange/sad thing I’ve come across was for the same kind of gig. We gave notice, installed outlets, etc in a different apartment complex. Normally we see random things and don’t report it, such as a cat in a pet free apartment or someone leaving weed out. In this case, we couldn’t turn a blind eye.

Every room in this apartment was littered with animal feces. There was two medium sized crates with two large sized dogs stuffed in them. (They also had feces in the cages) There was a small sized dog roaming free in the apartment as well. The ammonia smell was so bad, we were still gagging as we worked in the attic. It was heartbreaking to see them in this condition, so we reported it to the building owner. I really hope action was taken against the woman. She came home as we were wrapping up and it angered me even more because she was physically and mentally capable of walking them and taking better care of them.

Wasn't scary for us, but scared him shitless when our shepard came bounding over excited and happy to see someone new, prince didn't let him out of the truck, standing on his hind legs front paws on the truck door looking in at him, so we knew what was going on, and gave the repair tech a milkbone to give to prince and told him to relax, and so the dog wouldn't annoy him gave him the ball prince enjoyed playing fetch with. Told him if the dog gets on your nerves just toss the ball and in a few times the dog will find something else to do. Prince was funny that way, always expected a treat or a toy when the vehicles pulled in.

I walked into a house that a hoarder lived in. there was junked piled up to the ceiling in the WHOLE house. A trail from the front door to the kitchen

and a trail to the back of the house. I entered the kitchen and something moved behind the black plastic bags, I turned around and walked out with out saying a word

Called the office and told them HELL NO, send someone else because I am NOT going back up in there

The most interesting. new 1 millon plus house, a special order sink was backordered, and it arrived after the people had moved in, So i was under the sink hooking it up when a 25 ?? year old woman walks in and started yelling. She just found out that NOTHING was in her 60 year old husbands name. it was in his brothers name. This little gold digger was PISSED. The old husband stared laughing and asked her. Do you talk me for a FOOL? If you divorce me honey, you will get nothing but a lawyers bill.

I popped up from below the sink and asked him to sign my ticket. gave him a wink and left

I was a telephone installer for a while, and we got some odd jobs.

All the usual stuff, like families that went naked about the house, or being followed to make sure you didn’t nick the spoons (one customer used to hire security muscle to “help carry your tools”).

But it was the old ladies that were always an unknown quantity. The harmless ones used to feed you cake in quantities that would have kept the household cavalry happy. The batshit crazy ones might have a goat in the living room, or no internal doors (including the toilet), or a fireman’s pole to get quickly downstairs. Then there was the old duck who had a display of antique meat cleavers.

I went to one rambling old mansion where the Library and Long Gallery housed thousands of funerary urns (with contents) each neatly labelled. The only explanation offered was I don’t think they like being lonely.

Or a tiny terraced house with a half-eaten meal on the table, which her husband had been eating when he dropped dead. Four years before. It had a lace cover, to keep the flies off.

But the one that still makes me shudder was the decommissioned vicarage with a huge glass box in the hallway in which was a colony of flies. Thousands of them, feeding off meat scraps, making a continual buzzing noise.

I was replumbing a custom bathroom for a very nice lady a few years ago. While working on the job one afternoon, she mentioned that she needed to shower (there were 5 of the.m in her house), and go to work for a few hours but that I could stay and work if I promised to lock up when I left.

The master bathroom I was working on consisted of a huge room containing a garden tub, sauna, and shower area with his/her body sprayer. Outside this area was a room with a wall sized mirror on one side and a walk-in closet on the other. The opposite end of the vanity room was the master bedroom which was the only way in or out of the bathroom and vanity. She went elsewhere in the house to shower and left me to work. After 30 minutes I needed to go get something out of my truck and entered the vanity on my way out. She was standing at the vanity butt naked and bent forward with her face close to the mirror putting on makeup. Being a Texas gentleman I tried not to stare as I passed, but I was caught off guard by her charming assets before I was able to go “eyes front”. I mumbled something to the effect of “I will be right back” and quickly departed to my service truck. She said “no problem - I'm leaving soon”. At my truck I finally managed to catch my breath and think clearly. I began to think I was being set up for a sexual lawsuit, so I killed about 20 minutes before re-entering the house. She had finished in the vanity area and was elsewhere getting ready when I got back to work in the shower room. She eventually called my cell from her garage to let me know she was leaving and reminded me to lock up when I left. We never discussed me seeing her naked as she did not really seem concerned about it over the next 2 weeks that I was working at her place. She was HOT looking & I just chalked it up as a great tip.

When I was younger, I collected money for a Christian charity walking door to door, sometimes people would invite me into their homes.

On one occasion a very attractive women opened the door and invited me in. Claiming to be very interested in my charity and my cause. What was clear is this wasn’t going to be a quick stop, and once we sat down with some coffee in this huge lounge, her voice started changing and she started acting flirty and seductive. Clearly she was home alone, and here I was her fantasy come to life, that perhaps something would happen. She tried every hint, other than just getting physical with me directly. In the end, I think she thought I might be a bit young and naive to pick up on her hints, since I was only 19 at the time, and after about 2 hours told me to come back later when her husband was there to give a donation. When I did return, her demeanor was still friendly but absolutely not flirty like earlier.

On another occasion I met someone who had most likely not left the home in about a decade, their appearance was haggy and the house wrenched of cigarette smoke. This person looked completely neglected and in the worst state I’ve ever seen anyone in my entire life. 100% sure this person has already died.

This reminded me of my 5 years stint as a sales person in Mumbai. I was working for Reliance Big TV Dish & had entered one of the apartment complex.

As I did Direct Marketing, I introduced myself to a lady & she invited me in. She was the head of the family. I explained to her the details of how the Dish works better than cable, how it costs less, etc.

By religion she was Muslim. My trainer who was also a Muslim was back biting about her to me saying she is a Muslim woman & not a decision maker. I asked him to keep quiet.

The lady was so good she directly called her husband on mobile phone & told him : I am purchasing dish & it is way cheaper than cable. I wanted to inform you & thats is why I called.

My trainer was : no sale now because husband will over rule but her husband said : whatever you want you do , house department is yours. I don't watch TV at home much so its your decision.

The lady signed a cheque & gave us while my trainer was shocked.

Another time, a lady wanted to provide the cheque & the son had stolen her signed cheque book & Rs.50000 cash from home & ran away with his GF. The matter came to light because of me !

I was fitting a carpet at a retired teacher's home who worked overseas for many years teaching English in African town's and villages. During his time there he amassed loads of “ souvenirs “ which were now in his home.

There were spears, sheilds, shrunken heads and a variety of things used in voodoo and black magic ceremonies which were said to be cursed to anyone who came into contact with the relics which adorned his walls all over his home.

He told many stories which freaked me out and I nearly refused to fit the carpet as some item's needed to be removed and I was unwilling to touch anything. The gentleman removed the offending artefacts and I quickly laid the carpets in record time and got the hell out of there. It spooked me so much I thought I might be cursed.

This happened years ago but I've never forgotten it.

I received a call about a job that was a unique situation a few years back. The sister of a man who was dying of cancer, said her brother was coming home from the hospital in a few days to die on hospice. He had owned four pure-bred wolves (close enough anyway to pure-bred) over the last 15 years. She informed me that his hardwood floors throughout the home were completely ruined from the dogs. I also noted there was a distinct smell of ammonia throughout the home from them pissing all over the place, marking their territories, as they were all males. There was hair everywhere also, and I mean everywhere! Her goal? Rip out the floors, replace them with laminate, cleaning it up for him, so he can come home to a nice environment to die in peace and cleanliness.

We had to have it done in three days. Well. considering the cause, I pulled off the other jobs I had going, hired one more buddy of mine for the three days of work, along with my helper. The three of us pulled it together with just hour's notice before we needed to get started in order to make the deadline.

Once we got there and started tearing out the floors, it was obvious that this needed more care than originally thought. The smell of ammonia started taking our breath away throughout the house; as we ripped board by board out, it was not bearable. My buddy told me he's not dying, I don't pay him enough to continue working. We all went outside and I told them to take a break, I'd be back in 20 minutes. I went and grabbed the best body suits and masks that money could buy at the local Menards. Then I bought 5 gallons of Killz2 odor sealant, latex water-based primer.

We continued on, fighting through it, wearing our safety equipment and rolling primer as we went. In a few hours we were at the front door, all the hardwood ripped out, the floor primed and fresh air in our breaths. Due to the smell, we worked our butts off and actually got done quite quickly with the demolition and primer application. We then went home for the day to let the primer dry. All we could do was keep our fingers crossed, hoping the smell would be gone the next day when we got there.

The stuff is amazing! We walked in at 5 a.m. the next morning and we could smell no ammonia what so ever. It was amazing! I couldn't believe it.

There was a different smell however.

Now that the ammonia smell was gone, we could clearly smell what seemed to be some hybrid marijuana coming from somewhere in the house. Not a bad smell, very tolerable, yet it was obvious there was marijuana being grown somewhere in the residence. After a couple hours my curiosity got the better of me. So at break, I took a walk upstairs, which was shut off from the rest of the house with a door at the bottom of the steps. Well imagine how powerful the smell was, seeing as a door, a 25-step stairwell, a hallway, another bed room door, a bedroom and a closet door had been separating us and five seven-foot-tall beautiful marijuana plants.

Come to find out the cancer was so hard on the homeowner, he took it upon himself to grow illegal plants, as to help bear through the last year of his life. This was before the modern era of acceptable marijuana use in The States. In the state of Wisconsin it is still illegal right now, although that is going to be changing soon - it's looking like. The guy was the president of a bank his whole life. Not the type of man that would be partaking in illegal consumption of THC. Too much at risk with his job and his livelihood. His sister said, once he was turned on to the effects of the marijuana, it was the only thing that helped him pull through day after day.

Of course I left the upstairs and went back to work as if nothing was going on. We completed the job on schedule, received a bonus along with thank you cards from the man and his family. It was well worth the effort in the end I've been told from the sister, as he was at peace in his final month alive. Apparently she was unaware he was growing anything.

Since she took it upon herself to get this renovation done behind his back, she didn't know the danger that could have unfolded, inviting strangers into his house, doing what he was doing. There are plenty of people out there that would have been shallow-minded enough to call the authorities. Not my style. It will probably go down as one of the most memorable jobs I'll do, for the rest of my life. I do not even speak of the situation very often since then, out of respect for the family.

Thanks for reading.

I had to help clean my nana’s house after she fell and broke her hip. My aunt and i finished cleaning it, I cleaned the toilet, we cleaned out the fridge, the counters, etc.

There was a moldy pot that when she fell no one thought of cleaning out. SHe literally took it and put it over her fir place to undo the freaking mold. My nana is 89 and just…she is slowly losing her mind. Instead of throwing the pot away or normally cleaning it she wanted to boil the mold out over a fireplace.

Then she got irate over us cleaning her kitchen, especially me cleaning her toilet-i guess since my aunt was there and since i do the more ‘disgusting’ things relating to caring for my nana or houses if the need arises, whilst my aunt is in her 40s. My aunt wasn’t willing to clean my nana’s feet while i didn’t bat an eye, even when i say her feet-i am not too easily disgusted depending what it is.

We got kicked out and forgot a bag of trash i think. But we did clean her house and got her essential groceries.

I was a hospice social worker for 30 years, which meant that I not only went into people’s homes, but often went into those homes repeatedly over a period of weeks or months. That fact — along with my being a social worker, and a keen observer of things that were not necessarily told to me directly — meant that I learned a great deal about how each of these families really lived. The main takeaway, for me, was the old adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Rich people who live in gorgeous houses have all the same problems as everyone else — addictions, mental illnesses, criminal activities, etc. Their money just gives them more ways to cover that stuff up. And I went into a lot of dirty run-down houses of very poor people, and often found them remarkably generous of spirit. They might not have the proverbial “pot to piss in”, but they would offer me coffee & vanilla wafers, or one of the tamales they were cooking, when I would visit.

Many years ago I went to a London apartment with two effeminate gentlemen in an upmarket area to repair a ceiling light fitting.When I was up the ladder on top of a cupboard next to the lamp was a rubber chicken and an original WW1
“snoopy” flying helmet with speaker tube communication system. (The rubber pipes on each helmet (only one helmet there) connect between pilot and navigator so can talk to each other with no electricity needed) I have seen a motorcycle helmet communication system designed on this principal where idea probably came from. Had a discussion about helmet but did not mention the rubber chicken. Very nice people.Cant make these thing up!