Screaming neighbors, barking dogs, leaking faucets, broken appliances, security deposits that are never returned… most people who rent apartments have seen their fair share of landlord-and building-related nightmares. However, lest we forget that there’s always another side to these stories, AskReddit is here to provide a forum for landlords’ worst tenant stories. Prepare your gag reflex, because these murky waters contain a lot of poop and dead animals.

1. “I had a tenant pour concrete down the drains. There was no repair possible. It was literally more cost-effective to demolish, salvage what we could and rebuild. It even got into the septic system and we had to settle with the city for damaging their infrastructure. Biggest nightmare ever. We sued the former tenants, but when you’re suing a scumbag, best case scenario, you might get a 1990 Toyota Tercel.” — Throwaway1242014

2. “Tenants lived upstairs for 3 months, didn’t pay the third month’s rent, called in (as me) to cut off my utilities, reported me to Children’s Division for child abuse… moved out leaving 18 bags of garbage & reported me to the fire department for the garbage hazard.” — nachoqueen

3. “Rented to a tenant that seemed to have his shit together. Well dressed, articulate, owned his own business, and great credit. That façade didn’t last too long. 2 months in, multiple noise complaints and police had to show up for various domestic assaults. We evicted him, and he left quietly, but not before he decided to fap off on all of the walls.” — Caluca5

4. “Two dead horses, four dead guinea pigs, three abandoned dogs and one abandoned cat. Mountains of rubbish, dirty clothes, illicit drug paraphernalia and dog and cat shit littered the house – a new house, built less than a year before the eviction/abandonment. A motocross bike had been ridden in/stored in the house; mud/tyre/oil marks on the walls and roof even. Most of the furnishings had been destroyed [glass kitchen table had been taken to with a sledgehammer].” — thornutella

5. “I got a call from my tenants saying there was a water leak, I arrived to find that the tap on back of the house was pulled off the wall and leaking water everywhere, I asked the tenant what happened and she told me that it was just like that when she went outside. I turned the water off and while fixing the pipe I heard banging and saw the garden shed shaking like it was about to fall down.

I went over and had a look to find a pony ‘hidden’ in the shed, when I asked the tenant about it she told me ‘Well when I had it tied to the house water started coming out.’” — runswitscissors

6. “I own a few properties in Sydney.

Tenants stopped paying rent almost right away (3 months). I had the locks changed on them. Went to the property 2 weeks later to find the places an absolute mess. Poo on most of the walls. Holes in all the walls. A whole fucking toilet missing. Hot water system had a dead cat in it. Bath tub full of cat shit. Kitchen covered in dirty plates from the 3 months. Old KFC in the fridge. The carpet was completely munted. Cigarette butts EVERYWHERE.

$16,000 later my investment property is back on track. I never did manage to recover my stove or toilet from the old tenants but the insurance covered most of it.” — DropBearBait

7. “Lovely lady moved in and then she found a boyfriend. He had a couple birds. Lady died about a year later, boyfriend rented out parts of my teeny house to 11 other people and began breading budgies. He bragged to the neighbours that he had 54 budgies. He was evicted. It took me three dumpsters to clean out his garbage.” — Pandaerin

8. “Had a tenant smear poo from floor to ceiling in every room of the house, must of taken weeks — I mean every wall, no gaps…..

I paid a crime scene clean up company to clean it for me, would [have] been cheaper to burn the house down.” — Tharlo

9. “I worked as a handyman for this property firm in my town and basically every day there were little odd tasks to take care of… But one thing takes the cake and I will never be able to forget… [One tenant’s] toilet was completely stopped up and full of spiders, we figured something was amiss when she was continually taking out cat litter even though her cat died a year ago. She was using a cat box as a bathroom. If she wasn’t doing that, she wore adult diapers and when she soiled one, she’d take it off and toss it into the corner by the radiator.” — czach

10. “I leased an apartment to a nice family in a suburban neighborhood. The house caught fire (apparently from a candle) and firemen put out the fire. Police had to investigate, and they pulled out a tonne of dildos and cameras from the half-burnt down apartment. They would not have cared, except there were several reports from neighbors saying the place may be a brothel. The cops found out it was a porn studio and the man and woman faced 6 months probation.

Apparently the man and woman ‘rented’ children to pose as their kids when they met me.” — cantonboy

11. “One property I rented out at a discounted rate to a family for 3 years and when they moved out after the first year their cousin moved in and never told me, rent checks everything came from the same name, bank etc. Until I got a complaint and had to show up one day and find a different person living in the house. So I called the pervious [sic] tenant and they thought that their cousin could continue paying the discounted rent $800 from $1350 and I told them this wasn’t going to happen and they have to leave… Anyways they left and I came back a few days later to take a walk though the house and get it rented back out and the guy that left removed every piece of trim from the house and left it laying in the middle of the living room, I shit you not there was a massive stack of trim from every floorboard window door etc. in the middle of the living room. It was a 3 day jigsaw puzzle figuring out where to put all the trim back…” — stotts15

12. “So we were renting out this extra house we own in the Houston, TX area. We got these new tenants who seemed nice enough, and pretty normal, so we were happy. They had a two year, no pets, family of 4 lease on the place. Things seemed to be going well, but then we got a call from the neighbors.

‘We seem to be hearing a…uh, a rooster calling from next door.’

So, since we had known the neighbors for a while and we lived pretty far away from the property, we asked them to try to talk to the tennents and report back with the 411 on the ornithological situation. The next day, we get another call from the neighbors.

‘They said the rooster is no longer a problem, because they killed it…’” — Musicality

13. “Not my tenants but a story from a friend. He went into his tenants’ place quite soon after they had moved in to a newly done up flat.

He discovered in the kitchen they had ripped the doors of a couple cabinets, nailed wire to the frame and had their pet rats living in there.” — OrchardsBen

14. “I used to clean rentals for a property management company. The worst things I’ve seen would have to be the older home where the tenants turned the cement basement into a dog run. There was an ankle deep layer of urine and feces in the basement. Before I could even come in to clean, disaster recovery had to come in with hazmats on. The smell was powerful and nauseating.” — carlieq25

15. “Here’s the quick version:

*Young couple in their 20s moves in

*One evening, a shitload of cops pull up to building and rush to their apartment

*Guy gets wheeled away in a gurney, and he’s crying with a wound to his neck

*Find out from cop that there was a shooting and someone was dead

*Building full of tenants freaking out. Guess who needs to talk to them?

*Later find out that guy shot/killed girlfriend, then tried to kill himself but failed and shot himself through the neck

End of story: Guy charged with 1st degree murder, sent to prison. Did I mention that this happened during my first year as manager? FML.” — whysocereal