Are you more of a hotel or an Airbnb person? They both have their pros and cons. If you want to whip up a gourmet meal every night of your vacation, you might require a home with a fully equipped kitchen. On the other hand, if you want to avoid excessive cleaning fees and chow down on a complimentary breakfast in the morning, a hotel might be your best bet!

While you might think you know exactly what you’re getting when booking a hotel, many employees can actually prove otherwise. Hotel and motel workers have recently been sharing the most bizarre things they’ve come across in rooms, so we gathered their most fascinating replies below. From having frightening encounters to finding inexplicable amounts of produce, enjoy scrolling through these odd stories, and be sure to upvote your favorites!

#1

Managed several hotel when I was younger, here’s a few weird bits:

A guest left a briefcase with £35k within it, tried to contact them several times to no avail, after 6 months the police advised us it was now ours – this went to the staff bonus pot.

One guest fell seriously ill and was hospitalised. The situation didn’t sit right and locked their companion out of the room (they were given an alternative room for free). Found the companion trying to break into the room (despite our offer to get stuff for them). Police were called and they were wanted by them, also transpired they’d poisoned the guest and were after their wealth.

An urn with someone’s ashes.

Most disgusting is this. Heard the most blood curdling of screams coming from the rooms. Ran up and found a very traumatised housekeeper. As she flicked the bedding (to change the bed), unbeknownst to her, was a used condom. This flicked up in the air and landed on her head. She was frozen in fear and screaming. Had to help her by picking it off her. Understandably she had the rest of the day off.

Have a slew of hospitality tales like these.

Image credits: gherks69

#2

This story was told by a housekeeping manager during orientation. An old couple who are regulars would always stay at the hotel every summertime and the lady would always bring her teddy bear. She’d request that the housekeepers make sure to change its outfit daily. Odd indeed for the housekeepers to adhere to those rules, but not until they realized how well this couple would tip and anyone who happened to clean their room for the day would be so lucky. Bear had a name, forgot what it was, but the staff eventually started greeting it lmao.

Image credits: Velvetystardust

#3

A bathtub full of turnips.

Image credits: ladymerida

#4

A few years ago I was staying in a remote part of Oregon for work. Staying all by myself.

I get up in the morning and go into the bathroom to take a shower. The curtain had been bunched against the wall.

I get undressed, turn the water on, and pull the curtain fully across tub. When I do, it exposes a bloody handprint on the white curtain.

Scared the living s**t out of me. I nope hard out of there and skip the shower leaving as fast as possible.

As I check out I tell the front desk employee about the handprint. She sighs, rolls her eyes and says, “Probably just some hunter cleaning his kill in the bathtub. They’re not supposed to but they do it all the time.”.

Image credits: ye_olde_tosser

#5

Had a lady check in early & ask for a late check out. She still hadn’t checked out by 2pm & wouldn’t come out of the room. When we were about to have her escorted out she finally left. In the room was 100’s of little white out bottles everywhere. She had painted every reflective surface with white out including all the plumbing under the sink, all the fixtures, every screw & had started painting the mirrors.

Image credits: MenacingGummy

#6

As a guest, checked into a room in CA. I turn on the wall-mounted AC unit and a dirty needle falls out the bottom. Then we order a cot for our kid. We roll it in the room, open it up, and multiple cockroaches fall out and scurry away.

We got our money back and adios immediately.

Image credits: moto626

#7

Friend’s wife runs a mid priced hotel. She tells stories about what her people have found – everything from dead bodies in the bed frame (yup someone murdered their spouse, wrapped them in plastic) to d***s, adult toys (so many toys), to stolen cars in the parking lot. Anything you can imagine she has found.

Oh just remembered – cams in room. They have to scan every room now to validate that there are nothing communicating in the room now because of how many they have found.

Image credits: Jayhawker_Pilot

#8

I worked in a cheap hostel in Lisbon about 10 years ago. We had this very odd guest who’d speak in a super low voice and walk really slowly. He’d also leave random bits of TP around the hostel. Once the cleaning lady found him in his room completely rolled in toiled paper.

Image credits: ritaleyla

#9

For me it would be about 16 gallons of urine stashed underneath a bed we found while cleaning, it was stored in tons of plastic water bottles varying of different brands like Polish Springs or Dasani. once I also found 16 severed fingers in a trash can in a guys room.

Image credits: Exotic_Pop_5456

#10

Not me, but my wife worked as a night front desk attendant for a very budget hotel. She had some stories.

The saddest was a couple who were celebrating their wedding night/honeymoon at her hotel. They had been drinking at the reception and came in very happy and friendly. The man came back down after couple of hours because he couldn’t sleep due to backpain. He talked to my wife for a bit and offered her some cake before heading back to the room. He proceeded to take some of his wife’s morphine pills, which interacted with the alcohol in his system. His new bride woke up the next morning a widow.

Then there was a time when the cleaning ladies found a blowup doll a guess left in the room. One of the ladies was super excited to bring it home to her adult son….

Image credits: Gostaverling

#11

Oh I have one!
Worked at a motel on the outskirts of the city that used to be down the street from some pretty well known strip clubs in Eastern Ontario. There was a performer had an extra special act and left it in the bathtub during the day. The housekeeper wasn’t too thrilled about finding a gigantic python in the bathtub first thing in the morning.

Image credits: madaboutallthat

#12

My aunt was a cleaning lady for a nicer hotel for most of her life. She once found 75k in a bag under a pillow. She turned it in.

Image credits: NDRoughNeck

#13

A loaded .45 on the bedside table after checkout. I worked at a resort in northern Minnesota. The guy just left it there after checking out. We had to call him and he had to drive back to pick it up. When asked he said he was worried about the bears. He was staying in our main lodge building on the second floor which was essentially a hotel.

#14

A live fish in a bath thub.

Same year, different hotel, fresh bear meat. Twas a hunting season.

Image credits: supe3rnova

#15

Former Motel 6 employee outside of NOLA. Dead bodies always bothered me the most. Almost always recently dead not the hidden body trope you always hear about. As far as weirdest I’d say the room covered in smeared butter and syrup. Literal piles of empty syrup bottles in the bathroom.

Image credits: iputitthere

#16

Not a worker but use to travel for work. Once we were checking into our rooms and me and a coworker were going to her room. She open the door and there was two people living in the room. They were prostitutes who were friends with the house keeper. They were given keys to use empty rooms.

Image credits: Some_Cod_8604

#17

A large sack full of pinecones. We do not have any pine trees nearby so they had to have brought them with. It confuses and haunts me to this day.

Image credits: JudgeQuick

#18

Been workinh hotels for almost 20 years. A dead person, suicide. A safe full of dildos. A briefcase that had “if lost, please mail to the FBI”. A half melted ice sculpture for doing shots of a double penis. A couple of guns. A person’s dog that they left behind.

Image credits: TheLastMan

#19

A giant pocket knife like one of the Swiss army ones but it was the size of my arm under a bed.

Image credits: Spiritual_Quit_4833

#20

Former hotel front desk. At a mid range business hotel ($200+ nightly) we got a frantic call on the radio from housekeeping about a room being nasty.

Yeah, it was nasty. Poop thrown on the ceiling, smeared on the walls, on the floor. The bathroom had poop in the tub.

The room was declared a biohazard, we preauthorized about $2k on the CC, and a specialty company was brought in to clean it.

Customer wasn’t even mad when we called them to inform them of the charges, and the ban from the property.

Edit: let me clarify for those thinking this was explosive diarrhea: the poop wasn’t just in the bathroom, most of it was in the living area.

Image credits: TheForceIsNapping

#21

I’m not a worker at a motel but I have a relevant story. About 12 years ago my wife and I arrived in Savannah GA at 11pm to our motel after driving through a thunderstorm for 3 hours. Exhausted and rest to get some sleep, I grabbed the key from the front desk and headed to room #7 while my wife finished the paperwork. I heard noise coming from the room so cautiously opened the door. That was when I found three men and one woman, naked with the exception of some random biker gear like vests and boots were in the middle of making a p**no. They were all in their fifties and none were lighter than 300 lbs. There were two cameras on tripods and the bikers looked to be just went to get into the thick of it. I quickly shut the door once I was no longer in shock. Then ran back to the desk and let them know some people were in our room and the desk clerk set us up in room #1. I didn’t tell the clerk what I saw, but my wife and I had a great laugh when we were in our room.

Image credits: Digitalstatic

#22

Not a worker – stayed at Borgata in Atlantic City. Layed down on the bed and stretched my arms up. Reached up and felt something behind the picture over the bed. Someone stuck a well used crack pipe behind the picture and the wall.

#23

My father managed a hotel when I was younger. He came home one day distraught after finding a room with s**t everywhere. The guest had s**t in all of the pillow cases and smeared it all over the bathroom as well. I remember him saying it looked like a pig had lived in the room for a week.
Edit:spelling.

Image credits: awini9

#24

A bunch of used condoms stuck to the ceiling.

Image credits: Hummus-Among-Us

#25

I saw this on the short-lived Smoking Gun series on Adult Swim:

Hotel maids went to cleaning out a room only to find that everything in the room had been coated in Vaseline. He’d left behind a bag filled with dozens of empty jars. They charged the damages to his credit card, apparently he’d done the same thing to other hotels around town.

Image credits: Storyteller678

#26

I have a friend who has a side job of cleaning hotel rooms. He calls me out of nowhere cackling about how there were two inflatable sex dolls in the tub kissing, with one in the middle of the room with a paper saying “oh no I’ve been caught!”.

Image credits: TyrantDragon19

#27

Former management at a major hotel in Philly.

I was called into a room that was “destroyed” according to housekeeping. I wasn’t expecting what I saw. 100’s of packages of Sudafed, doors off closets, the honor bar absolutely ripped apart, doors of the hinges, broken wood cabinets, TV was shattered.

We did not call the authorities because the band’s management asked for discretion and paid a very large, undisclosed (to me at least) sum of money. The room was offline the rest of my tenure there, which was admittedly quite short.

Glad I am no longer in that industry.

Image credits: cookus

#28

While working the night audit at a very upscale hotel a known pimp (who was previously given a trespass notice to never come back to the hotel) somehow got in the building. Around midnight he tried to get upstairs to see his girlfriend and security told him leave or get arrested. Around 4 am he came down the main mezzanine staircase dragging a girl down the stairs by her hair. She was only wearing one shoe, it was clicking on the stairs on the way down.

They were in one of the very expensive suites adjacent to the presidential suite and owner suite. The person that rented the suite was a VVIP and knew how to use the staff elevator and a back entrance so they wouldn’t be seen by the public into or out of the hotel.

Some shady stuff went on with that guest getting put on the Do Not Rent list. The VIP had the place booked in someone else’s name. The VIP wasn’t banned for life, but the person who’s name was checked in can’t ever rent from the property anymore.

Image credits: TrogdorBurns

#29

Dried s**t in the bed – twice and almost a 1,000 miles apart. A stack of p*rn mags.

Image credits: Appropriate-Battle32

#30

Not a worker but I once got a room, upon entering everything was neat except there was spots where you could tell someone had only moved the blanket for where they were sleeping, there was a dent in the sheets where you can tell there a*s was, the remote was on the nightstand, and on the pillow you could see where their head was. I went down to the check in area and told them, they went upstairs with me to see what I was talking about and then they assigned me a new room lmao.

Image credits: LiterallyAzzmilk

#31

An absolutely giant thing of cherry flavored lube. Like I’m talking a f*****g massive cooking bowl sized tub of it with a label and all.

My friend says someone s**t in the bathroom trashcan, all over the shower floor, and all over the toilet seat as well as bed sheets.

Bloodstained sheets and towels.

Lotta sex toys.

Image credits: Jollygreengiant69

#32

My wife and I planned a trip to Copenhagen and I had plenty of extra space in my suitcase so I asked on their subreddit if anyone wanted anything from America. I got a decent number of requests and met up with some people to get them their stuff. The others never responded when we got to town so we just left the stuff in the hotel room. I always wondered what their staff thought coming in and seeing a bunch of American snacks unopened on the desk but reading these comments it probably didn’t seem too crazy.

#33

Used condoms in the kettle you use to make your coffee….. With disturbing frequency, at multiple chains, in different countries.

#34

My coworker eating a cold can of corn with a comically large pink spoon.

Also didn’t see a can opener with her, so either she was carrying around an open can of corn, or she found it open in the room.

Image credits: jollyrobyn