It’s finally October and many ASU students are looking forward to monster movie marathons, cooler weather and fall break. Telling spooky stories is all fun and games until a horrific story turns out to be truthful.
Roommate relationships can quickly get scary, and ASU students are among those who have experienced truly terrifying living situations.
The State Press asked students across ASU for their wildest, weirdest and most horrifying roommate stories. Their responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Sleeping With One Eye Open
“It all kind of started the first day I met this kid, on move-in day. The first conversation I had with him, he said ‘If anyone in this room is gay, thinking about being transgender, or has black friends, then we’re going to have a tough time.’
He made a lot of threats multiple times, he would threaten to knock me out, threaten to fight me. He has threatened to hurt our other roommate, who doesn’t come to the room for valid reasons.
It climaxed last Saturday night when I came home from the football game. He’s sitting there with our mutual friend, and I come over and sit on the couch with them, and he starts insulting me and making fun of me, saying awful things.
Then, he freezes up. I’ve read about this in books, but I never thought I’d experience it. He looks at me, and says ‘One of these days, I am going to kill you.’
I get up off the couch, got in a little fist-fight, but it wasn’t very long.
I go in my room, and I’m thinking this dude is actually going to kill me and pull a knife on me.
The next day, I went to the community director at Barrett, and told them what happened. They did a very short investigation with the campus police, the threats were validated, by him.
Within 30 minutes, I had a restraining order.”
Karsten Hart, freshman majoring in marketing
'Stun'ning Roommate
“I made the huge mistake of not really getting to know my first college roommate (M) before I met her. From our brief conversations, I figured she was pretty cool. Things were going great for a while after we moved in.
M and I went to parties and football games together and it looked like we were going to be the best of friends.
But she would come back to the dorm every night, waking me up while she drunkenly tried to get herself into bed at 3 am. She once gave a key to our dorm room to a guy that she was sleeping with.
I put up with her bad habits for a while, and even asked her multiple times if she could try to be a bit more courteous when coming back in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to be mean, but things kept getting worse.
One of the boys that M had previously slept with and stopped talking to had asked me if I could braid his hair. I told M I was having someone over later that day just so she wouldn’t be surprised, and she said she’d be out of the room. He left and it was getting pretty late, so I had one of our mutual friends go try to find M.
When she came back after finding M, she said M and her friends had a taser and that she had to talk them down from coming up to my room to assault me. When M came back that night I immediately left, talked to my RA, and slept in a friend’s room. I was scared to be around her.
I ended up asking her about the taser incident weeks later, and she admitted that while I was doing the guy's hair she was waiting in the stairwell at the end of the hall to see who came out of the room. When she saw it was him, she immediately went to her friend’s room and asked if she could use her taser because she was determined to get revenge.
She ended up switching to a single dorm second semester, so I had the room all to myself, and I could finally live comfortably. She was crazy, and now I don’t want to room with anyone again in fear of having a similar experience.”
Jada Fisher, sophomore majoring in nursing
Don’t 'Piss' Off Your Roommate
“He didn’t really respect personal space. He definitely had the freshman year attitude of ‘Oh, my parents are gone, I’m going to get drunk every night.’
The worst of it was when he came back at 4 a.m., I woke up with him grabbing my leg in the middle of the night. I tried to push him off me, but he fell backward, hit his head against the wall and gashed his head open. I turned on the light and he was completely naked and had blood streaming down his face.
I had to wake up at 6 a.m. in the next morning and I think he peed in one of my clothing drawers.
He broke our toilets and had thrown up all over the bathroom. He had gotten blood on everything, it was a mess.
He didn’t know how to live with someone else who wasn’t doing the same things he was doing.”
Julian Prime, former ASU student currently majoring in cinema studies at Oberlin College
Read more: Tinder Diaries: ASU students confess dating app stories
Scrambling to Move Out
“I went home for a weekend, and I came back and some of my food was missing. My pillow wasn’t there, just some of my stuff had been messed with.
I found my pillow underneath my bed. I pulled it out, and it looked like it had throw up on it. I asked her about it, and she was like ‘What? I have no idea.’
I also found food, from my fridge, under my bed, half empty.
Another friend who lived in my hall told me that a guy and my roommate had taken food out of my fridge, specifically hummus and eggs, and put them in my pillow. They thought it was funny, I don’t know.
I guess she was mad that I had more food in the fridge, even though it was my fridge.
She put eggs and hummus in my pillow, and then tried to hide it from me."
Katie Klotnia, freshman majoring in business sustainability
A Hairy Situation
“My freshman year I had a roommate situation where my roommate would always brush her hair on my side of the dorm. She shedded a lot, so I would get a lot of hairballs — just immense amounts of hair.
It was to the point where it was so much hair that it was on the shower walls, just everywhere in the dorm.
It got to the point where I asked her if she could turn the other way when she brushed her hair.
The shedding of the hair still continued on my side, so I just started rolling the hair up into balls and displaying them in her view.
Along with other things, we had to talk to a CA, so I brought that up and she just said, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, I can’t control my head shedding.’”
Theresa Gbekia, junior majoring in criminal justice and criminology
An Unusual Spot for Underwear
“I had a suitemate my freshman year and we had a major language barrier so we didn’t talk a lot.
One day me and my roommate noticed she hadn’t been back to her room for like a week so we wanted to check up on her, but were also scared to invade her privacy. So we just opened her door and then peeked in and there was a bunch of stuff just thrown everywhere and only one thong hanging in the closet on a hanger.”
Alexys Barry, sophomore majoring in business marketing
Reach the reporter at eborst@asu.edu and follow @ellieeborstt on Twitter.
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Ellie Borst is the executive editor of The State Press, overseeing the publication and its four departments: online, magazine, multimedia and engagement. She plans to graduate in May 2022 with her master's in legal studies and got her bachelor's in journalism in 2021. Previous roles she has held since joining SP in 2018 include digital managing editor, magazine managing editor, community and culture desk editor, and arts and culture reporter.
