One of the most exciting aspects of going onvacationis having no idea what kinds of memories you’ll make. Will the best part of the trip be the deliciouspastriesyou enjoy every morning for breakfast or the unexpected conversations you have with locals at a dive bar? Only time will tell!Unfortunately, however, traveling can sometimes come with unexpectedly frightening situations as well. Redditors have beenrecallingthe creepiest experiences they’ve had while staying inAirbnbsaround the globe, so we’ve gathered some of their most unsettling stories below. And keep reading to find a conversation with Kashlee Kucheran, CEO and Founder ofTravel Off Path!This post may includeaffiliate links.
One of the most exciting aspects of going onvacationis having no idea what kinds of memories you’ll make. Will the best part of the trip be the deliciouspastriesyou enjoy every morning for breakfast or the unexpected conversations you have with locals at a dive bar? Only time will tell!
Unfortunately, however, traveling can sometimes come with unexpectedly frightening situations as well. Redditors have beenrecallingthe creepiest experiences they’ve had while staying inAirbnbsaround the globe, so we’ve gathered some of their most unsettling stories below. And keep reading to find a conversation with Kashlee Kucheran, CEO and Founder ofTravel Off Path!
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Stayed in an airbnb recently that was pretty insane. It was a shared space with several other people in it, but I had my own private room and small living room with a mini fridge and counter. I stayed in room and barely came out since covid-19 quarantine measures had just started to be enacted. Pretty soon after getting there I started having shortness of breath and vertigo. I started finding drawings in a sketchbook I had that I had no memory of drawing. I didnt speak to anyone for days and started getting really paranoid that someone was going to try to come into my room while I slept. After about a week there I thought I had already died and everything I was seeing was a hallucination to get my mind ready for death. I lived with that and other weird thoughts for another week till I read something on reddit about carbon monoxide poisoning. Called the gas company and turns out, sure enough there was a natural gas leak in my room. Lucky to be alive. Took weeks to get the host and airbnb to even compensate me for my stay.
I got to an airbnb in bumf*ck nowhere somewhere Kansas, at about midnight. The airbnb was 12 dollars for a night. The property was a quaint little house on some farmland, and I had passed the nearest house about a half a mile down the road. The host was already asleep when I got there so I let myself in and made my way to the couch where I was supposed to sleep. It was eerily quiet and pitch black outside, and I was already nervous so I couldn’t get to sleep. The living room was decorated with all kinds of random artifacts and treasures, I was looking around and taking everything in. There were cool rocks and souvenirs, but most curiously there were weird religious objects and books with cultish symbolism. I googled a word I saw on a tapestry, which turned out to be the name of the religion the host followed. The religion revolves around UFO’s, the ‘bible’ they follow is basically just a categorization of hundreds of types of space ships. I was a bit on edge after reading that, but after MUCH research, I concluded that it wasn’t a m**derous death cult, just super weird. I also nosily read through a journal that was just sitting on a coffee table, where the host had written things about her travels. One entry was about how she traveled to Peru and saw a space ship, she wrote about how she’d never seen one that close before. It was all very strange, but I eventually got to sleep regardless. When I woke up in the morning, the host made me coffee and unprompted, began telling me about her religion, among other conspiracies, like the government being able to control tornados. She was very kind and not overbearing, just eager to tell someone her truth. We talked for an hour or so before I got back on the road, and she sent me away with a bunch of stuff to research and an airbnb magazine. Best airbnb i’ve stayed at. Close second would be the gay nudist hostel in memphis.
My fiance and I were staying at an AirBnB in Helsinki to visit family. When we got there and got settled, we were chatting about things we thought were missing in the apartment, specifically I remember saying I wished there was another towel hook in the bathroom (there was only 1 and obviously 2 towels being used). The next day we went out and were out pretty much all day, and when we got back that night there was another towel hook in the bathroom…
To learn more about why some travelers aren’t fans of Airbnb anymore, we reached out to Kashlee Kucheran, CEO and Founder ofTravel Off Path. Kashlee was kind enough to have a chat withBored Pandaand detail exactly why she won’t use Airbnb today.“I have used AirBnB in the past, especially when it was the new kid on the block. In the beginning, it was so unique to be able to stay in someone’s actual home, a breath of fresh air in the accommodation industry, but that didn’t last long,” the travel expert shared.
To learn more about why some travelers aren’t fans of Airbnb anymore, we reached out to Kashlee Kucheran, CEO and Founder ofTravel Off Path. Kashlee was kind enough to have a chat withBored Pandaand detail exactly why she won’t use Airbnb today.
“I have used AirBnB in the past, especially when it was the new kid on the block. In the beginning, it was so unique to be able to stay in someone’s actual home, a breath of fresh air in the accommodation industry, but that didn’t last long,” the travel expert shared.
Stayed at one in Rome. The door had 5 deadbolt locks on it. The windows were barred. Found out why. Randomly though the day people would try to open the door and look through the windows.Multiple times we would turn around and see people peeking though cracks between the curtains.We weren’t even there a lot. Usually a quick meal or drop stuff off then back out to see the sites. Really nice place though
“Now, instead of renting someone’s apartment for a few days, you are just inside a huge rental companies property that has been thrown together with scotch tape, sparsely decorated, and hardly maintained,” Kashlee says.“For me, it’s the worst case scenario. I’m paying money to stay in something that has been given the bare minimum effort, yet charged similarly to hotels, without the service or amenities of hotels,” she explained. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Now, instead of renting someone’s apartment for a few days, you are just inside a huge rental companies property that has been thrown together with scotch tape, sparsely decorated, and hardly maintained,” Kashlee says.
“For me, it’s the worst case scenario. I’m paying money to stay in something that has been given the bare minimum effort, yet charged similarly to hotels, without the service or amenities of hotels,” she explained. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
As far as why Airbnb appeals to so many travelers, Kashlee says there are a variety of reasons. “Many people still believe they are staying at a local’s home, usually to their surprising disappointment once they arrive,” she noted.
I was travelling solo in Prague, and i loved my AirBNB apartment. It was the only time ive used them. As i was going into the apartment, this old czech guy starts yelling at me in czech, i say sorry i dont speak czech, and i go up the stairs. He follows me but heads up another flight. I didn’t go into the apartment until he was out of sight. 10 mins later the doorbell rings, and i look out the peephole and it’s the guy. I obviously dont open the door but my heart was beating so hard. He leaves after a few minutes. I talked to the host about it and he came over right away to calm me down and assure me. He was great. The guy never showed up again.
Had a week long trip to Iceland. Our last night of the trip was just before a 6am flight, so I booked a cheap spare bedroom through Airbnb, close to the airport in Keflavik. I was honestly considering pulling an all-nighter at the airport instead, and in retrospect I wish I had. I probably would have gotten more sleep.We checked in with the Airbnb owner’s 9 to 12 year old son (I’m terrible at guessing age) who didn’t really speak English (even though the owner knew what time we would be arriving). The place was a mess, we really felt like we were invading someone’s home, but we had a bed and a bathroom and that’s all we needed for one night…The horrible part was overnight: I admit this is partly my fault as I forgot to put the lock on our bedroom door. I happened to wake up overnight to see the owner’s son standing at the foot of the bed just staring. I asked him what he was doing and he just turned around and walked away. I woke up my boyfriend who was still asleep, but he didn’t really register what I was saying and just went back to sleep. I then locked the door, went back to bed, but didn’t get a wink of sleep the rest of the evening.I let the owner know what happened after we got home, but he didn’t really do anything or offer any explanation. 0/10 would not recommend at all…
Kashlee shared that her favorite alternative to Airbnb is just sticking to an old, classichotel. “Hotels are listening to the demands of tourists and have started offering things like longer stay discounts, kitchenettes, better wifi, and more roomy suites,” the travel expert told Bored Panda. “Hotels, especially if they are historic, have some of the best addresses in the world. Why try and change a perfect model?”
I messaged the host asking for towels. She told me they were under the bed in a drawer. They were in the second drawer that I opened. The first drawer was stuffed full of sex toys and bondage supplies. To each their own, that’s her sexual expression. But you gotta put that somewhere else when you have guests staying over. I shouldn’t have been surprised since she had about 30 framed photos on the wall in the tiny studio apartment. Photos of herself from various pole dancing competitions and boudoir shoots.
“In regards to safety, I find hotels much more secure than Airbnbs,” Kashlee added. “They usually have maintenance staff on hand around the clock for thing like burst pipes or problems, guards and security cameras, on call doctors, high quality safety boxes in the room, variety of locks on the doors, and protocols in place for things like earthquakes or other emergencies.”
A couple years ago, my friend and I (18/19 F) were travelling in the Southeast USA because we were on spring break. The AirBnB we rented for the night turned out to be a couch in this guy’s front room. In the middle of the night, these two people come in through the front door, drunk as hell, banging about, cursing, just overall being loud and obnoxious (they were NOT our AirBnB host), and start talking in front of our bed. I was awake, as was my friend, but we were unsure of what they were doing or what they would do, so we didn’t move. They left the house and came back a couple of times, creeping us out the entire time, and we didn’t find out until the next morning that our host had been renting one of his guest rooms in the back of the house to them.Also, one of them ended up s******g on top of the toilet seat in the middle of the night. We got a full refund.
Not very creepy but some Paris AirBnBs just don’t exist, like there’s just no house at the address. So I showed up in Paris and guess what, no AirBnB, just great.
“Of course, creepy situations can happen in any type of accommodation, but myself as someone who spends an average of 200 nights on the road per year, I feel much safer staying in hotels than the property of someone who decided out of the blue they would like to be a hotel,” Kashlee shared.
I stayed at one, they had halloween decorations and a mouse infestation, I went up stairs to check out the pounding noise, skeleton with red eyes scared the s**t out of me.
My friend used to air bnb her one bedroom apartment a few times a month for extra money. She came back to a huge mess one time like there was a party. She peaked into a garbage bag they left and saw a huge box of used enemas. Her poor cat must’ve witnessed an orgy.
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I stayed in one that used to be a love hotel in Ikebukuro, Tokyo last year. Found out a few months later there was a guy going around m**dering people in their hotels in that area.
This isn’t exactly creepy, but just weirded me out.I was travelling throughout Eastern and Central Europe alone (18F at the time) and booked a private room through AirBnB. When I got there the owner was not around so I left my things in the room, locked it, and went exploring for a bit. At around 9:30pm he messaged me asking if I wanted to go out to dinner with him (I had already eaten and hadn’t met him yet) and I declined, as I thought it was odd that a man in his mid-40s wanted to go out to dinner with someone he had never met.We chatted a little when I got back to the apartment, and things were fine, but the whole experience was a little off-putting. The next morning he offered me food, and asked if I’d like my cereal microwaved (I had no idea people did this?? It was very confusing). He then insisted on taking me around the city until I had to catch my bus (as I insisted he drop me off early because the whole situation was making me uncomfortable), and I never contacted him again.The owner might of just been overly friendly, and nothing bad ever happened. It was just a weird experience and made me uncomfortable, probably because of how young I was.
My parents right now own an Airbnb. There was this couple that rented a night once, they were your typical dr*ggy looking people. They stayed for one night. That night, the woman was screaming like no tomorrow, I think she was being abused. We heard everything because the Airbnb was upstairs and very easy to hear. The guy was probably drunk. Cops were called and arrested the guy. The next morning, my parents found the glass door shattered, the police asked my mom if we could help provide the woman some food or whatever. Mom reluctantly declined because she had enough with these people and kicked her out. I still am not 100% sure what happened that night TLDR: domestic violence leads to a shattered glass door and cops.
Can’t remember where I read it, but someone found a camera hidden inside a WiFi router in the master bedroom. Ugh.
- The house with a creepy mannequin propped up at an organ in the backyard2. The house where the owner (who was single and lived alone) had 4 things hung up on his fridge - his own Christmas newsletters for the past 4 years. In 2017 he designed a fursuit. I know this because the picture of him in the fursuit made it into that year’s Christmas newsletter, which was hanging on his fridge.
I stood at a lovely AirBnB in Iowa for my little brothers graduation. He didn’t know I was going to make it so we threw a surprise party at the Airbnb. While we were setting up my other brother and I went down to the basement to get an extra table. The second we got down there we looked at each other and said, yup it’s scary here. We searched for the table, the longer I spent in the basement the greater the feeling of dread grew in me. We found the extra table and headed back up stairs, joking about how creepy a seemingly normal basement was. My whole family got together, and the family started. While we were celebrating my girlfriend decided she’d run the washer which was downstairs, she was going to go down alone when she came back and asked me to go with her, since it was creepy. Again I went down and rushed to leave. The basement was now officially scary to me.The party continued and we had a wonderful time. As the night started to settle people got in their Ubers back to their hotels, and now it was just me and my girlfriend, unwinding after an afternoon of eating and drinking. We were relaxing when the laundry buzzer went off. I looked at her, and she said she didn’t pick up the load from earlier. I thought it was strange that it hadn’t beeped hours ago. We headed down to the basement. Again she stopped at the stairs to the basement and asked me to go first. As I was going down the buzzer on the washer went off again scaring us. We both jumped, I hurried down grabbed the laundry and we headed up stairs to let it air dry. As we finished, I could tell she was still nervous, we decided to go through the house and lock all the windows and doors (this is standard when we visit an Airbnb we never miss this step). My girlfriend stays beside me this whole time, we finally have one last door, the door to the back garden right outside the kitchen and at the top of the basement. I go and lock the door, ignoring the sense of dread I felt with my back turned to the basement.I should mention this was an oldish house, so the stairs were steep and the bedroom where we slept was probably originally an attic. In order to turn on the lights up stairs you had to flip a switch at the bottom of the stairs. As we made our way in the dimly lit house to the light switch I think our sense of tiredness overcame the dread we had. I flipped on the switch and headed for the stairs. Just as I did I heard a loud banging sound like the sound of pots or something metallic clanging. It was a fast tone Whack Whack Whack. My girlfriends face was full of fear and I’m sure mine was too. I began to go for the kitchen where there was a knife. But then I heard the whacking again, at the top of the stairs, I turned to look against the now illuminated attic, and saw a ceiling fan turned on to its max setting, and it’s mounting pole making the sound. I ran upstairs and turned off the fan. My girlfriend close behind me. We got ready for bed. I headed downstairs to turn off the light switch and went up stairs. I looked outside the window of the attic to check on my car out front. Everything was good. We began to fall asleep. It was a restless night, hot and stuffy. I had dreams of seeing a shadowy figure out on the lawn. I woke up the next morning tired. I made my way down to the kitchen to brew some coffee. As I was turning around I looked at the stair case to the basement. Something was wrong, and I don’t know why but I was drawn to the basement again. I looked down the stairs, and walked down. I looked around, and saw nothing. I headed up stairs. We had breakfast packed our bags and got ready to go. As we were doing one last sweep, I checked the kitchen one more time to make sure everything as in good shape. Just as I was about to say all good let’s go, that damned laundry machine buzzed. Both me and my girlfriend were just like nope, and proceeded to get the f**k out. As we were leaving in a rush I grabbed the bags and told my girlfriend to start the car. As I was the fan upstairs turned on again and began making the whacking noise. I’ve never bolted so fast out of a house. When I got to the car my girlfriend saw the look of panic on my face. “What happened?” “The fan turned on again.” I got her out of the drivers seat and we sped off to collect our thoughts at a local diner. I texted the Airbnb host that the washer kept on making noises and that I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the ceiling fan upstairs.They messaged back“Thank you for staying with us.”.
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