Sublet Horror Stories

As the second snowiest winter on record finally releases us from her icy grip, it's finally spring SUBLETTING SEASON. We can smell the blooming flowers 'n sketchy Craigslist strangers already! But really, we get it. You have to find some dude to overcharge for your crappy twin XL stat so you can afford five square feet of space in Manhattan for the summer. If you aren't properly skeeved out by the thought of someone else showering in your shower, here are some subletting horror stories to get you good and freaked! Directly submitted from readers like you.

(Remember, PennLets is the only legit place to peep for all things University City.)

• Tragic missed op-pot-tunity: "I had a summer subletter who sold drugs and got all his weed ordered to my house from California. I should have made him give me some of his profits." (Also sorry for that pun.)
• Just a lil peep: "One of my housemates' subletters encountered me making a completely nude-from-the-waist-up venture into the hallway. Eye contact was made. We never spoke of it again."
• Just a lil pup: "I probably should've known that trying to find a subletter while abroad was never going to work out well, but hey, I was desperate, so when I finally found someone who responded to emails in a friendly and punctual manner, the fact that he had a dog didn't seem like a huge problem. I like dogs! Things were going great until the Fourth of July, when Fido apparently got freaked out by the fireworks and clawed his way all the way through my bedroom door to escape. It only got worse from there. When I arrived back on campus in August, my cozy little apartment was a disaster zone. Subletter Dearest had replaced the door, but neglected to deal with the four square feet of carpeting that had also been destroyed in Fido's patriotic fervor. To make matters infinitely worse, the entire place reeked of dog pee, the white bathtub had turned a disconcerting blackish color, and my ever-thoughtful subletter had declined to take out the trash or clear out the refrigerator when he'd moved out three weeks prior. I spent the first few weeks of the semester scrubbing dog pee out of the carpeting and disinfecting every square inch of my apartment, but I learned a valuable life lesson. Friends, just say no to dogs."
• Surprise roomie: "My older sister wasn't able to get a subletter for her place one summer and came back in the fall to a naked homeless man living in her room storing urine in tupperware in her mini fridge."
• Yard sex: "I came back to school a few weeks early to find that one of my housemates had subletted to an entire Irish soccer team. They really, really liked Four Loko. And live-in girlfriends who left their (dirty) underwear in various places around the house. And not paying for cabs so that pissed cab drivers knocked on our door. And grunting. And setting off the fire alarm. And yard sex, apparently, because our front yard was covered in condom wrappers. Things they didn't like: shirts."