From a woman who built an entire hidden apartment inside a shopping mall sign to a man secretly living inside someone else’s attic, here are mind-blowing places people have actually lived, all the way down to a bizarre village in England.
Squid Game Flats
Surprisingly, a strange village was built in the middle of a shopping mall! The Queensgate Center wasn’t being used, so they built these odd colorful homes here to make use of the space.
You can snag one for just over $160,000, though, if you want to see any sunlight you’ll have a lot to contend with because the apartment windows are nestled behind the mall windows. The whole vibe is super eerie, with the houses themselves looking more like dingy dollhouses.It ressembles the Lantern of Chagrin Valley. Built to resemble a 1940s village, this wildly unique assisted living home in Ohio is designed for dementia patients and features tiny houses with porches and a grass-green carpet for flooring, all inside a huge main building. The ceilings are painted sky-blue and fitted with fiberoptics that mimic daylight and stars, all designed to help residents feel at home, while ensuring they’re completely safe.
Assisted Living at The Lantern of Chagrin Valley by lanternlifestyle
The Skip House
If you’re house hunting in London, UK, safety costs a lot of money, and 28-year-old artist Harrison Marshall couldn’t afford it. However, in January 2023, he had a truly wild brainwave. Marshall was part of Skip Gallery, an architectural company that repurposes old skips, British for dumpsters. So, why not turn one into a house? And that’s exactly what he did!
It took him a month to build, adding to the skip and transforming it into a structure that stood 11.5 feet high and just over 14 feet wide at its broadest point. The frame was clad in cedar shingles and the roof made from recycled plastic and aluminum. Clever? Yes. But luxurious, it was not. For the first six weeks, there was no electricity, so no heating. One time, the damp got so bad that Marshall lifted his mattress to find the floor underneath rotting! As for the basics, he relied on a portable toilet outside and used a kindly neighbor's hose for daily drinking and washing up water, whilst he showered at work or the gym. Cooking was just as minimal, he only had a single hob, which meant lots of one-pot wonders.
Though, surprisingly, it helped Marshall’s love life, at least in the beginning. The skip-house made for a great conversation starter on dating apps, but things became tricky if a relationship got serious. Even so, there’s no denying how cheap it was. It cost £950 for the skip itself and around £4,000 to fix it up. That’s about $6,500 for an entire home, unheard of in the Big Smoke! But what about the land it resided on? Well, an arts charity had managed to secure Marshall a patch of wasteland in Bermondsey, south-east London as well as covering the cost of the toilet, so actually living there cost Marshall nothing. He ended up staying for a year and, despite the challenges, grew to love the place.
He Lived In A Shipping Container For 30 Years
In Newport, Wales, you’ll find Lighthouse Farm, where four old shipping containers once stood. Only, these weren’t just any containers, they made a vast, interlocking home for one Stephen Gibbons. After his divorce in 1992, Stephen needed a place to stay. Luckily, he’d inherited a 3 acre plot of land from his father and already owned some shipping containers. So, he decided to turn them into his home!
The interior was surprisingly cozy, complete with a fireplace, furniture, and a whole lot of clutter from Gibbons’ hoarding habits, including a collection of stuffed birds. It was fully insulated, had electricity, and even a septic tank! Though, there was one setback to the unique setup, it had no windows. Despite that, Gibbons lived happily in his unusual home for the next 30 years and partially raised his children there.
But in January 2021, Newport City Council came calling, and it wasn’t for tea. They served him a notice
ordering him to vacate the premises, claiming he didn’t have planning permission and was running an unregistered car repair business. Gibbons was stunned. He insisted that he’d never tried to hide his home from planners, and denied being a repairman, he’d only ever fixed one broken tractor in the whole time he’d lived there! But his protests fell on deaf ears. The council went on to rule that he’d illegally converted the land from an agricultural site into a home and that was a big no-no. In September 2022, they gave him 6 months to get out of there. He tried to appeal their decision on the basis that he’d lived there for so long, but trying to elicit empathy from the council was like a deer trying to woo a wolf. Gibbons lost everything. He spoke of the injustice, how his home had never hurt anyone, and how broken he felt. To add insult to injury, he needed to return the land to its original condition and was forced to pay £8,000, that’s over $10,000, on top of this. With few options left, Gibbons even considered putting his house on wheels just to get around the planning laws! As for who squealed to the council in the first place, Gibbons had his suspicions, there were a few people he’d fallen out with over the years. Even so, other locals came out to support him, Gibbons had done his fair share for the community. He helped organize a local relief group during the pandemic, kept fly tippers’ trash off his neighbors' drive, and even wrangled an escaped bull! Sounds like a hero to me.
So, what happened to him? We don’t know. We've tried contacting Jonathan Hill, a reporter from WalesOnline who interviewed him, but even he didn’t know.
Shipping Container Village In Guijing, China
It’s not just Gibbons who’s been making shipping containers his home. In 2013, there was an entire village in Guijing on the outskirts of Shanghai, where families of migrant workers lived in 18 makeshift containers stacked on top of each other.
The shipping container village: Families forced to live in desperate conditions for TEN YEARS by Shipping Container Homes Millions of rural workers flock to cities for jobs, but can’t afford the extortionate housing prices. So, some of them rent container homes. Several such villages existed, but for the one in Guijing, people paid just over $80 a month to their landlord, Zhang Baofa.Baofa bought the containers in 2010 after realizing he could use them to bypass Shanghai’s strict construction laws. Constructing a building requires approval, but the containers didn’t. Reportedly moved by the migrants’ plight, he turned the containers into a small village and offered cheap rent. Despite their rough appearance, these makeshift homes had electricity and running water, though that was about it. There were no bathrooms, so residents relied on public toilets and bathhouses to wash. Over time, the village grew into more than just a place to live. People converted containers into offices, stores, and even bars.
However, this unusual way of life came under threat. The government claimed the containers were unsafe and, more importantly, that they were standing in the way of development. Across Shanghai’s outskirts, residents were evicted and the container towns were demolished. This bulldozer urbanization was part of an estimated $6 trillion campaign to develop infrastructure for around 400 million people expected to become urban residents over the next decade. The irony being that the cheap housing they demolished was for the very workers it wanted to attract! And they didn’t even bother providing replacement homes. Ultimately, the land was sold to developers, who used it to build a load of expensive stuff.
Caterpillar House
Of course, there’re those who view the shipping container design as chic. Over in the town of Lo Barnechea Chile, nestled in the foothills of the Andes, stands a behemoth home built from 12 shipping containers, covering nearly 3,800 square feet!
This bold structure flaunts its exposed concrete and steel cladding to striking effect. The house is designed far longer than it is tall, with slanted volumes that follow the steep outline of the land, earning it the name Caterpillar House.
Starburst House
In 2020, London designer James Whitaker was commissioned to create a container house in Joshua Tree Park, in the midst of the Californian desert, that takes things even further. It would be made from 21 shipping containers splayed out in all directions, and aptly named the Starburst House.
Whitaker drew inspiration from a childhood science experiment, where he dangled a grain of salt on a cotton thread into a saline solution and it slowly grew into a crystal. That same year, the house went up for sale for $3.5 million, despite the fact that it didn’t actually exist yet! Construction was supposed to begin in 2021, but as far as I can tell, it still hasn’t happened, which is a shame considering how insane this place looks.
She Secretly Lived Inside A Rooftop Store Sign For A Year
Enough about shipping containers. Here's someone who went way, way further with their crazy home! In April 2024, contractors working on the roof of a Family Fare grocery store in Midland County, Michigan, noticed something odd, an extension cord leading into the store’s sign. That definitely shouldn’t have been there!
What’s more, locals had recently spotted a mysterious figure dressed head to toe in black wandering around the area, but no one knew who they were or where they lived. Bewildered, the store manager suspected the figure had been living inside the sign, and had no choice but to call the cops. The Midland police arrived on the scene and here’s what they found.
Police confront woman living in grocery store sign in Michigan by MLive It turned out this stealthy tenant was a 34-year-old woman living in a space estimated to be about 5ft wide and 8ft high, and she wasn’t living in squalor either. She had all the essentials for a happy home: a coffee maker, computer, bedding, phone, and even a printer! So, why was she living up on a roof in the first place? Well, she was homeless and despite having a job, she couldn’t afford accommodation. However, when reporting this story, she chose to remain anonymous and was tight-lipped about her background.
Woman Caught Living Inside Grocery Store Sign For a Year by Code Blue Cam Does that whole safe spot mean others used it before her? It certainly sounds like it. What we do know is that she covered her body in black and wore a mask and goggles because of a super rare allergy to sunlight. That’s rough, but it meant that dark hideaway was the perfect living quarters for her. But how did she get up there in the first place? Well, this ninja admitted to scaling the roof using a collapsible ladder, and hauling all her belongings up like that too! Since having a strange person secretly living in your store’s sign is a huge liability though, the police had to escort her off the roof. Thankfully, no one pressed charges. The woman complied, apologized to the manager for the trouble, and went on her way. Store workers gathered up her belongings from her tiny home, leaving them in a safe spot for her to collect later. So, where is she now? No one knows.As for who she actually is, a 2024 Detroit News article claimed to
reveal her backstory. Since it hasn’t been confirmed elsewhere I won’t mention the name it gives, but according to the article the woman was brought up in Midland in a fractured home and raised by her grandparents. Throughout her life, she suffered from schizophrenia; thoughts came and went uncontrollably, leaving her exhausted, confused, and isolated. She couldn’t sleep and spent her days believing people were spying on her and plotting to harm her.
As she grew older, her behavior became more erratic. She would mumble incomprehensibly to herself and even proclaimed that she was a prophet. This all took a toll on her relationships with family and friends. Unable to focus her mind on anything, she left college in 2014 and quit her part-time job. She didn’t trust anyone, all she wanted was to be left alone. In 2016, her grandfather passed away, pushing the family even further to the edge. She rarely left her room and kept her grandmother up all night making noise. During the day, they’d fight constantly. By August 2022, her grandmother could no longer cope and evicted her.
Despite offering her help finding an apartment, the woman declined. By 2023, she was living off the grid with only herself to rely on, making do in a tent she’d set up on public land. Somewhere along the line, she ended up moving to that roof, and after her discovery, was apparently spotted living in a tent on the roof of a laundromat. It was not possible to corroborate the Detroit News article with any other sources, and it's unsure how they got their info. But whoever and wherever she is, hopefully she’s okay.
2 Children Found Living In Abandoned Bus In Texas
In March 2012, on the outskirts of Splendora, Texas, USA, a postal worker came across an abandoned lot. The area was caked in trash, and stranded in the middle was a broken old school bus with its windows blacked out. Two bedraggled children were playing in the filth there, without an adult in sight.
Alarmed, he immediately called the authorities, who arrived on the scene and took the kids into child welfare custody. It turns out they’d been
living in the ramshackle bus for three whole months! They were taken care of by a woman believed to be their great-aunt. Though, care is a generous word. The children weren’t enrolled in any school, and when she left to work her 12-hour shifts, she’d leave them alone all day. Neighbors even recalled seeing the kids wandering around outside in the dark. So, where were their parents? Well, they’d both been imprisoned for embezzling money from Hurricane Ike victims in 2008. Inside, the bus wasn’t all bad. It had a bathroom, electricity, internet access, TV, air conditioning, and bunk beds for the children. Apparently, it was only supposed to be a temporary home while an actual house was being built on the site. Regardless, leaving young kids on their own in any circumstance is inexcusable.
Woman Sat On Boyfriend's Toilet For 2 Years
We all love toilet time, but in 2006, 35-year-old Pam Babcock from Ness City, Kansas, took it to the extreme. After fighting with her boyfriend one day, Pam hid in the bathroom of his mobile home and refused to come out.
Hours became days, weeks became months, and Pam only got more elusive. It became part of the couple’s daily routine, she’d wash in the bath and change her clothes, while her boyfriend, 36-year-old Kory McFarren, would bring her food and drink. They’d chat about ordinary things and every day he’d ask her to come out of the bathroom, but she’d always reply: “Maybe tomorrow.” Then, at some point, she moved onto the toilet and refused to get off. She sat there for over a month, barely moving, and the effect it had on her body was horrifying. Think about how numb your bum gets from sitting in the same place for a couple of hours. Well, a month has 730 hours. The prolonged pressure of sitting on the seat for so long made her skin begin to blister, and as the wounds healed, her skin started growing around the toilet seat. This damaged the nerves in her legs which, along with her immobility, caused them to waste away.
It all came to a head when, in February 2008, Kory found Pam groggy and lethargic. Enough was enough, after two years in the bathroom, a worried Kory finally called the authorities, which is two years too late if you ask me. When police arrived, they were shocked. Pam insisted she was fine and didn’t want to leave, but this time, she had no choice. Whipping out a crowbar, the cops removed the entire toilet seat, with her still attached, and rushed her to the hospital, where doctors painstakingly removed it from her body.
But why would someone do this to themselves? Sadly, Pam had a traumatic childhood filled with abuse and likely suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of situations where escape might be difficult or help unavailable. It often causes anxiety about leaving the house, only Pam took it a step further, the bathroom was the one place where she felt safe. As to why Kory didn’t ask for help sooner, he said:
She is an adult; she made her own decision… after a while, you kind of get used to it. Subsequently, Kory was charged for mistreatment of a dependent adult and sentenced to 6 months’ probation. Pam was released from hospital after months of treatment, though the trail goes cold when it comes to what happened to her after. Some say her legs deteriorated so much that she could no longer walk and has remained in a wheelchair, but without any clear-cut evidence we can't say for sure.
Mahal Family: Living On The Platform Of New Delhi Railway Station
If you were travelling from New Delhi Railway Station sometime between 1975 and 1985 and decided to rest in the waiting lounge, you would’ve been met with quite the sight! Living there was the Mahal family: mother Wilayat Mahal, her two children, their seven servants, and thirteen watchdogs!
So, what were they all doing there? Wilayat persistently claimed that she was Indian royalty, a descendant of the long-deposed House of Oudh. Oudh, or Awadh, was once a Shia Muslim kingdom in northern India, with the capital of Lucknow as its base. But by 1856, it all went to pot when it was annexed by the British Empire. Oudh’s governor at the time, Wajid Ali Shah, was stripped of his land and exiled. Fast forward to the 1970s, and Wilayat declared she was a descendant of Oudh’s last king and vowed to wait in the station’s VIP waiting room as a form of protest until her ancestral properties were returned. She had the lounge draped in all the fineries you’d expect from royalty, carpets, potted plants, a silver tea set. And Wilayat expected to be treated like royalty too. Even her own children called her
Your Highness! If someone wished to speak to her, they would be told to write it down on a note. A servant would then deliver it to her on a silver platter and read the message aloud.
Her occupation of the lounge was illegal, but any railway official was quickly chased off by her dogs and she met any eviction attempt with a threat to down a bottle of snake venom. That’s one way of dealing with it.
Even so, throughout these years the government insisted that she had no right to a palace. Plus, her actual claim to Oudh lineage was shaky at best. Nonetheless, many Shia Muslims in Lucknow were convinced and moved to tears by the return of their queen.This, it turns out, was all it took. Officials feared the wrath of the Shias in Lucknow if they thought their queen was being mistreated and in 1984 finally yielded, offering her 10,000 rupees to buy a home, a lot of money at the time. But she said it was too little. So, they offered her a four-bedroom house. She said it was too small. For her stubbornness, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi awarded the family Malcha Mahal, a red-stone hunting lodge on the edge of New Delhi, built way back in the 1200s.
But it was far from a happily ever after. The house was a dark, crumbling relic with no electricity, lost in the forest far from any community. Wilayat and her two children lived there in poverty until, one by one, they passed away, and the Mahal lineage was no more. Yet, there’s more to this story.In 2019, New York Times journalist
Ellen Barry investigated the family and met the last remaining member, Prince Cyrus, before his death. Barry discovered that, despite their very heavy insistence, the family were of no relation to Oudh royalty at all! It turns out Wilayat was actually a housewife from India who moved to Lahore, Pakistan after the Partition of India, when India became two countries. Heck, Prince Cyrus’s real name was Mickey Butt.
If that’s so, why did Wilayat protest in a train station for ten years? Well, after moving to Lahore, Wilayat longed for the country of her childhood. She also had a history of mental illness, after her husband died, she’d spent six months in a mental hospital. Once she was released, she adopted her new persona as Queen of Oudh and gave her kids ones to match. Then, she packed up all their belongings and returned to India. But if she wasn’t really a royal, how do you explain all the servants? And her dogs? Well, the servants were probably volunteers who also longed for the India of old and bought into Wilayat’s story, she was very persuasive. As for the dogs? In all likelihood, they were just strays that she took in and cared for.
Woman Found Living In Tokyo Closet
What an amazing story. But let’s crank the creepy factor up now. In 2008, in the town of Kasuya, Japan, a 57-year-old man was living alone in his house, except, he was confused. Over the past few months, food had been mysteriously disappearing from his kitchen.
Suspecting he was being burgled, he set up a CCTV camera to spy on the room at night. When he looked back at the footage, what he saw made him sick to his stomach. The camera feed showed a strange woman creeping through his home in the dead of night. Terrified, the guy called the cops who proceeded to search his place. After sliding open a shelf closet, they found her, a 58-year-old woman curled up on a mattress. The police immediately arrested her for trespassing. She told authorities that she was homeless and, quite simply, had nowhere else to go. So, one night she’d snuck into his house after he’d left it unlocked and ended up living there undetected for around a year! If nothing else, that’s impressively stealthy. She even secretly took showers to stay clean! At least she was hygienic then, but the whole idea of someone living inside your house without you knowing sends shivers up anyone's spine.
Woman Finds Ex-Boyfriend Living In Her Attic 12 Years After
In 2012, in the city of Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA, Tracy was a single mom taking care of her five kids. She kept hearing banging noises coming from her attic but assumed it was just an animal. Then, one time, she was in her room when she heard a mighty THUMP from above. Nails popped out of the ceiling and started falling onto her bed, making her wonder if the house was haunted!
The truth was much more disturbing. She asked her older sons and nephew to go up to the attic to see what was there. Peering into the darkness, they saw something move, it was a man sleeping on a makeshift bed made of coats and jackets.
Only, this wasn’t just any random homeless guy, it was
Tracy’s ex from 12 years ago! She’d broken up with him back then because of his addiction issues and troubles with crime. He’d only been released from prison two weeks earlier, and how on earth he’d managed to sneak his way into the house, let alone the attic, is anyone’s guess. The family called the police immediately, but by the time they arrived, the attic ex had fled. Investigating the scene, the cops found bottles filled with feces and urine. Worst of all, right above Tracy’s room, there was a peephole where he’d been spying on her.
As far as we know, the man is still on the run. As for Tracy and her family, they couldn’t bear to sleep at night for weeks, and honestly, you can't blame them.I hope you were amazed at these impossible places people were found living inside of! Thanks for reading.
