25 Times Parents Stumbled On An Unexpected Discovery In Their Child’s Room

Having kids is like going on a rollercoaster ride combined with horror-house aspects as unexpected things give you jump-scares as you just try to hang on for the ride. Recently, a hilarious Reddit thread went viral after getting parents to open up about the most surprisingly questionable things they stumbled across in a child’s bedroom. From fish tanks in closets to convicts hidden under beds, these tales seem straight out of an animation rather than real-life scenarios. But crazy as it sounds, these are people’s real experiences so go ahead and scroll below to read all about the weirdest things that parents did not expect to find hidden in their kids' rooms. 

#1 My parents were a bit confused when they looked in my closet found an anatomically correct wooden arm with metal bracket joints and elastic to move the individual fingers.

Image source: ryno9o I took "make an anatomical model of the arm" a bit too literally in my 6th grade science class and felt really dumb holding a working wooden arm in class when everyone else had drawings. I was hiding it because I used the power tools without permission. My parents were pretty cool about it after I explained why I had wooden body parts in the closet and let me to go an engineering tech school part time along side high school a few years later.

#2 Not a parent, but a nanny. I found a stash of dresses and make up under a five year old boy's bed. He had raided a box of old clothes that their mother was donating and took his sister's dresses that fit him, he found the correct sizes for his age and everything. He said he used it to be a "sassy girl".

Image source: anon, Engin Akyurt

#3 My friend's mom found his box of dead baby raccoon skulls in his closet. I stopped hanging out with him pretty soon after.

Image source: ngtstkr, Jennifer Uppendahl **Edit**: To clarify, he admitted to tying baby Raccoons he found in his dad's garage to a fence then [ending] them with a crossbow. **Edit 2**: If I get another message in my inbox about him being a future serial [criminal], I'll shoot *you* with a damn crossbow. Come on people, read the damn comments. **Edit 3 (Aug 2016)**: Not sure if anyone will ever see this, but he just received a life sentence for [unaliving] somebody. F**k.

#4 I'm not a parent, I'm the baby sitter, but one time I watched a 6 year old Jewish girl who was really upset about not celebrating Christmas. Her parents were really orthodox and didnt let her sing Christmas carols or even eat candy canes. As I tucked her in, she showed me a little gingerbread house she made out of saltine crackers, skittles, and peanut butter. Cutest thing I ever saw, and I never told her parents as she would have gotten in trouble, but she was something special.

Image source: TheUnicornIsWatching, whippetshuffle

#5 After I had surgery (and had been given a little too much anesthetic for my weight) I told my parents about the hedgehog I had been hiding from them for over a month in my closet. I was 18 at the time. The conversation went about like this from what I've been told.

Image source: JordanWhiteboy, Indigo Blackwood Me: Dad, come here... Dad: what? Me: There's a hedgehog in my closet... Dad: Jordan, no there isn't... Mom: (My dads name), go check... This sounds like something he would do... Dad: Fine... (My dad walked out for a few minutes and came back to the room I was in) Dad: (My moms name), He has a hedgehog in his closet... Mom: (dads name), no he doesn't. Dad: yes, he does... (Mom walks out, and comes back with a look of shock) Me: Dying of laughter... The End.

#6 Recently I found a green piece of folded paper on the floor of my 11 year old daughter's room. I opened it and the only thing written on it was "CHUCK NORRIS".

Image source: anon, Meruyert Gonullu

#7 When my husband was little (talking 5 or 6 years old) his mother couldn't figure out why his room had been getting smellier and smellier over the previous 2 weeks. She finally did some searching and found a "nest" in the back of his closet. He had taken 2 eggs out of the fridge, put them in a little nest he made out of his shirts, and put a plastic dinosaur on top of the eggs to attempt to hatch baby dinosaurs. In his little kid mind, this seemed like a perfectly logical idea.

Image source: anon, Callum Hill

#8 My mom once found my fish tank full of fish in my closet. I wasn't allowed to have fish.

Image source: Simplemindedflyaways, Benson Kua EDIT: I called them my "illegal fish" for the longest time...

#9 My mom found a locked briefcase in my brother's room. She was convinced there was d***s in it, so she panicked, broke the locks and opened it. She found p**n and fireworks. She was pretty embarrassed.

Image source: bionut876, jannoon028

#10 My $2500+ dollar gaming system.. and desk, which was on a different floor in the house entirely.

Image source: mr_majorly, Sharad Kachhi Just walked in from work one day and noticed it missing, was about to freak out when I saw that my 10 year old and (almost) 16 year old had moved it, and the entire contents, up to their room. Thought it about it for a few moments, not even upset when I noticed how much more room it gave me down stairs, and hatched a plan. When he turned 16 a week later, I said, "Happy Birthday! It's yours now!" and purchased him $100 worth of games on steam to rock the system with. ... now I'm planning a nice gaming laptop for myself ;).

#11 My parents found a crack pipe in my room when I was in like 3rd grade...I found it on the playground and thought it was a treasure.

Image source: CAKE_OR_DEATH_, Andrea Piacquadio

#12 When I was around 9 or so my mom found a convict under my bed. Granted I didn't know he was a convict because he used to work for my dad and would give me playstation 1 games (I think final fantasy 8 among others), so I thought he was one of dad's nice friends and didn't really question when he was knocking on our balcony door asking for me to let him in (keep in mind we're on the third floor).

Image source: steakbird, Andrea Piacquadio I let him in and he asks if he can hide in my room so I'm like 'whatevs, seems legit' and take him back to it. He looks around for a while at the closet before deciding he would fit his 200-something lb, 6'5 body underneath my twin bed. To the layman, something would obviously be awry but it checked out in my little 9 year old brain, so I continued watching Dragon Ball Z in my room now instead of the living room since school had ended not too long ago and I didn't want to do homework yet. 5 minutes later my mom comes in to see how my day was and is instantly concerned as to why my bed is sticking up off the ground on 1 side with me acting completely oblivious to it. She comes over and lifts up the blanket that is also slightly off the ground, and jumps back completely terrified as a 30-something year old man springs from underneath the bed. He starts talking to her in a hurried fashion and she's yelling at him, all the while I'm getting peeved because I can't hear what was going on in the show. They both storm out of my room and I don't really think anything of it and continue watching the show. About 5 minutes later, he blasts through my door, opens the window, PUNCHES OUT THE SCREEN, and does some crazy spiderman egress s**t that involved him jumping out the window while still holding on to the side of it so he wraps around the building whilst midair, lands on the group of Air Conditioning units (apartment complex), and runs off into the woods. 2 stories off the ground. Ok, now something's a little weird. 'Obviously he could've just used the front door' is what I'm thinking. Like 10 seconds later, 2 cops and a police dog are in my room followed by my mom, who looks absolutely mortified by what I've done. I guess the severity of it is finally setting in so I just look at her with that 'I f****d up, didn't I?' look on my face. I got my a*s BEAT that night. TL;DR: Mom finds fellon under my bed, guy Damien Walters himself out of my window.

#13 When I was 10 my mom found a piece of paper with two columns. One column header read "Bush" and the other read "Gore" and underneath each column was a list of every swear word imaginable (at least every one I knew). E.g. Bush would say "you lying sack of s**t" and Gore would respond "go to hell you bastard." There was a little drawing of each of them looking angry at the bottom of the page.

Image source: anon, Boris Pavlikovsky

#14 We have a wooded wet land area behind our house and every spring for a couple of weeks our yard and sidewalk gets invaded by the cutest little baby frogs. They are only about the size of a US dime. My daughter was about 5 and she caught one and smuggled it into her room in her pocket. I found her playing with it in her room. It took a bit of convincing that the baby froggie would be happier outside and away from our cats.

Image source: lisasimpsonfan, R. David Cummins

#15 My aunt once found a box of live hand grenades under my cousin's bed. Turns out he and a group of friends broke into the armory of a nearby army base. He was 12.

Image source: Herzogsteve, Pat Pilon

#16 My mom found my (I was 17) $13,000 in gambling winnings that I had been hiding in check boxes in my room.

Image source: parahsalinbundtcake, Kaysha She had resigned that the only way I could have made that money was to sell d***s (I've never done d***s.) She harbored this for weeks trying to wrap her head around it, so after confronting me was relieved to hear that I had just been sneaking into the casino to count cards at blackjack for the whole summer. I think of it as an "everything went better than expected" for all of us.

#17 I'm the kid here, but when I was 12 my mom found a shoebox full of blood-soaked socks under my bed. I'd gotten my period and was too embarrassed to ask what to do, so I just, you know. Socks. I don't know what she thought it was, but the fact that she was relieved when she learned she was holding a shoebox full of menstrual blood and ruined Peds is probably telling.

Image source: cadaverbonnet, Pavel Danilyuk

#18 A wedding ring in my 9 year old son's pokemon card box. Apparently, a kid at school really wanted one of my son's cards, so he took his mom's ring to trade. Mine was lost a few months ago, so mah boy thought it would make a good Xmas present for me. We were very surprised. It has been returned.

Image source: diswiddlepiggy, FOX ^.ᆽ.^= ∫

#19 My mom found the BDSM lesbian Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction I was writing when I was 16. I explained it away and 6 years later she still doesn't suspect that I'm bisexual.

Image source: Yosafbrige, Sandollar Television

#20 This is about someone who rented a room in my house. She was so immature, she was practically my kid.

Image source: burglarsonarceny, Stacy Spensley My boyfriend and I rented a house and it had an extra bedroom, so we posted an ad on Craigslist and a girl, let's call her S, replied. She had just turned 18 and was going to college 2 minutes away from the house. She seemed like a nice girl at first. Quiet, tiny (I mean like 70 pounds tiny), and didn't mind helping out around the house. A couple weeks after she moved in, we noticed weird food items were missing. Not frozen pizzas or bread or anything- it was more like whole jars of mayo and sliced american cheese. We asked her about it and she denied she took anything. When the semester was up, she moved out, and we started cleaning out her room and bathroom. When we opened the bathroom closet, this disgusting smell hit us. On the wall behind the top shelf, there were literally THOUSANDS of balls of paper towel with chewed and half-digested food inside. She would eat a jar of mayo, throw it up into this bucket we found in her bedroom closet, and make vomit snowballs, which she tossed into the closet. It took hours to scrape it all off. Absolutely disgusting. TL;DR: vomit snowballs. Eck.

#21 My coworker once found a ziplock bag full of hairs, all sorts of colours and length, in one of the new kid's room (we work in a rehab for teens). Kid says its his collection of girls hair for when he does his voodoo rituals.

Image source: confusedefuse, Tamara Bellis

#22 My cousin's parents found a full package of unopened bacon under his bed. He wanted it all for himself. I can't blame his reasoning, but the execution was a bit sloppy.

Image source: Mostly_Aquitted, Coopalooop21

#23 Another kid. My daughter used to sneak her friend in her room through her window.

Image source: crabby1990, Liliana Drew

#24 This question was tailor made for me. Since about Christmas my daughter's room has reeked of something dead. Her room is a rubbish heap of clothes and make-up nonsense.

Image source: LittleLarry, Beth Macdonald We moved a bunch of stuff, smelled around and determned the stench was coming from a particular area of the room. She reminded me that she slept in a spare room a few weeks back because she heard scrabbling sounds coming from a vent. I remove air duct vent covers, stick my nose in and give a sniff...nothing. The next day the stink is coming out of her door into the hallway. She's no longer been sleeping in the room because of the smell. After sniffing all over the place and carefully moving everything in her room we found what the smell was. An open tin of spiced octopus. She had received it as a gag gift the previous Christmas. It sat in her room for almost a year until, feeling curious, she opened the tin to have a look inside. She put the tin aside where it became covered with the flotsam and jetsam of a teenaged girls room. Eventually it was a smell that came straight from Satan's bowels.

#25 A hamster. We never bought them one. Turns out, a neighbor's hamster got in the house.

Image source: Val_Hallen, Ricky Kharawala