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Today my cleaner sent me a photo of the salt and pepper shaker with salt and pepper all over the counter, upon further inspection the guest had taken the bottom stoppers out, we also have grinders but they left those in tact.
Another time a guest had cut with a knife a 6 inch cut, through the kitchen floor mat.
They rearrange cabinets, cut on the counter without readily available cutting boards , and so many other things , you just have to laugh.
What’s happened you?
Two weirdest: First one was the environmentalist who unplugged our mini-fridge to save electricity, thus defrosting the freezer portion and spewing water all over our 200 year old wood floor. Second one was the couple who stayed for the summer and were oriented to the room including the window AC. Soon thereafter, apparently pulled the curtain over the AC and forgot about it. It was a very hot summer and the woman stayed in the room most of the time while her husband attended school. On the day they left my husband asked if the AC had been keeping up with the heat. They pointed to the ceiling fan. They had spent the summer without the AC!
Oh, gosh, these don’t sound funny they sound…oh, I get what you mean, you mean “so odd you have to laugh.” Still, those incidents, wow.
My “funny” is this: A 300 pound linebacker (a pro-football player recovered from an injury waiting to get back on his team and playing pro-flag football in the meantime) tromping around the backyard in his bathrobe, baseball cap, and sneakers at 7:00 AM. He fell in love with the nature preserve and was taking photos of deer, egrets & cranes with his phone. I called out to him, “What are you doing without bug spray, are you crazy?! You need bug spray!!” I threw him a can. I said, “I’m sorry, I’m such a mom.”
He said, “I need a mom.”
My funniest one was the man who was staying overnight with 2 dogs. At some point in the night he went to let them out in the front yard but for some reason he didn’t leash them.
So the dogs immediately ran off out of the yard. The funny part was he was in his underwear. So they ran off and he stepped out after them into the light shining in the front of my house. He then turned back, went in his room to put on pants, then ran back after them. They all returned shortly after so they must have just gone next door.
All this was caught on my Ring doorbell and was only funny because he recovered his dogs quickly.
Hard to choose. But I think my favourite one is still the guest who texted me from the beach:
“The ocean isn’t blue enough”.
Guest “ I don’t know why we came here - your town is boring…!”
We had a guy who stayed for 5-7 days at a time 4 or 5 times over a few months and said he was coming for work. He wasn’t here much, his car was usually gone during the day, but he was definitely staying here.
I’d see him go out in running clothes in the morning, come back sweaty, then leave un-sweaty in regular clothes. We leave goodies and there’d always be at least one beer and one Clif Bar gone after he’d stay. And he’d send a message thanking me for the stay and telling me he’d checked out. I even watched him load/unload his (plentiful) bags from my window a couple of times.
But we never once found any other evidence that he had stayed here. It was bizarre.
It’s a little bit weird that there was never a used towel or a wrinkled sheet or a single piece of trash in any of the bins (not even the outside one) but we also never found, even with a blacklight, a single drop of urine, a smudge, a fingerprint or even one hair (not even in the hair catcher that’s installed under the cover of the shower drain that requires a screwdriver to remove).
My uncle who’s retired-DOD said, “Oh yeah, you had a spook. I can see how they’d be good guests.” He’s always kind of flip so it’s hard to tell when he’s joking but I think he was serious.
Sounds like the perfect levitator!
I’m sorry, I don’t get the reference? Happy New Year to you Deb!!! 
My term for a guest that barely uses the accommodation, they appear to have levitated above the floor, the bed……used nothing. Unlike a Goldilocks who has used absolutely everything and still isn’t happy about anything!
I have an on call Doctor who stays at one of my places once a month for a week- he is a levitator!
We have had a couple of levitators, too. They stay in one of our bedrooms in our home-share, but we see them only when they arrive and leave. And it appears they’ve stood motionless and silent in one spot in their bedroom. No evidence in the bathroom, either.
Love it! Adopting it immediately.
That is uncanny, and so intriguing! I am now desperate to know what was going on and how he accomplished this ghostly levitation. This reads like the premise for a mystery novel!
I was dinged badly by a guest who loved my place and loved her stay. She gave me 3 stars because she was disappointed that my Melbourne apartment wasn’t in Paris!
Another guest in my apartment in Lisbon spent an inordinate amount of time rearranging everything in the place, right down to the cutlery drawers. 10+ years of occasional STRs and nobody felt that need before. Gotta say, it felt vvv weird as it’s also my home.
Did you disclose this??
Please don’t guest-shame for what you could easily have disclosed.
Is it possibly London? Does your listing verbiage rule that out? Tell me this. How can a guest possibly know? You must disclose.
I recently had a guest who was checking in late so I sent him a message telling him he’d have a Self Check In. I would leave his porch light on as well as a light inside, and that the door would be unlocked with the key left by the bathroom sink.
The evening he was to arrive I reminded him of his check in directions. He arrived, parked in the driveway and went to the back of the house where his entrance is. Then 20 minutes later he sent me a photo of the outside of his entrance door taken from the lighted patio. He said he could not find the bathroom to get the key. He’d been looking all around the outside of the house and yard for the bathroom, having missed the important part in the messages about the unlocked door. He never even tried the door. 20 minutes! Geez!
You really have to wonder how some people manage to get through life if they can’t even comprehend simple instructions. Life must be full of frustrations and wasted time for them.
A host on another forum had a month-long guest who could never figure out how to unlock the front door, despite the host physically demonstrating it to her half a dozen times. It was a simple lock and key, nothing tricky at all. Turn the key one way, the door unlocks, turn it the other direction, it locks. The guest was constantly ringing the doorbell or messaging the homeshare host because she somehow couldn’t figure out how to use a key. Once she even knocked on the next door neighbor’s door and hung out there for awhile, much to the host’s mortification, because the host wasn’t home to let her in. You’d think that even if she couldn’t remember which way to turn the key, if it didn’t unlock, she’d try turning it the other way?
I have some caladium plants in my garden that are green with red and white spots on them. A guest asked me if I had painted them like that.
My guests have to come onto the front porch to go through their private door. It’s on the left side of the porch and not seen from where they typically park. Although I couldn’t make it any clearer in the instructions, I often see them look first on the left side of the house. Sometimes they even walk to the right side of the house, only coming onto the porch as the third option. I’ve considered getting a sign I just hang out on arrival days on the front porch, pointing to their door.
I saw another local Airbnb where they painted shoe prints onto their walkway in red to show guests the way to their entrance.
I’ve had a few who put the wrong house number in the nav systems. I’ve been in my front garden and watched unknown vehicles (this is a neighborhood of culdesacs) go a few houses down from me and try to access those backyards. I’ve even had a couple park in my driveway and then walk to my neighbors house before I could round them up. There’s always an Airbnb guest story to regale my friends and family with.