There’s nothing quite like the high drama of a childhood sleepover. Unsupervised kids making their own (often bad) decisions is a recipe for a Lord of the Flies situation on its own, then you add strong personalities, weird party games, cruel pranks, and occasionally raging hormones and stuff can get real weird real quick.
Redditor u/MrFishStick850 wanted to hear about everyone’s messy childhood drama when they asked:
“What was your worst sleepover experience during your childhood?”
The answers range from hilariously embarrassing to downright disgusting to unnervingly creepy. Here are some of the best.
1. Sick as a dog
An old friend of my Dad’s was staying at our house that night and brought me a big box of chocolates as a birthday gift. We ate a few and then started playing games outside, leaving the open box unattended in the dining room.
My two large dogs ate the entire box. By the time this was discovered, my dad and his friend had left to grab a beer together, leaving my mom alone with 8 little girls and a toddler and two extremely ill dogs. She couldn’t load us all in the car to take the dogs to the emergency vet, so I had to help her pour hydrogen peroxide down their throats to make them puke. The rest of the night was punctuated by the sounds of the dogs throwing up in the backyard. Several girls asked to call their parents and go home.
2. Lost & found
Went to a friends birthday party in 4th grade. about half way through the night we decided to play hide and seek. maybe 30-45 minutes later (all I know was it was a long ass time) I come out of my hiding place to find them playing on the wii in the living room. they’d forgotten about me and thought everyone was found so they moved on to the next thing without me.
3. Threat level midnight
Friends mother and her boyfriend were arguing in the kitchen after we went to bed, he started talking about how he would “kill the kids if I have to”
I was about 7 or 8 I guess, so it didn’t really sink in that much at the time, but my friend wasn’t really in a great mood for the rest of the time I was there.
4. Spanking bad time
Friend and I went to another friend’s house to sleep the night. We were all mucking around like most 10-year-old boys do, to the point our friend’s Dad started yelling at his son. Was a little bit awkward and tense, and then my friend told his dad to “shut up”.
So his Dad decided his son needed some old school punishment and made his son pull his pants down, and made us watch as he whipped him a few times on the bare cheeks with his belt.
I remember feeling so awkward and embarrassed about it all that the only way I knew how to handle it was to start laughing…
5. Rude awakening
Had a big group of girls round for a sleepover when we were like 9/10. Slept in a tent in my garden. One girl brings my slightly special cat into the tent for the night. Cats loving it, he’s purring getting loads of attention from this girl and he falls asleep on her.
Wake up the next morning to find a shit on one of the other girls hair. Turns out the cat had got up in the night, walked over the second girl, done a poo and then went back to the first girl and fell asleep on her again.
6. Sicko
My friend Ryan had a slumber party for his birthday. I remember we watched “My Favorite Martian” we went to sleep and I woke up mid vomit. I wasnt even feeling sick. I literally woke up throwing up at 5 in the morning. They took me home, I slept in till noon.. and I remember thinking I wasted a whole day because I had never slept in that late before.
7. WHAT???
Early 1990’s: When I was a kid, I slept over at a buddy’s house for the first time. The next morning we woke up and his mom made us cereal, the milk tasted hella sweet, even for my child taste buds. Something about it all seemed off. Just as my buddy finished his bowl of cereal, his mom came over and turned the bowl on its side to pour the leftover milk from the cereal bowl into a milk carton. The mom then did the same with hers. I felt my face turn red with shame and embarrassment and my stomach turn. Horrified and confused I asked “what is that? What are y’all doing?”
He turned to me and deadass said “that’s our cereal milk”
Turned out this sadistic fuck and his ENTIRE family poured all of the leftover milk from each bowl of cereal back into a separate milk carton, specifically for cereal. I drank this entire family’s backwash.
F-cking CEREAL MILK. Used. Cereal. Milk.
8. Dead silent
Had my first ever sleepover with my best friend in the first grade. Things at night were awesome. When I woke up the next morning everyone at his house was super distant, and they called my mom to get rid of my asap.
His father had an aneurysm that night and passed away.
After everything settled he and his mom moved away and I never saw them again.
9. Sleepwalker
Not me but my sister. She was a sleepwalker. She was about seven. Slept over at a friend’s house, sleepwalked, woke up in an enclosed space. Panicked. Pushed her arms straight out in front of her against what she thought was a wall in front of her.
She had ended up behind a 7-foot tall bureau that was placed diagonally in the corner of the dining room. She pushed it over. It was full of plates, glasses, fine china etc.
It was 4am.
10. Appearances can be deceiving
Slept over at a friend’s house when I was 9. Her family was wealthy and I was envious of everything she had. The party was really fun but at 11 pm we heard her dad come home very drunk. After a little while I went upstairs to get some water and saw him pushing my friend’s mom against a wall and threatening to hit her. She seemed so scared. I went back downstairs and never spoke about it with my friend. But I definitely learned something about appearances that night.
11. Splitting breakfast
My parents sent me to spend the night with my friend. When I got home the next day my mom told me my dad moved out and they were getting a divorce. I didn’t see my Dad for three years.
12. Church people
Went to my friend’s house for the first time. She always wanted to come to my house not the other way around. But never told me why. So I get there and after the first hour it all goes downhill. The parents had strict rules about eating at the table. Proceed to insult me about my weight (I have always been skinny but not unhealthy so) to the point I nearly cried. After that they do 21 questions about my race and family. By the time night comes I found out they basically have a lockdown rule in their house. We weren’t allowed out of her bedroom until morning and I didn’t know that. So I got lectured the next morning. And the end finale was I didn’t know I’d be forced to attend their church in the morning before I could go home. So that’s how I figured out why she always wanted to stay at my house not the other way around.
Bonus. At one point I overheard her parents talking about me when on the phone with her. They called me a few nasty names and slurs for always inviting her to hang out and go places with my family and putting ideas into her head apparently. I will never forget these people.
13. Uninvited
I was invited to a birthday party in elementary. Everybody kept talking about the slumber party afterward. I assumed I was also invited to the slumber party, so I brought my sleeping bag and pajamas. Turns out, nobody actually wanted me there. I cried in the host’s room alone for an hour or so, then faked being sick and had my grandma come pick me up.
14. The curse of Michael Myers
My friend had a poster of the live-action Cat in the Hat in her room and the thing scared me so bad at night that I couldn’t fall asleep and I just sat there on the floor the whole night.
15. Taking one for the team
When I was like 14 I was at a big group sleepover with my friends. The mother of the girl who was hosting it was really strict about health and she told us that we couldn’t order any pizza until we’d eaten the massive fruit platter she’d prepared for us.
No one was touching the platter other than taking a few pieces to snack on. It was getting late, the pizza place would be closing soon and her mum was not budging about her rule. Someone needed to step up. That someone was me.
I started absolutely devouring the fruit platter, shoving pieces into my mouth and swallowing them without chewing. This was a platter for like eight people, but I was a woman on a mission.
We did end up getting pizza, but I got so sick I spent most of the night throwing up in the toilet. I couldn’t even enjoy the pizza cause I was so full.
16. Staph meeting
Girls sleep over when I was in elementary for a friend’s birthday. Had a great time laughing and telling scary stories before bed. Woke up the next morning with a fever and terrible nausea. Went home and I was only getting worse. I had a huge spot on my leg in-between my ankle and knee, right in the middle. It was hot, puffy, and red. Went to the hospital and it turns out I was suffering from a really bad staph infection. The night before, we were playing on the stairs when I slipped and scraped my leg. The doctor initially thought I was bitten by a spider. The infection was spreading fast and was eating away at my flesh. I had a tunnel up to my knee cap that had to be packed with fresh gauze everyday. Almost lost my leg.
17. Outwit outlast outplayed
Friends decided to set up a mock game of Survivor, based on the reality show. Which turned out to be an excuse to vote out the friend nobody likes first.
Guess who was the friend nobody liked.
18. Shut-in
A bit of a weird one, this was more sad than anything. I stayed over at my elementary best friends almost every week. Their grandmother lived with them and everyone treated her like a burden. They told me she was crazy and mean but she was always very kind to me and because I was raised to be nice to my elders, I was kind in return. One day, when my friend had to go talk to her mom about something the grandma asked me into her room. I had never been in there and it was decorated completely differently, I could tell she had moved an entire house worth of stuff into one bedroom. I can’t remember the whole conversation but basically she said I was kind and she really loved talking to me every week, and that her family didn’t really let her talk. She gave me a little metal Noah’s ark bracelet but asked me to hide it from the family. I was scared to wear the bracelet because I didn’t want my friend to get mad and every time i looked at it, it made me so sad for Nana.
19. Red badge of courage
I bled through my underwear and pajamas ALL over my friend’s bed. I was mortified and too embarrassed to tell her. I cleaned up in the bathroom before anyone else was up. I then made the bed up before anyone could see it. I still feel so terrible and embarrassed about it almost fifteen years later.
20. I am the night
It was like 6 or 7 of us at a friend’s house. Hot summer night so we’re camping outside in sleeping bags. It’s pretty late/early and we’ve been fucking with each other all night tossing little pebbles running around dragging each other around in sleeping bags the usual.
Well I feel a nudge when drowsy and just wave it off. Then I feel a nudge inside of my sleeping bag and immediately hear a squeaky screech. I scream And everyone Immediately pops up. I’m zipped up in a mummy-style sleeping bag so when I stand it’s still wrapped and so is the screeching in my bag.
A quick-witted kid named Cayde runs overs and shakes my ass out of the bag and a huge fucking bat flies out.
I later harness this fear and become Batman