#WeirdHomeEncounters #RichPeopleRealities #LuxuryHomeCuriosities
🏠 Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the closed doors of a wealthy person’s home? The lifestyle of the rich and famous often comes with its own set of eccentricities and peculiarities, and I’ve had my fair share of strange encounters while working in the homes of the elite. From outlandish art collections to lavish but bizarre interior design choices, here are some of the most peculiar things I’ve witnessed in the homes of the rich.
##Strange Art Collections: Unconventional Taste or Eccentricity Gone Wild?
One of the most common oddities I’ve come across in the homes of the wealthy is their art collections. While most people may display traditional paintings or sculptures, some affluent individuals have a penchant for the truly bizarre. Here are a few examples of the strangest art collections I’ve encountered:
– Taxidermy Menagerie: One particularly eccentric homeowner had an extensive collection of taxidermied animals, including everything from exotic birds to large game animals. These lifelike displays were scattered throughout the home, creating an eerie and surreal atmosphere.
– Surreal Sculptures: Another wealthy art enthusiast had a predilection for avant-garde sculptures that bordered on the absurd. From oversized, anatomically incorrect figures to abstract, incomprehensible shapes, their collection was a testament to their unorthodox taste.
While these art collections may be considered unconventional by some, they offer a glimpse into the unique tastes and interests of the rich and famous.
##Quirky Interior Design Choices: More Money, More Unusual Home Decor
In addition to their eccentric art collections, wealthy homeowners often make unconventional interior design choices that leave a lasting impression. Here are a few examples of the weirdest interior design elements I’ve encountered:
– Aquarium Bed: In one lavish bedroom, the focal point was an enormous aquarium built into the headboard of the bed. The colorful fish and soothing water provided an unusual but mesmerizing backdrop for a good night’s sleep.
– Gilded Everything: For some affluent individuals, there’s no such thing as “too much gold.” I once visited a home where every conceivable surface, from the walls to the furniture, was adorned in gilded accents. The result was opulent, albeit a bit overwhelming.
These quirky interior design choices may not be to everyone’s taste, but they certainly make for memorable experiences in the homes of the rich.
##Unusual Domestic Staff and Services: Luxury at its Most Unconventional
When it comes to the homes of the wealthy, the services and staff they employ can be just as unconventional as their art collections and interior design choices. Here are a few examples of the oddest domestic staff and services I’ve encountered:
– Psychic Housekeepers: One affluent homeowner had a team of housekeepers who claimed to have psychic abilities. They would perform rituals and ceremonies throughout the home to cleanse it of negative energy, providing a unique twist on traditional cleaning services.
– Pet Masseuse: For some wealthy individuals, pampering their pets is just as important as pampering themselves. I once met a homeowner who had a personal masseuse on call exclusively for their beloved pets, ensuring that even their furry companions lived a life of luxury.
These unique domestic staff and services offer a glimpse into the extravagant and at times unconventional lifestyle of the rich.
##Conclusion
The homes of the wealthy are often a playground for eccentricities and peculiarities, showcasing their unique tastes, interests, and extravagant lifestyles. From strange art collections to quirky interior design choices and unconventional domestic staff and services, these encounters provide a window into the fascinating world of the rich and famous. While some may find these curiosities odd or bizarre, they serve as a testament to the creativity and individuality of those who have the means to express themselves in truly extraordinary ways.
So, what’s the weirdest thing I’ve witnessed in the home of a rich person? It’s hard to narrow it down to just one, but suffice it to say that each encounter has been a unique and unforgettable experience in its own right. If you’re ever given the opportunity to peek behind the curtains of luxury, you’re sure to encounter some of the most fascinating, and at times, the most bizarre things you’ve ever seen.
I have one… this is crazy!
I once worked for a multibillionaire family who lived in Atherton CA (Silicon Valley). Atherton has the highest *median* home prices in the US at 7.9 million. They lived at the very top of the big hill with sweeping views of the forested coastal range. Stunning. Of course they had a pool, pool house, etc. They also had a home in Woodside CA, one on the strand in Manhattan Beach, CA, and a farm in Oregon, where every week their pilot (using their private jet of course), would fly up there to pick up fresh veggies, fruits, which they stored in the cold room under the house (kinda near the underground wine cellar – both spaces were huge). They **only** ate pheasant on holidays. Larry Ellison was one of their best friends and at their wedding snuck into the wine cellar, grabbed a $2k bottle of wine and walked around drinking it out of the bottle (they were pissed about that). Cristal champagne was provided for guests (massive wedding!).
Read on… it gets crazier!
One day while I was at their house, they had blueprints spread out all over the place. I asked if they were remodeling. No, they were building a new house… across the street. Which seemed odd to me because why give up that view? She said, no, they were going to live in **both** houses. The new one has a ballroom over two stories high with floor to ceiling glass, tennis courts, **a consecrated chapel**, (they’re Catholic), complete with rows of pews, statuary of saints, and gold leaf everywhere. This house also had an underground garage where they kept a multitude of Ferraris, classic cars, Porches, a Fiskar, and a Koenigsegg. The kid’s rooms had their own *huge* bathrooms with a tub in the bathroom and a tv at the end which slid down (hidden), at the touch of a button. Each room had a two-way fireplace* that led to a large deck… each bedroom!! All bedding was Charlotte Thomas “Bespoke” (Google them).
I’ve never seen ***anything*** like this before. And probably never will again. I might add that the parents were very nice, and those kids, while living in pure luxury, were sweet as can be and not spoiled in the slightest. They were respectful, generous, and kind.
I used to give music lessons to this dude who lived in a mansion way up in the mountains. When you walked through his front door, the first thing you saw was an enormous, low resolution photo of his wife in a bikini. The image covered the entire wall below the mezzanine so it was about 10’ by 4’, and it was pasted to the wall like wallpaper, so it couldn’t be removed.
Great guy, but I always thought that it was weird as hell that all their guests, children, family members etc were all being greeted by an enormous, low-quality image of his wife’s scantily clad body. I always got the sense that she wasn’t too happy about it either.
Absolute squalor. I run on an ambulance in a decently afluente suburb in PA, and I’ve been in two estates where the inside of the homes were bad enough to call social services. Houses where there was 8 figures of artwork on the property and people were sleeping on mattresses on the floor. It’s… jarring.
I know someone who’s worked for a very rich person, probably worth billions. He had more than 100 staff on site, including chefs for the staff…all while divorced and living alone. He had a ‘trivia’ staff member… someone hired to tell him interesting facts and stories daily. That was his only job. Someone else was hired to maintain his shoes. Polish, shine, the works. If I didn’t hear it first hand, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Our CEO has a driver that comes in, collects his stuff and laptop, and drives him home
My BIL worked one summer for a roofing company in cottage country in Ontario and installed Margaret Atwood’s roof. Her place is covered in portraits of herself, like apparently they’re all over the place.
Years ago, I interviewed as a nanny at this massive house. From the outside it just looked gigantic. They seemed normal for rich people, but as they were giving me a tour, I realized they had multiple rooms that were just completely barren. They had a living room, 3 bathrooms, their bedroom, each of the kids rooms and a playroom, a home office, the kitchen and dining room, and a guest room all nicely decorated and lived in. But there were like 5 other rooms and a couple bathrooms that were completely empty, no furniture no decor, just plain beige walls and carpet. They had lived there for years and weren’t in the process of remodeling or anything. They told me one of the empty rooms would be mine, so that made sense to leave it empty for a live-in Nanny, but the rest they just said “We don’t use these”. They had also mentioned they weren’t having more kids so it wasn’t like it was extra rooms for the future. It just kind of boggled my mind- like they just bought a mansion far bigger than they needed for no reason other than they could. Then didn’t even bother doing anything with the extra space. I ended up not taking the job, but a nanny friend of mine did. She said those doors always stayed shut except when the cleaners came. They spent hours cleaning this giant house, including the pristine empty rooms that never got used, so even more wasted money. Apparently one time she let the kids build a massive pillow and blanket fort in one of the rooms and the mom lectured her about letting them play in there. So they weren’t even allowed to use the space for anything.
Also, since the room was empty my friend thought when she started that she’d be able to move in her own bed and furniture. Nope, they bought all new stuff for her to use. They had a live in nanny before so then we wondered if she’s had her own furniture or if they just bought new furniture every time they got a new nanny? Then at one point while my friend worked there one of the little girls wanted to change rooms to one of the empty ones. They completely redid the new one with new paint, furniture and whatever decor she wanted. Everything left over from the new one was hauled away to the dump, even though it was nice kids furniture that was still in pretty good shape. Even the old bedding and everything. And then the now empty room had the pink walls repainted the same sad beige as all the others and the fun carpet replaced. So now I just imagine that over the years the kids played a weird game of bedroom musical chairs, with rooms getting redecorated and a new one being left sad beige and barren. My friend left after a couple of years working for them, so no idea if they ever did end up using any of those empty rooms.
Rich grandparents had a brand new house built, had a $100,000 splash pad built for their only grand child who has never visited them at their new house.
In my early 20’s I dated a girl whose Dad was rich. She brought me to Thanksgiving one year at her family’s “retreat” in the mountains. While my gf gave me a tour of the place, she showed me her Dad’s study/library, which had a trophy case with about 20-30 trophies.
Her Dad’s name was etched on them, but all of the other details were blacked out/covered up. I was told that under no circumstances was I to ask what the trophies were for, because we weren’t even allowed in there.
My uncle was a mortician, gay, and extremely wealthy. Aside from multiple crystal phalluses, carved stone phalluses etc.. he had an art piece hanging on his wall of a human male torso, no head, no arms, no legs, but sure enough it had a the wang. Also in each bathroom were black and white charcoal drawings of men in leather, spandex, or chains, with massive members.
Not weird but a Van Gogh, just chillin in the hallway. Took a selfie with the flash on, whoops.
As a kid back in the Mesozoic Era my best friend and I used to play in a converted racquetball court and lounge under the old West Coast mansion her family had lived in since its construction.
The stairs to it were hidden behind a closet off of the abandoned servants quarters. Halfway down the stairs was a wine cellar. A decoy as the actual wine cellar for the home was under the kitchen….. Another staircase behind a rack of dusty bottles led two stories down to our giant play area beneath this.
At the beginning of WWII – before Pearl Harbor- my friend’s paranoid WWI vet grandfather had dug out the space over fear of Japanese , (or German), invasion. Her dad made the giant room regulation designed for racquetball years later. Maybe originally squash. Not sure, but the lounge area was also glassed off above it so one could look down into the court like a gallery.
It was really neat. Also upstairs in the living room was a wall straight out of an old mystery novel. If you pushed a spot just right, the wall opened to a hidden room. Super tiny – had a button to ring certain other rooms in the house as the home had these already to call for staff . My friends mom said it was so if someone quickly had to hide they could alert the household of danger.
We used to pretend to be on Nancy Drew cases all the time……so fun.
(The family was wealthy, but despite the amazing home they lived a completely pretentious free life. Normal cars, camping vacations, frugal living as sport. But they were philanthropists too. Especially supporting organizations like the humane society. One thing about this family’s home was all the cats. I loved kitties but had a mother who preferred her animals well seasoned. The family had the space so they always had, and were looking to adopt out but often didn’t, at least 20 rescue cats, many with special needs. Haha, 😆 I’m old, I didn’t know how to write that. Special needs kitty mystery mansion really is actually an appropriate description. )
A full functioning Barbershop inside the house. Complete with the rotating “candy cane” outside the entrance. The guy would have his friends come over for a cut.
I was a guest in the home of an ugly rich guy who founded a company you’ve heard of. He married a sweet southern girl (who he met while she was stripping) and she served us drinks in her panties while we bowled in their private underground bowling alley. Interesting evening.
They are away so often on vacation that they have parties every 3 months. Their parrot was so upset with the owners absence it plucked all its feathers. The owner didn’t care. I felt bad for that bird.
I worked as a house cleaner in college and we would service primarily large homes belonging to wealthy folks. There was this one place that gave me the impression the couple was living well beyond their means. Huge house but almost completely empty. The other girls who had been working there longer told me the couple had been clients for a while so it wasn’t like they were just moving in or anything. Only the master bedroom and this one little den was furnished. The wife was the definition of a trophy wife. Skinny, blonde, lots of plastic surgery, and she was always a real bitch. Would constantly call our boss right after we had finished cleaning to say she found a single hair or a tiny spot on the floor or something dumb like that. Just a bored housewife. This one time she requested that we vacuum under the cushions of the one couch in the house. We go to do that and find a massive treasure trove of black BBW porn. Just tons of magazines and DVD’s. She asked that if we found anything in the couch to leave it on the kitchen island. So we did. We’re not sure if she did it intentionally to catch her husband or if she had no idea it was there and came home to a surprise. We never heard from them again after that.
One client had a whole separate house on their property just for their dogs. They’d referred to a “dog house” and I was expecting like maybe a little building in the yard where they kept their toys or something, but this was a full furnished home with king sized beds and a huge play room on the main floor. They had a full training and feeding staff to care for the dogs and everything. They lived in their own house and would come over to visit. Seemed like a weird dynamic to have with your pet..
One client didn’t have a litterbox for the cats, their cats I guess didn’t like using the boxes in the basement and they didn’t want to put boxes upstairs so they put down pond liner and kitty litter across an entire room in the basement and had their housekeeper run a rake through it daily.
Dollar store dish soap that didn’t do shit. I was like yo invest in some dawn or something yeesh
Full on Nazi SS officers uniform on display in a secret room
A wine cellar bigger than my appartement, and to access it you had to pass through a room twice as big, with model cars stacked to the cieling on all the walls…
This is a copy/paste of a comment I made on a similar question a while ago:
I have worked for some of the richest people in Maryland and the one thing that stands out more than others is this doctor I worked for in Montgomery County. It’s one of the most affluent zip codes in America.
Anyway, this guy owned a shit load of offices around the DC area, tons of employees and associate doctors, etc. Guy was seriously loaded. Huge garage full of super expensive cars like multiple Ferraris, art collection, wine cellar, the works. I used to do IT work for his medical practice and manage all the servers and stuff, and occasionally went to their house because I was the lead admin.
I once was working in his house and was walking around upstairs where the bedrooms were. I shit you not this guy was laying in bed being fed by an assistant. Like he was literally laying in bed while someone hand fed him, and not like grapes but a regular meal. It was fucking weird as shit. Imagine someone feeding you a full meal like a steak and spoons of soup, salad, etc. and you never used your hands. It was like an adult being fed like a baby. It seemed like Saddam Hussein type shit. I’ve never seen anything like that before and that was what popped into my mind, like a dictator or something who demands to be treated like a literal king.
There was nothing sexual about it.
Keep in mind this was a man in his 50s who was in fine physical shape and didn’t need a caregiver. It was just pure opulence.
Then one time I was working in the kitchen area and his young son, probably late teens/early 20’s came walking past me and stunk to high heaven of pot (which I’m totally cool with and we joked about), he went to the kitchen and poured a IPA into a glass and went back to his room, this was at 9am LOL I thought it was hysterical. He was a cool kid from my interactions with him, probably just figured “my dad is rich as shit so I don’t have to worry about anything” so he was totally laid back.
I’ve got some other strange things but that is by far the strangest.
I was at a house where there separate building that happened to be a guest house/art museum (they collected a lot of art). This building was a very modern build (think modern art museum with lots of marble, glass, and steel. Just having an art museum on your property was interesting by itself. But in the building was a guest room. In the corner of that guest room, seemingly out of place, was a wadded up blanket. Inside the blanket was a hyperrealistic miniature of a naked man. It was a bit startling to see at first but turned out to be a piece of art by Ron Mueck.
I was at John Waters’ house for his birthday and he has a room set up as a lifelike recreation of a meth lab (it wasn’t a real meth lab, it’s an art piece). He told me that when Bill Clinton visited him the secret service agents were *extremely* concerned about the room.
I worked for a very self centered man back in the 90s. He threw an office Christmas party at his house and he loved to give tours. He thought his closet was so impressive it was wide open with lights on and rope barriers in front of the door. Rope barriers. Like a museum.
I knew someone who didn’t like to do laundry so she just bought new clothes for each of her 4 kids every week. They were always high quality or designer clothes. At the time, all her kids were 10-16 yrs old.
What would happen if they liked an item a lot and couldn’t find it again? Why not just teach the kids to do their own laundry? Why not hire a housekeeper who can do it? There are so many options, other than spending thousands every month just to avoid laundry. Plus they rarely donated it. Just bagged it up and threw it out. I never could wrap my head around it.
I’m a caterer.
Lamborghini Countach hanging on the wall.
I have a cousin who’s dating someone who’s in a very wealthy circle of people in the mid south east. They said they went to a holiday gathering at an acquaintance of someone in the circle and that those people had real life dinosaur eggs on display in their home and were EXCITEDLY showing them off.
Not too weird, but i had rich friends growing up and one had 3 cellphones in elementary school. Another had cheetah print carpet in her bedroom which i thought was the epitome of rich.
The family had like Styrofoam bricks next to the couch in the living room for the explicit purpose of throwing at the TV if they didn’t like the show, or if a character said something silly.
A real train in the basement (engine and a passenger car) with a model of it running into a station that was modeled to a specific year.
I was a visiting nurse. I went to both poor people’s homes and rich people’s and found hoarders in both category. The type of thing where the floor would be covered in products and you’d have to follow a path through it to get to the back of the house.
Dated a rich girl that never wore the same pair of socks twice.
In Naples, FL I was at a house with a sensory deprivation room. Flat black walls with acousting dampening baffles, in the middle was a coffin-like bathtub. It had speakers and a flat screen display in the lid. I heard that the room cost over $100K to build.
Had a rich neighbor growing up who’d always invite us over for parties and always insisted on giving us gifts and leftovers. They did this with every guests.
They were also hoarders but built a separate house to keep their crap in. It was filled with whatever they bought but never used and even never got out of the packaging it was delivered in.
They told my mom to take a box of she wanted and for shits and giggles she did. It was a knife collection and sharpener set.
Buddy of mine has a car elevator.
Instead of just building a bigger garage, he stores his cars stacked onto each other, like some kind of Hot wheels accessory. It’s very surreal.
Nouveau rich-i worked for an estate sale company. The whole house was filled with expensive crap. In their attic, they had beautiful family antiques that they didn’t want, they were sold too. They sold nearly everything in the house, and started all over again in another state
They had part of the house permanently decorated for Christmas and it included a fully decorated Christmas tree that was suspended upside down from the ceiling. Which was actually pretty awesome.
A very rich person I know does not eat leftover food. They will cook a feast and afterwards everything goes straight in the garbage no matter how much is left over.