For the past six months we’ve been renting a place while our house is being built. Now that we’re nearing the completion date, I find that I want to leave a…a lasting impression on this place. That is, I want to freak out the landlord or the next set of tenants in a discrete, you-wouldn’t-notice-the-strangeness-until-you’d-been-here-a-few-months sort of way.
So far, I’m going to label shelves and built-in drawers to say things like, ‘bondage equipment, (black leather),’ ‘bondage equipment (metal)’ ‘handcuffs, (fuzzy)’ ‘handcuffs (vintage 1940’s police-style, fully functional)’ and then in the bathroom I’m planning on labeling all the shelves with things like, ‘ointments, assorted’ ‘herpes treatments’ ‘sophisticated shaving apparatus’ and ‘pez dispensers.’ I’m also thinking about leaving a fully fictionalized diary in some moderately hard to find place. I need to brush up on my writing skills anyway.
But I want to freak the future generations of rented-house dwellers even more. And who better to appeal to then you fine people? A few things to keep in mind though…I’m just turning seventeen, and living here with my parents, so everything would have to be either done a). relatively quickly–that is, right before we’d leave without my parents noticing, b). discretely enough that they wouldn’t notice at all or c). things that wouldn’t be questioned at all. As long as it fits that, I’m willing to do anything.
I’m sure you’ll do me a step further than doing me proud, and I look forward to it.
Thanks for the help, OS
Oh, I see this on tv a lot. Just cut out newspaper clippings of unsolved weird crimes & stuff & put them on the wall & circle things in them. What fun.
What’s odd about that? The first thing I do when I move in to an apartment is put locks like that on the outside of all doors – laundry doors, bedroom doors, bathroom doors. It’s called child-proofing. If I have to lock my kids out of any room for any reason, I can. I also installed a latch on their last bedroom door that kept the door open (the door was latched to the wall). They kept slamming the door and I got sick of it.
As for the OP, I suggest a combination of two previous suggestions. Cut out news articles, write random Bible verses on them in red marker, and paste them somewhere very out of the way (like the underside of a shelf). Can you imagine?
Leave typed, professionally written looking letters laying around asking the recipient about bizarre events. For example, one of them could be from the humane society, asking the recipient why they donated 100 cases of disposable razors and a 55 gallon drum of rubbing alcohol to their “Save the Burros” program. Or, you could leave passionate letters “written” by your landlord to the mailman. Even better, create reams of correspondance written by some charitable organization which indicates that they’re responding to letters of a “pornographic” nature (note that the letters from the charitable organization [or heck even a trade publication] should indicate that they’re uncomfortable with the subject of the “former resident’s” correspondance and suggesting that he/she seek mental help) then have a subscription to that organization’s publication sent to your old address! Should keep them wondering for years!
You don’t have to destroy the carpet immediately for this to come off. A uni friend did this before moving out of his first uni college room. He damped down the carpet, but didn’t soak it and it took until an accidental spill six months later by the next set of tenants until the first crop of grass was reported.
I don’t know about everywhere, but in my state landlords are required by law to replace the carpeting after every tenant. So anything involving carpets wouldn’t work here.
Most of the stuff above would only affect the landlord, who would have to clean up the place.
No, you paint odd things in strange places on the walls. In the exact same color as the existing wall paint. (Then hope the landlord doesn’t automatically repaint the place.) You do not want to over do this. Subtlety is the watchword.
What you want is for something like this…
Two years from now the next tenant is sitting on the toilet in the middle of the night. Only then do they notice the pentagon and strange runes hidden in the paint above the bathroom door and only visible when the light hits it just right and it is viewed from the proper angle…
Chimera, glow in the dark paint tends not to show up on white walls. Heh, now that I think about it, me and a buddy did this by accident to some old roommates of ours. He and I had gone around painting Egyptian symbols in glow in the dark paint on the walls, and one of our roommates had a black velvet painting of a Mexican in a sombrero that I’d painted all the white areas with the paint. Sadly, however, we discovered at night, the light from the parking lot was too bright for our handiwork to be seen. But there was a payoff to all this that we heard about months later!
It seems that after my buddy and I had moved out, our former roommates were sitting around in the apartment with some friends during a really bad thunderstorm. One of them (who knew nothing about the paint) was looking out the window and said, “You know, this is no ordinary storm.” At which point, the lights all went out, and all our handiwork showed itself! Scared the piss out of them!
