You simply haven't lived until you've survived a horrible hotel or motel experience. Whether it's haunted by ghosts trapped in the old stairwells, the carcasses of roaches, or neighbors with loud sex lives, few experiences will etch themselves into your traumatic memory bank like a shady motel.

Most of us aren't made of money, so if we find ourselves in need of a last minute crash spot, we'll go for the nearest discount hotel, one star reviews be damned. In most cases these stays are uneventful or mildly disappointing. But there are times when the shadiness is so deep and horrific it leaves you with a story for the rest of your life.

In a popular Reddit thread, people shared their worst motel and hotel stories, and it'll make you never want to leave your house again.

1. onlythefunny's dog was very hungry.

That time I couldn't make my dog stop licking the bed spread :-\

I finally had to lock it in the bathroom so he wouldn't lick a hole in it.

2. Giantxbones had a horrible stay.

Planned a trip once and looked into motels/hotels about 30 minutes outside the city. I can't remember the name of the hotel because it wasn't a national chain, plus it was 7 years ago (and I think my mind's done its best to shut out the experience as best it can).

Anyway, the pictures on the website all looked nice. Rooms looked good for what I needed and with a free breakfast, what could go wrong? It was $100 a night, seemed reasonable.

So I get there, and in the large hotel parking lot, there are only about 2-3 cars outside.

I go in, and it takes roughly 15 minutes for someone to meet me at the front desk. I check in, and start off to my room. The elevator door opens and boom, dark hall way, no lights.

I was like "wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut". It was being renovated or something, and you had to walk through the renovation to get to your room.

I get to my room, and it's roughly about half the size I thought it was. I go to the bathroom because I want to shower after a long roadtrip. I turn on the water and the cold water doesn't work. I turn on the hot water, and it never gets hot, it just stays cold.

At this point I'm getting really frustrated cause I'm paying $100 for this experience. I'm so tired that I say fuck it and try to take a nap. I go to sit on the bed and something moves. I don't know what it is at this point, but I know I saw something small move.

I lift the pillow and...........spider nest. WTF

I immediately pack my stuff back up and again walk through the renovation to the elevator. I press the lobby button, the doors shut, and......you guessed it, elevator gets stuck. Now I'm trapped, and after about 3 minutes in there, the lights also go out.

I pull my cellphone out and try calling the main desk. It takes 4 calls before they pick up. They say they'll send someone. After 2 hours, finally someone gets the elevator working and I'm let out.

After I get to the front desk and get my refund, I storm out of the place and toward my car. On the way, I trip on one of those long concrete barriers at the front of parking spots, and promptly break my wrist.

TL;DR Thought I was going on vacation, ended up experiencing hell on earth.

3. slamdancer slept in a bolted down room.

Driving cross-country from Wisconsin to Florida. Three o'clock in the morning, we've been on the road for hours, and neither of us can keep our eyes open anymore. We agree we have to stop at the next hotel, motel, Holiday Inn...anything.

Shortly we come upon an exit with a hotel. It's easy to tell this, because its name is just "Hotel".

We go in, and it looks pretty shady, but it's late and we're exhausted, so we get a room from the nice Pakistani fellow behind the desk. We only need a few hours sleep, so we request a wakeup call.

Opening the door to our room, we see that it's definitely shady, as everything in the room has been bolted and/or chained to the walls or floor.

At least, everything had been, because it's all gone now. The television, the mirror, the fridge, the end tables, the phone...they've all been stolen, and judging by the conditions left behind, usually a good amount of force was employed.

We pile our bags between the two beds and both sleep with knives under our pillows.

As I drift off to sleep, my exhaustion-fogged brain catches onto an important detail I had missed earlier...how are they going to leave a wakeup call when we don't have a phone?

7:00 a.m. - KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK "HELLO IN THERE! IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO BEING AWAKE NOW! HELLO! YOU MUST BE GETTING WITH THE WAKING UP!"

4. Spoon_Shaker listened to porn in action.

We needed a place to stay just one night after attending a concert an hour or so away from home. It only needed to be a simple place to stay, but I found a cheap little place with a spa in the room and though it would be fun to use the opportunity for a bit of romantic night away. We arrived before the gig and found the place painted a cheesy shade of pink, and the layout of the room was like a shady drive in motel, stained carpet and plastic furniture. The toilet broke two seconds after arriving and we had to call maintenance to fix it.

We left for the gig, laughing at what a dodgy place we'd found ourselves in. Later in the night we arrived back at the hotel a little drunk, and ready for some fun in the spa. As soon as we entered the bathroom we were hit with the unmistakable sound of loud, obnoxious sex thumping through the walls. It pounded through the room and we giggled at the raunchiness of it, and when it stopped suddenly we panicked a little that they'd heard us.

But we just heard chatting coming from the room next door; smoke break. Five seconds later, moaning and screaming. Suddenly, regular conversation. These guys were going from all out, crazy monkey sex to polite conversation in seconds. Eventually we realised; it was porn. They were making porn. This ebb and flow of screaming and orgasms and chit chat continued for HOURS, constantly, until they finally packed up all their equipment in a van at about 4am and went home, after 7 hours of 'hard' work.

I better recognise that room one day.

5. actaeonout got scammed.

This one is more embarrassing than anything--family and I arrive in Hanoi (Vietnam) and grab a taxi from the airport. We already have a hotel picked out, and tell the taxi driver to take us there. We pull up out front, and we see a guy come from what we thought was the hotel to tell us that they're fully booked, but they have a sister hotel right around the corner.

We say whatever, it's late, take us, and end up staying in a crappy hotel (bad plumbing, dimly lit, smelled weird) for a couple days before we wise up and realize that we'd been scammed. We went back to stay at the first hotel, which was very nice, and gorged ourselves on baguettes the whole time. Damn I miss those baguettes.

TL;DR Don't trust random dudes. I do recommend visiting Vietnam though.

6. TheFlyingPolack was drunkenly leaked on.

We noticed water leaking through the ceiling of our room once. We called the front desk to investigate. It turns out some drunk guy passed out naked in the bathtub on the floor above us and his butt was covering the drain creating a flood in his room. Only in Vegas.

7. tre11is took a dump in a sink.

The time I sh*t in the sink.

I was 11, and it was my first time overseas with my family. We'd just landed and I really had to take a dump, but I held it all the way to the hotel.

We arrive, check into our room and I run to the washroom. Now, this was literally a wash room - it just had a sink and faucets. Now I'd heard that bathrooms in France were different, that they had "bidets", but I wasn't sure exactly what a bidet was or what it looked like. I was desperate, I really needed to shit and I figured the sink was the 'bidet' so I hopped up onto it and took a huge dump.

After I was done, I looked down and the reality of the situation hit me. I don't know if you've ever seen a large, long unbroken log of your own shit in a sink - but it's pretty terrifying. Especially with your whole family in the next room. I try to 'flush' it by turning the water on, but that just makes a soup. The drain had that built in cap that you can use to fill it, so it wouldn't drain.

I searched the small room for anything to help, and my eyes landed on the decorative plant. I broke off a plastic branch, and used it as a poking stick to try and break up the poo so it would slide through the small opening. I didn't do much good.

So, being 11...I called my mom. She was pretty good about it - but it was horrifically awkward.

TL;DR: I sh*t in a sink in a hotel, and my mom had to help me clean it up.

8. NikolaTesla1 had an Ants moment.

Undoubtedly the mini fridge incident.

My family had gone to Florida for vacation and were staying in a cheap but relatively nice hotel. After the first three days we noticed they had a mini fridge in the room, so naturally my brother looks inside. Some sick bastard before us had opened two of the soda cans in the fridge and half drank both of them, which placed back in the fridge upside down. After a few days, what seemed like the hotel's entire ant population had swarmed inside the fridge through god knows where.

When my brother opened it, so many came pouring out that it may have looked like a miniscule interpretation of the Killer Ant scene from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The fridge was promptly shut, and after my brother's quick shower, we decided we didn't want to stay in the hotel after that night.

9. dabokii had to chop off their hair.

When I was about 7 or 8 my family and I stayed at a motel with a hot tub- my long blond hair got stuck in an uncovered filter and had to be chopped off.

10. DIGGYRULES got bed bugs.

After driving for 10 hours, my husband and I stopped for the night at a Days Inn in South Carolina (dump called "South of the Border"). The hotel door wouldn't close unless you slammed it with all of your strength. The water coming out of the faucets was brown. The towels and washcloths were frayed and had blood stains on them.

We went to bed anyway because we were exhausted and just needed to sleep, but we started itching like crazy in the bed. Bugs. We tried to report it to the front desk, but they didn't care, so we gathered our things and left in the middle of the night.

I tried contacting the management and the head office, but they just e-mailed us back and told us, basically, that it was our loss and not to expect any compensation or even an apology.

11. Three_Act_Show's poor dad was pissing blood.

A coffee plantation and spa in Indonesia. This place was extremely expensive, but in the end it was a disaster. My entire family went to the spa for a few days (we had never spent so much in our lives) and experienced the full terror of this Indonesian Resort.

There were personal baths in each room. Nice right? Think again. The baths were unhygienic, and eventually my father got a bladder infection. Then, we ate their food, and their "fresh" prawns. My father then got food poisoning. After all this, we decided to leave for Jakarta. So we let the hotel escort drive us to the airport, which is a couple of hours away.

My father was already very sick. He had a high fever, a bladder infection, and food poisoning. We were planning to bring him to a doctor as soon as we arrived in Jakarta. But something happened, of course. The driver misheard the hotel's directions (which were correct, we confirmed this later) and brought us to fucking Surabaya. Wanna guess where Surabaya is? Well, it's definitely not Jakarta.

So we return to the resort, and tell them of our woes. They give us a sh*tty room and allow us to stay another day, but they've already done their worst. We're forty hours behind schedule and have missed two connection flights. Now, however, the driver is told that he will get fired (in undeveloped country terms, f*cked up the butt) so my father tries to help him. They allow the driver to stay, and give him a few warnings.

When my father got back to Jakarta, he was pissing blood and in a terrible state. We had to stay there for a few days, in order to help him. That was a terrible hotel experience.

12. StickleyMan woke up to a very drunk British woman.

I was backpacking through Australia, staying in the most budget hostels around. After sharing a room with 23 other people for a week, I decided to splurge on a motel. I really just wanted my own room for one night. The thought of a carefree fap, without having to be covert, was highly enticing.

After falling asleep in a blissful, post-masturbatory haze, I was woken up at 3 in the morning by someone banging on my door. I opened it to find an extremely drunk British chick. She pushed past me, walked into the room, crouched down, and took a piss right in the middle of the floor. Then she passed out in the now-formed small puddle of her own urine. That was a weird night.

13. vesnapukanic got locked into the shower.

Went to a motel while on vacation with an ex. I went to take a shower and locked the bathroom door. When I was done, dried off and ready to go back into the main part of the room the door wouldn't open. My ex had to call the front desk who sent someone up to the room who proceeded to diassemble the doorknob to open the door.

After that they upgraded our room for the evening.

14. designgoddess's friends were covered in roaches.

Friends came to visit me out west. After leaving my place they were headed to the coast. "We're staying in Hollywood!" I tried to warn them. Get a hotel on coast and visit Hollywood during the day. They did not listen. Their travel agent had made all the plans. After a long day of sight seeing they checked into the hotel. It wasn't quite what they expected, but went to sleep anyway. In the middle of the night one friend got up to use the bathroom and turned on the light. Cockroaches everywhere. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

They covered the walls. They grabbed their things and ran out of the room. While standing in the lobby in their PJs, they tried to make sure they had no cockroaches in their bags or on them. As they walked past the front desk the guy told them that he didn't think they'd make the night. They drove to the coast and found a hotel where I told them to look. When they got home they complained to the travel agent who was shocked that Hollywood wasn't glamorous. Ah, days before the internet.

15. rollerdiscomania was covered in bugs.

Not sure if too late on this one, but eh..

I distinctly remember being around 7-8 and visiting a really beautiful part of Northern Australia with my family, I think somewhere near Kakadu National Park.

Me, my parents, and two siblings were staying in a little cabin, it looked pretty standard, whatever.

As we were initially walking up to the cabin, after picking up the keys and stuff, this little boy around my age walks past me and said to his mum 'They're staying in the one with the bugs'. I remember thinking he was a weirdo, little did I know..

Fast forward a few hours, the sun is gone (it gets particularly dark in the outback), so we switch on the lights in the cabin and hang out. After about 5 minutes of having the lights on, our ENTIRE CABIN is full of bugs! They were EVERYWHERE! they weren't even those annoying little fly-type bugs that hang around lights, they were like every kind of bug I've ever seen/heard of, and massive ones too.

They were on our food, in our hair, in our bags, in the shower, all over the floor and in our beds.

We spent the whole night trying to swat them away, spraying them with mozzie repellant, and being just generally grossed out and miserable. The next morning there were no bugs anywhere, not even little bug corpses from us killing them. Needless to say, we switched cabins the next night, and had a much better time.

TL:DR Attacked by entire bug population of Northern Australia

16. RiverHorsez was showered in sh*t.

I was in Aspen at a lodge about 12 years ago. I was 12 at the time. Great place, super scenic, they had an outdoor heated pool surrounded by snow which was beyond cool.

I went to take a shower after a day of skiing, and halfway through the shower the water turns brown. I freak out and jump out of the shower, grab a towel and tell my mom. she goes into the bathroom and all I hear is "OH MY GOD ITS SHIT! ITS SHIT! THERE IS SHIT EVERYWHERE!"

Yes, indeed the shower I was just in filled with sh*t. The lodge moved us to another room, and didn't even give us a discount.

TL;DR: I had a shitty time at that aspen lodge.

17. 10thDoctorBestDoctor's dad ruined their stay.

My dad stole money from my bank account because he got access to it via my mum and I couldn't pay for my last day there, and I was arguing with him on the phone trying to get him to return what he stole when the police knocked on my door and I was taken away by the police for non payment.

My dad is a d*ck.

18. Barkingpanther doesn't recommend the Days Inn.

Days Inn, Oakland CA. There was a cigarette butt floating in the toilet bowl, even though it was supposed to be a non-smoking room. The bed had a blanket and a sheet but no bottom sheet. The sink was oddly sticky. Oh, and there was a shooting a block away, so we went to sleep with police lights flickering through the curtains. Kind of like a nightlight.

I expect that there will be many, greater tales of terrible hotels but I still want yo put this out there: do not stay at the Days Inn in Oakland California.

19. sheepherder55 listened to the sounds of golf.

I had a motel room that was below a screen golf* place in Korea. These places open all night. So I had the noise of people whacking golf clubs on the floor/ceiling above me. Not an easy night's sleep.

*For the uninitiated it's like a golf simulator; real clubs and balls and you hit the ball at a screen which projects and image of the course.

*But we are initiated, aren't we, Bruce?

20. 4tehlulz had a true winter experience.

Stayed one night in Warwick, Queensland in a cheap motel cabin with a mate. It was the middle of winter and the cabin had thin fibro walls (with the insulation properties of a tent).

The blankets on the beds were completely inadequate and even after we put on every stitch of clothing we'd brought with us, we were still becoming hypothermic.

There was a sh*tty griller in the kitchen area so we turned it on and spent the whole night huddled around it for warmth.

20 people share the worst things that happened to them at a hotel or motel.