10 People Who Lived Secretly in the Most Unexpected Places

Where you live is generally pretty predictable. You can live in a house or apartment in most countries in the Western world. Some people live in trailers, some in tents, and there are people who live in caves and trees. However, most places you would consider a real home can be counted on one hand. But there are a few people who have decided to think outside the box and live in much more unexpected places.

10. Teenager Lived at AOL Headquarters for Months

We're going to go back in time to a place far away called AOL. Remember them? America Online was once a huge internet powerhouse, and they were constantly sending everyone unwanted CDs. They also had a big fancy headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Since tech companies like to stuff their offices with amenities, there was a gym, laundry facilities, couches, and a cafeteria. Basically, everything you'd need to survive pretty comfortably if you decided to live in the building, which is what did Eric Simons .

Simons was 19 when he lived at AOL for two months in 2011. He ate their food, slept on their couches, and spent his days using their resources to start his own company, since he didn’t actually work there. Instead, he signed up for what was called a “startup incubator program” that was based in the building and gave him access. When the program ended, he just hung around.

He managed to reduce his living expenses within one month up to 30 dollars , and it was only because at one point he went to McDonald's after getting bored of AOL cereal and ramen. It was only after a security guard accidentally caught him that his living situation came to an end.

9. Man trying to avoid Covid lived in O'Hare for 3 months.

ohara

The Covid-19 pandemic has shaken up many people’s living conditions. Shelter-in-place, work-from-home, you name it, people have been doing it. Many of us have become more familiar with our own homes because of this fear of going out into the world. But for Aditya Singh, that’s not quite the case. At the height of the pandemic, Singh was desperately afraid of catching the virus, so he stayed put. But he was at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

For three months, Singh managed to remain relatively hidden in a closed part of the airport. He arrived on a flight to October 2020 and was not caught until mid-January.

He traveled with a stolen security badge and, with the help of a face mask, apparently no one noticed that he was not who he claimed to be. Other passengers gave him food while he was there.

Singh had no criminal record and was in America pursuing a master's degree. He was due to return to India when he was caught. In October 2021, a judge found him innocent by any criminal charge, since he was only in the secure area because he got off there on his original flight, and had not actually broken any rules other than using an ID that did not belong to him, in his fear of leaving.

8. A man lived in his office for 500 days

You know the old saying, "You have to work to live, not live to work?" Somehow, a man known only as Terry K. got that mixed up in his head and ended up living at work. And he did it for 500 days.

In his story for Salon The man detailed how he rented out his real apartment in Venice Beach and then lived under his desk in an office building. He would wake up before anyone else arrived, then go to the gym and shower. Sometimes he would even come home a little later to make it seem like he was actually commuting to work.

Why would anyone do something like that? Money. Terry worked 60 hours a week and was never in his apartment. He had student loans and hospital bills and was getting nowhere. So he saved money by renting out his apartment and just living in his cubicle.

With the average rent in the area at the time $1300 per month , he was able to save $20,000. Plus, hundreds of hours of travel. So why did he stop? The company went bankrupt and he was fired.

7. Squatter lived in church attic for three years

It's not uncommon for someone or something to crawl around in the attic in horror movies, and it's entirely plausible when you think about it. Most people rarely go into their attic. There's often easy access to it and potentially plenty of furniture and other items to keep you occupied. Perhaps that's one of the reasons William Baker took up residence in the attic St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church in Arlington, Virginia. And because it was a church attic, not a house attic, it was even less frequented, allowing Baker to live there for a remarkable three years.

Baker was homeless, and he had managed to make a nice place for himself with clothes, a guitar, and a refrigerator he had filled with food he had stolen from the church. In fact, it seemed like the missing food was the only hint that anything was wrong for three years, but it was certainly not enough to convince anyone that they had a squatter.

Baker entered the attic through a ceiling tile. He used a ladder to climb up, then pulled the ladder up without anyone knowing. It wasn't until a repairman showed up at an unexpected hour and heard noises upstairs that anyone realized. The police were called and Baker was charged with trespassing.

6. People living in Walmart

Despite its history of questionable business practices, there's no denying that Walmart is a big deal in the retail world. In the first quarter of 2023, they revenue amounted to more than 141 billion dollars . This is not surprising, since the stores sell almost everything you could possibly need. For this reason, it is perhaps not surprising that more than one person has tried to live in one.

In 2013 14 year old teenager took up residence in a Texas Walmart, but only stayed for a few days. He built hideouts behind things like strollers and stacks of toilet paper so people in the store couldn't see him when they closed up for the night. He also changed his clothes from day to day to avoid looking suspicious.

As expected, he ate food taken from the grocery section of the story and, in a display of crude ingenuity, decided to wear diapers so that no one would catch him in the toilet.

Elsewhere in Texas in Walmart air ducts a man was found , although it was not said how long it had been there. Suffice it to say, the Texas Walmart must be a very homey place.

5. A woman secretly lived in a stranger's closet for a whole year

What do you have in your closet right now? Apparently, a lot of people do. there There is unworn clothes for hundreds of dollars. Maybe you have shoes or sentimental items. But can you say with 100% certainty that you don't have a stranger living there? And before you say "sure," know that at least one person in the past has discovered a stranger living in their closet.

In 2008, a woman was arrested in Japan after living for a whole year V a stranger's closet. He became suspicious when food began to disappear, so he installed severalsurveillance cameras to keep an eye on his house while he was away.

The police arrived and found all the doors and windows locked, then searched her and found her curled up on a shelf in the closet. She said she had snuck in the year before when he had left the place unlocked and had been there ever since.

4. A student spent a year in a ventilation shaft at Yale University.

Let's go back to 1964, when student housing seemed to be as much of a problem as it is today. In this case, a Yale student seven whole months lived in the school's ventilation shaft.

Allan Kornfeld used brick pattern wallpaper to conceal his entrance. In winter, he kept warm with an electric blanket. His living space was an air shaft that provided ventilation for the squash courts and was only four feet wide but 40 feet long with a 10-foot ceiling.

He ate on campus because his tuition covered meals; it just didn't cover housing, and he didn't have enough to rent his own. He had an off-campus mailing address, and friends answered any phone calls for him.

3. A Redditor Posted a Guide to Living in a Vault.

Storage units have been around for years, but they got a big boost in the early 2010s thanks to shows like Storage Wars. Suddenly, they were a big deal, and not just for treasure hunting. People started using them as homes.

Back in 2017, a Reddit user known as 007craft detailed how he for a couple of months transformed storage in the house . The monthly rent was only $200, so it was definitely better than rent, and it already included all his belongings.

He had a bed, a TV, a toaster and a stove, and a refrigerator. He installed power cables and even an antenna to boost the cell phone signal, and then just had to worry about suppressing it so no one would notice.

One version is that the man moved out on his own once he found a real apartment, but U-Haul says they actually caught him and kicked out .

2. The man lived at the veterans stadium for 3 years.

Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia was once one of the most famous professional sports stadiums in America. It was home to the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Eagles. According to Tom Garvey, it was also his home.

Garvey was a parking attendant at the stadium in 1979. Unmarried and with no particular responsibilities, he began sleeping in an unused concession stand and turned it into apartment , where he lived for about three years. Since he was always at work anyway, no one wondered why he hung around for so long.

He took him home to level 200 at Gate D. If anyone had opened the door, all they would have seen were boxes. But if you walked down the hall to his home measuring 60 by 30 feet, lined with astroturf, you'll find a refrigerator, bed, sink, stereo system and other amenities that make it livable.

1. Man Builds Secret Room in Rhode Island Mall

The record holder for the longest run in a place where no one is supposed to live is Michael Townsend, who spent four years at the mall, although he shared the duties with several friends.

The process itself is as exciting as it is incredible. They built an actual room with cinder block walls and a utility door for access. Inside, they created a 750 square foot apartment. There was even a china cabinet. The only thing missing was plumbing, as they couldn’t install plumbing, but since it was in a strip mall, they were never far from a bathroom.

The space they used was basically a design flaw. The mall's floor plan used all the surrounding space, so the apartment was built on an empty lot. The crew planned to install wood floors and build a second bedroom, among other things, but mall security figured it out and arrested them.

Townsend was charged with trespassing, and the shopping center banned him for life.