Shocking Items Found by Event Cleanup Crews
"Someone once found a prosthetic leg filled with mini liquor bottles and a phone number written on it that just said, 'Call me if found. Or don't.'"
"I've cleaned up after a county fair a couple of times. My weirdest find was liquid shit in a glass wine bottle. I still have questions, but we did not investigate at all."
"A friend of mine worked security at a music fest and found a perfectly sealed burrito inside a shoe. Not a food container, but a shoe. The dude took it home and ate it. He said it was the best burrito he ever had, and he still talks about it three years later."
"Oktoberfest finds at least one set of dentures annually."
"A four-foot papier-mâché penis."
"An unexploded firework shell from the fireworks display. My dad put a fuse in it and lit it off in the church parking lot across the street for New Year's. Those are NOT supposed to go off on the ground. It sent fireballs 300 feet in all directions (except down, of course). Dad turned 83 in June. Somehow, he still has all his appendages, both eyes, and most of his hearing."
"Did this as a volunteer in the past. The main thing you find is just so much shit. Shit in a sock? Check. Shit in a saucepan? Check. Shit in a sleeping bag? Check. You get the picture."
"Two Ziploc bags full of urine. They were found in the women's bathroom of the bar I worked in."
"A small bottle of breath freshener that turned out to be many drops of LSD."
"I found a woman's purse with a few thousand dollars in cash. I returned it, and the elitist husband tried to give me a $20 bill reward. I brushed him off and complimented the lady on the nice family pictures."
"I did an EMS standby festival, and we would always go through with the clean-up crew to make sure there were no people left. One day, I found a bloody knife and blood all over the grass after a festival. We called in a whole crew of cops and the fire department to see if we could find this person, which we didn't. No hospitals in the area had anyone come in with a stab wound. No dead bodies in the last week with a stab wound. Have no clue what happened with that person."
"My sister and her roommate found a cat tied to a tree and abandoned after the Rainbow Gathering. The roommate kept her, thank goodness, but who the hell does that?!"
"Shit in a frying pan...that had been fried to medium-rare."
"$8 in quarters, in a perfect little stack."
"This was after a festival where I participated in an FCCLA event at the town square. I stayed back after to help clean up, and I found a jar with liquid, little plastic babies, and little plastic buttons in it."
"Soooo many plastic bottles filled with urine. Several shoes. And one vibrator."
"A home answering machine...and this was only 10 years ago."
"Found a few condoms and a tooth once."
"Cleaned up after Wacken Open Air in Germany. People left their tents, sofas, and refrigerators. Nothing really weird, but some people made sculptures out of their trash, and others burned their stuff on the campsite. Also, a burned-out caravan had to be removed."
"Over 15 years of global festival production here. We find everything, especially because most of the events I've worked at are 'leave no trace' events, which means that during cleanup, we remove everything from the site. In no case have participants left no trace. At one point, I was in charge of the sanitation contract. We had a vendor who vastly underestimated and couldn't keep up with the demand one year (the event was oversold), and there were literal pyramids of poop above the toilet seats all over the site during the event. People on acid would open up the door to a port-a-potty after standing in line for 20 minutes and just burst into tears, then add their bit to the pyramid. I have no idea what they used to wipe. Also, one year we had a bout of food poisoning hit our production commissary. One of my crewmates ended up shitting in his own cooler since he was stuck and super sick in his tent for a couple of days. I have PTSD from the poop stories."
"Worked at the Tweeter Center in the south Chicago burbs as a teen for a few summers. I did tons of odd jobs, but they made us all clean the hill (we picked up larger stuff; they gave us bags and gloves). It was mostly money, cigs, garbage, but one time we found a carved, wooden tortoise left under one of those hemp blankets you can buy at fests!"
"I found an ounce of mushrooms in Highgate after a Grateful Dead show. I also found a fully loaded Neo Jukebox in the very early 2000s. I don't remember what show it was, but that thing had so much bad ass music on it. I found federal police hiding in the trees in Chicago '95, Grateful Dead lot. Yeeeeow. I had a lot of fun in life."
"A lap harp! Hand-made, intricate carvings and in great condition. I left it with security (people I know). No one claimed it, and at the end of the season, they told me it was mine. I left it until the beginning of the following season, and it was still not claimed, so I took it home! At least I tried."
"During a shift as a server at a big money gala, I found a beautiful silk scarf, a single lady's slipper shoe (the kind women bring with them to change into), a man's tie, a falsie, and there was a pair of Spanx I saw in the women's restroom garbage. There were more items, but those stuck out. I worked that gala for a few years, but they were never that many dropsies as that one."
"Catheters and a gold fish in a toilet."
And, finally: "A wig with a pile of raw broccoli on top of it."
Have you ever worked as part of a cleanup crew for outdoor events, hotels, convention centers, arenas, etc.? If so, what's the weirdest or grossest thing you've stumbled upon? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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The school would be evacuated, and the fire department would be called, but everyone just rolled their eyes and said, 'Kids, what can you do? This is how they are.' It wasn't seen as a big deal." "Today, it would be all over the news and declared an act of violence." —u/Salty-Ambition9733 15."I remember kids bringing pocket knives to school and using them during shop class. When I was growing up in the '90s, it was common for many students to carry them. I went to a small, rural school, and nobody thought much of it, but they really cracked down after Columbine. They installed cameras and started searching backpacks, and the school code of conduct was changed to ban anything that could be used as a weapon." "Flash forward to 2021, my nephew was expelled for accidentally bringing one to school. It was forgotten in his pants pocket. He mentioned it to a friend like, 'Oh no, I forgot I had this in my pocket.' As he was trying to decide whether to confess and turn it in or just keep quiet, his 'friend' ratted him out, resulting in an instant expulsion. He had to finish his last two years through an online program." —u/kmill0202 Related: 16."Drivers' Ed in high school, mid 1970s: We were shown very graphic movies from the '50s — Signal 30, Red Asphalt, Mechanized Death — but they didn't stop anyone from driving like a fool at times, after all, we thought we were invincible." —u/reesesbigcup "We homeschooled our son, so the only place that would teach him Driver's Ed was the Seventh-Day Adventist boarding school. Their teacher did a phenomenal job of scaring the sh*t out of the students about drinking, drugs, and not paying attention while driving. He also told traumatic true stories that my son would retell me on the way home. My son, who is now 36, was so traumatized, as was I, that we've rarely gone over the speed limit since! He never lets anyone except me drive him, and only on rare occasions." —u/CompleteSherbert885 17."Flashback: I was the new kid in school, coming in for the second semester from a very warm part of the country to freezing temps. The English teacher was a devout Baptist who enforced her rule that any kid she called on had to stand up and recite any Bible book, chapter, and verse she requested." "She got me on my second day there. I had no idea how to recite the Bible or where to find the verse she wanted, so I eventually told her, 'I don't know how.' She went off, called me a heathen, the devil's spawn, etc. Just ranting, raving, and asking, 'What is WRONG with you?' (I was not a Christian). I was never happier than the day mandatory school prayer was banned in schools." —u/LimpShop4291 18."Hazing the new guys: My dad told me that back in the day, when he tried out for high school football, the older guys on the team would initiate or 'welcome' the new players who wore briefs with 'Gatorade wedgies.'" "Basically, the seniors would force the new players to drink a FULL bottle of Gatorade, then hang them on a hook in the locker room by their underwear. Within 20 minutes, they would be peeing their pants, and the seniors would be high-fiving and laughing at them. The newbies who experienced this would tell their moms to buy them boxers and wear them from then on out. My dad said his butt was sore for a week afterward, and he had to put ointment on it. The senior guys called this process 'turning a boy into a man' because it was a way of welcoming the new guys to the team and making men out of them. I thought this was mean. I don't know if this type of thing was common on sports teams in the old days." —u/Sufficient-Cost1685 Did any of these stories surprise you? Older adults, what aspects of your high school experience are completely unacceptable now? Tell us in the comments or answer anonymously using the form below! Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity. Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds: Solve the daily Crossword
