08-08-2025
Shocking Items Found by Event Cleanup Crews
Reddit user ForeXcellence recently asked, "People who clean up after festivals/concerts, what's the weirdest thing you've ever found?" Unsurprisingly, because people are unhinged and so, so gross, the replies were absolutely all over the place. Here's what people revealed:
"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 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 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.
