This fall, a group of engineering students at The Ohio State University rented part of an old house and ended up dealing with some problems that are fairly ordinary for a college rental unit.
“There was mold in our air conditioners,” Mark Hartman, one of the tenants told The Lantern, OSU’s student newspaper. “The walls and the floors were all dirty.”
Oh yeah, and there was also this mysterious dude named Jeremy living in the basement.
“Some random guy had a key to our house and was just living in our house without anyone knowing,” explained Brett Mugglin, another tenant.
The five first-floor roommates were under the impression that there was a utility closet behind a locked door down in the basement. However, when the landlord’s maintenance staff knocked the door down, they discovered a fully furnished bedroom suite decorated with photographs and strewn with textbooks.
There was also a toilet and a sink in the basement for Jeremy to use.
The residents asked the management company, NorthSteppe Realty, to change the locks, which it did. A realtor also left a note asking Jeremy to call.
The tenants alleged that the locks had not been changed for years until the shady new roommate was found.
“There could be hundreds of people with keys to the house,” Hartman speculated to The Lantern.
Luckily, Jeremy appears to have been a pretty decent guy. He promptly removed his stuff from his basement lair after the note and the phone call. Also, the guys on the lease said they were pretty sure he never ate any of their food or entered their rooms.
Mugglin said he had even run into Jeremy somewhere on the premises during the summer. A short, weird exchange followed.
“He was a really nice guy. Like, I feel bad for him,” Mugglin said.
Apparently, Jeremy figured out that he could use the room and was able to obtain a key to the house because his cousin had lived in the house the previous year.
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