Landlords, actually
1) The one who refused to speak to women, even down the phone. Whenever anything needed fixing in the house (which was quite often, as it was a bit of a dump), one of the boys had to call him as he would put the phone down on us females.
Why, you ask, did he rent rooms to women, when he allegedly thought we were disgusting sluts? Because someone had to clean the house for the male lodgers, of course.

2) The one who let himself in quietly, early in the morning and creep up to peer through our keyholes to try and catch us in states of undress.

3) The one who got drunk one night, and stood in the hall outside my (locked) door, shouting obscenities at each of the lodgers in turn. He then started shouting that he had a knife and was going to stab the first of us to come out of our room. Especially "that bitch who's on the phone all the time", meaning me. Talking of phones, this was some time ago, when mobile phones were only for yuppie businessmen. I certainly didn't have one, and the only phone in the house was out in the hall with the psychotic landlord. I wedged my door with a chair, and sat by the window all night, ready to jump out of it if he managed to break my door down (only on 1st floor). When it had been quiet for some time, i.e. at about 6am, I peeked out, saw him lying in a small pool of blood outside my door, with cinematic bloody hand prints on the wall. Stepped over him, called the police, and called a friend with a big car to come over and help me move out ASAP. Then he suddenly sat up, like something from a zombie film, and started cursing and threatening again. Turns out he had just cut his hand slightly on his own knife, and passed out from the alcohol, not the loss of blood.
The interesting thing is that all this should have been quite scary, but at the time I was suffering from a hormonal imbalance with a significant adrenalin deficiency, so while I was aware, logically, that this was not a good situation to be in, I didn't actually feel the slightest twinge of fear.
(Turangalila, Sat 7 Apr 2007, 18:50, Reply)