Niamh Shackleton
A property owner who ignored an odd request on Airbnb ended up receiving an unexpected phone call from the police.
There are many Airbnb horror stories, a well-known one being about dentist Sascha Jovanovic, who had had a woman living in his multimillion dollar home since 2021 and very much overstayed her welcome.
She was meant to leave the property in April 2022, but the pesky tenant didn't pack up her things until November 2023 after squatting for the best part of 600 days.
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Because she didn't pay rent from April 2022 onwards, the woman's said to owe Jovanovic over $60,000.
While Jovanovic's case was a years-long debacle, this woman's was much shorter - yet still very unusual.
In recent weeks, Airbnb host Edith Stone Lentini said she got what she described as a 'sketchy' request on the holiday rental app.
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The person who sent the request was the mother of a high school student who wanted to use Lentini's Nantucket home as a hub for a Halloween party.
"My daughter wants to throw a little Halloween party for her and her friends and I was wondering if that’s possible," the message read, as per Nantucket Current.
"It wouldn’t even really be a party. I will leave the house spotless and I’m sure nothing will be ruined," it went on.
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While some may have found comfort in the mother's reassurances, Lentini did not and chose to ignore the booking request.
But it turns out the gathering went ahead without her knowledge, and she only learnt about the bash when the Nantucket Police Department turned up on November 1 just after 10pm.
She was asked if she knew anything about a party being thrown at her house, to which she denied.
"I said, 'No, there should not be,'" Lentini recalled, the New York Post reported.
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"They said, 'Well, there’s a house party going on.' And I said, 'Oh my God!' They said, 'Let us call you back.'"
It turns out the high school students had broken into her property via an unlocked window and had the party without her consent.
Whats more, the 'host' set it up so that guests would arrive in stages, depending on what school year they were in.
"The audacity of it and the fact she staggered the grades!" Lentini said.
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Most high school parities end in chaos, but fortunately Lentini's home went largely unharmed.
It turns out the students actually went out of their way to ensure her items weren't damaged.
Lentini explained: "They took all the pictures and mirrors off the walls. They took all the pillows off the sofa and put them in the basement.
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"They moved all the furniture aside, rolled up my white carpet and moved it into the screened-in porch, and moved my TV."
She went on: "As much as I’m upset about this, they did take care of the house. The most damage was just sticky floors. They even put ‘do not enter’ tape around the TV stand."
Lentini even joked that the girl who had the party 'should become a party planner'.