7 Insane True Stories Behind the World's Most WTF Houses

The world is home to pretty much every shape, size and bizarre form of house you can possibly imagine. But, as amazing as these houses are, the stories of the people who built them are often even more insane.

Yes, a house says a lot about a person, and these houses tell the world that their owners aren't about to conform to its rules. Or maybe that they just forgot to take their medication.

Believe it or not, this thing that appears to be a gigantic, ancient, haunted house in mid-collapse is in fact an inhabitable home. And it looks like that on purpose.

Located in the Siberian town of Arkhangelsk, it's believed to be the tallest wooden dwelling in the world, towering 13-stories and seemingly defying several laws of physics by not toppling over every time somebody leans on it.

So Who the Hell Built This Thing?

Actually... we're pretty sure nobody dares lean on the thing in the first place. You'll see why in a moment.

Nikolai Sutyagin built the entire house himself by hand mostly from scrap lumber. According to its creator, the house was originally intended to only be two stories, but looked "ungainly," so he just kept building, which we're pretty sure isn't a technique recommended by most architectural schools.

Despite the quirkiness of his final product, Nikolai sounds like quite the inspiring figure doesn't he? The kind of guy you tell your kids about when you want them to get their asses up from in front of the TV. Well until you find out that Nikolai Sutyagin was actually a Russian gangster who built his house to be the Russian equivalent of the Playboy Mansion.

On one hand you're more likely to get tetanus here than in the real Playboy Mansion. On the plus side, you're also less likely to have to sleep with Hugh Hefner.

The house contains a garden, ballroom, five-story bathhouse and numerous rooms where Sutyagin's business colleagues could "entertain" various women. Come to think of it, he may have inspired us even more now.

Of course he's not wearing a shirt.

Well, clearly this is just a picture of a house in construction. That white structure is just one of the walls of a full house to be built later, right?

Nope, turns out that's an entire house, the thinnest one in the world in fact. The house measures only about three-feet wide at the front, expanding to a roomy six-feet across at its widest point. Despite being narrower than a lot of human beings here in America, this Brazilian house manages to pack in two living rooms, three bedrooms and a kitchen.

And great security

So Who the Hell Built This Thing?

A few years ago, Helenita Queiroz Grave Minho found herself out of a job. While some people might use this as excuse to catch up on their daytime TV while hiding inside to keep the disability checks coming, Helenita decided to be proactive. She wanted to build a house that she could rent out for extra cash, but unfortunately the only land she had to build on was a narrow alleyway. That didn't stop her.

The would-be builder went through a lengthy battle with the mayor's office before she was allowed to build but eventually the authorities gave in, probably out of morbid curiosity. Despite having no architectural training, Helenita designed and built the house with her husband, and it's now become a local tourist attraction, with Helenita planning to build another story on it as well. Hopefully she stops there though, since we're not sure "world's narrowest collapsed pile of rubble" will have quite the same draw.

Let's make one thing clear: We didn't just find some house that sort of looked like a toilet with the intention of mocking it. Oh, no, this was designed to be a toilet from the get-go. The dude went to the architect and said, "I want to live in a goddamned toilet, and if you can't make that happen, I'll find somebody who can."

He was an eccentric man.

So Who the Hell Built This Thing?

Sim Jae-Duck was born in a washroom. Usually this is the kind of personal trivia you try to keep to yourself, but Sim Jae-Duck isn't merely unashamed of the fact that the first thing he saw in this world was that the tub could really use a de-grouting, he's downright proud of it.

It was no mere coincidence that his mother gave birth there either, as Sim's grandmother told his mom that babies born in bathrooms were destined to live long, successful lives. Normally that kind of advice would be cause to ship grandma off to the nursing home, but it turns out that she may have been on to something as Sim Jae-Duck went on to become the Mayor of the South Korean city of Suweon.

Photo research of Suweon yields this picture. We can only assume it is a strange place.

During his term, Sim was given the nickname "Mayor Toilet" because everywhere you go politics is basically just like kindergarten. Also, Sim earned his moniker by being completely obsessed by them--his big thing was that bathrooms should be "clean and beautiful resting places imbued with culture" and hopes to transform them into something closer to a garden or art gallery (if those things were filled with the smell of other people's poop).

Which brings us back around to his toilet house.

In 1999, Sim Jae-Duck launched his World Toilet Association and, to celebrate, unveiled his glass walled toilet house, which features two bedrooms, guestrooms and, of course, three luxurious state-of-the-art washrooms (though it would have been awesome if they had forgotten to put those in).

By the way, if you have 50-thousand dollars laying about you too can spend a night in Sim's toilet house. Seems kind of pricey considering the "WE'RE STANDING IN A GIANT TOILET!!! TEEHEE!!! ARE WE HAVING CORN FOR DINNER?!?!?" jokes would get old after three or four hours.

On the southernmost tip of Florida lays the Coral Castle, a structure that has been compared to world wonders like Stonehenge and the great pyramids of Egypt. And it was all built by a single man who, if his neighbors are to be believed, may have had magical powers.

So Who the Hell Built This Thing?

Latvian immigrant Edward Leedskalnin was dumped by his fiance the day before their wedding. Men react differently to that kind of thing; some drink, some have sex with the babysitter, some decide to build a goddamned castle.

Edward moved to south Florida and did just that, using giant blocks of limestone from the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Everything in the castle, from Edward's two-story tower living quarters, to the furniture, to the strange sculptures in the courtyard, to his throne (he way have been overcompensating just a tad with that one) were made of these stone slabs, with no mortar or cement to hold them together.

While that's odd in and of itself, even stranger is the fact that nobody knows how the hell the guy did it all. Leedskalnin went to great lengths to make sure nobody saw him working, and it remains a mystery how he managed to move, cut and precisely assemble these chunks of rock (some of which were up to twice as large as the stones used at Stonehenge) all on his own.

See this giant hunk of stone? I totally lifted it, and I'm not going to tell you how.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, eventually he decided the location he'd chosen for his project wasn't quite right, so he moved the whole thing 10-miles down the road. Think changing apartments is tough? Try moving when you have to take over a thousand-tons of limestone with you.

Over the years people have come up with plenty of interesting theories to explain the creation of the Coral Castle, and by "interesting," we mostly mean batshit insane. Neighbors say they witnessed Edward placing his hands on the rocks, chanting and causing them to levitate; local teenagers claim to have seen him flying the blocks like hydrogen balloons; and some even believe Edward may have discovered the very key to the Universe. Edward himself said his amazing building abilities were due to him discovering the secrets of the pyramids. Gee, thanks for the clarification. Even Spock himself demands an explanation...

We're thinking his secret may involve using a "magical" army of grossly underpaid illegal immigrants to move his gigantic rocks.