Oftentimes, when moving to a new neighborhood, you don't get to choose who lives next to you. Ideally, you'd want neighbors who are quiet, respectful, and unproblematic; but that isn't always the case. These stories of nightmare neighbors will make you think twice before you give your trust to people in your community:
1. Urine Trouble
I moved into a run-dwon apartment in a building that was occupied by basically the worst people in the area. It was a pretty rural small town—a lot of junkies and lowlifes, etc. I moved there because I don’t have a driver’s license and I needed to live close to my new job at a café as there are no buses in the area—except school buses—and it was relatively cheap. I quickly learned what a mistake I'd made.
One night when I came home from work, I met two of my neighbors by the entrance to the building. These two were living wall-to-wall with me, and I had listened to their drugged-up saturnalias more than once. They started following me up the stairs, not saying a single word, just following me. I rushed inside and locked the door, when they started hammering at it.
They were yelling, hammering their hands at the door so hard I thought they would break it. I yelled back at them: “What do you want?? Leave me alone!” Their answer stunned me. They stopped their hammering and the man said, with a fragile voice; “We were just wondering if we could borrow your pee for a drug test tomorrow.” I not-so politely declined and told them to get lost. I didn’t live there for much longer, I’ll tell you that.
2. The Family That Fights Together…
I just recently had a new family move into my neighborhood. The neighborhood is relatively small and close-knit; it’s the kind of neighborhood where everyone knows each other and we generally all get along well. We have big block parties and shoot off fireworks together on holidays. The new family is a middle-aged couple with their four children.
The kids’ ages range from around 14 to two, and this incident is just the first of several problems that I have had with this family since they moved in. So I was hanging out in the living room just relaxing and watching TV. From the couch, I have a clear view of my backyard. That’s when I noticed the retractable cover of my swimming pool begin to roll up.
I was home alone and no one else has access to my backyard. For insurance reasons, I have a lock on my back gate because of the pool. The gate always remains locked as we would be liable if anything was to happen in the yard. I rush outside and see what was going on. That’s when I see this Entitled Mother standing next to my pool with her four children.
They are dressed in their swimsuits and the mom is rolling up the cover of my pool. Me: Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing in my backyard? Her response shocked me to the core...EM: My kids have been well behaved today and they want to go for a swim. I saw that you have a pool so we are going for a dip. Me: This is not a public pool and you are on my private property. I need you to get out of my backyard now. I never told you that you are allowed on my property without permission.
EM: WHO THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? IT IS A VERY HOT DAY AND MY KIDS WANT TO GO FOR A SWIM AND THEY WILL. Me: Not in my private pool they will not. How did you even get in my yard anyway? The gate is locked. EM: SCREW OFF! IN MY OLD NEIGHBORHOOD WE DID THIS ALL THE TIME. MY KIDS ARE GOING FOR A SWIM NOW AND YOU WILL NOT EVEN KNOW WE ARE HERE. YOU ARE JUST BEING SELFISH AND I WILL NOT ALLOW MY BABIES TO SUFFER BECAUSE OF YOUR BAD MOOD.
Me (Now angry): I will not ask again. You either get off my property now or I will call the authorities. You are not using my pool and that is final. EM (finally gets the cover off): Okay kids jump on in. Don’t listen to this stupid witch. Kid: Yeah you stupid witch. We are going for a swim now and you can’t stop us. Me: THAT’S IT! I AM CALLING THE AUTHORITIES.
EM now sees that I am serious and tries to the “reason” with me. EM: You would really not allow four kids to go for a swim on a hot day. What kind of heartless person are you? Just let us go swimming for an hour and we will leave. Don’t you want to be a good neighbor to us? Me: No I do not. You just broke into my backyard without permission? Please get off my property now.
She starts to mumble something to her kids and then she grabs her two youngest and starts to walk out of my yard. I then turn around and see her two oldest boys still standing by the pool. I start to walk over to tell them to go with their mother, and that’s when I see what they are doing. Her two oldest spawns are PEEING into my pool.
Kid: MAYBE THAT WILL TEACH YOU TO BE A BETTER NEIGHBOR, YOU STUPID WITCH. Me (grabs the arms of the two oldest and pushes them out of the gate): GET OFF MY PROPERTY YOU DISGUSTING LITTLE BRATS. EM: DON’T YOU DARE LAY A HAND ON MY BABIES OR I WILL CALL THE POLICE ON YOU. WHO DO YOU THINK THEY WILL BELIEVE? A GOOD MOMMY OR A PATHETIC LITTLE WITCH LIKE YOU? YOU JUST GOT WHAT YOU DESERVE. ENJOY SWIMMING IN YOUR PEE POOL.
They then all walk off laughing as they went back to their house. I was in complete shock and I didn’t know what to do. I now wish I called the authorities after this first incident, but I sadly did not and things have since escalated with this family. Remember how I said that I had a lock on the gate? I later found it broken on the ground. I have no idea what they used to smash it, but they were successful. I have since purchased a much more heavy-duty lock.
3. It’s Raining What?
This was in an apartment building. The upstairs neighbor’s dog peed on their patio and it dripped down onto me while I was sitting outside reading. I yelled and ran to shower, and when I texted them to ask them to take their dog out to pee in future, their response made my blood boil with rage. They said it wasn’t their dog and it must have blown over from somewhere else. Blown over? From where?
4. Noise Pollution
I used to have a terrible work schedule. I'd have to wake up at 2:30 am every morning so I could be at work by 4 am. My downstairs neighbors would blare loud music at all hours of the night and I could feel the bass through my mattress. I went downstairs and politely asked them to turn down the music, and they seemed to kindly agree.
As soon as I got back into bed, they turned it up even louder and kept it going until about 1:30 am. They didn't know who they were messing with. Before I left for work at 3:30 am, I turned over my amplifier so that the speaker was facing the floor. I turned the volume up and set my guitar on top of it. I left for my 12-hour shift, and the feedback was still screaming when I came home. The neighbors never blasted their music again.
5. Pot Calls Kettle Black
When I was living in a small apartment, my neighbors always cranked up their music to 11—like very, very loud—and left it there until something like 7 am. Maybe later, but that's when I would leave for work. It was so loud that I couldn't hear my own TV over it. My neighbors and I would bang on the door but they would never open the door.
It was like trying to sleep at a festival. Then at some point, I found out they often left for a bar across the street, but would just leave the music on. When I found this out, I started pulling the breaker for their apartment. It worked for a bit, but they would just come back at 5 am and turn it back on. It was reported by heaps of people, but nothing was ever done. Then I came up with a genius plan.
While they were gone out as usual one night, I jammed their lock so their keys wouldn't work anymore. When they couldn’t get in after coming back from the bar, they had to get the property manager and he heard the music blasting inside. After a couple of times of that happening, they were evicted. Hmmm...maybe I'm the bad neighbor in this story.
6. Living Your Best Life
I lived in Melbourne, Australia for about a year. While there, I met a gorgeous gay couple, Brian and Derek (names changed). They were both bisexual, and they lived in the same building as me on the floor directly above mine. I soon entered into an intimate relationship with both of them. We would have threesomes, and sometimes more.
Besides the awesome bedroom stuff, I also became really good friends with them and we're still in touch. It was tons of fun for all involved. Among my neighbors was a middle-aged couple with two children. They lived right across the hallway from me and were quick to judge us after seeing Brian and Derek exiting my apartment early in the morning on more than one occasion.
The woman, Karen, asked me in the elevator what I was doing with "those two gays." I politely told her it was none of her business. When she kept on pestering me, I told her "If you must know, I'm friends with benefits with them, now leave me alone." I still remember the look of shock on her face. I don't think she expected me to reply so brazenly.
When I told Brian and Derek about this, they shared their own experience in dealing with them. This couple had tried to talk to the property manager about "gays moving into a building with families and children." They were told to screw off but any time either or both of these guys were in the elevator with them or ran into them in the parking lot, the husband (Let's call him Todd) would stand between them and his kids while giving Brian and/or Derek angry looks.
They must've been trying to prevent their kids from catching "the gay." HA. In the weeks that followed, the entitled couple continued to give me the stink eye any time they saw me. I just smiled back at them sweetly, which annoyed them even more. On one occasion, their teenage daughter said "good morning" to me and tried to make small talk, before her mother dragged her away by the arm while berating her for talking to "that woman."
Interestingly, their kids seemed very well behaved and nice and I truly felt sorry for them. My next-door neighbors (another couple with kids with whom I got along very well) later told me that Karen had tried to get them to file a noise complaint against me. According to Karen’s logic, since I shared a wall with that family, they could probably hear all the "ungodly" noises coming from my apartment and they should complain in order to protect their children.
The nice couple told them they would do no such thing as I had never bothered them and they had never heard any such noises coming out of my apartment. One night, Brian, Derek, and I decided to have a foursome that would involve the three of us and Brian and Derek's friend Dean. The next morning, Dean asked if he could come back to my place with me.
As it was a Sunday morning and Dean was hotter than Hades, I agreed. As he and I were walking down the hallway to my place, Karen was just getting out of hers. She saw Dean and I smiling and talking with his arm around my waist. She approached me, asking angrily if I was “selling my body." I told her she was insane and asked her to kindly screw off.
Later that day, I received a terrifying call from the property manager. She wanted to let me know that Karen and Todd had complained that I was "a prostitute" and that it was dangerous for their children to be in the same building as me. They told her in great detail about how I was bringing home different men. The property manager had gotten to know Brian and Derek quite well and had an inkling that I was “friends” with them.
So she contacted them and they told her all about Karen’s crazy behavior and accusations. They said that the man they had seen me with was a mutual friend. The property manager dissuaded the family from filing any sort of false complaint against me as it could cause a world of trouble for them. I thanked that kind lady and later had a good chuckle over it all with Brian and Derek.
The blatant harassment from Karen and Todd had stopped, but of course, the hateful looks continued. On one occasion, when we were in the elevator together, Karen made a pathetic attempt at shaming me by condescendingly asking if I was going to have any men over that night. What she didn't realize is that shame about my promiscuity is something I'm entirely incapable of feeling.
I proceeded to tell her in great detail about all the acts I was going to engage in that evening. I mean, she's the one who asked, right? After this fun little interaction, she and her husband avoided me completely. Good times.
7. The After After Party
My neighbor’s son used to go out partying all week, bring his friends back, and then party at his place until 5 or 6 am. The issue? He would party upstairs in his bedroom—music blaring, yelling—and it was right next to my bedroom. If it was just constant noise, I could sleep through it, but not that. I was running on no sleep and had to be up at eight to go to work.
I was getting in trouble at work for being exhausted and no one believed it was because my neighbor wasn't letting me sleep. It was terrible. So, after trying to talk to the jerk, we posted a note through the door. His mom worked nights so when she got home, things went crazy. The note was reasonable, as we asked them to move the after-party downstairs because we couldn't sleep through all the noise.
We didn't intend for his mom to get the note. Wow, she was so mad. When my alarm went off an hour or so later, he was angrily yelling that it wasn't fair that my alarm woke him up every day. Yes, an alarm going off once or twice before work was totally unreasonable, while his music blasting all night wasn't. The parties stopped, though.
8. A Messy Message
We lived in a neighborhood of townhouses. One neighbor let her dogs go #2 all over everyone’s lawn and she never picked it up. We tried asking her to be more considerate, but she didn't listen. We even tried picking the mess up for her and putting it on their doorstep, but she still refused to do it. So, my one neighbor decided to get a piece of it and smear it all over the front of the house. After that, she started picking it up.
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9. Grand Theft Auto Neighbor
When I started my first job post-college, I was thrilled to live by myself for the first time in my life. I had this beautiful one-bedroom apartment in a solid part of town. Everything was great until six months later, when new tenants moved in next to my unit. I had a package go missing (a phone case). Amazon had posted a photo of it at my door, so I thought that it was just a fluke.
Then it happened again, and again, and again. The office wouldn’t accept packages, so I had to get my items delivered to friends’ places instead, which was wildly inconvenient. The local authorities didn’t care in the slightest when I reported it, so I just figured I’d deal with it. Fast forward a few weeks, and the situation escalated.
I come home after being gone for less than an hour, to see that my doorknob and front door were scrapped up and the knob was barely hanging on. Long story short, I had been parking in plain view of this guy’s window, so he was able to tell when I was home. I am 100% convinced he tried to break into my place, and that me coming home early interrupted him.
I googled his name after I moved—got it off a package at his door—and found that he was a convicted felon with charges that include grand theft auto, domestic assault, drug dealing, and an attempted break-in.
10. Adventures In Babysitting
Years ago, this new neighbor of mine kept trying for the better part of a summer to use me as a free babysitter. It started when her kid, who was really a cute, well-behaved kid about seven years old, showed up at my door at 7:15 in the morning. We were all just waking up and getting around so I told him that my boys weren't ready to play yet and to come back in a few hours.
That is when the kid told me his mom had gone to work. This seemed a bit odd to me so I brought him in and tried to call his mom. Sure enough, she was gone. So I brought him in and fed him breakfast. He stayed with us the rest of the day and he got along well with my two boys who were five and 10. I had only talked to his mom about two times, so I had no idea why she would think this was a good idea.
When his mom came home, I walked him over so I could talk to her. I told her not to do that again, though I did say that I would be willing to watch him on occasion if asked first, but not every day. Her response was: "Well, what else do you have to do all day?" This kind of took me by surprise. I tried to tell her that I work at home on commissions.
She rolled her eyes and told me that being an artist isn't a “real job,” and besides I was married so I didn't need to work. I should have pointed out to her that she was married and working, but I felt myself getting angry and I didn't want to argue with her. "Just don't do that again." I said to her. "You have teenage kids home for the summer, have them babysit."
She frowned at me and said, "They work." I said, "So do I!" Then I went home. The next morning at 7:15 the kid sheepishly shows up again. Once again I bring him in and feed him breakfast and later lunch. Once again I took him to his home and once again told his mother to please not do that again. She actually tried to tell me that it was my neighborly duty to watch him and I told her that if she sent him tomorrow I wouldn't be there because of a doctor’s appointment. Her reply blew my mind.
She said that as a babysitter I should have given her several day’s notice about this. I angrily told her I was NOT a babysitter and then went home. The next morning I made my 7 am appointment. I did some grocery shopping afterward and it was about 10 am when I got home. The poor kid was waiting for me on my porch. He had been there for nearly three hours and the little guy was scared and hungry.
That night when I took the kid home, I was angry. I told her how the kid was scared and alone. She actually said that she had told me I hadn't given her enough time to find anyone else and that his being alone was my fault. I pointed at her and said: "I am NOT a babysitter! Don't send him over again!" That night, this woman had her adult nephew call me to scream at me for not being home when his poor aunt dropped her son off.
How dare I leave a small child alone like that? I told the nephew that his aunt KNEW I wasn't home so it was HER that left a child all alone. I said that I had repeatedly asked his aunt NOT to send the kid over anymore and I was NOT a babysitter. This nephew freaked out at me when I said that. I hung up on him while he was still screaming at me.
This worked for two wonderful, quiet days. Then right back to it. I tried everything, but this woman insisted that it was my neighborly duty to babysit and would tell me as much. Finally, I decided that to solve this problem I would just get a job outside of my home, and that way she would have to stop. (I was too much of a pacifist back then. I no longer am). I landed an interview for a position at the local library and I was ecstatic.
I told the woman to keep her son home because I had arranged for my kids to stay with their grandmother while I went to this interview. The next morning, I drove to my mother-in-law's house and took my kids inside. When I went to leave, I found this woman's kid waiting for me in my car! She had actually followed me there and put her son in my unlocked car and then zoomed off while I was dropping off my boys.
My mother-in-law wasn't the most flexible person in the world and she adamantly refused to watch an extra kid. I had to cancel my interview. I was livid. I toyed with several ideas at this moment. I could take the kid to her job and leave him with her...or I could call CPS. I really wasn't sure how stable this woman's job was and I didn't want her to get fired, and when I went to go call the CPS I chickened out because it really wouldn't be fair to the little boy.
Besides, I had heard really scary stories about CPS. In the end, I just waited for her to come home. I left the boy at my house with my husband (I planned on doing a lot of cussing) and I stomped over to her house and met her before she even got out of her car. I shouted at her. I told her she was dense, stupid, moronic, and crazy. I told her that she had lost me my job interview and if she sent her kid over to be watched again I was going to call CPS.
I told her that she was violating my space and if it took going to court to get her to knock it off, then so be it. She then put her hand on her hip and in her most snotty tone she said: "Well if you didn't want to sit with him, all you had to do was tell me." I really do not know how I kept from punching her right then and there, this comment was so asinine.
I turned on my heels to start stomping home when I saw her husband pulling up. Now, this was the first time I had ever met her husband. He worked at a job that only allowed him to be home on weekends. (I can't blame him, I wouldn't want to be around her either), but when she saw him she turned tail and RAN into her house. He saw that I was upset and asked me what had happened.
I told him. Told him all of it, especially the incident at my mother-in-law's. The poor man was shocked. He had been told that I was being paid and he had been giving her money to pay me! He had no idea all this had been going on and he was very, very apologetic over the whole thing. In fact, he apologized again to my husband when he came over to pick up his little boy.
Finally, FINALLY, she stopped sending her kid over! Later I heard from others that she was badmouthing me and warning folks about what a horrid babysitter I was, but I took that as a favor. I didn't want to babysit any kids other than my own and I still hate doing so. I don't hate the kids, I love kids. It's dealing with the parents that I don't like.
The kid came over only once in a while after that to play with my kids, after he called first to get permission, exactly the way it should be done. I'm sure his dad had something to do with that because the kid only came over on weekends. This is one of a few stories I have involving this crazy lady. Her only entertainment in life seems to be seeing how bizarre she can act in this neighborhood.
I'm luckier than my other neighbors in the fact that she leaves me alone now, and I'm very happy with that.
11. Wait, What About Tenille?
I have a few stories from the same neighbor, let’s call her Linda. Linda would often have men outside the apartment building that she locked out screaming her name. But the best story regards a boyfriend Linda had who insisted my roommate and I call him "The Captain." About a week after meeting him, we came home to a wedding announcement for Linda and "The Captain."
Yes, his name was The Captain on the announcement. But there was one final, delicious twist in store for us. Exactly one week later, The Captain was taken away by officers outside our apartment building for public intoxication at 2 am while screaming "I've made a huge mistake. I hate you, Linda! A huge mistake! I'm ruined!" I wonder what she did?
12. While It Pours
I had a neighbor who wouldn’t let anyone use his driveway because he didn’t want it to get dirty. Anyone including himself. He parked on the street outside. If he thought you were having a party, he would drag a bunch of plastic bags full of god knows what to the end of his driveway so no one could turn around it. One time I came home and he was outside hosing it down in the rain. To his credit, I’ve never seen a cleaner driveway.
13. Grandma Girlfriend
I used to live in a horrible apartment with paper-thin walls. The people next door were a woman who looked like she was in her 70s and what I thought was her 30-something grandson. They would yell at each other all day, constantly blast their TV, and the smell of their smoke would waft through into my apartment and make the place absolutely reek.
The worst was at night when the two of them would, well...be very loud in bed. So this was the first clue that they were not grandma and grandson like I’d assumed—at least I really hope not. Every night for an hour I heard their creaking bed banging against my bedroom wall and the old woman moaning like a stuck pig. Nightmarish.
I also think the guy kept track of my schedule and watched for me because whenever I came home or went out, even when I took out the garbage, he would be there outside his place, trying to chit chat with me while staring at my body and being completely gross. I lived there a year, but it felt like ten.
14. While It Pours
I had a neighbor who wouldn’t let anyone use his driveway because he didn’t want it to get dirty. Anyone including himself. He parked on the street outside. If he thought you were having a party, he would drag a bunch of plastic bags full of god knows what to the end of his driveway so no one could turn around it. One time I came home and he was outside hosing it down in the rain. To his credit, I’ve never seen a cleaner driveway.
15. This Trash Didn’t Fall Far From The Tree
I had some neighbors below me years ago. It was a mother and her son, plus sometimes his ex, and sometimes their kids. I feel terrible for the kids, because the adults were the trashiest people. The place reeked of pot 24/7, they would park their vehicle on the grass as they were at the back of the building, and they drove everybody nuts with how loud they were.
I once recorded audio of the mom and son fighting where he was screaming and very graphically describing how he was going to kill her. I saw a guy in the building across from us also on his balcony subtly recording in case it escalated. The fight ended when his ex showed up either with or for the kids, and they started arguing instead. At one point she screamed that she had crabs and then drove off. It was absolutely wild.
16. Shade Of Blue
My dad was talking to our neighbor about what color he should paint the house and he said, as a joke: “Well, I might as well paint the old house blue.” The neighbor became angry and responded, “You can't do that! A blue house? How stupid and annoying! Don't be dumb,” etc. And that’s how I grew up in a blue house.
17. Garbage Battle
We had some neighbors that used to leave their garbage out in plastic bags the night before garbage day—instead of putting it in a bin. Around here, that's just ringing the dinner bell for raccoons and other critters. Sure enough, come morning there's garbage strewn all over the neighborhood. What the raccoons and skunks didn't spread around, the wind picked up the slack.
Some of the people on the street kindly approached the guy and asked him to put his garbage in a bin. He told them to get lost. Thus began the Battle of the Garbage. It was so, so satisfying. Every morning of garbage day some people on my street would collect all the half-eaten and rotten trash from their lawns and toss it back into the dude's backyard.
Next, he would collect it, then dump it back on their lawns. Or cram it into their bushes. People started finding half-eaten burritos and candy wrappers in their mailboxes. The street started to look like a slum. The authorities were called. Health inspectors. City by-law enforcement. Each side was calling in whatever authority they could muster to get their enemy in trouble.
The dude and his family—amazingly his wife seemed perfectly pleasant—lasted about eight months then moved. Every once in a while I find a random margarine lid or piece of styrofoam in my hedge, and my mind goes back to those dark days of the garbage battle.
18. Don't Be Crabby
My mom's neighbor called the city on my mom to force her to repair the fence that divided their yards. This lady had always been a crabapple for 10-plus years, but this move really ticked my mom off. The fence did need a few mild repairs, and my mom would have done them right away if the neighbor just talked to her about it (she was already in the process of getting quotes).
The city contacted my mom and told her that she needed to maintain her fence. My mom asked if she had to have a fence by law and the person she talked to could already sense where this was going. Turns out, there are rules about maintaining a fence, but she was not required to have one. So my mom paid a contractor to tear it down entirely.
The neighbor came to talk to my mom and asked when the new fence will be built. My mom replied, "If you want a fence, build it yourself!" A couple of weeks later, my mom had a nice new fence, courtesy of her annoying neighbor. A little petty, perhaps, but hilarious nonetheless.
19. Stop Moving The Invisible Furniture
This horrid individual lived in the apartment right below my husband and me. It went from constant complaints, to him calling law enforcement on us multiple times to him leaving threatening messages on our car and front door. When we first moved in he was upset with the landlord for renting above him—left plenty of unpleasant notes and interrupted quite a few times when we were talking to the landlord.
When we moved in we only had a mattress and no other furniture, but he kept calling the landlord and saying that we were moving furniture around at 2 am and had our TV at full blast. After the eighth complaint in two months of us still moving around furniture and TV being too loud, we finally showed our apartment to the landlord. It revealed the truth.
We literally didn't have a TV and still only had our mattress. Then the neighbor started leaving notes on our car telling us to keep it down and he even put in writing, "There needs to be NO noise after 10 pm or else I'll call the authorities." We usually didn't even get home until after 11 pm and we were respectful to make sure we kept things down because we knew that not everyone had our work schedule.
So, we tried keeping it down even more and there were so many instances when we'd be eating dinner or cuddling quietly, or even sleeping and he'd be banging on his ceiling/our floor. After a few months, he started calling law enforcement and it got to the point where even they told him to stop calling about a noise complaint because it's a landlord issue and every time they came they never hear anything.
The last time they showed up, I was asleep and my husband ended up talking to them and explaining everything. They suggested that we file a harassment complaint. Then he started leaving threatening notes on our car and front door, and we kept hearing our doorknob jiggle. This is where it turned terrifying. He claimed that he and a friend had sat outside our apartment for two hours and listened to all the noise we were making.
He then said that he knows where we park our car so we’d better start parking it somewhere else if we didn't want it to get damaged etc. We kept the notes and made copies for the landlord and let him know that this was what we were dealing with. We were just keeping him in the loop before it got even worse. The last complaint was when he ran outside to the landlord.
He was screaming that something needed to be done about us because he heard our bed squeak the night before and how dare he rent to some crazy college kids who are partying and doing it all night. The landlord finally told him to stop being a bitter old man. Then this crazy neighbor of ours—who’d made our lives so miserable—took a total 180 turn and we found out that he had decided to sue the landlord and was moving.
Suddenly the neighbor kept offering us rides when one of us was walking. He stopped complaining and leaving notes. Our doorknob did, however, keep jiggling and turning at around midnight. Whenever we would check on our door we'd hear someone running down the hall as we'd approach our door. He eventually moved away and shockingly we haven't gotten a complaint from any other neighbor in the last three years we've lived here.
20. The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far
My neighbors have three boys all under the age of seven. In my first encounter with the mom, she promptly tells me (not asks) that her kids wander. I naïvely thought that meant there might be the odd rogue ball episode or something so don't protest at the time. Our yards are unfenced, and we share a driveway. Oh boy, was I wrong.
My yard, back deck, front garden, and even the inside of my house were seen as an extension of their space. The boys would even have sword fight tournaments on my back deck, off my kitchen. The parents would literally do nothing. I was put in a position many times to ask for more privacy as it was affecting my work and a general sense of well-being as I am a very private person.
It took some pushing, but finally, things got a bit better. They still "wander," however to a level I am not willing to cause drama over. This past early winter, I decided to put in security cameras. I live alone in a not-so-great area and I wanted some peace of mind. I also wanted to document encroachment in case it got bad again. In that time, the cameras have picked up a lot of encroachment from kids, but I did not raise the issue.
The relationship with the parents is peaceful, and I wanted to keep it that way. Fast forward to yesterday, my camera picks up a clip of the middle kid peering into my window with a pair of binoculars. I send the clip to the parents, explaining one of my cameras picked it up and that I am not comfortable with this behavior. It is inappropriate and an invasion of my privacy. Their reply blew my mind.
They send a note back saying he was only trying to see if I was home so he could say hello. Then they insisted on knowing more about my security cameras, what they can see, and if they pick up the kids playing in their yard. I explained that they don't...as they only pick up motion in my yard. But, if the kids are in my yard, which they are...a lot…they are recorded.
The parents are now insisting I take the cameras down. The lesson is, entitled parents raise entitled children. I am frightened to see what kind of adults these kids will turn into. Who knows if I will be here long enough to find out.
21. Here Today
I lived in an apartment with a lot of rotating tenants. An elderly lady moved in across the hall from me and promptly started hoarding. I started to figure it out when her porch started to fill up with odds and ends furniture including, but not limited to, a roll-top desk. She also yelled at me once for taking her key out of the front door and putting it in the mail slot.
Anyway, after a couple of weeks, I started to realize I hadn’t seen her in a while and started to smell something real weird. Then I found out the dark truth. Turns out, she had passed and no one knew about it for a week—hence the smell. Her family came and cleared out all her stuff about a week after that.
22. A 'Hole' Lotta Trouble
My great-grandfather was one of the last people in town to get indoor plumbing, and as such, he had an outhouse in his backyard. Every year on Halloween, the neighborhood kids would come into his yard and knock over the building, exposing the cesspit. He got tired of it. So one year, the night before Halloween, he moved the building forward and covered the fess with burlap, disguising it in leaves and grass clippings.
In the dark, it was almost impossible to tell it was there. On Halloween night, he sat in the outhouse and waited. It wasn’t long after sundown when he heard the wet splat outside as a couple of kids fell into the muck. He lowered a ladder into the cesspit for them and said they could leave, but only if they promised to never mess with his outhouse again.
The kids honored their promise and even spread the word around the neighborhood not to mess with that outhouse anymore.
Pexels
23. Deadbeat Daddy
I rented a flat with an ex and the upstairs neighbor was an absolute nightmare. This was a deadbeat dad who had his kids every weekend and left them screaming all the time. He'd blast music until sunrise every day even when he had his kids. I got the council involved, nothing happened. I got child services involved, nothing happened.
He used to argue every Sunday with his ex about how he wasn't paying child support. They'd argue right outside our door—we were on the ground floor. The guy was unemployed, owed the landlord a lot of money, and only left his flat to get groceries or drugs. He then had the nerve to get angry at me when my cat meowed loudly...once.
24. Get Out (Leave)
After all of my siblings moved out for college, my parents changed the basement into a liveable unit and started renting it out. The first two tenants stayed for five years and they were great. We never had an issue with them. The third group of tenants, however, gave us a lot of problems. They stopped paying rent after three months and since it was winter we couldn't evict them.
My parents had to suffer through their parties while not receiving rent that was meant to go to 70% of the mortgage...They almost lost their house because of these jerks. Well, my brothers and I were home for Christmas that year and after hearing about the issues, we decided to take care of it. Since it was my parents' house and the tenants stopped paying rent, we decided to "move in" with them. These people were such jerks, I don't even regret what we did.
We had the keys, so we would come in and out of the apartment as we wanted. A friend needed a place to sleep? No worries, we had a unit downstairs with two beds and two couches. We'd let them stay for as long as they wanted. The bars were closing but we wanted to keep partying? No problem, we had a furnished apartment and we wouldn't be bothering my parents.
I would go there to shower at 2 or 3 in the morning so I didn't wake my parents up. My brother slept in one of the beds for five days. I invited 20 people once and we were all drinking until 5 am, up until one of the tenants left for work in the morning. They did complain about privacy. We told them that according to the law, we were not allowed to throw them out at that moment; but since they stopped paying rent, they lost all privilege over the unit.
They called 9-1-1 the first night they found my brother sleeping there. We explained the situation to the authorities and said that they'd have to take us to court if they wanted us to stop using our apartment. Some other things we've done: We brought our pets (the tenants were allergic, so I borrowed my friend's cat), we used one of the bedrooms as storage for stuff we were supposed to get rid of, we opened all the windows in the middle of winter, and we disconnected the water heater. We told them to take care of it themselves since they weren't "tenants" but squatters.
25. Kids Running Wild
I had some really crazy neighbors once. The matriarch nailed all of the windows shut in their house, then removed the doorknobs and installed several deadbolts. This was to keep her grandkids home and everyone else out while she was at work. Child welfare stopped by and somehow they were okay with this—which really floored me.
While she was at work, the kids were able to get one window open without her knowing, and they would usually leave during the day and make it back before she got off work. This went on for quite a while and eventually, there were maybe a dozen young adults living there too, and they all used the window as the main entrance.
The window, unfortunately, bordered on my driveway, and was mere feet from my house. All hours of the day, people would be out there, wiggling in and out of the window. People got tired of being cooped up and major fights broke out. I regularly heard bodies hitting walls or furniture or fists. I heard yells of "well, stop threatening and get your pistol already!"
I have PTSD, and it was just day after day of trying to keep myself calm. The kids had a pneumatic BB revolver, a lookalike handgun, and one morning shot up my neighbor's car. She left to work at a hospital early in the morning, before first light, and didn't notice. When she shut her car door, all the glass fell out the windows.
Later in the morning, the same kid shot out a window in the school across the street. But what happened next was even worse still. My husband and I were outside planting flowers and my husband felt a sudden pain in his shoulder. Sure enough, the kid had shot him. The authorities arrived and the kid just kept on shooting. They called the mother, who had to unlock all the deadbolts.
The officers took away the kids' rifles, and dragged them outside so they could be cuffed and taken away. The youngest was maybe nine. Since no one confessed or ratted, and the officers weren't sure which of the three did it, they were released and not charged. Thankfully this act of physical aggression against my husband got them evicted.
But the eviction just started another wave of bizarre behavior. After tearing up the house, including breaking all the windows and ripping out the electrical boxes and punching random holes in the walls, the kids went to the landlord's house with their lookalike handguns and shot up the windows in her house. Again they were taken away, but being juveniles, no repercussions.
A couple of weeks later, her vehicle and garage were firebombed, but no one was charged with that. I'm so glad they are gone. I live in a wonderful neighborhood—not rich by any means, but the most awesome people—but it's hard to enjoy the community with that going on next door. I hope they somehow find some peace with this life.
26. Eating The Rainbow
He eats my flowers. In his defense, he told us that he has been doing it for years when he introduced himself after we bought the house. He also brought over frozen cookies in a plastic bag, as a housewarming gift, but wasn't sure what was in them. We share a side yard and as he was talking to us, I noticed his all-brick house was actually roofing shingles, layered to look like brick.
It started to register that he may be a little out there. He's a great neighbor. Just an older, eccentric person who keeps to himself and eats my flowers. No shame. He comes over to my yard and eats my lilies raw. Or, he brings scissors and clips the heads to "boil and make jam." It's crazy to me, but we have embraced it.
I planted a couple of raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry bushes three years ago, when we first moved in, on the side yard we share. Along with those were a few knock-out rose bushes. I told him to help himself to berries/roses anytime, especially before the birds do. The bushes have all gone insane and the entire side of my house is now a yearly buffet for my neighbor.
Having a decent relationship with a crazy guy I share a property line with is worth some deadheaded flowers.
27. Dog Gone Shame
The neighbor’s dogs got into my backyard and attacked my dog. My dog ended up okay, but it was a long recovery and he still doesn’t walk right. He was and is the happiest dog ever, so to see him on the ground covered in blood was the worst thing ever. The dogs were able to get through because their kids had taken a plank out of my fence—they didn’t have a fence.
I left a letter on their door explaining the situation. They showed up at my door to tell me that it was my fault for not having a stronger fence and that they wouldn’t be paying any medical bills. After a lot of them yelling and me calmly explaining why they actually would be paying, they eventually complied. They did build a fence, backwards, with the flat side facing them.
They are also extremely loud, have chickens that escape on a regular basis in our suburban neighborhood, and are overall scummy people.
28. Agent Bunny Reporting For Duty
Our neighbor plays VR in a large bunny onesie. When I say a bunny onesie, I mean one like the kind the kid gets in A Christmas Story. Which, you know, is cool. I guess you do you. But he plays with his window open so everyone can see him and, on top of that, he plays from what I can tell is exclusively military sims and never ever breaks character.
You can hear him yelling stuff like, "Contact 30 clicks south by southwest!" or “Down Reloading, Ready UP!" The guy will throw himself to the ground and I mean throw himself. The few times I've spoken to him or seen him in person he's had bruises on his arms and face from hitting the ground. And that's only what I can see from his window.
Other than that, at night you can hear the guy grinding, hammering, and drilling on something. I'm terrified to know what he's doing in there. He says that he works for the government and does contractor work for it. He has really nice stuff—including a lot of expensive stuff—and new vehicles all the time. So, he seems to have ample money coming in.
He, however, can't carry on a conversation. He starts getting nervous and will break away as soon as he can. He was home for a few weeks, saying that he was in between contracts, and I managed to talk to him a bit while he was setting stuff outside. That stuff that he was laying out though—a rucksack that had seen some heavy use and everything from medical and survivalist camping gear to empty magazine holders, and a plate holder for bullet-resistant plates.
He said he was letting them air out since he was planning on going on a backpacking trip for a few weeks. Weirdest part is that he leaves almost every night between 9 and 10 pm. Probably to get some of the junk food he'll leave in his car occasionally, but every night? I like to think the guy’s a secret agent and uses the VR thing as an excuse to explain away bruises and cuts.
Either way, I feel sort of safe, he's genuinely nice when he does talk to you, just in that I haven't spoken to another human being for years kind of way. You go Secret Agent Bunny. Saving the world one hop at a time.
29. Leave Well Enough Alone
A guy in my neighborhood owned six cars and kept them all parked on the street in a very congested block of apartments. He spent hours tending to them, and they somehow always looked rustier when he was done. If a leaf landed on one of his cars, he would accuse the neighborhood of intentionally placing leaves on his car to annoy him.
30. Purrfectly Nice
My neighbor sits in his yard, hides behind his plants, and meows at people who pass by. He is not dangerous at all but he is not right in the head either. His caretakers are his parents and they seem to be very nice people. His dad once told me "he just likes to be a cat" and left it at that. I didn't ask any more questions.
31. Battle Of The TVs
I once lived in an apartment building with little better than paper for walls. You could clearly hear the next-door neighbors' conversations, them doing it in bed, walking up the stairs, etc. For some reason, they thought it would be totally awesome to install a surround sound system and affix the speakers to our shared wall. It was not awesome.
The TV was so loud that it literally shook the wall, and we couldn’t hear our own television unless we turned it up ridiculously loud in return. The neighbors did not respond kindly to our request that they place the speakers elsewhere (or at least turn the bass down)—it ultimately ended with authorities being called on them.
We called them after the guy got super angry at being asked again to turn it down and started pounding on the wall and screaming about how he was going to mess us up. They finally got evicted when he threatened someone at the management office on some other matter.
32. Music Mayhem
We had neighbors (one girl above us, one girl below us) that were good friends with each other. The one above had two small dogs (we were only allowed one per apartment) and the one below had a bigger dog. We all got along fine, but the girl above us was a bit of a jerk—she would leave her dogs alone for far too long and be very invasive of our lives.
She'd constantly beg to use our internet or drop by and make herself at home. I was sitting in the living room one day and I heard dragging in the hallway. I went to check it out and saw both of the girls moving a mattress upstairs. They told me the girl below was moving in with the girl above us, making the living room her bedroom so she could sublet her apartment to save some money.
This was an old building, so there was not much in the way of soundproofing. That meant that we would have girl #1 still living there, who was loud enough, as well as girl #2 and the three dogs above us. We decided to keep the peace and not say anything....until that first night. They decided to have their own dance party at 3 am, in HEELS, while screaming wildly.
We said "screw it" and called the landlord. The next morning, there was a pounding on my door. I went over and saw that it was the girl above us. She was flipping the heck out. We apparently ruined their lives by revealing to the landlord that the girl who lived below us was subletting her apartment. That's when the serious battles began.
It turned out she had been behind in rent, so the landlord was sick of her and gave her an eviction notice. That led to her going absolutely nuts. She would constantly stomp on her floor, run the hot water in the building for hours so it would run out on everyone else, encourage her dogs to bark, etc. We changed our WiFi password, enraging her more.
We wanted to take the high road, but soon enough, we needed to take action. We were going away for a couple of days and we knew our next-door neighbors quite well, so we mentioned our plan. They thought it was hilarious. Right before we left, we turned on that annoying French nun song, "Dominique." The upstairs girl may or may not have been named Monique. We hit the replay button, cranked it to full volume, and left for two days.
The landlord called us after about 24 hours. We feigned innocence and claimed that it was a simple oversight on our end (but really, he knew what was up). We gave him permission to go into our place and turn off the music. Both the girls ended up leaving by the end of the month. They did not stop being jerks, but it was satisfying to know how much they suffered for at least 24 hours.
33. No Remorse
I live in a rural area and my neighbor was a real jerk. The dude was on drugs, cheating on his heavily pregnant wife with another addict, just completely out of his mind. It ended in unimaginable horror. My husband had a dog and this guy set out cat food (he doesn’t have cats) just so Scrappy would go to his porch. The guy then chased our dog into our front yard and shot him in the ribs.
Sadly, the dog didn’t pass immediately—he suffered. I could’ve strangled the neighbor right then and there, even as a little 110-pound female. It still infuriates me. He didn’t even show a bit of remorse.
34. Sweet And Singed
I had a neighbor back in The Day™ who we will call Gary. Gary was a really sweet guy. Middle-aged guy, kind of had it rough in life, but managed to keep his spirits up. He liked beer and BBQ, to a degree that made me like him immensely. He made extra money by doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. Heck, he mowed my grass for pretty cheap.
Great guy. He lived with his uncle, a cool old coot with a hook for a hand. The uncle supplemented his income by buying and selling random stuff, much of which he kept in his backyard. Very Sanford And Son. They even had the old-timey truck. Gary also loved to make BBQ, as I said. He would slow-smoke stuff in smokehouses that he made himself out of random junk.
People would bring him things and he would turn them into smokehouses. He made the neighborhood smell nice. One day, I am off from work, hanging out at my house and playing video games. Suddenly, there is a loud explosion that sounded like an artillery shell. Pictures fall off my walls and my cats scatter and hide immediately.
Being an idiot, my idiotic self goes running out the back door of my house toward the sound. My neighbor's house is right behind mine so I immediately see the following: The awning on the back of my neighbor's house is on fire; there is a 50-gallon drum in the backyard on fire; there is a tarp held up by a number of poles, to provide shade in the back yard, on fire.
Finally, my neighbor is on the ground, unconscious, being rolled around by his uncle and a buddy. He is also on fire. So, I see someone is already calling for help, so I go to help. By the time I am there, Gary is no longer on fire, so one of his buddies grabs the hose, and I grab a bucket. They have one of those dual-spigot thingies, so I can fill the bucket while the other guy uses the hose.
I am putting out the awning on the house, and the other guy sprays down Gary to make sure he is good and extinguished. As I am re-filling the bucket, I see the guy with the hose is putting out the tarp shade. He turns toward the burning barrel, aims the hose, and lets loose. I am doing the slow-motion "Nooooo....!" thing.
When the water hit the barrel, a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke appeared above my neighborhood. I was freaking out, screaming about shooting a hose into burning liquid. I later asked his uncle what was in the barrel. He said, "Oh, a mix of kerosene and fuel oil." I said "That is two of the three ingredients in rudimentary liquid rocket fuel. The third ingredient makes it explode slower."
Eventually, the ambulance came and immediately left with Gary. Turned out he had second and third-degree burns on over half his body. However, the biggest issue was the concussion. He also had a bajillion little internal injuries all through his torso. They almost lost him more than once. It took him a few months to get out of the hospital.
He's fine now, though he is not pretty, but he had to stop doing my lawn because I guess sunlight hurts now. Poor, sweet dude came to me to apologize and to tell me his cousin will be doing my lawn. I was just glad he lived, and here he was making sure I was taken care of. And that is the story of my exploding neighbor.
35. A Curse On You And Your Cars
On our street, there really is only parking on one side of the street—the garages and driveways for most of the houses weren't meant for cars, but this is another rant. The parking is on our side. The people across the street from us at one point had a car for each member of the household. To make matters worse, the daughter was a terrible driver so she needed at least two parking spaces.
This means that one family requires seven parking spaces! The best space to park is in front of my parents' house especially in winter as my parents would shovel it all out for easy access—this family never helped to shovel even though they would complain if we didn't shovel out enough. So, if my parents were out, this family would fight to claim my parents' place.
This family calls us the evil neighbors now, because one day my parents were away and the daughter and son-in-law were visiting in their brand new SUV. Of course, they parked in my parents' spot. Cue freak windstorm which destroyed their car and the mom's. Apparently, it was my parents' fault as we had obviously cursed them!
36. Nature's On Her Side
My grandmother had a neighbor who refused to help her repair the fence between their properties. It was still fully functional as a boundary line, but it was falling apart. Any conversation about fixing the fence ended with him saying that it was on her property, so it must be her responsibility to repair it. I guess that was fair.
She took a fall and was hospitalized for a few weeks. Upon her return, she found a new fence built an extra five feet into her property and a bill in the mail from the neighbor. He argued with her for months that she owed him, saying that the original fence was actually on his property and that where it was now was the boundary line. So my grandmother got a surveyor and...surprise!
The neighbor had taken five feet of her yard. At that point, she was already very old, frail, and tired of fighting her neighbor. But she had an ingenious way to get her revenge. She planted blackberries along the back fence and within two years, it was covered. Every year, she’d walk the fence and throw seeds over it because, of course, it was still her yard.
After five years of fighting, the blackberries had reclaimed her property. She’s been gone for a few years now but the blackberries remain, and it's her way of haunting her neighbor. He’s tried ripping up the ones on his side of the fence on numerous occasions, but the plants reseed themselves and grow back every year from her side.
37. We Saw Eye To Eye
We lived next door to this old man who sat in his front yard blatantly just staring at us with binoculars. He only did it when my parents weren't home. When my mom confronted him he claimed we were lying. We weren't. So one night we hear a noise outside, and my mom pulls up the blind to find herself eye to eye with this old man trying to look into our window.
38. The Foolproof Solution
I was visiting my aunt a couple of years ago in Arizona. She lives outside of Phoenix. Her next-door neighbors had three or four kids who were super annoying. There was a brick wall dividing their backyards, and such is common for the area. Upon my arrival, I found out that the kids next door were throwing things over the wall for fun.
Not just like harmless objects like twigs and pebbles, but like rocks, toys, garbage, and even knives. My aunt’s family had to keep their trampoline on the other side of the yard so it wouldn’t get stuff thrown into it. I asked my aunt about it and she said she talked to their parents, but they still kept throwing stuff. So that night, I went online and filed a report with their address.
A couple of days later, the neighbors left a note at the front door with a long apology that basically said “it won’t happen again.” It pretty much stopped after that.
39. Ding Dong Neighbor
A bunch of things happened with my ding-dong neighbor. She had a large dog that hated my older, smaller dog. One day her dog ran into my yard and bit my dog. She did apologize for this one, and it didn’t happen again. The same neighbor dumped her lawn clippings into my backyard, and I had to ask her to stop and clean up her mess.
She decided to build a fence. Of course, she didn’t get a survey, so I paid for a survey of my property. She’d started building her fence three feet over on my property. I had her stop and remove the fence. She was angry and never rebuilt it. I painted my house. She painted her house, same color. I bought a new car. She bought a new car—same color, same configuration.
There's other minor stuff, but that's enough. Odd person. Very odd.
40. Green Thumbed Success
I used to live in a little town of 300 people where we had an elderly neighbor named Gladys. She would routinely look near our garbage can outside and take the recyclable bottles and cans we would leave for her. After we cleaned out a fish tank, we put the gravel and fake plants in a bag and left it on top of the garbage can because it was already full.
About a week later, Gladys hollered at me while I was outside to come over as she wanted to show me something. She had taken that bag we had left and planted the fake plants along the side of her house. She said she wasn’t really confident that they would make it but so far they seemed to be thriving! I could only nod and compliment her on her green thumb.
41. Not Avon Calling
I had a neighbor a few houses down who kept to himself. One day he was turning onto our road and I happened to be behind him. Some kids were cutting across his yard so he stopped to yell at them and I couldn’t go around so I was stuck. He then started backing up, but I had only a little room before backing into a very busy road. He then hit the front of my car.
He started yelling at me. I was maybe 18 at the time and was legitimately terrified. I was able to make it down the block to my house, called my mom and she encouraged me to make a report. The officer came, was super kind and offered to go to the house of the man who hit me to get his insurance information. The man refused to answer and the officer made a report and called to check in later in the afternoon. I thought it was over, but it only turned more horrific.
That night the neighbor ended up taking a firearm and pounded on a few neighbors' doors, presumably looking for me. The officers were called and quite a few of them responded. They could not find the man so they had everyone on our street shelter in place until they could find him. Officers ended up finding him under a boat in his backyard.
I don’t know if he was committed or what, but he never was back at his house and his family sold it a few months later.
42. Hello Neighbour
I have a neighbor who lives on the same floor as me and his apartment is right next to mine. He's over seventy and blind, and every now and then he enjoys walking down the hall, while feeling the walls around him, because he has no strength to actually go outside anymore. Last year in August, I was locking my apartment door and getting ready to leave and meet a friend, when I noticed him walking slowly down the hall towards me.
I politely said hi to him, as usual. As I fumbled with my keys, he approached me slowly and then he did the most demented thing ever: He leaned in and started fondling my butt. I took a step away in shock, but he came after me and said, "Let me kiss your pussy." I felt my blood freeze. I then said in disbelief "What the? You should be ashamed!" but he replied by repeating the exact same phrase. I pushed him away and left quickly.
I still live here, and he still takes strolls in the hallway. I have told a few friends, but not my landlord or any authority, because I'm sure they won't take me seriously or say something like "Don't mind him, he's old and senile, he doesn't know what he's doing." My friends were concerned though and asked me if I was ok. I wasn't.
43. Neighbor Flung Cat
I had a 17-year-old cat, which I loved so much. She was my mother's cat and I got her when my mom passed. So anyways, one day the cat disappears. After a few days of not seeing her, I posted on Facebook about it and it was shared a lot. One day, I was getting into my vehicle to go to work and my young neighbor—about six or seven years old—shyly came up to tell me something.
She said that she saw my other neighbor throw my cat over her fence into the kindergarten playground. We live very near the elementary school. I spoke to the head custodian and he said there was indeed a dead cat on the playground. So my neighbor is so far off her rocker that she'd rather throw a dead cat into an area where young children play than dig a hole or do the noble thing of telling me what happened.
44. Lawn Invaders
My neighbor had a super annoying son. His friends were constantly running over into our yard and breaking stuff. So, we got a dog named Molly. Every time she had to poop, I'd put her on a leash and walk over to the property line so she could drop off some landmines for the kids. They were always on my property so the neighbors couldn't complain about my dog pooping in their yard.
Finally, the bratty kid had his bratty friends over for a bratty birthday party and his parents sent them all outside to play. Of course, they were running over into our yard. I ended up getting three or four of those little jerks with Molly's landmines. After that, they never came into our yard again. Molly got belly rubs and a hamburger that night.
45. Snack Attack
Some just straight-up rednecks move into my neighborhood. They turned the shared side yard, which was legally ours but shared because we weren't necessarily using it, into a lumber yard/playground where they dug a massive pit for mud wrestling. No kidding—mud wrestling! The youngest kid got stuck in the mud pit up to his head and they couldn't get him out for hours.
They also just wanted the full neighbor experience without putting in any effort themselves. It was like they'd moved from some hillbilly commune where you could just demand things of your neighbors. Every day when I got home from school, the three youngest kids would bang on our door until we gave them snacks. One of them, when denied snacks, came back and broke our glass door with a hammer. But that was just the beginning.
The second oldest kid (there were six in total) had an old A/C air handling unit in the backyard that he was allowed to hit with a sledge hammer when he got angry. He got angry often and at some pretty irregular hours. I ran into him at a bowling alley years after they moved away/got kicked out/went bankrupt. He had giant scars all over his back, chest, and arms—he said he woke up in the middle of the highway on Halloween night, all cut up.
46. On The Fence
I decided to fence in my backyard and I asked my neighbor if he would pay for half of it since it also ran along his property line. He declined. So I installed a fence around my backyard a few inches on my side of the property line. My neighbor then tied a new fence into my fence, as well as to our other neighbor's fence on the other side.
So he only paid for about 40 feet of fence altogether and he managed to get his entire yard fenced in. Jerk move! But it wasn't a big deal, even though he got a few extra square feet of backyard space and a free fence on two sides for free. Sometime later, his dog knocked a hole in my fence. He asked me to fix it since his dog could escape.
I declined. I told him to fix it since it was my fence and his dog did the damage. He called code enforcement and the homeowners association. It turned out that if I have a fence, I have to keep it in good repair. I was out of luck—but I knew how to get my revenge. I repaired the fence and then painted the side of my fence that faced his property high liner yellow, blue, green, mixed with slates of black and brown.
According to the bylaws, I get to choose the color of my fence as long as it is in good repair. He complained about it to the HOA but they told him they couldn't do anything. Eventually, he caved and painted over my fence. I had him charged with vandalism and he was fined. He also had to repaint my fence with the original terrible colors.
But he didn't stop there—he then bulk emailed the entire subdivision, asking them to support him in his attempt to get me to paint my fence. Instead, the neighbor to his other side and behind him all painted their fences to match mine. He moved a few months later.
47. Hose Was Neighbor’s Breaking Point
My mom, dad, and I moved into a condominium when I was about 14. When we first moved in, we met Trina, our downstairs neighbor. Trina was an older woman (60s) taking care of her mentally challenged grandson who was my same age but mentally a six-year-old with minimal language development. Trina seemed sweet and welcomed us to the building.
We had a few small issues with Trina, but we decided to keep them to ourselves. You see, she smoked A LOT, like three to four packs a day, and the smell would overtake our house. Also, the grandson would scream a lot in the early morning but nothing serious and we never said a word. We were all friendly enough and life was fine.
About two years after moving in, my mom bought a portable hose to water her outdoor plants and clean the balcony off. This is when the trouble started. Trina lost it when my mom washed the patio for the first time: just water, no chemicals, just rinsing the dirt off. Trina promptly started threatening my mom’s life for doing this.
She then complained to the condo association every single day for years. She started to burn small fires in a coffee can under our windows in an attempt to smoke us out. She once saw my bedroom window was left open and literally flooded my room with her hose. She would call the authorities on every single noise we ever made. Eventually they fined her $50 for wasting their time.
A couple of years later I became pregnant. Yeah, I was very young, just 18 at the time. So my boyfriend moved in and we had the baby and decided to raise it together. The neighbor told my boyfriend that I had a revolving line of men, and I was unsure who the father was, but chose him because he was nice. This was, of course, completely fabricated.
She continued with her nonsense for years and years. Once she was driving down the driveway while I was getting my then two kids into the car. She literally tried to hit my oldest son with her car. I had to physically pick him up and throw him out of the way. When the authorities came she denied everything so nothing happened.
She harassed my family for years to the point where the condo association had to have private meetings with her and my dad, which nothing ever came of. The condo association was just as fed up as we were. Three years ago my mom passed suddenly. When the neighbor realized my mom was no longer around, her response made my blood boil.
She laughed and told my dad and my kids that my mom deserved to die. She was an awful, awful woman. She recently had a stroke. We don't know if she is still alive or in a home but my dad, who still lives there, says it's nice to be free of the constant harassment.
48. The VIP Syndrome
We had a woman in my old neighborhood who used to pretend she was a cop all the time. First, I encountered her screaming at the post office staff because she’d arrived past the pickup time and they couldn’t guarantee her letter would be in tomorrow. She was there almost an hour just pitching a fit while they opened the other counters around her. Her rant was along the lines of “Do you know who I am?!” and all that stuff.
The second time that I encountered her she’d cornered some poor child on the bus and was telling her she’d have her taken away because she was an officer and she didn’t like the way the kid was eating a bag of crisps or something like that. Real invective stuff. I stepped in and politely asked if the child knew this person, at which point she backed off.
Anyway, I guess she saw me leave at my stop because I woke up the next morning to find my garden torn up. Total weirdo.
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49. What Can I Say: He’s A Swinger
I lived in a three-story apartment building on the middle floor. The bottom floor was basement apartments. It was a very quiet building and a lot of people were older and lived there 10 years or more. Then this weird creepy jerk moved in below us. He would play music loud all night and I had to be up for work at 5:00 am.
I wanted to complain, but he wouldn't answer the door so we could ask him to turn it down. So I had to jump up and down until he heard it. He also had angry girls banging on his door screaming for hours. He was home but just wouldn't answer. One of the girls ran out and poured nail polish all over his car. That was actually a good day.
His apartment was in the basement, but he had a huge window that was right next to the stairs to get in. The guy never closed the curtains and you could see directly down into his living room. There he had built a swing with bondage stuff hanging on it. I had to explain what it was to everyone that came over—even my mom.
Then one day an officer knocked on my door. He looked kind of embarrassed because he was holding about 20 pairs of women's underwear. He asked me to pick out mine. Three of them were mine and the nice officer told me to throw them away because the downstairs neighbor had been wearing them. Turns out he’d taken them from the laundry room
I guess the upstairs neighbor was walking in the building and saw her underwear hanging on the swing and called it in. So they took him away for taking our underwear. The landlord evicted him while he was behind bars. He was so angry that he was getting evicted, he went and bought a bunch of sand and covered the whole apartment in sand.
He then turned the air conditioning all the way up and left it. Of course, this was after he’d switched the electric back into the landlord's name. He was a nightmare neighbor.
50. Bringing The House Down
I had the neighbor's house condemned and torn down. It's kind of a long story, but it was so worth it. So, the property next to me had two houses on it. The owners decided to gut and remodel one of them, and they piled the demolition debris in the front yard...directly next to my house. That stuff stayed there for a full year, with the owners ignoring my every effort to get them to do something about it (they did not live on the property, they were renting it out).
So I eventually checked with the city about their remodel permits and found that not only did they not have permits, but as far as the city was concerned, the house didn't exist. It had been built with no plans or permits filed and tied into the other house utilities. So I talked to the city planner’s office and they came out to put a stop-work order on the house (which was not really necessary since no work had been done in a year).
They also condemned the house. They told the owners they wouldn't be fined or prosecuted if they demolished the property. That sounds drastic, but the house was already gutted with no windows or doors, and they weren't going to let them restore it. So that's how I got someone's house torn down.
51. Kid Caught In Crossfire
One of my neighbors almost shot me when I was a little kid. I was playing in front of my apartment building when my neighbor got into an argument with one of these other guys from down the street. I wasn’t sure what exactly the problem was, but my neighbor didn't like it, so he pulled out a pistol from his front pocket and fired a couple of bullets.
A stray bullet flew right past my face, and it came really close to hitting me. My mom’s friend from the next floor down grabbed me and pulled me inside to safety.
52. Binning It
I once totally randomly caught my neighbors on camera, at 1 am, dumping trash into and onto my bins which were already on the curb for morning pickup. I wouldn't mind a little trash if there's space in my bins, but they put in about twice as much as can fit, causing the bins to overflow and mixing the recycling and compost with their trash.
I promptly returned it, neatly piled on their porch with a note written on a bill with their name and address on it, quoting the county ordnance on dumping (the volume was enough for a $5,000 fine), and that they were on camera. A couple of days later they left an envelope saying, "Sorry, neighbor," with tickets for a concert.
It was a "free" concert in a sketchy venue with a printed invitation that screamed "MLM recruiting event." I wonder if they even understand that what they did is not an apology. I haven't crossed paths or words with them again.
53. Dog Owner Acts Like A Dog
My current neighbor, let’s call her Kitty, is a woman I‘ve known vaguely on social media for a while. But now that she’s my neighbor, I’m seeing a different side to her. For example, last month, she fostered a dog. She saw me cleaning my porch and asked to come over with her dog, and—wanting to be friendly—I said sure. So she comes over and puts her dog in the backyard.
So, I made a couple of drinks even though she was already half hammered. I finished making the drinks and went to let the dogs inside—her foster Husky and my lab mix. Unfortunately, her dog climbed my five-foot fence and ran into the street and got hit by a car. Luckily he was ok. I offered to pay whatever she needed and drove her to the vet.
She proceeded to scream profanities at the vet. I then took her home while the pup was getting stitches. She promptly walked into my house, drank every ounce of booze left in the entire kitchen, and rolled around on the floor with her crotch exposed to my husband. She then asked him to drive her to the store for more booze. Now I avoid her like the plague.
54. Too Loud Up There
My neighbor, an old lady, complained about many things. First, she complained that my “dog ran around at all hours of the night,” even though I never had a dog, or any other animal for that matter. Second, she claimed that I was "always too loud." This despite the fact that I lived alone and I'm in the Navy and would literally be away for weeks at a time.
Also, understanding that I lived in a condo, I had bought an expensive Bluetooth headset to use with all of my devices. There was literally not a speaker in the house connected to an entertainment system. She also complained that the rainwater coming off of my deck would drip on hers, because I apparently engineered the building in such a way that her deck stuck out further than mine.
I sent her letter to the property manager and the strata board, ccd her, and said that the next time she left me a letter like that or screamed through the ceiling at the top of her lungs I was going to charge her with harassment.
55. Surrounded By Sound
My partner and I shared a split house with a couple; they were upstairs and we were downstairs. They said they knew that the noise insulation was low and asked us to let them know if it was ever too loud. We texted maybe 10 times in two years to turn down their TV at 3:00. Their TV was directly over our bedroom. On the final time we texted them, they snapped back HARD.
They talked about how awful it was for them and how much they tried to please us with the situation. They went on to complain about how they even stopped using their surround sound system. I mean, who needs a surround sound system in a less than 500 square foot uni? At 3:00 am no less. On top of this they constantly moved and, on one occasion, broke our stuff in the basement storage to the point we eventually stopped using it.
They frequently put shoes in the new dryer to the point it melted rubber on the back. They then broke said dryer by overstuffing it and leaning heavy equipment against the door so it'd stop popping open. They also "accidentally” took our packages from us on several occasions and filled up the other shared space we had with their own stuff so we couldn't use it.
56. Snitch To Win
I had a neighbor who won the lottery (about $800k USD after taxes) and he decided that made him God. He also had an addiction problem and would stay up late partying and playing music at all hours of the day and night. I live in a small mountain town and the sound echoes terribly. Well, this guy "Dear John'd" his husband of 8 years and at one point was making violent threats against him.
The authorities got involved and the neighbor got slapped with domestic charges. But that's just the beginning: AFTER the charges were filed, this neighbor decided he would buy a firearm, which was totally not allowed. He had to lie about the pending charges to get it, and then he told his ex that once he got it, he was going to end him. After that, he decided that partying out in Portland was more important than attending his court date, and he subsequently had a bench warrant issued to him.
On the Friday of a St. Patty's weekend, he was blasting his music again, so I called 9-1-1 to register a noise complaint. He likely had a scanner, because every single time, before they came, he turned down the music. They'd arrive not hearing any music, then let me know there was not much they could do. At that point, I let it slip that he had an active warrant. They ended up taking him in.
Because he blew all of his lottery money and alienated himself from every friend he used to have, he spent the whole long weekend behind bars with every other jerk who was there. About three weeks later, he put his house up for sale. A crowning achievement for me.
57. Sweet Mustang Revenge
My neighbor poisoned my dog—sadly, it didn’t survive—so the night after we moved out of that neighborhood, I went back and took my revenge. The guy who’d done it was restoring a Mustang and I thought that was the perfect way to get back at him. I spray painted the car, super glued the wipers to the windshield, poured a gallon of bleach in the gas tank, and super glued the gas cap and door shut.
58. Rock On
My house is right on the corner of an area where the road turns into a T, and I had issues with people cutting the corner and driving through my yard. One time, someone even nearly hit my dog. So I bought a boulder that was probably 300 or 400 pounds and put it right on the corner. That winter, we had a bad snowstorm.
Someone was coming through in a lifted Dodge and he hit the boulder going about 20 mph. He totaled the truck. Since then, I’ve had zero issues with people.
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59. Door Opener Opens Man Eyes
The first apartment I lived in, I had a neighbor that would try opening the door. I didn't hear it myself because I worked nights. I came home early one night—around 2 am—and he was trying to get in through the apartment door. We had a huge argument and he stopped doing it after that. I'm guessing he thought it was just my two female roommates living there, because he never tried anything after he knew I was there as well.
It kinda opened my eyes, at the time, to the sort of nasty stuff that women have to deal with.
60. The Grass Is Greener
In our first house, my wife and I had a neighbor who disliked us from the start. Apparently, the people who lived in the property before we did were his family friends—they went through a divorce and ended up selling the house to us. He was petty and mean to my wife, who doesn’t like confrontation, and he'd do annoying things to mess with her.
He'd park across our driveway before she left for work, throw pieces of wood over the fence, let his dog go all over our lawn and not pick any of it up, etc. I tried talking to him a couple of times, but he promptly told me to screw off. That was the last straw—I had to fight back. I knew he loved his lawn because he'd always brag about how it looked to everyone, so the next time it rained, I went out back and threw an entire box of oxo cubes into their backyard and let the rain melt them into the grass.
His dog absolutely destroyed his yard looking for the smell and I would make sure to comment on it every chance I got. We moved shortly after.
61. It’s A Chicago Thing
One time, I came in to visit my Gramma in Chicago for Christmas. I was looking for a parking spot near their house but the only one available had a lawn chair right in the center of it. I moved the lawn chair to park a little down from her house. I mean, who leaves a lawn chair in the street in wintertime, right? So I just put it on the sidewalk so someone could pick it up if they wanted it.
When my uncle saw what I’d done, he hustled out in just his socks to tell me to park way down the street in front of an empty lot, and then he very carefully put the chair back exactly where it had been. I had no idea (at the time) just how close I’d come to getting shot that day. You do not mess with the winter lawn chair in Chicago.
62. Going Out With A Bang
Our neighbor was a pain in the butt. He would call the authorities on us even if we were just standing in our yard, minding our own business. He didn't have a mental problem; he was just a jerk who thought calling 9-1-1 would scare us. We would hear him on the phone saying, "They're standing in their yard, talking again."
The officers would often apologize for coming by, explaining that they had no choice but to respond to the complaints. Sometimes, they would just drive by and wave to us while shaking their heads. So one night, we had enough. We bought a thousand-count string of firecrackers, made a makeshift fuse, put it in his garage, and waited. Needless to say, it was super lit.
63. Said Hi To Wrong Neighbor
After the polar vortex a few years ago, the mail finally came—the sub zero temperatures froze the snow in a way that mail couldn't be delivered. So, I was basically in my house for a week and just so delighted about the mail and seeing another person outside that I said "Hello" to a neighbor I know better than to talk to. I got way more than I bargained for.
She immediately burst into tears and started telling me about how she found out something horrible about her boyfriend. I should mention that she is around 50 years old and dates the kind of guys who use her for a place to live. Anyway, she’d just found out that her boyfriend ejaculated into her coffee every morning. Um, but really.
She found out because she was spying on his phone and he texted a friend saying he did it. Right around this time, her big dog burst through the front door and before she could finish saying, "He won't hurt you" the dog bit me in the stomach—luckily it didn't draw blood. I kindly excused myself and went back into my home to regret ever leaving in the first place.
64. That Deflated Feeling
I have one strange neighbor. She has a penchant for going around sticking nails in people's tires at night. This has happened dozens of times to nearly everyone on the street, though she's slowed down since more people have started installing video cameras and motion-sensor lights in their respective driveways.
65. Ask Me No More Questions
I have these neighbors who are always asking for things. Like for my wifi password. Or asking us to buy more security cameras to point at his house. They also ask if I would watch out for their chickens—including roosters that are not allowed. They just keep asking for everything. The only thing he didn't ask for was permission to put an animal trap in our backyard. That he just did.
66. Dancing The Night Away
We used to live next to a woman who would have a disco party for her cats in her backyard at 2 am every few days. She would put up a disco ball and party lights with music playing. It was a little bit odd but what made it crazy was her dancing as though she was performing a ritual around the disco ball. It’s honestly one of the strangest things I’ve ever witnessed!
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67. I Guess We Were The Bad Neighbors
I used to live in a bad part of Queens, NY until about 2004. The house that we owned there had been owned by my family since the early 1900s. It was known throughout the surrounding area as my family’s house—kind of famous I guess. Unfortunately, not everyone in my family were good people. Some of them were involved in gang life.
My siblings and I weren’t allowed to play by the windows, so we wouldn’t end up in the crossfire of a gang battle. The deciding factor of us leaving that area was when someone broke into our neighbor’s house, mistakenly choosing the wrong house and asking where OUR family was, looking to settle some issue. My parents decided it was time to leave.
68. I've Got The Power
My upstairs neighbor was noisy late at night. At like 2 am, he'd blast music and walk around with heavy feet. We had repeated conversations about it, but he blew us off. He bought us earplugs and told us to simply "deal with it." Unfortunately for him, the breaker box for the building was in our unit. After conducting a few tests with his friendly roommates who hated him just as much as we did, we zeroed in on the breaker to his room and an unoccupied area.
Guess who had strange power issues at night while he was being disruptive? He wasn't the brightest bulb in the box and he never suspected us. The landlord was aware of his disruptiveness and he was already on thin ice, so we asked him not to follow up on the guy's complaints and he was on board. After he got aggressive toward one of his roommates over an unrelated incident, he was kicked to the street at the end of his lease.
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69. Sleepless In The Suburbs
I was living in the burbs, and there was a house that let their dog bark all day. Another house would party until 3 am and the people living behind us would throw their dirty diapers into our backyard. The party house and the dog barking house made me miss so much work. Nothing like calling your boss and saying "I can't drive to work because in the last three days I have had four hours of sleep".
70. It’s A Conspiracy!
She complained to the authorities that neighbors had purchased satellites to spy on her. She set up cameras that were directly aimed at all surrounding neighbors. She built up beams around the inside of her fence so that she could stand on them and look over the fences to the neighbor yards and she would launch large rocks.
She also yelled at everyone who watered their gardens and lawns that all the water was making her property soggy, even though she was at the top of the hill. She planted jeans in the soil as if to use them for landscape fabric. She painted everything (house, sheds, yard art, bike, etc.) on her property red and yellow and blue "to ward off evil spirits."
71. I’ve Been Watching You
This was almost 10 years ago when my husband and I were still dating and we moved into our first apartment together. There were four buildings of apartments within walking distance of each other and my run-in was with someone in a neighboring building. We had a dog and I was the regular dog walker, because my husband worked all different shifts and I didn’t.
So, one day, I was coming back from a walk with her when this guy comes out of one of the other buildings. He starts walking towards me very directly, pitching a fit about the fact that I’m walking my dog. He says he’s seen me just leave her poop on the grass and just walk away. I can assure you this was an absolute lie, 100%.
He says he sees her squat all the time and I just keep walking. I was dumbfounded. I said, “My dog is a female, that’s how she pees.” He then just continues going on and on and on and at one point says, “I’ve been watching you...” And again, I’m dumbfounded and I just go, “You’ve been WATCHING me?” I remember going back to my apartment and calling my husband at work and just crying because I felt so scared and alone.
We had been at that new place for only one month so we had 11 more to go at that point. We talked to the managers and they were absolutely no help. They said yeah, they knew who we were talking about, he’s had multiple complaints against him and they think he sells drugs. Oh, and if he does that again, call the authorities.
72. Right Back Atcha
My grandpa's neighbor's septic tank started leaking into his backyard. He repeatedly asked him to fix the septic tank and clean up the mess in his yard, but he completely brushed him off. So my grandpa took matters into his own hands. He rigged up a "plumbing" system in his yard and installed an upright PVC pipe that pointed at the neighbor's backyard over the fence.
I don't know how the system worked (I was only about eight years old, as this happened in the early 90s), but it was set up to spray the neighbor's own septic waste over the fence and into the neighbor's beautifully polished yard. And just like that, the neighbor fixed his septic tank. They remained enemies until my grandpa died a couple of decades later.
I miss that old crazy man.
73. Mind Your Own Business
My current neighbor runs a small business practice out of her home. She had her customers park on my yard—easement, technically—despite the town telling her she couldn’t. And despite all the times I told her to stop. She never stopped until one person parked facing my house, two feet from my “no trespassing” signs. I called the authorities.
I filed a complaint against the customer and never saw that car again. But she didn't stop, she only got more bizarre. Then she tried to lease my front yard. When that didn’t work, she tried to buy my house while we still lived in it. She told the contractors that they could access her yard through ours, so they dumped loads of gravel and sand in my front yard as their storage area, and a cement truck tore 18-inch ruts in my yard.
A tree on the property line was infested with termites and a huge branch fell on a mutually owned fence. She demanded we pay to have the limb removed because it was damaging the fence, which was actually quite horribly dilapidated. She didn’t want us to cut down the tree because of the shade it provided her back patio, which was installed at the expense of my yard.
74. It’s In The Air
My sister’s neighbor reported my sister to the authorities because her kids were playing in my sister’s garden. She did not for the usual reasons, such as too much noise, etc. Nope, she did it because a volcano in Italy had erupted and the radiation resulting from this eruption would hurt them. My sister lives in the United Kingdom.
75. Screams Heard Through Concrete
We lived next door to a group of sex workers and shared a bedroom wall with one of their bedrooms—this was in a condo building. We would be woken up at regular intervals each night by obnoxious, dirty movie-worthy screaming. It even came through our concrete walls. Forget leaving a window open in the summer. It was too noisy,
Apparently, the building was known for it, but we had no idea before moving in. The neighbors had a whole system in place. Their pimps would wait down on the street and flag the next gentleman caller to enter after receiving payment from the satisfied customer. They had at least five units rented in the building for this purpose.
The authorities knew about the setup but preferred them in a building rather than on the street so they wouldn't do anything about it. The condo board and building manager also knew but never brought it up during official meetings so it wouldn't be recorded in the minutes and tank the property values. Really wish WE had known about it.
76. Full Stop
My old boss had a problem with tipsy kids taking his mother's mailbox. He got tired of replacing them, so he told me to go out there and make sure whatever hits it doesn't keep going. I bought a six-foot-long steel post with under three feet sticking out of the ground, then poured concrete around it and installed the mailbox.
The next tipsy kid that hit it never got a chance to take out the rest of the mailboxes on the street.
77. Bad Neighbor Begets Worse
Our first apartment together we lived in an upper of a house. The lower had a family with a few kids in it. “Great,” we thought. “No crazy parties or anything like that.” A few weeks after we moved in, the flies started showing up. Our apartment was full of gnats and flies by the end of the first month. We had just scoured the whole place, weren’t leaving food out, could not figure out for the life of us where they came from—until we saw them coming out of the vents.
The family got evicted a few months later. The landlord showed us the unit, and we all beheld the horror. There was dog poop and rotten food covering the floor. Piles of garbage everywhere. The place was a total gut. They ended up listing the unit at a higher price to make up for refinishing. “We should get some better people in now. The place looks nice,” we thought. Our apartment was finally bug free.
We didn’t actually see the next family that moved in. They arrived while we were gone on a weekend trip and they immediately covered every window with sheets. Then a weird smell started filling our apartment. It was acrid and off. We closed the vents (again) and figured they were probably still cleaning as they settled in.
Then the garbage started piling up outside and the overnight noise began. It sounded like they were bowling in the basement. Plus, there were so many plastic jugs overflowing the recycling. There were no sounds during the day, at all. My husband worked night shift at the time and the nights were long and full of weird sounds shaking the whole house. Like at 4 am: “let’s build a pyramid” noise.
After a week or so of this, my husband politely knocked on their door on his way home from work, hoping to introduce himself and ask them to keep the noise down. No answer. He tried for a few days and even on the weekend and at different times. No one ever opened the door. A few days later a note was taped to our door. Its contents chilled me to the bone.
The note said: “People upstairs, don’t bother us and we won’t bother you. If you ever step on our porch again, I’ll call the authorities. Mind your own business. Don’t mess with me. GAZ Chicago” We almost immediately started looking for a new place to live, luckily moving pretty quickly after.
78. On A Rampage
Our neighbor plants a row of shrubs, waits until they look nice, and then whacks the heck out of them. He cuts every single branch off until there's just a spindly 5' stick. Or, he plants several shrubs along his foundation, waits 3-4 years, and then yanks them out with his car. Once he pulled out a very healthy tree growing at the end of his house and then planted another same size tree in its place.
If we ever sell our house, I think he would buy it just so he could bulldoze everything in our yard.
79. Ambulance Visit Is Just The Beginning
The very first night my wife and I moved into this townhouse, an ambulance was called to the house. It turns out that our neighbor had pushed his girlfriend down the stairs. We heard the fight and saw the ambulance come. After that, every night at around three in the morning he’d start banging on our walls waking us up, yelling at us to be quiet. We were always asleep.
I confronted him when I finally saw him, and things got heated. He was actually quite crazy. Later he threatened to hurt my wife. We moved out after this threat on my wife’s life. The authorities wouldn’t do anything about it.
80. The Hansel And Gretel Trail
He was our landlord/neighbor in a duplex we were renting. He was a hoarder and did a lot of things like rummage through our trash to retrieve garbage we had tossed. It was in LA and he would put out dozens of teeny tiny receptacles; cups, milk cartons, pots, all over the yard any time there was a hint of rain forecasted.
He would also leave little pieces of plastic garbage around the fence to see if anyone took them or moved them. Odd stuff. But then there was the ultimate weird moment. We had a shared set of stairs leading off the back of the house. I went down them one day and saw a piece of bread lying on them. It thought that maybe it was for the birds.
A couple of days later it was a piece of toast. A day after that the toast was wrapped up in a used napkin and propped up against my door. To this day it is still a mystery to me why he would think I would want the 5-day old porch toast.
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81. Stuck In The Middle With You
Many, many years ago, I rented a little house with the girlfriend I had at the time. The neighborhood seemed pretty nice. On one side of us lived an elderly couple, and on the other side my worst nightmare. She was a dealer with six children and three boyfriends. In addition, this neighbor liked her music at full volume.
So, here’s how it went: The elderly couple would hear the music noise coming from the dealer's house and call the officers to my place because it was so loud they thought it was me. The officers would pull up and wake me—I wore earplugs—and then go to the dealer's house and then the dealer would think I had called to complain about them.
The dealer ended up losing her electricity due to unpaid bills, so she came over while I was at work and plugged extension cords into my outdoor sockets. She then got mad and threatened to shoot me when I unplugged them. We had to move in with my mother as an emergency stopgap because my landlord thought I was making it all up.
82. Cold Comfort
Not sure if this counts as crazy but I have this neighbor who is part of a spiritual organization called "Brahma Kumaris." Every time someone in the neighborhood is going through rough times, especially deaths in the family, she goes to their house, and instead of offering condolences, she preaches how they should join this organization and things will be better.
She doesn't acknowledge anyone the rest of the time. Indeed, the only acknowledgment is at the time when someone dies or a new family moves in the neighborhood. In both cases, she acknowledges the people to take the opportunity to preach and to give books written by the leaders of the aforementioned spiritual organization.
83. Not A Petting Zoo
My neighbor tried to sue another neighbor because their cat scratched her kid’s arm and part of his face. In the cat's defense, the kid had walked over—when the cat was curled up and resting—and picked it up by its tail and attempted to sling it like a slingshot. That was when the cat scratched the kid. Can you really blame the cat?
Next she tried to claim that my dog bit her kid. Admittedly, my dog did growl at the kid, but only after he repeatedly slapped him on the butt and hind legs. The said bite marks she claimed were from my dog sure looked to me like they came from a human, possibly from my neighbor’s own mouth. Did she actually bite her own kid?
84. Shut It Down
The rich brats next door were always throwing loud parties whenever my mom and dad went out of town for a few days, which was often. One Sunday morning, I did a quick inspection of the property and found a bunch of litter had been left in the street or thrown into the grass. The worst part is that there was a public bus stop at the corner of our street, so we started getting complaints.
That night around midnight I gloved up, collected a bunch of them, then snuck into the neighbors' yard and scattered them around the pool, the garage, and the back door where mom was sure to see them when she came home. There were no more parties.
85. That Blowed Up Real Good
So back when I was about five years old, we had some neighbors next door who were basically hoarders of everything. There were car parts out the wazoo in their yard that leaked all kinds of stuff. I am pretty positive that it was this leaked stuff that made my cat sick and caused its passing. But the real story here is actually about the neighbor’s son.
So, basically, they had a kid who was around 18 that was always in trouble: shoplifting, fires, whatever basically you could get in trouble for around that age in high school. One day he decided to light a fire near an 18-wheeler tank filled with gas that they had in their yard for some reason. You can probably see where this is going. So yeah, one night at 2 am, it blew up. Authorities came and took him away. They moved shortly thereafter.
86. The Selfish (Not)Giant
There was one angry old guy in my neighborhood—the one who yelled at kids and had his house egged every Halloween—then one day, he became a totally new person. He woke up and out of nowhere took out his back fences so the kids living on either side of him had a bigger area to play. Other neighbors loved it so much that they did the same thing, creating a massive field with sandpits, swings, slides, a treehouse, little vegetable and herb gardens, etc.
It was the greatest thing ever. Kids used to put four slip and slides in a row. There was a trampoline, an above-ground pool, and a soccer net. In the winter, it was snow forts and an outdoor rink. He also painted his house bright colors, adopted senior dogs from the shelter that were everybody's to enjoy, hosted cocktail parties, played saxophone on his back porch, etc.
I lived on a different block, but spent a lot of time there—he made his block a paradise for kids and families, and people loved him. When he died, more than two hundred people showed up to the cemetery for his funeral. Before he had his sudden change of heart, he might have been gone a week before someone probably smelled something.
No idea what happened or how he suddenly became sane. I think he was probably mourning his wife and woke up one day and decided to move on. I like to think he had a dream where she appeared and told him to let go. Everybody I know who grew up around that block wants to be the exact same guy when their time eventually comes.
87. Hissy Fit Over Scared Cat
I was living alone in a first-floor studio apartment in a city where I knew basically nobody. The neighbors above me had two toddlers who would run from one end of the apartment to the other from 6-8 am every morning. They weren't that bad, though. The woman across the hall—a senile, intolerant, elderly, shut-in, cat lady—HATED me.
This woman banged on my door to tell me to "quiet down" every evening. After the first four or five times of this, I knocked on her door and explained that I wasn't the one making the noise, and even pointed out that the yelling and music she was complaining about was coming from her upstairs neighbor, obviously, as I was standing right in front of her.
She was so sweet and kind and said "oh my mistake!" and let me know that we would be friendly from then on out. But after that, it was like that conversation never happened. She started to literally hiss at me if we ever crossed paths on the stairwell. She would leave notes on my door saying "stop scaring my cat" and "I know what you did" and "I've alerted the authorities."
One time, I had my long-distance boyfriend over for the weekend, and when she saw us driving out of the parking lot together, she threw the trash she was carrying to the dumpster at my car and called me a very unkind name—suggesting I was a sex worker. Well, that was enough for me to finally tell my landlord about what I was experiencing.
He let me know that she struggled with mental health issues and, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it. That this wasn't the first he had heard of her, and I would just have to put up with it. I lasted five months before moving out. My landlord charged me a giant lease cancellation fee.
88. The High Life
My neighbor’s doghouse has electricity. The doghouse sits there in his backyard at night with a light on, radio going—the dog loves listening to the radio, apparently—and a small electric fan in summer to keep him cool. It's not so much "crazy" as, perhaps, a bit eccentric. How many doghouses have electricity, lights, fans, and a radio playing for the dog's enjoyment?
89. Bird Brained Idea Worked
When I was growing up, my rear neighbor, Janet, and my mom were both going through rough divorces at the same time. My mom mostly kept to herself at first. Janet did not take that approach. At first, Janet’s complaints seemed frustrating but reasonable. We had dogs and a fenced-in yard in the suburbs. When the dogs were left outside too long, they barked.
Janet filed a noise complaint. Again, quite reasonable. But then Janet started filing noise complaints any time she saw the dogs outside. So, my mom started keeping them inside more. Next, Janet filed complaints when she could hear the dogs barking inside, or when she heard someone else’s dogs, or really just whenever she felt like it because this wasn’t about the noise it was about Janet feeling a sense of control over something during an out-of-control divorce.
Eventually, the authorities must have told Janet she had to stop calling them, so she started calling animal control instead. It got to the point where animal control knew what was happening, and would come to our door to make small talk with my mom just to file their report. They told her, though, that as long as the calls happened they had to at least come out.
That’s when my mom had a feather-brained idea. Whenever animal control showed up, my mom would buy a two-pack of lawn flamingos and put them in our yard. She was a teacher, so she got up early. When she did, she’d take the flamingos and make them stare at Janet’s front door. Then she’d get home earlier than Janet, and move them around just like normal decor.
Whenever Janet made a call, my mom bought more flamingos. And whenever Janet made a call, a bigger and bigger flock of lawn flamingos stared her down when she left for work. To make it more mysterious, the flamingos would be casually mingling when she got home. I can only imagine what she must have thought. One would have to think she questioned her sanity, both because of the movement and the incremental growth.
By the time it got to 12 or so lawn flamingos giving her the hundred-yard glare, she made the connection. Janet never called animal control again after that.
90. Something’s Fishy
Our neighbors seem to be into preserving their own food. That’s cool, I suppose. However, the task has become fishy. Literally. For the last few weeks, they have been drying fish in their driveway. By that I mean that there are like 2-3 dozen whole fish just laying on their driveway on tinfoil. No protection, no pans. Just fish. On the driveway.
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91. Housewarming Went Cold
This dude had just moved in across the street and threw a housewarming party. There was loud music all night until someone called the authorities and they shut it down. I finally got to bed around 2 am. I then woke up at 3:30 am to this same dude going door to door demanding to know if it was the person living there who called the authorities.
92. Mind Your Own Beeswax
Beehives. Putting them up is allowed where I live, and I have had them for over 10 years. They don't bother anyone and most of my neighbors love them as they are good for their gardens and they get free honey. However, one of my neighbors who moved in five years ago does have a problem with them, apparently. She has called the council and the authorities too many times to count, and they say all tell her the same thing:
They're allowed, they're not annoying anyone, and the bees were there first. So, she tried to take matters into her own hands whilst tipsy—she jumped the fence in the middle of the night with a can of fly spray. It was very dark, so she accidentally jumped into my neighbor's yard instead. Their very large guard dogs bailed her up and she pretty much destroyed their gardens, boat, shed, and car windows trying to get away from them.
When officers arrived at the scene, she admitted that she had tried to poison my bees but went into the wrong yard. She tried to sue me, saying: "If I wasn't trying to poison her bees, none of this would have happened." The officers just laughed at her. They threw the book at her and now my neighbors are suing her for all the damage she caused.
She is now beyond broke. The bees are still there. When I hand out free honey around the neighborhood every few months, I always make sure she is around watching me and I intentionally don't give her any. Other neighbors tell me they regularly mention my bees around her just to see her lose her cool.
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93. Blair Cat Project
I had a neighbor in an apartment complex who would sit in her car in the parking lot and blare Christian gospel music, which in and of itself wasn't the worst. But later we discovered a plastic bag hanging in a bush next to our window facing her unit, and found a cat skeleton in that bag. We called the apartment manager, who said, "I think I know who it was."
We then saw the manager knocking on the Christian’s door 15 minutes later. We were a little spooked. We never found any more bones, but we'd catch her staring at our unit a few times. We moved after the lease was up.
94. Water Over My Head
The neighbor stealing water almost led to my toddler getting, at least, seriously injured. The neighbor was opening my gate and helping herself to the water for her flower beds. I suspected it from the high water bills, but had no proof. We always kept the gate closed because we had a dog and I had two kids under 4 years old at the time.
The youngest was 1 1/2 years old, and he loved to run around the backyard with the dog. One morning, the youngest begged to go outside to run around, so I let them do so while I cooked breakfast and watched them from the kitchen window. I went to the bathroom real quick, checked the laundry, and then heard a knock on the door.
I went to answer it and there was a man holding my youngest. "Is this your kid?" the guy asked. "They were running up the road up there," he continued. Holy moly! I thanked the guy profusely, then went outside to figure out how they got out. The gate had a latch that was way too high to reach for a little one, so I didn't even suspect that option.
Lo and behold, the gate was wide open with the hose suspiciously thrown near it. I was so fricking furious. I bought a lock for the gate and ended up wrapping the hose in and around several cinder blocks. It took all I had not to go over and scream at the woman who was responsible. But from then on, she never complained about my kids near her precious flowers, and I didn't care even if they did pull up every single one after that.
95. Neighbor Under Surveillance
My wife and I were happy to move into our new house in the summer of 2019. The neighborhood seemed really nice and we were excited to meet the neighbors. The first two families we met—neighbors on either side of us—warned us about the people renting the house directly behind ours. Apparently, they had been known to cause trouble and blow things way out of proportion, bordering on paranoia of everyone around them.
We kept this in mind but had no issues for the first six months or so after moving in. Their house sits on a hill behind ours, and so overlooks the majority of our backyard due to the elevation change. Well, one night (morning, technically) at about 3 am we wake up to ring notifications from our phones showing video from our front doorbell. When we realize what it is, our blood runs cold.
There’s a man standing barefoot in a sleeveless shirt on our porch POUNDING on our front door. We give it two or three minutes just watching him on the app, thinking maybe he’s intoxicated and has the wrong house—essentially giving him the benefit of the doubt. But then we start to hear him say “come out you two, I’m gonna mess you up” etc. and he leaves the porch and starts to head around the side of the house towards our backyard.
Considering we had no idea who this was, my wife now immediately calls the local detachment for officers to come by, as I move out of our bedroom towards the external doors to look and listen for any attempt of a home invasion. At this point, our neighbors directly behind us throw a HUGE spotlight into our backyard from theirs.
We’re thinking, okay cool they know something’s up and they’re trying to help us out by shedding light on our backyard. Officers arrive several long minutes later and knock.We explain the situation and they head out back to look around and get the scoop from the neighbors with the spotlight. Well, the officer comes back with the news that really shocked us.
It turns out that the spotlight neighbor was the one on our porch, and he had jumped our fence into our backyard and then went up into his yard and then threw the light on. He told the officers that several nights prior, I had let my puppy out into MY OWN backyard in the middle of the night and, because I was in my boxers, he said that I was “trying to expose myself to his family.”
He then followed this up to the officers with “evidence.” This was the most chilling part of all. This evidence consisted of videos he had taken THROUGH OUR WINDOWS of my wife and me inside of our own home doing totally normal things like chores, watching TV, etc. Nothing inappropriate or scandalous—not that it would have mattered anyway, since we were in our OWN HOME.
Because of the elevation difference, if they went out of their way they could technically slightly see through our closed blinds due to the angle…so they had been filming us for no reason at all and expected the officers to see this as reasonable? The constable came back in and my wife was devastated. It was a huge breach of our privacy of course and totally unfounded accusations as we had never done anything to anger these people, we hadn’t even met them.
The officer told us “just don’t worry about it, if he tries something again just give us a call,” which wasn’t the most comforting at the time. They moved out a few months later without any additional issues, and my wife and I celebrated like it was a holiday when we saw the moving van in their driveway.
96. Saturday Sale
When I was 10 or so, an old lady yelled at my brother and me for sitting on "her" curb. She could have asked nicely, but she decided to be a jerk instead. So we came up with the most ingenious prank we've ever pulled. We decided to have an estate sale for her. We got up at like 4 am on a Saturday morning and put up homemade cardboard garage sale signs we made with her address on them.
In big, bold letters, we also wrote: "Early birds welcome." We then sat on the curb a little down the street across from her house and watched people bang on the door for an hour or so. The best part is we didn't put a date on the signs, so if she didn't find them all, people would just keep showing up every Saturday.
97. SWAT’s Happening?
We moved into an apartment complex and the neighbors right next door on our landing made our experience there extremely uncomfortable, to put it lightly. Two weeks after we moved in, 20 armed officers showed up and breached the neighbor’s door. The officers said they couldn’t locate the person they were after and that’s all the info we got on the incident.
Through our shared wall, we once heard a man shout, “If you don’t stop doing that, I swear to god I’ll punch you again.” And then: “Do you want me to punch you again?” This shouting was followed by a child crying. We called CPS but then we were afraid because we were the only ones that could have heard—so they’d know it was us who called.
Very often, we’d see strangers at the neighbor’s doorstep. When they’d knock on the neighbor’s door we’d hear a child next door answer, and then shout something like, “Mom, so and so is ready.” I’d like to believe she was just giving haircuts or something—technically still against lease agreement—but based on the types of people showing up at the door, it seems unlikely.
We were exiting the apartment at the same time as the neighbors, and their four-year-old child fell all the way down the concrete stairs to the ground level. We were horrified and moved to help. The mother stepped in and ignored us, yelled at her crying and definitely hurt child. They then quickly got in their car and drove off.
We moved after a year and never looked back. But I do think about those kids and I feel sad knowing that so many children are in abusive situations, raised by incompetent parents who were likely raised in the same terrible cycle.
98. Glow Up
Every spring, sometime in late February or March, our neighbor puts up a fluorescent light strip of the size of a bed in her living room window. It's on day and night for a few months. You can see the light from the window a mile away. At first, I thought she grew weed. But she's like 80 years old—a gray-haired frail lady. But, then I realized she grew pelargoniums.
Pixabay
99. It Came From Above
I had an upstairs neighbor who let their dog do its business—number one AND number two—on their balcony. I'm guessing this was going on for a while, as I started to notice a brown viscous substance leaking on my potted plants on my balcony. It wasn't until it rained that I could smell that it was dog excrement and urine. I basically had dog sewage raining all over my balcony from that night it rained.
I spent a ton of effort making my balcony a nice little oasis with nice lighting, plants, outdoor carpet, and furniture. I eventually got him evicted because it kept happening.
100. Peace Offering
I think I was the annoying neighbor. I used to live in a townhome complex where the back "porches" were just slabs of concrete and there was a field that connected all of them together. One night, I had like six friends over and we were on the slab grilling some chicken wings. We weren't too loud (we had no music playing and we weren't trashed), but I imagine we were still audible to the other buildings.
A woman from across the way started hollering at us, threatening to call the authorities. A few of my friends were like, "Screw that lady," but I decided to take a different route. I plated up about eight wings with our scratch-made buffalo sauce and walked it over to the lady on a paper plate. I then apologized for disturbing her, handing over the plate as a sort of peace offering.
She told me she overreacted and was sorry for yelling at us. I told her it was okay, but I also asked her if she was doing alright because she'd probably had a terrible day; yelling at strangers for a little noise at 7 pm on a Friday like that. She ended up confessing that she did have a bad day, and I told her I was sorry. Moving forward, we kept our volume at a reasonable level as a courtesy to her.
A little while later, she yelled back over that they were the best wings she'd ever had, and we gave a little cheer back to her. Never heard from her again. Hope her days are better now.
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