It’s tough to live in peace if you don’t lead the same kind of life style as the people you’re living with (or living around), and while you can (in most cases) choose your roommates, you can’t choose your neighbors.
I had a neighbor across the hall who was an old lady with custody of 3 grandkids, 1 of them being a toddler. I was outside one day and heard the toddler yelling. I looked up at the 2nd story window to see him standing up on the window sill and the only thing keeping him from falling was the screen. I ran up and banged on their door, but no one ever came. I went back outside, he had gotten down.
Several months later it was spitting snow one night around midnight and I came into the parking lot to see the little boy outside in nothing but a diaper with a woman I didn’t recognize. Turns out she found him walking around out by the road (probably 100 yards from the apartment) and called the cops. Police showed up to find mama and her boyfriend passed out and some drugs there with them. None of them ever came back to the apartment.
ShavedBeanBag
I lived across the street from a very bored stay-at-home mom whose excess idle time turned her into an insufferable busybody.
Her husband backed out of the driveway and slammed into my roommate’s car parked on the curb. He apologized, gave us his insurance info, and took care of it. He was never a problem because he accepted responsibility for what he did.
His wife, however, demanded that we never ever park any cars at the curb again, because “we can’t get out of our driveway otherwise”. The street was very wide – she was just completely unable to accept that the accident was her husband’s fault, and figured we were somehow responsible for it, ergo we were responsible for preventing it in the future.
We told her that we would avoid parking there whenever possible, but that we still had the legal right to park on the street, and that if necessary we would still do so, and that it was her and her husband’s responsibility to avoid hitting other people’s legally parked cars when backing out of the driveway. She wasn’t happy with that answer, but just told us we better stay out of her family’s way, and stormed off.
One day she came storming over, banging on the front door, cussing us out. We got her on our security camera saying “If you don’t move that freaking car in the next 10 minutes, I am going to total it with my truck. It’ll be your fault, and you’ll have to pay for the damage to my vehicle too”. To this, I simply responded: “I don’t know whose car that is, but I didn’t park it there. I have you on camera, so if you do anything to that car, I’ll have to call the police and hand over this tape”. She then threatened to sue me for invasion of privacy for recording her, and still insisted that we move the car, even though it wasn’t our property. We just ignored her, and she did not do anything to the car – we did keep the recording though.
A few weeks later, I had a friend visit from out of town. He parked his car on the curb, and then started unloading some stuff from his trunk. She came storming out, screaming and cussing at him “I have told you repeatedly never park your stupid car on this curb. If you don’t move it, I am going to total it, and you can pay for a new crap of car, as well as the damage you do to mine!” He tried to calm her down and asked if there was somewhere else he could park, and she replied “You can park it in hell, because that’s where you’ll be after I kill you!”.
Unfortunately for her, he had his dash cam running the whole time, and it captured everything. He called the
police, and she was arrested for threatening to commit vandalism and for threatening violence.
A few days later she left a long-winded hate-letter in our mailbox. It was written as if it were an open letter from the entire neighborhood, and it basically said that “nobody knows who you are”, and “Everyone wishes you would move away”, and “Nobody wants you living in our neighborhood”.
Thing is, she forgot about the security cameras. I took the video of her opening my mailbox – which included her taking all our letters out of the mailbox and rifling through them – and I gave them to the post office. This led to her getting arrested for a second time that week.
After that, we used her two arrests, our collection of security and dashcam footage, and her letter to get a restraining order against her that actually prohibited her from entering her own home, and then we called the police every time we saw her because she was in violation of the order.
She ended up having to live in a hotel room. Her husband came over, apologized to us, and asked if we would drop the restraining order so his wife could come home. I told him I would do it, but only if she wrote me, my wife, our roommates, and the friend of mine she threatened a 1-page apology for her harassment – and that moving forward she would promise to never ever contact us again for any reason whatsoever .
I received no apology, and their house went on the market a week later.
RealityIsMyReligion
The little girl next door to our rental house lived with her father and grandparents and I guess she didn’t want to tell them that she got her period so she started throwing her used sanitary pads over the fence into our yard where my dog would chew them up and come running into the house with his new found “toys”.
We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from until I set up a sting operation. I basically peered angrily out of my kitchen window from behind the curtains like a crazy old bat for two hours straight and caught her “red-handed”, literally. Then I told her granny who was suitably horrified.
I assume they had “the talk” because it stopped that day.
Shaolin816
I once had an upstairs neighbor (we’ll just call him Upstairs) for about 3 months before he got evicted for reasons that will become clear.
When Upstairs moved in, he came and knocked on my door to introduce himself and tell me to let him know if I was ever bothered by noise. Excellent!
He had the strangest haircut I’ve ever seen – shaved with a ponytail in the back, disembodied pointy sideburns, and some of it was dyed blue, what the heck? But hey we all have our quirks.
Soon I realized that Upstairs traps you in conversations every time you see him. He would also stop like two minutes into every conversation, shake my hand, and introduce himself again. But hey, sometimes people are weird and that’s fine. I totally sympathize with awkwardness.
Eventually Upstairs seemed to convince himself that we had met before in another town (we hadn’t) and that it was fate that we met again (it wasn’t) and possibly that we were soulmates (we weren’t).
Have I mentioned the noise? He was constantly on every stimulant ever and just kind of never slept. And thanks to his love of playing music full volume at 3 in the morning, none of us ever slept either. He also screamed, full on screamed, the lyrics to each song.
I later heard from other neighbors that he had been propping the doors open at night so his drug dealer could come in. Another neighbor had seen him in the parking lot one night, naked from the waist down, setting
an abandoned van on fire.
He also had a very loud speakerphone, must have had it hooked up to his sound system, and I got to hear half a conversation of his friend saying things like “well of course he called the cops on you, you chased him with an axe.”
I started getting cryptic notes and a postcard under my door, and then more notes asking me to return the previous notes. I guess he was just lending them to me?
Anyway one night at 1:30 in the morning he knocked on my door, then went around and knocked on my window when I didn’t answer, then came back around to the door again.
I opened the door with the chain on and we had a conversation that started with “Upstairs. It’s 1:30. I’m going to bed.” and he says “You weren’t in bed. You were sitting on the couch.”. It ended with him angrily asking if I just wanted him to “leave the place forever” and me saying yes, please do that.
Going forward the noise from his apartment got worse.
This all culminated in a night where me and a couple other neighbors confronted him over the noise. I had no idea how soundproof my ceiling actually was until I went up there. The volume was concert level. I didn’t know a human could make that much noise at home.
He was not sober at all when he eventually answered the door, and the conversation went nowhere. After we all went back to our rooms, he started throwing things on his floor (my ceiling) and yelling “HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT!?”
Upstairs left the apartment that night, accompanied by police, at 4 in the morning, after three separate 911 noise complaints from different neighbors.
He got evicted shortly after this.
facets-and-rainbows
We had a neighbor whose friend’s dog bit my wife on the hand causing permanent nerve damage. Well none of them were there when it happened but they got together and concocted a different story of what happened so they could protect their friend and her stupid dog.
So then they started to let our dog out of the yard and claiming we were harassing them. We were not doing any of these things. They spread rumors about us and our kids and even sent letters to us telling us how awful we are.
Then one of them sent a letter to my wife’s boss about how terrible she is. We had lived there ten years and it got to the point we just sold our house and moved. These ladies are all in their 50s and have nothing to do all day but imagine injustice towards them. One of them we later found out was let go from her job a few months previous to any of this happening due to similar actions in her workplace.
Peelboy
My previous next door neighbor was awful. I actually posted about her and asked for advice after she made a CPS threat last year. The question was picked up by a couple of online news sources, so we aren’t the only people who think she is crazy.
She called CPS on us last year because my older two sons (7 and 5 at the time) were playing football in the front yard during a sun shower. She basically told CPS that we locked all of our kids (including our toddler) outside during a thunderstorm and wouldnt let them back inside. She said they were begging to come in and we wouldn’t let them. It was a complete lie. They were having fun, the door wasn’t locked, and my wife could see them from the living room window. We got a CPS visit and the case was closed. A few days later my wife was outside playing with our toddler. The neighbor approached my wife and asked her if she learned her lesson.
We try not to make any contact with her after that, but she has made complaints about our tree house and complaints about the kids playing too loudly outside. She also called CPS on our friends across the street because their son had a black eye. He got the black eye in wrestling, but the neighbor called anyway. She frequently yelled at kids for not wearing jackets at the bus stop and still went to the bus stop with her 12 year old. I let my kids ride their bikes to school with their friends and she expressed concern about that as well.
We had a neighborhood party once she finally moved.
Shostakovich22
Crazy old Delores lived kitty corner to my parents back yard when we were growing up. My sister and I always tip-toe sprinted past her house to be as quick and quiet as possible.
One spring day our other neighbor lost their puppy. The whole family was out looking for it. The dad was checking under cars and gets to Deloress prehistoric Chevy that was held together with duct tape and prayer. I dont think the thing even ran. Well, Dolores kicks open her front door and pumps the 12 gauge shotgun shes got strapped across her chest. The guy backs away hands up as quickly as he could trying to explain about the puppy.
Dolores would tell anybody who listened how she caught an immigrant trying to steal her car. (It should be noted that we lived in a particularly safe neighborhood in a relatively safe, quiet city so the fact that her first instinct was to grab the shot gun was a particular overreaction)
One day my dad hired a plumber. The plumber coincidentally grew up in the neighborhood and unfortunately had his bike stolen as a kid. He told us he had been hired by Doloress children to fix something in her crawl space and while hes inching along in the dark he sees a collection of nearly a dozen childrens bicycles including his own. She just stole and collected kid’s bikes as a sadistic hobby.
TheBrontosaurus
Our neighbor got a coonhound
because he thought it was cool. Then he put it as far away from his own house as he could, which meant he put it on a chain right under my bedroom window, but still on his property. When I asked him to move it, he told me to “go to hell.”
So for four years I had a bored coonhound bawling and braying all night long just outside my bedroom window because the idiot next door thought it was cool.
principalman
The way my neighbour’s houses are set up, our neighbour from hell’s yard is surrounded on 2 sides by a cement building. He also happens to always have his sound system going in his shed right next to my house. The result is sound constantly being aimed back into my yard and house. He leaves it on to the point where he will go to bed with it still going. We also suspect he’s intoxicated most times we try to speak to him.
Anyway, fast forward about 3 months. Every single day there’s his music going, plus his amplified voice and whoever else is over. I’ve called in a noise complaint, and they come at 11pm with his music still going. The cop asks him to turn his music down and leaves.
The next morning our wind chimes were cut. Since then he’s been watching my mom when she works on the garden. Last week he was banging a shovel off a metal pipe for 45 minutes until my mom went inside.
bellabutts
Our neighbors moved from a rather remote suburb to a 2 bedroom condo on the middle floor, but expected the same living environment. They expected no noise from the neighbors, EVER, and especially after 9pm when they went to bed. And an adequate and immediate response to any complaints they had, but never wanted to actually speak to their neighbors about their concerns.
The put themselves on the shitlist within three days of moving in when they called the police on our elderly neighbors for having their TV turned up too loud (that was the first and last time that they ever did that so I’m guessing the cops told them off for it). They constantly complained to the management company about us (their upstairs neighbors) because according to them we were too noisy during “established quiet hours”. Note: our complex has no such thing as “established quiet hours”.
To them, any noise at all was too much noise. We got at least one “notice of complaint” letter from the management company a month. My mother is a property manager; she only ever sends those letters out when someone will not stop hounding her to do something about their terrible neighbors, so you know they were probably calling in every day to scream “THEY’RE WALKING AROUND AND IT IS AFTER TEN PM”. They also threatened to sue us for “trying to murder their dog” because we had a bird feeder on our balcony and they claimed that we had maliciously placed it there so their dog would bark and injure herself trying to get to the birds. The husband almost came to blows with my mom over this when she called him out on his horse crap logic, because they did more to hurt and abuse that dog than she could have done to herself just barking at birds. They moved out after living there for only six months. Good freaking riddance
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shiguywhy
We currently have neighbors from hell. We just bought our first house last year, on the street I grew up on. It has always been a very chill and quiet neighborhood, which was a big part of the appeal, in addition to the fact that we both loved it and could afford it. Everything about this place is perfect. All the neighbors are nice and quiet. Except one.
Dog that barks incessantly? Check
Super loud parties every weekend? Check and check. (I have to get up at 4am for work on Saturdays so this peeves me greatly)
Blaring explicit ganster rap outside all day/night all weekend? Oh you betcha!
Kids of all ages running amok throughout all above listed activities, often until well after midnight? Yessir.
A plethora of uber-trashy signs promoting vigilante home protection and gun ownership? Obviously.
These people are the worst. We have called Animal Control on them multiple times, after which the lady of the house inevitably runs out into the street screaming about “whichever of you suckers wants to call the cops on me, come on out so I can beat your freaking ass!”. Animal control won’t come out again unless we file a Nuisance Abatement, under which the accused would have access to who filed the report. I am here alone with my kids all day. No thank you.
So now we just call the sheriff’s department (which they told us to do) but I am pretty sure the neighbors have a scanner because their crap usually quit shortly after we call. My husband is about ready to go all-out crazy on these people, and I just don’t know what to do anymore.
malarkist
When my parents moved into their first house back in 1989/1990, they had a neighbor named Nancy. They referred to her as “Nancy the Nut,” because she was really out there. One time my mom was walking me in the stroller and Nancy’s mother came up and started asking about me. My mom then asked her how many children she had. Days later, my parents got a misspelled and expletive-filled letter basically saying how dare they ask how many children a woman has. It was Nancy that wrote it.
She also put traffic cones in front of her house for no real reason and killed the tree in her front yard by duct taping it. My parents moved in 1993, but my dad saw her one last time a few years later when he was in downtown Chicago. He looked, and there she was, several feet away from him, hocking a loogie.
She’s since passed away, but, wow, was she weird.
PAKMan1988
He shared a wall with me and my now ex. We couldn’t make a peep after 9pm without him angrily beating on the wall or our door. His reason for sleeping so early? He had to get up early to go skiing. This man didn’t have a job, he just skied every day. It made it hard to feel bad about his sleep.
One night probably around 10pm my ex and I were watching Bob Ross and Bob must’ve tapped his paint brush too hard because it sent my neighbor into a frenzy (and at this point we had already learned to watch things very quietly). He banged on my door and when I opened it he was in his boxers with his dick flopping out. He told me he called the cops because he’s had it with our noise and I told him that I’d make sure I’d tell the cop that his dick was out when he came to my door. Shut him the fuck up real fast. Cop comes to my door and I open it only to see that it’s the cop my sister had been screwing, he realizes that it’s me, laughs and closes the door.
Neighbor moved out when the snow melted.
Elfsteps
This happened a few months ago. There’s a girl who lives next door to me, she’s probably about 19 years old. I don’t talk to her or her family, they’re not very neighborly.
Anyways, one night, at around 1:30am, I’m gaming in my basement with my headphones on and the window open for a nice draft. All of a sudden I begin to hear something in the background. I take my headphones off and all I can hear is a girl screaming bloody murder and making weird gurgling noises.
I rushed upstairs to see if my parents were okay and find out what the heck is going on at 1:30 in the morning. Turns out the girl was having some sort of drug fuelled episode. My dad saw everything. From what he told me, the girl had a fight with her mom and lost her shit. She ran outside the house and started screaming while rolling on the lawn.
The best part is that they’re crappy neighbors and don’t pick up their dogs’ turds. She rolled in poop and her mom had to run out after her and forcefully bring her crap covered daughter back into the house.
AMA_Anytime
The 1st house we owned, the neighbors had a 3 year old daughter. Within 2 weeks of moving in, the 3 year old would just randomly show up at our back door. Mind you, we had a fenced back yard, so she had to open the gate to come in. At 1st we were polite, walked her back home, etc. After about a month of this, we ended up putting a lock on the gate.
Well neighbor daddy took exception to that, something in his mind about it being a safety concern that his offspring couldn’t just wander over to our house anymore. Things escalated pretty quickly, to include neighbor daddy deciding that we were ‘bad neighbors’ and having an 8 foot privacy fence put up. The final incident involved him standing outside his fence, surveying it’s massive ugliness, all while shouting obscenities at us on our deck. We called the police, and during that interaction I learned that neighbor mommy was a raging alcoholic with a number of outrageous incidents under her belt, and neighbor daddy was a known drug addict.
About 5 months after we bought this place, these two winners disappeared. Nobody ever saw a moving truck or anything, but one morning they were gone, front door open, house empty. A few days later the bank sent their repo team out, the house sold to a nice young couple.
This was an otherwise decent neighborhood, and once we got to know people around, we learned all kinds of ‘fun’ stories about these people. Some of our neighbors thought we had somehow managed to drive them out.
JerkCircleton
My husband and I lived on a large static Dutch barge divided into 6 small apartments. One day our lovely quiet neighbour moved out and the worst couple moved in. 24 hours a day they were either having sex or fighting. Screaming at each other or ridiculously loud sex.
She was a banshee but seemed relatively normal otherwise, he was a massive ripped dude with facial tattoos who was seemingly incapable of talking at anything less than maximum volume at all times. I was convinced he was dealing drugs. He didnt work but when she was out he would spend hours shouting at his phone, hanging out of the window (the windows were really close together and the boat was too warm to keep them closed for long). Oh and the wall between our bedroom and their bathroom was paper thin so every morning I got to enjoy the sound of him clearing his sinuses for about 5-10 minutes.
We were woken by armed police in our bedroom one morning at 4am because it was reported hed stabbed a homeless guy. The police didnt realise it was apartments so just bust in random doors looking for this guy. Helicopters hovering right above the boat , guys in body armour and massive guns swarming down the gangway.. the whole place was cordoned off most of the day while they tore apart his flat. He wasnt charged with anything in the end but it didnt improve our opinion of him.
moonwashed
My son is autistic. Moderately to severely autistic he was about 2 years old and didnt speak. He would moan and cry a lot. There was not much we could do to comfort him.
My neighbors above us would constantly call the cops even after we explained the situation. The cops were cool about it they werent going to arrest a 2 year old but it was stressful trying to calm an autistic toddler and then having the cops bang on your door. They would throw parties wake the kids up and then call the cops on us. We could hear them complaining about us through the ceiling and when they were on the patio.
I felt bad about it but there wasnt much I could do other than try to calm my son. One morning (maybe around 6 am) we were packing the kids in the car and my son is crying his pitiful moaning cry and my neighbor starts mimicking his cry through his window.
A part of me died that day. All the shame, stress, sleeplessness.
damnyankeeintexas
We were having our fence repaired after a tree limb fell on it. The repairman happened to step onto the neighbor’s side while fixing the fence, and the neighbor ran out screaming at him to get off her property, and if he stepped over again she’d have him arrested.
Now there was very little mystery as to why she was a divorcee.
PenisBeautyCream
I hated my old neighbor. He would call the cops on everyone in the neighborhood for anything.
The best example of his unadulterated behaviour is when he called the cops on me for having an out of control party. It was a small party and it was at 2:00pm. The responding officer apologized to me for even coming over.
The next day I saw that guy in his yard and I called him out. He denied that he had called the police. Its been years since Ive moved but I still secretly try and think of things to do in revenge. I seriously hate that dude.
wisconniegirl1
I lived in an apartment complex. Our next door neighbour had a rooster as a pet, and he always did that rooster sound at 5am and woke most of the other residents up at that time.
No one complained though because we all had to be up at 5 anyway and just got used to it. It was like our alarm clock, but man I really wish I could get to snooze it like a real alarm clock.
CoolingOreos
My mother is the definitely the worst neighbor ever.
She yelled at both sides until they built fences to separate themselves from our yard when she’s outside. My mom then bragged about how we effectively got “free” fencing.
amm964
Our neighbour on one side is a church. And our neighbour on the other side is an old man.
Church put up a big sign saying “Free Bible Lessons, Wednesday 8:30pm”. Our old man neighbour thought it would be hilarious to change the sign to say “Free SEX Lessons”.
He used the paint tin I had just finished painting the front door with.
The church is still 100% convinced their 25yo neighbour with the Mid Brunswick Green front door is the culprit, as opposed to the 70 year old man 1 house away.
valiantfreak
I live in low income housing and there are many disabled people in my building.
The man who used to live above me at one point would blast 10-20 seconds of music SUPER loud randomly throughout the day – It literally shook my apartment. It felt like he had a woofer aimed at the floor. I asked him politely to stop doing it late at night, involved the apt manager but they always gave him another chance and I then started involving the police. Eventually his lease ran out and the apts concession to me was to not renew it. He was never punished and I imagine him blasting his random music at someone elses walls now.
Also I had a neighbor who WAS evicted after her alcohol self started trading a place to sleep with homeless men for booze (the local liquor stores had cut her off). A young 20-something girl opening her apartment door to an older creepy mentally unstable guy practically drooling. It stays with you.
6bubbles
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