People Share Their Most Horrendous Incident With A Bad Neighbor
28. Don't Illegally Extend Your Lawn Onto A Farmer's Land
“My sister has a small 60-acre family farm that was annexed into the city about 15 years ago. While she still maintains it as a horse farm, most of the adjoining property around her has since been sold for residential development.
For the most part, she gets along fine with her neighbors, but she has one neighbor who took it upon himself to cut a barbed wire fence, fill in a perimeter drainage ditch, and extend his lawn another two acres into her field.
The property has twice been officially surveyed and the neighbor was served written notice of encroaching on her land. On top of that, she has twice taken him to court for property damages for cutting the fencing, yet he continues to extend his lawn more and more.
One day in early spring, I was at the farm and Sis was at wit’s end on how to deal with this character. I said, “No problem, Sis. I will get his attention today.”
I then went an got the trusty old John Deere farm tractor out and gave the horse barn a thorough spring cleaning, removing about 4 tons of manure, which I loaded on the manure spreader and hauled it to the back of the property where the neighbor was happily puttering along on his little craftsman riding mower.
I went right up close to the property line and dropped the manure spreader in gear, then I ran parallel to the fence making sure that nothing was being thrown over the fence but making a good ground cover at the state-mandated maximum rate of two tons per acre.
I made one pass, and when I turned around to come back on the parallel track, the neighbor walks out in the fields and asks “What the do you think you’re doing?” I said, “Simple, buddy, I am just spreading all the BS you been passing to us?”
The neighbor then pulled out a cell phone and called the cops. The cops came and asked me what I was doing? I said, I am spreading horse manure in preparation of plowing this field; it’s technically called “organic farming.” Do you have a problem with that?”
I then got off the tractor and walked the cop over to the property line and showed him the survey stakes and where the neighbor had actually cut the fence.
The cop then went over to the neighbor who was livid, shouting all kinds of stuff about health regulations and spreading effluent, etc. The cop pulled out his pad and asked the neighbor for his ID.
The neighbor thought the cop wanted his information to file a complaint against me, so he immediately handed his license to the cop, all the while still pointing at me and shouting obscenities and nonsense about health laws and such.
Imagine the neighbors surprise when the cop handed him a citation for cutting the fence, filling a drainage ditch, and trespassing, then telling him that what I was doing was perfectly legal and normal functions for a working farm.
The cop then waved at me and hollered, “Have a good day, and by the way, if this guy gives you any more problems, call me. Next time, I come out here I’m gonna haul him in.”
27. Wannabe Secret Agent
“There’s a particular type of person who seems to feel like they’re the only thing standing between society and complete collapse, and about six years ago, my downstairs neighbor was one of them.
She was aloof and paranoid, and she’d imagine threats from almost everywhere…which made the fact that she thought of herself as some kind of secret agent all the more annoying. Said neighbor was always trying to find ways of getting me (and anyone else whom she thought of as suspicious) to move out of the building.
She’d stage loud telephone calls with ‘headquarters’ about the alarming behavior of the other tenants—like my tendency to get home after nine in the evening, which was clearly scandalous—and frequently yell at the people who’d stand on the corner to smoke.
On one occasion, I heard her shouting at someone over the placement of a flowerpot in their window, which was obviously an indication that they were selling.
Then, one afternoon, I found this taped to a wall in the stairwell.
It was perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at an official document that I’d ever seen, and I’m including the time that my friend Jonathan—then nine years old—made a flyer for bodyguard services.
The atrocious grammar, poorly Photoshopped seal, and the distinct absence of any legitimate contact information made the ‘notice’ about as realistic as a scene from NCIS. Furthermore, the reference to ‘the past two years’ seemed to indicate me as her primary target, since I was (as far as I knew) the only resident who had been there for less time than that.
Still, since the notice was clearly meant to scare someone, I decided to return the favor by taking a page out of my neighbor’s own playbook and standing outside of her apartment while staging my own fake phone call:
‘You should see the notice; it’s terrible! Hah, yeah, it’s like they didn’t know that impersonating a federal official is a felony! Anyway, the real FBI are on their way, and they’re going to dust for fingerprints.
Whoever made that notice is looking at a lot of jail time!’
I went back inside my apartment after that…and within seconds, I heard my neighbor’s door open. There was the sound of hurried footsteps rushing towards the stairwell, followed by an equally hurried retreat.
When I went out to check five minutes later, the notice was gone.
I’ve since moved away from that location, but for the rest of the time that I lived there… the lady never bothered me again.”
26. The Worst Kids In The Neighborhood
“For about a month, we’ve had neighborhood kids coming to our yard to play with our 8-year-old son.
He’s an only child, so we still let him play with a mask on and with social distancing since he gets lonely since he’s in school. I’m immune-compromised which is why we are cautious.
At first, the kids got along great but things started taking a turn for the worst. I noticed that they were coming over and playing with my son’s things and trashing our yard when we weren’t home, so me and my husband had a talk with them about it and told them they weren’t allowed over when we weren’t home and to stop leaving their trash in our yard.
It worked for about a day and it gradually started to escalate. There are a set of twin boys, a girl and another boy, involved in this all of which are older than my son by a year or two.
There is another brother and sister who are closer to his age that play with him and those other kids, but they are okay and are not disrespectful.
We’ll call the bad neighborhood kids R&J (twin boys), RT (girl), and CM (boy)
R&J are the most destructive and have the worst foul language I’ve ever heard from 4- 5th graders! CM just tags along with them. They gradually trashed the yard more and more. My son was constantly complaining about how mean they were being to him and how they were hitting him and threatening him and the good kids so we told them they were no longer allowed here or around our child.
Well, they came back over when we weren’t home and destroyed my son’s trampoline netting and had it all strolled out in the yard with a garbage bag load of trash all in my yard. I took pictures and told them again that they aren’t allowed over again and if they keep disobeying me and my husband will have to resort to talking to their parents or the police.
I have video cameras that have recorded everything too.
Fast forward to today…
My husband had decided we just needed to put up a privacy fence, so he used a tool with a string to mark the property.
Well, R&J came over with two other kids RT and CM through the yard, and they got mad and proceeded to try to tear it down. I’m still so angry thinking about it, but it gets worse.
My husband confronts them again that they aren’t supposed to be on our property, not even to go to the good brother and sister who lives next door because they have been disrespectful and destructive. Well, this overly obese girl (RT) starts cussing my husband and me out saying we don’t tell her what to do and she’ll destroy any fence we put up and she’s saying this while in another neighbor’s yard who has told them they can’t be in her yard either.
RT threatens to call her mom, and we say fine…
Well, RT’s mom and dad both come up in their cars shouting obscene language and threatening to beat us in the streets cause apparently their daughter told them we cussed her out and believed every word she said (so mature..) because you know…their daughter doesn’t lie and is a perfect angel (barf).
Such role model parenting going on there! ::sarcasm::
Had to call the sheriff on them after that display. The sheriffs did a no-trespass on RT and her parents and all the rest of the bad neighborhood kids.
Just hoping these aren’t the types to retaliate further, but I feel like they are just given the rude behavior, foul language, destructiveness, disrespect, and boundary stomping. I’ve lived in many places, but I’ve never seen that many toxic kids in one neighborhood!
This has just happened this year and I live on a couple of acres of land in the county. I know the parents are to blame cause children aren’t born being that rude and disrespectful; they learn it from somewhere.”
25. Ongoing Battle With Trashy Neighbors
“My neighbors and I have an ongoing battle. We don’t really know or understand why it got so bad. They rent and have been there for about 4 years. We own and have been here for 13 years.
Their driveway is directly next to our yard, and there is an encroachment agreement for their garage that is on our property by a couple of inches. We have had no issues with any previous tenants and have been friends with all of them.
Here are SOME of the things we’ve had to deal with.
It started when he’d idle his loud, really stinky truck on high for 1-2 hours at a time. We asked them to stop, or compromise, or something, because fumes were coming into our house and making us physically sick.
Not to mention that it rattled our walls, being less than 6 feet from our house. We offered cookies with our complaint to them was a, “Heeey, we don’t want to cause problems. Please help us find a solution.” They gave back the cookies.
It didn’t stop. We tried to ignore it.
Then they parked their RV just enough on our property that we couldn’t use our back gate. This caused issues. We asked them that the next time it’s moved if they could inch it over.
He said no and that it wasn’t on our property at all. He wouldn’t answer the door when we tried to talk to him about it again to compromise. So we called bylaw to get it moved right then instead.
Then he started posting false Kijiji ads with our personal information – full name, address, phone number. My phone was going crazy. We contacted Kijiji and had them removed.
Then he started blowing dirt and grass and leaves onto our freshly groomed lawn and parking on it enough that it was creating a mud pit.
In the winter, he kept shoveling snow onto our sidewalks and blowing snow against the house and back door. We asked it to stop via note since they weren’t home, and talking previously didn’t do any good.
We received a note back that said, “Why don’t you flip off? Nobody likes you.” We decided that once the snow was gone, we’d build a fence because we had enough, and bylaw and RCMP weren’t interested or able to help, simply telling us to be good neighbors.
We have TRIED. We installed surveillance cameras, one that runs down the side of our house and catches their driveway, which is visible to the street. We blacked out the areas where their kitchen windows are out of courtesy, even though we couldn’t really see inside the house anyway.
They started flipping the bird to the camera. Every. Single. Day. For two years. We built that fence that ran down the entire length of our property. They kept running into it, leaning heavy items against it, pulling and pushing against it, causing it to lean slightly.
We did nothing since it was still intact and still sturdy. He threw garbage over the fence one day. We had a dog that would eat the dumbest stuff, and we were worried he’d cause her health issues, so we talked to them over the fence.
The wife said that her husband wouldn’t do that, even though we had a clear shot of him doing it on surveillance. She demanded we remove the camera, and we declined since it was installed to keep tabs on the they were doing to our property.
She insisted we were lying (again, surveillance to prove otherwise).
The next morning, we had a threatening note left in our mailbox calling us terrible names and to grow some nerve, and then an RCMP officer showed up to talk to us about the threat we made to the neighbor.
We explained our version, offered them the surveillance footage of both the garbage being tossed over the fence and the conversation that took place after. They reviewed it and decided to read the neighbors the riot act and to stop untoward behaviors against us.
So on. And on.
Last year, we have him on camera pouring antifreeze into our diesel fuel tank. RCMP were called. They knew he did it. They wanted to act on it. The crown prosecutor said no because their caseload was too busy.
Yes, the truck was wrecked. Sure, we got insurance, but we are out the deductible and the long term damages that aren’t obvious when something like this first happens. A few weeks later, food was tossed into our yard from their backyard, and we were scared he was trying to poison our dog.
More petty BS things. We were legit scared for our safety at this point because we have had authorities involved frequently and most of them admit that they see our neighbor as a (real) psychopath, but they can’t do anything about it.
(Can’t, or won’t….. ). The landlords think we should have them over for coffee to see that they’d never do these things and that we are imagining it all. Seriously, what the actual heck…
We wanted to take them to court, but in speaking with our lawyer, he did not feel confident that we would get enough to be worth the court costs.
We decided to sell our house and get a restraining order against them. We filed. They made a counterclaim and decided to fight the order. They threatened us. We persisted. We ended up agreeing to a mutual restraining order, which has been easy enough for us to follow.
Things quieted down. Our house was listed. And now we wait- because ‘the world pause’ has thrown a hitch in our plans of getting the heck away from these people since real estate has slowed right down.
We thought things settled, but they’ve recently started up again. Despite a “no watching or staring” clause in the order, he has been doing it frequently. He and his buddies have been staring at us and our yard through the gap he created between the fence and garage.
We fixed that gap so he can’t see as much. And then yesterday, he swerved towards us on the road. RCMP can’t do anything again since it’s our word against the neighbor’s, despite the long-standing history of him lying and causing problems.
We are DONE. We just want to move. We have been packed and ready for months. Rumor has it that we have a buyer, but they have to sell their home first.
We have taken the higher ground the entire time.
We’ve taken measures to protect ourselves and our property. But it’s never enough. And now we want to hurt them in a way they feel it.
But you know what. Because it won’t help matters, it will only cause a faster and worse escalation, and nothing will be solved. And someone may land either in jail or a graveyard.”
Another User Comments:
“I second the catalog signup option. Sign them up for everything and use their address and phone number for multiple things. Especially If you’re moving eventually anyway and they don’t sound smart enough to figure it out.
Someone like that won’t likely change no matter what you do. There’s, unfortunately, no decent recourse, so minor passive-aggressive annoyances are your best bet. They’ll give you the satisfaction and freedom from blame.” Fallenfred
24. Just Call Him Tweaker Dan
“I grew up in a rough neighborhood.
Rough neighborhoods are kinda funny, based on what I’ve heard from other people with similar experiences, in that you tend to have a really polarizing effect. You have your ghost neighbors, people that never talk to anyone and for all intents and purposes don’t exist, and you have the awesome neighbors that you keep as close to you as possible because, in that kind of setting, you need to.
The neighbor on either side of the house I grew up in was pretty good. On the right was a ghost neighbor who eventually started talking to us and being pretty cool, and on the left were my godparents.
Across the street was a family of addicts, two doors down from them on the corner was a guy who made and sold the stuff. He had a network of users and sellers all down the street, and one on every corner house at every intersection who was involved with him.
This guy was an icon. People in the area called him a number of things, “Tweaker Dan” was one nick-name, “the White Guy” was another.
He had a make-shift auto-shop in his garage, and he worked on cars from around 5 am until about midnight every day, loudly, punctuated by people coming and going from his house to grab the stuff. Sometimes he would have loud arguments with people outside, and sometimes he would have fights with people he argued with.
More often when he went for his firearm, people left.
Dan rode his bike everywhere. He had a car, and it worked, but he generally just rode his bike all over the place.
Now, growing up, I just saw him as a crappy neighbor, to be feared and avoided.
The thing was, Tweaker Dan was actually a pretty friendly guy. He would wave to everyone, neighbors, anyone who lived in the neighborhood, anyone he recognized, really.
It wasn’t until I was older that I learned a little more about Dan and his operation because of some mutual friends I ended up knowing.
Dan didn’t just supply to the neighborhood, Dan controlled a large amount of the local supply chain. There were two major gangs in the area, but our neighborhood fell directly in a kind of neutral area between their territories.
One gang probably could have taken our neighborhood if they had wanted to, they were big enough and powerful enough.
Dan was their supplier. They knew him as “the White Guy,” and part of their arrangement with him is that he sold to them, but they stayed out of the neighborhood.
This was his arrangement with anyone “affiliated” that he sold to. He would sell to pretty much anyone, but if he dealt with you, you kept your crap out of his neighborhood. “Don’t poop where you live” sort of thing.
Turns out, this is also why he rode his bike everywhere and waved to everyone. Dan was keeping an eye on who came and went. He waved because he wanted you to know he was watching.
It wasn’t so much that he was being friendly, though he was, but that he was communicating something very important: he was watching.
To those of us who weren’t involved with him, we didn’t know. We didn’t know about his rules, who he said was allowed to come and go, the arrangements he’d made that basically kept our neighborhood from getting worse as the city around us turned to garbage.
We only knew about his erratic and peculiar behavior, that he never slept, that he dealt stuff and that he did them.
A lot of the clean houses in the neighborhood vilified him, but it was always peculiar to see which houses were friendly with him because it was not always who you’d expect.
For a guy who had so much interaction, he was also friends with the prison guard, the family who lived a few doors down, my godfather. People you’d have thought would have avoided him.
But they knew.
Who knows how, but they did. I asked my godfather about it after I found out and he said yeah, he knew; he just didn’t see it as something that should be talked about.
So that’s Tweaker Dan.
One of the best and worst neighbors I’ve ever had.”
23. She Was Like An Enraged Rhino
“I have a story that made living close to them really awkward until we moved. The family opposite us at our old house was really strange. And their daughter was a bully. As a kid, she’d push me over into glass, spread rumors about me, and fed lies to her mom in order to start drama.
Eventually, my mom said to the girl if she didn’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. So in response, the girl goes to her mom and I don’t know what she said or whether her mom was just nuts (more likely the latter), but this woman was absolutely furious.
She storms across the street towards me, a seven-year-old girl, like an enraged rhino. I was terrified, so I ran inside my house. Seconds later (she ran to the door), she started furiously hammering on our door.
My mom answers and this woman is SCREAMING, yes SCREAMING, about how dare she do x, y, and z. My mom tells her to get off the property and tries to shut the door, but this woman puts her foot in the gap of the door, practically foaming at the mouth, points in my direction, and screams, ‘SHE IS A LITTLE BEE WITH AN ITCH.’
Fun fact, my even crazier aunt was living with us at the time with my two cousins, my younger cousin was standing in front of me as this crazy lady pointed and screamed at me, so my crazy aunt thought she was talking about my cousin.
My aunt LAUNCHES herself at this woman, tackling her to the floor. My mom tries to break it up but then this delightful specimen pulled her hair and so my mom started punching her in the face.
It went on like that for a while until the husband literally drags his crazy wife home.
It was really awkward for a long time, the bully girl bit off more than she could chew seemingly as after that there was no more drama from her.
Her crazy mom is still a nurse.”
22. We Had To Call The Cops Two Days After They Moved In
“A few months back, we had a rental home down from us that had terrible tenants. Their dogs barked all hours of the night and ran wild, their kids left their stuff all over the neighborhood, and he blared music from his garage basically all weekend long.
One glorious day, these people just up and moved. The whole neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief but sat back waiting on the next tenant to come in. To everyone’s surprise, though, the long term owner decided to sell it after the last tenant.
The house goes on the market, sells in 7 days, and a few days ago, the people closed and showed up with a Uhaul. They drove a newer Nissan truck and had a kid and a small dog.
Everyone seemed to think we’d finally gotten a quiet family to finish off the otherwise perfect neighborhood.
So this evening, I invited my family over for dinner, and after we were out on the back porch enjoying the cool air, out of nowhere, we hear a screaming woman.
“You hurt me every day!”
“You’ve been gone for 4 hours! Where have you been?!”
“I had to give my kid up for adoption, so you could keep your kid!”
My family and I walk out front, and lo and behold, it’s the new family.
The man is sitting on the tailgate of his truck, and the woman’s pacing like a psycho in front of him flailing her hands around. One by one, I start seeing my neighbor’s lights come on, and people walking outside slowly.
Before we knew it, the whole neighborhood is out watching the absolute show.
Needless to say, after about 20 minutes of tons of profanity and having to explain to my child not to be worried, I threw in the towel.
I’ve called the cops for emergencies a lot but never to nark on anyone; it’s just something you don’t do where I’m from. Tonight, though, I finally had to, the argument just kept escalating and the language kept getting stronger to a point I was worried it’d get physical quick (her to him).
Lowkey, I find it funny but highkey, it really sucks. It’s a good neighborhood, but now we’re all right back to square one, worried we’ll be caught up in something that we don’t want to be in just because of this one house.
They didn’t even make it two days, lol. Like, how can you screw it up before you’re even fully moved in?”
21. This Neighbor Is So Bad That He Was Sent Packing Shortly After Moving In
“So a couple of weeks ago, someone new moved in downstairs.
I didn’t really think much of it. My last neighbors were awesome. I even asked him when he was moving in, if I made any noise and he said no. I always ask everyone to try to be respectful.
Then comes Sunday. He started playing music, extremely loud. When I say loud I mean loud… a mother ffeaking car crashed into this building and it was quieter and shook the building less. His music is literally shaking my entire place.
I tried to hide in the bathroom on the other side of my place from the sound. Sadly, even the toilet was vibrating and singing. That’s what it was like for over 4+ hours. Due to the fact I have occipital neuralgia and a broken neck that’s healed wrong, loud sounds and vibrations can cause me extreme pain and migraines.
I still tried to be nice and wait to see if he would turn it down. I pay to live here because stuff like loud music and kids screaming are not allowed here. I was hoping he read his lease and would remember that eventually.
Alone, this city’s ordinances do not allow people to be that loud. Sadly, after FOUR hours, I had to go downstairs and ask him to turn it down a little. I couldn’t see straight from the pain.
So I probably didn’t have the happiest smile on my face. Not to mention, I suffer from resting bee with an itch face on a good day. I personally think it’s weird Americans want you to always smile, but oh well.
I didn’t even ask him to turn it off. Just to turn it down. I got my professional, white, Washingtonian voice I use to deal with people like this. I wasn’t expecting him to get this angry at being asked to turn the music down.
I don’t understand why anyone would get so crazy over this. Just getting asked nicely, “Could you please turn the music down from a 13 to a 9? Everyone can hear it and it’s shaking the building.”
So instead of just admitting what he did and moving on with life, he decided he had to get mad at me because I’m a horrible, loud person too, so what he was doing was okay… So getting mad at me because I shut my doors and walk-in my house… Ya..
that was the only thing he could think of. I am an extremely quiet person. Asking me to not walk, open or shut doors in my home and that my cats can’t touch the floor.
Am I the only one who finds that crazy? My apartment manager thought it was crazy too. Also If that noise was a problem, why didn’t he say anything before? How can so many adults not know how to communicate?
It’s an older building and everyone hears everyone’s doors. Apparently, he has never lived in an old place. I also hear it every time he opens or shuts his doors. Same with all my neighbors.
Thankfully, he did turn down his music. Though I am not going to not walk into my home because someone got upset that I asked him to turn down his music. It’s crazy to think someone can just not touch their floor or doors, right?
I’m not a ghost yet. So the next couple of days, he decided to start getting angrier and angrier. If he communicated and told me I was being loud, I would have done anything possible to stop it, though only so much anyone can do about a rickety sliding glass door.
He was just gaslighting.
Yesterday, he got really upset because I went on my patio. So after he was done yelling at me for shutting a door, I go to the apartment manager’s office. Thankfully, he was already there complaining about me.
Well as you can guess, the apartment manager said I’m making normal noise. That it’s impossible not to make that noise. My 10 lbs cat creaks the floor walking, and I’m 112 lbs. How do I levitate?
Everyone knows how to turn the music down. I don’t play music. I don’t yell at the top of my lungs. I even had my love disconnect the subwoofer from his surround system when we moved in… out of consideration for our neighbors.
Personally, I think comparing hours of music to a door shutting is weird. He was also informed I have occipital neuralgia, a broken neck that’s healed wrong, carpal tunnel… That makes it physically impossible to never drop anything.
A dude probably in his 40s harassing a disabled girl in her 20s because she is disabled. Looks bad and is a hate crime if he does not stop, even though most likely I make less noise than most people here.
He was angry. We decided we would like to remain strangers.
So he is moving out into an apartment right by the playground on the other side of the complex. He got the upstairs he wanted. Can’t wait till he learns about unwanted park noises… Lots of old, metal playground equipment, wind, and kids here.
All kids gotta be in the park or pool to scream too. He has already started moving and has to pay for it all again. Right after he just got everything unpacked.”
20. They Produce Music All Hours Of The Night
“My guy and I have been living in a triplex (built in 1946) for about 2 months and we absolutely love it. After we signed the lease, the landlady told us she was thinking about converting the bat (directly below us) into a 4th unit.
It didn’t bug us too much because we thought being upstairs, we wouldn’t hear anything.
Well… she ends up renting it out and things weren’t an issue… until we learned our new downstairs neighbor is a music producer.
He told us that he had a guitar, sitar, Cajon, and 6 synths and he’s planning on recording an album. So he turns his apartment into a recording studio. We can hear EVERYTHING, and the sound/vibrations shakes our walls.
We’ve kindly told him to use headphones at night and to be mindful of having jam sessions too late into the night. We’ve told him to quiet down about 5 times so far. He’s obliged but kept on playing late into the night each subsequent time.
We’re on the fence about telling the landlady because he will probably know we reported him and it’ll be awkward whenever we see him.
Thankfully he was quiet all week and we thought another neighbor finally complained. However, tonight he decides to have a recording session (that started at 10:30 pm) and invited 4 friends over too.
We were trying to watch a movie but couldn’t with the noise.
We told him to turn it down, which he did, but we could still hear it. We followed up again and he said, “The best I can do is 1/4 volume because we’re recording.”
The reason I’m so upset is that before we signed the lease, the landlady questioned us about how quiet we are because the whole building is a quiet community. It’s unfair that he turns his apartment into literally the most unquiet thing.
We are working from home due to the “world pause,” and if he produces during the day, I just throw on noise-canceling headphones.
What would you do in this situation? I’ve about had it with this guy…”
Another User Comments:
“There may be a section of your lease that addresses running a business out of a residential apartment. If your landlord doesn’t enforce the rules of your lease you have grounds to sue the landlord.
A friendly letter from your attorney will get this straightened out. Also, there are noise ordinances in every city/town. Look them up. If he’s out of bounds, call the cops.” 1ukeskywa1ker
19. He Accuses Us Of Being The Noisy Neighbor When He Is
“Ok, so background info: My guy and I just moved into a new apartment a couple of months ago.
We are quiet people and try to be considerate of our neighbors.
About a week or two into us living in the new place, I was making dinner and had the kitchen fan on to vent steam (was making pasta).
It was around 6 or 7 pm when we heard a knock on our door. My partner put a mask on and opened the door and our downstairs neighbor was outside without a mask and asked us to turn the kitchen fan off because it was making too much noise and he was about to go to bed. Personally, I thought it was a pretty early time to go to bed, but we turned the fan off and he left.
A couple of weeks later, we get a call from our landlord asking us if we had been arguing in the middle of the night. We had not and I’m actually pretty sure we went to bed early that night because we were both working early the next day.
We told that much to our landlord and he just told us that he had received a complaint. We thought it was weird but brushed it off as echoing from a different unit.
Later that week, I was home alone doing some dishes again around 7 pm (it gets dark where I live around then this time of year) and turned the fan on because it was a little humid in the kitchen.
I had been doing dishes for maybe 15 or 20 minutes when I heard a loud knock on my door. I checked through the peephole and it was the downstairs neighbor again not wearing a mask, so I didn’t answer.
It was also dark and I am a smaller gal and didn’t feel comfortable opening the door to a stranger.
I had finished the dishes, so I turned the fan off, but he kept knocking for 10 minutes, and I was honestly a little freaked out because I’ve had someone break into a past apartment when I lived alone before.
He left eventually, but I was unsettled for the rest of the night until my partner got back. Anyways, my partner calls the landlord to let him know that the downstairs neighbor should not be knocking for 10 minutes without a mask when it is dark.
We haven’t had him knock on the door since.
Mind you, throughout this whole time that we have been at the apartment, the downstairs neighbor has been stomping and hammering together furniture anytime between midnight and 6 am, which has seriously disrupted both my and my partner’s sleep schedule.
These past few weeks have been especially awful and I don’t think either of us has had a full night’s sleep. We just sent an email to our landlord about it and are waiting on a reply back.”
18. She Threatens To Kill My Cat If It Goes Near Her Apartment
What a bundle of joy.
“I’d like to start this off by saying that I’m typically a non-conflict kind of person. While I can’t say I always take the high road, I try to avoid any type of aggression or animosity at all costs.
Unfortunately, I have a neighbor who doesn’t feel the same way.
I just moved into an interior-facing unit that has a patio area that extends around the entire perimeter of the atrium. Each patio area is divided by basic fencing per unit, so we each get a section that’s directly adjacent to at least two neighbors.
This being an incredibly pet-friendly building, I thought it would be perfect so my pets can get some fresh air when I’m out of the house.
One of these pets is a very curious, very dog-friendly 6-month-old kitten.
He frequently enjoys perching on top of our fence and surveying the area around. We discovered quite quickly that our adventure cat has the ability to navigate through our neighbors’ patios and has developed a habit of wandering into open doors and windows.
This discovery was of course followed by profuse apologies, many baked goods, and an immediate solution of applying a privacy screen to limit his access to other people’s homes.
What I neglected to realize in this scenario was that my other pet (an extremely anxious husky) would take it upon herself to destroy the screen.
Just this night, we went to grab some dinner and came home to find that the animals had learned how to open our patio doors and remove a large enough section of the screen for the cat to wriggle through.
When I went out to survey the damage, my neighbor, two doors down, stormed out into her yard and began to admonish us quite aggressively for allowing the cat to enter onto her property. Some background here: she has a non-cat-friendly dog that barks constantly (3 AM seems to be his favorite time to make noise), this is the second time the cat has paid her a visit, she was livid the first time it happened. My partner is not as shy to conflict as I am, but realizing our error, we offered both an apology and an explanation and assured her that we would rectify the situation immediately.
This woman is a lunatic. Clearly, the apology wasn’t enough and she continued to scream at us, escalating to a point where she literally said, quote, “Next time that cat comes into my house, I guarantee it will go missing.” That about cinched it, and my partner took great offense and told her not to start poking into other people’s crap until she cleaned up her own.
I totally get that we are in the wrong here. We definitely messed up with controlling the animals, and she has a right to be upset. However, this being the second time that she’s had a meltdown, I’m feeling less willing to try to work with her and more interested in raining down high holy heck.
I spoke to a couple of other folks in the building, and it seems like she has a habit of posting complaints about others to management for the pettiest issues (i.e., leaving lights on late at night, laughing too loud outside, having too many people over, etc.).
Frankly, she has a bad attitude, and I’m both offended and afraid for the safety of my pets.
At this point, not sure if I should address the building manager directly or hope and pray that this blows over sans incident.”
Another User Comments:
“First of all, don’t let that lunatic make you think that you’re in the “wrong” here. I get that your cat entered their home. Big whoop. Big deal. Nothing to write home or call the police over.
Threatening to either hurt or “disappear” your cat is a direct threat against you and your family. The only person in the wrong here is that psychopath you have living next door. Anybody who has the ability to strike or abuse an animal is 100% a terrible person and should never get any respect from you or anybody.
Animal abusers are the worst kind of people. No good person hurts animals. Let me repeat that, if a person is capable of abusing an animal, they are not worth being polite to, not worth being civil with, and 100% not worth trusting them to not follow through with their threat against you.
My neighbor hurt my dog a little over a year ago. We were unable to file criminal charges because our video surveillance only had the audio of the interaction and no video because it was in a blind spot.
This left us feeling anxious because what if he did it again? So I set out and made sure every single person in my neighborhood knew that this man was an animal abuser. We printed flyers with his picture, name, address, along with a QR code that linked to the audio of him talking and then savagely kicking my wheaten terrier.
It’s a graphic audio clip because you hear my dog yelping in pain. After we hung the flyers up, we got calls from my landlord (who is the slumlord who still allowed him to rent his apartment) begging us to remove them, which we did not.
Every new neighbor that moves into the neighborhood, I make sure they have a fresh flyer near their home on a pole or something. You would be surprised how effective this can be. Not only is this pathetic excuse for a “man” exposed for being evil, but now the whole neighborhood hates him.
Maybe somebody will think twice before letting him near their animals, maybe not, but I did what I could to warn the people around me. This may sound petty, but when it comes to my dog, I would basically do anything for her.
I would start with the building manager. If no progress is being made, or nothing is corrected, I would take this matter into your own hands.
Edit: also my dog is okay, she limped for about a week after it happened, but she made a full recovery and I also fixed my camera set up so that there were no blind spots.
I also don’t leave my dog alone in my yard anymore.” wittlegupster
That said, yes that woman is a lunatic (though that is really unfair to lunatics as a group).
17. They Have A Thing For Stomping
“There’s a couple that lives upstairs from me. These two people can only walk by stomping on the floor as hard and as loud as possible.
They also seem to have a collection of very heavy things that they drop or spike into the ground, over and over and over, day and night.
This has been going on for about a year now.
In the very beginning, instead of being passive-aggressive or anything, I started with a note about the noise, my phone number, etc…
Nothing changed.
Then, I knocked on the door to have a casual chat… I could clearly hear them inside but they wouldn’t answer the door.
I tried again, the same result. On the third try, the guy came to the door. I introduced myself and we exchanged phone numbers.
Nothing changed.
When it’s especially bad, I send a polite text. Not too often, no more than 2x per month… only when it’s especially noisy.
They claim they’re not doing anything but I can clearly hear them jogging around right above me… they seem to give zero effort to even trying and step a little lighter and not make so much noise.
It’s not like they’re having a party or anything reportable, just that they’re very heavy-footed (not heavy people, in good shape), and stomp around all day and all night.
Also, the furniture dragging… why drag furniture back and forth from end to end of the apartment from 8 am to after midnight, every single day and night?
It makes no sense.
It’s also insane that they never seem to stop moving for more than maybe 30 seconds. Then it’s right back to stomping. I’ve begged and pleaded. I’ve escalated to the landlord. I’ve even offered cash, “I’ll Venmo you $100 if there could be one hour without extreme disturbance…” Ignored and stomping continued. I’ve offered to buy a rug or rug pad for them to dampen the sound… ignored.
The other consideration is that there have been other tenants in the same apartment and I never heard more than an occasional sound here and there. It’s sure about the way their apartment is configured and the fact that they walk like giant iron-shoed cavemen.”
16. They Let Their Kids Pee In Our Yard
“I live in a townhouse where the houses are built into each other.
Full-sized, so they’re not apartments. All of the neighbors anger my entire family off, especially since they all blast their music into the night, but it goes so much further than that.
The neighbors on both sides of our house cram a good 8-10 people in their houses.
They blast their music all night long and scream at each other constantly. The left neighbors are better than the right ones though… Although I hate both since they are both disrespectful, one more than the other.
One time, my stepdad was just trying to relax when he saw a stream of water coming from their yard. His window was open, and one of the kids was trying to spray the water into the car.
The parents were right there and only said something when he walked outside. My mom has said that she saw their four-year-old daughter, running around outside wearing nothing. The dad was right there and said nothing but looked at my mom with an angry look like it was her fault that she saw his daughter.
I forgot to mention; this family is extremely strange. They have a baby and raise it for a few years, and then they disappear. Then there’s another baby. Over and over again… except there are these twins now, twin daughters who have never grown up since we arrived here.
They’ve been screaming the whole time. They never stop. When you move into a place like this, you need to be able to control your volume, make sure that you aren’t too annoying to the people around you… It’s not even like a cheap place; this place is pretty pricey, so it’s like they chose to move here to annoy the rest of us.
It just really seems like they don’t care for their kids or us at all.
One day, I was outside with my mom when the little nightmares came outside with somebody, screaming. Out of nowhere, I hear the adult say, “Don’t pee there; people walk there!” Which my mom and I looked at each other in horror.
Does this statement mean that they’re allowed to pee anywhere as long as nobody walks there? By the way, these are two LITTLE GIRLS he’s talking to. They let little girls pee outside and run around wild.
When they had a little boy, he peed in our yard, as well as everybody walking all over our grass. So annoying. If we ever say anything about it to them, they get angry at us, and make it seem like we did something wrong.”
15. The 19-Year-Old Toddler
This teen is downright crazy.
“Does my landlady’s daughter count?
I live in a room with a private bathroom off of their home, and it’s a pretty convenient setup.
I’m almost never home other than to sleep, so generally, the little annoyances don’t bother me.
But holy cow, this girl is actually the worst. She’s 19 years old, living at home while she takes some time off from college.
Okay, pretty reasonable; I’ve been there before.
Except she acts like a five-year-old. Her speaking voice is, at best, a yell. At worst, it’s a demon screech from the underworld. She likes to hang out in the room directly next to mine and scream full volume at her mother pretty much every day.
They’re not normal arguments, either. Her mother is always very calm and reasonable, while this girl just throws tantrums like a child because she doesn’t like what her mother is making for dinner, or her mother isn’t paying enough attention to her, just really the kind of stuff toddlers enjoy complaining about.
Normally I just tune it out, but I work an overnight shift on the weekends and have to catch up on sleep during the day. Unfortunately for me, she has the weekends off and it seems like they are her favorite time to scream for hours on end.
This girl also fancies herself as a singer and is trying to get herself into a performance art program at some college. She’s applied to a bunch now I think, and she likes to practice for her auditions again in the room right next to mine.
Her voice literally sounds like a dying cat (hence the river drowning). Of course, if anyone tries to give her constructive criticism, she just shrieks, so they let her be. Now recently I’ve heard a lot of sobbing from her because she’s starting to get rejection letters from the colleges she’s been applying to with these horrible auditions.
I normally try to keep as much distance from her as possible, but her sister and I are friends so when her sister is visiting from out of town this girl will invite herself along on our plans and since we don’t want to listen to her scream we just let it happen.
On one of these outings, I learned that she’s also a ‘dancer.’ I figured we had finally found some common ground! So I ask her what styles she’s into and she says ballet, modern, and tango.
I don’t know much about the first two, but I’m a competitive international ballroom dancer, so I tried asking her what style tango she dances, assuming she probably also dances the other dances in the style and just mentioned the dance she’s working on.
She just met me with a blank stare and repeated as if I were the 5-year-old that she’s dancing the tango – didn’t I hear her? So I elaborate, asking if she means international or American, and she starts to get angry, saying that she just dances ‘regular’ tango.
Apparently, she just walked into an Arthur Murray dance studio and told them she wanted to dance tango. And because it’s Arthur Murray, they charged her an absurd amount of money for their studio gear and just started teaching her some unidentifiable form of tango.
At that point, I was just like, ‘Oh okay cool,’ but I had already set off her rage, so she starts shrieking asking what I even know about tango. I reminded her that I’m a ballroom dancer, and her response was, ‘I don’t dance BALLROOM.
I dance TANGO. Aren’t you freaking listening?’
We just don’t really speak anymore. And yet the headache just from listening to her in the next room never seems to go away.”
14. The Neighbor In His Birthday Suit Won't Stop His Harrassing
What part of “stop” does this guy not understand?
“We live in an apartment. I’m a male, mid-twenties, and my mom is in her sixties. Our upstairs neighbors is a male about 40 and has a girl not on the lease about 35.
When the tenant first moved upstairs and began playing his music up to 3 am, we told the manager about the issue. The manager spoke with them and it got calm for a pair of weeks. Then the upstairs tenant brought his girl to live with him.
That’s when the issue got more severe.
As retaliation, they began throwing butts into our patio. When we told management the issue worsened until we put security cameras on our patio. They also smoke and are always burning things.
Always, the smell penetrates our unit.
Then they began throwing trash behind the fence of our patio.
The man monitors when I go to the patio and he will go to his balcony. A couple of times he has done so and begins to talk to me.
Management has informed him not to talk to me, and he continues to do so.
This is a smoke-free building and the manager hasn’t acted on them smoking.
After the latest complaints to management, they have begun waking up at 2 am and begun stomping and hitting the walls along with playing loud music all morning until 9 am.
The girl goes to the balcony and begins moaning and screaming daily.
The manager has seen the video recordings and the next-door neighbors also verified what is happening.
The manager just says she will speak to them.
We have done multiple police reports, which the manager has a copy of, as well as written complaints.
Our cameras are located within our patio and only look into our patio. I took a picture once.
He was talking to me, and as soon as he saw my phone, he flipped around.
We no longer feel safe nor comfortable in the apartment. We’re located in Texas.”
13. He's Obsessed With His Grass
Every neighborhood has at least one neighbor who’s crazy about their lawn.
“Our house is on a corner lot at the entrance to a (the 1980s) subdivision in a rural area outside of Atlanta. Either my husband or I cut the grass, and when we don’t have time, we’ll hire someone off of Takl or our neighbor cuts it for a few extra bucks.
APPARENTLY, no one does a good enough job for a man who lives deeper into the subdivision – nowhere near our lot – so in warm weather, he’ll be outside our house edging the sidewalk that runs along the main road and shoveling debris from the gutter into our yard.
He then goes into our yard and shovels the debris that he threw off of the street into a trash receptacle, I’m assuming. He then spends another hour plus leaf blowing invisible cuttings and dirt off of the sidewalk.
He’s been driving me crazy for as long as we’ve lived here (going on 3 years) because he’ll be out there AFTER DARK running lawnmowers, trimmers, leaf blowers, etc. He mows the sidewalk by our house and the same across the street alongside our neighbor’s home.
Before we knew that he was just some rando who lives several streets back, we one day came home to find him chucking garbage into our yard. We approached him asking who he is, why he is throwing stuff into our yard, and just W*F in general. He immediately got really confrontational and aggressive saying he has the right to be there and it’s none of our business, basically.
We’re like, uh, it’s our yard… it is our business? He got angrier. I explained that he’s been a bit of a nuisance out there mowing after dark and could he not do this while we’re at work.
More yelling. We came back to the house flabbergasted that this dude was raging at us because we asked him why he was chucking crap into our yard and mowing late into the evening (sometimes after 8/9.) Left to avoid him and returned home to a letter.
In this letter, he apologized for being loud and annoying and for copping an attitude when we questioned him. He said he’d make every effort to be less of a nuisance and threw out some Bible verses and yadda yadda.
This letter was THREE PAGES LONG.
Ok, he’s going to do better. We both felt kind of bad because he seemed genuine.
…he was not genuine. Nothing changed. If anything, it got worse. It seemed like he was timing things to be out there when I got home from work and was staying out later and later.
At one point, we called the cops because he literally pulled down our street right behind us. The cops said it’s a county streeet, so he can technically be out there at any hour of the day or night edging this 6″ wide stretch of grass.
Anyway, fast forward, it gets cold and he goes away. Now it’s warm again and he’s back, and I SWEAR he’s got himself a louder mower.”
12. Entitled Peeping Tom
“Okay, so I have this crazy entitled dude living next door with his entitled coward wife (she sends him to try to intimidate me, have never spoken to her), his newborn baby that he mentions every time he tries to intimidate me, and a toddler.
So yesterday afternoon, I get home from work, tidy up, have a shower, put a towel around me, and go to grab a glass of water and just sort out my new Firestick USB on the tv and basically tidy up around my tv.
Now his house is built up higher than mine and his front stairs to the front door come down right outside my kitchen window from across his driveway, so he has a perfect view straight through my house – through the kitchen to my living room/tv area (and a full view into almost all my rooms if all curtains and blinds are open (perfect).
So I’m at my tv fiddling about for about 5-10 mins with my back turned away from my kitchen window. I’m bending over and the towel may not exactly be covering everything. Now usually if someone were to be at the bottom of those stairs, my sofa would shield my bottom half from view as the sofa is behind me.
As I start to turn around, I immediately spy his two legs just standing on his front stairs facing me, not moving. I can’t see his face as the kitchen cabinets attached to the wall are obscuring his face from view unless I bend down a bit but can clearly see his legs and feet facing me, not moving.
I move out of view acting as if I haven’t noticed. And slowly inch back in, crouching to try and make out what the heck he is doing. I can see his torso somewhat and he’s still not moving.
Don’t dare to get any more of a view as now I’m fairly positive he is staring straight in and will catch my face if I bend down any further to see his.
I wait. He doesn’t move.
About 2 minutes go by with me out of view until he bounds down the stairs shirtless, no phone in hand so can’t have been texting or whatever on the stairs, thus no other reason to be silently standing on his front stairs for goodness knows how long.
He had on boardshorts, so maybe a sliver of a chance he slipped a phone into a pocket, but I really don’t think so.
I have a security cam out on my deck which should have caught him in the near distance (needs to be set up like this; otherwise, I can’t see part of my front fence yadda yadda.
It was initially set up as a doggy cam), but lo and behold, it has not caught him. This is now the second time it has not caught him creeping. The first time it should have caught him creeping above my fence glaring at me as my dog was outside by the fence directly in camera view, yet it did not.
It’s motion and sound-activated. I don’t know what the heck is up with my cameras, seem like they never work when I really need them to for proof if this creeper escalates.”
11. An Arsonist And Mariachi Band Feud
“This is a true story. 100% true story.
I live on the 10th floor of a 12-floor apartment building. One night, I was watching Bob Ross on Netflix with headphones on when I saw one of my three cats stiffen up as if he was hearing something.
I pull off my headphones and hear what honestly sounded like mariachi music. It was coming from my floor and I assumed it was coming from the apartment below me. Being the mature adult I am, I put on my heeled boots and stomped on the floor a la “turn down that racket.”
Not long after, the fire alarm for the building goes off. I throw on a jacket and go down the stairs. As I go down, a neighbor of mine tells me it wasn’t anything major, but I press on.
On the landing outside the 5th or 6th floor, there is a small crowd. Curious, I stay to hear what’s up. I hear a man shouting in Arabic and another guy shouting in English. I ask what’s going on to a couple of bystanders and they told me the story:
Apparently, the Arab-speaking gentleman was throwing quite the party- at 12 am. The music I heard through the floor was actually coming from his apartment- that’s right; through 5 or 4 floors!- and was actually annoying the crap out of his neighbors.
One of the neighbors knocked on the door and politely asked him to turn down the music. The party host refused and allegedly called him names. So the polite neighbor leaves and the host closes the door and resumes his revelry.
Well, polite neighbor stuck some paper under the door and lit it on fire, or so the party host thinks. In truth, I don’t know who the arsonist actually is; it could have been another neighbor or the polite one.
So the host is yelling at the neighbor (who is assumed to be the polite one from earlier) accusing them of lighting the door on fire. I saw the door; it was fine, the threshold wasn’t charred at all.
The building manager had finished dealing with the fire department and shooed us all away.
The aftermath is the Arab party host was evicted. No one knows who the arsonist was, so they might still be in the building.
There hasn’t been any noise complaints like that since.”
10. Their Dog Won't Stop Doing Their Business On Our Patio
“Bruh, we’ve been here four years, but she’s been around for about the last two.
Their first dog was loud, but it must have passed because they got this adorable new puppy, and I guess they decided to potty-train it by just never taking it out and letting it pee on the balcony instead.
I don’t know why she’s okay with that, but regardless, WE aren’t.
We grow plants on our patio. They’ve died. We have a patio table. I’m tired of cleaning dried pee off it. She sweeps the poop off the side, and it lands in our grass, and our patio always smells.
We’ve notified our leasing office at least four times (and so has at least one of our kind neighbors), and it stops for a few days. We’ll see her son taking the dog out like a normal human, but then they go back to business as usual.
Since we reported it, she started tossing buckets of Fabuloso to clean it off, WHICH ALSO LANDS ON OUR PATIO (I asked her what it was because of our tomato plant growing there and asked her not to do it again… she apologized but hasn’t stopped).
IT’S SO GROSS, YALL.
I also have a dog. He’s old, and stairs are hard on him; that’s why I requested the ground level unit, so we access our patio 2-4 times a day, every day, and I’m legit DODGING DRIPPING PEE half the time.
It’s a lease violation (to let pets pee within 50 feet of the units) and to keep a grill on their balcony, which they do, which is /technically/ enough to EVICT them, but the leasing office (which has never responded to us, only to our sweet neighbor) says they can’t do anything.
We’ve never made trouble for them and always pay rent on time (which we know she hasn’t because they leave the yellow late notices totally exposed taped to the shared mailboxes), so leasing office sucks and so does she!
I haven’t confronted her (besides the Fabuloso incident) because, within a few weeks of moving in, she went around knocking on every unit’s door to ask who had left a note on her car after she’d left it parked in two parking spaces for three days straight.
We told her we hadn’t seen anything. She called the police anyway and specifically sent the police to our unit. We legit had NOTHING to do with it. Maybe she figured we had because we were the nearest university students (unless she can hear us through her floor and heard us clowning her about her park job for like a half-hour.
If she can hear us talking about her all the time, at least that would explain why she hates us.)”
9. They Accused Me Of Spying On Them, Then They Started Spying On Me
It’s kind of like when cheaters accuse their partner of being the cheaters out of guilt, you know?
“For context, I live in South Florida, and I just moved in from Northern Indiana.
It began around yesterday evening. I was just sitting outside listening to some music, thinking about stuff, you know? I then heard the voice of who I assumed to be a woman saying, “What are you doing,” something like that.
It was pretty quiet, so I didn’t assume it was directed at me ’til she wouldn’t stop. I just replied with, “What?” and she just stopped talking. At this moment, I was kind of suspicious. I just got back to my day.
Then this guy, probably in his late 50’s or 60’s, complains to the landlord that I was “spying on his wife!” I decided to just accept the fact he was mistaken and I guess it was fair enough as the houses down here are VERY close to one another.
So we went over to apologize. This guy walks out half-unclothed out of his house probably about 30 seconds of us just standing there (yay). At this point, I already get bad vibes, so I try and make it speedy.
Now I’m usually a pretty chill guy and I like to keep to myself and avoid people when possible, and I already went out of my way to apologize, so what does he say? “You’re lying and full of crap.
You’d best not come around my property again or you’re gonna regret it.”
… what the heck? I try to brush it off and just profusely apologize and he then starts asking, “Are you renting? How long will you be here?” I just say yes and say about a year, and in probably the rudest tone I’ve ever heard someone talk to me in, “That’s for the best” and then proceeds to pep talk me and my family.
At this point, I was about to lose my mind and just wanted to get out of there before I said something I would regret. Eventually, we just walked home and finally brushed it off.
Oh!
You thought that was it? We’re just getting started. Around the next day (today), I find out they’re spying on us? What the heck? I don’t know when this started, but now I’m really upset. You can’t accuse me of spying when you are directly spying on us constantly.
Now, look, our landlords are really chill, like a really cool guy, but he’s not doing anything about it. He might be busy (would be fair), but, God, this guy is reaaally angering me right now and I don’t know how to handle this.
We just got done with a lot of crap, and now our neighbor is just here blabbering stuff out of his mouth and then proceeding to do what they accused of me. Now what did we learn today, kids?
I don’t know.”
8. They've Taken An Interest In Our House
“Three boys have decided to cause some shenanigans. They’ve lived down the street for about two years, but they’ve only started to trouble us the past few weeks.
One day, I saw them running from our backyard and onto the sidewalk. They didn’t stop running until they were out of view. I checked the camera we have for the backyard and I didn’t see them.
I did see my dad walk to the side of the house after putting away some tools around the same time. He must have freaked them out.
That’s when we decided to get the Ring doorbell to try and catch anyone before they make it down our driveway.
We do have everything locked up in a shed and our garage because we don’t live far from the more troubled neighborhoods. Sometimes shady characters will find their way onto our street. I’ve had a guy chase me halfway home, but that’s another story.
Maybe a week and a half later, the same three boys were lingering in our driveway. They’re still on the sidewalk but the part that intersects with the driveway. I came home from work and drove halfway onto my driveway only for them to look at me confused. I motioned for them to move to one side or another.
They did but they did the teenage eye roll and muttered something like, “omg” or “w*f.” I live here kids. Idle someplace else that isn’t a driveway, please. Preferably not by my house. I thought I caught them on my dashcam, but when I checked, I found that my dashcam was having issues and needed to be formatted to work properly again.
I was at least hoping to catch their faces in case I have to call the police in the future. At the moment, they haven’t done anything besides slight trespassing and standing on the sidewalk/driveway for longer than necessary.
I did mention to my parents that they might have seen our Ring doorbell. That hopefully they’ll forget about walking down our driveway in the future.
Well, yesterday…they threw a snowball at our Ring doorbell.
The Ring only caught them running away after they threw the snowball. It does show one on our property and the other two already on the sidewalk as they ran. I’m pretty sure they were doing their best not to activate the motion sensor before they attempted to hit the Ring.
They were close, but they missed it.
Now, I thought I knew where they lived since I saw them hanging out on a porch down the street. After asking someone, I found out that they don’t live there.
They randomly decided to chill on a stranger’s porch. Most likely they live in a newer house a few more houses down. The house next to us had their car stolen from (they left it unlocked so it wasn’t really broken into) last year and our neighbor believes it was them.
They just don’t have evidence besides, “They were seen going down driveways.”
I do know that they go to the local school. I’ve seen them walk in front of my house at around the same time.
I have to get home around 3:30-4 pm though, which is early for me. I’m hoping they’ll calm down and forget about us. It does seem like the Ring doorbell has rattled them. We do not leave anything out that would interest teenagers unless they want a few potted plants and a swingy chair, which are not in view from the sidewalk in front of our house.”
7. They Have Way Too Many Gatherings
“I live in an off-base military housing. The only people that live in the housing area are people with kids. Every house has at least 2 kids, and unfortunately, I live a block away from an elementary school so even more kids.
I also live in a cul-de-sac if that helps.
At the end of the street, there are these 5 houses. In each of these 5 houses, there are at least 3 kids that live there. All of these kids are no older than 9.
All of these houses are next to each other and the parents are friends.
These kids act so wild. They are constantly riding bikes, scooters, and tricycles in the street. That would be fine, but when there is a car coming down the road, they don’t get out of the way.
Instead, these kids ride in front of the cars making them go slower. It is a constant problem with parents that live in this street. The bigger problem with this is that the mail cars, delivery trucks, food deliveries, and other delivery/car-related services are often coming into the cul-de-sac.
The kids don’t get out of the way and the drivers get angry.
The biggest problem with my neighbors is the get-togethers. Every weekend, they do one or sometimes even two block parties DURING THE WORLD PAUSE.
Nobody social distances, nobody has a mask on, and they eat out of the same food containers. The only people who attend these parties are the 5 houses I mentioned because everybody else is sane.
These parties go on for many hours into the night.
The latest one last Friday went on till midnight. They ride bikes and all different kinds of wheels all night screaming their heads off. It wouldn’t be a problem except they don’t discipline their kids unless they really mess up.
And they don’t throw away their trash.
The kids are always getting into trouble. They will steal, fight, and trespass. If you leave something out that they can easily take? It’s theirs now. If you leave your garage door open?
Hey, guys, look at all this cool stuff! It’s the worst. Two days ago, I saw them hop a fence into a neighbor’s yard. They are horrible.”
6. These Neighbors Have A Thing For Being Noisy
“I have simply horrible, awful, selfish neighbors.
Long story short, we have had to endure constant inconsiderate actions from them for years and I’ve come to realize it has ruined my happiness and my relationship with my family.
She stays at home all day and he works.
She has friends around all the time and they chat loudly all day and play awful music. She talks on the phone on a loudspeaker in the garden or at her backdoor and essentially shouts at the top of her voice.
She speaks a different language, so I don’t know what she’s saying, but I can hear the person on the phone as if they were in the room with me.
Then they decided to put up this decking which means they overlook us in our garden, and they’ve covered it with tacky ornaments (3-foot gnomes, etc.) and fake plants, etc. Fine, it’s their garden.
But they put up these horrendous little wind chimes and cover things in thick plastic sheeting without tying it down, so it flaps and rustles in the wind really loudly. And those darn wind chimes go day and night in this incessant pathetic tinkle.
I very politely (probably too meekly) spoke to them in the garden last year and asked them to take the wind chimes down and stop the plastic sheets/tarpaulin rustling all night long and explained I could hear it was disturbing my sleep, I can’t work, and it’s driving me crazy.
They laughed and snarled at me and the next day they had literally covered everything in plastic. It has been nearly 2 1/2 years of this, and I hate it more than anything.
It has driven me to the point of near insanity.
I am constantly on edge and unhappy, and I started snapping at my family and moping around the house. I wake up in the night thinking I’m hearing them. It sounds over the top, but it’s almost become an obsession.
It’s not just noise either. They are generally inconsiderate, nasty people. They have essentially got a dump at the end of the garden and they put a really awful makeshift fence/blockade horizontally along their garden, so they can’t see their junk, but the neighbors can.
I also caught him putting all his weight onto the wire fence we have between us to bend it over our garden, so they can put their bins at an angle into our garden and they can flip the lids over into ours.
They’ve jammed things into the fence so that it is bent about a foot or more into our area. There have been rats and critters down there too and subsequent poison baits all over. When approached about that he said, ‘Well, I don’t see you putting rat traps down.
At least I am doing something about it.’ He also said we should put our own fence halfway horizontally down the garden, so we didn’t have to see his mess. They’ve also got spotlights all over their garden, and we found out they’ve got a camera that films both our gardens.
We can’t even go out and enjoy our garden when they get to spend all their time in theirs.
My family tried having another proper conversation with him, but it ended with him shouting and shaking with rage and intimi my mother which was just outrageous (I wasn’t there and only learned about this at a later date).
The noise is worse than the visuals though. I can’t even have the windows open in my own bedroom. I can’t get away from it even inside my own house.
I hate those wind chimes and the rustling, but they simply ignore me. I have lost all motivation and think I am very depressed.”
5. Just A Bunch Of People Who Don't Know Their Limits And Can't Stay Within It
“I moved not too long ago, but my old neighbors were the worst. The place across the street was a duplex and had a revolving door of awful people.
The first year I lived in that place wasn’t too bad.
It was a reclusive guy on one side and a woman with three kids on the other. The only problem was this woman wouldn’t watch her kids at all. They would be playing on the road all the time.
In the summer they were up to midnight every single night. The worst part was none of these kids could be over 10. One of them always bounced on a pogo stick. I’d just hear that annoying sound until midnight.
It’s like that kid did nothing else but bounce on that pogo stick. Every night I’d fall asleep to a sound I can only equate to two fat people getting it on on a bed of springs.
The reclusive old man moved out, and it got real bad. Every few months people would move in and prove themselves to be worse than the last tenants. The first group of people would sit on their porch all day yelling at people who walked past them.
All day, every day. ‘Hey girl, where is your fine self going? Where the heck are you going? Stop and talk to me! You stupid girl!’ That was an interesting few months. Then they got replaced by these people who were just loud.
They didn’t seem too bad until one night when the girls of the house got into a fight at 2 am. They started going at each other in the street. One girl eventually fled to her car and sideswiped three cars on the street before crashing.
The last lot was the worst. They were obviously dealers and had swarms of people in and out of the place and blocking traffic. This was annoying but still tolerable. Then they started throwing insanely loud parties every night.
The main kicker was the one dude who lived there who wouldn’t drive anywhere without a beer. I’ve never actually seen someone drink and drive. The dude would just stumble to his car at 11 AM with a beer in his hand almost every day.
I never saw this guy get into his car without one. Occasionally he would just chug it and then throw it on the ground as he got in. The other problem with these neighbors was broken glass.
They would throw their empty bottles into the street constantly. I never bothered to get cops involved until these neighbors had moved in. Apparently, everyone on my street had complained about them, but they were still there when I moved out.
2,600 miles later and I have much better neighbors.”
4. The Constant Complaints Are Getting Old
“Okay, so here’s the situation. I have a neighbor in my apartment complex (who I’ve never even seen) that keeps leaving notes on my door. I once dropped a dish at 2 in the afternoon and they left a note and complained to the leasing office.
I don’t consider myself a noisy neighbor and come on dude, it was daylight. Another time I fell off my couch (don’t ask), again, in the daylight. Got another note but no call.
Here’s where it started to get aggravating.
I once received a call about a smoking complaint. I don’t smoke and don’t let my guests smoke here either. I thought, “Okay, someone is smoking on my floor. The office is probably calling everybody on my floor.” Just last week, I got another note.
This time it said, “This is a non-smoking property. Please don’t smoke in your unit. We can all smell it.” Just today, the office sent someone to knock on my door and follow up with another complaint about the supposed smoking that’s happening.
I invited her inside to see for herself, but social distancing and all, she said it wasn’t safe right now. She seemed to believe me, but whoever is singling me out is really starting to get under my skin.
My theory is that there is, in fact, a smoker on my floor, I have noticed a smell when I was outside once in a while. And I think whoever keeps complaining about me is either across the hall or one door down.
I can’t be sure.”
3. He Stood On His Roof To Spy On Us
An odd person he is.
“My family especially and pretty much the whole neighborhood surrounding his house was harassed by an old man with heart failure and his hoarder wife. He was also a hoarder too.
He had an obsession with cars and he had like five or six sometimes seven parked in his driveway and literally on his front yard. Every morning, he would rearrange them. We lived on the most popular street in town next to the highway.
One day, my mom was driving me to dance class, and when we pulled out of the driveway, a huge white SUV was going over the speed limit and almost hit us.
That is when she decided to call law-enforcement about the cars.
He was advised to move the cars and nothing was going to happen. Instead, his wife placed fake flowers in her yard and called animal control claiming that our chickens run rampant around the neighborhood. That same day, I have an old English bantam that went missing.
She was never found.
She was the only one we would allow outside of our fence because she was so little that she could squeeze through the gate. She would fly over the fence. She only got out to eat the mulberry trees in our garden and eat the seeds from another neighbors yard.
She would only be gone for like 10 to 20 minutes before she would come back. The other chickens were not allowed to do that because they were too big. When they do escape we immediately clip their wings so that they cannot fly.
And sometimes the only reason that they would fly over the fence was to harass the little Bantam.
We decided to build a wooden fence facing his property, so he wouldn’t watch us. Every time one of us went outside to do something, he would be there on his porch with a firearm in his lap.
He would also climb to the top of his roof and pace back-and-forth so he could watch us in our living room. One day while he was rearranging his cars, he was screaming and cussing at our house and threatened to teach us a lesson.
My mom called the police on him. When the police showed up at his door, he ended up cussing at the police. My mom was kind enough not to press charges.
He called animal control on my neighbor because the dogs were barking.
She also had five dogs and a cat at the time. He also chased my 98-year-old neighbor with a lawnmower.
Several months later, my grandfather was in the hospital because he had a hole in his stomach.
He was transferred to a nursing home and the neighbor happens to be in the room right across from his. They were scheduled to have physical therapy together. Unfortunately, they were both victims of elder abuse by the staff.
Only after a week, my grandfather fell out of bed and laid there for hours without anyone to help him. But when someone finally discovered him he was taken to the hospital and he was pronounced dead three days later.
My neighbor on the other hand stayed at the nursing home for two more months and recovered.
Since he returned home, he wasn’t dedicating his time to harassing the neighbors. He died the year I graduated. Since then, things have gotten better.
His wife seems to be more outgoing, most of the hoard is cleared out, and now there are only four cars in the driveway. Most of the neighbors have either died or moved away, and right now, we are in the process of doing that.
So in a way, he was his own demise.”
2. She Wanted To Make Everyone Miserable
She’s probably miserable herself.
“She would walk down the street in just panties yelling at the mailman to ring her doorbell no matter what was being delivered. She sat at the window and enjoyed traumatizing the poor man.
She ‘befriended’ my people-pleasing mother who felt bad for her. And then she would come over when my parents weren’t there and the older kids were in charge. She would then steal and threaten to whoop us.
When her dog finally died, her cop son arrested my older brothers. Why? Because she swore she saw them dump rat poison in its dish. A full doggy autopsy revealed the dog died because it was 15 and had doggy cancer.
And the kicker, when my baby sister was about 5 she told her, in front of me and my siblings, that she should die because the night she was born was the night her husband died. She then referred to her as a soul stealer for several years.”
1. Getting Revenge On The Laundry Thief
They got something even better in return.
“Ever since moving into my apartment, my now-husband and I like to do laundry at obscene times like 2 or 3 am. We like that the laundry room is deserted, we don’t have to wait on elevators so much, and we liked how we didn’t really have to wait around for our clothes.
Spoiler alert: we don’t do laundry in the dead of night anymore.
One night, my now-husband and I were doing laundry at around 2 or 3 am as was usual for us. While we aren’t super chatty with our fellow neighbors, we talk occasionally to some of them.
One such neighbor, a middle-aged, humpbacked woman I’ll name Quasi for the purposes of this story, had popped down into the laundry room with us. We were friendly; she said o, we said hi back. We made small talk for a bit as we finished loading things into the washer and then set a timer on our phones and left.
When we returned a bit earlier to see how our clothes were doing, we found one of the washers with our undergarments and delicates open. A basket that belonged to Quasi was in front of it, and my pajamas were in it.
My now-husband and I shoot each other a look and we check the basket further. We found sheets that belonged to us, as well as other items of clothing. We were both livid. We put our (undergarments and delicates) stuff in the dryer, my husband went upstairs to hang the rest of the wet clothes up to dry while I waited in the laundry room.
Quasi returned and she sifted through her basket and bent to get it. At this point, I had no sympathy nor neighborly feelings anymore. I saw her wallet fall to the ground and she did her thing.
I wondered what else in there was stolen, but I said nothing and texted my husband what was going on. Quasi leaves… and her wallet was still on the ground. My husband had returned and I pointed it out.
My husband picks up the wallet and shoves it in his jacket pocket. I thought he was probably going to drop it into the rental office mailbox, but instead, we grabbed our dryer-clothes and went upstairs to home.
We debated what we should do with the wallet; we were both upset that our clothes were about to be stolen and noted we had some stuff go missing.
Over the course of talking, we rationalized the decision we made next: we went through the wallet.
We found maybe $150 to $200 in cash in the wallet. My husband took it all out and pocketed it. He and I decided to go get McDonald’s at that point, so we went downstairs to leave. As we did, Quasi asked us if we saw her wallet and my husband flatly answered “no.”
As she continued her search, he slid the wallet into the mailbox and we kept walking. I felt slightly bad about taking the money, but honestly, she was probably stealing from us and other residents.
A couple of years later, a note on the bulletin board went up saying a lace tablecloth that was an heirloom was missing and the owner pleaded for its return… I could only assume the Laundry Thief struck again, and now I don’t feel bad anymore.”
