People Share Crazy Stories About Their Nightmare Neighbors

It’s not always easy having neighbors, no matter what “type” of neighborhood you live in, from a ghetto residential area to an upscale gated community. Neighbors who host loud parties long into the night before work or school the next morning, neighbors who strike up unnecessary and awkward conversations at the mailbox, snoopy neighbors who like to peek through the fence or even fly a drone over your property to collect video and/or picture footage of your backyard. I’ve dealt with all of these! And I’m pretty positive you’ve dealt with at least one of these as well.

Okay, so hearing a loud party here and there isn’t so bad. And I guess most of us can handle the cumbersome conversations. I also suppose a neighbor who spies onto your property doesn’t always have bad intentions. Maybe they’re just curious to see what your backyard looks like? Who knows. But what really gets me appalled is those God awful neighbors who are total jerks, raging alcoholics, or full-blown criminals (like, worse than most of the ones you see in movies).

Although dealing with neighbors like these isn’t fun, they do make for entertaining stories to tell later on.

(You know, once you overcome the trauma.) Devour some juicy, and disturbing, “neighbor from ****” stories below!

17. My Older Neighbor Invited Me Over For “Some Fun” While His Wife Was Gone

“I had just moved to a new state by myself at the age of 22. My dad, who lives 3 hours away from my new place, helped with everything. While he was moving me in, we met my next-door neighbors-an elderly couple in their 60s. They seemed nice, especially the wife.

They took down my phone number and told me to call if I needed anything. Nice people, I thought.

A few weeks later, I’m outside and the man invites me over for dinner later that week, promising his wife’s lasagna. I agree, somewhat reluctantly, because I’m a bit of an introvert.
But they seem so nice and mentioned missing their kids, who don’t come around so often.

I show up on time and knock. The man answers. I ask where his wife is, and he tells me, “Oh, she’s in Florida, visiting her sister.” Okay… that’s weird, and definitely doesn’t sound like the dinner I signed up for.

I ask if it was unexpected, the visit? He says, no. I mention that he had said we would be having her lasagna, so I had assumed it was a dinner with both of them. He gets kind of flustered and says, “She forgot to make it before she left, I was planning on us to have what she was supposed to be left in the fridge.” Okay… definitely feeling like I was asked here under false pretenses.

But maybe he doesn’t like it when she’s gone and just wanted to have company for dinner? I don’t know. I’m uncomfortable, though. I don’t know this man, and my family and friends are hours away.

“Dinner” is a day old pizza he pulls out of the fridge. And he seems much more interested in opening one of the three bottles of wine he’s got out on the counter. He offers me a glass, and at first, I refuse, but he really insists.

I agree to be polite. I go to sit at the dining room table and try to start talking casually about the area, asking for tips on places to visit, etc. He says,”Oh, let’s be friends, no need to sit at the table, let’s go into the living room.”

At first, he sits across from me in a different chair.
Eventually, he moves to the couch where I was fidgeting, clearly uncomfortable. He continues moving closer and changing my attempts at small talk to weird and personal topics-asking me about my “partying” in college, prying about men in my life, etc.

All while trying to refill my glass. I’m not drinking what he pours, but he keeps pouring it higher and higher until it’s at the brim of the d*mn glass. Eventually, I say “sorry, I’m not a drinker, and I don’t plan on having anymore.” He.. almost pouts? My alarm bells are going off like crazy and I just want to bolt. I keep saying that I have to go, something has come up with a friend, but when I stand to go he calls me back each time and says, “You agreed to have dinner! Your friend can wait.

Plus, you’ve just moved here-who can already be so important?”

I’m basically almost paralyzed at this point. I need to get out of there, and my brain is going a million miles a second planning an escape and dealing with the weird feeling of still wanting to be “polite.” He tells me to “loosen up.” And then he comes over and proceeds to start rubbing my shoulders. I’m in full out panic now. I flinch away, pull out my phone, and say in a dead voice, “I have to leave, right now.”

Idk what did it, but he let me go at that point.

He tried keeping up with me as I nearly ran out of the room. He met me at the door and said he was sorry I couldn’t stay longer.
And then, he somehow casually slipped in a reminder that he and his wife had a spare key to my house, if I ever locked myself out (the person who had lived there before I had given them one and used to have the cat and house sit).

I ran home and just… bawled. I was mad at myself for getting myself into a scary situation like that. I was furious at how STUPIDLY committed to being “polite” I was. And I was scared.

I called the only somewhat friend I had at that point, a guy I had met at my graduate school, and asked him to stay on my couch for the night. He very kindly agreed (he’s also my boyfriend now and lives with me lol).

And then I called my dad in the morning and he drove 3 hours to change every single lock on the house.

When I see my neighbor outside now, he avoids eye contact. I haven’t spoken to him, or his wife, since.” Reddit user

Another User Comments:

“I hope you have learned to be more firm and set boundaries. There is no reason to have stayed as long as you or even have gone for that matter. You make choices you feel are right, we have an instinct for a reason and yours was telling you to get out.

I’m glad you are alright it just pains me to hear about anyone in situations that could be really bad because they were guilted and pressured into them.
Stay safe.” Nexlore

Reply:

“I have. I don’t care about “politeness” anymore. I’ve learned my lesson to be firm about my boundaries. I’m glad I learned it that young. I hope other young girls will learn it, too. Because it’s absolutely critical.” Reddit user

16. He Shot At Everyone From Animals To Innocent Toddlers

Terrible that the police needed to “see the guy shooting” in order to get involved in any way.

“When I lived out in Sandy, UT,  we had a 40 something-year-old guy who lived on the same property as his parents right next door to us. He was always weird but I didn’t realize how weird he was until several months after we moved in.

Apparently, he had serious mental issues and had been institutionalized for a while.
One day, a guy who lived down our street came to my door. He stopped to tell me that we had an odd duck next door.

I told him pretty much, “Yeah, we know.. he yells at our dog and sometimes makes threats to us and our dog.” This friendly concerned fellow says, “I drive by your house every day around 4 am on my way to work and he is in your yard 3 or 4 days a week looking in your windows”

So, he goes on to tell me that this neighbor followed his wife home and threatened her with a 0.22 rifle.

The crazy dude claimed this lady was “revving her engine” as she drove past his house. It was something he often accused us of doing, too.
Dude had a thing for that… so, the crazy guy started throwing roofing nails in the road. So many people got flat tires that the local Les Schwab KNEW where we lived based on the type of nail they pulled from our tires.

So, after this, I and several other people on the road called the police.

We reported him. His response to this was to start shooting his 0.22 at myself and my then small children anytime we went outside to play in the back yard. Imagine you have your 2-year-old son and 2-year-old niece outside on a warm spring day, playing on the trampoline and suddenly start hearing bullets ricochet off **** around you…

I called the police again and they said they could do nothing about it because I couldn’t actually see this guy shooting at us.

It didn’t matter that he threatened to do so on many occasions and that due to his violent history and mental illness, was not allowed to have access to weapons. They did nothing.

This guy eventually started killing our pets. He shot our german shepherd. He strangled the cat and left its body on the front step for my kids to find. I know it was him because, after the incident with the gun, I put up cameras.

I called the police, again and again, they did nothing.

What does someone need to do to protect themselves against people like this!? A man chases a woman and three kids into their driveway and holds her at gunpoint for 20 mins? Doesn’t go to jail.
The same man is seen multiple times peeping into an 11-year-old girl’s bedroom window in the early morning hours? Nothing.

The same man shoots at toddlers while they play outside, kills animals and throws roofing nails in the road costing the neighborhood thousands of dollars? Nope, sorry.

Nothing we can do.

We eventually were forced to move away from that house because the police refused to assist us.

Great neighbor? All my neighbors are amazing now. I love where I live!” TATP1982

15. She Thought She Was A 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 seven 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 an “official notice” taped to a wall in the stairwell.

It was perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at a government-sponsored 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 a distinct absence of any legitimate contact information made the thing 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. This led me to stand 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 to 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, but for the rest of the time that I lived there, the lady never bothered me again.” RamsesThePigeon

14. He Went Full-On Satan Revenge Mode

This is something that started out as petty revenge but ended up consuming a lot of my free time during my freshman year of high school.

So I had a next-door neighbor, who I’ll call “Chris.” Chris wasn’t the worst kid I knew, but if this were Myspace he wouldn’t be on my top 8.
Now, for the most part, Chris and I got along well and we would always talk on the way home from school about video games and music and stuff that freshmen talk about. Well, one day, on the way home from school, Chris asked me if I wanted to go to church with him and his family that weekend, to which I replied something along the lines of “No thanks, man; I don’t really believe in God.” This must have struck a chord with Chris because after that day, Chris never spoke to me or even acknowledged me.

That was until Chris overheard a conversation I was having at school about smoking pot. Chris, like the self-righteous young jerk he was, took it upon himself to tell his very religious parents my plans, who then took it upon themselves to tell my parents.
This left me grounded for two weeks.

During my time in the hole, a.k.a my bedroom, I devised a plan to put the fear of God in Chris. My bedroom window faced Chris’ bedroom and I thought about just throwing rocks at it throughout the night, but decided that wasn’t enough, because snitches get stitches.

So I ended up taking fishing line and tying it to my wireless Bluetooth speaker. I made sure there was enough line to reach from my window to the bushes under Chris’ window. I then downloaded a bunch of satanic chants and satanic ritual stuff like the chant to summon the devil onto my iPod. Every night when Chris went to bed at 9 pm, I would slowly open my window and lob my Bluetooth speaker over to the bushes under Chris’ window and start playing satanic chants.

This went on every night for the two weeks I was grounded, but it didn’t stop there. I saw the toll it was taking on Chris; he would look dead tired at school, and I knew he was tired because I sat there most nights watching him turn his lights back on and look out the window, and sometimes he even got his parents to go take a peek, but to no avail. I tasted ***** and I was going to push Chris as far as I could.

For three months, I continued this and each day I would watch Chris turn his lights on/off four to five times a night. I would set alarms on my phone throughout the night so I could wake up and mess with him, and one final alarm so I could reel in my satanic grenade before the sun came up.
It got so bad to the point that there were nights I refused to go out with friends so I could stay home and mess with Chris.

Apparently, this prank took a toll on Chris because his grades dropped significantly that semester, and the next year his parents put him in a private Catholic school. I never really spoke to him after that despite being neighbors. Source

13. They Wouldn’t Stop Blaring Music, But We Had A Plan

“About 10 years ago when I started college, I was late putting in my dorm application and ended up in the less desirable hotel-style dorms. I lucked out and got a pretty good roommate; I wasn’t into the party scene and my roommate turned out to be an upper-year student who kept to himself so we got along pretty well.

Most of the partying happened a few rooms down the hall; noise levels were pretty tolerable aside from the occasional drunks and loud hooking up (it was college after all).

Unfortunately, the dorm layout was pretty cookie-cutter, beds on one side of the room, desks on the other side. The desks in one room were against the same wall that the headboards were bolted to in the neighboring room. This mean if you were in bed, there was a pretty good chance you’d hear whatever the room beside you was watching on their computer/TV.

Luckily most people had enough common sense to keep the volume down at night.

Two months go by uneventfully until one night. It’s 3:00, my roommate and I are woken up to the headboards shaking and the unmistakable rumble of a subwoofer on the other side of the wall.
They had been pretty quiet for the first few months so, we cut them some slack on what we figured this was a one-off party. We threw in some earplugs and toughed the night out.

Turns out we were wrong, it wasn’t just an occasional party as we assumed, the jacka** neighbors proceed to run the stupid subwoofer 3-4 times a week in the middle of the night for hours. A week into this, we got pretty fed up and knocked on their door; we pretty much told them we didn’t care about noise during the daytime, but we asked them to keep it down at night. They agreed and we figured that was the end of things (this wouldn’t be revenge if the had kept their word).

They still did their loud middle-of-the-night parties, but they only turned down the subwoofer to the point the wall/headboards didn’t rattle. The beds were still fixed to the floor(moving the bed wasn’t an option) and the vibrations would travel right through the mattress. We complained to the RA multiple times, they’d turn it off when the RA came only to turn it up again when the RA left. The constant sleep deprivation got bad enough that my roommate and I were missing early classes because we simply didn’t have the energy to get out of bed.

There was only so much we could do, we had exhausted every reasonable/civil option, so we both agreed it was time for war. My roommate then piped up “I wish we had a way to destroy their subwoofer…” At that point, a light bulb went off in my head.
Background – Years ago as a kid, I witnessed my dad nearly blow up the stereo receiver testing a 25W marine radio in the living room. Growing up, I was into tinkering with electronics which led me to pursue a degree in engineering.

In my teens, I got pretty heavy into CB radio and had a pretty good assortment of gear (radios, amps, etc).

That weekend, I made a trip home; grabbed a radio, a 400W amp, antenna, coax cable and a nice beefy power supply before heading back to college. In our room, I wired the whole deal up and hid it under my desk; the antenna (½ wave wire dipole) was positioned along the wall of the offending room.

We waited till night time.
Right on cue at 1:00 in the morning, subwoofer started bumping Lil Jon and I fired up my setup, set the amp to 200W. I knew the song they were playing and waited when the bass started to hit, I keyed up the radio for a few seconds. Instead of nice smooth bass, the subwoofer made a horrible wub wub wub noise. I let off on the radio to hear someone in the other room yelling “*** was that? I think something’s wrong with your speaker man”.

My roommate and I burst out laughing at this point. They must have thought they were running the subwoofer to hard and ended up turning it down for the rest of the night. For the remainder of the semester, we kept this cycle of subwoofer interference up, almost conditioning them to keep it down (kinda like Pavlov’s dogs).
About a week before final, they decided to throw a big party, this time they had the subwoofer back at full volume rattling the walls.

We decided to end it this night, I fired up my radio and set the amp to kill(400W). I keyed up the radio, all 400W 27MHz of AM goodness pulsing through the air, and you could hear that the subwoofer was taking it all. About 15s in, there was a loud buzz and a pop, I let off on the radio; silence, the subwoofer wasn’t playing anymore. Then someone in the other room yells “OMG, *** was that?”, then someone says “Holy **** man, your speaker is smoking!”I look over to my roommate, he walks over to the fridge, grabs us both a beer; needless to say, we both slept well after that.” spare_parts13

12. He Put His Girlfriend In ICU And Tried To Get Me To Defend Him In Court

“Last year after a blissful first year of living in a new apartment all on my own for the first time, a man moved in next door that I will never forget.

The layout of the apartment is crucial to understanding this incident. The most important part is that my balcony and his balcony are only partially separated by a wall; there is a solid 2-foot gap in which you can easily walk from one to the other.

For context, I previously had a very lovely woman living next door for the entire first year I lived there who never crossed this balcony threshold without being explicitly invited. I only throw this in there so you can understand I wasn’t previously concerned about someone infiltrating my space.

The first time I met this new neighbor, he was unloading groceries from his massive truck into the assigned parking spot next to mine. As I was driving up, he and a girl I assumed to be his girlfriend were unloading boxes from Costco.
I noticed them speaking and as soon as I was out of the car, they went silent. I nodded to them, proceeded to the elevator, and the guy ran up behind me, threw some boxes down and begged me to wait.

No problem, I’m a good neighbor.

While in the elevator, the girlfriend refused to make eye contact or speak to me (a little weird but I just thought she was shy) but he quickly introduced himself and was extremely chatty. In the 45 seconds it takes to get to the floor where our apartments were, he asked how I liked the place, where I was from, and where I worked. Looking back, his enthusiasm was a little strange but I chalked it up to him being excited to be in a new place.

For the sake of the rest of this story, let’s call him Sam. Sam was maybe 33, 6 ft. tall, with a slim muscular build and had hair buzzed extremely short, as if to mask his balding. Pretty average looking by all accounts.

The first few weeks we run into each other often and he always makes small talk, and ALWAYS refers to me as “Miss” (I assume it’s because he forgot my name but wanted to be polite).

I almost never see his girlfriend after the first night, but occasionally I can hear him talking to a lady in his apartment as the walls are reasonably thin.

One night about 3 months after Sam moved in, my boyfriend is spending the night and we were watching movies on the couch, it’s maybe 11:30 PM.
The back of my couch is against the wall I share with Sam and we hear some banging noises. My first thought is that he and his girlfriend must be getting it on.

Boyfriend and I laugh and turn the volume up a bit to drown them out. Then, in addition to the banging, the neighbors begin screaming, we can hear objects being thrown, glass shattering. The words are muffled but there is distinctive anger and crying going on. My boyfriend, gem that he is, steps onto the semi shared balcony and in his loudest voice yells over (without crossing onto Sam’s balcony) “EVERYTHING OKAY IN THERE?”

The girl opens the sliding glass door on Sam’s side a minute or two later and says “Sorry about that!” so… we leave it alone.

I’m concerned, but we have no idea what actually happened and decide to go to bed. Big mistake, I know.

I wake up around 3 am to more screaming, but my boyfriend refuses to wake up and I’m not about to take my 5-foot self to break up whatever is going on at 3 am. I considered calling the police but was so drowsy I convinced myself I dreamed it. I deeply regret that decision.

The next morning I woke up to some terrible personal news (an entirely unrelated death of a friend) and pretty much put the events of that night on the back burner.

I didn’t forget, but it also wasn’t on my mind.

Fast forward about 2 weeks. It’s a warm day and I’m outside reading a book in a robe, sports bra, and shorts.
I’m in a chair that faces away from Sam’s apartment, so I can’t see his side from where I am. I’m deep in my book when suddenly I get tapped on the shoulder. Sam is standing behind me and asks if we can talk for a second.

This man has already crossed an (albeit invisible) line by coming on my side of the balcony, but I also can’t get to my door without physically moving him aside so I ask him what’s going on.

He told me it was his birthday and asked if I knew where to get some ***** to smoke because I “seemed like a girl who knows how to have a good time.” As we live in a state where the stuff is legal, I told him that I’m sure Google would provide the best dispensary in the area but I personally didn’t have any.

He proceeds to tell me how inebriated he got last night and at this point, I am itching for an exit. As I start to move as if to signal I’m done talking, he reaches out for my shoulder and tells me he hit/scratched my car last night because he was driving “very, very wasted” (remember his massive truck?) – he says all of this with a smile on his face, almost laughing. I’m surprised but mostly want to get away from him because my creep senses are starting to tingle and I don’t want to blow up at him for hitting my car.

He says he’ll send me his insurance info if I give him my number, and THANKFULLY I knew that would be a bad call.
I make a bad nervous joke about knowing where he lived and said if the damage was bad enough, I would knock on his door to get his insurance. He counters by saying he will leave a note with his info on my door. He retreats from my balcony while also saying he’d prefer to just pay me cash and not involve insurance.

I give it an hour or so and then I head down to assess the damage (I did this because I didn’t want to walk down at the same time as him / risk having him follow me). Sure enough, there are two long new scratches on the driver’s door. They’re not deep, just kind of superficial, or worthy of a call to insurance immediately.
I really just didn’t want to get involved with him in any way so I decided I could deal with the scratches, but this little event has kind of shaken me.

At this point, I KNEW something was off with him. Nothing unusual happens as far as I’m aware this night.

The next day is a Saturday, and as I had to work the next day, I am home alone, watching some action movie and it’s around 11 PM. I’m on the sofa with my cat curled up on me and the movie is relatively loud, so it takes me a little while to register this banging noise coming from the hallway of my apartment building.

I honestly only noticed because my cat had woken up and got all puffed up and freaked out.
I turn down the volume of the film and suddenly the banging is getting louder and louder. And just as I stand up, I hear the 5 words no one wants to hear coming from their door, “OPEN UP, IT’S THE POLICE!”

My stomach dropped to the floor. I had lied to Sam the day before, I totally had stuff from the dispensary.

And I had just smoked outside on the balcony (the part farthest away from Sam’s) maybe 20 minutes before. I’m totally panicked, floating like a kite, and trying to control my breathing so I don’t immediately come off as suspicious before I answer the door.

I remember checking the peephole to see a close up of a cop’s face and then opening the door, coming face to face with 6 officers ALL with guns drawn.
I am about .5 seconds away from completely peeing my pants in fear, still convinced I’m somehow in trouble for smoking.

The officer who seems to be in charge can sense instantly the level of my panic and he says, “Ma’am, you’re not in trouble. We need to speak with you about your neighbor. Can we come in?” At this point, I’m reeling and my whole being is tense. I let the cops in but my heart hasn’t moved from my throat. The policeman in charge asks me about any interactions with Sam. I tell them I barely know him, that he just lives next to me, only moved in a few months ago.

I ask why they needed to be in my apartment – I’m scared but also I don’t typically get along with cops, and I have the right to know why 6 of them practically waved their guns in my face.
The lead officer proceeds to tell me that Sam is a bad guy – he apparently beat his girlfriend so badly the night prior that she was now in the ICU for her injuries. They also told me Sam had a gun and had barricaded himself in the apartment next to mine.

They said they had spoken to my building manager and knew my place had access to his balcony, and they needed to use it. Then they asked me to go into my bedroom and lock the doors and  turn the lights off.

The next 30 – 45 minutes were a nightmare. In my panic, I had left my cellphone on my kitchen counter and had to sit in my room just listening to the commotion.
No shots were ever fired, but there was a lot of yelling and what sounded like things being thrown.

Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime, the main officer knocked on my door and told me that Sam had been arrested, and thanked me for letting them use my apartment. They asked me questions for maybe 15 more minutes and left.

I wish this is where the story ended, but there is a bit more. In the days following Sam’s arrest, I became even more panicked about him coming back to the apartment building, worried about retaliation.

I hadn’t said anything to the police to technically incriminate him (I had proof of nothing except his word that he was the one who scratched my car) but I did tell them about the night my boyfriend and I heard them fight.
About 5 days later, Sam reappeared at the building as I was coming home from work one evening. He tried to approach me, but the elevator shut just as he was running to catch it.

My whole body got tense, like the feeling when you come this close to getting in a car accident but narrowly avoid it. I stayed off my balcony entirely from this point and always kept the curtains closed. We didn’t speak (or really see each other) at all for another few weeks, and then had our final interaction.

Sam stopped me in the parking lot one night, running after me as I was about to get on the elevator.

He begged me to tell him why I let the cops in that night.
I told him the honest truth,  that I was stoned, didn’t know what to do and had a bad history with cops (this is all true and again I was concerned about him trying to retaliate). He then got pretty upset and kept trying to repeat the question, obviously wanting a different answer. When I couldn’t give him one, he then offered me $3,000 to “testify as a character witness on his behalf” because I “knew him” and “knew how he really treated women.” I was speechless and very freaked out.

He told me his hearing was the next Thursday morning and he asked if I could show up. I was like a deer frozen in headlights for a moment and then somehow got the **** out of there after mumbling a string of words that were most likely incoherent.
The Wednesday night before this trial, I came home from work and my cat was acting kind of weird, like something had just spooked her and her tail was puffed out.

I kind of shook it off but I notice through the curtains there was something taped to the outside of my sliding glass door. Apparently Sam had left a post-it with his phone number and name and underneath “I am counting on you.”

Needless to say, I never showed up. I took a photo of the post-it, grabbed my cat, locked all my doors, and stayed at my mom’s house for about 5 days after that happened.

I did phone the police to let them know he had been on my balcony again, but they never followed up with anything.
Eventually, my boyfriend came and we went back to my place together – everything was as it should have been.

I never saw Sam again, but a few weeks later a lady I had never seen before was cleaning out his apartment. Maybe a month after that, new people moved in and things have been normal ever since.

I tried calling the police and the county jail to see if he was in lock-up again, but no one was able to release information to me. I’m hoping that means he’s there, if he did what the police said he did.

So to Sam, I will say – I’m not really sure what happened but my biggest regret is not calling the police when I felt like I should have in my gut.
Let’s NEVER meet again.” *******************

Another User Comments:

“And this ladies and gentlemen is a prime example as to why you should call the cops during domestic disputes like these.

Ignoring it and hoping for the best can possibly lead to situations like these. Please learn from this person’s mistake so you don’t have to deal with the guilt of ‘What if I could have prevented it?'” hella_carebear

Reply:

“I fully agree. It was a giant mistake on my end, one I’ll hopefully never come across again – but next time I won’t hesitate. It could save someone’s life.” *******************

11. He Thought He Had The Right To Destroy His Rented Condo

“I (23M) was living in a rented condo in a Pacific Northwest university town.

One day, a new downstairs neighbor, Dan, approx 21M knocks on my door and asks if I want to smoke some of the special stuff.
“Sure, sounds good.” I invite him in and we chat and smoke. Before leaving he notices my microwave; “Hey, I don’t have a microwave yet, could I heat my dinner in yours.” Uh oh. After 3 days of Dan asking to use my microwave for every meal, I eventually told him I was sorry but he’d need to figure something else out.

He looks really bummed out, but says OK and is typically friendly to me in passing.

A few months later I’m watching tv with my girlfriend when a loud repetitive thumping from downstairs starts shaking our apartment and manages to knock several framed pictures off our wall. I have pretty bad social anxiety, so I timidly go downstairs and nervously say, “Hey, there’s a loud thumping coming from down here.
Is everything okay?” Dan then enthusiastically replies, “Sorry about that.

Come check it out.” I follow him into his living room where I see a small skateboard ramp they had constructed to practice tricks inside “because it rains a lot.” Next to the prerequisite stack of pizza boxes, there are also 4 human-sized clay statues and a giant wooden pyramid in the corner, all partially demolished. There is also a parakeet frantically flying around the apartment and bird poop all over the floor, because why not? Trying to make polite conversation before asking him to not practice kickflips inside, I ask about the statues.

He laughs and says “they were all just sitting outside of the art department at the college!” Wonderful.
They’re all stolen student projects. I ask Dan, if it’s not too much trouble, that he and his friends try not to skate inside. There was still some occasional noise after that, but nowhere as extreme as before so I let them be.

One day, an elderly couple knocks on my door. The wife is obviously near tears. They ask me if I know the downstairs neighbor.

“Not very well,” I say. It turns out they are the owners of the condo below mine and their tenants have skipped on the bills and left the condo demolished. This is their first property investment and first time acting as landlords. I’m not sure why, but they invite me down to come to see what’s left of the apartment.
The first thing I notice is that they had peeled up the entire carpet from the living room and stacked it on their patio.

All of the wooden cabinets in the kitchen had been removed, put in a pile and set on fire. There is a dead parakeet in a small cage hanging from what’s left of one of the demolished statues. I don’t believe it was the same parakeet I had seen flying around a few months earlier.

Perhaps most bizarre was that they used a sledgehammer to completely demolish the wall between the two bedrooms, seemingly just for the **** of it.

I told the landlords I was terribly sorry this had happened to them and promised I’d call them and the police if I saw the neighbors again.
Two days later, I hear some repetitive thumps from below my apartment. I look out over my front patio and I see Dan with a hammer in hand. I call the police and explain the situation then call the landlords. The landlords ask if I could go downstairs and talk to him to keep him occupied until the police arrive.

I was a compulsive idiot and I also felt bad for them so I say yes.

When I get downstairs, I see Dan who smiles largely at me and nonchalantly asks how I’m doing. Right behind him, however, is his girlfriend, seemingly 18 and far along into a pregnancy. Her legs and belly are sticking out of the small bathroom window and she is stuck, Winnie the Pooh style.
He is using the hammer to try to break the window frame while his pregnant girlfriend is stuck in it.

She is crying. I go wide-eyed and ask if she’s okay and I offer to help or call an ambulance. “Nah man, we’re good. We just needed to grab a couple more things before we move out,” he says cheerfully as if this is standard procedure for moving out of a condo. This was all so weird that I start to get paranoid and I suddenly become fearful that he would somehow know I already called the police.

I said, “I think I have something upstairs that would work better than that.” I go upstairs and recall the police and explain that there is a pregnant girl stuck in a window downstairs and may need an ambulance or paramedics to help.
A few minutes later, when the police arrive, I see them manage to get the poor girl out of the window, then put her into the back of the cop car. I go out to talk to the officers and they say they only found her stuck in the window.

Dan had bailed and left his pregnant girlfriend behind.

It was a truly bizarre experience and looking back I wish I had taken more initiative on multiple occasions with the condo board. Maybe I could have been more proactive with helping the pregnant girl until the police arrived.

I saw Dan once more downtown a year later, panhandling with a bunch of 20-somethings. This was over ten years ago and I honestly doubt he’s still alive.
Aside from the obviously terrible decision to leave his girlfriend behind during a break-in, I did feel some empathy for the guy.

Most of his behavior was most likely drug-fueled, but I was young at the time and wrote the behavior off as him simply being “crazy.” I really hope the girlfriend was able to get out of that situation. I still don’t know how I didn’t hear them demolishing a wall or smell the burning cabinets downstairs.” jordanerick

10. He Casually Walked Into Our Apartment To Ask For *****

“When I lived with my now ex-boyfriend last year, we lived in a really cheap, really sh*tty apartment building with sketchy neighbors and paper-thin walls.

The worst were our next-door neighbors; now I’m not too familiar with the nuances of certain ***** but if I had to guess I’d say they were pretty heavy into it.
We put up with a lot from them; loud music and arguments at all hours of the night, smoke coming up from under their doors, loud parties, unsavory characters coming and going at all hours etc.

At the time, my boyfriend and I were both working full time, but we’d had a rough couple of years financially and decided to stay in a cheap building to save money.

I worked as a day bartender and my boyfriend worked evenings so I’d often be home at around 6, and he’d be home around 10 or 11 PM.

There was one night where I was home alone and the arguments from next door sounded more scary than usual, threats were being made, someone was screaming about killing someone else, there was lots of screaming.
I messaged my boyfriend to ask him what I should do (he was more used to this lifestyle than myself, being a casual drug dealer who grew up in a really sh*tty neighborhood) he said just stay inside and turn up the TV to ignore it.

Then the yelling and screaming could be heard in the hallway, followed by people knocking on all the doors, like hammering on the doors. I get up from the couch to make sure my door is locked and bolted and messaged my boyfriend again. He told me to just stay put and that he’d be home soon. I was pretty scared, I was in my home alone, I weigh 115lbs, and I’m not exactly built for physical conflict.

By the time he got home, the yelling had quieted down a little, he came in to make sure I was okay and then went to see our neighbors; he had a better rapport with them than I did as he sold to them occasionally. Came back, told me it’s all good now and they were sorry for scaring me earlier. Whatever, it’s fine.

We go to bed that night, it’s the middle of summer so we’re both sleeping naked on top of our bedsheets when I wake up suddenly.

I check my phone, 5:32 AM, and I’m hearing singing from what sounds like out in the living room, then the bedroom door opening, and the face of my neighbor peering around the door frame.
My heart jumped up into my mouth and I felt paralyzed. I was still half asleep so I didn’t even realize I was sat there totally naked for a few seconds.

I just screamed my boyfriend’s name. He woke up and immediately jumped out of bed, still totally butt naked (he’s not a small guy, he’s around 6’3″, fairly built, and covered in tattoos) as our neighbor c*********asually* slu*rs, “Oh* man, I* didn*’t k*now *you h*ad you*r **** here, do you have anything to smoke?” My boyfriend asks our neighbor calmly to leave (because you never yell at someone who is potentially extremely high as they reflect your energy), the neighbor doesn’t seem to understand why this is so weird and keeps asking for something to smoke or drink.

At this point, I’m kinda in hysterics and my boyfriend is super p*ssed. He starts yelling at our neighbor to GTFO. Neighbour obviously starts yelling back, and I am then treated to the sight of my naked boyfriend chasing a druggie around our apartment trying to make him leave. Eventually, the neighbor is herded out of the front door. I’ve calmed down again, and extremely angry at my boyfriend for leaving the front door unlocked, but happy that he was there to chase away our neighbor.

We moved out at the end of the month just to get away from these people. Worst neighbors ever.” DreyaNova

9. Their Parenting Was God Awful

Some people really shouldn’t be parents. There, I said it.

“So a little more than a year ago, my partner and I moved back in with my mum.
The three of us were supposed to move shortly thereafter, but the plans fell through. Since then, I’ve also given birth. While I’m glad to have a roof over my head, the flat itself isn’t the best place to live.

I won’t go into the sh*tty landlords, or the unnecessarily loud church next door. No, today’s rant is solely about the upstairs neighbors from ****, and their demon spawn.

The first encounter: In February 2018, my mum got new upstairs neighbors, a couple and their two young kids. I’ll call them S and G, who were 6 and 4, respectively. My partner and I happened to be up for the weekend a few days after they moved in, and HOLY SLAPNUTS BATMAN! These are the loudest ************ I’ve ever seen in my life.

That first weekend, S was running through the flat like a lunatic for the entire morning. Since we were trying to work from home, we rang the bell to ask them to quiet down. Enter the dead-eyed, broken toothed witch that is their mother. I’ll call her Susan. We introduced ourselves as the downstairs neighbor and asked if she could quiet the kids down. “Oh, well my son likes to run.” No apology, no attempt to correct the situation, nothing.

Just a dead-eyed, matter of fact, “go *** yourself.” Mind you, the flat is in a two-family house which is walking distance from three separate parks, one of which is DIRECTLY DOWN THE STREET! And it was unseasonably warm for February (thanks to climate disruption).
So there was absolutely no reason for this kid to be running around like a maniac all day.

Fast forward to August 2018, I’m six months pregnant, and we’ve moved back into the flat.

During that entire month, those kids, (of which there are now 3, as Susan had a baby a few months prior) don’t leave the house except to take Susan to work at the mall. All day, every day they’re inside the house. S is running around manically, throwing his brother G into furniture, and onto the floor whenever he feels like it. The running, stomping, screaming, and crashing starts around 9 am, and often doesn’t subside until 10 or 11 pm.

Finally, after a particularly obnoxiously loud day, my partner gets fed up and rings their doorbell.
Enter the dad, I’ll call him Chris. My partner explains that I’m very pregnant, and that the kids are being way too disruptive. We’re met with a monotone, “Well, he’s on the spectrum…” complete with the now don’t you feel bad for complaining, and feel sorry for me face. My partner wasn’t taking the bait, and told Chris that what he was hearing was “go *** yourself.” Chris’s jaw d*mn near dropped to the floor.

Clearly this guy is used to getting all sorts of pity for his kid’s affliction. Granted, it does suck, but it’s no excuse for letting your kid run around unchecked all day and night. Chris mumbled something about “I can try to calm him down,” along with a half-a*sed apology, and went back upstairs.
Since then we’ve had to repeatedly remind them of our general existence as well as the fact that we have a small child who goes to bed early.

Most of last year, S was kept home from school because his parents couldn’t get up on time, those days were fun. Three to four days a week their kids go to bed after Chris picks up Susan from her mall job anywhere from 10 pm to 2 am during the holidays. This past August the kids still didn’t leave the house except to take their mother to work. The only exception was the few times S escaped outside while his parents were sleeping.

Three of the four times this happened, they had no idea he was gone.
The boy is 8. They had no idea a big a**8 – year-old wasn’t in the house, which can’t be more than 900 sqft.

These days the noise still lasts from 3:30 pm until they go to bed around 10 pm, and is worse now that their baby is finally walking. I never knew how loud toddler footsteps can be until now. S seems to really enjoy throwing the toddler around, as loud crashes followed by bloodcurdling toddler shrieks are a common occurrence.

The only time we can escape the noise is when we leave the house, or when Chris leaves to take Susan to work. If they’re awake, they’re loud as ever,

I’m so tired of my walls shaking. Every time these kids throw one another around, it sounds like they’re about to come through the d*mn ceiling.” SecretAgentOrangeMan

8. Frank Was A Combination Of Bizzare And Dangerous

I would have been long gone before his arrest even happened.
“I used to live in a terrible part of the city.

Our building was a two-story ancient thing that had been split up into apartments. In one section was this guy I’ll call “Frank.”

Frank was maybe in his late 50s and seemed a bit off when I first met him, but then again, so was nearly everyone in this section of town. Once he told me he was an ex-pilot but I can’t tell if this was true.

One day I noticed a huge, handmade, cardboard sign propped up on the sidewalk.

It read “FREE BEER FOR LOVELY LADIES” and had an arrow pointing to an open door that led to his place. Obviously no lovely ladies took him up on his offer.
As time wore on the sign was joined by a number of odd things he was trying to sell – cheap plastic kid’s toys, cardboard signs from bars downtown (usually ones that had beer logos or bikini models on them), lawn furniture and the like. Turns out Frank was going around at night, stealing things off local lawns, and trying to make a living from it.

The local police knew about this. When the pile got too big to ignore they’d threaten to arrest him and he’d return the stuff. He’d lie low until he felt the “need” to make more cash and the impromptu hot yardsale would return.

Frank was getting more and more erratic. Three times in a row he would snarl at me that I was a “****”, then suddenly in the same rant change tack and ask if I had a boyfriend, and if not was I looking for one? I mean literally, he’d go from how I was one of the reasons western civilization was going to ***, then in the same breath try to entice me with his charming ways.

I wasn’t the only one he asked this question or in this manner. Again, this sales tactic wasn’t successful. He never hit or grabbed at anyone so the local cops, of course, did nothing.

Frank routinely would put “a steak” (his words) on to cook, then forget it was there and/or fall asleep. The smoke alarm went off constantly. I can only imagine what the inside of his apartment looked like after that many rounds of smokey kitchen nightmares.

One night I woke up to hear what sounded like glass breaking. It was so loud and close I thought someone had smashed my windows, but they were fine. I looked outside but because of the direction, my windows were facing I didn’t see anything.
The next day I went outside to go shopping. I didn’t go however because the sidewalk was littered with splattery ***** patches. There was also a huge amount of broken cups and plates all about the intersection.

While I was gawking a neighbor lady saw me and came running out to give me an update: Frank had decided to smash all his kitchen supplies in the road last night and had cut himself pretty badly doing it. As we talked here came Frank. He’d bound up his leg badly with some kind of fabric and was still bleeding profusely. He then sat down on the curb and cheerfully commented to us how nice the weather was.

Both of us decided not to engage and scurried back inside.
I called 911.

The ambulance showed up, then the police. Frank heard the ambulance siren, scrambled back inside, and barricaded himself in his apartment. We could hear him yelling that he wouldn’t go to the hospital because that’s where “they put microchips in him.” Finally, because he was a danger to himself, and possibly a health hazard because of the ***** trail he left everywhere, the cops popped the door lock and managed to talk him into going along, probably sedated.

Frank was later released, and mercifully I moved shortly after that. I have no idea what happened to him. Just… if you see a cardboard sign that says you can get free beer if you happen to be a lovely lady, don’t, for the love of god, take up that offer.” Wishingwurm

Another User Comments:

“Sounds like some form of dementia… my grandfather had that late in his life… he would go from really nice and loving to wanting to kill you in a few seconds… it got so bad that he attempted to kill my grandmother twice…

his was caused by a stroke..” ssandoval83

Reply:

“I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather… and your poor grandmother!

You could be right.

I suspect ***** mostly because the area was rife with them. I know he did have an obvious drinking problem for certain. It’s also possible it was a combo of all three.” Wishingwurm

7. She Was Nice To Our Faces But Talked Trash About Us On Facebook

“Kathy was a former downstairs neighbor of mine who was a devotee of paganism (though she always called herself a “witch”). She had a bunch of occult stuff in her apartment, would wish people “Happy Samhain” during Halloween, often dressed in black, etc.

This didn’t really bother me because who cares what crazy people want to believe? My small Midwest county has a population of just over 30,000 people yet contains well over a hundred godd*mned churches so what’s another crazy belief among so many others?

I only mention the witch stuff to drive home how flighty she was.
Kathy started out as a very friendly and considerate neighbor. She was constantly engaging members of my household in warm conversation. If either of my kids disappeared while doing laundry, invariably they were in her apartment after having been invited in for cookies or other baked goods.

She even used to give my daughter her unwanted designer clothes (both were very petite and roughly the same body type despite my daughter being in middle school). In return, I convinced my father (who owned the building) to allow her to have a dog in her unit despite it being against the lease (we’d had a LOT of pet damage over the years and it’s just easier to not allow animals period). Over all, she acted like a neighbor anyone would want to have.

Unfortunately, this didn’t last.

As mentioned, my father owns the apartment house we live in and one day he called to ask why Kathy was complaining about me on Facebook. He said she was b*tching about how noisy we were- always thumping the floors or playing our television or video games too loudly and she couldn’t get any sleep. Needless to say, I was gobsmacked because at no point did she ever say anything to us. We saw each other all the time so I would have expected her to say something if we were disturbing her.

Having lived in her unit myself for ten years, I knew full well how annoying it was having loud, inconsiderate people above me so I had always been careful to chide my children if they ever thumped the floor or otherwise caused too much noise.
Perplexed, I went downstairs to ask her what the problem was. Kathy wasn’t in her unit but I could hear her in the other downstairs apartment, occupied at the time by a single guy about my age.

I knocked on his door, he opened it and sure enough, there was my complaining neighbor relaxing comfortably on his couch. I knew the two of them were very friendly (despite having an out of state boyfriend, Kathy spent a worrying amount of time alone with the guy downstairs). It really wasn’t any of my business, though.

I told Kathy how I’d learned she’d been complaining about me on Facebook and I apologized if we were being too loud (even though I really didn’t feel we were) and asked her to please say something to me in the future if we were disturbing her.

She in turn apologized and explained that (here’s the kicker) she had recently started some new medication which a) made it hard for her to sleep and b) made her EXTRA SENSITIVE TO NOISE.

While I didn’t say anything, in the back of my mind I was like, “Well, then why in the **** are you complaining about MY family being too noisy when it’s YOUR ***** that are causing the problems?” but to maintain a good relationship, I let it go.

I went back upstairs and told my kids we needed to be extra quiet from now on and to stay out of the kitchen at night because it was directly above Kathy’s bedroom. This was just to be safe so as not to thump the floors if she was trying to sleep.
About a week later, she started complaining on Facebook again about us being too noisy. In fact, her posts became extremely insulting. Now to be fair, I am a huge fat b*stard and my wife is overweight, but Kathy REALLY harped on about our weight and how we were so fat she was afraid we were going to crash through the floor and crush her.

She even called my very sweet, quiet wife a “cow.” She even attacked our parenting, saying how sh*tty we were because we made our kids do chores around the house like cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Again, this was only about a week since the two of us had a friendly chat where she all but admitted her prescription ***** were the problem.
I called my father and explained the situation to him and told him I didn’t know what else to do.

Fortunately, not only did he believe me, but Kathy’s insults convinced him she wasn’t worth the hassle and didn’t care if she moved out or not. Eventually, I responded to her posts on Facebook, not only reminding her how she told me all about the medication she was on but also pointing out how she was spending all that time with the guy downstairs despite having a boyfriend.

We had several Facebook rows back and forth like this until, eventually, she broke her lease by moving out without giving us the required notice.

She also left the unit dirty, so we kept her security deposit.
A couple of months later Kathy filed a small claims lawsuit against my father alleging emotional damages from how terrible I’d been to her and how we’d illegally kept her deposit. This was ridiculous because a) anything I said was reacting to crap she had said and b) the building is in my father’s name and I don’t legally have anything to do with it, technically I’m just another tenant.

Our lawyer laughed when he saw the filing and sent Kathy a friendly letter warning her that if attorney fees started racking up she’d be on the hook to pay them when she inevitably lost the case. She didn’t even bother showing up for the first hearing and we won by default, which means not only did she lose her $500 security deposit for breaking her lease, she was also out another $100 she had to pay for the filing fee.

Technically, we could have countersued her at that point for the attorney fees we’d already accrued, but we decided to let it drop and to just get on with our lives.

The last I ever saw of Kathy was a photo that showed up in my Facebook feed of her dog, a white poodle that she had taken to a groomer to be completely dyed a myriad of garish colors. The poor thing looked like someone puked a box full of Lucky Charms all over it.

Yeah, she’s THAT kind of sh*tty person.” evilkumquat

6. He Had Four Pet Peacocks

They’re pretty, but they really don’t make good pets.

“Our neighbor had purchased four peacocks for his two-year-old daughter. It shouldn’t have been an issue being we lived out in the country and our houses were far enough from each other that we couldn’t even see our neighbors.
But this genius chose not to keep them contained in any way, nor were their wings clipped. As a result, these four feathered rats spent most of their time on our property.

Sure, you’re probably thinking peacocks aren’t that bad. They’re pretty and have amazing feathers. That’s what I thought too. Then they started waking us up at 4 am almost every day. They sat on our roof and did their loud a*s call for upwards of thirty minutes sometimes. If you’ve never heard a peacock call, they sound like a dying cat in an amplifier. Next, they began sh*tting EVERYWHERE. Think goose turds are bad? Peacock poop is far worse.

It looked like a large dog had been relieved of week-long constipation all over the driveway, front patio, deck, yard, etc.
My mom called the neighbors multiple times to complain, telling them to pen up their stupid birds. Neighbor always replied that he couldn’t catch them and just call when they showed up. Surprise surprise: he never answered when we did call after that.

The beginning of the end was a few months later. My mom had spent a whole weekend planting flowers for the spring, as was her annual ritual.

The next morning, she woke to find the peacocks in the process of eating the last remaining flowers. She. Was. Livid. My mother was not the sort of person to get mad, hardly ever. But when she did, she could make the devil himself curl into a ball as he clutched his nuts in terror.
She called Neighbor. No answer, as usual. Without a second’s hesitation, she called the police. She was done. Cops arrived to take her statement, at one point asking how often the peacocks came onto our land.

Before she could reply, those little b*stards strolled out of the woods and onto our lawn. The cops took plenty of photos and then left to seek out Neighbor. They slapped him with a fine regarding letting pets roam free.

A few days later, Neighbor came to our house and confronted my mom, demanding why she didn’t call him rather than the cops. She laid into him BIG time. Somehow it ended with him giving her a check to compensate for all flowers the peacocks had eaten, and a promise to keep them off our land.

It didn’t end there though. They kept coming back! I resorted to trying to shoot them with my B.B. gun (never even hurt them, they just bounced off their thick feathers and gave them a scare). We called Neighbor repeatedly and either got the run around or no answer. Finally, we called the cops again. They went straight to his house and gave him another, bigger fine. I never saw the birds again, but we heard from friends next door that when Neighbor’s wife found out about the fine, she freaked out and demanded he get rid of them.” Ser_Laughing_Tree

5. Our Days Were Ruined By Bratty Kids And Our Nights By Screaming Rednecks

“Oh my God. So my husband and I moved in with my cousin, started renting a room from her to save a bit of money.

If she had warned us about her neighbors beforehand, we would have s****ed out the extra money for a studio or something.

First of all, there was not one house with bad neighbors, but two. The family to the right of us we’ll call “Rednecks from ****” or RFH, and the ones across the street we’ll call “Druggies with Kids” (DWK).

The DWK neighbors probably wouldn’t have been much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that my cousin had kids around the same age, so they all played together.

At least, at first. The problem was, we had an above ground pool set up in our backyard, and the kids had no respect for anything. There were certain rules concerning the pool (there was a “feet washing station” aka hose right next to the ladder for rinsing off feet before getting in, for example) and the neighbor kids had no interest in following the rules.
One kid was particularly bad, not only not washing his feet before getting in, but if he was mad he would start throwing dirt, grass, etc into the pool.

After having multiple discussions about how that was disrespectful and if he did it again he wouldn’t be allowed to play in the pool, he was finally banned. We explained to his druggie mom why he wasn’t allowed in the pool for a week and that if he continued the behavior after that week, he would be banned for 2 weeks, and so on. This absolutely enraged the her. If one of her kids wasn’t allowed in our pool, none of the kids could play together.

Period. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for what she started doing next… Within a week it was one of her kid’s birthday party which the kids in our house had been invited to before this disagreement.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that they were no longer allowed at the party, she starts taunting the kids in our house from across the street. For the kid’s birthday, she’d rented a bouncy house and set it up in the front yard, which is fine.

But then she starts calling over to my cousin’s kids playing in our yard. She calls over the 5-year-old. Says, “do you want to play in the bouncy house? Too bad, you can’t because your mom is being mean to the kid not allowed in the pool.” My cousin goes out and essentially tells DWK, “if you don’t want our kids to play together that’s your prerogative but you need to leave 5-year-old kids out of it.”

Anyways, this kind of thing goes on for a while.

Her kids are bullying my cousin’s kids at her direction, she will tell her kids loudly enough that my cousin’s kids can hear that “cousins middle child is fat, you don’t want to play with him anyways” or “cousins youngest child is a crybaby, go tell him that.” We’ve explained to the kids at this point that when people are unhappy they try to make other people unhappy, so when she’s mean just feel bad for her (or some age-appropriate variation of that).

But then one day the cops are at her house. We’re in the front room of the house, so we’re watching what’s going on (shamelessly, cause *** them.) The stepdad is dragged out in handcuffs, there’s a woman we assume is from CPS talking to the kids one at a time and then to the mom.
Eventually, the cops and CPS leave and it’s just the mom and the kids. We figure the show is over so we go back to our lives.

I go take out the trash and the mom starts screaming about how we called CPS on them, they know it, other neighbors (RFH) have confirmed that it was us, blah blah blah. I just kind of laugh because the whole thing is absurd. Yes, I assumed they were not fit to be paretns, but it’s not like I had any proof, certainly not enough that I would think to call CPS on them. That p*ssed her off.

She starts walking across the street towards me, still screaming nonsense, being aggressive. A guy at her house (her father or FIL?) joins her in yelling at me, how I don’t know their lives and stepdad who was arrested didn’t do anything wrong.
In possibly not my brightest moment, I responded that he obviously did something, since he was arrested and all. Now the guy is walking towards me too, and I’m slowly backing away regretting responding to him at all.

My husband and cousin notice the commotion so come outside. My cousin starts yelling about how we didn’t call CPS, we don’t know *** they’re talking about and they need to back off before we actually call the cops on them. Turns out we didn’t need to because one of the other neighbors did. The cops show up, clearly not pleased to be on our street for the second time that day. Tell everyone to stay on their sides of the street (we were in our own yard the whole time, btw, they’re the ones standing on our sidewalk) and if they’re called out again anyone outside is being arrested for disorderly conduct.

That was the last interaction we had with them. A few days later they moved out and we celebrated.

Of course, that still leaves us with RFH. They were a husband and wife (in their 50s maybe?) who constantly bickered. Shortly after the DWK moved out, their daughter moved in with them. She was a druggie too (early 30s). Obviously, we didn’t live in a good neighborhood. Once she moved in, the bickering got worse, and rather than just being able to hear them argue inside their house, they would argue in the front yard.

Screaming matches at 2 AM because the redneck dad caught the druggie daughter’s druggie boyfriend sneaking in through her bedroom window. Redneck dad would be wasted at noon and yelling about how his daughter was a wh*re and her boyfriend was a loser.
Redneck mom would yell at redneck dad for yelling at druggie daughter. It was literally an everyday thing, all this would be going in the front yard in the middle of the day so we’d have to keep the kids inside because who wants their kids listening to that?

It was a great motivation for us to get our *** together and move out though, our bedroom was closest to them and we could hear that *** through our walls, waking us up in the middle of the night and ***.

We moved out and then a few months later my cousin found a new place to live, and now we laugh about that crazy a*s street with the crazy a*s neighbors.” angelseuphora

4. He Threw A Hissy Fit Over A Parking Spot

“Townhouse. D*uchebag next to me was the son of rich parents, went to a fancy private school in DC where he apparently wasted his parents’ money because from what I’ve seen on his Facebook he’s barely literate.

He squandered his expensive education and joined the marines, where he was supposedly a sniper. Came back, and from what I understand he did some extended jail or short prison time down south, and eventually knocked up the woman that became his wife. His parents bought a townhouse and paid the mortgage for the place next to the one I moved into, and neither of them was employed in the first year or so I lived there.

She was a piece of work herself, don’t really know much about her history.

Anyway, d*uchebag objected that I parked one of my 3 vehicles in the unreserved space closest to our units (we were in a corner of the parking lot) but it was not my primary vehicle so it stayed there for days at a time.
He insists that his wife be allowed to use the space. My space in the last spot in the row at the corner closest to us, then his, the unreserved, then 2 more reserved for other units, etc.

There was an island in the middle of the parking lot that allowed no parking alongside it (fire zone) and plenty of extra parking about 40 yards away. I parked my third vehicle in an entirely separate area of the neighborhood, as I rarely drove it, and the area I parked it was not directly in front of many houses.

Anyway, he insisted his wife shouldn’t have to walk that far with their small child etc. and I just said “well then YOU park down the way and let her park in the reserved spot out front.

He wouldn’t have that. He kept getting confrontational, at one point bellowing at me physically nose-to-nose at my door.

I was having none of his ***. Then one day without warning he files a report that he witnessed me repeatedly and deliberately slam the rear door of my SUV into the side of his car, and I get served with a charge of malicious destruction of property. Meanwhile my vehicle is blue, both theirs are silver, and the outermost point of my door when it’s open is about 5 inches higher than the row of marks on his car and there’s no hint of blue to them.

Yes, the marks covered about a foot or more along the fender, not something that would happen from the single deliberate act he claims to have witnessed.
I later was able to determine that the marks lined up EXACTLY to the point that HER car’s right rear door would strike his fender when he has managed to park in the coveted spot next to his reserved spot. She would whack it loading and unloading their child from the right rear seat.

Charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence after we went to mediation on it. A couple of weeks later I get home late one evening and walk up to my place and he’s out on his porch staring daggers at me. I pay him no mind. Little later I’m paid a visit by the police. Seems he has a real doozy of a scratch down the side of his car, and of course, he thinks I did it.

When asked when it happened, he said earlier that day. Hmm, I was away for the day and have proof, couldn’t have been me. You cried wolf once, and now you really look like an ***.

Now it’s time for revenge. First I try and take him so small claims court to recoup the retainer I paid preparing to defend myself, no luck. They went out of their way to occupy the non-reserved spot at any opportunity, even swapping cars any time happened to leave with whatever vehicle was in it, etc.

So, I set up a streaming webcam in my upstairs window looking down at the parking area. I worked literally 2 minutes away, so I could see when she would leave during the day to get cigarettes or what-not while he was at work, and she would often find me pulling into the neighborhood as she left.
I would leave the car I was driving in the coveted spot left again with my other one that had been parked further away.

Ha-ha!

One day I’m looking at the feed and I see a fire truck out front. I duck out of work to see what the fuss is, and make a p*** through the neighborhood and back out again. As I’m leaving, he’s about to pull in, but he follows me instead. I drive around randomly for a few minutes and he’s right behind me no matter what. I eventually stop by a roadside papusa truck and get out like I’m going to order, and this a**hat stops right in the road next to my truck and is on the phone watching me.

I order some food, get back in my truck, and call the police as I drive off. Eventually, he stops following me. Turns out from the police that it seems she had reported a hazmat situation out back of their house, something about pepper spray on their trash can that she got on her hands and in her face, and she claims I put it there. He even claims he saw me watching the scene from another part of the neighborhood when I can demonstrate that I was at work at the time.

Utter *******. Nothing came of this.

Next step, I rearranged my entire living room so that my TV and enormous speakers, which were formally against the exterior wall of my end unit, are now against our shared wall.
I proceed to play music and watch loud action movies (while replaying the most intense scenes repeatedly) at every opportunity, all while watching the webcam upstairs for the police to pull up so I can turn it down to a more reasonable but still not “quiet” level that could still barely be heard but was far from complaint-worthy.

I never did this after 8:00 PM mind you, I’m not a total ***… He called them at least 4 times and they eventually told him to stop wasting their time.

I eventually moved away after 2 years, and I’ve managed to keep tabs on them via the state’s court records system. There were numerous vehicle/traffic infractions including multiple accidents, driving on a suspended licence, leaving the scene of an accident, displaying flashing lights on an unauthorized vehicle, and of course speeding.

Criminal charges including the unlawful taking of a vehicle, drug/paraphernalia charges, domestic violence, failure to appear, violation of probation, and IMPERSONATING A POLICE OFFIcER (he showed up on the department’s Facebook page for that, I about died laughing)

He and his wife separated and filed for divorce. She also racked up some charges including disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, failure to obey a lawful order, failure to display/present license/registration, driving on expired tags, falsifying tag/registration, driving on a suspended license, identity theft, credit card theft, and more.

Wife died a year or so ago, and per his Facebook page she is now “AN ANGLE IN HEAVEN.” He’s now raising their daughter on his own living with his parents in their $1.6M house on the water, or so it would seem since their address has been listed for every hit in the case searches for the last 3 years or so since they split.
I went to check up on him again a few weeks ago, only to find that his parents had filed for emergency custody of his daughter.

No, he’s not gone and given them a reason to take her from him, he’s up and died. Apparently, you can view toxicology and autopsy records at the chief medical officer’s office, so I called to find out if they had a record for him. The CMO said yes, but the autopsy doesn’t have any information that the toxicology report didn’t already explain, that he OD’d on ******, fentanyl, and *******.

His parents are now battling the wife’s sister for custody of his daughter.

I feel sorry for that kid, but she’s better off without the pieces of *** that she comes from.” xterraguy

3. She Fell In Love With Me And Constantly Confided In Me

That poor girl.

“After the unit next door to mine was empty for about a month, it was filled with a “couple”.
A “couple” in this instance was a druggy wife-beater, a druggy beaten wife, a fully grown son (20, my age at the time), the fully grown son’s girlfriend (22, and actually she was a ****** beautiful intelligent woman; I have no idea how she ended up in this mess but apparently some people are drawn to trainwrecks), and an almost-fully-grown daughter (17).

A family of five. Living in the unit next to mine. It’s an identical (mirrored) version of my itty-bitty ~150sqft studio apartment. Let me rephrase; my small-a** apartment, which was barely large enough to comfortably fit one (forever alone) adult, was housing five right next doors.

When they first moved in all was well. About a month in I could hear fighting and yelling through the shared wall.
After another couple of months, I could hear hitting. I did the cowardly “pretending I don’t hear anything” thing at first (I’m a terrible person).

I did call someone at one point but nothing came of it and nothing changed.

I didn’t know how many people lived there at first. My landlady told me it was a couple. That’s all I knew in the beginning. I worked 2 full-time jobs (80+ working hours a week) at the time, and came home late and left early and rarely saw my neighbors. I didn’t know that 5 grown people lived there at first. I still don’t know how 5 grown people lived in a sh*tty apartment that was almost too small for me alone.

I found out the details after I came home one night. The teenage daughter was crying on the stairs. I offered her a hug but she said no, so that’s cool. Then 5 minutes later she knocked on my door and told me she changed her mind, so I gave her a hug. (Keep in mind I didn’t know she was 17 at the time, this was the first I’d ever talked to her; no pedo.)

She bawled and let our her miserable life story, which I have to admit was significantly worse than mine, and mine was a fetid banana peel in the gutter at this point in time.

Also, she is by far the legitimately dumbest person I have ever met.
I’m not saying this to be mean. She was not mentally challenged as far as I could tell, just a bit on the slow side and hadn’t been to school since elementary. But she was a fairly good person on the inside.

The neighbor’s daughter tried to get enrolled in the local high school (2 blocks away). I encouraged her; I did want her to grow and develop as a person.

I convinced her to talk her dad into taking her down to enroll. She was resoundingly denied on her academic (or rather, lack of) foundation. She couldn’t learn in public school because she had not learned in public school. That was pretty f*cked up, and it totally damaged her already-fragile self-esteem.
I didn’t even know that that could happen.

I had a futon couch. I called it (lovingly) roller coaster couch. The rear legs were two little pillars.

The front legs were a single setup shaped like / ‾ ‾ ‾ . One day (unrelated to neighbors) the back legs broke off. So I took the front off so it would at least sit flat on the ground. That’s when I discovered that the front leg thing was the perfect size and shape to pretend to be a lap bar on a roller coaster. My friends (who broke the couch) and I put some videos of roller coasters on the TV and pretend it was a roller coaster.

Hence the official designation roller coaster couch.
It was awesome.

I had neighbor daughter and neighbor son over shortly after. I tried to show the roller coaster couch. Neither of them had any clue what a roller coaster was. She believed me and he didn’t, and they started fighting until neighbor’s girlfriend agreed with me that roller coasters were totally a thing. He still didn’t believe they were real, but they stopped fighting.

I only ever met dad once.

It was when I was trying to convince him that his daughter should go to school. He gave off a “*** the system I’ll deal with my daughter” vibe. Total *****. I saw him plenty of times before and after this, but he never said another word to me. He’d always be drinking some sh*tty gas-station beer on the porch (we shared a stairway and a balcony leading to the entrances of our apartments).
He’d always mean mug me.

I never actually met mom. I saw her plenty of times. She always had bruises and would glance at me and glance away. I got the impression she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone.

Son was your typical “wannabe cool dude” who couldn’t be cool to save his life. But god d*mn if he didn’t have some knack with the ladies. I never ever did get along with his personality. Everything good or positive he had to shut it down and make it look like ***, or he had to 1-up it; either way.

He was also not educated (though not as bad as Daughter afaik), but he was granted more freedom and would just leave the house whenever he wanted, whereas daughter wasn’t allowed to do that.
Son’s girlfriend was the only decent person in the lot. Why she was living with this trash I will never know. She was beautiful, educated, and came from a background much better than even mine. Son and girlfriend never did ever hold a real conversation the entire time I knew them.

She’d try to bring up something like planning on the future, and he’d either ignore her or tell her to shut up. He’d try to talk about something like how he hates punk a** b********, and she’d have absolutely nothing to say on such a mindless topic. He’d just up and grope her or slap her a** anytime and anywhere, and she obviously did not like it one bit. She’d try to like wear her hair up and he’d just straight rip the hair ties out of her hair if he didn’t want her to wear her hair up that day.

Real d*uchebaggery; clearly learned from his dad, and no idea how he got her or why she stayed (she was still in touch with her family and could have left freely at any time).

And to be honest, I was incredibly envious of him having her.

I just tried to be a good person to them; especially a daughter who definitely needed someone good in her life.

The neighbor daughter didn’t know the difference between a generally good person and someone who you should fall in love with, apparently.

She wrote me love notes. These were written in large block letters taking up two or three lines of lined paper like you do when you’re using the learning paper in elementary/primary school and you’re learning how to shape your letters.
They were nearly-incoherent, rambling sentences with no grammar, spelling, or punctuation to speak of. She professed her love for me and swore up and down that I had to be the best and smartest person in the world.

The sad part is I’m not all that great, but I don’t doubt that I was the best person in her world. She also heavily hinted at ****** advances quite often and being the terrible virgin that I was the only reason I didn’t give in was that her incredible stupidity was an instant ***********.

That last part isn’t a play on words or an attempt at **** talk; she just couldn’t say things properly and any attempt at a long sentence instantly revealed her intellect.

After that started happening I kinda got the message that in her f*cked up mind (not her fault, but still) she was doing the closest thing she could to falling in love with me. I went in the opposite direction and immediately distanced myself with her. But that didn’t make things better.

She’d come knocking at my door or crying outside it and I’d try to ignore her; pretend I’m not home. She’d persist for hours. I know I could get away with it because I’d come home several times and she was also knocking at my door or crying outside it.

Like, how long had she been out there knocking on my door when nobody was in that apartment? She didn’t know when I was home.
She just persisted regardless.

On two separate occasions, she got into my room in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. It was creepy enough the first time because I always lock my doors. But I kicked her out. I double and triple checked my lock every night before I went to bed.

And about a week later she was again in my room in the middle of the night. I still am clueless as to how she did it.

So I GTFO’d there as quickly as I could after that point. (If I was a bit older and there wasn’t any ****** tension (I was still a ***** virgin at that point, and I know she had been ***** multiple times and had a f*cked up perspective on s*x, and she was under 2 years younger than me and very pretty despite it all), I probably would have tried to take her under my wing and taught her what not living with ***y people and just, in general, being educated would be like, but I was in no way capable of doing that at that point in my life.

So I just pitied her and ran away.)

On the bright side, when I was moving out daughter, son, and girlfriend all came over and helped me clean my apartment. Given I was a terrible, forever alone bachelor, my place was, of course, a grotesque mess. None of them ever minded because their place on the cleanest day was still worse than mine on it’s dirtiest. So they all came over and helped me clean up all my ***.

When I left daughter cried and dad mean mugged me.” AskRedditAndChewGum

2. Drinking Was Her Favorite Hobby

“We have a house which has a separate apartment on the second floor. Our very first tenant was a hot mess. I should have known drama would be coming when instead of asking to borrow a cup of sugar on her first day moving in she asked if we had any beer she could “borrow” and she would get us back when she could get to the store.

She turned out to be a raging alcoholic. We started noticing liquor was missing from our kitchen. We had a bunch of beer left over after a party and were storing it our part of the basement. That started disappearing. We confronted her about it. She denied it. We had to start always locking our door which we never needed to do before.

She was a single mom who did not have custody of her 2 young girls supposedly having had just fled from her abusive husband.

It started becoming clear why she didn’t even have joint custody either as she was constantly wasted. She was in her early 30’s hanging out with an 18-year-old boy she was ******. We would hear them as our bedroom was directly below hers.
She was also seeing an age-appropriate guy from town which made for some entertaining sad wrongful episodes of drunken fits and him trying to save her from herself.

She must have had a night of alcoholic remorse because we came home one day and an apology note was stuck on a bottle of Absolute vodka sitting on the steps from our shared garage into our part of the house.

The note explained how she was sorry for her behavior and that yes, she had stolen from us. So I guess her buying (or somehow getting) us a bottle of booze was making up for all she stole. This weirded us out but thought hey, perhaps she is going to turn over a new leaf.
We knew we wouldn’t have to deal with her too long because she was having trouble making rent and had to move somewhere more affordable.

But within a couple of days that bottle of “I’m sorry” vodka was stolen from our kitchen before we had a drop of it.

She moved out not long after that. The age-appropriate guy she was seeing worked at the town grocery store and we ran into him not long after she was gone. She had rented an apartment above the laundry mat that he managed and he had issues with her stealing *** from people and the laundry mat while she lived there.

But he didn’t have to deal with her too long either because sadly as he reported, she was drinking and driving and killed someone else.
She went to prison.

We had a few other crazy tenants but she was by far the most f*cked up. Too bad she couldn’t straighten herself out and get help and get her girls back. That would have been a much better ending. She only made more victims.” bird1979

1. He Was The Definition Of A Creep

“I had a SUPER creepy neighbor for about a year when I lived alone.

I lived out in the country in a small cabin/studio that was detached from the main house. We shared a long, steep, narrow driveway that opened up at the bottom for parking. It was me in my studio, and then attached to the garage of the main house was my landlord’s grandson who was a couple of years younger than me.
For a while, it was just the two of us on the property and we got along just fine.

Nice guy.

Anyway, after a few months of peace, a new family moved into the main house. They seemed fine, for the most part, but were super annoying. The husband, who didn’t speak English very well, used to fix junk cars. He basically took up all of the parking in the driveway and it became pretty difficult to get in and out. Then they started having parties on the regular. Annoying but whatever. Nothing too unusual. But for some reason, the husband took an interest in me pretty much right away.

He’d say hi when he was walking passed my yard and out to where he kept his livestock.
Like the man had a million goats, sheep, roosters (some for actual cockfighting, as I later found out), and a cow or two. I didn’t mind the casual greetings, as we were neighbors and it seemed fine.

After a month or two of casual greetings, he started to linger more. Trying to have lengthier conversations, so he could practice his English.

Supposedly. Then the weird *** started happening. He would do things like knock on my back window to bring me my mail. His excuse was that he didn’t want to scare me but coming through my yard to the front door. He brought me beer a couple of times, and a flower. And he always did this when it was dark out.
Meanwhile, in the span of like maybe 6 months or so, I had gotten 3 flat tires in the driveway.

Two of those were from nails that I had apparently run over. Odd. But he this guy did do a lot of things that required nails and tools around the property so getting a flat tire didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. What was super weird about the situation was that he was ALWAYS home hanging out in the driveway when I’d discover my flats. He’d offer to put my spare on for me, so I could get to work and go have my tire fixed.

I thought that was super nice of him the first time. But then I started thinking about it.
He worked in the farm fields and had to be at work hours before I even woke up to start my day. What was he doing home in the middle of the week at 730 am? At this point, I was starting to get REALLY weirded out and I was telling my friends. Of course, they encouraged me to tell the landlord, talk to the sheriffs, etc.

Even though I felt uneasy about him, I still brushed off their suggestions.

One night he came knocking on my back window again after I’d told him multiple times to stop harassing me and if he needed to speak with me he or his wife could come to my front door. It was like 1030 at night in the middle of the week.
All of my lights were off. My TV was off. It was CLEAR that I was trying to sleep.

I ignored his knocks and they continued for a good few minutes before he finally gave up. A couple of days after this event, I was getting ready to leave for work, when what do I discover? Another flat tire! And who was out in the driveway? The creepy husband. He changed my tire for me again, and off I went to work. I took the flat one to the tire repair place that I’d been going to, and when they went to fix it, there was no puncture hole anywhere.

All they needed to do was fill it up. At that point, the guy who was helping me as I was paying told me that there was no way for it to have gone flat unless somebody had intentionally let the air out of it.
I mentioned the creepy neighbor and he told me I should probably file a complaint with the sheriff just in case.

So I went home, called my dad to come over and he waited with me while the sheriff was being dispatched.

They took my statement, told me I should have called them sooner, and to not hesitate to call if the creepy neighbor even so much as looked at me the wrong way again. When the sheriff went to speak with the creep, he pretended like he didn’t know any English at all. And the wife tried to tell the sheriff that I was the one who was coming onto her husband and making up lies about him.

Thankfully, things settled down after that and they moved out of the house the next month.
When they left, they stole some expensive items from my landlord and left an infestation of roaches in the main house.” miss-etc

After reading these stories, you might feel more distrusting towards the people you live near. However, rest assured that most of our neighbors will be nowhere on the level of these crazies! Sure, it’s common to come across a neighbor who purposely snubs you when you wave hello, an overly-chatty neighbor who annoys you, or even a good two-shoes neighbor that reports other neighbors for everything from overwatering their grass to having an “eyesore” fence that could use a fresh coat of paint… But we can thank our lucky stars that they aren’t the previous people.

Phew!