Unless we want to move out into the middle of nowhere, having neighbors is a necessary evil—and we do mean “evil” when it comes to these horrible neighbors. Their ridiculous antics were too outrageous to ignore, no matter how hard these Redditors tried. Let this be a lesson to us all: Other people are NOT just like us. Not in the slightest.
1. Drawing A Line In The Sand
Our next-door neighbors seemed very friendly at first. Weird, but friendly. The first time I met her she made it clear by mentioning 5-8 times that her house was a little bigger than ours, but still no problems. But then it started to get creepy. She also told me she could see that we removed a wall and she could see it from her bathroom window.
We just moved in in the spring after closing in February. I knew I wanted to get a hedge or a fence put up right away so I put in an application for a perrmit. That's when I learned the township needed clarification on something. They sent a map of our lot with the surveyor stamp. My neighbor told me that the previous owner of our house told them, for the last 17 years, that the lot line followed a few bushes on the property.
Turns out that according to the township, my property extends about 20 feet over from what they originally thought. Our property is on a curved street so the section that we are gaining is shaped like a slice of pie. The neighbor's wife has made it clear she isn't happy. She mentioned 10 times that it's new information and for 17 years that's the way it was.
She said, "You have to understand that after 17 years this is a shock to us and this is how it's always been". She also was telling me how my fence should look and that she wanted the fence more than 6-10 feet off the property line. The township said it can be one inch off. I decided to have enough room for a mower; about two feet. Then it got simply ridiculous.
Finally, she said, "That window over there is my teenage daughter's and we don't want her looking out and feeling like someone is on top of her". Says the woman who looked into my house from her bathroom window. I get you thought your property was bigger, but it's not my fault you got your information from an unreliable source. I pay the property tax on that piece of land and I want to be able to use it.
My property is only .31 acres and my backyard is small but my side yard is big-ish. So then, the township told me to use a metal detector to find the property pin and I was out there. She came over and started yelling at me. She said the property line isn't contested and that what I was doing "was inappropriate and my daughter is right upstairs studying in that room".
She kept yelling but I walked away. We just had the surveyor out the other day. What he told me made me grin like a maniac. It turns out my property extends another 10 feet beyond where I thought, so that's 30 feet they didn't expect. Well, the surveyor came up to me and said "what's wrong with your neighbor? She was yelling at me saying I'm digging up her lawn and that it's her property, not theirs".
Apparently, her husband was on the phone with the township. Here is a text conversation we had. Him: Hi, I’m from next door. We saw that your surveyor was out today. Are you and your wife both available to talk with us for a few minutes sometime today or tomorrow? Me: Hi. Yes the surveyor was out today. No offense, but at this time we are not comfortable having a conversation.
Me: We went through the proper channels to ensure we are putting the fence on our property. We spent additional money to insure this was correct based off of your recommendation for it. Our son and our dog having their space is our main priority. Not to do anything out of spite. We feel like there is some hostility, as evidenced by things that were said to myself and the surveyors today. Just looking to avoid confrontation. Hope you understand.
Him: There's no hostility. We're not seeking confrontation either. We would just like to have a neighborly discussion about your plans for the fence. Any projects done along that property line have a significant impact on our daily lives due to the close proximity to our primary living and working space in our home, including our teenage daughter. We are not nor have we ever been opposed to you installing a fence.
Basically, they want to tell me where to put my fence. Eventually, I installed it three feet off the property line and I was thinking of planting greenery in that space. But they weren’t finished. They are now demanding I move my ring spotlight. The husband texted me, stating that the light shines in his daughter’s bedroom (on the second floor) and into his kitchen.
There is no way this is true. I'm not the only neighbor that has issues with them. I no longer communicate with them because last time I did I was yelled at for being on my own lawn. They continue to bring up their daughter, even though I've never seen evidence that she even exists. They've also recently reached out to me saying my dog was outside all morning barking.
I looked back at my ring camera and not only was she not out all morning, but when she was barking it was at him slowly walking his dog in front of my fence then yelling at her multiple times. Oh, and his dog pooped on my lawn and he didn't pick it up.
2. Counting Down The Days
My new neighbors moved in three days ago. Day 1: I was out for groceries and when I came back, their young kids were biking around on our driveway, which is not shared. It’s 100% ours. Not a huge issue, we just asked them to move and pulled in. Day 2: The kids are riding bikes/power wheels/dirt bikes down our street.
We live in a huge family-oriented neighborhood, and I have four kids myself. I just called my kids out to go introduce themselves to the neighbors’ kids so they could get to know each other. My kiddos go talk to the new kids, and, ten minutes later, they come back saying that the kids were rude and they’d rather not play with them. Fair. Not everyone will get along.
Day 3: I’m sitting on my couch watching television and notice someone walking in my backyard. We have a six-foot privacy fence with a gate, so to get in our yard he would’ve had to purposefully open our gate. I walk out to my back patio to ask who he is and what he’s doing. He says that they were playing ball, it went over the fence, and he was coming to get it.
I told him that he needed to knock on our door, not just come into my yard. I asked if his mom was at home. At this point, my dogs come out of the dog door and make a bee-line to the gate that the kid left open. As soon as I made it to the front yard, I get the privilege of witnessing my dog getting hit by a car. She’s fine, just bruised (big dog, low speed limit, we were lucky).
Obviously, at this point, I’m concerned about my dog, forget to speak to the mom, take the dog to the vet, and finally get back home two hours later. The mom wasn’t home when I got back so I took the time to find a padlock to lock our gate. When I noticed her at home, I went to speak to her. Yeah. Didn’t go well. Before I could express my concerns over her son coming into my yard, she just started screaming at me to “not ever speak to my freaking son again”.
It’s only day 3. I can’t wait to see what happens on Day 4.
3. The Pressure’s On
I have a new apartment neighbor who moved in about four months ago. There's something really weird about them because we have a shared bathroom wall. Every time I turn on my shower and am in it for a minute or so, they turn theirs on. This immediately makes my water colder and the pressure goes way down (this building is super old). But this is even creepier than it first seems.
I don’t take a shower at the same time every day. I work from home, so some days it’ll be 10 am or 6 pm or 11 pm, etc. But if they are home, they do this every time. I have started to turn on my shower and not get in and just let it run and listen. Sure enough, they turn theirs on too. The walls are thin so you can hear when someone has their shower on.
They usually run theirs until right after I turn mine off. This happens even if they have already showered that day. The only time this doesn’t happen is when they’re not home or if it’s really late, like 2 am, and they're asleep. Just wanted to vent because it is such odd behavior to me, and seriously ruins every shower I try to take. I usually take under 10-minute showers so I’m not being excessive or anything that would annoy them.
People are so weird and it drives me crazy.
4. Neighbors Are Doing It For Themselves
I just moved into my house a week ago. I have this neighbor, Linda, who just won't leave me alone. She wants me to cut down my trees that shade her vegetable garden. She also asked me to cut down my trumpet vine that runs along the fence between our properties. I told her I’d think about it. I came out this morning and saw that all the vines were withered and they had been sliced at the ground.
She must have come over a few days ago while I was gone. My yard is completely fenced so I don’t know how she got in. She may have a key to my house.
5. See No Evil, Hear No Barking
I have never had an issue with a neighbor. I've been lucky up until now. I moved into a new home at the end of February 2020. I introduced myself and my family to the new neighbors. As you'd expect, some neighbors were super friendly, and others clearly wanted to keep to themselves. Within 30 days of buying the home and moving in, one of my next door neighbors started construction on a large, concrete block building.
The building is really close to the property line as well as really close to his back porch and another building in his backyard. I went to speak to him. I had a bad feeling, and was proven right. He indeed told me that it was not permitted and agreed that it was probably too close to the property line. He said he'd stop construction on it but didn't know why I had such a big deal with it as it's just a shed.
As soon as I mentioned construction and fire codes, he walks off and stated again he'd stop construction on it. Two days later, he continues construction. I tried to talk to him again and he just says "whatever buddy" and walks off. So I checked with the city and the zoning in our area requires a 12-foot setback for any structure, more depending on the height.
This was less than four feet from the common wall between our yards. That wall is the property line. So I call the city. While describing my complaint, the operator pulls up recent aerial photographs of his property. It opened the flood gates. She says that he has no permits on file with the city for any of the three other buildings in his backyard, the porch added to his home, the wall around his property, the structure he built in his front yard, etc.
She also says that he has very obviously overbuilt his property and there are guidelines to what percentage of his property he can fill with buildings. The guy has A LOT of unpermitted, uninspected buildings and construction on his property. The city went out and gave him a notice for work without permits. He has been asked by the city, multiple times, for information on his property and has not replied.
That was April 2020 when he got the notice. He has a couple of dogs. When I first met him, he told me to come meet his dogs so that they won't bark at me too much. I did and it didn't seem like the dogs were barking that much. After he got the notice from the city, though, he would just leave his dogs outside for hours on end and let them bark and bark the whole time.
It is just about mind-numbing. The way his yard is set up, he has a driveway on one side that goes from the street out front to his back yard. The other side of his house borders mine, and that is where the dogs are most of the time. It seriously sounds like it is right outside. With the TV and home theater on, AC running, kids making noise and all of the other household noises, I can still hear his dogs barking.
5 am to 11pm, those dogs will bark. Lately, he has started keeping one dog at a time on his back porch but is confining them to some kind of kennel. It is only about 4ft x 6ft. The dog(s) will whine, yip and bark for hours on end and it is right on the other side of the wall from me. I feel bad for the poor dog, being confined for hours at a time.
Summer temps are now going over 100 degrees, will get up to 115+ regularly during the summer, and I also worry for the safety of the dog being confined when temps are extreme and it is confined in an area with no ventilation. So, I go over to talk to him about his dogs and their barking. This was December 2020. He has a large block wall surrounding his front yard.
It's about 7 or 8 feet tall. There is no way to access his front door or his yard without going through a gate, which has barking/snarling dogs on the other side. No doorbell, intercom. Nothing. So, I knock on the side of his house, that is facing the street. I'm standing in his driveway. Both him and his wife come out to meet me.
I asked him if he could do something about his dogs and their constant barking. His reply was blood-boiling. He said to me, with a smirk on his face, that he doesn't know what I'm talking about and that his dogs never bark. This whole time, his dogs are barking so much that we can barely hear each other. "You know what buddy, you already cost me way too much money. Get off my property" he then said to me.
I take two steps and I'm now on a city-owned sidewalk and near the street. His wife climbs on something from his front yard and is screaming and cussing at me from inside the yard, leaning over their wall. He comes out of his gate and takes his shirt off, trying to get me to fight him in the street. I just walked home. I didn't laugh, argue, yell, talk, nothing.
At that point, I just walked home to avoid the violent confrontation that they were wanting. His dogs have continued to bark almost all day, every day since that interaction. But karma came for him. I was contacted by a city inspector recently about the complaint. The inspector told me that they have been asking him for information for over a year and he has yet to comply so his notice has officially been turned into a citation and he will have to go before a judge.
The problem that the inspector has had is that he has been unable to make contact with my neighbor, as he cannot get to the front door. He said that he has to issue the citation in person and also has to take pictures of the property when he serves the individual. The city inspector said that he is most likely going to have to get an officer to take him onto the property.
I've been debating calling the city about the animal noise. If I do, I'll probably bring up the issue of the confined dog on the back porch. They handle animal noise separately than normal noise and disturbing the peace calls. He'll get fined between $50 and $500 per occurrence, as I'll be required to complete a log of when I hear the dogs. He has clearly shown that he is unable to have a conversation about it and resolve it between the two of us.
I know he's in trouble with the city already but does he seriously think he can just continue to be a jerk without any repercussions? I'm 40. I've had plenty of neighbors through the years and have never had any issue with any of them until this guy. He's in big trouble already and I feel like it might be too much under the circumstances but I'd also like to be able to get a full night of sleep without having to listen to the dang dogs.
6. Start Your Engines
I have a double driveway with three cars in it and a fourth that I like to park in front of my house. So that's just one car in front of my house, but for some reason my neighbor is upset, even though they use ALL the spots on either side of their home. That's not to mention the spot they use across the street. My house is next to the house that’s directly across the street from them.
They also have a car in front of mine. Yet they’re super offended that I have one car parked in front of my own house. She says I should put it in my driveway because she really needs the space. HELLLO!!! YOU HAVE 12 FRICKIN CARS!!!! I don’t want to have to shuffle my cars every time someone at my house has to go somewhere to make things more convenient for someone with 12 cars.
7. The Sound Of Silence
We've always had a problem with our elderly neighbor. He fights with his girlfriend all the time, but in the first few months of last year it got worse. From March to mid-May it was every other day. We had a blessed week or two, but this last week it's been EVERY DAY. They scream and throw stuff, with ALL the windows open, going in and out of the house, EVERY TIME THEY FIGHT.
Usually, this only lasts a couple of hours. We live in a small complex, and everyone else hates them. But then they outdid themselves. Yesterday they carried on for FIVE HOURS. A few of us got together to decide whether to call the authorities, but they kept stopping and starting, and the last time we called them, they didn't do anything. Tonight, I'm relaxing after a long day, it's 11 pm, and I hear this woman start screaming again.
I lost it. I ripped back the curtains and screamed at them out the window to shut up. We are NOT doing this tonight. Shut UP. I am not the only one. YOU DON'T EVEN LIVE HERE! It's summer! It's HOT! We all have our windows open, we can all hear you! We're sick of listening to your fights SHUT UP. I'll be darned, it went silent and they left quietly within 10 minutes. WIN.
8. Into The Deep End
I'm an introvert, I love my privacy, and I hate small talk. A new house was built one lot over from us and every time we are outside, our new elderly neighbor is trying to get our attention and talk. We have a new puppy so we go out at least every hour. We'd only had the puppy one day when she spotted us taking it out in the yard, so she climbed through the garden and trampled through some mud to get over to gawk at us.
She came over to tell us how she just loves our pool and wishes she had one but can’t because her lot isn’t big enough. Okay, she’s old and wants company. But she took it to a new level. She also sits on her porch with her chair turned towards us and watches us, and she’s now trying to manipulate us to invite her over to swim. She keeps making comments.
Yesterday she and her granddaughter walked through the empty lot to stand at my fence and stare at our stuff for an uncomfortable amount of time. We were inside, thank God. I feel like I can’t go outside because my anxiety is off the charts because of this. We are getting privacy bushes put in but landscapers are about a good month out.
I don’t want to be rude, but clearly, she doesn't understand boundaries.
9. Every Dog Gets His Day
We are in Virginia outside of DC, in the outer commuting range. I am a retired USN and now work for Government in the DC area as a civilian. My wife is the Director of Nursing at a local hospital. We have four daughters, one assigned male at birth. We are also mixed race but present as various shades of black. That's where the problem arose with one of our neighbors.
We are out in the country, gentleman farms kind of area. Lower double-digit acres. It started with the dogs. Out next-door neighbors to the south let their dogs out and assume they will stay on their property. They don’t. I had seen them a time or two, but since I don’t currently have horses or livestock, I did not worry about it. Until the day it turned into a disaster.
One morning they came at my daughter, who was walking out to her car. After attempting to order them away, my daughter reached in her purse and pulled out her pepper spray, which includes a marker dye. She blasted both dogs. They took off and she went on her way. That night there was a knock on the door. It was the next-door wife.
She is very upset that her dogs had been “attacked” and asked did I know anything about it. I knew about the event since my daughter had asked for a new pepper spray unit since hers was empty. I told her my daughter had been mobbed in our driveway and had sprayed a couple of aggressive dogs and asked if they were hers. She told me their dogs had gone in their house and had rubbed the dye everywhere, ruining things.
They had taken them to the vet to get them cleaned up and treated if need be. Clearly, it was all our fault and we needed to pay for everything. I said under the circumstances, I would decline. She left furious. But she was just formulating her next move. The next day she and her husband came over with an itemized list of damages they felt they had incurred.
I reviewed the circumstances with them and pointed out that they were responsible, that we would be well within our right to even shoot the dogs, and that if they did not like it, they could sue us. I also said that any further communication on this matter would only be accepted in writing from us. They left unhappy, though I got the idea the husband understood.
Life went on. About a week later, it flared up again. Another neighbor texted me about the incident. I called him back and told him what happened. He said that the dogs had been a problem for some time. However, the wife was bad-mouthing us to anyone who would listen, saying that we had viciously gone after her dogs. Oh, she said more too.
She said we did not understand how to live in the neighborhood, and at least to him, she said it was because we were Black “city people” and did not understand country living. I asked him what he thought of what I described. He said we should have shot the dogs. Around then, I also observed some new fencing going on on their property.
It appeared they have put in a large dog run that connects to the house. Another week goes by, and we get a demand letter from a lawyer. Its contents are infuriating. It costs a pretty penny. Vet bills, new carpet, new upholstered furniture, pain and suffering, etc. I wrote a simple letter in reply that described the event, called his clients negligent, saying I had damages of my own, and said if they wished to proceed, I would see them in court.
There is a Next Door for our area. After the letter exchange, the neighbor's wife posted on Next Door about her dogs being viciously hurt by us and the resulting damage, costing them thousands. They had also had to build an enclosure to protect their dogs from us. Before I saw it and could tell her not to reply, my wife posted a rebuttal, pointing out the dogs were on our property, lunging at one of our children, and got pepper-sprayed in response.
A couple of other neighbors chimed in about the dogs running loose being a problem. Others chimed in about how nice her house had been. No reply was posted. A notice of a suit against me was served later. They had decided to go the small claims route. It included the list of damages well in excess of the $5K limit here in Virginia.
Their reasoning was that their dogs were friendly and would not hurt anyone, so the use of pepper spray was unnecessary, and we were liable for the subsequent damages. I knew exactly what I had to do. In my formal reply, I pointed out that I was not the person who did the spraying and was therefore the incorrect person to sue. My location could be verified by cell phone records and my employer’s time and attendance system.
They did not modify their suit and we proceed to court. Once there, it was clear they are being coached by an attorney. I immediately move to end the proceedings since I could not have been the person. The judge accepts my argument, and the case is dismissed. Afterward, their attorney asks me who sprayed the dogs. Again, I knew the perfect response to give.
I point out I was not there and had no direct knowledge. I also point out that his clients (turned out they were family with the lawyer) were fundamentally in the wrong and were going to lose regardless. He demands a name, so I sarcastically give him a made-up one along the lines of Diana Spencer (AKA Princess Di). A week later there is a deputy at the door trying to serve that “person” with a new court summons.
It gets declined since there is no one there by that name. At that point, I get another demand letter from the attorney saying that I must identify who sprayed the dog. I do not answer it. Eventually, we get a summons for each of my daughters except the male-to-female one. I write the response for each of them, documenting how they could not have been there.
Each response cites the previous case against me and asks the court for an immediate ruling without the benefit of a court appearance. They reply with a demand that someone needs to be made to identify which person did the evil deed. But there was one thing they forgot. The court says there is no means to compel the information and agrees to an immediate dismissal.
I then write a snarky letter to their lawyer about the ongoing harassment and that court costs would be in excess of the damages they seek, and they would still lose. I copy the husband on the letter. We don’t hear anything for a while. The neighbors could not let go. We got a letter asking for a negotiation session prior to the filing of a suit in circuit court.
My wife and I went to it. We brought absolutely case-closed evidence. Like, a huge binder and videos. The incident and the two front door conversations were recorded. We had so far declined to tell anyone that we had video. Our approach was to convince the attorney so he would convince his clients. He had not done that so far, so perhaps if we made it painful enough for them, they would listen to him.
At the meeting, the lawyer suggested that they make an opening statement and we could respond with one of our own, to identify matters of agreement. Then we could discuss matters of disagreement. Their position was that they did not know the dogs were leaving the property. That they were friendly and would never hurt anyone, and that spraying the dogs was unnecessary.
Therefore, whomever did it was responsible for all the subsequent damages and costs. Furthermore, we had obstructed determining who did the spraying and now shared responsibility. My reply was shorter and better. Their dogs were off their property, whether they knew it or not was not germane. They did lunge at a member of my family who legitimately defended themselves.
I said that they were well aware of those facts from the day it happened. Furthermore, I had a video to back up both points. The small claims attempts were harassment, as was this and a counterclaim was a real possibility under the circumstances. It was clear that the existence of video surprised them. At that point, their lawyer tried a diversionary tactic, and a good one.
He stated that as part of the process, they needed us to fill out a form and that they would provide us the equivalent from his clients. The form included name, address, employer, relatives, DOB, etc. I immediately declined. I said that could wait for the interrogatories and that we were not required to provide that information at this point.
He asked for copies of the videos. My response annoyed him to no end. Again, I declined, pointing out that if this went forward, he could subpoena them. However, I did agree to play them for him. The first video was of the infamous incident. The audio was poor due to range. However, there was no mistaking the aggressive demeanor of the dogs and my daughter after trying to command them, resorting to pepper spray after that failed.
I just previewed the one of the doorway conversations to show they had clear video and audio. The lawyer huddled with his clients for a moment. He claimed his clients did not give permission to be recorded. I pointed out it did not matter since I had a sign posted and there was no expectation of privacy. He then demanded that I give him copies immediately.
I declined. However, I did say that I might put them on YouTube and link to them from Next Door with a complete story of the nonsense so far. The lawyer said that I couldn’t do that, and I said I disagreed. He again demanded I state which of my daughters sprayed the dogs. I again declined. I also stated that his client’s claims were bogus, that we were tired of the charade, and were considering pushing back.
Finally, the wife spoke up. She said we did not see how miserable her dogs/fur babies were all day and how destructive the dogs had gotten being limited to an outdoor run. We had no idea how much they loved their home and how expensive it was to replace everything damaged. We needed to understand it was all our fault and that they were only asking for fair compensation.
As planned, my wife responded. Her reply was ice cold. While the neighbors were childless, she was a mother. She had to watch the fear those dogs had generated in the family that leads to PTSD with a lifetime consequences. That she could not have a dog since her daughter was now terrified of them. Of the fear and anger generated by the wife’s statement to the neighbor that our reaction was due to being city blacks, and that that attitude was inexcusable in the country or the city. It was all their fault, not ours since they chose not to control and contain their dangerous animals.
After that, there was silence with the women glaring at each other. After a bit, I asked the lawyer if there was anything else we should do at this meeting. He said no. I told him I expected a letter one way or another within a week if they were going forward or not. He agreed. It took closer to 10 days. When I saw the outcome, I grinned. They withdrew the complaint.
The letter also claimed that any publication of the videos would be considered defamatory and grounds for further action. So, the whole story: My male-to-female daughter was the one who sprayed the dogs. She was on her way to class at the local Jr College. The rest of us were all at school or work. She has changed her name, but the usual look-up sites have not caught on to that yet. None of us are afraid of dogs, having had family dogs over time.
This event did not really cause or trigger PTSD in the family. The statement was a negotiating position, not a sworn testimony. My daughter did all the right things. I doubt she would have shot them, even if armed. I would not have either, but it makes for good posturing. The dogs in question are male littermates, large hounds I believe, not sure of the breed or if they are fixed.
One is clearly the alpha. At this time we have a standoff. Most court action appears to be over. A couple of neighbors have asked what the status is on Next Door. Neither of us is replying. I have told a couple of friendly neighbors that the case has been dropped for reasons I have in video but am not allowed to share. Subsequently, larger issues have come up between the two of us…and their place is for sale.
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10. Party On
My next-door neighbor filed a complaint to my Home Owner’s Association because I was “having a frat party”. Here’s what really happened. My old friend, who happens to be a 59-year-old British woman, was coming to get me, but I was running late. She was talking to my husband in the garage. Her car was parked but was running with her radio playing. And it was 5:15 pm in the afternoon.
If that constitutes a frat party, I wasted a load of money in college.
11. Disturbing The Peace
I just moved into a new flat and I'm living alone for the first time. I was so excited to have space to myself. I was finally getting away from my family after living with them for the past year. But all of that went to heck the moment I moved in. I can constantly hear my upstairs neighbors running, slamming doors, jumping off things, moving furniture, and screaming constantly from 5 am to midnight every day.
They never go outside, they literally never leave the apartment. I finally worked up the courage to try and go talk to them. When I did, a man barely peeked his head out from the door and I introduced myself and asked if I had been being loud. I then asked if they could be more conscious because no one lived below them before but now someone was living under them.
He agreed and said he would try to fix it. Well, another week goes by and no change, if anything it has gotten worse. Being woken up at 5 am and listening to them be inconsiderate all day long, constant sporadic jumping, dropping heavy objects, screaming, running. They were interrupting my zoom meetings to the point that coworkers found it difficult to hear me.
I finally got my broom and banged on the ceiling a few times around 10 pm because I could no longer take it. I can’t even drown them out with a loud television. And can’t tell you how many hours of sleep I’ve lost. The next thing I know, the situation escalated. They’re banging on my door telling me to open up. This time it’s a woman. I start talking to her.
She says, “Me and my boyfriend and three kids live upstairs”. And I said, “Ok but I’m going to be honest, I specifically looked at apartment complexes that had a max occupancy of two people in a one-bedroom in the lease/addendums so that there wouldn’t be an obscene amount of noise”. This is when her large six-foot boyfriend comes around the corner.
I didn’t know he was there. He gets in my face and starts yelling at me, telling me that he'd screw me if I go to management and that their lease is none of my business. It was so scary. I was thankful I had my friend in the apartment with me because as soon as the woman saw my friend get up and come to the door and saw I had someone else in there with me, she told her boyfriend to back off.
Then she told me “I don’t have a problem with you”. I wanted to say, good, you shouldn’t because I’m not disturbing you. But then she said there was nothing she can do about her children as they are kids and she had to throw in that she’s a Navy veteran and I’m like girl...I don’t care what you are...I pay rent like you do too. Then I made a huge discovery.
As it turns out, I had been recording the noise from earlier (to take to management/have documentation) and had forgotten to turn off my voice memos before I answered the door. Our entire conversation, her stating her name and unit #, how many people were living in the apartment, how old two of the three kids were, and including her boyfriend harassing me was all recorded.
I finally wrote into management yesterday telling them about how they’re not following the lease and that it’s disturbing me in my home and I don’t feel safe having her aggressive boyfriend living above me. I can only imagine what would’ve happened if she didn’t calm him down. So happy I have the voice recording as proof as well as a witness.
My anxiety is spiking to the point that I’m already mentally drained and now I’m feeling awful and super anxious for reporting them for violating the lease. I can’t believe I’ve only been living here three weeks and am having to deal with this. I don’t know if I have adequate grounds to move to a new unit. I am losing my mind in here, I haven’t had a single moment to relax and I do not feel safe.
12. Do It Yourself
I'm not sure if I'm in the wrong here so I'll let you be the judge. I'll give a bit of a backstory before I start. I'm a disabled female (incomplete quadriplegic in a wheelchair). The building that I live in has 20 units in it over a few floors, and I happen to be on the first floor. I've lived here since 2013 when the units were first built. I'm quiet and mostly keep to myself.
My unit has one bedroom, a bathroom, and a lounge room/ kitchen area. Barely enough room to swing a cat but it's all been built for my needs and it works well for me. Around the start of 2019, these new tenants moved into the unit directly above mine. From the start of their tenancy, they've been nothing but a pain. There's a mother (60-year-old), a daughter (30-year-old), the daughter’s boyfriend, and a large dog in a unit the same size as mine.
The first week they were ok, but then they started their ridiculous behavior. Throwing their rubbish over the balcony into my backyard. Using my backyard as their own ashtray. Tipping their dirty dishwater over their balcony, sometimes tipping the water onto my clothesline. Fighting constantly, slamming their doors. Leaving their dog out on their balcony most of the time, making the dog howl and bark for most of the day.
Drinking excessively, which made their fighting and other bad behavior worse. Dropping their clothes over their balcony. I talked to the tenants and asked them nicely not to drop things into my backyard. When they answered me, I wanted to scream. They claimed to not know what I was talking about but promised to keep an eye out.
This stopped them doing it for a while, but a few months later, it started again. I gave up asking them directly and went to the landlord as a mediator. I started to become scared of the man that was up there, as officers were called multiple times when he would get violent. And then the world turned to poop and things got worse. Lockdown was enforced in my state in March until mid-June, which is when their fighting started getting worse.
They began drinking more and I suspect they were using other substances. A few days after lockdown is when they started playing their music. Having units so close together makes hearing music and other noises inevitable. But they had a boombox that played so loudly that my floors would rattle and wearing earplugs did nothing to dampen the noise.
This went on for three months from 10 am until 10 pm and sometimes even longer. I reached my breaking point. I made countless noise complaints to the authorities, the council, and the landlord. All of which did nothing until I made an official noise complaint to the authorities. The tenants were given a six-month noise abatement order.
Breaking the order would result in their eviction. This quieted them down for a little while at least. Now that you know where I'm coming from, this is what happened. Yesterday I found a note scrunched up at my front door. At first, I thought it was rubbish that had been blown there but then I noticed there was writing on it. I had a look and instantly rolled my eyes.
It said: "This is [unit number]. I dropped a brown nightgown into your backyard. Will you bring it back to us"? I had a look for it and it was around the side of my backyard along the grass down a slope. There was no way that I could access where it was sitting. The tenants know I'm in a wheelchair. This is where I got petty about it.
I called the landlord and asked if they could contact the tenant on my behalf. I would have had no problem if the tenant knocked on my door and asked to get it themselves. I'm not a total cow and I told the landlord that. The landlord relayed the message and called me back, telling me that the tenant suggested that one of my care workers get it for them.
Which I said no to, as it's not their job. In the end, one of the other neighbors got it for me and gave it back to them. I know I was petty about it but I just wanted them to be an adult and fetch their own stuff and not expect me or anyone else to do it for them. I understand that accidents happen but after the heck they've put me through I didn't feel like doing them any more favors.
13. From Good To Bad
A few months ago, my neighbors moved out. It's too bad, cause I liked them. Their place was empty for a bit, but I knew the bliss wouldn't last forever. I helped them pack up their stuff, took trips to the dump for them, and even said "anything that comes up at the last minute you need ditch, toss in my trailer on the side yard". The new neighbors moved in a few days later—turns out he runs his own business out of his home.
All home-based businesses require a permit which must be signed. The permit outlines the requirements/rules of a home-based business. Two of these rules are a) no customers before 7 am on the weekdays and no customers before 8 am on the weekends, no business to be conducted after 7 pm, and b) no more than three customers at your home at a time.
Sadly, our neighbor runs a gym/personal training out of his garage. We found out that he has classes every hour of every day between 5-9 am and then from 4-7 pm. He will routinely have four or more people at his class. After the first complaint to the city provided no relief, I purchased and installed some video cameras. I know it sounds bad, but get a load of this.
We are routinely woken up by his customer traffic, sometimes as early as 4:45 am. His customers love to talk—and talk loud without much thought given to anyone in the neighborhood. There was one that would announce her arrival by setting her car alarm several times while she walked into his garage. One Saturday, he decided it would be a good idea to open his garage up, pull out his equipment, and have class on his driveway.
About a dozen people showed up by 7 am. His customers routinely use my side yard and driveway to access his garage. His customers, generally 4-5, will line up outside his gate at 10 minutes to the top of the hours waiting for the prior class to finish. Routinely they will drop weights in the garage (on a padded floor) which will rattle his side door.
When his side is open, my side door and sometimes the windows adjacent to his home will rattle. And there is so much grunting going on. Clearly, he wasn't obeying the rules set forth in the home-based business policy set by the city. Finally, after several months of complaints, video evidence, sworn statements by myself and likely other neighbors, his business—and sole means of support for his wife and three young daughters—will be cut off this next week.
I hope for his sake he decides to move or open up a commercial space. Hopefully, he decided to move. I can suggest a few realtors that could help him and he'd be welcome to use my trailer to move his stuff.
14. Exactly Where I’m Supposed To Be
When I park my car, it's in a spot that's in between my power box and my neighbor's car. For a while, especially while I was gone during the evening for work, they have slowly moved their car more and more to the right, until they were literally almost touching my car, keeping me from opening my driver side door. Since I had to enter my car from the passenger side and this has only been the case for two days, I decided not to immediately say anything to them or my landlords, thinking they just weren't paying attention.
My side of the parking lot also has an extra space that is unused and unpowered that my brother would park in when he visited. In fact, any visitors could use it as long as they didn't block my car or could fit between me and the light post. So a small compact can go there, but not a huge heavy-duty truck... For three years, there hasn't been an issue with anyone parking there.
So, the new neighbors moved in a year ago. Their friends would try to park in my parking space or box me in with their big Dodge Heavy Duties. My car is a small Ford hatchback. I never complained, but my other neighbors have complained on my behalf, as they could see I was being squeezed out and boxed in by people that parked like they were drinking.
Plus the offending neighbors’ friends would park in other units’ parking spaces without permission. I wish I could say that’s the extent of the idiocy. But no. On top of this, they had attempted to use other units’ power during the winter and began complaining when people started turning off their breakers for their spaces when they left the apartments.
I had been patient and honestly believed they would eventually get the clue that they only had one parking space (as they also drive big Dodges) and they should ask before just parking wherever. As it is summer, I could move over into the unpowered spot if they really needed to fit their two vehicles there until winter hit. However, I then got a lovely text from my landlord that made my head explode.
Apparently, these neighbors are complaining that I am the one parking too close and that I had dinged their truck. My landlord expressed that we only get one parking space and mentioned my brother's car, which was currently parked beside me in the unofficial visitor’s spot...and on the other side of him, my lovely neighbors had parked their truck on the street.
Meaning my brother parked before they got a chance to attempt to get their truck to fit there. So I texted back that they were trying to park in my space and that if they are so upset about how close I was, I would be calling a tow truck to remove their vehicle at their expense. I also explained where they have been parking, how they have been parking, and what they and their buddies have been attempting to do.
My landlord texted back that he wasn't trying to start anything. He just asked me to have my brother (who visits once a week to every two weeks) move onto the street out front and that no one is allowed to park in the unpowered spot until we have proper signage put up next month clearly defining who owns what space. Even though it's already labeled on the power boxes.
I have never had an incident living here for the past three years. My apartment needs repairs but I have been patient with my landlord. I get along with my other neighbors just fine. No one has ever complained about my brother or anyone parking in the empty space beside me. However, these kids move in with their loud heavy-duty monster trucks, not thinking that they either have to get smaller vehicles or pay for an extra powered space.
They then try to intimidate my elderly neighbor and try to take power from other units. Then when they get all worried that a tiny hatchback is parking too close and they might get dinged, because they are trying to fit two trucks in a single space. And all this is apparently my problem to solve for them. Yeah, well my solution is having one of their trucks towed and impounded at a nice big parking space located in the local junkyard two miles out of town at their expense.
I'm fine with no one being allowed to park on my right. Doesn't mean it will solve those dingbats’ parking issues. I'm exactly where I am supposed to be and that's that.
15. I Pity The Fool
We bought a house in April and the neighbors across the street from us are in the process of moving out. They have a HUGE house, six-bedroom, five-bathroom, that was top of the line....25 years ago. It was listed for 600k about six weeks ago (they took forever to pack), has been pending three times, and is now at 500k, so I'm assuming an inspector is finding an issue.
Other houses in my neighborhood that are that size are selling. They asked us to help change lightbulbs and fix little things, which was perfectly fine. Or it was until their latest actions. They’ve now started sending "requests". Painting their frame of the screened patio, replacing faucets, and cleaning their house. We painted their screened-in patio because we thought (mistake) it was the last thing they'd ask.
We honestly felt bad because the house is in need of some MAJOR TLC. It's got original carpet that has been cleaned and stretched so many times that it is desperately in need of being ripped out. The bathroom tubs are peeling, the house was freshly painted but was terribly done. When they put it up for sale, they left some huge furniture that they requested us to sell, and we could keep 10% of the profits.
They acted like this was a HUGE reward. It's a 20-year-old couch, mattresses, three dressers, and other outdated furniture that is worth nothing, and weighs a ton, and is upstairs. So obviously it didn't sell for anything, and is still sitting upstairs in their house. One person came for a dresser and it was too heavy for us to move, so we figure this is all custom-built and assembled in the room.
When they left, they "requested" us to do daily walk-throughs and send daily reports of their house, which is fine, but we stopped after a week because we have our own house that we are working on, work, and are not trying to spend weekends and time off at someone else’s house when we literally bought a house to spend time there.
We both get up at 4 am for work, get home around 4:30 pm, eat, and sometimes will literally nap the majority of the rest of the day. Yesterday was one of those days. I had no idea what was coming. Little did I know, these neighbors were back in town and had called each of us several times after 7 pm—once we get off work we don't look at phones.
They had then texted us multiple times. We gave polite replies but said we weren't able to help them. We wind down for the day around 7 pm because we get up at 4 am. So then they knocked on our door at 8 pm, 9 pm, 10 pm, and 11 pm according to our ring camera. If you had a problem, you wouldn't be going to just my house, you’d be asking other people.
I really want to just tell these people that we cannot help them anymore and this is not my problem. This doesn't go into detail about everything we have done for them, but it quickly became too much. Every time we leave their house after doing things there, we both feel so bad because it needs so much work. It’s so dirty, and with three people walking away from it, there has got to be some major issue as I notice it goes back on the market after an inspector is there.
16. Do Unto Others…
Last month, my daughter had a seizure. I had my teenage sisters staying over at the time so my parents came to pick them up. My dad’s car blocked over a bit of my neighbor’s driveway as he came to collect the girls. A few minutes later, my neighbor knocked on the door, demanding the car be moved. It was nearly midnight and the ambulance was blocking our driveway.
My dad immediately went out and moved the car and apologized. He explained they didn’t mean to block her in. Quite a few times since that night, the neighbor has now started to park over our drive and block us in. It’s got to the point where me and my partner park one of our cars on the drive and one blocks the drive, even though our drive can fit both cars on it.
When she’s blocked us in we’ve knocked on the door to ask her to move but she doesn’t answer the door. We can hear her in the house but she doesn’t answer. It’s driving us crazy and we’ve now got to the stage where we’re getting a lawyer’s advice.
17. Buzz Off!
My next-door neighbor is a middle-aged woman who lives with her elderly mom. Not because her mom needs to be taken care of—I believe it’s the other way around. She doesn’t work and is basically a little girl in a 50-year-old body. I work from home, and this woman is home all day, doing who knows what. Whenever I go outside, she magically appears and gives me her “expert” advice on whatever I’m doing.
If I engage in a conversation with her (just to be nice), it’ll eat up 20 to 30 minutes of my time. It's one of those inescapable conversations. And if I do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, like bite my fingernail out of nervousness because I don’t know when I’ll be able to exit this conversation, she’ll go: “STOP! Wait, I got a cream for that!”
Or if I shoo away a fly, she’ll go: “WAIT! I got the BEST bug spray! Top of the line!” Everything she has is “top of the line” or “the most expensive, highest quality out there," and she's got something for everything! I literally can't MOVE around her, because she's got something for everything I'm doing! One time she caught me painting a statue in my garden.
She came over with boxes and boxes of paint. And once she starts up with a new topic, tack on another 20 minutes of time And that's just my experience with her while I'm outside. Behind closed doors, it’s a total nightmare. Before I knew any of this about her, I made the mistake of inviting her into my house for a cup of coffee. No wait, let me correct that.
She actually saw me drinking coffee on my front porch one day and asked if she could have one. While I found that a bit intrusive, I felt rude saying no, so I made her one. And while I was making the coffee in my kitchen, she continued talking to me from my front porch, and I couldn't really hear what she was saying. I felt rude, so I invited her into the foyer rather than have her stand outside.
MISTAKE. Now she comes over twice, sometimes three times a week for coffee! And whenever she sees me outside, she asks, "can I have a coffee?" And when she rings my doorbell and I answer the door to greet her, she's already stepping into my house, like a vampire that I can't stop from coming inside because I've already made the mistake of inviting her in once!
And each time she comes over, I face new horrors. She's getting more and more comfortable in my house, sitting on my couch (She reeks of smoke. I don't smoke, and prefer to have my house not smelling like that). And now she's asking to borrow things, browsing the shelves in my living room, and then exclaiming, "Oh! My mom would love to read this! You're not reading it right now, right? I'll bring it back, you know where I live anyway”.
And then she helps herself to an item on the shelf. I don't like being mean to people, but I feel like the only way to stop her is to be That Person. I'm a single, 30-year-old woman, living alone. I think I'm way too nice, to the point where I let things go beyond what I'm comfortable with. This was my mistake, I know. But how do I undo all of this in the nicest way possible?
If I had it my way, I would have it so that she never comes back into my house ever again. She is my neighbor, not my friend. She is not my type of person. We have nothing in common. I just want to be left alone.
18. Disturbance In Suburbia
My husband and I moved into our first home last summer. Coming from the city, we found our slice of “suburban heaven," as the property offered a beautiful yard with well water-irrigated lush grass. We also chose it for what we perceived as privacy, at least compared to where we had lived. It didn’t take long for us to discover we had made a grave error.
When we first met our neighbor closest in proximity to us, she seemed very nice and thoughtful and we thought how lucky we were to have such a lovely neighbor. This changed quickly, as she became overbearing to the point where I couldn’t be in my backyard without fearing she’d yell over to me and to come over. She would interrupt me no matter what I was doing.
She has a dog of her own, and she’s single, middle-aged, no kids, divorced, and she let us know early on that our backyard was like her dog park before we moved in, as the old man who lived here previously passed and the lot was vacant for a year or so. She has her own fenced-in backyard, but it is the opposite of our green grass with rocks and planters and is quite unkept.
For a few months, we let her over frequently, then we began to avoid her. Other strange things happened with her that are beside the point of this thread, but anyways what really started to irk me, especially because I work from home all the time, is that she would be in our side yard property all the time. She tied her dog to our fence, on our lawn, and she used it as a potty spot multiple times a day.
One morning, I even woke up to her loudly on the phone BELOW my bedroom window, looking into our first-floor window. It was getting obnoxious. Our side yards have no barrier, aside from the fact that ours has lush green grass and hers has rock and pine needles. Not once did she have a conversation with us about this. And then it took another turn.
She started to call me in the middle of the workday as I was in meetings and trying to focus, to ask if her dog could come into our backyard. The final straw was when she left a voicemail, asking for permission to let herself into our backyard whenever she pleased, since my two dogs “were always outside”. I felt like that was asking too much after she’d been overbearing for the past four months of living there.
Granted, I think she had good intentions in her efforts to be nice to us, but my introverted husband and I found her overbearing and annoying, especially in the way she used our property as if we didn’t exist or as if she was entitled to it. So, I went outside to talk to her after I listened to the voicemail. It took a lot of working up to and courage because I truly hate confrontation.
I politely and timidly let her know that we don’t feel comfortable with her using our backyard whenever she pleases. She didn’t take that well at all. To begin with, she rolled her eyes and talked back. I went on further to ask that she stop using our side yard because we like our privacy. Then she really lost it on me. She said, “Well so much for having a good neighborly relationship” and stormed off.
I was taken aback because if someone let me know I was overstepping someone’s comfort and property zone, I would say “so sorry, I had no idea”. But of course not. Later she came to our door to pick something up we were borrowing, and she started saying some nasty things, like how I hadn’t tried to be nice (I had, but in my own way), and that my husband and I should get a fence if we were so concerned.
Needless to say, she’s a grown woman and the property line is obvious, but alright. Months have passed, and we hadn’t talked to her much, and I observed that now she would stand on her property with the dog leashed, but the dog is on our property so it can go potty. She was making an effort...? Well, that didn’t last long. A couple of weeks ago she got a new puppy.
She has returned to using our yard as she had done before. She is literally training her new puppy to “Go poo poo! Go poo poo” on our lawn. Really!?!? So my husband wasn’t too upset at first…until he found five piles of poop sitting in our grass. That was it for him. I’ve been annoyed about it for a while because I work from home and see/hear her doing it, and it is also the principle for me at this point.
He went over to talk to her with the poop bagged up in his hand and let her know our property is not her dog’s potty spot. She made a few excuses and said she’d get a property surveyor, and my husband said we’d respect the results. He also asked her to respect us, left the poo on her porch, and walked away. She hasn’t apologized or taken any accountability.
When she makes excuses as to why she uses our property, she passively tries to make us sound like jerks. As mentioned, we will respect the results of a surveyor if she gets one, but I know for a fact that our entire side yard is not her property. I genuinely don’t think any of it is because of land markers and the deed I read, but whatever at this point.
She’s still using our lawn with her dogs after we talked to her twice. Now my husband and I are submitting a fence permit with the town so that we can hopefully resolve this by building a barrier. But I’m bummed it had to come to this. This has caused us a lot of frustration and it slightly feels like “suburbahell” now. So much for our oasis.
19. A Game Of Chicken
I’ve been living in my current home for a little over five years. About two years ago, we bought some chickens and I made a run for them beneath our scuppernong vines. It’s a good sized area. This is in the back corner of my property, probably about 200 feet from the road. Shortly after, an old couple moved into a house across the street and one house down.
My neighborhood is an old mill house neighborhood, and my house is on two lots so my yard is twice the size of everyone else’s. I believe there used to be a house next to mine that burned down or something and that lot was purchased by whomever owned my home at the time. Anyway, one day it all started to curdle right before my eyes.
I started getting visits from animal control. I was told by my neighbors directly next to me that animal control would come by when I wasn’t home and walk around my property. I have one chicken who escapes daily and visits my neighbors, who feed her and let their kids play with her. The old couple across the street and one house down once saw my chicken in my neighbors’ yard, took a photo, and called the authorities.
I was given a ticket which cost me $295.25 even though the neighbors whose yard it was in didn’t mind. Animal control eventually stopped coming by after she and I had a conversation. She said the old couple across the street are the ones calling, specifically the wife. Her claims were beyond stupid. She says that the chickens are making her ill and she is deathly afraid of being ambushed by the chickens.
She claimed that it isn’t legal to own chickens within city limits (animal control assured her that it is). Animal control also told her that there is no smell from my chickens and said that I have the cleanest run they’ve ever seen. The neighbors also claimed that a specific animal control officer took their friend’s chickens last year because chickens aren’t legal but the guy who they say took them hadn’t worked in animal control in almost two decades.
The animal control officer also told me that the woman across the street calls animal control and/or the authorities least five times a week to complain about my chickens. My wife recently got a promotion and our landscaper is purchasing our home as we’re having to relocate about four hours north of here. He usually brings his son when he cuts our lawn and the little guy loves the chickens.
He asked if they can keep them so we’ve decided to include them on the sale so our awful neighbor will get to deal with the chickens for years to come.
20. Got This On Lock
So my complex is on a busy road, and until recently, everyone's mailboxes were just sitting there clustered together, and anyone could stop and empty them all in minutes. Just a couple dozen mailboxes all sitting out on a super busy road. I've lived here three years, and probably our first month living here, the sheriff showed up with our mail that they found shredded in a ditch. They showed up every six months or so now, to give all the tenants their mail
I spent a lot of time fighting with my landlord about how unreasonable it is to have two dozen unlocked mailboxes on a huge main road just waiting to be burgled. I wasn't the only one who complained either, EVERYONE was SICK of having the sheriff show up unannounced to deliver mail! He continually told me to pay for a PO Box, and basically "deal" with being unable to receive mail at my home.
I finally downloaded my local Tenant Handbook and found out it's illegal NOT to provide locking mailboxes for tenants in my state. I called and left a message with the cited law, got a bunch of other tenants to also call him, and without a word a month later (he ignored me and every other tenant every time we called to see what was going on), they installed locking mailboxes. WIN.
21. The Grassy Knoll
So I own my house, while the neighbors next door rent theirs. They don’t have a driveway. It sucks, but it’s not my fault or my problem. At first, they would park so the end of the car was blocking about six inches of my driveway. Enough for me to have to drive off the curb to get out of my driveway without hitting them. We asked them to stop doing that.
There is plenty of room in front of their house and ours for them to park. They did for a little but then they got two more cars. One day while my husband was at work I heard someone outside. I look out and see my neighbors shoveling my driveway. I thought ok that’s weird but whatever. I should have known something was up then. The next time I went out I saw they took those two cars, and used my driveway to pull up next to my driveway in the grass.
Now their cars are leaking oil in my yard. I’m afraid of getting a ticket because they are parked in MY GRASS. They also started having guests that come over and block my driveway completely. I’m so sick of it!! They also have the nerve to get an attitude with me when I ask them to move their cars! What the heck is wrong with people!?
22. Working On My Night Moves
I’m an upstairs neighbor, and no matter what I do my downstairs neighbors HATE me. I'm tired of feeling guilty because I'm doing something normal. I always try to make a minimal amount of noise—I purchased expensive headphones, stopped doing my dishes when he's home—but at this point, I don't know what to do. It’s 1 am and I'm just EATING CHIPS and he texts.
I don't know if he hears the rustling of the pack but bro, can't he just put some earbuds in his ears to sleep? He often invites his friends over, puts music on, and they laugh/ talk loudly but I put up with it, why can't he do the same? Am I really in the wrong? The only thing I ever asked him to do was to lower his TV volume because it triggers my OCD.
I'm scared that to "take revenge" he'll start watching it loudly again.
23. Up A Tree
My partner and I are renting the rear townhouse on a block of two. We have a shared driveway, and the area directly in front of my house and adjacent to my neighbor’s garage (technically our land) had a potted ornamental pear tree. The tree is beautiful and provides us with some privacy to our upstairs landing. The neighbor has made a comment that he does not like the tree as the leaves fall on his car in autumn.
The tree receives good lighting and is watered regularly, and, until last week, was very healthy. Last Monday, the leaves started getting dry but were still green. Unusual for an established tree. On Thursday, my neighbor came out for a chat while I was inspecting it. Without hesitating, he offered to cut it down. I told him that I’d fertilized it and would like to wait and see if it gets better.
On Sunday morning, I realized that the tree had been cut down, leaving an ugly stump with no leaves. On further inspection, three weeds that were thriving in the same planter were also withered, leading me to believe that the tree was poisoned. I don’t want to cause drama with our neighbors, but I am furious. Even if he didn’t poison the tree, he overstepped a boundary by cutting it down.
24. Not How I Thought My Day Would Go
I live in a studio apartment that's underneath a house, and a few years ago the original owners moved out and decided to rent it out to adults with special needs. It's pretty much a revolving door, some stay for a year, some stay for a few weeks. For the most part, they're great, they leave me alone, bring me my packages right away, and are generally quiet and friendly.
Then there's this one guy we'll call Larry. He's lived there the longest, since the beginning. He has severe schizophrenia and a speech impediment. He has multiple "people" he talks to and some are friendly, and some are hostile to him. One of these is "Mike". He and I got along for the most part but he's very, very loud. Unfortunately, he can't help it.
I've had to check on him a few times to make sure he's okay when he's having a meltdown and contact his social worker. He's a stomper, and the floors above my bedroom are laminate, so it's amplified. The walls are pretty thin, and above my room is where he likes to hang out the most. Usually, it's him just talking to himself loudly but sometimes he'll dribble a basketball.
He’ll also move furniture, or make other odd noises at times like 4 am when I'm sleeping. He's all by himself in the house this week because his roommates are with their families for Christmas right now. This is a recipe for disaster. He does not do well alone. Today, he had a full-blown meltdown. Screaming, shouting, banging on the walls. I work from home so obviously this got very distracting.
I went out to check the mail and he was outside aggressively playing basketball in the driveway, shouting, blasting music, and making a scene the whole neighborhood could hear. I asked him if he's okay and needs help, and that he's being very loud. I was as tactful as I could be but stern enough to get the message across that he's behaving poorly.
The look he gave me was deadly, and he nearly threw a basketball at me. He stomped off, went inside, and shouted some more. Mind you, I can't understand much of what he's saying because his speech impediment is so severe. I texted his social worker, who never came by. Then it turned downright terrifying.
I was in the kitchen making dinner when I heard him having a conversation with his other personality, and the conversation I overheard was "I want to kill him, Mike". "You can't Larry, he's nice". "But I hate him". "Don't do it". "Yes". "No". "YES I WANT TO”. "YOU CAN'T". It went like this for a few minutes until I heard him stomp off. I always felt safe in my apartment, but this is waaaayyy to much.
I can't say for sure he was talking about me because he never said my name but just the fact that he's contemplating this in the middle of a meltdown by himself is making me VERY concerned. I haven't heard back from the social workers, and my landlord is a state away.
25. Screw That Noise
So yesterday, I had an incredibly important job interview. It was my final interview with my local police branch and if I passed this interview, then the past six months of training and tests would have been worth it, and I would be a full-time officer. My interview was three hours long and I had a time slot for 10 am-1 pm. I had deliberately picked this time slot.
I thought an earlier one would mean that there would be less chance of noise from any of my neighbors. 7:30 am, next-door neighbors’ music is on full blast. No warning, so I was already startled from a rude awakening. This came after not being able to get to sleep until 3 am because the same neighbors were having a party. Less than four hours of sleep, and a three-hour interview coming up.
Safe to say I was not amused. However, I thought that I would give them the benefit of the doubt and give them time to turn it down. It got to 9 am and it was still going, and now the kids were screaming and running around outside, having to shout louder than the music just to be heard. So I sent my neighbor a text, just politely asking them to turn the music down (not off), as I had my interview in an hour.
It got to 9:30 am and I had had no reply and the music was steadily getting louder. So I went and knocked on their door, and of course, they couldn't hear me above the music, so I had to knock on their window and more or less felt like I was invading their home. It very much did not get better from there. The wife answered, the same woman I texted, and she was oblivious to the fact that I had texted her.
Unbelievably, she didn't seem to think anything was wrong with the level of the music. I asked if she would turn the music down, and she said that she would but she couldn't stop her partner from turning it up again if he wanted to. They were having another party, apparently, as it was their son's A-Level results day and he had done well. Oh, great.
I told her that as nice as that was, I had an important interview that I could not rearrange and could not afford to not get. Her response infuriated me. It was a shrug, and she said she would turn it down a bit. Thanking her, I went back home and immediately noticed that the music had turned down a bit, so I was a bit happier. I set up in my kitchen/makeshift office, and sat down to wait 15 minutes until my interview started.
I could still hear the music and the screaming, but it was enough that I could drown it out. The interview was going well until about 10:30. And I think you can guess what happened. Music whacked back up to full volume, even louder than before. All of the neighbors’ doors and windows are opened. The kids are screaming louder than ever, and everyone is now standing outside in the garden and talking loudly, right by my kitchen window.
I tried not to let it get to me, but when I saw one of the guys doing the interview look confused and distracted, I knew that they could hear it too. I immediately apologized and explained what had happened and said that I could move to another room and carry on. So I had to move from a proper office set up to my small and partially decorated, dark living room.
The interview went ahead, but I couldn't focus properly as all I could feel was their music thumping, and I was now getting a migraine. I had to ask them to repeat questions numerous times and I just couldn't drown out the music and screaming. The interview finished at 1 pm and at 1:15 pm, it suddenly went silent from next door.
The whole family and their friends (there were about 20 people there altogether), left the house at the same time. They 100% did it on purpose. Then I got horrible news. I just found out this morning that I did not pass the final interview, and I have to wait six months before I can apply for the position again. And to rub more salt into the wound, I have to do all of the tests and interviews (that I had already passed), all over again.
I have appealed the decision and have further explained the circumstances, so hopefully, they are lenient. I'm planning on confronting my neighbors today, after I've calmed down.
26. Getting Ahead Of Himself
I have a double lot, which gives me a good deal of space. Apparently, the lady who originally owned my house years ago deeded the original owner of my neighbor's house a five-foot strip of land from her lot, so they would have space to move on that side of the house. Otherwise, the house would have been right on the property line. He has graveled over his own backyard and parks two tow trucks back there.
So, I guess he sees this part of my front yard as unused and wants to pave it so he can park his tow trucks in front instead. I said that I wanted to think about it. Yesterday, a small front-end loader showed up, parked right in front of my yard.
27. The Cherries On Top
I'm retired from health and rescue after over five decades. I am now blind, but at the time of the following events, I still had my vision somewhat intact. Because of health issues, I recreated the golden years of my life and chose to raise trees and parrots. My son lived 1,500 miles away, so I lived alone—a geriatric wheelchair-bound ol’ bitty who chose to live by the beat of my own drum.
There was a catalyst event that started the following events. I will NOT disclose what occurred, safe to say, the authorities were called and warnings were issued to the neighbors in the strongest wording. That initiating event only seemed to light fires under them. I was about to learn a lesson of a lifetime. It was a lesson that was both unwanted and undeserved.
Nevertheless, a life lesson straight out of THE OUTER LIMITS or TWILIGHT ZONE. So decades ago, I had purchased acres of land from a family member, so I started planting on land that had just sat untouched up until then. The shape of the 40.2 acreages looked like a cooking pot with an S-shaped handle from high above. I had my home built in the eastern/southern corner.
I started planting southern-zoned trees 18 years ago. Many different fruit and nut trees. One special tree, an olive tree. One day, my tree man contacted me asking if I was interested in purchasing cherry trees from Japan. I jumped at the chance and obtained two of them, a male and female. There was just one thing. I thought to myself...where in the holy heck am I going to plant these trees?
My acreage was full. So I planted them near my southern home. Little did I know, that would be the wisest choice I could have made on many levels. The first season they bloomed, their fragrance could be enjoyed a mile away on a calm wind day. Their blooms proved to be one of the most beautiful things one could see, making them the showcase of my home.
They are the first things your eyes scan to and you become mesmerized by their enchanting beauty and fragrance. Throughout the following years, I noticed the female tree would throw babies every third season, sometimes every second. The roots of these saplings could, as they grow, strangle any trees near them, so they had to be uprooted and replanted in free ground.
I planted them along the sides of my winding driveway and along the sides of my home, like a gift-wrapped home of cherry blossoms. The land to my left was rocky soiled land. Not earth that one could easily plant on, but some developer bought it and sectioned it into about 3/4 acre plots and built one home on the most southern. When the new homeowners moved in, my years-long nightmare began.
I put up chain-linked electric fencing—and unknown to the neighbors, full audio-video day/night security cameras. This is because I was having fruits, nuts, and vegetables from my garden come up missing the following season after they moved in. Chaos broke out the following spring, a year that I had baby cherry saplings pop up. Nine of them to be exact.
I let them grow to a safe replanting age and rolled out in my wheelchair with buckets of water and shovel in hand to get to work. As I was on the ground busy digging up babies, the neighbor, Karen, came out of her house demanding to know what I was doing. I informed her I was digging up the saplings to give to the neighbor who lived north of my acreage. She shocked me with her response.
She went from 1 to 100 in a 10th of a second, screaming at me about how I couldn't do what I'm doing. Apparently, the trees belong to her and I had to give them to her. I informed her "that would not be happening". This angered her even more and she advanced toward me, spewing verbal vomit and anger. When she put her foot and hands on my electric fencing, in what to me was an attempt to climb over, she got the shock of her life.
After she regained her breath, her verbal vomit became pathetically comical. I just kept repeating "my land, my fencing, my property, my trees. I will do as I please, Karen”. I quickly grew tired of this tornado of spinning verbal vomit, put my shovel into the earth upright, and climb back into my chair. I grabbed the bucket that had a few saplings and yelled, “Bye-bye”.
As I was waiting for my wheels to engage, I watched Karen go back into her house and I went into mine. About 30 minutes later, I heard my parrots screaming. Someone was ringing my bell and knocking. My camera showed an interesting sight. Three officers. When I answered and asked what I could do for them, they informed me they received complaints.
Apparently, I was “stealing” trees and had attacked someone a little while ago. They asked if I knew anything about it. I said "follow me" and rolled them to the saplings I still needed to uproot. They asked me if I was planting them. I said, "No, I'm digging them up”. They asked "Where are the trees you're accused of taking?” I rolled them to my work shed.
They then asked me to take them to where the supposed assault happened. I rolled them back to the saplings in the ground, pointed to the fence line, and said "there". They asked where, clearly confused. At this time, Karen ran out and started her verbal vomit again. Both officers tried getting her to calm down and return to her home, to no avail.
In fact, I couldn’t believe what they did next. They called for backup. After what seemed an eternity of ear-shattering, nauseating verbal vomit from her, she was manhandled into submission by four of our finest in blue and they pulled her back into her home. The two officers still with me asked if I could try to be a little more “clear as to what had occurred”.
Without saying a word, I pulled my cell phone from my wheelchair pocket, pulled up my security archives app, narrowed in on the time in question, put the cell on speaker with the volume turned up to max, pushed play, and handed the cell to them. I then pulled up county land titles and deeds and showed them my property lines, and how my fence line was 15-feet inside my property lines.
I then pulled up the receipts, import/export clearance documents, and clear descriptions of the Japanese cherry trees, making sure they noticed MY name, MY address, MY signature of receipt, and dates/times. One officer walked back to their car and the other explained my right to have her cited for trespassing, to which I said "YES".
He then said he will file trespassing on her. He then walked to his car and I wheeled to the front of my home. I watched them talk with each other. After a short while, one of the officers who was in Karen’s house came out and walked up to them. They continued talking while one of them was writing on a clipboard. Two of them then walked back into Karen’s house.
Very quickly after, the situation escalated. I could hear Karen's verbal vomit permeate the air with a vile nauseating green haze of disgusting epitaphs. Then, as quickly as the verbal assaults began, a calming peaceful quiet crystallized in the air. I guess I had forgotten to breathe because I was shaken out of my fog by one of the officers, who was tapping my shoulder.
He placed his card in my hand, explaining his phone number and case number, then asked me to forward him a copy of my security footage relating to that complaint. I shook his hand, thanked him, and we parted ways. By then, I was exhausted so I went inside to eat an early supper and planned for early retirement that night and would finish the sapling work in the morning.
I called my other neighbor and told her "I'd roll by her way tomorrow". She said she would just meet me at the fence and use her hook line to pull the bucket over the fence. That plan suited me just fine. As I was eating my supper. about two hours after the afternoon’s crazy circus show, I got a shattering intrusion. Someone started pounding my front door as if trying to wake all the dearly departed within a 50-mile radius.
Security cameras showed Karen and her husband Kevin at my door screaming, "I know you're in there...come out here now". More pounding while I was on phone with the officer from earlier—I’ll call him Zeus. He could barely make out what I was saying over the pounding at the door and the parrots' screams of fear. Minutes later, I could hear sirens on my security feeds.
Moments later, six officers surrounded my front door, and after a few minutes, they were able to de-escalate the anger that permeated the air. An officer called me on my cell asking if I wanted to trespass Kevin now too, to which I gave him a resounding "yes”. I watched on the surveillance feed as the officers took them down my drive.
The cameras at the south gate were very blurry—it seems Kevin or Karen sprayed something on them, but the audio was still crystal clear. The officers gave Karen another trespass charge and trespassed Kevin as well. Karen earned her first trip to have a cozy meet and greet with the judge. I planned to be a visitor for that! After everyone was gone, I called my other neighbor's husband.
I asked if he could come on over after dinner to clean my cameras before sunset in exchange for a basket of fruits, their choice. It’s good to have great neighbors who are kind and giving of their time and elbow grease. The next morning, I resumed my sapling uprooting. If I thought it was over, I was so wrong. Karen came out to offer reruns of her verbal vomiting, her karenisms, and her mental gymnastics of pure rage and crazy.
It was then that I confirmed in my mind that this Karen was a special kind of Karen, a narcissistic sociopath who lived in some altered reality that consisted of unicorns, rainbows, and minions of monkeys who were at her every beck and call. I finished the last sapling and pulled myself to my chair to put all saplings into one bucket. While I was calling that neighbor to meet me at the north corner, I rolled past Karen.
She started screaming at me, demanding I hand over her trees. I told her "Karen, we went over this yesterday. WHAT IS YOUR MENTAL MALFUNCTION, KAREN??!! They're not your trees. I promised them to MY FRIEND. Not you”. I made my way to the good neighbor who asked me what was going on. While I was explaining to her the preceding circus show of crazy, our finest in blue rode up to us.
It seemed Karen called and made a second complaint against me. Only this time, I had supposedly taken money from her in exchange for the saplings. This officer knew nothing of the prior day's events. So...the three of us viewed the security feeds of 50 SHADES OF CRAZY. My poor neighbor just kept shaking her head and told the officer that Karen needed a pretty new white jacket with extra-long sleeves.
The officer snickered. After he regained his composure, he told us he was "ALL OVER THIS". My other neighbor and I chatted for a while longer. We arranged a time for her to come over to pick fruits and stop by for tea, then we parted ways as I had workmen due to arrive to restyle my south fence and gate. After the electrician, fence man, and his workmates finished up, I invited them up to my house for a quick BBQ of burgers and a salad from my garden.
Our late lunch was disturbed by a barrage of screeching that broke our sounds of silence, shattered the stratosphere, and gave the angels above some heavenly hearty laughter. When I realized what was going on, I burst out laughing. Apparently, Karen had gotten her hands on a megaphone. I called the non-emergency line. Funny thing is, that time I didn't have to say a single word.
I could hear the operator tell me she is "sending the squad back out there". Karen earned another meet n’ greet with the judge, and a couple more charges of breach of the peace and harassment of a disabled elderly person. We offered the poor officer who had already been there a burger and tea. He took us up on our offer and called in for a 20-minute break.
We had a too-short, lovely respite. It ended all too suddenly. The poor officer was called back into service. He thanked us, chugged his tea, and grabbed his burger and ran. I told the workers, “Welcome to my life...a never-ending soap opera entitled AS THE CRAZY CIRCUS TURNS". They heartily laughed. They thanked me, packed up, and did one last test on the gate before they left.
All was quiet, but we all know that hair-raising, fear-evoking old adage: IT’S ALWAYS CALMEST BEFORE THE STORM. On a Saturday morning. I was out pulling veggies from my garden. I heard a faint hissing sound I couldn’t make out. Then hell broke loose. The next thing I knew I was being punched and beaten. There was no way I could fend off the blows from fists coming at me from multiple directions.
The blows seemed to never end. When I awoke, it was evening. My chair was on top of me and I was laying in curdled puddles of blood...my blood. I tried finding my cell. It was at my side with the screen shattered. I dialed emergency but I couldn't talk...it was garbled. My old friend Zeus and his partner showed up along the eastern wall. I heard them calling my name.
I started screaming, it was all I could do. I guessed they called the fire department, because after a short while I could hear more sirens. I texted Zeus the code to open the south gate. They found me. I will spare you readers all the gore and simply say I ended up with my jaw broken in three places, seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, a concussion, a lacerated liver as well as other soft tissue and organ injuries, major black eyes, along with a broken arm.
My body looked like a patchwork painting in hues of white, black, blue, purple, and crusted browns. I looked the pretty picture. Zeus and another officer visited me after I arrived back home from the hospital. We talked—a difficult venture for me as my jaw was still wired shut—about what happened. And they took copies of security footage. I’ll never forget what that footage showed.
Turns out Kevin sprayed paint on what he thought were all the cameras facing me at the time of attack. He didn't know about the cameras in the fruit trees and along the western wall. Kevin never laid a fist on me but three men pummeled me while he watched and laughed, calling out blows as if he was a spectator at a WWE fight match.
Kevin is married to the right woman. They are BOTH that special kind of crazy. Kevin earned a pair of shiny new as well as free four-star accommodations after his photoshoot for his starring role in the movie 50 SHADES OF CRAZY, as well as his recurring role in the soap opera AS THE CRAZY CIRCUS TURNS. Kevin got out on bail while awaiting trial.
Investigators were now busy finding the three beasts from Hades. I told the investigators to search for Kevin and Karen's friends, associates, and family members because I had never seen them before. Well, well, well. Investigators do what investigators do oh so well. Weeks later, they found them. The truth was cold. It turns out they were Kevin's three younger brothers.
All I can say is Kevin's family tree grows nothing but rotten apples. Arrest warrants were issued and forwarded five states over. They were picked up in their home state and issued their own sets of “bling” and given photoshoots and four-star accommodations. Well, I assumed Kevin didn't like that we gave his brothers their own starring roles in this crazy soap opera and movie.
The night Kevin's brothers were given their bling, my security cameras caught something even crazier. Kevin and Karen were going shopping on my land. I called the brave Boys in Blue. They came up in the dark (no lights or sirens). The drama play that Kevin and Karen put on in my backyard was priceless. I popped my corns, sat back, and was entertained, nay, I was mesmerized by the pure audacity and entitlement of the Ks.
Their impromptu acting was chockful of gut-splitting jocularity at its finest. I remember thinking I needed to plan for an Emmy awards show because they both certainly earned one that night. A mix of Laurel and Hardy and Monty Python. Four officers chasing two rather rotund people around as they were throwing their ill-gotten gains at the poor officers.
Truly a food fight of gargantuan proportions. As all plays do, this one came to an end. After the bling was passed out and the curtain fell, the two K's were taken for more photoshoots and accommodations and invitations to visit the judge. Eight days after the special K food fight festival, I was suddenly jarred awake to horror. It was the thunderous sounds of engines roaring.
There was earth shaking-pounding, and the fingernail-on-chalkboards screeching of metal on metal. I called the authorities, naturally. Karen's two brothers were caught red-handed in their trucks with oversized tires, chains attached to their tow hitches. The other ends of those chains were attached to what was left of my mangled fencing.
Several poles were pulled out of the ground. Sparks were flying everywhere. These two brothers turned out to be a special kind of stupid, too. Attaching METAL CHAINS TO A METAL TRUCK, THEN ATTACHING THE CHAINS TO AN ELECTRIC SOURCE??? Really??? I shut off the power grid to the fencing and they got detained too. Ok folks, if you’ve been keeping up on your headcount, we are up to seven.
I thought to myself, just how bad can this soap opera movie get? Little did I know. Oh, how little did I know. I still had a lot of learning to go to find out just how deep this crazy rabbit hole went. While I was busy having my security fencing rebuilt and fortified after that, I was waiting with eager anticipation for my day to shine in court.
I was jolted out of my euphoric haze one day by a constant buzzing and knocking at my door; my security fencing was still under repair. Security cameras showed a couple of sheriff's deputies awaiting my response. When I opened the door they informed me they had a warrant for me and I would be going with them. They told me to stand up and not fight them.
When I tried to explain to them that I had been wheelchair-bound for about a decade by then, it got really bizarre. They told me they were informed I was “faking for sympathy” and they pulled me out of my chair. When I crumbled to the floor, the look of shock and embarrassment on their faces was almost worth what I was going through.
They spent the next three hours trying to figure out how they were going to transport me and my 1,000-pound wheelchair. They ended up transporting me using a folding wheelchair that they cuffed my hands to. After my own photoshoot, I was processed and told I was being detained for grand theft, filing false reports, and multiple charges of harassment and intimidation.
I used my one phone call to my lawyer. This was a whole new level of crazy. I will spare you people the quagmire my lawyer pulled me out of. But here is the juicy aftermath. According to what investigators and my lawyer were able to piece together, Karen's sister, who happened to work for the county court’s office, pushed through falsified reports to have the county's prosecutor file formal charges against me.
The grand theft was built on lies that I had pilfered all the Japanese cherry trees on my land, and by then I had 72 of them. They claimed each tree was worth $550. I was accused of taking $30,600 in trees. I was accused of harassing their family members. The family of crazy, both Karen’s and Kevin's families, were all listed on the complaint against me.
Mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. They filed an 11-million suit against me. They each were asking for 1 million in damages. CRAZY OUTRAGEOUS. Oh, and Karen's sister used a gullible judge to sign the warrant. It took a little over two years to get my woes fixed and my record expunged.
Over another year and a half, Karen, her sister, and Kevin agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges and served six months, 11 years, and six years respectively. Karen's sister was fired by the very same judge she snowballed. Karen's two brothers served five years each and were ordered to pay me $50,000 each in restitution. Kevin and Karen were ordered to pay me $25,000 each in restitution.
Kevin's three brothers each received 25 to life on assault on an aged, disabled person with grievous bodily harm and ordered to pay $250,000 restitution each. My lawyer had his payday when he counter-sued both families. We settled for 3 million. My lawyer took 1/3rd. I ended up with five of the six homes that used to belong to the three main family units.
This was as well as cash, stocks, bonds, and jewelry. All parties involved in this nightmare were each given permanent stay-away orders to not come within 1,000 yards of my person or property. Everyone received 8-10 years’ probation with notices that their original charges (except Kevin's three brothers, who were prosecuted on all original charges) would be refiled and prosecuted should they fail to meet every stipulation of the original sentencing.
My good neighbors came for a visit after things calmed down. We reminisced. I promised I would try to keep our community peaceful from then on, but I seemed to be a magnet for crazy. We laughed, shared a great steak n’ lobster BBQ, and sipped mint juleps as the sun went down. Truly great people.
28. She’s Lost Control Again
Every time I tell this story, I feel so dramatic, but how else do you describe this situation?
In the fall, our elderly neighbor either got confused or lost control of her car, plowed forward, destroyed our trellis, bushes, and hit our house. We have a big dent in the front, awaiting cooperation from contractors to repair and likely replace all the siding. Oh, AND, she snapped our gas line when it happened so it was a very scary 20-30 minutes until that was repaired.
Thank God we both work from home because I hate thinking what would have happened to our dogs. Somehow though, it was the aftermath that hurt the worst. During those moments, she didn't come check on us. When she hit the house, my husband immediately ran over to her, asking if she was all right, showing genuine concern. This neighbor?
She has never apologized and has almost completely avoided us since then. The only time she has spoken to either my husband or me was a couple of weeks later when my husband was attempting to replace the trellis. She came outside to argue with him, claiming he was digging on her property. And then she said things like "No one is more sorry than me that this happened to you…”
He reminded her this is the second time she had lost control of her car. The first time, she plowed over her bushes, but she had paid to replace them. Hilariously enough, she plowed over those new bushes, too, in this incident. This trellis? So, the property line essentially runs through a flower bed. I am super into gardening and she is in her 80s.
I gradually took over the entire flower bed, always with communication with her. I weeded her side, I mulched it..."Hey, I like these flowers so how about I have them all through our shared bed?” "What do you think about me removing the lilac bush". "Hey, I want to put a trellis up. That way, all these morning glories we have can climb it. Will that bother you?”
“No? Ok, where exactly is the line? I would hate to put it on the wrong spot and have future people in your home getting angry. It will be this high—will that bother you?" She said it was nice to have me care for all of it, since she was too old. She told my husband she and I never talked about that trellis—not helping with her denial is the fact that she has dementia.
Every time she sees one of us outside? She scurries inside. Totally avoids us. Could you imagine being in your 80s but being afraid of your neighbors who are only in their 30s? We have a land surveyor coming shortly to tell us exactly where that line is because I want that trellis for some protection to stop her car. But there’s a secret I’m keeping.
I will not lie—I hope she gives them heck when they come over. I am ready for a fight. The authorities were useless. The transportation department in my state were useless. Her children are insane AND useless. So, fine. I'll fight an old lady.
29. Mind Your Own Business
Yesterday before I went to bed, I noticed that water was dripping from the ceiling of my kitchen. My first thought was that there's a water leak from upstairs, so I went up and knocked on my upstairs neighbor’s door. I could hear the sound of water sweeping/dumping. It sounded like a lake at the other side of the door. I knocked three times.
They did not stop sweeping/dumping water, but did not respond to the knock either. Then I heard someone speaking from the bedroom direction in Chinese: "Someone is knocking", and the guy responded, "Ignore them". Well, what they did not know was, my native language happened to be Chinese. Even if I was someone who did not know Chinese, I'd hear people talking and know they're ignoring me intentionally.
I kept knocking. I'm a very confrontation-averse person, but after another five knocks, they still did not respond. I had enough. I started speaking to them: "Hello, excuse me, could you hear me? There's water leaking from my ceiling, can you let me know what's going on”? I paraphrased and repeated these sentences about three times.
Finally, after around 10 minutes of knocking and speaking to them from the hallway, the guy responded with an attitude "If you have any question, talk to the management". I responded, "Can you at least let me know what's going on? Is it anything serious? My ceiling is leaking". He responded with the same sentence. I called the management.
It was past midnight then so the janitor came over, looked at my ceiling, talked to me briefly about the situation, and went upstairs. He knocked on their door about five times (with pauses in between), no response. I then told him that he might want to introduce himself because maybe they thought it was me again. The janitor did and knocked again for a while. Still no response.
Then he decided to talk to their next-door neighbor and see if they had any issues and explained there was a water leak. I was sure my upstairs neighbors could hear their conversation very clearly since I could hear it from downstairs. Then the janitor knocked on my upstairs neighbors' door again, repeated who he was, and said something like "I'd have to get my key or call officers if you don't respond".
Still no response, he then came down and asked me if I'm sure there's someone upstairs. So I think they changed their strategy and made an effort not to make any sound when the janitor knocked. But they had messed with the wrong person. The janitor grabbed the keys and went back up, then they finally opened the door because they were cornered.
I could not hear clearly what the guy said, but the janitor then told me they had a water overflow at their sink, and now it looked like the floor's fine, there's no water anymore. He asked them not to use the sink and wait until the plumbers come the next morning. And the janitor said the guy gave him an attitude as well. He said something like, "Why are you here”?
I was super annoyed, but as I said, I'm a very passive and confrontation-averse person, I just sat there feeling like I was treated really unfairly by rude neighbors. Luckily there's not much damage, the water dropped to a spot where I didn't have much stuff placed, I just had to wipe water off, and placed a plastic basin there. But…why???
30. Thank You For Your Service, Now Screw You
It was 9 pm. I live in a high rise on the seventh floor. I’m an ER nurse and, obviously, it’s been extremely busy. My wife and I had an early morning the next day, so decided to wind down the night, relax, and get to bed early before a hectic 12-hour shift. I’m brushing my teeth when I hear a knock on the door. It’s the building manager who I’m on very good terms with.
He’s accompanied by a plumber and they explain that the unit below is having a water backup through all drains. Obviously, a big issue and I get that, but why are you coming to me when it’s the apartment below? Well, apparently the pipes in question can be accessed through my unit easily. Then the plumber mentions they can also be accessed through the 6th floor’s unit, but that involves drilling a hole in the wall.
The tenant lady didn’t want to do that since it’ll then cause repairs. Still, how is this my problem? I say no. The manager says okay thank you for your time, we’ll let you know if we need anything. My wife goes to bed and I’m up for a bit longer doing some reading. My phone dings with an email from another manager telling me I must give access to the plumber.
I have no choice, she tells me. But I didn’t go down without a fight. I politely respond that they cannot have access, I have to be up very early tomorrow and people’s lives are in my hands so I need to be fully lucid and not fatigued. This manager calls me, but from a blocked number, and before I can answer it, hangs up. She leaves a voicemail very upset that I am not letting them fix the 6th floor’s unit through my unit.
Because it was from a blocked number I couldn’t call back. My only response is to email back explaining again that I cannot stay up, this isn’t my problem, goodnight. Knock knock at the door. It’s the 6th-floor tenant and the manager. The tenant is going off on me that she is a lawyer, is going to sue me, and will charge back to me all the damages that I am causing by not letting the plumber fix her problem through my unit.
I’m so tired, but just to get the issue resolved, I’ll let the plumber in. One huge problem arises. He isn’t there now. The manager and tenant leave. I decide to stay up watching TV for a bit, thinking the plumber will come knocking on my door. 11 pm, 12 pm, then 1 am and I finally get an email from the manager telling me the plumber fixed the issue by going through the 6th-floor tenant’s wall.
I have to be up in four hours now to care for people’s lives. I was left a nasty voicemail, sent rude emails, threatened to be sued, and have damages charged to me. I’m an ER nurse who’s been through heck and back these past two years and that’s how to treat me? Pathetic.
31. Some People’s Sisters
Miraculously, I found a home within a Homeowner’s Association that isn’t horrible! Unfortunately, Every HOA requires at least one Karen. Last year, I joined the HOA board for my neighborhood of townhomes. I wanted to finally have a say in what was happening in my community. In this short time, I have learned that very few people bother reading anything about their HOA before buying a home.
Because of this, I see endless issues where people don't know what rules they have agreed to live by. It now surprises me when somebody acts responsibly and contacts the HOA with an appropriate request. Two months ago, a responsible homeowner asked for approval to add a small patio to the grass in front of his home. This is a common landscaping feature in our neighborhood.
Our rules state that he is welcome to add the patio as long as it is identical to the others in the community. So of course, we approved the request. Now enters our neighborhood Karen. Karen lives next to this responsible homeowner. On Monday the construction began to install the patio. Karen started a verbal altercation with the homeowner's contractor.
She demanded to see written approval and construction designs for everything. Karen was told to mind her own business. As a Karen, she then felt it was her responsibility to contact our HOA management company's emergency line. She berated the office staff for never calling or emailing her to ask permission to do the construction or inform her that it was approved.
She felt that the space was close enough to her home that she had just as much right to it as her neighbor. She also kept repeating that there were many other HOA violations without giving any details. Karen was transferred to the property manager's mobile phone number to leave a message. Apparently, Karen said something concerning enough in the voicemail that I received an urgent call from the property manager.
She begged me to walk over to the responsible neighbor’s house, take a few pictures, and see if there was anything unusual about the construction work. She was worried that the patio may look different than the others in the neighborhood. So, I packed my toddler in her stroller and took a walk down there. Ladies and gentlemen, what I saw made me so mad.
Everything was perfectly normal. There were no problems. Worst of all, the construction was not occurring anywhere near Karen’s property. I was baffled as to why Karen would feel she has some claim to the area that is on the opposite side of the neighbor’s house from her. A few hours ago, I learned Karen isn't even the homeowner of the property next to the responsible neighbor.
She is the sister of the real homeowner. I learned this because the real homeowner went to our online resident portal to send the HOA a message. She seems to be embarrassed by her sister's behavior and stated that she actually read her homeowner documents and feels the HOA has done a great job of handling this situation. I am praying this is the end of this week's drama.
32. The Bearer Of Bad News
My neighbors went to visit family in another state about two months ago. Today we got a letter in the mail from his sister informing us that, during their stay, my neighbor's 13-year-old son seriously harmed his four-year-old girl cousin. This has been a complete shock to us, but definitely explains why they came home early. They didn't even hint that anything was wrong when they got back.
They all seemed perfectly normal. Their whole family has been so welcoming and so nice to us over the years. It's so hard to comprehend that this happened. I even had so many great conversations with their son when I see them outside. He's always so nice and polite. A small part of me (I would like to re-emphasize "small") almost wishes I didn't know.
How am I supposed to talk to him or his parents again? I see them almost every day and I have loved talking to them. I can't help but feel bad for his parents. They have so many friends in the neighborhood and I know that at least one of my other neighbors got the same letter. They have to face all of us every day and I'm not even sure they know that these letters were sent out.
It's going to be devastating to their whole family once they find out that we all know. I don't have a clue how to act around them now. Do I play it off as if I don't know until they bring it up? They are my next-door neighbors after all. There's no avoiding them and I have to live next to them. Or do I tell them we know and see what happens? I know my wife is not a forgiving person.
I think I'm more stressed about how she will react. Not the way I wanted to start my weekend...
33. Ghosts Of Homeowners Past
We recently moved in January. The previous residents moved out in the beginning of January, while we moved in at the end. One package she had sent here I held because maybe it took a minute for them to change their residence. But since then, it’s gone to a new level. She has had multiple packages delivered and comes to our home looking for them all the time.
Not only that, but someone has been checking our mailbox late at night. I continue to send the packages back and we also drop the mail off as “return to sender” but it just keeps coming. Almost as if she hasn’t updated her address. I don’t feel like at this point it is my or my husband’s obligation to hold her mail or packages. I don’t know this woman and it’s getting ridiculous.
34. Holding A Grudge
My neighbors planted a line of quite ugly bushes on my parents’ property about 10 years ago. My parents told them to take it out, and they freaked out saying the property line is wrong, refused, and are now incredibly territorial. Like, they still give us issues about it. I just want to finish them and get it taken out but I am unsure because it’s been a while.
35. The Silent Treatment
This afternoon there came a gentle knock on our front door. I answered to find an 11-year-old boy holding our newspaper. He introduced himself as Michael, and he was darling. Ever-vigilant for new neighborhood playmates for my kid Alex, I introduced them, and within minutes, Alex was invited to this child's home around the corner. I didn’t think anything could go wrong—it did.
I wrote a note to the parents explaining who we were, how we met their adorable son, and asking them to please send Alex home when they were ready and also to call me so we could meet properly. Ten minutes later, Alex showed up devastated. The dad, who was working in the yard, refused to speak to him, snatched the note and crumpled it, while Michael went into the backyard.
Alex came home. Figuring it was a simple misunderstanding (maybe the dad thought my kid was selling something?), I walked over with Alex. I walked across the yard, and in my very-best-meeting-someone-for-the-first-time demeanor, introduced myself. Y'ALL. The man stood sideways, grinning, and completely refused to acknowledge me as I explained I'd written the note, etc.
The entire minute or so, he made sure I saw that he was ignoring me and that he was enjoying it. I finished my spiel as if I were not being completely ignored, said, "Come along, Alex", and we left. The moment we were out of earshot, I told him to stay away from that house, to run away if he sees that man on the street, and to be super-kind to Michael.
I am concerned for that child. What the ever-loving heck?
36. Coming Out On Top
I have a huge hill right outside my backyard. A family has been sitting on top of the hill right in front of my backyard. I caught the husband staring into the window and the wife was filming/taking photos of my house the very next day when they came by again. This is stalking and creepy. There's a park right next to the neighborhood that they could sit and do whatever.
Why sit right in front of my backyard? The first time they came, I came out onto my deck with my dog. My dog was going crazy barking at them and as soon as I sat down, the husband jumped up and started to walk away. The wife was slower and laughing as the two kids and their dog were leaving. Next weekend if they come again, I plan to come out with a megaphone.
I’m going to ask them why have you been sitting right in front of my backyard looking into my window and taking photos the past few days? No one else in the entire two developments sit on top of the hill because everyone has the decency to know it’s rude to sit right in front of someone's backyard. Still, I don’t know if I’m overreacting with this situation.
37. Watch Your Back
So this was almost 10 years ago. My dad moved to another state for work the summer I graduated high school. My dad had to leave a few months early for his scheduled start date and to have time to look for a new house while our family was packing the old one. Being unable to afford taking care of my 18-year-old self, I was forced to move with them much to my disappointment.
Still, my dad managed to pull some strings so that I could start my first job under him over the summer and get a jump start on enrolling at the local college. After a couple months of hotel living (paid for by dad’s company stipend) we found a great house that was relatively new, being rented out by the original owners. They had just finished building their new house by the lake and obviously didn't need their first house, so they thought renting it out would be a good investment.
This house was everything we were looking for, exactly where we wanted it to be. Near the schools for my siblings, near my dad's work, and with a pool and a rec room for movie nights and video games. The area and time of year made house hunting pretty tight at the time so my dad basically jumped on it. The landlord got the lease typed up from a template and my dad reviewed the whole thing before signing it.
Now my dad is a very meticulous person and has always ingrained the idea of keeping an eye out for loopholes that could be used against you. Read every word of every contract you sign and if something doesn’t seem clear, ASK! He isn’t a lawyer by any means and has made false assumptions himself, but he knows how to search law books if he needs to.
This is important later. We move in and get all settled, but quickly start to learn the truth. The landlords didn’t really want to leave their old house, they just couldn’t afford to keep both without extra income. They essentially viewed my family not as tenants, but as groundskeepers that paid them for permission to maintain their house.
One of the landlords for the most part wasn’t actually that bad, but the woman clearly wore the pants in the relationship and the man was busy with his full-time job as the local postmaster (also important later), so the woman did most of the landlord-type things. It was very clear that she no longer had anything else to do now since she had been a stay-at-home mom and their youngest daughter had started school.
I will say that I did not like this woman from the start. There were disturbing signs. There was a comment she made when we toured the house. In a very thick southern accent, it was something along the lines of not needing to worry about her younger daughter (who was adopted) growing tall enough for sports because she’s Asian.
This woman was a cartoonish stereotype who gave off narcissistic, white savior vibes. The orphanage lady from Despicable Me crossed with Paula Dean comes to mind. She also definitely did not like my mom and siblings when she first met them, as she had only met my dad and I who are white as white bread, but my mom is Hispanic so her and some of my siblings are more on the toasted whole wheat side.
She acted like it was a privilege that she was letting us live in “her house”. This lady would nitpick everything that wasn’t perfect about the house and loved showing up unannounced. We would get notes on the door about needing to water the flowers more, or that the grass is supposed to be mowed every Saturday, or don’t cut the invasive vines she planted and that were growing up the backside of the house.
I got up early to mow the lawn the next Saturday after the note to get her off our backs, and halfway through, a truck showed up with a paid lawn crew. Obviously, she hadn’t said a word about this to my parents. She would come to the door when my parents were gone and say she left something in the garage (which they had, like paint and insulation and other remodeling supplies), but then went upstairs because she was “checking on something she talked to my dad about”.
My dad of course had not spoken to her at all, and this was obviously an issue for my parents. But she didn’t stop there. At one point she tried to get my five-year-old brother to let her in right after he got off the bus. This was at a time of day when both my parents were usually working and I had just gotten out of class, but our middle siblings would have been home already.
So he wasn’t by himself, just no adults yet. To her surprise though, my dad had stayed home that day and parked inside the garage for once. He was so angry. He immediately told her she needed to leave and typed up an email to the male landlord stating that if they tried to enter the property again he would be going to court about it. This included not being permitted to enter the backyard.
She had obviously done this on numerous occasions, but the lease stated they had to give 48-hours’ notice if they needed to enter the property for ANY reason. They did not take this well and things just kept escalating. She would schedule “maintenance” on days we had planned for parties or family events, and we still have no idea how she knew when they would be.
She even had a tree removal service show up on my brother’s birthday to remove all the trees along the back fence. Supposedly for safety reasons, but that was obviously a lie. It did however prevent us from using the pool at our pool party. She would also claim all sorts of things weren’t allowed on account of HOA violations that my parents knew were false because the HOA president was also my little brother’s Sunday school teacher and they had brought up the issues with her.
The HOA president told us that she was a nightmare when they had lived in the neighborhood, and still showed up to the monthly meetings because she was still technically an owner and was using the meetings as an excuse to check up on us every chance she got, even asking the neighbors about us. The HOA was actually very lax in its regulations and mostly dealt with just the shared spaces and garbage removal.
My parents of course started looking for a place to move near the end of the lease and managed to secure a place three months before the end, but didn’t say anything to the landlords. Well come 30 days to the day before the end of the lease, she shows up at the door for no apparent reason. As I was the only adult home, I answered the door.
Just as I opened the door to hear her excuse, the mail truck pulled up behind her. She starts walking away as if she changed her mind because she thought my dad was home to talk to her, and I step out to grab the mail since it’s here. The postman gets out of his truck and says he has some certified mail that needs to be signed for by an adult. I still get chills thinking of the next events.
First, she pipes up, pointing at me: “He’s an adult, he can take it”. It was an eviction notice indicating that our landlords (standing three feet from me) had decided we were not keeping up to the standards of our lease and would not be renewing it. As such we should be out within 30 days. Well knowing that we were already moving, I just accepted it and went back inside.
It was very clear that she was there specifically to make sure we got the notice, which was only valid from the day it was officially received. She of course also knew exactly when it would get there, and likely timed it as such (again so that my parents weren’t home) because her husband, remember, was the postmaster. I called my dad right away and he was fuming.
Luckily we had actually already gotten the keys for the new house as the previous tenants were out the week before, so we were totally moved within two weeks and my dad and I spent the last two weeks going over every inch of the house to make sure there wasn’t a chip of paint or carpet stain in sight. We even went as far as repainting a couple rooms using the leftover paint in the garage.
Out of spite, my dad decided not to pay the last month's rent because we had paid first and last month's rent and security deposit when we moved in. Well, a month later, the couple have been harassing my parents about the last month's rent, and then claimed that we owed further beyond the security deposit because of all the “repairs” they had to make after we left.
We knew that was total nonsense because we had honestly left the place better than we got it. So one day we went by (we still lived pretty close) and peeked in the windows. My dad was wild with fury when we looked. Turns out, they were doing a full remodel and probably trying to get us to pay for it. This set a fire under my dad they would regret.
In that state, landlords are required to set up a specific bank account for security deposits that both the landlord and renter have access to that is not to be touched during the term of the lease. My dad, a couple months earlier, had asked the husband for the account information, having just recently discovered that rule while looking into ways to fend off their constant harassment.
Dad had only asked a couple of times and kind of let it slide because he was pretty high up the regional totem pole at work and always busy, including a lot of traveling. Now, however, he was on a mission and started demanding the security deposit be returned. In one particular phone call with the husband that was getting very heated, dad started spouting off the specific reference that he was reading right off the state’s website.
He very clearly heard the woman from the background say to her husband, “Is that the money that’s in the safe”? CHECKMATE. My dad immediately chimed in on not only that they had failed to meet state requirements, but also that the MINIMUM penalty, as stated on the state’s website in front of him, was forfeiture of the security deposit, but also any other dues and fees paid before move-in.
So not only were we not behind on rent and owing cost of repairs, but they actually owed us the deposit AND two months’ rent. My dad immediately pointed that out to them and added just to rub in that they couldn’t get out of it because ALL of their conversations for the last few months had been recorded either through email or the recording app on his phone.
38. The Ballad Of Frank
Meet my neighbor, Frank. He’s been my neighbor since I moved to the neighborhood around 8-9 years ago. To give a bit of a description of Frank, he’s a middle-aged divorced man with several kids, a love for riding motorcycles in the middle of the night, has a knack for confrontation, and has some sort of a superiority complex. This already sounds like a troublemaker, but you better brace yourself.
Here is a highlight reel from Frank’s extensive catalog of things he’s done. When we (my family) first moved into the neighborhood, we heard Frank might stir some trouble, but we didn’t have a terrible experience with the guy until a couple years later. Around this time, he picked up the hobby of flying drones. Actually, it was more like flying drones over people’s houses and looking at them with the drone’s camera.
Specifically, he liked to fly them over houses with teenage girls living there. It actually got to the point where he was put on the news, and he defended his actions in a pretty idiotic way. One of these girls that had been spied on by him talked about his desire to peep on her when she was in her pool to the news as well. While it did attract attention from the news, he was never faced with charges.
He basically got off scot-free. You’ll notice that this becomes a theme as the story goes on. Even with this attention on him with his perverted tactics, he still flew his drone every day, though he seemingly quit flying it over houses. He had a much stupider idea. Instead, he tried following people with it. This failed on his very first attempt.
On this attempt, he was following my sister and her friend (who were about eight at the time) when the drone crashed into a tree they were under. The drone lost power and dropped right in front of them. The drone fell with some force to it, to the point where if it had hit one of the girls, it might’ve done some actual damage considering how young they were and all.
My father confronted him about this, but all Frank did was scream and curse at him for daring to talk to him in such a manner. Although my dad ended the confrontation quickly due to not wanting to waste his time with a screamer, Frank decided he needed payback. You know, for something that was his fault. Remember when I wrote that he loved riding his motorcycle in the middle of the night?
For the next few days, he would wait till 1 or 2 am to rev his engine in front of our driveway and screech past our house at crazy speeds. Because we never went up to him and got mad, he grew bored from not being confronted. Not much happened other than his occasional late-night motorbike rides until about a year after the drone incident.
Something I didn’t mention at the start was that he has a love for owning an excessive amount of cars, motorcycles, and boats. Obviously, this takes up a large amount of space, more than a usual driveway and garage can hold. So, he began parking all of his cars and boats along the street. It got to the point where despite his house being about four down from ours, the vehicles were just about blocking our driveway.
He had them parked overnight, which our HOA does not allow. He got several violations for this, and even to the point where he got into a trial for excessive problems. Now, this started in late 2018. To this day, this court battle continues. This is due to extreme luck on his part as well as delay tactics. These tactics are appalling. Basically, he keeps writing letters to switch judges.
He does this by saying that the current one assigned to his case will be biased toward him, even if he and the judge have never spoken. They keep allowing him new judges to gather more evidence on him, but for now, he believes he’s winning. Once again, he gets off without any immediate punishment. The boat/car situation has been the main problem with him for these past few years.
But he’s done one other thing very recently (two days ago) which inspired me to share the story of Frank. Basically, about a month ago, Frank decided instead of wasting his valuable time walking his dogs and allowing them to use the bathroom, he would instead open his door and allow them to run free around the neighborhood until he saw fit.
These dogs aren’t regular-sized dogs though. They’re big dogs, and while I don’t know the exact breeds, I can tell they have Rottweiler features. He did this a few times before my dad decided to record him doing this, as it’s against the law. Frank did not like this. So after having a raging tantrum at my father, he began parking his large car right in front of our driveway.
It’s actually OK for him to do this, as it doesn’t completely block us from backing out of the driveway. It’s still very annoying, but knowing how much he loves to be confronted, we have not said a word to him. In the end, we were the ones getting revenge. It’s almost comical when we’re outside and we watch him park his car right in front of our house, and then he proceeds to make the LONG walk to his house.
Since it’s the summer and very hot outside where we live, we thought he’d stop by now. However, he’s continued for weeks. About a week ago, he attached a trailer to the already large car, making it more difficult for us to exit our driveway. But still, above board. At least, until he used a piece of cardboard to replace his license plate on his trailer.
We sent an email to code enforcement, but we didn’t call in since we knew they were already dealing with other Frank-caused problems. Two days ago, code enforcement knocked on our door. He said someone called in the car with the trailer and assumed it was ours because it was obviously parked right in front of our house.
We told him it was not ours, and it was Frank’s instead, and that we had video proof to back that up. As soon as we told him that, he had a surprised look on his face. He then revealed that Frank was the one who had called the vehicle in. That’s right: he called in his own parked trailer to get us in trouble. My mother wanted to walk the code enforcer to Frank’s house to have him dealt with.
The man said he was told by the higher-ups not to have any contact with him. Apparently, no one can contact him directly, since they don’t want him to have a harsh reaction. So for now, he gets off without a hitch. His karma will come soon. Frank has claimed several times throughout the years that he will move, yet never has. My parents have told me that I cannot speak to him as long as he’s living here.
Ever since then, I’ve been waiting to tell him my thoughts on him right before he leaves his house for a new one. I was in second grade when we moved here, and in fifth grade when we started having problems with him. Now, as I begin to move into junior year of high school, I doubt I will still live in this house the day he finally leaves.
Though I plan to come back home to celebrate the day he leaves if I’m in college when that happens.
39. Just Play Nice
So one day I ran into a former co-worker and we went to get coffee and talk about what was going on since I left work. So his parents have a very large home and were talking about downsizing and getting a smaller home because all the kids are grown and gone. They were talking to some of their friends about it. Well, one friend piped up.
They said they knew about a friend of theirs that might be interested in selling their three-bedroom home and would set up a meeting with them. This couple was getting up in their years and couldn’t take care of their home anymore and were about to put their home on the market and move into a retirement home. The parents liked the home, so a deal was made and everything started falling into place.
The parents put their home up for sale and the elderly couple said that they would need two months before they could move into a retirement home. They said that would be no problem because they were in the process of selling their home and they had a few people interested and were waiting to see who would make an offer. Well, the offer was made and their home sold.
They had to put some of their stuff in storage, sold/donated the stuff they didn’t want, and moved into a hotel for about a month. The elderly couple got into a retirement home after a month and a half. The parents had a general contractor go in and make needed repairs and then moved in. Now, this home is on a corner lot. This corner lot is bigger than the rest of the lots in this housing tract.
It has a very large backyard and had a wooden gym set they had no use for. The parents said that this needed to go and called one of their friends and offered it to them since they have young kids. A few weeks later they come over and take the thing apart and loaded it on a trailer. Said thank you, and left. Now it’s the start of spring and it’s getting warm.
One day, the mom saw a strange sight. A few kids come running past their house and towards their backyard. She then hears a loud scream and these kids run back down the street. About 10 minutes later there is someone banging on the door and trying to hurt the doorbell. The mom opens the door and there are two mothers, with a bunch of kids behind them.
She asked what they needed and they said they wanted to talk to the elderly couple about what happened to the wooden gym set that was in the backyard. The mom said that she and her husband now own this home. Well, it went from 0 to 100. One of the mothers cut her off and said that she didn’t believe her and that she must be a caregiver or something.
She demanded to see the elderly couple. Again the mom said that they owned this home. The woman cut her off again and said whatever and that the wooden gym set belonged to the neighborhood and that they had no right to have it removed, and what are their kids are going to do now? The mother said that they didn’t want or need it, sorry.
Then the second mother cuts in and said that it needed to be replaced for the good of the neighborhood—and with a bigger one so the kids have something to play on during the summer. The owner said that is not going to happen and since they. were being rude/demanding, she just shut the door in their face. They scream that they were going to call the authorities for theft and sue them.
About an hour later, the inevitable happened. Officers knock on the door and want to know what is going on with a wooden gym set? So, she invited the officers in and explained to them that they now own this home and had the gym set taken out because they have other plans for the backyard and the gym set was in the way. She explained that she didn’t know what arrangements the previous owners had but that was not her concern.
Plus, the way the neighbors just came up to her door pounding and screaming at her was not how to make friends or be good neighbors. Also, there was nothing in the deed/title about the gym set belonging to the neighborhood. They talked some more and the officers thanked her for her time and said that if the two women come back to call and they will come and deal with them.
It seems these ladies have had run-ins before and are well known to them. So, now that the wooden gym set is out of the way, the parents can get some real improvements done. So what better way to deal with hot summers, you got it, put in an in-ground pool and hot tub, and what better time to do this than in the springtime. The digging begins.
Since the house is on a corner lot, all the work is on the side that cannot be seen by the entitled ladies. Besides, they are at the other end of the street screaming at those neighbors to set up their above-ground pools so the kids can go swimming when it starts to get hot. Now, the parents are friends with their next-door neighbors and the ones at the end of the street.
They told them that this goes on every summer and that the wooden gym set was a magnet for the kids and that they were very loud and demanding of the previous owners. This is when the whole story came out. That elderly couple hated the two ladies and their kids, but the women would just strong-arm them into doing stuff like letting the kids on the equipment, make them lunches, etc.
So the mom told the neighbors not to give in to their demands, and that they had a plan. The hole is dug (big hole) and all the workers are staying out of site so the bad moms don’t see what’s going on. A brick wall is also being put up along the back of the property, still leaving room to complete the pool/hot tub. This wall will be about 10 feet tall with a special topping.
If anyone tries to get over it, they won’t be able to get a grip. They also built a wall between their neighbors, including between the two houses. All the gates installed have spikes on top and have special locks. Now the pool is done and the progress on the wall is moving along. When it is done, it will be about three feet from the sidewalk. The water trucks have been and gone and the pool is full.
The pumps are running, lights are something else, and they can change colors! Great for night parties. Now, since the parents like camping, one of the things the wall will block is the spot for their camping trailer on the side of the house. There are two large gates that open so the dad can back the trailer in and lock the gates. There is also a wall between the pool and parking spot for the camper, also with a spiked gate.
For the first time this spring, the entitled moms take notice of some changes that have been made. At first, they are staying back because they are still trying to strong-arm the neighbors at the other end of the street, to get them to get their pools set up. You know summer is right around the corner, and that water needs to get warm, right???
The parents are just counting the days until they come knocking, asking about when they were going to put that wooden gym set back up. Well, are they in for a surprise. It’s the beginning of summer and getting warm. The women are angry that the neighbors at the other end of the street haven’t put up their pools and are making it known how mad they are and having a meltdown.
It’s going to get hot so what are they going to do, they need those pools up. The parents are having a housewarming and a neighborhood pool party and only invited those on the corners by them and those neighbors at the other end of the street. On the day of the pool party, everyone that’s invited is heading over in their swim gear and towels with food.
Everyone is having a good time, swimming, and the BBQ is in mass production with steaks, hotdogs, and hamburgers. Well, the entitled moms come out and go to the neighbors at the end of the street. Would you know it, they are not home, and no pool either. They are mad and then they smell the BBQ and start back up the street. The closer they get, the stronger the BBQ smell is, and the sound of people having fun.
The sound of kids playing and having fun can be heard. Now they think that the gym set is back and go around the side of the house…only to find that the wall goes all the way around, and they can’t see anything. The sound of people talking is being heard and it sounds like everyone is having a good time. Then comes the sound of kids splashing IN A POOL.
They quickly go up to the front door and start knocking and ringing the doorbell. Now the dad is no stranger to these women, so he opens the door and asks what they wanted. They first tried to demand to know why there was such a big wall, second was why they weren’t invited to the party. Third was they were going home to get their kids and come and use the pool. He had the perfect response.
He said, the wall is mandatory by city code when there is a pool. Second, you burned that bridge a long time ago. Third, NO YOU WON’T SHOW UP WITH YOUR KIDS AND EXPECT TO USE OUR POOL. At this point, they started to protest and he just shut the door. They said they were calling the authorities (again) So, about an hour and a half later officers show up.
The dad invites them in and can see the women and their kids across the street all dressed in swimsuits with towels. The officers were led to the backyard and were greeted by everyone, the mom said hello and asked if they liked what they had done to the backyard.
The officers said it was one heck of an improvement. The mom asked if they would like something to eat and have a sit while they talked about the women. Both officers said yes and thank-you and went off-duty for lunch and talked about the women. Other neighbors told the officers what the women had been doing and that this was the last time they would let them get away with it.
No more pools, no more feeding them. They were done with them and their kids. The officers said they understood and couldn’t give any details but they were well known for getting into trouble. They also said that a report would be made, so if need be, they could request a restraining order against them. After about 30 minutes, the officers said they had to get back on duty and said thank you again for lunch and to enjoy your pool.
The parents walked them to the door and bid them a good day. Then came the cherry on top. They stood in the doorway and could still see the moms and kids still waiting across the street. They waved to the officers and closed the door. The mom went back to the party while the dad was still watching from a window. The women ran up to the officers.
They talked for a few minutes, and the dad said he heard them start screaming, and the officers driving away with them just standing there, the kids crying and the moms just standing in the middle of the street trying to figure out what to do next. They had lost the gym set, and now, couldn’t force their neighbors into letting them use their pool and feeding them and their kids.
I think it just hit them that they would have to now deal with their own kids for the summer. The look on their faces was priceless. By the way, there is a spot set aside in the back corner away from the pool for a “wooden gym set” when the parents have grandkids. Now that’s Karma.
40. Picking Sides
I moved next door to a guy called Dave. He lived alone with his 4 rescue dogs. Dave was very welcoming. He knocked on my door the day we moved in and gave me a welcome gift and introduced himself. I liked Dave from that moment.
Dave had disabilities so had a disabled parking spot outside of his house. There was an old couple called Mr and Mrs Love. They seemed like lovely old dears. They stopped to say hi one day while I was painting my front wall. Mrs Love told me to be careful of Dave. Apparently he was an awful man who complains and fights with all the neighbors. He would call the authorities for no good reason and he was cruel to his dogs.
Ok, Wow! The woman across the street told me he was a creep who took videos from his bedroom of kids playing. Another told me he called child protection on them for abusing their kids. That’s when I started to question things.
I'm not one for gossip but it's hard not to be wary when all your neighbors are telling you that the antichrist is living next door. When my dog had puppies, Dave gave me his number and told me to call him any time, day or night, if I needed help. He was slightly deaf and didn't always hear the doorbell.
Dave let me use the shared entry that was also his to store some things that I had no space for. Dave fed my cat when I went away. Dave never complained when my teenage son and his friends were rowdy. Dave told me he was leaving his home to the Dogs Trust in his will, in return for them to take his dogs and rehome them.
Dave looked after my dogs when I was going through something and wasn't home a lot. He never pried. He just supported me by being there. Dave cried when I gave him a Christmas card. He never had one before from a neighbor. Dave helped me move to my new house which wasn't far away, by bringing bits around that I forgot when the movers came.
The parking spot was the reason that the neighbors started a witch hunt for Dave. They said he scammed the council and wasn't really ill. Dave got something that they wanted. They didn't like it. Dave had cancer by the way. Nobody cared to ask. It was easier to start a hate campaign. It took one neighbor to tell an exaggerated story and begin the snowball effect that had Dave labeled as a pariah.
I still see Dave. The other neighbors, I walk past them if I see them around. All of them are the worst neighbors I ever had. I hope the couple who moved in to my house appreciate how lucky they are to have Dave next door.
41. Play It Again, Sam
I doubt that this is the worst, but it's the first that comes to mind. When I was a single mom with 3 kids, of necessity, we lived in a really bad apartment in a seriously bad complex. At the time, it was all Icould afford. I worked two jobs, my kids were in school all day. IN other words, our apartment was quiet all day long 5 days a week at least.
The people who lived downstairs from us did not work. They slept all day and partied all night. Eventually we learned to sort of sleep through the screamingly loud music and other party noise; the cars coming and going, beeping their hellos and goodbyes, front door constantly opening and slamming shut, laughter, yelling and as the night went by, screaming arguments and fights in the parking lot. Every morning we went out and picked up the bottles and cans, used condoms, and worse left in front of our apartment.
Other than a few attempts at requesting that they “keep it down” which was utterly ignored and a couple of calls in the middle of the night to the police with the same request which was also ignored, we realized that resistance was futile and we stopped complaining about it.
After about a year, I inherited a piano from my grandmother. An ugly old upright with the most beautiful sound and a fabulous touch. I was a classically trained pianist but at that point in my life I could barely afford my rent, a piano was out of the question so this was a huge deal to me. Once it was moved into the apartment I couldn't wait to play, my fingers twitched with eagerness.
The instant the movers left, I sat down and Hayden sonatas just poured out of me. About 15 minutes in, there is a banging on the floor. Entranced with what I was doing, I ignored it. More banging on the floor. Over and over. One of the kids brought it to my attention. Laughing, I said that at that moment, I just didn't care. They laughed with me and I played on.
After about 30 minutes, the doorbell rang. One of the kids answered the door then called for me. I went to the door. It was the husband of the downstairs neighbors and he was seething with anger, didn't I realize that they were trying to sleep? On and on he went about how rude and inconsiderate I was. I said nothing. He ranted and raved, threatened and swore. I still said nothing. He finished with this sentence, “we wouldn't mind so much if it was good music”
Whereupon, I closed the door. Latched it and turned the key, went back to my piano and resumed. This time, Rachmaninov.
Shutetrstock42. Surprise!
The landlord's son hid from the cops in my apartment by entering through the crawl space and going into the bedroom closet. He accessed it through the hole he made using a saw in his apartment closet next door.
Shutterstock43. Call And Reply
A couple of years ago, a new family moved into a house across the street. My kid nephew quickly made friends with their son. Things seemed good…until it went downhill fast. One of the first incidents was with their dogs. They have two aggressive dogs who love to maim other people’s pets and jump on passerbys. They refuse to keep the dogs indoors or in a pen, so the dogs run the neighborhood.
The dogs destroyed all of our chickens (on camera) and are prone to lunging at any cat they see. The father complained to my mom about getting “thousands” in dog tickets, but he still refuses to control them. Their son and my nephew would get along at first, but then their son became violent and wanted to hurt my nephew because they both liked the same girl.
Then once, the kid told me he wanted to kick my dog in the face...“just because”. So he did. One day, my dog was in our side yard and this boy ran over and kicked her right in the face. He did this in front of my nephews and their friend. The dog nicked his leg. He cried and his parents called the authorities, who took my dog away to the pound despite their dog having bit many people in the past and not being taken away.
We later got her back after one of the officers agreed that our dog was defending herself on our property. Any possibly good relationship with these people was over then. Later on, their family was involved in a bad wreck. Feeling sorry for them, we bought balloons and candy for their kids. They were happy to get them and things seemed good again with our neighbor.
We had just lost my father to cancer that week and were desperate to spread any positivity around. The paradise didn’t last. That night, the neighbors had a large number of people over. Everyone was drinking and loud and my nephew had been over there playing with their boy, but we had him come home after the “party” started. Not long after he came home, their little boy showed up at our door.
He asked if my nephew could help him find his cellphone because my nephew was the last one to see him playing with it. Strange, okay, but we agreed—only after dinner was done. He came home and we were eating when the kid and an adult man showed up at the door. “Can he help us find his phone”? “We just made dinner”, I said. “Just ten minutes, please”.
I didn’t want to be rude and so I let him. Soon he came back. No, they didn’t find the kid’s phone. We’re eating again. It’s dark out. All of a sudden, someone’s at the door again. I open it to three adult women. They’ve been drinking and are about to beat down our door. They’re screaming and cussing, saying my young nephew must have taken their phone.
My mother tells them to leave and they won’t. They’re screaming and my mom yells back for them to leave. They keep it up. I try to calm it down by going outside with the women. They are too aggressive. They claim we have the “$1,000 phone” and they “tracked it to our house”. They’re cussing me out more and finally go back to their house.
Jeez. I sit down with my nephew. He’s never taken anything, but I give them the benefit of the doubt and look through his things. He swears on his grandfather that he did not take this phone. My nightmare gets deeper and darker. The doorbell rings again. I open the door to the father. He’s a huge man, probably over 300 lbs, and is so far in his cups that he’s falling on my porch.
He demands to speak to my nephew. I say no. I do not want this adult around my 10-year-old. As if he’s never heard no before, his sweet voice turns violent. He stands straight and begins screaming and cussing. He’s pushing in our door. My mom, me, my teenage nephew, and his teenage friend are holding this man back as he tries to push into our house.
He makes eye contact with our 14-year-old and tells him not to look at him. My nephew keeps staring. The dad shoves me and my mother and breaks in to try and hurt my nephew. We all shove him back outside. He’s cussing us the whole way as he walks into our front yard. In our yard, we see the entire party of people—they’re about to jump us. 20 people, maybe more.
My nephew calls emergency. I demand these people leave. The dad is trying to get my 14-year-old nephew to fight him. What the heck? My mom tells them to get off our property. The man begins to rant at her. He calls her several names, which she ignores. Then he keeps going. “Where’s your old man? Where’s your old man? Oh, that’s right. He’s dead!”
He goes, “I bet he died to get away from you”. They finally go back to their house while still cussing at us from afar. Finally, officers arrived. They weren’t any help. “You didn’t have it on video, so we can’t detain them”, they say. They write some city tickets and say we could go to court and state our case against them, that’s the best they could do.
Even though they broke into our house. Admitted to it. Put their hands on me and my mother. In front of several witnesses. Later on, they encourage us to drop the charges and get cameras for our property instead. Because if we don’t drop the charges, these people will retaliate against us. We dropped it. We were grieving and emotional. We couldn’t handle a court hearing.
Here and there they say something to us, or have their friends do it. Our mailbox was knocked over. Their friends stand in the street and flip us off. They kept making remarks loudly from their porch as we installed the outdoor cameras. After living here for 20 years, we are ready to move. Oh, by the way: Officers found the cellphone that very night. It was in the wife’s purse the whole time.
And no. They didn’t apologize.
44. You’ll Pay Someday
So I have had a very tense relationship with my neighbor for years. 10 years ago, I moved into my current apartment in Paris, which belongs to my parents, when I got an entry-level job. I have since moved up in the world but not paying rent is frankly too good considering how costly it is here. When I moved in, I met my new neighbor. God was it a doozy.
He inherited the place from his mother a few years before. He was unemployed, hit his wife, had a party or a fight at his place pretty much every two nights between 2 am and 4 am, stocked building materials in the public areas of the building, had such a badly-taken-care-of place that once when I sent the authorities there, they came back with social services a few days later because they were worried about his child's health.
For months he forced his door because he lost his key and couldn’t pay for a locksmith, he once tried to force my door open at 5 am because something he had left unattended in the public area disappeared and he thought I had taken it. Anyway, he disappeared a few years ago with his wife and daughter, and about a year ago, has come back alone.
Since then, I’ve been looking for a way to get rid of him for my peace of mind. Boy, did I find one. Note also that the day after his “friends” helped him move back in, someone tried to force my door open while I was at work. One day, while telling some of his friends that they couldn’t just keep forcing the door open instead of making new keys, one of them told me he wasn’t afraid of me since he had already gone behind bars.
So, this weekend, that genius called the authorities. When the officers arrived he explained to them that he wanted the people in his apartment out and they didn’t want to leave. Here is a summary of what the officers were told by both people during the discussion: First, my neighbor rented his place to a man but still lived in the place since he doesn’t have anywhere else to live.
The man had now arrived at the end of the rental agreement but didn’t want to leave. My neighbor failed to notify the authorities of the rental, meaning that he did not pay tax on it and didn’t have the proper authorization for rental, including things like the place having a fire escape. He readily admitted so. He also doesn’t have a document proving the place belongs to him.
See, his mother left it to him in her will. But in France, that’s not enough: Once you pay the taxes on the inheritance, a notary needs to write a new paper to say it actually belongs to you (which costs money). He doesn’t have such a paper and doesn’t even know what it is, which means it’s likely he never paid the taxes on the inheritance.
There is also a possibility he dodged local taxes on the apartment since it’s not in his name. Lastly, it just so happens that in France you can’t just throw someone out like that. See, if they’ve been in the place for more than 48 hours, officers can’t just evict them; they need a judge to order it. Furthermore, you can’t do that between November the 1st and March the 31st to prevent people from being out on the street during winter.
So my neighbor did all that for nothing. Officers couldn’t force the occupant out without a court order and even then couldn’t apply that court order before the last day of March. They growled a bit at everyone for the waste of time and asked the squatter to leave before Wednesday—which he agreed to, since he will have his own place on Wednesday.
All in all, it was a very, very fun evening and I feel like I will have a discussion with the fiscal administration to talk to them about those inheritance taxes.
45. Back Off, Get Your Own Husband
I’m a single 32-year-old female, and I bought my house in September 2020. It’s fully fenced but it’s a chain-link on my neighbors’ (they are in their late 60s) side. She thinks I’m after her husband because I’ve spoken to him three times. She even told me I’m disrespectful for talking to him about mulching the property line and apologizing for my dogs barking.
She has been stalking us, waiting for us to go outside, and then she goes on her back porch and cusses, threatening my dogs. This lady used to baby talk to my dogs and now she threatened to shoot my dog once. Then she waited for me to go outside at 5 am to walk my dog, and she threatened to shoot me if I ever walked onto her property.
At this point, I called the authorities. They agreed she is nuts, thinks everyone wants her husband, lied to them, and said she feels threatened for her life, and then they basically told me I should call them anytime she does something like that again and to put up security cameras. That evening , I came home to a cardboard sign on the tree facing my house that says “private property, keep off, this is from her husband”.
Then she just reported that my dogs are running at large and she feared for her life (they are always either leashed or in the backyard). Oh, those cameras I ordered? The irony! They were delivered today, but the delivery person delivered it to their house and she won’t give my package to me. What the heck? I put a letter in her mailbox, asking she give it back.
So tomorrow I may have to call the authorities to go over and ask for it. This is insane y’all. Why on Earth would I be after her old fat husband? Ugh.
46. Party Down
We have a main road behind our house and on the opposite side is a street identical to ours, kind of a mirror image estate layout with that street’s version of our house directly behind us but across the road. The set-up is two sets of semi-detached houses with gardens backing onto the road. Ours is the same, back of our house and garden facing their garden and rear house.
The people living there are in their early 50s with a daughter in her 20s. Next door to them, on one side, lives their sister and her family, and on the other side are their elderly parents. Their gardens have no dividing fence so it’s one big space with a pagoda-type thing and a hot tub. Plus a bloody big sub-woofer and professional DJ set up, complete with disco lights and microphones for karaoke.
They have parties literally three times a week. Not just people having a few drinks together but 20+ people screaming, dancing to trance music and singing bad karaoke until 3 and 4 am. I feel like I live in a bad Spanish holiday circa 1999. I'm all for people having fun and could put up with it within reason, like on a weekend or something, but these people are doing it on a Tuesday night.
I have work and a toddler and “Vengabus” being played on repeat at 2 am was frankly making me contemplate dark things. Complaints to the council were useless. In five years, they've not done anything other than send letters and interview their neighbors on either side, who are related to them. Their latest party was significantly bigger than usual.
47. You Don’t Scare Me
My neighbor who has been after me because he's bored as heck had the Geek Squad install a Ring floodlight pointed directly at my house. It switches on every time a car goes by. Good thing Halloween is around the corner. I bought some of that stretchy cotton-like spider web and stretched it enough to block the camera. I also added some bird reflecting mirrors along with a long strip of reflective roll and bounced that light right back.
Talk about a waste of $200 dollars. However, there’s icing on the cake. I also added a banner that says “scary” that points in their direction since they will be looking in a mirror. Be right back, I'm gonna work on my evil laughter.
48. Keep It Down!
My neighbor cuts wood starting at 7:00 am every morning, including weekends. He stops for an hour or two and then is right back at it. His woodpile is right on our property line and about 20 feet from my office and bedroom. Due to the constant noise, I lost my job for not having a quiet work environment and I can’t get another until this is resolved.
We live in a development in a rural area. I called the township and they stated that they have no noise ordinances but they will discuss it next year. My husband works 12 hours, third shift, and can’t sleep, my son is meaner than the devil due to lack of sleep, and it’s driving us insane. We tried talking to him numerous times and he is apologetic (nice guy) but the next morning he’s on the chainsaw again.
I don’t know what to do at this point in time. Isn’t there some kind of universal rule for noise levels?
49. Caught Red-Handed
This happened about 20 years ago, but it still makes me giggle a bit. We had just purchased a house out in the countryside. The nearest neighbors were 300+ feet away, quiet, clean air, etc. I loved this place. I went down to the local hardware store, bought myself a post and a mailbox then set about getting it installed. There are regulations about where a mailbox must be installed with respect to the hard surface of the road.
There are also some guidelines for how the post should be installed as a safety measure for motorists. Note that mailbox PLACEMENT is a requirement, but installation is guidelines. This is important later. My new mailbox was up for no more than two days. Then disaster struck. Someone came along and hit it with a baseball bat. The side of the box was caved in and my mail was all over the ditch.
I figured it was kids being kids and I'd just replace the box and that would be the end of it. Nope. The new mailbox was up for almost a week before someone homered it. The box was almost 100 feet away from the post and the post had been pushed over. Fine. I'll just build a stronger post. This time, instead of a 6-foot 4x4 post sunk 2 feet in the ground, it was an 8 foot post sunk 4 feet in the ground and set in 2 feet of concrete.
About a week goes by and my mailbox has been hit again and the post broken off. I didn't know who was doing it, but I intended to get revenge. I dug my concrete out of the hole and prepared my nuclear option. I rented a PO Box and forwarded all of my mail there. Using the same 4-foot deep hole, I cut an 8-foot length of 6-inch well casing (large-diameter thick-walled steel pipe used for water wells).
I set my well casing in the hold and filled the hole completely with concrete. Then I filled the pipe with concrete (all 8 feet of it) with concrete. I welded on a crossbar (2-inch square tube) to extend the mailbox to the required position relative to the road surface and mounted the cheapest plastic mailbox I could find on it. Then I really ensured my point was made.
I then got a bread bag and filled it with some old-school red barn paint that I had. That stuff doesn't come off. I tied the bag up really tightly and put it in the mailbox. Sure enough, a couple of days later I happened to be at home when I heard a relatively loud engine coming down the road towards my house.
There was an EXTREMELY loud metallic "CLANG!", and then some screaming, and, finally, the engine noises proceeding down the road and out of earshot. I went to look and found that, as expected, my mailbox had been demolished. There was a large splatter of red paint on the ground. When I looked at the post more closely, I noticed a shallow dent on one side as though the steel had been struck hard by something metal.
Perhaps an aluminum baseball bat? I never did find out who it was, but I did spot a black Toyota pickup truck several weeks later that had a bunch of red paint down the passenger side. I wonder how that got there?
Piqsels
50. Bad Habits
One of the residents at my apartment complex will point a high-lumen flashlight as they pass you or you pass them. He does this to vehicles too. My first encounter with him made me think it was a one-off incident. I got home from work around 10:30 pm with a friend (it's almost pitch black outside) and I noticed him walking his dogs because he had a strobing light.
I slowed down and got far over on the street. As I passed, however, he switched to a blinding light and pointed it directly into my car's cabin, blinding me and my occupant. As I mentioned, I thought this was a weird, one-off incident. Well, it soon turned much worse than that. Tonight I was walking my dog and saw him point his high-powered flashlight at other vehicles as they passed.
He was walking on the grass adjacent to the road. We walked past each other and in passing he would periodically point the flashlight directly at my face, going as far as to turn around and continue to do it. Definitely not a one-off thing. I eventually told our office about this and the main lady said, "Is he doing it again?!?" So they know about him from previous experience.
51. Taking More Than His Share
Approximately four years ago, I finally convinced my husband to make the move to Florida. The kids are grown and on their own so we made the leap and bought a wonderful (little) house close to the beach. All is well and good. We meet the neighbors and get along with all of them. I’m very happy at this point. My backyard fence is vinyl on three sides and wooden between me and my neighbor on the left, Andrew.
We had planned on changing it to vinyl but hurricane Irma beat us to it. Knocked it down pretty as you please. It took me about three months to save up for the materials and labor costs of my new fence. I like to pay cash if I can. Anyway, Andrew and my husband are unloading my new fence and out of nowhere Andrew says, “I don’t know why you spent all this money on the fence, you can’t put it up”.
Wait, what? What do you mean I can’t put it up? He then proceeded to tell me that the property line between us ran right through the middle of my shed—which the fence had been attached to and where I planned on putting the new fence. He also said that the neighbor on the other side of him put up a new fence while he was away and when he got home, he made her take it down!
You have got to be kidding me. Insert eye roll. I, however, am not so easily intimidated. I was actually quite mad. Having so recently purchased the home, I called the surveyor and explained what was up. We set up an appointment for the following week. Immediately when they pulled up and got out of their vehicle, Andrew runs over talking about “Y’all can’t be on my land. This is private property”!
The boss man of the crew was very polite as he explained that they could and would be on his property to settle the dispute over property lines. If he didn’t agree with their findings then he was more than welcome to hire his own surveyor and proceed to take it to court. Boy howdy, he was angry. I found out that my property line was 22 inches past the shed, where the original fence had stood.
52. Meet The Looneys
My boyfriend and I moved into a “nice and quiet” neighborhood about six months ago. We chat with a few of our neighbors here and there, especially while walking our dogs, and are friendly when we encounter anyone, but we mostly keep to ourselves. Showing up at someone’s door with a basket is just in the movies, right? Two weeks ago, I got out of the shower and heard my boyfriend talking to someone in the entryway.
I peeked out and saw him nervously talking to a woman. I had just taken my glasses off, so I was extra blind and didn’t recognize her. I assumed because she was standing inside our house that my boyfriend knew who she was and carried along getting dressed in our bedroom. I have never been more wrong in my life. A few moments later, my boyfriend shouts out to me and asks if I know what’s going on.
“No, I thought you were going to fill me in on what’s going on”. The woman is chiming in now with short cryptic phrases like “Oh really? You don’t know who I am? You should know exactly why I am here”. I have severe anxiety, so my mind was already starting to race and I was trying to place this woman’s face. She seemed vaguely familiar, but in the context and confusion, I couldn’t place her.
My boyfriend keeps asking her who she is and she gives no indication of who she is or why she is there, but keeps insisting that we know what’s going on. He finally asks that they step back outside to talk. I can’t believe the woman’s reaction. She reaches behind her and LOCKS THE DEADBOLT with a smirk on her face. I thought things were about to escalate, so I start looking around for something to grab.
When I see nothing, I just shout for my boyfriend to quickly open the door himself so she can just leave. He follows her out of the door while she is still rambling. As soon as they step outside, I realized who she was. She is a neighbor! Her backyard is diagonal to our backyard, and I see her from afar here and then while walking our dogs, but she never comes anywhere near, smiles, waves, or even makes eye contact.
Now I’m even more confused, wondering if our dog had dug a hole under the fence and she came to chastise us, or what? My boyfriend comes back in and I ask how the heck that all started. He said he didn’t have the slightest clue who she was, or why she was here. I said, “she must have given you some kind of reason for you to let her in the house”. His next words chilled me.
That’s when he said, “I didn’t let her in…she rang the doorbell, I started to answer the door and she pushed in and shut the door behind her”. I felt panic flooding my brain. What did we do? Did we offend her in some way? I decided to text my neighbor whose backyard directly faces ours and asked how well she knew her next-door neighbor, and gave them a brief summary of what had just happened.
She responded quickly that a few years prior, the woman fell and cracked her head open and had gone through multiple brain surgeries since. Good neighbor said loony neighbor was never the same since, but “friendly”. Not in the list of adjectives I would use to describe our interaction. She offers to give us looney’s husband’s phone number, or suggests that her husband could talk to looney’s husband in the morning.
I accepted both. I had never even seen her husband so didn’t want to call out of the blue with something like that, but figured it would be nice to have his number just on the off chance that anything else out of the ordinary ever happened. Boy, we had no idea what our future actually held. The next morning, Good Neighbor texts me that Looney Husband was extremely apologetic.
He explained she had a seizure earlier in the week and started new meds that caused confusion. He said he would take care of it, and that he was so glad we had informed him. I kept thinking that her behavior did not seem like someone who was disoriented, or confused…she seemed paranoid and hostile, but I still felt sympathetic towards their situation and decided to write it off as a weird evening.
Two days later, I get out of a meeting at work and saw someone ringing my doorbell three times. My doorbell records a short clip each time it’s rung. When I saw the footage, a shiver ran down me. It was her. In each clip, about 10 minutes apart, she would slam the doorbell, then huff and puff and pace around, visibly upset we had not answered the door.
She was peering in the windows near our door. In one clip, she glared directly into the camera for about 20 seconds before hitting the button. So creepy. I texted my boyfriend and sent him screenshots, but we were both working, and after all, she was just ringing the doorbell. Maybe she had come to apologize, but was just not a pleasant person?
Three hours later, my boyfriend was on the way home and I was still at work. She’s back at the door. Waiting, pacing, stomping her feet. (Have you never heard of a 9-5?!) I warned him in case he was close but she ended up leaving. She came back 10 minutes later, though. He was right around the corner, so he drove straight to THEIR house and her husband was outside.
My boyfriend told Looney Husband that this is getting a little weird and we would appreciate if she would stop patrolling our front porch. The husband said he’d take care of it and they had a doctor’s appointment coming up. 9 pm rolls around. I decided to take my dog out for a quick stroll. No more than two minutes after I leave, I see the notification that someone rang our doorbell.
No. Freaking. Way. Yep, it was her. So I started screen recording. I thought SURELY my boyfriend would not answer, but he did. It turned into chaos. She tried to rush towards the open door and he quickly stepped out on the porch and shut the door, which upset her. She said, “Don’t even TALK to me” (again, you rang OUR bell). She continues rambling that she knows everything that's going on.
She says she’s hearing all sorts of things from our house, and he needs to let her in so she can see everything we’re doing, and know everything that’s going on. He jests that he was just folding laundry, which really set her off. She started cursing him out, calling him a liar, and insisting she must come inside. She must know. My boyfriend tried to tell her that he understands her situation.
Still, he said, there’s no need to get hostile. This set her off even more. Looney took his sympathetic statement as an admission of guilt that we really were spying on her. He offers to walk her back to her house and she curses at him some more and then storms off. I had him text the husband the video. We wanted him to see that it was not just confusion.
There was something more serious going on. He said he was on his way home from work and would, you guessed it, “take care of it”. We never heard back from him. We were going out of town the next morning, so we had two days of peace. We came home and for a few days, a little more peace. Maybe we all just needed a few days of space for things to settle, right?
Wrong! The last incident had been nine days ago. Today, I’m at work and I see the doorbell alert. I knew in my gut what was happening. It was her again. I tried to open the video, but the signal in my office is atrocious. I was anxious, so I kept an eye on the activity log. All of a sudden I start seeing things pop up… “Front door open”….“Front door shut”….“back door open”….“back door shut”….”front door open”…“front door shut”…and so on.
I quickly called my boyfriend to see if he had come home from work early. My heart sank at his response. He said no. I told him that someone was in our house, and we needed to get home. I was mainly worried about our dogs. At one point, Looney had made a weird comment about our dog, and we had also just gotten a puppy.
Puppy was crated, but I was worried a door was open and our other dog would be wandering loose, or worse. I sped home and ran in the door. No dog running to greet me and no puppy in the crate. I start shouting for them and racing through the house, shouting all throughout. I felt like the house was spinning. I was sobbing uncontrollably when I thought I heard a faint jingle.
I sprinted for the backyard, and there they were. I have never been more relieved but was still terrified. It had to be her. Was she still there? What had happened? My boyfriend got home, and I tried to load some of the doorbell clips again. The first two were unavailable. But when the clips from about an hour later loaded, I gasped. We saw …paramedics.
Paramedics banging on our door and trying to get in, and at some point, they came inside. Who let the puppy out of the crate?! Could not tell you. Apparently, when the fire department comes to your home they don’t leave a notice or anything? One of the only things I could hear in any of the clips was, “She’s gonna flip again when we call her back”.
Who is SHE?!? You guessed it…Looney Neighbor. We called the fire department and they told us she had called to report someone inside of our address was collapsed from a seizure. I’m not sure if she’s just trying to make our life a nightmare at this point, or if she was just trying to find a way to get into our home. My boyfriend went to talk to her husband and he was still extremely short with responses.
He was also not taking it any more seriously. I called the non-emergency line and they sent an officer out. The officer was not remotely helpful. He had gone to talk to the Looneys first, and then gave us the same lines about “she’s trying new medication”. “He’s going to call her doctor”. I 100% understand how stressful that kind of stuff can be, and I truly do feel bad for them.
BUT, I am also scared for our safety. Every incident has escalated, and nothing has changed. I asked about filing a restraining order, but I knew this was a long shot since they live close. I asked if there was anything that could be mandated about her being supervised, or getting a caretaker. Her husband is a firefighter so she’s completely alone for long stretches of time and is always walking around the neighborhood alone.
The officer told me not to hesitate to call again if she comes back…that was it.
53. We’re Always Watching
My friend's sister has been working on the front lines as a nurse while her husband takes care of their four kids. A couple weeks ago, they finally had the finances to get their driveway repaved. I will mention they have lived in this neighborhood for six years and this is not a HOA. Anyway, yesterday they received this letter from some anonymous neighbors.
"Thank you for finally upgrading your driveway after years of significant deterioration. It's a significant improvement. We are all so happy to see that your family is in a financial position to do this improvement or maybe it took this long to receive enough donations to find this project. Regardless, it's been long overdue. It would also be appreciated if you would give attention to your front lawn.
“Many of us take pride in having weedless lawn and don't appreciate any residents who don't put any effort in keeping the dandelions down".
54. Excuses, Excuses
Long story short, my neighbor Greg was into me. We made small talk once in the elevator and a week later when he saw me walk outside, he chased me down the street and asked where I was going. When I told him I was going to get coffee he asked if he could come. But there was something huge he didn’t know. I’m not only in a relationship, I was also 15 weeks pregnant at the time but not showing at all.
I told him I was meeting a friend for coffee just so he would leave me alone. He then asked our doorman for my phone number, claiming I told him they could give it to him. I wish my door people would have asked me first, but they gave it to him. Ever since then, he has been non-stop texting me, asking me to do stuff. Well, enough was enough.
Finally today I replied and told him I’m moving into a house in October with my long-term partner, that I’m pregnant, and while I think he’s a nice person I’m not interested in spending time together. His reply stunned me. He said lol, you don’t have to make things up just to not hang out. I didn’t even want to sleep with you. I replied and said not making anything up, but ok.
You know, take care and best of luck to you, etc. Now I’ve had multiple people in my building tell me that Greg is running around telling everyone that I’m lying about being pregnant and being in a relationship because I don’t want to date him. I’m shocked that a 35-year-old man is acting this way. The good news is my other neighbors know he’s full of it.
Still, it’s going to be so uncomfortable now if I run into him in person. I feel like I’m in high school.
55. Oh Yeah, He’s A Character
This happened about four years ago now and still is one of the more ridiculous things to happen to me. I was living in San Diego at the time in a small apartment building with seven or eight units. I lived on the 2nd floor. Our building was right near the highway overpass on the outskirts of downtown. We were also very close to the airport flight path, which made our neighborhood pretty loud.
At this point, I had already lived in my apartment for just over three years. I decided to get a cat, got the permission from my landlord, and paid a pet deposit. When I got her through a shelter, she was probably about three months old. One night I was watching TV when there was a knock at my door. I answered, and couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
Standing on my porch were two officers, both with their hands on their holsters, both seemingly tense. They told me they had a noise complaint from my downstairs neighbor and that he thought I was on substances and rolling a bowling ball around. It took me a few seconds to understand what they were talking about. Then I burst out laughing.
"Oh haha, that's probably just my kitten running around". They were not amused. They told me if they had to come back they would have to do something—which is a pretty wild threat after finding out the noise was from a cat. I left a message with my landlord to let them know what had happened. The next day, my downstairs neighbor came to my door to apologize to me.
He said he thought I may have been into some shady stuff because his “army intelligence friends” told him that those noises he heard align with substance activity. That made zero sense to me, but I came to realize this guy wasn't all there. He said he was sorry and was happy I had a cat and that he even had a toy he would give me. Cool, problem solved, right? Oh, so very wrong.
About two weeks later I had officers at my door again. This time, they were aware of the situation and we all chuckled about how absurd it was. However, since they were called, they had to come. They just told me I'm doing nothing wrong, don't worry about a thing. Right around this time, my neighbor began hitting his ceiling anytime my cat ran around.
It got me anxious to the point of having my cat sleep in a separate smaller room so she couldn't run around. This only lasted a couple of nights since she would cry the whole time. I just thought, whatever, I'm doing nothing wrong, we live in a city in a loud area, it’s an apartment, etc. I'm not sure of the exact timeline, but about a week later, I had an officer at my door again.
This time, it was the San Diego County Sheriff. And that wasn’t all. He had a court summons. This neighbor was trying to get a restraining order against me! For what?? ELDER ABUSE. Yes. Because of the noise of a now six-month-old kitten! The court date comes around and I had printed up about 15-20 pictures of my cat to show the judge. I was furious.
My neighbor’s "evidence" was handed to me, which was basically a list of dates and times that he marked down when he heard noises from my apartment. It's legit insane, and five pages long and I still have it. The judge didn't want to hear any of it, just forced us to enter into court-appointed mediation. I'm fine with that, I just want things to improve.
I received a call a few weeks after our court date to let me know that the neighbor refused mediation and that we would have a second court date towards the end of the month. Throughout ALL this time, he was banging on the ceiling and scaring my cat. But then, things took an even darker turn. He started being malicious and would just whack the ceiling in the middle of the night, oftentimes waking me and causing my cat to go crazy and run around.
Finally, the second court date was here, and at this point, I had already decided I would be leaving San Diego. It had nothing to do with this ongoing situation, but it was a light at the end of the tunnel for sure. We're in court, and the judge starts yelling at my neighbor for refusing mediation and wasting the state’s money. I interrupted to say, "Just want to make sure everyone knows this is about the noise my six-month-old cat is making!"
I hear laughter from other people behind me in the courtroom. Neighbor pleads his case, says I am harassing him and making too much noise. I repeat, this is about the noise my six-month-old cat is making. The judge is clearly angry that this old man is wasting the court's time and said that we must enter mediation. I tell him—I'm sorry, we shouldn't even be here.
“I'm moving out of state in just a few weeks, and again, this is about the noise a CAT is making". Again, more chuckles from the courtroom. To this, the judge replies "Oh. Well, if you don't end up moving then you'll need to come back to court". I said ok, and was ready to be done with all this. My neighbor tried to have pleasantries with me at that point but I just ignored him and walked out.
I wish there was some sweet revenge at the end, but really, I never spoke to him again and my cat and I are living happily in an apartment where she can run around to her heart’s desire and no one can tell her otherwise! By the way, during this entire ordeal, my landlord did nothing to help me out. The most he did was just chuckle and say "Oh yeah he's a character".
LibreShotSources: Reddit, Buzzfeed, Quora
