From nosy creeps to full-out Karens who terrorize everyone and everything, these horrendous neighbors made people's lives a living nightmare.
1. Caught Red-Handed
A few months ago, I started noticing how my internet speed was really low. Well, today I downloaded a Wi-Fi scan tool for my cellphone and guess what? I saw three devices (all cellphones) that I didn't recognize. I got so angry because I hadn’t been able to download/watch movies, games, etc because of lag. That’s when I decided to change the password.
15 minutes after doing it, I heard some neighbors (kids) start to yell something like "What the heck happened to the internet?" "I can't connect again..." and more things. Like, really? You thought I'd never realize that you took my Wi-Fi?
2. I Didn’t Hear Anything, Did You?
My old neighbor made me question my own sanity by drilling holes in his walls many hours each day for almost two years. When we confronted him he denied drilling and asked what was wrong with us, even suggesting therapy and psychological help. He was a nice and well-spoken guy too.
So after two years, he moved out and our landlord told us that he had done some substantial damage to his apartment by drilling all the walls, floors, and ceilings full of small holes. He was sued, acquitted due to mental health problems, and institutionalized for severe schizophrenia. Our landlord told us after court that the guy had drilled to find government spying devices...
3. What Nightmares Are Made Of
My crazy neighbor from two neighborhoods back thought he was protecting me—but it ended up being the most terrifying experience of my life. He entered my apartment while I was fast asleep and stood beside my bed to make sure I was "OK" after finding my front door had been left unlocked. I woke up to hear him trying to strike his lighter in my pitch-black bedroom (2 am) where I'm supposed to be alone. Without opening my eyes I instantly woke up and began planning how I was going to handle the intruder before he finally said my name and I recognized his stupid voice.
4. Running Water Hero
We have had several sets of crazy neighbors but my favorite was J & Y, an old Cuban couple who got inebriated and fought loudly every night. One time we were late on our water bill, and in the US the water company can cut off your water if you don't pay. The truck comes and the guy gets out and opens the door on the sidewalk, shuts off our water, and drives away.
Immediately J explodes from his house with the largest wrench I have ever seen in my life, (bigger than a small child) screaming curses in Spanish at the retreating water company truck, runs to in front of our house, throws off the door in the sidewalk and turns our water back on. Then walks back to his house, still muttering, and walks in, slamming the door behind him.
Flickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer
5. Caught In The Act
I lived in army housing. They were small apartments, each with a balcony. One day, the lady across from me (who would often invite men into her home when her husband was at work) invited two of the German law enforcement officers in. Well, they were in for a surprise.
Her husband came home early and the two officers vaulted over her balcony while pulling their shirts on.
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. My neighbor is upset that I park ONE car in front of my own house, yet they take all of the parking in front of both of their next-door neighbors’ houses, plus the house directly across the street from them. 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
Our horrible next-door neighbor, an old man, has been routinely fighting with his old girlfriend for years, but from January to March, it ramped up to once a week. 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. The first day, she stumbled through piles of dirt and clay through the lot between us because we didn’t make eye contact.
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. The last item has become prominent with one of the 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.
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 59-year-old British friend was picking me up, but I was not ready yet. 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. Don’t Make A Sound
I moved to my new apartment around seven months ago. Having had problems with parties in my old apartment because the walls were extremely thin, I decided that I would not have them in this one. But I didn’t count on one thing. My neighbors are complete jerks. When I moved in I had a dinner with three members of my family and they complained.
I thought they were being ridiculous but as a gesture of goodwill, I gave my neighbors my phone number so that if there were any problems they could text me instead of coming down. They had then been incessantly texting me, telling me to stop using my phone after 8 pm, and to stop laughing. Might I add, I do not speak very loudly nor laugh very loudly.
Their excuse was that the only room in my house (studio apartment) is under their bedroom. I tried to be reasonable and speak lower, but that didn’t satisfy them and I wasn’t about to whisper in my own apartment. I got to my breaking point after four months of this and I told them to not text me anymore, as they were being ridiculous with their demands and I would from then on consider it harassment.
I had five friends over for the first time this August. All heck broke loose. The husband tried kicking down my door after coming down to complain; I had told him that he could call the authorities because I didn’t care and then closed the door. He got mad because since we didn’t have any music and we were a small number of people, he knew it would be useless.
For what it’s worth, we were playing cards. Now they told me they’ve called the HOA about my being on the phone past 8. I’m so over it.
12. Doing Their Best
I deal with PTSD, social anxiety, and a neurological disorder, so I live alone in a fairly quiet apartment complex. I had some younger girl move in above me, and she sometimes will have her young 6-7-year-old child spend the night. She also loves to run back and forth early in the morning. While annoying, I get it, she's a child and doesn't do it for more than 5-10 minutes at a time.
Well, my neighbor also has this issue of talking outside on the patio just about every night past quiet hours. Her patio unfortunately is right above my bedroom, so I hear everything. The authorities were searching her place last week for some reason and even took her away. I've even had to call the landlord due to a fight that I thought was going to get someone beat up.
Tonight, she upped her game and brought speakers outside to watch a movie on her laptop with someone else. All I could hear was the sound, her barrel laugh, and the never-ending conversation... While I was nervous, I went outside and politely asked them to put on headphones or something as I have to get up early to work and that quiet hours are at 10.
I'm super hesitant to renew my lease despite me living here for nine years. While I'm still shaking a little bit, I'm proud of myself. I work hard to live where I do, and I work hard to lessen my symptoms from what life threw me.
13. Don’t Mess With Me
This happened about five years ago when I moved into a wheelchair-friendly unit. I have parking, but one of the other tenants who doesn’t, James, would constantly park in my car space. Every time I confronted him about it, he claimed not to know anything, but he'd park there anyway. I informed the landlords about this and they sent out constant letters until he finally got the message.
But did he park on the street? Nope. He did something much worse. He started to park his car along the driveway, sometimes blocking my exit. To get out of my door I go down a ramp and then turn onto the driveway, but he would park his car and block my exit. There was no back exit so this was my only way to exit my place. I told the landlords about this and the council parking officer in hopes they could make him stop doing this.
I confronted him a few times and told him not to do this and warned him that his car might get damaged if I try to get my wheelchair around it. But did he listen? Nope. One glorious day when I needed to leave, I saw his car parked halfway across my exit. There was JUST enough room for me to get around, but I knew I would scrape the side of his car with the side of my power wheelchair if I tried to get around it.
I had two options: stay home and miss my appointments or try and get around his car. I went with option B. Before you have a go at me for damaging his car, it was an old beat-up tin can that already had some scratches on it. What's one more? When I got home, I couldn’t believe my eyes. His car was still parked there! So I called a tow truck company and told them there was a car parked and blocking access to my home.
I don't like using my disability to my advantage but I'd had enough! The call went something like this: ME: "Ah, hello? Um, yes. I'm so sorry to b-b-bother you, but I'm in a w-w-wheelchair and I c-c-can't get into my house because there's a c-c-car parked there. It's my n-n-neighbor and he won't stop p-p-parking there. I n-n-need to get inside." "Oh my god, what?? What's the address? We'll be right there!"
10 minutes later, the tow truck arrived. He saw the car and me, stuck out in the driveway with tears (dramatized for effect) in my eyes. Not long before the driver was about to tow the car away, James came out screaming "WAIT!! WHAT AH YA DOIN??? THAT'S MY CARRR!!" The rest was him yelling inaudible sentences asking why his car was being towed and threatening to sue the tow truck company.
He moved away about two years ago, but in the remaining time he lived there, he parked his car on the street.
14. The Spite Light
My husband and I recently moved into a house that was previously owned by his parents. The neighbors on one side were friends with his folks. Small description of the layout: Our garage door points to the side, so it points towards this couple’s house. It happens that their bedroom window is facing the garage door. Above our garage door is a small light that illuminates our driveway.
Both my property and my neighbors’ are on a full acre in the county, outside city limits. They have complained about that light since his parents owned the place. They have complained about quite a few things since we’ve moved in, and for the first bit, we tried to be considerate. The motion light was a big one that they would constantly bring up, saying it was shining in their bedroom window.
We had a large pine tree that blocked it for a while on our side of the property line. They then came to us, asking to cut down the tree because the overhanging branches were making it difficult to pull vehicles through on their property. In an attempt to be good neighbors, we agreed. So they cut the tree down. But in doing so, they left the trunk, saying it was on us to deal with it.
But, because the tree was cut down, now they’re complaining more about the light. We have not allowed that to make us change it. So they’ve decided to put up a privacy fence. Ok, sure. It means we have less to deal with from them. This winter there have been a number of reports of people taking things from cars. And on top of that, we got chickens.
So we set up a ring camera/motion light that faces the back of the property. The light ONLY comes on when someone is in the driveway or near the chicken coop. But by pointing it at the back of our house, their window is also in the path of the light. It’s just in the fringe view of the camera, so I can’t imagine THAT much light is getting in.
And with the angle, it’s also on our bedroom window, almost directly. It hasn’t troubled us at all since we installed it. It had been in for three days when we got a text from the couple. When I read it, my blood boiled. It was basically saying “challenge accepted” and threatening to get the brightest light they can find and point it at our window.
Now it’s been a little over a month. The neighbor was true to his word and put a light on a 12-foot pole with a light on top. He did his best to angle it in our window but missed, not that we told him that. It didn’t really trouble us. He took it down about four days later, never saying a word. Then they called the sheriffs on us! After sending progressively more aggressive and insulting text messages (always from the husband) they resort to calling law enforcement.
The officers showed up, very polite and we talked with them. Showing them the light in question, they agreed that its placement was fine. We mentioned the text messages and the officers asked to see them. My husband showed them his phone. The officers’ entire demeanor changed. They apologized for interrupting dinner and said they would go next door and talk to the neighbors.
We got a text the next day from the wife. It was finally what we wanted. According to her, SHE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT HER HUSBANDS BEHAVIOR. She had been out of town when he put up the “spite light” and made him take it down when she got home. She also didn’t know about the text messages he’d been sending. The sheriffs told them both that my husband and I have enough to make a real harassment case against them.
She would like a chance to talk face-to-face. She spoke with my husband today and it genuinely seems sorted. Who would have thought them calling the authorities would actually help us?!
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. Wake-Up Call
Last night my boyfriend and I were woken up by someone trying to enter a code on our front door keypad, before repeatedly and shaking/banging on our door. Honestly, a terrifying thing to wake up to. My boyfriend yelled through the door for the guy to leave but he kept trying for some reason? So instead he opened the door to yell at the guy.
He told us he rented a room here. My boyfriend just told him again to leave and slammed the door. This morning we checked our ring cam and saw the guy was on his phone at first trying to get the Air BnB address because he didn't have his itinerary. After he was told off twice, his reaction was to scoff about it and say "okay…" in a sarcastic tone, like he didn't just try to break into a stranger's house??
We didn't even know about the rental until we found the listing this morning. Turns out it was the same neighbor who, upon first moving in, lurked outside our guest bedroom window (at night) when we had a friend staying here, got our friend's attention, and asked him through the window what our Wi-Fi password was. Thankfully our friend was freaked out by this and didn't give it to him.
We've still never talked to this guy before and honestly I don't really want to. We're friendly with every other neighbor we've met so far, but is it okay to just write this guy off now?
17. Home Alone
My partner, our children, and I have rented our house for about a year now and it's in a fairly nice neighborhood with mainly older (boomer generation) people who live around us. We hardly ever see our neighbors—we have one across, and one on either side—except the one across from us, but she has always been friendly to us. I am a truck driver so I'm not home a lot.
My partner stays at home with the kids and homeschools our children. We decided yesterday to go on a day trip to a nearby larger city to relax and spend time together. My neighbor across the street saw us loading into the car quite early in the morning since we had a full day planned. About two hours later, our Ring doorbell detected motion.
My partner checked it out to find our neighbor knocking on the door. We asked what she needed. Her answer only made it weirder. She said that she was checking on our children. My partner and I found this odd since we aren't close with the neighbors. We don't even know each other's name. Still, we explained to her that our kids were fine and that they were with us.
About 10 minutes later, officers come to our Ring doorbell saying they had a report of kids left alone at home. We were able to clear it up by letting the kids talk to them via the Ring app so they knew they were with us. We explained that no one was home alone since we all went on a day trip. We continued on about our day and planned to talk to her today about it to ask why.
Fast forward to today and my partner and I walked across to ask what gives. It went from 0 to 60 in no time at all. The neighbor gets in my face and accuses us of leaving the kids home alone frequently (we don't ever). Her evidence was that when we get groceries delivered, we have the kids bring them in from the front porch while we put them away in the kitchen.
It should be noted that there is another kid around my kids' age in the neighborhood who roams around from house to house unattended and unsupervised, but no one seems to mind him. How all of that translates to us leaving our kids home alone I do not know but I just needed to vent. We told her not to speak to us anymore so hopefully that will be that.
18. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
So my husband and I purchased our first home in a suburban southern area a few months ago. It’s not going great. I adore my home, of course, but my neighbors are my opposite. This is fine but they've made an effort to show their disgust in us. To start, I have epilepsy and I smoke medical marijuana for it. This has been an issue for my back neighbors, who are an elderly conservative couple.
My neighbors to the left, at this very moment, are talking very loudly in their backyard. I was sitting here reading when they came out. So far they have complained about my dogs because their dogs attack the fence now—my dogs do not and the fence is their fence. Their dogs already broke one board from slamming into it simply because my dogs are here.
They also made some judgements on us about how my husband and I look. Then they went into me personally, questioning if I have a job because I’m home all the time. So I just loudly said, "I work from home, and you know I can hear you right?"And they went inside. I’m so bummed about this. Where I lived last, I was friends with all my neighbors. I literally already spent 50k on this house and my neighbors suck.
19. The Woman In The Window
I’m a woman in my early 30s, living alone. My next-door neighbor is also a woman in her early 30s, living alone. We live in a typical suburban neighborhood. Long story short, I noticed pretty early on that she’s OBSESSED with her property lines, as I witnessed her yell at another neighbor about it roughly a month or so after she moved in.
At that time, I thought to myself, “Okay, this woman is nuts, but she’s not gonna become my problem, because I never go anywhere near the property line”. I don't even spend time outside in my own backyard, because I still have to build myself a patio. So I figured I’ll just be friendly with her, and she’ll see how chill and easy-going I am, and we’ll be cool with each other. Well, I was wrong.
Come December (after our first big snowstorm), my plow truck driver plowed my driveway. She flipped out, telling me that some of the snow that was moved during the plow job had rolled over onto her property. Then she actually said, “I’m going to draw a line in the snow, and if anything goes over that line, we’re gonna have a problem”. Oh boy, here we go.
After that, I tried to explain to her (in a stern but polite manner) that the snow was not on her land, and that I was on a work call (we both work from home). Then came the terror. She reacted to that by marching over onto my property and screaming at me on my own front porch. She screamed in my face, in a manner I had never seen before.
She demanded that I "take a walk" with her to examine the snow so that she could prove some of it was on her land. I was feeling pretty threatened at this point, so I said, "I'm not walking anywhere with you". Then she screamed, “then we’re going to have a problem! Do you understand me”? I said nothing, because I was in a state of complete shock.
I just stared at her, in amazement. And then she leaned in and screamed this blood-curdling scream: "DOOO YOOUUU UNDERSTAND MEEEE”??!! So I slammed the door in her face and decided to avoid her at all costs from then on. She was just getting started. In the days that followed, she proceeded to shovel her driveway, and the sidewalk in front of her house screaming at me and my house the entire time she's shoveling.
She can see me through my window, as the desk I work from faces the window. Come spring, I go for walks with my friends in the neighborhood when the weather is nice. She ran at us with a weed whacker as we passed in front of her house, screaming, “you start your walks when you think I’m inside?! You can’t avoid me”! I filed a report after this incident.
On her more calm days, when she’s not doing one of those screaming episodes, she'll go outside whenever I go outside and pretend to work on a bush that’s on our property line. I hired a landscaper to cut my grass, just because I don’t feel comfortable in my own yard. She went outside on my landscaper’s first day on the job and talked to him about me.
Basically, I can’t do anything at my house without her reacting to it or somehow finding a way to insert herself into the situation. She makes everything her business. On her best days, she’s just behaving in a nosey, annoying manner, but on her worst days, she's screaming at me and making me feel threatened. And there’s a kicker. She also never leaves her house to go anywhere, EVER.
She has her groceries (and anything else she needs) delivered to her house. She literally never gets into her car to drive anywhere. She is ALWAYS home. Waiting, watching. And before you say it, no, I’m not selling my house. I was here first, and I put so much money into renovating it to make it into my dream house. I refuse to be run out of my own neighborhood.
Oh, and, I’m getting a privacy fence put up next month. I don't really like the look of fences, but I don't think I'll be comfortable going into my own yard until I get one.
20. Drive-By Headache
This lady is targeting us in our neighborhood. Just at all hours of the day, she drives by or pulls into our driveway and lays on her horn. She tells our next-door neighbor that we party all night long and harass her and that her uncle owns our house and we never pay our bills. None of which is true, and we’ve been in this house for three full years.
Well, let me tell you, eventually I documented every time she’s driven by, blaring her horn. It was a grand total of eight times—twice a week every Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. She pulled into our driveway about an hour ago. I immediately flew into protection mode grabbed my phone and poked my head out the door. I asked in my most acidic voice "Can I help you”?!
She says “Yeah, where are your kids that always run around here”? I say “I don’t have kids. This neighbor and that neighbor have kids, we do not have kids that run around”. Then my husband pokes his head out and was about to tell her to get off our property. She starts backing out and says “I'll be back with officers”. I said “go for it” and whip out my phone to get her license plate.
Go figure it was on selfie mode, but I read her numbers over and over, committing them to memory. I rush inside and write them down. My husband then calls the non-emergency line and we get an officer out here in 10 minutes. We tell him about her, and I show him my calendar of all the times she’s driven by/pulled in. We also got backup.
Our next-door neighbor lady comes out and confirms our side of the story and tells him whereabouts she lives. He leaves to go talk to her and comes back with an exasperated smirk on his face. What he told us infuriated me. Apparently, she wasn’t targeting us but our next-door neighbor. She claims that their 17-year-old son, which they don’t have, snuck into her house and put cameras up to watch her.
She is actually delusional. Anyway, the officer said she would stop so fingers crossed. If not they have it on record.
21. Ulterior Motives
My next-door neighbor was always creepy. He always asked us to come inside and play with his cats. Then, when he was moving out, he offered me an Air Force One jacket. I was about 10 at the time. He said that if I wanted to get the jacket, I had to come with him to get it from some guy's house. After I told him I needed to ask my mom, he disappeared.
To this day, I think he wanted to abduct me.
22. My Way Or The Court Way
My family's neighbors took my parents to court because they didn't like that we bought two unused laundry rooms to enlarge our tiny 38 square meter flat. When they couldn't do that anymore, they invented a story where we played basketball in our flat on the night of Christmas Eve. This, they claimed, happened while we weren't even home and had multiple pictures to prove it since we were visiting grandma for Christmas.
23. No More Room In The House?
There's a woman in my town who has a house but lives in her car, in the driveway of said house. A car that, I'm almost certain, doesn't even run. She's seen at least once a week walking around our neighborhood picking up any trash she finds, which she then brings back to her house. She then throws it in a huge pile in her backyard.
The pile is so big, it could probably fill an industrial-sized dumpster. It's a miracle she hasn't been fined by the township for it, or maybe she has we don't know. She's never spoken to anybody. We are not even sure if she can speak. We have attempted to ask her questions, but she just smiles and continues walking. Weird.
24. Caught In The Middle
My neighbors had...problems. They had constant, nightly blowouts and physical fights. They were together but not married, so they were constantly on and off. The dad was an avid drinker and the officers knew him by name. Once, when we were sleeping, we heard the screaming and cries of their son (who was my little sister's best friend). A minute later, the boy was knocking on the door for my mom to help.
She pulled him inside and a few minutes later the mom showed up, bloody and beaten up. She asked my mom to lock the door and held onto her son. She wouldn't call the authorities out of fear they'd take the son, so my mom pulled the couch out and made them a makeshift bed. She locked the door and made the mom food while my sister and the son slept. But that wasn't the end of it.
About an hour after they'd showed up, the dad started kicking our door and screaming. My mom fought with him through the door for over an hour, and he eventually left. My mom then arranged for a place for them to stay in a women's shelter an hour or so away and brought them there the next night after he thought they'd already left.
She spent two weeks sneaking as much as she could to them until she found an apartment back locally and felt it was safe for them to come back.
25. One Man Home Improvement Project
I lived in a really nice suburban neighborhood and the diagonal across-the-street neighbor was always strung out. He would be in his boxers in his front yard literally at all hours of day and night. He would water his front lawn over 10 times a day, cut the lawn with a hedge trimmer for hours on end and it'd look terrible afterward.
He also tore down his backyard fence and painted his house in multiple colors. He took down all his blinds and keeps his windows open 24/7. He would also keep his garage open all day and night. It was the strangest behavior I have ever seen in my life. Luckily, he was taken away after his wife had had enough of his behavior, I guess.
He alone turned a nice quiet street into the most stressful living situation I have had in my life. He would passively harass my wife and I as we walked down the street. He would also shadowbox in the corner of his lawn closest to mine or rap out loud with his phone at full volume in the quiet neighborhood and only when we were outside the house.
26. Don’t Drink The Water
I lived in a suburban town in New Jersey before I went away to university. There was this one field behind a church that all the town kids used to go to hang out at. There was a jungle gym, four baseball diamonds, a basketball court, a concession stand that was open on the weekends, and a big open field to run around in.
The only issue was that there were only two ways to get into this field, and they were about half a mile away from each other. Therefore, if you didn't want to add an extra 10 minutes to your journey, then you had to walk past the "water guy's" house. The water guy would stand outside his house every day from March until October, straddling a bicycle and saying, "Don't drink the water," to anyone that walked by.
His voice was very reminiscent of Hector Herbert from Family Guy, although not quite as high pitched or whistle-y. It got so bad that parents complained to the town. However, being weird isn't an actionable offense and he never did anything but stand on his lawn and say, "Don't drink the water" to passersby. This went on for the entire time I lived there. He was by far the weirdest guy I have ever seen in my life.
27. The Dog Days
My current neighbors are the worst. I'm in the Navy and so I'm often away, leaving my wife to deal with things alone. Our neighbors recently got a Staffordshire Bullterrier and rather than walk it, they would just throw it into their yard to do its business. After a while, it ran out of places to go in its own garden, so it started to jump into ours to take a dump.
My son is also scared of dogs, so he feels unsafe about going into our own yard to play. Since I'm at sea most of the time, there isn't a great deal I can do apart from telling my wife that I'll deal with it when I get home. But now the dog is growling at my wife in our own yard as it spends so much time there that it probably thinks it's his. I told my wife to leave the gate open and if the dog jumps over, it can go outside to do its thing.
The next day, my wife opened the door to a man screaming at her and calling her a witch because his dogs ran away and might have been run over. He then threatened my wife and son over the issue and left. So my wife called the authorities and to her astonishment, the jerks next door said we were being unreasonable by not letting their dog do its business in our garden; our property.
Anyway, he got a warning from the officers and an order to control his dog by building a fence or risk having it taken away by the dog warden.
28. Wiping Away Evidence
We had a house blow up in our neighborhood years ago. It turned out they were cooking stuff, and it wasn't dinner. A few days after the initial boom, we were all surprised to see a fire raging in the same house. It turned out that one of the guys not home at the time of the first blow-up got the brilliant idea to come back days later to commit arson.
He reasoned they wouldn't have started the investigation yet and he could burn the evidence from the last fire with a new one.
29. Sweeper Swiper
We have this one family on our block. There must have been at least 10 people living in a modest-sized row home. Once when it snowed heavily, I had to dig my car out with my shovel and I also brought a broom to sweep it off. I barely got my car out, but I left the shovel and the broom next to my spot which was right in front of their house.
I forgot it at first, so I figured I would just circle the block and pick it up. Sure enough, I came back around and the shovel was gone and standing where it used to be was their 12 or 13-year-old daughter holding my broom. I asked her for it back and she started telling me I had to prove it was mine. At this point, I was furious.
I told her to leave the broom and get her parents. Of course, she ran inside with the broom and locked the door. I started pounding on the door for 10 minutes. No one answered. I was confused as to why anyone would want to take a broom! My only hope was they used it to clean the mess they lived in. I knew this because their front door was always wide open when they were outside. Luckily, they moved.
30. The Pesky Beggar
I once had a neighbor in college who would knock on my door and ask me for money. I would just say that I was a broke student who couldn’t spare anything. It was weird as heck because it was a weekly occurrence at the least. She was in her 50s and working, so I didn't understand why she would do that. One day, I got fed up, so when she knocked on my door, I said, "Yeah, I got some money for you."
I asked her to hold out her hands and gave her like, two dollars worth of nickels that I had in a change jar. Surprisingly, she never bothered me again after that.
31. A Man’s Castle Is His RV
I have a neighbor who speaks with a Western Massachusetts Hilltown drawl. He renovated his house so that it is now at least one-half auto garage, so he could park his RV inside during the winter months. He would get sloshed and drive his daughter's Barbie power wheel around the neighborhood, often ending with hilariously injurious results.
He would often yell at people driving too fast down on our street, every so often kicking the doors or tail lights of said violators. Apparently, he has lived on the same corner of the block his entire life, having grown up in the house right next door to his current one. Overall, he is a pretty helpful dude and totally rocks.
32. Stop! In The Name Of Law!
My neighbor pulled us over pretending to be a police officer, saying that we had somehow broken the law while pulling out of our driveway and that she was “going to call it in.” She isn’t a cop. After chatting with the other neighbors, it turns out she’s just the “wannabe HOA president” in a neighborhood with no HOA. So, mostly harmless. Just very annoying.
33. Problem After Problem
I lived on the top floor of a sketchy house in college because it was the only place that would let seven of us rent together. The first week we were there, the SWAT team did a raid on one of the units below us. They busted in the door and used flashbang grenades on them. One of the other units smelled like urine and constantly had people coming in and out buying illicit substances.
Our keys barely fit in the lock because people had tried to pick them so much. Our cable and internet stopped working, so we called the cable company to check it. The guy took us over to the box outside and showed us nine different lines that were ripping our internet. I could go on and on. On the plus side, we could shoot bottle rockets in our hallway because it wasn't like anyone was going to call the authorities on us.
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34. Can’t Get Better Than This
Our next-door neighbor was the nicest guy in the whole world. He's an old Vietnam Veteran who connected with my husband and me because he found out we're both Veterans, ourselves. Every week he brought home freshly baked bread rolls from work and would give us a big bag full. He would also invite us to bring our two-year-old son over to check out the latest model plane he built.
He would always offer to help me clean my car off after a snowstorm, and he is just generally the nicest guy ever. We would try to repay his kindness by bringing in his mail when he would go visit his daughter and by bringing over baked goods that I've made. He's just the kind of guy who brings out the best in anyone he meets.
35. It’s A Plant
We lived in a four-plex. At the end of our driveway was a eucalyptus tree that occasionally shed its seed pods which are shaped a bit like a sleigh bells, about the size of a quarter. Evidently, she slipped on one and broke her foot. She kept trying to get my kids to admit they had placed the eucalyptus seeds there as a booby trap and that they needed to pay her bills.
My kids were six and eight, by the way. I told the kids not to talk to her. So, then it became this rant about how my kids were so disrespectful and her grandson would never ignore a grownup like that and get those kids out here right now to apologize! But, she'd say this on repeat. One time I just stood there listening and she repeated herself for 20 minutes.
It was truly bizarre. Eventually, her hoarding caused a rodent issue so I had to call the landlord. She got evicted but I didn't feel bad because she owned another house. In fact, the only reason that she was renting and was living there was because of her hoarding too. Simply put, she had hoarded so much at the other house she couldn't live there since there was no room.
36. Doorbell Bandit
We had a neighbor of ours—a retired officer in his 50s—doorbell ditch us for around a month. The crazy thing is we never knew it was him. Apparently, he was mad at us because we had a dog that would bark and disturb him. He never told us about this, so I didn’t feel too bad about his little prank. But we did want to catch him in the act at least once, just to spook him a little.
Finally, one day before we were moving out, he doorbell-ditched us. My wife and I looked at each other dead in the eyes, and without a word, I sprinted out the front door. She, on the other hand, went out the back door. We had this unspoken thing where we were like, “Let’s trap this jerk!” I was so impressed that we did this without needing to say anything to one another.
I caught up with our shirtless neighbor and he put his hands up, saying, “Okay, you got me.” I said, “Dude, what the heck? Why are you doing this?” He was tipsy as heck, and he proceeded to tell me about my barking dog. He apologized and said he should’ve told us about it.
37. Window Watcher
There used to be an old lady who'd lean out her second-floor window every day, just watching the neighborhood. She would just stare at everyone for hours. Last summer she stopped and we assumed she'd passed away. Then a couple of months ago I saw her again. It turns out she and her housemate don't use the upper floor anymore.
I guess hanging out the lower windows is less appealing. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed seeing her being weird until she wasn't there anymore.
38. Dogging Your Steps
My old downstairs neighbor blocked my car to tell me that she was reporting me to the authorities for injuring her dog. Apparently, we were so loud the night before that her dog jumped off the bed and injured its eye and was now blind. The funny part is that we weren't home the night before. We had stayed at my brother's house.
She also used to follow me around with a camera, yelling things at me about the dog situation. She also posted letters in the public areas outing me as gay and calling me a sinner, even though I'm straight and, at the time, lived with my girlfriend who she had met. So, not entirely sure how she came to that conclusion.
She was a character. They kicked her out of the complex shortly after.
39. Downstairs Disturbance
I rented a house that had a rental basement suite. It was a one-bedroom, but an adult mom and her two adult sons all moved in there. They would fight, burn their food, and it would stink up our house. But the worst part? The mom had the yappiest dog ever. At the time, my five-year-old son had seen something on TV and told the mom that he heard that yappy dogs have short lives. She got offended and from that moment, she stopped talking to us.
They all eventually moved out, thankfully.
40. Get Off My Lawn (Not Everyone Though)
This older lady lives across the street from me and she is obsessed with leaves falling on her lawn. This is to the point that she will come out of her house and pick up one individual leaf off the grass in the fall, or any other time. She spends hours a day outside with the leaf-blower in fall just blowing the leaves away.
She will go and knock on other neighbors' doors if she thinks you have too many leaves on your grass. She'll even come over into your yard and do it herself if you're not home. What I think is weird is that she's in her 70s, no kids or grandkids living with her, and lives alone in a pretty large four-bedroom house with an amazing in-ground pool in the backyard—with a slide and diving board and everything.
Nobody has used that pool in at least five years yet she opens it up every summer. Somehow, she likes my family and has never once yelled at us about our leaves and, in fact, randomly brings things over like half-eaten gallons of ice cream and asks if we want it because she's not using it. I do not know what to make of it.
41. Slip-N-Slide Set Up
Our neighbor would have a bonfire going every day. One day he decided to put a TV in front of the bonfire and he would put a trash bag over whenever it would rain. He then got a gigantic banner that said something, something "USA" that he used as a slip and slide. He also had a taped-up hose on the side of his house that he would use to water his plants and slip and slide, which were fantastically set up next to his barbecue grill.
42. Right Back Atcha
I had this one downstairs neighbor who lacked any respect for the fact that our building wasn't sound-insulated. He would listen to loud music mostly through the day and sometimes late at night. This lasted for months, but nothing had yet been done by the landlord. One day, though, I think he discovered that he really, REALLY loved Gnarles Barkley's "Crazy."
He decided it was appropriate to play it half a dozen times in the course of an hour, and I just had it. So, being a karaoke jockey and having my equipment on hand, I decided to show him what "loud" was. I connected my speakers to my computer through my console, then I went hunting for the absolute worst "karaoke cover" of that same song.
I remember vividly it was a cover by this creepy fat basement dweller in his late 40s and it was horribly off-tune. I played it with the speakers flat on the floor so he'd get the full brunt of it. I played it three times in a row, loud enough that he would definitely suffer the consequence of his lack of respect. And, wouldn't you know it, he never played that song again.
He started being much more conservative in his volume levels. He left that summer and I never heard "Crazy" again from his collection. I wonder why.
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43. Birds Of A Feather (And Other Things)
The old lady who lived below me left me multiple cryptic letters blaming me for the birds chirping too loudly in the mornings. Not pet birds. The sparrows and other birds outside. This went on for months. The notes were quite accusatory. For instance, one of the notes said, “AGAIN, your bird dodo is on my railings, bird seeds on my porch & chairs, & your birds are ruining my nite rest, wee hours of the morning, birds in your feeder chirping.”
I did not have a bird feeder when I received this note. Yes, for a brief period I had had a bird feeder, but I had taken it down after a few months after multiple cryptic letters. Also, eventually, management had gotten involved and took her side even though bird feeders were explicitly allowed per the lease. So, no more bird feeder.
However, there were several trees nearby, including one that literally hung onto both her and my balconies. I assure you that birds existed before I set up the feeder, and they continued to exist after. My sister and BIL took over the lease four years ago, and they still get the occasional note from "bird lady." Apartment management has even inspected their unit to verify there's no bird feeder or any other bird luring devices.
44. Balcony Boneheads
The balcony people at my apartment complex. There are two to four of them who would always be out on their balcony chatting nonstop. I don't know how they have conversations because it seems like they are always talking over each other. They would listen to a radio station that had terrible reception loudly on the balcony at 3 AM in the middle of the week. I’m pretty sure that is not a requirement for anything.
45. Exam Stress
My upstairs neighbor, who was quiet and respectful for the entire year, decided to crank his music during finals week in my senior year. I knocked on the door twice and asked him to turn it down, only to have him crank it up minutes later. It was so loud that my windows were shaking from the bass. Finally, on the third try, I called the authorities who issued him a citation.
After the officers left, he decided to bring three or four friends over to knock down my apartment door. It took pointing a pistol at them through the window to make them go away. I was happy to be done with college.
46. Silence Isn’t Golden In This House
If the sun is up, my neighbor has to be making noise. Yet, he goes ballistic on anyone who makes even the tiniest peep after the sun goes down. This is what a regular day seems to be for him. From 8:00 AM–10:00 AM: mow the grass, and get out the LOUD leaf blower to blow even the tiniest particle of grass off the sidewalks and driveway.
10:00 AM–1:00 PM: get out the pressure washer to wash the sidewalks, driveway, siding on his house, his boat, his cars, the dog, whatever he can find; break for lunch, but play talk radio in his garage at maximum volume while he eats; fiddle with the engine on his motorcycle, revving it every 30 seconds to make sure it "sounds right."
1:00 PM–6:00 PM: get into a screaming match with his wife, all on the front lawn; fiddle with the motorcycle again; get out the table saw and randomly cut a pile of lumber that he will never build anything with; get out the chainsaw to cut up wood for his fire pit; dinner time...with loud talk radio blasting in the background.
6:00 PM–9:00 PM: pressure wash the sidewalks...again; get out the weed trimmer and mercilessly destroy even the slightest hint of a blade of grass that is too tall; leaf blower time again; and, finally, the last shouting match with the wife, with talk radio playing, until the sun goes down and he is, apparently, done for the day.
And, then…9:05 PM: go bananas at a neighbor (me) for coming home and parking my car too loudly after dark.
47. Slingblade Sorrow
We called him Slingblade. He introduced himself when we first moved into the area. He was in his mid-50s, wore overalls, and lived in the shed behind the neighbor's house. He said he would, "Never bother anybody. Except for some nights you might see me drinking a little and dancing around the burn barrel." Which he did, quietly.
He showed us how to properly use a maul to chop firewood. He also let us know when strangers stopped by when we weren't home. He kept to himself and never asked for a lift to the store that was two miles down the road. One day we saw the neighbor chasing him down the road with an ax handle. The day after that I saw him hanging out downtown with the homeless people. I kept hoping to see him again, but haven't in several years. I hope he's doing well.
48. Heavy Footed
I live in Brooklyn, NY. I recently got my own apartment in Greenpoint. I have a pretty great job in midtown Manhattan that offers a lot of overtime, so I have crazy hours and I commute to work. So, when I leave work late (usually around 11:45 pm every night), I catch the late trains and it takes me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get home.
When I get home around 12:30 am, I’m exhausted—I just kick my shoes off and just throw them and my duffle bag wherever they land (usually on the floor right by my apartment entrance). When I first moved into my apartment, I always heard banging from the neighbor downstairs. I never thought anything of it, and I was always like, “Is this person serious? They’re working on their apartment at 1 am in the morning?!”
It wasn’t until maybe three weeks ago that I realized that he was getting upset about the banging that I was doing over their heads. I guess our apartments are set up differently and their bedroom is directly under my living room? I’ve since become more conscious of the noise I make when I get home—I started gracefully taking my shoes off and placing my belongings on the couch.
Regardless, the person who lives down there has never actually come up to my apartment to address the issue, but I find it hilarious because I just picture them laying in bed cuddled up with a broomstick or something similar and just waiting for the slightest pin drop to jump on top of their bed and start stabbing their ceiling.
49. Hear Me Roar
My previous tenant was super quiet. These new guys scream all night and day at each other and never seem to sleep. Their front door gets slammed no less than five times an hour. Their kid even shows up occasionally to get in a screaming match with her boyfriend before they get back in the car and peel away from the house again. Plus, they have about 10 cats that they released outside the second they moved in and which constantly end up under our house driving our dogs insane. Truly lovely people.
50. Grudge Holding Granny
Our ridiculously awful and crotchety old neighbor had an ongoing feud with my grandparents, who moved into the area over 30 years ago. The woman called the city on my grandfather when he was renovating because she was sure he hadn't applied for permits and wanted to get him in trouble. To her surprise, he had. She then called saying the front yard was a mess.
In our city, if you have a bunch of stuff on your lawn, such as spare tires, car parts, or other attractive things, you can be forced to remove them. We had a full garden instead of a lawn, so we wouldn’t have to mow. The inspector agreed it was ridiculous because it is clearly a garden and not an eyesore. She would also wash her driveway after the rain, wasting water, as well as her car every two weeks. This, despite the fact she was in her 80s and never went anywhere.
She would mow her lawn in diagonal stripes and flat out screamed at her daughter when she mowed it the wrong way once. Every time someone new moved into the neighborhood, she would "warn" them about us. We still have no idea what she would say, but we know she would do it, because of her other feud with a new neighbor.
A young family moved in beside her with their two lovely children—they didn’t know what they were getting into. She would engage in extremely passive-aggressive tactics until things blew up and the man and she got into a screaming match on their front lawns. The neighborhood is well to do. People screaming on their front lawns is something you wouldn’t expect to see here.
While they were screaming at each other, my grandma was out front working on the garden, something she does regularly. The crotchety neighbor decided to call over to my grandmother, telling her to mind her own business. Next thing I knew my grandfather was screaming over to her to mind her own business, as we are on our property.
The man came over shortly afterward and we talked about the crotchety neighbor, and he confirmed that she had warned them against talking to us.
51. Driveways And Fences
My current neighbor wants us to tear out our driveway because she doesn't like the fact that it's on a slant and lets water roll downhill. She’s a loon. When the driveway was put in 25 years ago, it was all done by contractors and it is up to code. She’s threatened to sue us because her yard is at the bottom of the hill. We’re in Georgia and last year we had a BUNCH of rain—like, more than normal.
So of course, she had three inches of standing water. She said she talked to a lawyer and apparently, he said her case was solid. Then, later, she corroborated everything with our builder neighbor across the street. When intimidation didn’t work, we came home to a fence separating our properties. I guess it was supposed to offend us? Anyway, that was the best fence ever!
Guess what they say is true... great fences make great neighbors. She hasn't bothered us since then and we're both pretty civil nowadays.
52. Thar She Blows!
I recently moved out of an apartment I shared with some friends and moved into a new place with my partner. While we were looking, we saw the unit next door to my shared apartment had become available. The apartment was in a great location, and it'd be nice to live next door to my good friends, so I called the number listed but didn't hear back for over a week.
The housing and rental market in my town is always quite crazy, and lately it has absolutely skyrocketed. So, when my partner and I had the opportunity to look at another unit in a different building, a unit that was way bigger and nicer, for the same price as the unit in my old building, we pretty much jumped all over it.
I eventually got a call back from the realtor listing the unit next to my old one. As we talked, I politely told him that I'd found something else but that I had lived next door to his unit and loved living there. In response, he was very smarmy and told me he'd have no trouble finding someone else to rent it. And, I agreed with him. He was so smug—but he wasn't smug after what happened.
A couple of months after I moved out, my friends posted on social media that a fire in the unit next door had evicted everyone else in the building temporarily. There was an explosion that blew out the windows in that unit, and the people living adjacent to it are still displaced, even though it is almost four months since.
My friends told me that the people who did move in were sketchy. They were always yelling at each other, and there was a quiet teenaged daughter (?) who never seemed to go to school. Additionally, theft in the area got worse immediately after these people moved in—mostly cars getting rummaged through. I ran into someone else I know who lives in that building and she agreed with my friends.
It turns out that the accepted theory among the people who live there is the new tenants had a lab that exploded.
53. Clean Freak Ken
When I lived in the city, there was Ken. I only knew Ken's name because when we moved into the house, the landlord said, "Oh, and that's Ken's place." I never met Ken, but I would watch from afar, as my bedroom window overlooked a room in Ken's house. I'm pretty sure it was either his bathroom or his kitchen, which means one of two things.
Either he did his dishes by hand every night as naked as the day he was born, or every night he stood in the bathroom and vigorously scrubbed his junk for sometimes upwards of a half-hour. My girlfriend at the time and I used to get wasted and watch him. Sometimes even in the middle of getting busy, one of us would casually go, "Ken's back," and we'd giggle to ourselves.
The funny thing is, he kept the curtains in place during the day, so I never had a reasonable chance to peek in some more. He kept to himself. We kept to ourselves. And every night he would clean the bejeezus out of something with the curtains pulled back, daring the world to peek in on his proud vulnerability.
54. Open Fire
Just three days ago, the neighbor's dog attacked my dog in the street. My dog was on a leash, while the other dog wasn't—it just came charging at us. Being that the dog looked like a pitbull and was about 60 lbs, and I didn't know if it had diseases. Not wanting to risk getting bitten, I tried to shoot it. Just one shot and it ran away.
The shot woke up the entire neighborhood and the owner came out yelling at me as if allowing my dog, or myself, to be ripped open would have been the better choice. Three officers showed up and it created quite the show. Now I have to go to court for discharging a firearm within city limits. I can't wait to go actually.
55. The VIP Syndrome
We had a woman in my old neighborhood who used to pretend she was a cop all the time. First, I encountered her screaming at the post office staff because she’d arrived past the pickup time and they couldn’t guarantee her letter would be in tomorrow. She was there almost an hour just pitching a fit while they opened the other counters around her. Her rant was along the lines of “Do you know who I am?!” and all that stuff.
The second time that I encountered her she’d cornered some poor child on the bus and was telling her she’d have her taken away because she was an officer and she didn’t like the way the kid was eating a bag of crisps or something like that. Real invective stuff. I stepped in and politely asked if the child knew this person, at which point she backed off.
Anyway, I guess she saw me leave at my stop because I woke up the next morning to find my garden torn up. Total weirdo.
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56. Barefoot And Bananas
There used to be a girl who lived in my neighborhood who was downright crazy. She would always walk around with no shoes on and hated me because I dated someone she was into, who also happened to live in the neighborhood. She came over to my house late one night and harassed me a couple of times, usually when she knew my parents were gone.
When I refused to come outside, she broke a car window with a rock. I’m so glad I will never have to see her again.
57. The Worst of The Worst
I saw my neighbors hang their pet dog on its hind legs to “train” it. It was at 5 pm and my sister and I were chilling at home, watching some Doctor Who. We then heard this really loud yelping outside our house and my sister and I decided to walk outside and peer through a bush and see what the heck was going on in our neighbor’s backyard. When we saw it, our blood ran cold.
We decided to call 9-1-1 and get the authorities over to apprehend the jerk. By the way, it turns out that they have mistreated animals before, but it was only when we caught them that they were taken in.
Wikimedia.Commons
58. I Will See You In Court
An ex-member of our condo board lawyered up and said she'd sue the new member running for her position and the condo as a whole because she claimed he was falsifying documents and was slandering her. When her lawyer saw the signatures of the residents, he laughed and said, "She's got nothing." Only two people voted to keep her and the 74 others voted for the new guy.
59. What Kind Of Wizardry Is This?
We have a guy who was known as “The Wizard of Belgrave.” You would just see him walking around with his walking stick/staff. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night, it could be 7 AM or midnight, he was always walking. We would also see him in different suburbs, over 40 km (25 mi) apart. He would occasionally stop and cast spells on people.
60. Floridian Feud
We moved to Florida and our neighbors there were the most messed up people I've ever met. There's almost too much to get into, but here are some highlights: They threatened to poison our dog, they threw stuff in our yard all the time just to try to get a reaction out of us, and they set up two webcams in a window to watch our house. It goes on and on.
One day, a shoe landed in my pool while I was swimming, so I, being a 13-year-old kid, picked it up and threw it back over the fence. I kid you not, they called the authorities and told a total lie—they said I threw a shoe and it hit their grandma in the head while she was watering her plants. It almost got me in serious trouble.
To this day, I swear we didn't do anything to provoke their horrible behavior. We were friendly with them until they started acting out.
61. Binning It
I once totally randomly caught my neighbors on camera, at 1 am, dumping trash into and onto my bins which were already on the curb for morning pickup. I wouldn't mind a little trash if there's space in my bins, but they put in about twice as much as can fit, causing the bins to overflow and mixing the recycling and compost with their trash.
I promptly returned it, neatly piled on their porch with a note written on a bill with their name and address on it, quoting the county ordnance on dumping (the volume was enough for a $5,000 fine), and that they were on camera. A couple of days later they left an envelope saying, "Sorry, neighbor," with tickets for a concert.
It was a "free" concert in a sketchy venue with a printed invitation that screamed "MLM recruiting event." I wonder if they even understand that what they did is not an apology. I haven't crossed paths or words with them again.
62. Attention Seeker
When I was between 10-13 years old, there was a girl next door who was two years younger than me. Her parents were extremely strange. We hardly saw them. The girl was basically an only child, as her older sibling was about 20 years older than her. As a result, she constantly craved attention from all the kids around us.
There would be times we would all be playing together, and she would just act weird. For example, she would try to lick us or would brag about things regarding her parents. However, the weirdest encounter I ever had with her was when it was just me and her in her house. She asked if I wanted to see something cool, so obviously, I said yes. I’ll never forget what she did next.
She then brought me to her bathroom, where she grabbed a diaper and proceeded to undress her bottom half and put on the diaper. She then had me watch as she pooped herself in the diaper. She even took the diaper off and showed me the poop to prove she had just gone in the diaper in front of me. This may have been the weirdest encounter I have had with anyone, EVER.
63. No Consideration
I can tell so many stories about my current next-door neighbor. One time, she decided she didn’t like the bush that was next to my mailbox, so she tore it out. She also has four dogs and none of them are EVER on leashes. They always run over to everyone else’s yards to do their business, and she doesn’t bother to pick it up. She also allows them to run in the streets, and gives people dirty looks when they need to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the dogs.
I myself recently got a puppy. When I take him outside, I have him on a leash in my front yard. If her dogs are outside, they’ll come charging over, scaring my dog, and he’ll run up the steps to go back inside. I have asked her to put her dogs on a leash so that they don’t come into my yard. Her response? “They don’t like being on a leash,” and “Your dog needs to get used to other dogs.”
Yeah, screw you and your poor dog ownership.
64. Too Loud Up There
My neighbor, an old lady, complained about many things. First, she complained that my “dog ran around at all hours of the night,” even though I never had a dog, or any other animal for that matter. Second, she claimed that I was "always too loud." This despite the fact that I lived alone and I'm in the Navy and would literally be away for weeks at a time.
Also, understanding that I lived in a condo, I had bought an expensive Bluetooth headset to use with all of my devices. There was literally not a speaker in the house connected to an entertainment system. She also complained that the rainwater coming off of my deck would drip on hers, because I apparently engineered the building in such a way that her deck stuck out further than mine.
I sent her letter to the property manager and the strata board, ccd her, and said that the next time she left me a letter like that or screamed through the ceiling at the top of her lungs I was going to charge her with harassment.
65. This Ain’t No Country Club
Some neighbors lived a block away, on the same block as a country club and golf course. Million-dollar riverfront homes would start about seven houses away from them. However, they wouldn’t ever cut their lawn, or clear their snow. They would keep a pile of old mattresses and garbage in their backyard/alley. They would also have 'meetups' in their front yard, complete with cars parked on the sidewalk and bonfires.
I even caught one of them going through my shed last summer at 2 AM.
66. Neighborhood Karen
When I was around 10 years old, my neighbor would occasionally watch me open my mailbox to see if my GameStop magazine had arrived. She would threaten me each time, saying that she would call the authorities on me since it was unlawful for me to check my parents' mail. I actually believed this until I was 15 years old.
67. Privacy? What Privacy?
When I first moved in my neighbor walked into the house, unannounced. Now, when my wife gets home, sometimes she wants to stay in her car having a phone conversation. He will come out and walk down the side of his house, checking his sprinkler controls and looking at my wife. He also has two huge bushes he refuses to cut.
It blocks our view of backing out of our driveway. The fire department came by to clear trees and bushes around the fire hydrants. The neighbor came out and yelled at the fireman. "This bush is older than you!" Needless to say, I just hope there are no house fires.
68. Serial Mower
I lived next door to a guy who would mow his grass every single day. He was nice enough to start at 8 AM, although I think that was only because according to the law, that was the earliest he could do it. Same thing with the rain. As soon as it was over, out came the mower. At that time I would work until 2 AM or 4 AM, so sometimes I didn't get to bed till 6 AM. It sucked, and earplugs didn't seem to help much. I moved out ASAP.
69. The Best Revenge
We lived next to a family when I was younger and they were the worst people. They were loud and obnoxious, always playing their music loudly and throwing trash on our lawn. They also had a Great Dane who would always run into our lawn and take huge dumps, sometimes on our porch. My dad talked to them a couple of times and they said there was nothing they could do.
My dad took matters into his own hands one day and started picking the mess up with a shovel to catapult it back into their yard. But that's not even the best part—they had kids our age who were not very nice. One day, they were playing in a blow-up pool that was placed on the hill. We were watching them play when all of a sudden, the best thing happened...
The whole pool tipped over, and those little jerks went sliding down the hill. They stood up, covered completely in their dog's mess. Best day ever.
70. Water, Water Everywhere
The neighbor behind us had a leak in his water pipe and, rather than fix it, he just had the sump pump drain it out into the back yard. This meant that all year round the back of our yard was a little bit damp. Eventually, the leaky pipe burst and filled the house with five feet of water. His solution to this was just to keep the pump running and flood the entire neighborhood.
After about an hour, a posse of all the neighbors whose yards were being flooded confronted him and called the city to shut off the water. The city fixed the water pipe and the neighbor ended up with a large fine. At least my yard stays basically dry now.
71. The RC Man
I'm in a new neighborhood and THAT guy, thus far, is this guy who is 50ish and has a ton of RC vehicles. He often sits on his porch and speeds them around. I've seen half a dozen different cars and a helicopter. The other day I saw two boys playing with their RC car. One ran over and knocked on the guy’s door. They talked for a minute, and the kid ran back over to his friend and they both brought their car to him. He began working on it, apparently fixing it.
Wikimedia Commons, Santeri Viinamäki
72. About The Garbage
A retired woman on my street follows the garbage truck and moves the garbage cans off the street while the rest of us are at work (because they are an eyesore). This would be fine, except she leaves them in the middle of the driveway, and that's a problem because there is no stopping on our street during rush hour. You either need to park a block away to move the garbage can, then go back to get the car, or risk getting a ticket while you move it.
Since the houses are quite close together, we found out what she was doing for the first time when we turned and hit the garbage can. It was just far enough back that you couldn't see it until you turned.
73. My 30 Seconds of Fame
One time in 2004, my mom participated in a TV show. This was a show where a singer would visit your house and a professional chef made food for both you and the singer. My mon’s neighbor, apparently, could not stand this. So, the result? Well, she constantly yelled at the camera crew and tried to hit their equipment with a broom.
74. Trail Of Destruction
My next-door neighbors had a daughter who was an addict. She would come around fairly often. She looked like Mickey Rourke in booty shorts and would wear an undersized tank top, and had a super bleached, teased mullet. She would usually help her elderly parents with yard work, etc., and was always nice to me. Her arrival, however, was usually accompanied by screaming matches with her friends.
Her little dog would be yapping and pooping everywhere too. There was even paraphernalia left in the yard, and sometimes she and her friends would appear to stash drugs/stolen goods in the shed that was out back. I've seen her mow the lawn in a negligee and nothing else. She would arrive with different people and cars nearly every time she showed up. The rest of my neighborhood was normal, but I swear sometimes looking out my back door was like going to the zoo.
75. Family Feud
One got the authorities called on them because their eldest son was under the influence of something and got into a huge fight with the mom on the front lawn. Turns out, he was also wanted for a number of federal offenses. The officers got to the wrong house and started banging on our house at 1 am in the morning until my very irritated father pointed them to the real home.
76. Let Them Eat Cake
She throws baked goods of all sorts into our yard, bagels, half loaves of bread, German pancakes, literal unbaked dough, all while knowing I have two dogs with sensitive stomachs, and even after I throw the bread back into her yard every time. We finally caught her on camera today literally chucking white bread pieces over the fence and into our yard so I think we might confront her soon.
77. Green Acres Is The Place To Be
My 72-year-old neighbor is the best. He climbed up on my roof in the freezing rain to help me patch it without asking. He let me use his boat to take my son fishing. I came home one Sunday afternoon and he gave me three dozen brown eggs and six pounds of bacon. He has orange and grapefruit trees that he gives me fruit from.
I borrowed a five-gallon gas container from him one time to get gas for my lawnmower. I returned it full, even though I got it empty and he refused to take it back. I had to put the gas in my truck to empty it before he would take it back. I thought moving from the city to the country was going to be bad, but thanks to him it’s the best move I ever made.
78. Case Of The Ex
I heard a really loud banging one evening and walked outside to see a fire extinguisher on the floor and a woman on her phone. I was puzzled, but I put the extinguisher back and went back inside. A few minutes later, I heard the banging again and opened up the door to see the woman trying to beat down the door across from mine with the fire extinguisher.
Apparently, she was the ex-girlfriend of one of my neighbor’s friends and she was trying to find him even though he was quite clearly not there. I called the authorities, and interestingly enough, my neighbor told me she got charged for driving under the influence that night in an unrelated incident.
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79. A Cat Lady (Not So Much)
I have this neighbor lady who makes a big issue out of one of our cats and she can never just leave us alone about it. One of our cats was hit by a car at a young age and as a result, she’s a few cards short of a full deck but for the most part, she functions normally. Well, one time the cat was outside and found its way onto neighbor lady’s porch.
So, neighbor lady brought her over to us and explained that our cat got into her porch somehow. We thanked her for bringing our cat back and made sure to not let it happen again. Everything about that interaction seemed perfectly normal—we were so wrong. We later found out that she had reported us to the authorities because our cat was “very thin and hungry like they were being starved.”
This was even though that cat was a chonker at the time. It turns out she had done it to our other neighbors who have cats too. The cats don’t even have to leave the yard, if the cats are out of the house then according to the neighbor lady they are being neglected and starved. She’s, suspiciously enough, never done such a thing to our neighbor who has dogs though, even though that neighbor regularly plays with her dogs outside.
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80. This Old Man Needs To Go
Our boring suburbia has but one issue—this old man. He has knowingly loaded and pointed a weapon at kids playing at night, tried to poison his neighbor’s dog, and threw boards with nails pounded into them into the bottom of a neighbor's 3-foot pool. He also brings shady people around and was taken in for filming underage kids doing various things.
81. What Could Have Been
My next-door neighbor when I was growing up was bipolar-schizophrenic. He was always doing bizarre and invasive things, like repainting our front door with this awful purple color when we were on vacation. After his wife left him, he parked his car under our balcony, doused it in gasoline, and set it on fire. Luckily, the fire department was quick to respond. But here's the creepiest part...
We later found out he had installed a deadbolt lock on our fire escape beforehand.
92. Free For All
We rented a house from my mom's coworker who grew up in this house and was renting it out. Across the street was Jeanette, an 80ish-year-old lady, who had lived in that house most of her life and knew our landlord very well. Well, because she knew the landlord, that meant she felt she could come into our house whenever she wanted.
She watched us through her window and had every excuse to come by. I have never really locked my doors, but obviously, we started to. It didn't stop her. If she knew we were home, she would ring the doorbell incessantly. Our blinds always had to be down, living room lights off, so she wouldn't know we were home. Just got in? Quick, run inside before Jeanette sees you.
We saw her peering out of her blinds on a regular basis. One morning was my breaking point. The doorbell was going. I hid in the bathroom to pretend that I wasn't home. How did she see me?? The doorbell stopped, but the doorknob kept rattling. She tried for five full minutes to open our door. It probably would have been longer, but I gave up and let her in.
Some of the notable things that she did/said included coming in when my husband was cooking and calling him a good little housewife. She also told our neighbor he shouldn't be dating his daughter. They were, of course, not father-daughter, and were in fact a 40-year-old couple, and there was not actually a big age difference.
Why didn't I tell her to go away? Look, I'm a nice midwestern girl. I can be confrontational if someone is being mean, but she was just...lonely? A tad crazy? But harmless. It's like she was a character from a sitcom...we didn't know these people existed.
93. He Restored My Faith
My neighbors restored all sorts of cars. It’s cool, but not what you want to hear at 4 AM. I went over once when they were working on a car in their driveway to tell them that I thought the car was awesome. I then asked if they could try and be a bit more mindful. I explained that I understood that it is almost impossible to not be loud in that car, but I would appreciate it if they could keep from any unneeded revving and loud music until they got it moving.
If not, I asked if I could trade them cupcakes for a chance to drive it. We had a good laugh and they apologized. They worked nights/early mornings so they were so used to that being their middle of the day. They hadn’t thought anything of it. They let me drive it up the road and back too which was awesome. I made them car-themed cupcakes, and I was finally able to get some sleep.
94. NOT Welcome
When I moved into my house, I made an effort to meet all of my neighbors. Instead of being a creep and knocking on doors, over a few months, I just waited until I saw someone outside and casually walked over to introduce myself. Well, one night, a Black neighbor of mine was having a big loud party, and I walked over to say hi around 8 pm.
It was a birthday party for one of his grandkids, but there were folks all out in the yard, so I thought it was okay to say hi. I said "Hey, I moved into this street a few doors down a couple of months ago. I was just stopping over to introduce myself." He said, "Do you look like the color that's supposed to be in this yard?" I apologized and went home.
He passed of a heart attack a couple of years later; probably from being such a hateful jerk.
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85. Not On My Turf
I had a situation where I didn’t want my neighbor using our driveway. It was a long driveway, like 60 feet long two cars wide. The problem was the across-the-street neighbor would pull into my driveway still driving about 30MPH, slam the breaks while putting his truck in reverse, then floor it back into his garage across the street.
I never said anything to him about it until one day he almost hit my 5-year-old using chalk 40 feet up the driveway. I was watching and jumped on the hood of the truck to get his attention. He apologized profusely, then did it again five days later when I was leaving the house with my dog for a walk. In both scenarios he used more than 60% of the driveway.
He didn’t apologize that time and just parked in his garage and closed it. For the next month, I parked on the street and didn’t let my kids play in the front yard until the 30 feet of staked razor wire across my driveway found a new home. So, I guess I’m technically the crazy one but I don’t really care.
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86. What A Treat
I used to live across the hall from a couple. The man worked for a major tech firm and the woman worked part-time, so they seemed pretty comfortable. I was living with two pretty much broke guys at the time, and I think they must have noticed our complete lack of housebroken-ness. Twice a week, we would get a knock on the door with a basket full of tasty treats. It had everything from tandoors full of delicious meat, to baskets of bread and pastries.
The woman was an absolute gem and was always there if we needed advice on something house-related. Without her, I would still be doing laundry once a day. Although the husband didn’t drink, now and then he would come over to hang out. They'd never take money, never ask for favors unless we offered, and they would always have a smile on their faces. They genuinely just seemed to enjoy being part of the community and helping out.
87. A Horrible Trade-Off
I started mowing our lawn when I was 11 or 12. We only had a push mower and it sucked. Our next-door neighbor had a riding lawn mower and told me I could use it whenever I wanted; I just had to leave the gas tank full. I was ecstatic. Then my dad told me, in exchange for that favor, I should mow my neighbor's lawn too.
Well okay, I figured I could still do that in less time on a riding mower. But, then, my dad decided he didn't like it when the other next-door neighbor's yard wasn't even with ours, and he felt bad that I was mowing only one of our neighbors' lawns and not the others. Like, he didn't want to show partiality to one neighbor. Mighty big of him.
So at that point, I was mowing three lawns, over four acres, every Saturday. Luckily, a new neighbor moved into that third house within a couple of years and he wanted to mow his own lawn.
88. Squirrelly Business
We had a couple living downstairs from us, in a condo, who thought that they were living in a single-family house on a 20-acre lot in the woods. Among all the things they did to their neighbors, one of the craziest things they did was leave a note on our door threatening to sue us and make us pay for their Pomeranian’s surgery.
This was because my mom had a bird feeder on our balcony and the squirrels running up to try to get the seeds made their dog bark constantly. The dog had a collapsing trachea. They did not think that the fact that they walked her on a retractable leash attached to her collar, and that they would hit the stop button on it if she started running so she jerked so hard she flipped had anything to do with it.
Even the fact that they dragged her around by the leash couldn’t be a reason, apparently. It was obviously the squirrels. They dropped the threats after I filmed them walking their dog when they did their little stop maneuver. My mom tried to talk to them about it and they both denied posting the note, each saying that it must have been the other one because, "I don't think it's the squirrels, but my husband/wife does."
They moved out after six months.
89. This Guy Blows Me Away
Growing up, I had a neighbor who would leaf-blow his yard EVERY SINGLE DAY. Without fail around 3 PM that annoying wail of the blower would start up and go for at least a half-hour. On weekends he would start at 9 in the morning. He would begin on his roof, then blow off his whole yard. One day he couldn't get it started.
He threw it in the garage, got into his car, and bought a new one an hour later. My neighbor's kids glued leaves on his driveway to mess with him. Rain would only postpone the annoyance. Once it had stopped raining for a few minutes, he would be out there. In the summer, when I would get home after a long day at work, I would just want to take a nap.
Without fail, as soon as my head hit the pillow, I would hear that dreaded whir.
90. Here's Your Proof
When I first moved into my house, I didn’t know my exact property line yet, so I put a marker by a tree I thought was mine. My neighbor came over and said I had to remove the marker since the tree was on his property. So I went ahead and got a survey done to settle any troubles. His face when I showed him the surveyor's findings was priceless—turns out, I actually owned the tree, plus the 10 feet beyond it. Problem solved!
91. Drawing The Battle Lines
My neighbor seemed to have opened hostilities against me for reasons unknown. He cut down my row of cedar trees, removed the branches, sharpened the trunks, and pointed them at my property. I never thought I would see the modern use of an abatis outside of trench warfare. Well, I guess, you see and learn something brand new every single day.
92. The Phantom Neighbors
My story is a bit different—but still totally weird. I have lived two houses away from the same neighbors for 20 years and have never seen them. None of the other neighbors have seen them either, but they do exist. The light on their garage door turns on at night and off during the day. They drive their car into the garage, then close the door. When they leave, they open the garage door once they are already in their car and drive off.
The windows on the car are tinted, so you can't see in. They don't answer the door when you ring the doorbell and put a "no candy" sign on the door during Halloween. They have no mailbox by the curb, instead, you have to put it in the door mail slot, and they hire people to do yard work. I think they must be serial killers.
93. Blood On Her Hands
Some 15 years ago, when my parents and I lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we ended up befriending one of the neighbors and her two kids. Well, one day, we were all hanging out together when I noticed her son had some pretty bad bruises and a nice size knot on his head. I just shrugged it off and we continued playing. Then, that night, the mother came over and made a shocking confession to my mom.
She said she ended the boy's life. She went into some pretty disturbing details, and she wasn't remorseful at all. When she left back to her house, my mom called the authorities immediately and she was taken to the station shortly after. The worst part is, she vowed that when she got out, she'd do the same thing to my mom. We noped the heck out of Indiana and moved to another state.
94. The Missing Spark
I started getting random power cuts multiple times a day, and had the landlord call the electrician out a few times before we realized that someone was turning off my main electricity switch by hand. The switch is in a room accessible by everyone in my building. When I told my landlord it had to be someone in the building turning it off, he said he had a thought.
I got a call back 10 minutes later. My downstairs neighbor had just then made multiple noise complaints about me. I guess the landlord had called and asked if he'd been switching off my electricity, and the neighbor chose then to actually complain. This is when I realized that all the power cuts happened when I was in my kitchen, right above my neighbor's bedroom/where he spends most of his day.
I had thought my appliances were causing the power cuts before. It turns out he thought that turning off my electricity frequently would magically make me understand that I was being too loud when I used the kitchen late at night. When I didn't receive the telepathic message that he was trying to send me via power cuts, I guess he got angry and did it even more!
Somehow, it got even worse from there. Every time I went into the kitchen, any time of the day, he would turn my electricity off. I had to leave my apartment, go to the other side of the building and turn it back on every single time. It happened 2-3 times a day usually, but at worst it happened 5 times in a day. I started tiptoeing and being as quiet as possible.
However, he listened for me and turned off the power to punish me for using my kitchen at any time. By the way, as soon as he actually complained, I started being as quiet as possible late at night, because I do stay up late and hadn't taken care to be quiet before. But by now, he had decided I should be punished any time I use my kitchen.
The letting agents were unable to do anything without any proof, and installing CCTV wasn't an option for some reason. So, one day a lady from the office offered to help me catch him. I met her in the street, she waited near the electricity box, and I went to my kitchen and started making myself a drink. The power went off.
I get a text from her saying that she had caught him, and the sting operation was a success. Right then, I hear an unholy tantrum begin below me. For the rest of that day he bangs, screams, puts on his vacuum cleaner for 20 minutes straight. Anything to get revenge, I guess. After this, the landlord locked my electricity switch away so only I could access it.
In between the guy being served an eviction notice and him leaving, he decided to just scream at me through the floor when I was in the kitchen, and go outside and throw stones at my window. I installed my own CCTV camera and the stone-throwing stopped. I was so intimidated by the thought of using my kitchen I actually lost weight before he left.
95. Your Term Is Up!
I had one neighbor who was the self-appointed mayor of the block. He would tell me all the time what I was doing wrong, from having my sprinklers on at the wrong time to not properly sorting my recyclables. I took his suggestions under advisement and even read the four-page typed note he wrote to me about the correct timing of the crabgrass preventer.
One evening, when I was cleaning off my deck, he walked up and began telling me about the latest landscaping issues. My niece, who was 13 at the time, was showering off after being in the pool. She walked out in a robe from the shower area and slung her suit over the fence to dry. I thanked him for his vast landscaping knowledge and told him we were off to dinner and shooed her inside.
I closed the slider and remembered I left the hose on, so I slipped the door back open and I saw her suit slid over the fence. I took two steps to the edge of the deck expecting to see her bathing suit on my grass. That’s when I spotted him—and it was the most disturbing sight of my entire life. The mayor was on his hands and knees in my grass, sniffing the suit crotch. We had a long talk about how he was going to come with me to the station.
96. Slipper Sniffer
My across-the-hall apartment neighbor is so weird. Like, just overall off-putting. Anyway, I leave my sandals out next to my door every night since I don't wear shoes in the house. It so happens that one night, I had to meet my best friend, who came over in the dead of night at the front since she doesn’t know my place very well. As I opened the door, I caught my neighbor doing the most deranged thing imaginable.
He was caressing and smelling my sandals. I froze and mildly freaked out. He saw me staring, did a weird giggle, said something about his kids calling him back inside, and then yanked me into this weird side hug. Now I leave my shoes in a box inside my house. Ugh.
97. Boarding House
My neighbor was an 85-year-old widow who lived alone. She had two vehicles, a car and a truck. Over the course of a few months, I realized that she was no longer parking her car in her garage as she had for the many years prior to that. Then, suddenly, the truck was not being parked inside the garage of the lady either.
It turns out she no longer had room in her garage to park her vehicles because she was walking down to a residential construction site about a block away every evening and she'd grab two 2"x 4"s and bring them home. She had over 500 boards stacked in her garage and when she was questioned on what she was going to do with them, she didn't have an answer.
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98. Stay In Your Lane
I lived in an apartment complex with assigned spots, and every day this person in a white Civic encroached into my parking spot. So every day I was parking closer and closer to her car. I was getting good at parking close enough to her, without hitting her. One day I was walking to my car to head out to work, and I saw her climbing through her passenger side door to get into her car, cursing up a storm.
She saw me, we locked eyes as she was climbing over her middle console. She started her car and drove away. Since that incident, she has stayed in between the lines of her own parking spot.
99. Noise Complaint
I lived above a guy in a really old fourplex and I guess the wood floors squeaked really loudly whenever I walked around. It wasn't like I was stomping around or anything, but the dude would constantly come upstairs and bang on my door to yell at me about the noise. I felt bad for him in the beginning because he seemed genuinely frustrated, but he didn't seem to understand or believe that I wasn't intentionally causing a ruckus.
I called my landlord several times asking him for a solution. I couldn't move out because I was locked into my lease, but my landlord was just like, "Buy a lot of rugs." It got to the point that I couldn't take the constant yelling and I was literally either tiptoeing around or hopping from my couch to my chair in order to get out of my living room.
Finally, I went downstairs one day and asked if we could talk about the situation. I felt that maybe if I looked him in the eye when he was calm and explained that I wasn't doing it on purpose, he would maybe understand. After I gave him my spiel, he had a chilling response: "I'm about at the point where if it happens again, I'm going to show up at your door with a really big knife." And then he just stared at me.
I basically ran out of there, called my landlord, and said that I had just been threatened by my downstairs neighbor. A month later the guy moved out, and then as soon as I could, I did too.
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100. No Parking Zone
I lived in a duplex that shared one large driveway with another duplex. Parking could be tight, but all of us cooperated and made the best of it, except for one woman. She left a note on my car two days after my husband and I moved in, telling me not to park there because she didn’t like that I was "in front of her door."
I was at least 15 feet away from her house and that was the only spot I could park in without blocking anyone else. I left her a note back explaining this. She banged on my door at 11 PM and screamed at us, calling me the c-word, and demanding that I get rid of my car. We eventually shut the door on her. The nasty notes persisted and were ignored.
I confirmed with my landlord that this is where I should be parking and he said yes, ignore her. Then, she started barricading that part of the driveway, so that every day when I got home, I would have to get out of my car and move her stuff before I could park. This became a real pain in the neck when I broke my elbow.
She used her trash can, a pedestal with a birdcage on it, and a bench to block the driveway and I had to move all of them to park. I started just picking them up and gently moving them towards her porch. Then she came up with something else. She started putting Vaseline on them. I grabbed her trash can and got a gloppy handful of Vaseline. Sure enough, everything else was coated in it as well.
I decided to use my foot to push everything up against her house. Mind you, nothing was damaged or knocked over, just moved. She called law enforcement and reported that she saw me vandalizing her things by picking them up and throwing them into her house, kicking stuff over, and smashing them into the ground. The officer was angry.
He thought that I was the teenage girlfriend of the guy who lived there, not the adult leaseholder. So he pounded on the door yelling, "Sheriff's department! Come outside!" We went outside. He pointed to me and asked, "Are you the girlfriend!?" I resisted the urge to say something snarky in response to what I found to be a misogynistic and demeaning statement.
He went off on me saying, "Your behavior needs to stop right now, I don't know where you're from, but in [town] we do not tolerate this kind of disrespect blah blah blah!" Well, he didn’t know what he was in for. 15 minutes later, once we'd gotten a word in edgewise, he changed his tune pretty quick. He realized he'd been misled by our neighbor. We told him we were sorry he got dragged into a petty parking dispute.
He told us he's been dragged into stupider stuff and told us that if she puts up the barricades again, to call them instead of moving it ourselves, to protect ourselves from false allegations. In fact, he wanted us to call any time she does anything to harass us. She also received a mean letter from the landlord telling her to knock it off.
We got a mean note from her saying, "The reason I don't want you parking by my door is because you are trash! Your druggie psychopath girlfriend runs amok vandalizing! I want nothing to do with you," among other things. We called law enforcement and she got spoken to by them, and the landlord sent her another mean letter. Hopefully, that'll be the end of it.
101. Double Eviction
My first apartment had a creepy old man who lived on the basement floor and this equally creepy kid in his early thirties on the top floor. Both of them regularly sat out on the porch entrance at varying times of the day and would catch me whenever I came home. I lied to the old man, (we’ll call him George) about my name in a moment of panic.
When he found out that wasn’t my name, he started getting more aggressive in greeting me with my real name to show me how I’d done him wrong. He would circle the building when he realized I started using the back exit, and he'd even sit on the back steps to wait for me to pass by. I told my landlord twice about it and all he did was tell him not to talk to me, which made matters worse because just continued to harass me but with more of a vengeance.
He ended up stealing the wreath that was on my door because nobody else had one on their door and threw it in the trash. At that point, I no longer cared about causing my landlord grief and asked him to pull up video footage. Turns out, he’d been coming upstairs several times to see when I left for work and would stand in front of my door. He ended up getting evicted. But the nightmare didn't end there.
This was all happening while the kid on the top floor was still there. He was weird, but I didn't pay him much mind. After the whole George thing, I wanted to be on good terms with the other tenants, so I started saying hello when I came through the entrance or in the hallways. Bad call. Such a bad call. He started going around telling the other dudes that lived upstairs that he was sleeping with me and how I wouldn’t waste time jumping his bones.
Whatever, I stopped saying hi to him. About two days later, however, I went to take my trash out and I passed my window that was facing the alleyway. This dude was pressed up against it, sliding his face around the glass trying to see me. He saw me and tried to play it off, but the situation was already screwed for him. I called the authorities and it turns out he’d been pegged for"peeing" before on two other charges. He was also evicted.
102. Stay Away!
My friends used to live in a gentrifying neighborhood near the beach in my city. They had a regular apartment, but someone bought the building in front of them—it was beach adjacent—knocked it down, and put up a few luxury homes. Among all the people who bought homes there, a crazy woman bought one.
She had a two-car garage, and a driveway, and best we could tell, she had one car. But NO ONE was allowed to park on the street in front of her house, which was clearly marked as a public street and where people had been parking since forever to go to the beach or because their building didn’t have parking. We could see this street from their apartment.
She went out and keyed any cars parked there. It took a while to figure out it was her, but eventually, people saw her doing it. All the neighbors warned their friends not to park there, and people started putting up cameras to get evidence of it. Some dude with an ugly truck started parking directly in front of her house every day just to mess with her, because he didn’t care if she scratched it up. Well, that just made her get even worse.
She slashed his tires. It got to the point where every time she opened her door to walk outside, neighbors would cuss her out through their windows. One night she went out in the middle of the night, and then painted the entire curb on that street red. Someone got it on video, and several neighbors called the city.
I think she got a talking to and a fine, and she had several insurance claims pending against her from damage to cars. She finally stopped. Everyone still hates her though, even new neighbors, who are told the story of her from older residents.
103. Trouble Spot
Back when I was little, we lived across from a popular public pool on a tiny street, so parking was premium. We had issues with people parking across our driveway, but we were close with the pool owner and would get him to ask over the loudspeakers, and whoever parked the car would come over, apologize to us, and move.
But one day after coming home from school, I saw somebody had the audacity to not park in our driveway but inside our garage. My dad was dumbfounded. We went over to make the usual announcement. Then this woman in her 30s came stomping over in a huff and said she would fix it when she had finished her exercise routine. So, my dad just parked behind her, and we went out for dinner for a few hours.
She was mad, but she didn't learn her lesson and kept doing it two to four times a month! Eventually, my dad stopped caring about parking her in and let her out at his leisure. It wasn't our problem just hers. She even called officers on us. They just told her not to park on private property and then wrote her a citation. Then one morning, she had the gall to park us in our own driveway. Dad had had enough.
He made sure she was doing her laps, grabbed a coat hanger, jimmied the door open, dismantled the passenger seat, and left it on the curb by the pool exit. He then waited on our front deck, sipping his tea as she came out of the pool to get her car. She walked by the passenger seat without a second glance. Scowling at him as she got in her car, she did a double-take as she went to put her bag down.
She freaked out, realizing that my dad had had access to her car the whole time. She ran over, grabbed her seat, put it in the trunk, and drove off. We never heard from her again.
104. Keep Your Friends Close…
I suspected that my wife was cheating on me with a co-worker. I confronted both who responded by calling me a jealous husband. They were just best friends and I needed to understand that. So, I befriended him, became his workout partner, and learned everything I could about him. I’d even invited him to my dinner table.
Physical revenge was often considered, but neither he nor she was worth me spending a life sentence in prison for. I played dumb. He was a bodybuilder and taking steroids. He wasn't incredibly smart and had just barely gotten through college. And he was working minimum pay jobs while he worked towards his true desire.
He was applying for the firefighter school in our major metro city. If accepted, it would be a lifetime job for him and a career he’d wanted since he was young. He talked often during our workout sessions about how much it meant to him. I have had countless EMS and fire department contacts through my healthcare career.
He also knew I was knowledgeable about medicine. After he started to ask questions about steroids, I made sure to give him just enough info to have him want to ask me more. I then made sure he started emailing me his steroid questions. Ironically, he used an account that even had his full name in the address.
After a private investigator confirmed the affair, I moved my plan into action. So, when I was ready to leave my wife, I contacted several of the FD officers who sat on the review board. I gave them the emails from one of their candidates admitting he was using substances and lied about it during the interview process. He was slated to be a part of the incoming class as he’d done quite well. But he was rejected.
I used my contacts in the EMS community to make sure that he’d never be accepted to a major fire department within a 200-mile radius. He and my wife took my dream marriage, so I took something that had just a profound effect.
105. While You Were Away
I was living with a friend of mine, and this girl who I didn’t know that well. We became friends and started hanging out. I ended up getting into a car accident on the freeway and had to move home. It took me a few days to get back to pack, and when I did, most of my stuff was missing. I was furious and upset about it. The girl told me my friend had people over who'd maybe taken things.
While she was gone, I stopped packing to go into her room and snoop. I couldn't believe my eyes. This girl had taken over half of what was in my closet and hidden it in her room. She had everything from my CDs, antique perfume bottles from my grandmother, down to socks and bras. I was livid and packed the stuff that she was trying to take from me.
With more garbage bags, I grabbed all of the clothes she had hanging up and anything else I could find. I lit it all on fire. She called me franticly and said her things were missing. So, I told her the people who'd taken my stuff must be responsible. Once she knew she'd been caught, she threatened me and told me she was going to call the authorities.
I told her to go ahead because they wouldn’t have found anything.
106. They Say He’s A Real Blockhead
We grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in my state. It was really rough. Anyway, 80s childhood being what it was, we used to ride our bikes everywhere, regardless of danger. Our home street was divided into three parts. The upper and middle parts were relatively okay in the daytime. The lower part was off limits no matter what, because that’s where the creeps and dealers lived.
We moved out finally and went somewhere a lot safer. Years pass. Our old neighborhood makes the news every so often for various outrages. One day, I saw in the newspaper that a woman had recently been found deceased in her house—she’d been sitting there for a month on her couch. It was already sad, but then things took a horrific turn.
When authorities showed up to deal with the situation, they discovered a big slab of cement in a strange place in the backyard. A neighbor told them that they’d frequently seen her at night sitting near and talking to the slab. If you knew how strange the people were in our neighborhood were, you’d have brushed this off as yet another weirdo.
Well, it turns out it was her husband. Only they weren’t officially married, so when he passed on—it was suspected to be natural causes, surprisingly—she couldn’t live without his Social Security check every month, so she buried him in the backyard and kept up the pretense that he was alive and living with his out-of-state relatives.
We used to ride by that house frequently when he was already buried in the yard. Oh, the 1980s.
107. One Problem Too Nanny
As a nanny, it’s weird when your boss is a mom with no actual experience being a boss. I worked for my neighbor who was my worst boss. She wasn’t that bad when I first started working for her. Over the course of the year, she kept adding more and more things for me to do. Eventually, I wasn’t just taking care of the baby. I became their maid.
If you think I got a pay increase, think again. And then, things got even worse. Eventually, I was basically this woman's personal assistant. She got a taste of power and took advantage of it. As a young 19-year-old, it was hard for me to see how bad it was. But I knew one thing: my boss was a nut job. One day, she got mad and fired me. The very next morning, she called me asking where I was. It was so confusing.
But I was broke and young, so I went back. At that point, I did everything from taking care of the baby to hand washing her delicates. She gave me a “uniform” and reprimanded me if it and my hair and makeup were not well kept. When she got pregnant with baby #2 and suggested I become a "wet nurse" I just flat out said no. So she fired me. Then, a few weeks later, she showed up at my house begging me to come back!
Saying "no way" and slamming the door in her face was so, so satisfying.
108. I Can See It in Your Eyes
My boyfriend’s younger brother and I were taking a bike ride down the street to the shops late one afternoon. As we get onto the main road, we notice a dude across the street heading in the opposite direction. He is walking with a limp, his head is bowed, and he’s got a plastic bag in his hand. We're only a few meters away from him when he crosses the street onto our side.
As the bro rides past him, this stranger lifts his head up and smiles in his direction as they pass each other. I'm a little while behind, so I don't pay too much attention to this—that is, until the bro stops, turns around, and gives me a funny look, just as this guy is passing him by. I still don't think too much of it at this point, assuming that he had just stopped to let me catch up.
As soon as I myself passed the stranger and made eye contact with him, I realized that this was not the case. When the stranger looked over and nodded at me, I saw nothing in his eyes. When I say nothing, I mean like black pits where his eyes should have been or just an eyeball that looked entirely black. I don’t know how else to describe it.
When I finally catch up to the bro, we stop around the corner and he says to me "Did you see that???" "You mean his eyes?!" I asked. "Yeah, it looked like they weren't even there!" he replied. We then kind of sat there for a while processing what we had both just seen. Had the bro not related the same feeling and experience to me as I had felt when the stranger looked at me, I doubt I would have ever thought anything of it.
I probably would have just assumed it was the light angles playing tricks on me or some such thing. It was a sunny afternoon, so glare certainly could have played a part. He could've been wearing contacts, I don't know. But none of those explanations feel like they fit. We got home later on and told everybody what had happened, but no one believed us. They still don't to this day.
109. A Good Foundation
So, I do a lot of insurance work, and I try cases of all kinds, large and small. I had a small case, over about $2,600, from where a contractor drove into a retaining wall at this lady's house (who also happened to be his neighbor) and damaged it. He wouldn't fix it, and, after like eight months, the homeowner allowed her insurance company—my client—to have it fixed and then sent the bill to the contractor.
Surprise surprise, the contractor wouldn't pay. There was lots of squabbling between my client and the contractor's insurance company, who offered less than $500 on a $2,600 bill. We had a trial to settle it. I brought our claims adjuster and the homeowner. The defense attorney brought the contractor and an adjuster from the contractor's insurance company.
Everything goes fine with questioning the homeowner, who was a sweet, middle-aged woman. She, like most people, knows nothing about the finer points of masonry. Then, we get to my claims adjuster. He says, "Well, we paid $2,600 to have this fixed, but I'm not an expert on masonry." However, he also discussed how estimates on masonry were made.
I close my proof. Next, the contractor gets up on the stand. They go over what exactly happened with the retaining wall. Then, he testifies that he "knows for a fact" that the $2,600 invoice includes overhead and profit and accuses my client of "running a scam." The judge strikes the answer. I look down at the estimate for repair and grin from ear to ear.
It says, in bold print, "This amount does not include overhead or profit." I look at the invoice. It's the same amount as the estimate. This guy is lying through his teeth—and I’m going to catch him. On cross-examination, I show the contractor the invoice. "Sir, this is a $2,600 invoice for repair, correct." "Yes." Then I show him the estimate.
"Sir, this is a $2,600 estimate for the same repairs, correct?" "Yes." "They're the same amount, correct?" "Yes." "Does the estimate say it does not include profit or overhead?" "Uh..." "Does it?" "Yes." "Didn't you just testify that you knew for a fact that the estimate included overhead?" "I don't know." "What don't you know?"
At this point, the contractor is furious and beats his hand on the stand. "It doesn't include overhead and profit, does it?" "I guess not." "But you said it did, right?" I pass the witness. But I wasn’t done yet. Next, the defense attorney calls the contractor's insurance company's adjuster. He testifies about how much he thought it should cost, like $500.00.
I cross-examine him. "How did you make this estimate?" "I put the numbers into a computer program." "How do you know what numbers to put in?" "Uh..." "Are you a contractor?" "No." "Are you an expert in masonry?" "No." "Have you ever worked in construction?" "No." "And the computer programs spit out what you put in?" "Yes."
"And you can just put in whatever numbers you want?" "Yes." "And it makes an estimate based on the numbers you pick?" "Yes." "But you don't know anything about masonry?" "No." The adjuster just testified that he made up the estimate. Defense closes proof. And the judge takes the matter under advisement. So let’s recap all this glory.
The contractor lied and was discredited, and the adjuster for the contractor admitted he just made everything up. We got $1,000 out of the trial. Less than half of what we sought but double what the defendant argued it should be. It was a win in my book.
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110. I’ll Huff And I’ll Puff
When I was 14, we shared our house with another man who lived on the floor below us. I was home with my younger brother while our mom went out. All of a sudden, the man came screaming and banging on the door. He was yelling about how downstairs was flooding and it was coming from our bathroom. I didn't know what to do.
But because he was an adult, I trusted him and opened the door. He came in, ran into the bathroom, and did something. After I told my mom, she called management. What they told her was truly disturbing. There had never been a leak. There didn't find water marks or any other signs of flooding. So, my mom told us not to open the door for him again.
The next time my mom went out, he came banging on the door again. We told him that our mom said we shouldn't open the door for him. His reaction was terrifying. He did not appreciate that and he went absolutely crazy. "Let me in now!" He screamed over and over again all the while banging on the door. We never found out why he wanted to come in.
111. Home (Almost) Alone
Once, my brother and I were sleeping, and my dad had just left for work. A little while after, someone entered the house and told the dog to be quiet. I didn't recognize the voice. I was 100% sure it was a burglar who thought the house was empty as my dad had just left. I sneaked into my brother's room, shaking with fear, woke him up, and told him that a stranger had just entered the house. He called the authorities on the spot.
Two minutes later, two official cars and four law officials were at the door of our house. Turns out, our neighbor was just playing a sick joke on us. He had put on a "funny voice" or something for no reason whatsoever. My dad was furious with him when he found out.
112. 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.
113. The Grass Is Greener
In our first house, my wife and I had a neighbor who disliked us from the start. Apparently, the people who lived in the property before we did were his family friends—they went through a divorce and ended up selling the house to us. He was petty and mean to my wife, who doesn’t like confrontation, and he'd do annoying things to mess with her.
He'd park across our driveway before she left for work, throw pieces of wood over the fence, let his dog go all over our lawn and not pick any of it up, etc. I tried talking to him a couple of times, but he promptly told me to screw off. That was the last straw—I had to fight back. I knew he loved his lawn because he'd always brag about how it looked to everyone, so the next time it rained, I went out back and threw an entire box of oxo cubes into their backyard and let the rain melt them into the grass.
His dog absolutely destroyed his yard looking for the smell and I would make sure to comment on it every chance I got. We moved shortly after.
114. Treehouse Troubles
We had this one strange guy in our neighborhood who liked to build strange things in his house. Well, one day he decided to take his hobby outside and build a tree house in his backyard. Our HOA president was a city councilman at the time, and he was not happy in the slightest. The president's plan was deranged.
This turned into a two-year dispute where the HOA kept asking him to add "safety measures" to the structure in hopes that he would eventually give up and dismantle the tree house. Eventually, the HOA told him that he would have to have the plans signed and stamped by a qualified engineer saying that the structure was safe. But there was one thing they didn't know.
At the next meeting, he handed in the blueprints, signed and stamped...by none other than himself. That was a great meeting. It turns out that this guy had a PhD in civil engineering!
