These Neighbors Are Monsters

December 8, 2022 | Eul Basa

These Neighbors Are Monsters


When moving to a new neighborhood, one typically does not have the luxury of choosing who he or she lives next to. Unfortunately for the folks in these stories, their neighbors ended up being total monsters whose mission in life seems to be making everyone else's experience in the community a living nightmare. Whoever said "love thy neighbor" clearly hasn't met these fools.


1. Better Yours Than Mine!

My parents’ neighbor owns a landscaping company, so he has a dump truck. His house is set further back from the road than theirs, so his driveway, which is right on the property line, extends past their house and next to their backyard. One time, my dad noticed the neighbor turning the dump truck around in my parents’ backyard when the ground was very soft from some recent rain.

He went back, and sure enough, there were giant ruts in my parents’ yard. When my dad confronted the neighbor about using their backyard to turn around, the neighbor's response floored him: “I’m sorry, but if I turned it around in my yard, it would have left ruts in my lawn". So he knew it would leave ruts, then decided he didn’t want them in his yard, so he left them in my parents’ yard instead.

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2. Not-So-Secret Service

There's a particular type of person who, for some inexplicable reason, feels like they're the only thing standing between society and total collapse. That was my neighbor. She was aloof and paranoid, and she'd imagine threats from almost everywhere...which made the fact that she thought of herself as some kind of secret agent all the more annoying.

This neighbor was always trying to find ways of getting me (and anyone else whom she thought of as suspicious) to move out of the building. She'd stage loud telephone calls with "headquarters" about the alarming behavior of the other tenants, like my tendency to get home after nine in the evening, which was clearly scandalous.

She'd also frequently yell at the people who'd stand on the corner to light up. On one occasion, I heard her shouting at someone over the placement of a flowerpot in their window, which was obviously an indication that they were selling illicit substances. Then, one afternoon, I found an "official notice" taped to a wall in the stairwell.

It was perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at a government-sponsored document that I'd ever seen.  The atrocious grammar, poorly Photoshopped seal, and the distinct absence of any legitimate contact information made the thing about as realistic as a scene from NCIS. Furthermore, the reference to "the past two years" seemed to indicate me as her primary target, since I was, as far as I knew, the only resident who had been there for less time than that.

Still, since the notice was clearly meant to scare someone, I decided to return the favor by taking a page out of my neighbor's own playbook. This led me to stand outside of her apartment while staging my own fake phone call: "You should see the notice; it's terrible! Haha, yeah, it's like they didn't know that impersonating a federal official can get you into some serious trouble! Anyway, the real FBI are on their way, and they're going to dust for fingerprints. Whoever made that notice is looking at a lot of time behind bars!"

I went back inside my apartment after that... and within seconds, I heard my neighbor's door open. There was the sound of hurried footsteps rushing towards the stairwell, followed by an equally hurried retreat. When I went out to check five minutes later, the notice was gone. I've since moved away, but for the rest of the time that I lived there, the lady never bothered me again.

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3. A Purple Solution

I had a neighbor who always let his dog run free. It would get into our yard, give our dogs fleas, eat all their food, and teach them how to escape. No matter my mom's complaints, this neighbor denied his dog was getting out. So, being fed up with the situation, my mom got some satisfying revenge: She dyed his dog purple (with a non-toxic product, of course) and sent it on its merry way.

The neighbor kept his dog contained after that.

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4. One Word: Crazy

When I was 13 years old, a new neighbor moved into the house next door. We shared a driveway with her. The families in our neighborhood are really close to one another and everyone likes to have get-togethers and block parties. So, when she moved in, we all got together and had a little celebration to welcome her. Immediately, it became clear that she did not like my dad.

A while later, we found out that she’d been telling our neighbors that my dad was being inappropriate to her at the party. I know my dad would never act like that, but he isn’t a native English speaker (he’s Middle Eastern, which is relevant to the story). Maybe some wires got crossed and there was a misunderstanding. So my dad went over to apologize to her. It did not go well.

She told my dad to leave, which he promptly did. Then, she put up the security cameras. They absolutely covered her house getting views of pretty much every angle including lots of shots of our shared driveway. “Whatever,” we thought. “A lady has a right to put cameras on her house”. But then the authorities started showing up. She called them claiming that we had messed with her cameras and that my friends and I were shining laser pointers at them.

The officers ended up leaving pretty quickly because the supposed "crime" she accused us of was not captured on any of her cameras. We thought she was done with her antics after that, but we were wrong—she then started claiming that we were poisoning her yard. She spent a lot of time on her lawn gardening and growing plants, and for some reason, every six months or so, she’d cut everything down and start over.

Anyway, the authorities came back but they couldn’t find any evidence. We didn’t even have any poison, nor had her cameras picked anything up. We had absolutely no motive to poison her lawn. So she started an inquest with the department of agriculture. A pesticide use investigator showed up, interrogated us, and took samples from her yard.

While that was going on, we had a few other interesting encounters with her. Once, she bought a giant floodlight and pointed it into our windows in the middle of the night. The fire department had to come and unplug it. Another time, our dinner was interrupted when a massive hazmat truck came blaring down our street. Men in heavy gear poured out and charged into her house, then, minutes later, they disappointedly filed out.

One guy came and told us that she had bought a Geiger counter and used it wrong, and she had thought that we had irradiated her house. Finally, things came to a head when she sued us to get an order of protection. She claimed that my dad was a member of a sleeper cell intent on destroying her. She also claimed that he had used his skills as an engineer to develop a device that she referred to as a "white ion laser" which would allow him to turn invisible and sneak into her house.

She submitted one terabyte of film from her cameras, all of which was annotated with such incriminating evidence as “My neighbor leaves the house, my neighbor enters the house". There were also tons of photos and notes. But that's not the most horrifying part. It was here that we discovered that her cameras were pointed into my bedroom and she had been filming me for years.

I was a young lad by this point so there’s probably video evidence of some pretty embarrassing teenage behavior out in the aether now. We later legally forced her to move the cameras, but she kept moving them back, so I just kept my blinds closed for the better part of a decade. During the trial, the department of agriculture report came back.

It was determined that our neighbor had poisoned her own lawn by over-fertilizing it. She received a fine for contaminating the groundwater. We obviously won the lawsuit and countersued her to get our own order of protection. We also had to legally get the files on us at the FBI and CIA closed since she had reported us to both agencies.

Despite losing the suit, she continued to live next to us, occasionally calling the authorities on us for non-issues. They were called on us a total of 37 times. It’s now been ten years and she’s finally moving out. Why you might ask? Does she feel guilty for accusing us with no evidence for a decade? Had her paranoia finally driven her to move? No.

She didn’t pay her property taxes for six years and her house got taken from her. She tried to sue the city on a bunch of occasions as well and failed. This is only a summary of the situation. There are tons more. I haven’t even gotten into her kids, her horrible husband, the video she posted to YouTube of her dog passing...

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5. It's A Roach Party

I didn't really interact with my upstairs neighbors when I was living in my first apartment, but I did know that their religion prohibited them from ending any life...including roaches. Their apartment became a breeding ground and the roaches would spill into the rest of the building, including mine below. It was a horrible experience and I felt so hopeless because it didn't matter how clean I was. Those bugs were always everywhere.

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6. Justice For Hershey

When I was 10, my neighbor—an 80-something-year-old man with a Christian radio station—shot and ended one of my dogs. When I went looking for my dog, I asked my neighbor if he had seen him. He told me that he'd taken aim at a dog like that in the morning. Frozen, I asked where he was so I could bury him. He told me that his body was in the dumpster and that he would end me too if I didn't get off his land.

I ran through the woods back to my house, screaming in anger and punching trees until my knuckles were torn and bloody. When I got home, I called the authorities and the K9 unit came out to my house. They retrieved my dog's body and I buried him. The worst part was that my dog was very sweet (I know that generally sweet dogs can be threatening, but it was very against his nature).

My neighbor had tied him up, then took him out and shot him point-blank in the chest. I have never felt more rage in my life. My mom took the man to court and he was charged with unfair treatment of an animal. The judge asked how much money I thought the dog was worth. I was dumbfounded and croaked out that I didn't want money—I wanted my dog.

The neighbor was fined $500 and I made him pay it to the local humane society. The man had the Ten Commandments posted all around his house, so the next night, I took a red sharpie and circled "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on all of his signs. My dog's name was Hershey. He was a mutt that was born in my bedroom, and he was only two years old when his life was taken from him. Such a good boy.

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7. Wait, That's Not Rain

My friend's upstairs neighbor has a dog. He never takes it for a walk or outside for a poop. Instead, the dog just goes on the balcony, and when it dries, he just shovels it off onto the cars below. Then, he throws water on it to "clean" it up and the dirty water drips down onto my friend's balcony. She has called the landlord, the city, and the maintenance company about it, but no one will do anything.

We have shouted at him while he was in the act of doing it and he stopped for a minute, but he continues when we are gone. If you knock on his door, he won't answer.

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8. A Slap On The Wrist

My neighbor hated cats, so put out cat traps, the barbaric type that crushes legs. One day, my cat got caught in one—and when I saw him, I just started screaming. He'd dragged himself home while he was still trapped in it. When I took him to the vet, they found that his pelvis was crushed, so he had to be put down. I had never been so angry in my life. And that's not even the worst part.

My neighbor was only given a warning...He was later charged due to his treatment of his own pets, but he never did get punished beyond a fine. I hate that guy.

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9".Am I The Drama?"

This happened on a week-long cruise. The first two mornings, our neighbors on both sides were ridiculously loud. They were basically screaming in Spanish and constantly waking us up. We didn't go to bed until 4 am, so they cut into your sleep. On the third night, at around 11 pm we went to our room, blasted the TV, and left it like that all night.

You could hear it outside our door, and it was very loud like they were. The next morning, what do you know—the neighbors realized that other people could hear them and they were quiet for the rest of the cruise.

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10. Doo-Doo Delivery

When I was in elementary school, our neighbor's four dogs would always poop in our backyard. My mom asked the neighbor many times to pick it up, but he never did. So every morning before school, my mom would send me and my brother on 'poop patrol'. At first, we just put the poop in the neighbor's yard, but our neighbor never got the hint.

My mom then had us put the poop on his porch...That's when he got a fence and the problem stopped.

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11. Petty Planting

I had two neighbors; we'll call them A and B. They absolutely hated each other—Neighbor A really took pride in his lawn being “pristine” and that caused Neighbor B to complain over things like leaves and lawn clippings ending up on his lawn. The authorities were even called over this issue multiple times. This went on for a year.

Eventually, Neighbor B got fed up—and pulled the most diabolical move ever. He intentionally planted clover on his lawn. He waited for it to flower and then set up an industrial fan to blow it over to Neighbor A’s lawn. I aspire to this man's level of pettiness every day.

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12. How I Met Your Mother

Back in the late 70s, my mom had a terrible upstairs neighbor who would play loud music all the time. She would bang on the ceiling with a broom to get him to turn it down, but he never would. One day, there was no music, and my mom, an aspiring nurse, was concerned. She went upstairs to investigate and found that the guy had broken his leg.

He was laid up in a cast so he couldn't get up to keep changing the records. She, being the nice person she is, nursed him back to health. That solved the music problem because...that was also how my father met my mother.

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13. One Man's Trash...Is Still Trash

I was living in a shifty part of town at the time. I had a couple of older neighbors who could have starred in a Hoarders marathon. The garage door was bowing out and splitting in areas due to the amount of garbage forced into it. To top that, they had hundreds of feral cats with horrible defects. They kept the front door open 24/7 so the cats could come in and out of the house, at least the ones that lived long enough to.

I would have to crawl under my house to remove the lifeless ones so my house didn't reek every few days.

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14. Unfair Warning

My neighbor accidentally fired a pistol and the round went through our sliding glass door and ended up in the pantry. We were alerted when 80% of the glass in our sliding glass door fell onto the floor. I'm 5'7" and I could walk through the sliding glass door without opening it. The round was found in a box of pancake mix about six inches over my head, so the odds of it hitting me had I been in the kitchen or walking around my house were very high.

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15. Catch The Klepto

I moved a lot growing up so I've had a few. One of my neighbors in Florida was a known kleptomaniac, but he would take the most random items around the neighborhood. When someone moved out of a house, he would dig up the plants from the yard and sell them online. We would just wake up one morning and all of the plants would be gone with the trail of dirt leading to his house.

When his house foreclosed, he took all of the doors off their hinges before moving out. He also took another neighbor's bicycle when they left their garage door open. The owner knew it was him, so he just walked over to his house and took it back without calling the authorities. We also later found out that he was going through a nasty divorce from his wife... who was once his therapist.

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16. Make Yourself At Home

I used to have this obnoxious neighbor who invited herself over all the time. If we had multiple cars in the driveway, she assumed we must have had company over, which meant free food for her. She would peek over the fence, see that we were grilling, then would come over to find out what was up. My dad had a semi-trusting relationship with her and he let her know where we kept a spare key should there be an emergency. BIG mistake.

We walked in a couple of times after being gone and found notes from her on the counter. That meant she had used the spare key, gone into our house while we weren't there, and probably snooped around. My dad told her she was not allowed to come in when we weren't there and she apologized...but then, the next day, there were brownies on the counter with a note that said "Sorry".

She clearly disregarded what he said to bring us apology brownies! But the last straw was the worst of all. My dad had left the house one day and I was taking a shower. When I stepped out in just a towel and ran to the laundry room, there was a random woman sitting on the couch.

After freaking out, I learned that she was a Jehovah's Witness and was let in by my neighbor who apparently was snooping around while I was in the shower. She just left the lady alone in my house. My dad came home and changed all the locks that day and told her not to come over ever again. We also ignored her any time she knocked after that.

She hated us after that and she clearly thought all of her actions were completely normal.

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17. The Crazy Man

I grew up with a crazy neighbor who would get tipsy every summer night between about 5 to 8 pm, and I mean EVERY night like it was his job. He was always playing some tunes on the radio, and he also did this thing where he would come out onto his porch once an hour to let out a lion roar. It was weird, but I got used to it.

None of the people in the neighborhood had any issue with him because we all just assumed meant he had some real personal demons; plus, he never did anything else that would be a cause for concern. His behaviors became normalized in our community. For example, whenever I heard him start to roar, that was always my signal that I should head home because dinner would be ready soon.

Later on in life when I was in my late teens and I started drinking, my friends and I would go to this one house in the neighborhood that had a porch with a clear line of sight to my neighbor. This is when we dubbed him "Crazy Man"—he would come out onto the porch, roar for a bit, and we would all kind of laugh and say to each other, "Dang, Crazy Man is really loaded tonight, huh?"

Eventually, we started talking to him and we came to find out that he was actually a very nice person and not at all the angry tipsy guy you would think he was. He would even respond to the name "Crazy Man" and he seemed to enjoy the half-coherent conversations we would try to have with him. Sometimes, he'd toss us down a few bottles and have a quick chat with him, but you always had to initiate the conversation, or else there'd be no way for him to know that we were there.

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18. No Breathing Room

I have a horrible neighbor who loves calling the authorities any chance he gets. If we left our car doors open too long, or if we get too close to his yard or anyone else's yards, he would complain. He's calmed down a bit over the years, but it used to get heated between him and this family that lived next to him for a while. The worst part is that they were just as bad.

They beat their dogs, left them locked up in their backyard, and never fed them. They also screamed at each other, often out in the open, and one time, some of their relatives came over and they pulled pistols on each other. I think they may have even tried to burn their house down because they couldn't get it to sell. Needless to say, nothing happened because he called 9-1-1 within minutes.

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19. Thou Shalt Not Covet...

Years ago, my wife, kids, and I rented a townhouse. We had been there for four years, and we were on a month-by-month lease. The owner told us that she would not be extending the lease because she was selling the unit. No big deal, but the lease ended in July and we were told this in May. We scrambled but were eventually able to find a great house in an excellent neighborhood to buy.

It was during the housing crisis so we got a huge deal, too. We paid about $100K less than the neighbors. Anyway, at the townhouse, there were a few neighbors who would ogle my wife. I don't blame them, but they were all married except for one guy named Brian. Brian was divorced a few times and had kids in their 20s that lived with him.

He would constantly run outside if he saw my wife out there. He would mention to her that he saw her going to the store or to the mailbox or whatever. But then it started getting creepy. We had a community pool and when he saw her going there with our kids, he'd follow so he could hang out with her while she was in her bikini.

It creeped her out so much that she would wrap a towel around herself until she confirmed he wasn't at the pool. I had to have words with him more than once about this. Moving day came and we hadn't told any of the neighbors we were moving because why would we? Brian came over as we were loading the truck and asked my wife: "Which one of you is moving out?"

I stopped and told him, deadpan as could be: "Both of us". He was hoping it was a divorce situation so he could try to take my place. But wait, there's more...I came home from a work trip one day and my wife told me that Brian was driving past our house. I don't know how he did it, but he found out where we live. We still live in the same city, so I think he either saw my wife and followed her home one day or just drove around until he found us.

We live in a cul-de-sac. There was no reason for him to be driving there. One day, my wife took my car because I had to take hers in for maintenance. The doorbell rang and it was none other than Brian. He was obviously stunned to see me answer the door and he started to stammer some nonsense about why he was there. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if I ever saw him near my home or my wife ever again that it would be the last thing he did on this Earth.

I made him acknowledge that he understood me and he scurried to his car and left as fast as he could. It's been a few years and neither of us has seen Brian. Every now and then I'll see a car I don't recognize on our cul-de-sac and I always look at the driver...just in case.

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20. Keep Your Hands To Yourself

My next-door neighbor came over to borrow a ladder when my husband wasn't home. He gave off a really weird vibe—he "steadied" me from behind when I was taking the ladder down from the wall hook. At the time, I just told myself I was being overly sensitive, but I should have paid attention to the red flags right then and there.

Later that week, my husband and I ran into him and his wife in a store. He greeted me with a kiss on the cheek...It was weird, and my husband thought so too, but we still didn't look into it too much. We shrugged it off and assumed he was just being overly friendly. Then, a few weeks after that incident, we were visited by a government agency that asked us a couple of questions about him.

Apparently, he needed a security clearance where he worked. There wasn't a lot to report as he seemed okay. But one early Saturday morning, he knocked on our door while my husband was at work. I had all four of my kids there. I don't even remember why he came over, but at one point, he took an opportunity to rub himself against me in front of my kids.

I kicked him out, then I immediately called my husband and his wife. She called me back, begging me to retract it, but I assured her that he really did what he did. Somehow, it got back to his supervisor and his clearance was put in jeopardy. They ended up divorced.

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21. These Walls Are Too Thin

While living in Los Angeles, I was staying in a nice area called the Miracle Mile. Most of the residents there are fairly young. I stayed in an apartment complex on the second floor and I had a neighbor under me. My girlfriend at the time lived in Oregon. She came to visit for the first time and we had a lot of fun in the apartment. One day, while walking out, we heard someone downstairs leaving as well.

We made our way to the staircase and once we got down to the bottom floor, my neighbor who lived directly under me said hi. Mind you, this was my first time seeing her after living there for seven months. My neighbor said, “Hey, I’m also from Oregon”. My girlfriend and I exchanged looks, puzzled as to how my neighbor knew where my girlfriend was from.

She then asked us how our dinner date went the night before at Jones'...At that point, we were dumbfounded and assumed she must have been hiding in our apartment. After that interaction, she would randomly come up to my apartment and ask random questions about my girlfriend. Then, toward the end of my lease, I would hear her screaming for absolutely no reason.

I would also see her out in the neighborhood with messy wild hair and smeared lipstick on her face and teeth. She's the weirdest neighbor I’ve ever had.

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22. Noise Pollution

The old lady who lived across from us decided to become an opera singer. She would "sing" to her plants almost daily, from 7 am to noon and from 6 pm to 3 am. And I'm talking full-blown "OooOOOoooaaaaaaoooOOO" practically all day every day. It made things like sleeping hard and she caused my partner so much stress it triggered her depression. She got the authorities called on her twice.

The first time, she sang to the officer's face and closed the door. They had to break in and take her away, but she returned the next day. The second time, a senior officer cursed at her while the younger guy tried to hold his laughter. I bonded with one of my neighbors over our shared hatred toward this loud witch...I think he lived above her, which is probably worse.

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23. Mormon Hormones

Growing up, there was a big Mormon family across the street. At first, they just kept trying to convert us, but as I got older, I noticed the men paying me more attention, especially since puberty hit me like a truck. At barely 12 years old, I could easily pass for a sixteen-year-old with a chest and ample behind. Every time I saw one of the men, they had some kind of comment, mostly about my chest.

The sons who were at least four or five years older than me often asked if I stuffed my bra and they would ask to feel them, as to prove I didn't. Of course, I never gave them an answer and I would just run home. Luckily, we moved right before I turned eighteen because I've heard horror stories about that religion.

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24. Balcony Battles

I live in an apartment and the balcony is a decent size, but one side is a wall that goes about three-quarters up and the other side is my next-door neighbor's balcony. One day, a couple moved in—they seemed to be in their 20s and the girl was pregnant. They were total nightmares. She would sit on the balcony almost every day, talking loudly on her cell phone or chatting with a friend.

That became annoying very quickly, so my balcony door would often have to be closed. She would go inside in the evening, just in time for her boyfriend to sit on the balcony and light one up. Sometimes it was just him, but other times they would be having a party. It sucked for me because I would never be able to have the balcony door open and it'd get quite stuffy inside my apartment.

When the baby was born, their behavior continued until we had to threaten to call CPS on them. After that, the partying stopped. Later on, they had a second baby, and the first one would scream her brains out all the time, which we could hear through the walls. Thankfully, they moved out soon after.

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25. Stuck In The Middle

We had two neighbors get in a feud. They loved tipping over each other's trashcans and scattering trash in the yard. Oh, and since we lived between them, the trash mostly wound up in our yard and they refused to pick it up. Even when our other neighbors recorded them scattering trash across our yard, they denied it. Oh but, here's the twisted cherry on top.

One of them also borrowed our snow shovel and tried to throw animal waste at the other's cars. They missed, hit my mom's, then said we did it to frame them since our shovel had the mess on it.

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26. A True Arch-Nemesis

There’s a guy who lives down the street from me and he's a real piece of work. He also has serious problems with women. When I bought my house, I had a boyfriend living with me. He left me alone during that time, but when that relationship ended, I became this guy’s arch-nemesis apparently.

He would come onto my property and take my stuff. He has stolen a porch chair, my garden hose, a string for my trimmer, a doormat, whatever he could find. When I confronted him about it, he told me those items were my “husband’s” property, not mine (even though I’ve never been married). The authorities were called but as long as he gave the property back, nothing happened.

If I had a female friend over, he would shout prejudiced slurs. If I had a male friend over, he would shout derogatory names at me. Again, I'd call the authorities, but they'd only give warnings no arrests were ever made. And that's just the tip of the iceberg—even worse is he'd alternate between trying to hit my dog with his car and trying to come onto my property to take her.

He would also loiter all the time. He cut down my rose bushes, dug up all of the tulips in my flower bed, and brought his animals into my yard to do their business. I sternly told him he was not to trespass, but he responded that he had the permission of the deceased former owner of my home to come onto the property whenever he wanted.

I told him that I owned the property now and that he was no longer welcome. He then said that I had “no authority” and he asked to speak to my father (who lives 1,800 miles away). At that point, I had enough. This time when I called the authorities, I made sure they served him a written no-trespassing order. He violated it twice and was cited, but he never did pay any of his fines. Unfortunately for me, no further action was taken against him.

But things started to get better from that point on—a new magistrate was elected and I installed security cameras. Between having ample video evidence to easily charge and convict him and having a “changing of the guard” at the magistrate’s office (the previous magistrate was very difficult to deal with, even for the authorities), the whole situation has changed dramatically.

While the problems with this guy aren’t completely nonexistent, the frequency has really decreased.

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27. Rock On, Brother

My upstairs neighbor liked to blast Black Sabbath all night long on the weekend. The funny thing is I like Black Sabbath, but I didn’t like it at 3 am when I’d just got home from work after working a twelve-hour shift. I’d be there laying in bed hearing the tune from “Symptom of the Universe” and my brain would be filling in the lyrics.

As many times as I've banged on his door to get him to turn the music down, you’d think he would have learned to have the volume at a decent level by 1 am.

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28. This Land Is My Land

I had a neighbor that thought all the surrounding lands were his. His plot was pretty small, but he thought that if he mowed my lawn EVERY DAY, he would have ownership of it. He even drafted up some papers saying that the city was giving him ownership of my land, which my lawyer quickly pointed out was nonsense. Oh, but he went even further than that.

He would do things like jump in my car and break the clutch so he could push it into the alley and have it towed. He and his wife called the city multiple times on me to get my own vehicles towed off my own property while pretending to be super nice to us...they are a prime example of how Iowan passive-aggressiveness can be extremely annoying.

Anyway, I called a tow company to pick my car up and bring it to a mechanic. My neighbors thought they were successful in getting it towed off the property so they started celebrating, but then my car showed up the next week and they were taken in by the authorities. Ha.

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29. Community Hazard

One day, my entire street was closed down and we were told by the authorities that we couldn’t leave the block. The other neighbors from across the street called them in after they had found out that our next-door neighbor had a secret lab where they made illicit substances. If it blew up, it would have taken out the whole block.

The craziest part is that they seemed like a totally normal family—the father was a substitute teacher at my middle school, and he and his wife had a three-year-old toddler that would often play outside in their yard.

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30. Becoming Unhinged

I've always been pretty lucky with neighbors, even in student areas. I can't think of any I've had trouble with, except for this one guy. He was on a lot of synthetic substances and you could tell that it was quickly spiraling him into paranoia and psychosis. He wasn't someone I knew well, but I didn't mind sitting with him to watch TV together or letting him come in for a cup of tea when things were bad.

Still, I worried about the guy, and I always worried his condition would one day make him aggressive toward me. I hope he's doing better now.

Vengeful NeighborsShutterstock

31. That House Is Not A Home

I bought my first house last November. The neighborhood was a mix of nice, young families and some questionable people. Some yards were very nice, while others looked like they hadn't been mowed in years. The neighborhood sat on the edge of a very nice suburb of the city. Our backyard was beautiful—it had a large shed, privacy trees on both sides, and a seven-foot privacy fence in the back.

At the beginning of summer, my girlfriend and I had put up those backyard lights that went from the tall trees across the backyard and connected to the shed. I also installed back deck speakers so we could enjoy music when we had friends and family over. We had met no neighbors at that point. One day, I looked outside and my jaw DROPPED.

I noticed that one row of the hanging lights was cut. We also noticed that someone had put wood beams on top of my fence posts so we couldn't tie our light strings up there. I was in the house while my girlfriend was in the shed, and all of a sudden she came running in. The neighbor was screaming at her over the fence.

We didn't know who he was screaming at—he was just screaming, saying things like "You think I'm afraid of you?" and " I will put you 10 feet in the sky". My girlfriend came to get me, and at that point, I'd already had bad day. Mind you, we had NEVER seen this person before, NOR could we see him over the fence. I came out of the house and I started screaming back: "HEY, IS THERE A PROBLEM?" over and over with a VERY stern voice. No response.

I then decided to go over there to be a good neighbor and see if everything was okay. Well, behind the door, I heard him say, "If I have to open this door, I will end you". I shrugged and left him alone. Then, 15 minutes later, he was back at it again. This time, he sounded tipsy, and he began threatening us again, saying: "I will end your life, I am not scared".

I don't know what triggered him to act that way—Was he messed up in the head? Bored? Did he have a problem with the previous owners? Anyway, I decided to call the authorities and they said they would send someone over. This was on a Monday evening at about 11 pm. He was still yelling as we waited for the officers to arrive. He then got very personal and called all of us out".

You, your wife, your dog, and daughter...I am going to end you all". At that point, I realized things were getting real. So I called 9-1-1 again and told them they needed to send someone over ASAP. When the officers finally arrived, they couldn't really do anything even after I told them what he had been doing. As they went over to his place, I watched intently.

I saw them on the second floor of their house as the officers were knocking on their door below. Suddenly, they shut the lights off in the house. The officers got more aggressive with their knocking, so much so that you could hear it echo throughout the neighborhood. Finally, they got in and they were there for about 15 minutes. Soon after, one of the officers returned to my house.

He proceeded to tell us that they are known addicts in the area and that they had been in and out of that house HUNDREDS of times over the past year. He also said that they had no wall on the back of their house—there was just a tarp placed over an area where the roof was caving in, and there were weeds growing everywhere. It was uninhabitable.

I asked him how they could possibly live there and afford it without being kicked out. The officer guessed that the house must have been owned by that family for generations. Ever since we called the authorities on them, they haven't given us any problems, but it was disappointing to be told that we'd have to watch ourselves in our own backyard because of these unpredictable psychos.

These Neighbors Are MonstersShutterstock

32. Right Back Atcha

The town I live in has a lot of people with boundary issues. My last place was in the downtown area and the place had this long back patio space that stretched behind three units. I was at the far end, and there was no reason for anyone to cross through my side. Yet, the middle guy who had two dogs let them do their business all over my side.

He didn't pick it up all winter, so my partner piled the mess up onto the guy's backdoor. Another annoying thing about the dogs is that they would bark outside our window at 8 am every morning, without fail. The dude worked from home, so we blared metal music in the morning when we were in class. We didn't feel bad about it either. After all, he was the only one we shared a wall with.

These Neighbors Are MonstersUnsplash

33. Off-Leash Aggression

My neighbor used to let her dogs, which were Siberian huskies, run loose. Even after one ran out into the street and was hit by a car (we lived in a pretty busy city), she still refused to put them on a leash. One day, it got personal. One of her dogs got into my house and mauled my cat. My neighbor didn't say or do anything until about a week later when I happened to bump into her on the street.

She asked, very casually, how I was doing and I said I was still pretty upset over what happened. Her response? She shrugged and said, "Yeah, sorry about that," and then continued on her way. I don't think I spoke to her again after that.

These Neighbors Are MonstersUnsplash

34. A Total Catastrophe

I grew up in a trailer, so our "front yard" was the neighbor's "backyard". This was also back in the days of clay litter, so we had to dump all the litter in the trash once in a while, then rinse the litter boxes out and let them dry before refilling them with fresh litter. Not my favorite chore by any means, but I had to do it.

My neighbor came out one time, yelling that I couldn't do that. I gave him sass back, saying that I had just as much right to be there as she did. She yelled that I was a horrible kid and that she was going to tell my parents that I was being rude to her. I told her to go right ahead—it's not like I wanted to be cleaning the stupid litter box anyway.

I told my parents about the interaction afterward and the neighbor never said anything to them. But then, a couple of weeks later, we made a shocking discovery—my cat was deceased. I was devastated, and my parents wanted to get to the bottom of it. They found out from their friends who worked at the local grocery store our neighbor had recently bought rat toxins.

Again, this was a trailer park. If she had had rats, then we would have also had rats. There was not proof enough to take her to court, though.

Thanksgiving dramaShutterstock

35. Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

We had neighbors that got kicked out of a bad area and moved next to us. They were a family with teenage kids. Both parents were gaming the system for disability. For example, they would use wheelchairs whenever they went out even though they were walking fine. They also made a huge amount of noise, and at daft times too.

I can't remember why, but we got back one day and the neighbor's son got in my face and threatened to hurt me while I was getting a small child out of the car. I am 6'3" and this guy is like 5'10", so he couldn't actually get up in my face like he was trying to do. I first made sure the kid was safe as that was my primary concern, then I went inside and called the authorities.

It turned out that when they arrived next door, they had called the authorities before us. They turned up thinking that I was the one who threatened him. Luckily for me, the officers already knew this guy had a record. I, on the other hand, didn't have any involvement with the authorities other than having my bikes nicked years ago.

Two weeks later, the house on the corner got raided for selling illicit substances. I am hundreds of miles away from them now. Yay.

These Neighbors Are MonstersShutterstock

36. Sensitive Ears

I lived in a nice condo community in San Diego in college and the head of the HOA was this grumpy old man who had nothing better to do than sit around and wait for some noise to complain about. I lived two doors down from him while a couple of my friends lived next door. He would complain that my friends were cooking too loudly during the day, walking too loudly at night, opening cabinets too loudly after 9 pm, etc.

He also complained that my car was too loud (I have a Mustang with high-flow mufflers). My roommate had the exact same Mustang with the same exhaust, but apparently to him, only mine was the problem. One time, he complained that I started my car at 6:30 am and woke him up because his walls were shaking. Mind you, my car was on the street, which was a good distance away from his unit.

My roommate, whose window was right above my car, slept through the noise and he had his window open. There were at least four other cars in the complex that I counted that were louder than mine that went through the area at all times of day and night. To top it off, the complex is in a busy intersection less than half a mile from Interstate 5. I’m pretty sure he just sat up all night waiting for me to start my car so he could complain.

He is someone who never had anyone over, so I’m sure he did that to pass the time.

Cringey Family FactsShutterstock

37. Monster Roaches

We had a hoarder next door. The bugs she brought along with her were bad enough, but she was old and forgetful, and on more than one occasion, she put food on the stove and just left it. Smoke would billow from her apartment and I would have to call the fire department so they could race over there, kick in her door, and prevent a fire.

She also liked to hoard newspapers, among other things, so her apartment was basically a tinder box. On top of that, there was this creepiness that took over her whenever her family came over to remove everything from her house. She would just stand there, staring at the dumpster. Much of the stuff they would carry to the dumpster I would recognize as something I had thrown out, sometimes even years earlier.

When we asked her to let the exterminators into her apartment, she would rude and defensive. It would be one thing if she had been a sweet old lady with a problem that she acknowledged and apologized for. But she was downright mean if you asked her to open her apartment up and let pest control keep the monster roaches at bay.

Landlords Behaving BadlyShutterstock

38. Dirty Photographer

When I was in my 20s, I had a creepy neighbor who lived in the apartment next to me. He always acted very weirdly around me. I heard disturbing things about him from people who knew him so I tried to avoid contact, but he would not leave me in peace. He once asked me to turn my wireless LAN off because it gave him headaches.

He also once offered to take photos of me in my lingerie because, according to him, he is "such a good photographer". He didn't take no for an answer and really tried to convince me. It got so bad that I didn't open my door unless I knew he wasn't there. I had to tell my friends to make sure to talk to me on the doorbell system before coming up, otherwise, I would not open my door. It was scary.

Creepy Moments Shutterstock

39. Forced Restart

My boyfriend and I moved into a cute little apartment together in south Florida. Shortly after, an older gentleman moved in next door. He initially seemed like a nice enough guy, but kind of lonely. We invited him over for dinner once because we noticed he'd get take-out often, and we could tell he didn't know how to cook. Biggest mistake of our lives.

Well, apparently, he had bed bugs that hitched their way over and infested not only our apartment but multiple others in the complex. The worst part is the guy knew about them, yet he made no efforts to treat the issue or get rid of them. We also later found out that he was a heavy drinker and I once had to call an ambulance after he lacerated his arm by punching out the windows of other units in the complex.

I spent the next three years constantly having to pay for repairs to my home and car, and I ended up throwing almost everything away and starting over because of him.

Bug Infestations factsShutterstock

40. Make It Make Sense

I had neighbors above and below. The ones above would get it on for like four hours and then vacuum for 30 minutes. The ones below would get into fights all the time, with the husband criticizing and verbally destroying his wife over her appearance and addiction issues...then they would get it on like monsters. But apparently, I was the problem because my footsteps were too loud??

Awful Neighbors factsShutterstock

41. A Bad Case Of BO

I shared a dorm room with this one kid in college. He would only shower on Sundays and only do laundry when he went back home (which was maybe once a semester), so the entire suite smelled terrible due to his BO. That, along with all of the food he'd make in the room, made for an unbearable situation for my nostrils.

The kid would also oversleep, causing him to miss all of his morning exams, then he'd get cranky at everyone else for not waking him up. There was this one time when he was determined to not miss his exam, so he set alarms every two hours throughout the night and nobody in the suite got any sleep. Yet, somehow, the kid still missed his exam.

To this day, I cannot understand how he functioned as a human. We had some real issues with him because he impacted our everyday lives.

These Neighbors Are MonstersShutterstock

42. Desperate Times

When I first moved into my building, I had a next-door neighbor who used to blast his stereo at 2 am in the morning. He didn't care if he kept everyone up because "it was his time to do what he wanted". It took me and two other tenants to threaten the landlord with breaking our leases before he would do anything about the guy, but did that solve the problem? Nope.

It took calling the authorities and one of my neighbors actually breaking his lease before the landlord finally kicked him out of there.

Nightmare Roommates FactsShutterstock

43.  Gone Too Soon...

I’ve lived in the same house for most of my life. My next-door neighbor is a sweet, elderly lady, but she had the most awful grandson imaginable. He'd always blast music and yell at her whenever he went over to her house. My bedroom faces their house, so I could hear it all. The craziest part is that the guy passed the week after I complained to my parents about him.

I felt horrible for complaining after I found out what happened, and I felt even worse when I realized my first reaction to his passing was: “Thank God I won’t ever be bothered by him again!”

Double livesShutterstock

44. Taking The Power

Before I was in school we lived in a trailer park and our neighbors were always loud, throwing parties. One night, when they were blasting their usual loud music and drinking with their friends, my dad went out and turned off the power. That ended the party. They had no idea it was my dad, and they simply thought they hadn't paid their electric bill.

My dad turned the power back on later at about 6 am the next morning and loud music started right back up. I was so proud of my dad, but we still needed to come up with a Plan B.

These Neighbors Are MonstersShutterstock

45. That's Tree-son

My neighbors climbed over my fence and into my yard when I was away on vacation to cut down an entire tree. According to them, the tree was interfering with their satellite TV signal. Total pieces of human trash.

Secret from parentShutterstock

46. Tomato Thieves

My mom used to grow her own tomatoes. They were amazing and delicious, and she was always so proud of them. We had them for years when I was a kid. Then, some new neighbors moved in. We never had any problems until they arrived. Their kids were spray-painting on our house, throwing junk in our yard, but the biggest sin of them all...

They took...Every. Single. Tomato. All eight of her plants. They were all totally bare. She was heartbroken and never grew tomatoes again.

These Neighbors Are MonstersUnsplash

47. Smile For The Camera

We had next-door neighbors who had rowdy kids, and they never did anything too bad...until one of their parents passed. That's when they became totally unhinged. Over the next few years, they caused us a number of problems. They vandalized the side of our house with graffiti, left lines of nails on our driveway, threw random objects through our windows, and launched water balloons filled with corn syrup and flour into our yard, just to name a few.

And it got even worse as time went on. The kids started selling illicit substances out of their house, and we had to deal with excessive noise as they threw large parties every weekend. They would sit on the front porch with their friends, screaming bad words at each other almost every weekday. We tried calling the authorities on them, and to our surprise, they were already aware of what the kids had been up to since they received calls from other people in the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, their mother covered for them. She'd somehow managed to gain the sympathy of the officers, and then she'd apologize to us privately after they left. All they could do was give them warnings—but that wasn't good enough for us. At one point, we finally decided to set up cameras around the entire perimeter of the house, and we specifically installed them at a time when the kids were outside.

We wanted them to see every camera go up. The moment they realized that they'd be caught on tape if they tried any of their nonsense again, the problems immediately stopped. It's been mostly peace and quiet (with a few exceptions) ever since.

Creepy Security Cameras FactsShutterstock

48. The Fear In Her Eyes

When I was a child, I didn't realize my neighbor was an addict. One time, while my family was about to start eating dinner, a woman opened my front door and screamed into the house: "Please, I need to use your phone to call the authorities!" She was frantic and crying with make-up running down her face. Turns out, she was someone that my neighbor had hired to spend the night with him.

At one point during their interaction, he pulled out a pistol and threatened her in some way. Eventually, he went to get another drink and she seized that opportunity to run to my house. There were other times when I saw him doing pretty horrible things, but this one stands out as it was the first time I saw someone in fear for their life.

James Brown FactsPxHere

49. Unexpected Waterworks

One morning, I was in the shower getting ready for work when water started POURING into my bathroom. I mean, water blasting out of my sconce, shower tiles turning brown from being waterlogged, etc. I threw on shorts and ran down to the office. No one was there. I went to the maintenance office. Empty. I called every number for the company I was renting from. No answer.

Lastly, I went to my neighbor's apartment above me where this was coming from, but still no luck. By the time I got back to my place, the entire bathroom ceiling had collapsed and I had water damage visible in two other rooms and a whole hallway. I later found out that his girlfriend had nodded off while filling the bathtub to do laundry (despite there being a giant laundry room in the basement) and the water was running full blast while it overflowed.

She destroyed my apartment and damaged thousands of dollars worth of my stuff. She admitted to exactly what had happened. He came home and tried to talk his way out of it. The maintenance guy shut him down and told him he knew what had actually happened and that he was basically boned. He then made a throat-slashing gesture at me in view of the head of maintenance.

He got evicted as a result of the damage she did and the fact that he threatened to end me. But the nightmare still wasn't over. He blamed me for his eviction, so he started vandalizing my car by kicking off the side window. He slashed a tire as well.

These Neighbors Are MonstersShutterstock

50. A Mother's Obsession

When I was very young, we lived next door to an elderly couple and their adult daughter. The adult daughter had kids and grandkids of her own, but she had some personal issues and she couldn't live on her own with them. I don't remember how it started, but she would venture further and further into our property until one day, she walked right into our house while we were in the living room.

My mother was pregnant and babysitting other children at the time. She was so startled she jumped up and chased her out of the house. On another occasion, she came storming over to our house with a mop in her hand, determined to attack my mother. She had to call my uncle to come over and I remember him putting his entire body weight on the door to keep her out.

We called the authorities on her and she was taken away for psychiatric evaluation. After that, the officers had to come back to talk to my parents because, during her evaluation, she claimed that my mother had kidnapped her son and chained him in the basement. Obviously, none of that was true. After that, if we were playing outside and we saw her, we immediately ran into the house and locked the doors.

I don't know what her diagnosis was or why she was so fixated on my mother. We eventually moved when I was around 12.

These Neighbors Are MonstersShutterstock

Source:,


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