Generally, we can't control who we live next to. Moving into a new house in a new neighborhood is a lot like a game of roulette—you just don't know how things will turn out, especially with your new neighbors. Will they be totally harmless, or complete nightmares?
1. Feline Vendetta
My neighbor was absolutely fine for about seven years. He was a nice old man who recently remarried to a woman who had a 20-year-old student. She partied from time to time, though she was mostly tame. But then, one day, out of nowhere, we found our one-year-old cat lifeless in their garden. We weren't sure if we could be mad since the cat could have passed of a heart attack or something, so my family shrugged it off as a coincidence.
Fast forward two months later—we had a new cat that was younger and cuter. I came home one day and my cat came crawling to me whilst giving the loudest meow of his life. I couldn't believe my eyes. Turns out, my cat was shot. Our gardener told us that he clearly saw the neighbor with a pistol, popping pigeons or something, minutes before my cat was shot.
So yeah, as you can imagine, we haven't been close to our neighbors since that day...P.S our cat survived surgery and is perfectly fine, but he only has eight lives left.
2. Kooky? More Like Spooky
It started out that we just thought she was a free spirit; just your average hippie-dippie Scandinavian lady with alternative parenting ideas. But we gradually learned that she was just a horrible person. The first red flag was when she picked up my four-year-old son, claiming she wanted him over for a short visit. She said he was playing with her younger daughter and she said they were playing in the buff most of the time.
I told her he wasn't allowed to be undressed anymore but I wasn't mad because I knew things were less uptight in Norway where she was from. I later talked to my son about it. Her older daughter, on the other hand, was always misbehaving. Her first time over to our house, she smeared chapstick all over an entire wall. She was like six years old. Plenty old enough to know better.
Another time, she sneaked into our house while I was outside playing with my kids and started eating some brownies I had just made. I mean, she tore a hole right smack in the middle of the plastic wrap over the dish and scooped out handfuls of brownies. She would also "pole dance" on the tree out front, singing "Shake yo money maker." Six years old.
She had birthday parties for her children, to which we were invited and brought gifts. But then, we found out their REAL birthdays were later in the year. When we were invited again, we declined. The lady tried to explain that she celebrated half birthdays. I explained to her that we didn't. Soon, my children were not allowed to play at their house anymore.
Though, we still all ran into each other walking to school. She would tell me how she saw real demons walking around disguised as people, and how God told her that I was really close to seeing the light and becoming Christian. It was during this time that someone called CPS on her and she accused me of it. It wasn't me, but maybe it should have been.
We finally moved, but she caught up with me one day to give me a bag of used clothes for my daughter. But her intentions were utterly twisted: I sliced my finger on the razor blade that she put in the bag, luckily not very badly. That was the last I saw of her.
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3. A Near Fatal Mistake
My neighbor came home from the bar with his friend and they were both tipsy. At some point, they started screwing around with a pistol and accidentally shot through their floor—down into my apartment. The worst part? I actually got hit in the stomach. I called 9-1-1 and when the ambulance was taking me away, my panicked fiancé was getting ready to leave because the EMTs told her to follow.
My neighbor came down and was like "What happened? We heard a commotion!" The authorities were called and he got taken into custody.
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4. Sketchy Dealings
One year in university, I ended up finding a room in an apartment building. It was one of those apartments with five bedrooms on one floor with a shared kitchen and two bathrooms. The landlady ended up renting out each room individually, so I was living with four complete strangers. They were mostly decent guys and we got along okay, outside or normal roommate quarrels.
This was fine until it was time for the roomies to move out before the lease was up. They didn't want to get charged for the month of rent, so they found subletters. My one roommate gave his room to another total stranger. The new total stranger wasn't really vetted all that well. I bumped into him once when he moved in and he gave me a weird vibe.
He kind of seemed like a sketchy dude, but whatever; we were all poor university students, so I thought maybe I was reading him wrong. I didn't even really meet him long enough to really catch his name. Anyway, one night, a few days after he moved in, I was sitting in my room with my girlfriend and we were watching a movie. During the movie, I could have sworn that I was hearing radios going off.
I shrugged it off and figured it was a part of the movie. About twenty minutes later, however, there was a knock on our apartment door. None of my other four roommates was home, so I answered it and was greeted with not one, not two, but five officers. At least one of them was armed with an SMG. Officers: "Does this man live here?" Me: "Uh...Yeah, I think that's the new roommate..."
Officers: "Is he home?" Me: "Uh...I don't think so..." They came in and knocked on his bedroom door. No answer. Curious, I asked them what was happening. The officers all shared a meaningful look and one of them answered that he may have been involved in an incident and may be injured. About five minutes later, the apartment door opened and the sketchy roommate was standing there in the entrance hall to the apartment.
Our conversation went something like this—Me: "Are you okay? The authorities were here looking for you and said you were injured." His response was horrifying: "Oh, I was involved in a drive-by earlier today. It's okay though, I ran away." He then went into his room as if he didn't just drop a bombshell on us. Five minutes later my girlfriend and I were still sharing looks of astonishment.
Then, a knock on the door again! Surprise, surprise, it was the authorities. Now they had some reinforcements and even a few dogs with them. I just pointed to the guy's door. An officer unbuttoned his holster and I locked myself in my room. I emailed my landlady that night informing her of what had happened, saying that I would be moving out of my apartment early, and that I was expecting not to be billed for my last month of rent. She did not argue.
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5. The Good Prevails
I'm a surveyor. This woman called us with a complaint about her neighbor's garden growing into her property. She was upset at her neighbor and told us all about how nasty she was. We eventually met the neighbor and she ended up being the nicest person ever. She told us she would be willing to move her garden, but only once the survey was completed.
We staked out the line and it went right through the other woman's shed. That's when the horror was unleashed: She screamed at us, pulled our stakes out, and tried to hit us with them. Her neighbor, the one with the garden, was so happy that she was right, she was almost in tears. She made the woman move her shed and then installed a large fence. I love it when the good guy wins.
6. White Flag
I moved into a brand new house. I noticed an old toilet, garbage, and a broken-down hot tub in the neighbors front yard. Nothing special about that. I made cookies and we went over to introduce ourselves. He laughed and slammed the door in our faces. Little did we know, this was the beginning of our worst nightmare. A few days later, I was out landscaping our new yard with my husband, and we just laid some bricks.
He was on his knees, making sure they were level, while I stood beside him and handed over the bricks. Our neighbor then walked by and yelled, “Well, I can see who wears the pants!” My husband and I looked at each other, totally perplexed. Then, a few months later, we got a puppy. Our other neighbor let us know she witnessed the guy's son throwing lit-up matches over the fence at our puppy when he was in the backyard.
We found about 50 matches in our yard. Then she also had to call the authorities because his other son broke the lights on her garage and defecated on her welcome mat (all captured on her home video system). About six months later, I got a complaint about our dog's barking and ended up with a $500 fine. It was ridiculous. Our dog never barked, unless someone walked by or came to the door.
We had letters from all 16 surrounding neighbors attesting that our dog never barked, but the letters were not admissible. We sold the house and moved shortly afterward.
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7. Karmic Justice
This happened to my parents before they had me and my siblings. When buying their first house, which is our current family home, they arrived on their motorbikes to view the house. After deciding on wanting to buy it, they greeted the neighbors. The neighbors expressed how thankful they were that the "biker couple" didn't buy the house, then proceeded to rant about their dislike towards bikers...not knowing my parents were the biker couple.
As you can imagine, it didn't go down too well when the pricks noticed the bikes. But it gets even more interesting—a few months after their initial chat with the neighbors, my parents were sitting in the living room minding their own business when they heard an explosion. They ran outside to find both of their bikes engulfed with flames.
They called the fire brigade who put out the fire. One of the firefighters approached my mom and pointed out that there were matches laying around and that it was more than likely an arson attack. My mom didn't pursue it with the authorities for God knows what reason, but while in her fit of rage, she told my dad: "Whoever did this is going to break their right leg."
Coincidence or not, a week later, one of the neighbors came home with his right leg in a cast.
8. Mr. De Vil
I was 13 at the time. My neighbor tried to take my dog and her puppies. He literally broke into our house one day to do it. Luckily, my mom and I were there at the time—when he realized we had caught him in the act, he dropped the dogs, but also told us that he could break our necks whenever he wanted. Quite a nice guy. We obviously called the authorities after that.
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9. An Act Of Hate
I was in a car accident when I was young, maybe eight years old. I had my two sisters—one younger and one older in the back seat with me, and in the front were our babysitters who were very close family friends. We went off a curb on our very own road that was notorious for accidents and the car flipped several times. It was the middle of winter in Northern Vermont.
We had tons of snow and it was cold out. We were all okay as it was a low-speed accident, but the Jetta doors had crunched in and the only way we could get out was by kicking the cracked windshield out. While our babysitters did their best, we couldn't get out. By that time, the person whose lawn we had rolled onto came down. He was very nice, but he couldn't get to us either. He told us he would go get his parents who lived just up the road to help.
He returned with his parents and my babysitters' faces were a mixture of disbelief and concern. You see, my babysitters are Black, and the guy's parents were their next-door neighbors who were EXTREMELY supremacist. They would shoot in the air and in the general direction of the family's home, shouting "American and proud!" on basically every even remotely patriotic holiday.
It came to a head one year when they shot through two layers of the fence that our babysitters' father had installed out of worry for his many kids. Now, while analyzing our situation, the faces on the parents of the guy were a mixture of disgust and amusement. I'll never forget what they said: "We aren't lifting a dang finger for these losers," and how they turned away, chuckling to themselves.
The guy was embarrassed and apologized on behalf of his parents. A few minutes later, a fire truck arrived and they broke open the doors to help us out. I was freezing and confused as were my sisters. That act of hate has always stuck with me. I sincerely hope those two jerks met a painful end.
10. Real Peaches
My neighbor sprayed our hedge between our houses with something that destroyed it. Initially, we planted it there next to her cyclone fence so we wouldn’t have to look at her. Everything we’ve planted there dies, and they always start dying from her side. She’s super nosy and is always watching out the window, which is why we plant things there!
She also moved her in-ground sprinklers onto what I think is our property. They are touching our driveway, and she sets them to go off in the middle of the night when our cars are parked there. She refuses to set them for when we’re at work because it “interrupts her yard work time.” The water spots on our cars are from the irrigation water, and they leave huge, white, amoeba-shaped marks down one side of our car!
I paid someone $250 last year to use acid to remove them and they were still faintly there. She actually had the nerve to suggest our son park his car there because the color of his car won’t show the water spots as bad! Her husband walks up and down the backyard fence and whistles at our dog to make her bark, then the wife complains to us about our dog barking.
They're real peaches.
11. The No-Gooder
We were trying to sell our house and the neighbors' nephew was sabotaging it. When we’d leave so people could look at it, he would sneak around creepily which turned off a lot of buyers. He even went into my house during an open house and told people not to buy it. He lived like 100 yards away from us and to this day, we still don’t know what his deal was.
Once he started threatening my sister who tried to help him after he passed out on my driveway, we called the authorities and made him sign a paper that said if he was caught on the property again, he’d be put behind bars. Luckily, we were able to sell it after that.
12. Crossing A Line
This is about my neighbor two houses over. We were good acquaintances, probably almost friends; but everything changed in a single moment. I worked for the guy for a little bit—he was actually my boss at the time this happened. I noticed that he's really big on using people's stuff when they aren't around—like one time, he used a guy's woodworking tools while he was gone.
I told him multiple times, "Hey, I'm cool with you borrowing my stuff but just make sure you ask. I also don't like unscheduled visits, so call or text if you want to stop over." I just wanted to let him know where I stood if he wanted to borrow some more tools from me or whatever. I had let him borrow a 17 mm impact socket from me once.
Then, two weeks went by and I assumed the jerk probably lost it. Whatever...I just told myself never to lend out stuff to him again. Well, after another few days, he said, "Hey, you weren't home so I returned the socket and borrowed another." Yes, he hopped over my fence mid-day while I was gone, opened my garage door, returned the socket he borrowed, very scratched and marred up, and helped himself to some of my other tools.
He told me this a week after he did it, out of the blue, as if it was no big deal. That was the breaking point for me. I told him to stay the heck away from me, my house, my family, and my property.
13. Driveway Dispute
We moved into an apartment and our neighbor informed us that she owned half of the driveway. Cool, whatever; it was a huge driveway and it had more than enough room for all of us. After a month or so of living there, she divided the driveway in half with a bunch of rocks. Still fine, as we had plenty of room. But over the course of two months, she slowly moved the rocks closer and closer to our apartment.
It got to a point where we would have to physically move them out of the way to get in and out of our driveway. The landlord finally got a survey done and found out a shocking truth—she didn’t own ANY part of the driveway! From that point on, she was forced to park her car on the road. Serves her right for lying to us and taking advantage of our kindness.
14. Bird Calls
I'm probably someone's bad experience, although they don't know it's me yet. The malfunctioning smoke alarm in my apartment complex hallway has almost become a sort of a bitter joke among my neighbors—it's been chirping multiple times a day for the past two months; but no matter what, maintenance just can't seem to make it stop.
What my neighbors don't know is that the smoke alarm only chirped consistently for about three days. Everything since then has been my parrot, who liked the sound so much that she's been mimicking it as often as she likes. They don't know I have a parrot. The woman immediately next door does think I have a dog, though, because the feathery little witch also likes to bark and then scold herself for it.
15. Up In Smoke
I came home to a smoke-filled apartment and I called 9-1-1 right away since I couldn't find the cause myself. Turns out, our downstairs neighbors put a charcoal grill on their stove so they could barbecue indoors. Brilliant. My only relief was that a friend had walked my dog earlier that day so I know he wasn't in a smoke-filled apartment all afternoon.
16. Public Pool
They insisted that we pay to have a gate installed between our backyard fences so that they may use our above-ground pool as they please, preferably when they invite friends over. When we denied it, they threw a hissy fit and found an excuse to "punish" us. You see, the pool was going through some expensive issues with leakage into the yard.
They threatened to call the fine-happy HOA because the water was leaking into the yard they rarely used and their dog was allegedly getting sick from drinking the water. Not wanting to deal with that nonsense (and also wanting to clean our own backyard of the pond that began housing frogs), my father spent his birthday day off from work in the Texas heat digging a trench and installing a pipe so that the water could drain.
The neighbors came outside and harassed dad the entire time he was digging the trench, telling him it would've just been easier to install the gate. Would've been easier to install a shovel into their frontal lobes, those freaking profligates.
17. Don's A Dog
My old neighbor used to walk his dog on a leash to let it take a dump in my yard. My mom had me throw the mess back into his yard once and he called the authorities on us. A few months later, my family and I were going out of town and after we left our house, my mom had realized she had forgotten something. We turned around—and what we witnessed made our blood boil.
There's our awful neighbor, standing in the middle of our yard with his dog on a leash dropping a nice present in our front yard. All I remember is my mom winding down her window and yelling, “Screw you, Don!”
18. Black Tie Event
My next-door neighbor growing up had someone in the family pass. On the day of the funeral, he came to our door and asked my dad if he could borrow a tie. My father complied and gave him a nice black silk tie, suitably appropriate for the occasion. He felt bad for the guy and thought it was an easy way for him to help the guy out during his time of sorrow.
We showed up at the funeral and saw the neighbor, strangely not wearing the tie he borrowed. Then we looked at the casket and my dad's tie was being worn by the corpse. Not wanting to be rude, none of us said anything, and as a result, the tie was buried with the corpse, never to be seen again.
19. You Think You Know Someone
I lived behind Bob Berdella, the notorious figure from Kansas City. I lived there for five years and I talked to him daily, as he was the head of the neighborhood watch. Little did I know that he had also been living a secret life, kidnapping people and sending them without remorse. The day he was caught, it was because one of the young gay men he captured escaped and ran down the street wearing nothing but a dog collar.
Because I listened to tapes and CDs at the time, I had not heard anything about it on the radio. I drove home that night to a neighborhood full of officers, and it took me by complete surprise. When I found out the truth, I sounded just like every other neighbor in that type of situation: "But he was such a quiet and nice guy..."
They used excavators and backhoes to dig up his yard, and they tore down my fence as well. Eventually, he was given life in prison, where he eventually passed. His house was later sold and demolished. It was very weird. He had a store in a flea market, plus four skulls in the window with a sign that read "Final Four." One was from a victim.
20. The Psycho Next Door
My aunt, who was a single mother at the time and ran a daycare service in her house, lived next to a psychopath. After a bad ice storm one day, my aunt had a bunch of tree limbs fall into her backyard. Her neighbor's husband came over and cleaned it up for her; you know, just being a good neighbor. In turn, my aunt thanked him with a case of drinks; you know, just being a good neighbor.
Well, his wife took that as flirting, and so began a one-sided feud against my aunt. It was a while ago, so I don't remember everything. What I do remember, though, was horrifying. She tried to run over my aunt's dog once. Another time, she called child protective services and told them my aunt was a night worker and working at her house during the daycare hours.
Probably the worst one though was when my aunt found a bit of grass near the house burnt. She's old high school friends with the fire inspector, so he came and confirmed a fire was started using a propellant. My aunt took her to court over these things, but I don't remember what came of it. I'm pretty sure she at least got a restraining order.
21. A Huge Disturbance
Our neighbor burned something in his oven. Rather than open his windows to get the smoke out, he opened his door to the hall and set off the building's alarms. We all had to stand out in the cold and wait for the fire department while he watched from his apartment. The fire department opened his windows and told him he was an idiot.
We still had to wait outside for them to do mandatory checks of everything to make sure it really was just him being stupid. It was January. In New England. During a cold snap.
22. When Greed Takes Over
I live in Puerto Rico, where most of the island has been without power for the past two months following Hurricane María. Due to our government's power authority being quite slow in the recuperation process, a lot of neighborhoods in my area have been hiring private contractors to bring the electricity back. In my case, I found a contractor willing to bring our neighborhood's power grid back on, but I needed unanimous support from the neighbors to pay and authorize the process.
Most were on board for this, but two of my next-doors opposed it for some reason. When we asked them why they were, their response floored us. They said that they wanted the neighborhood without power so the rest of us would eventually leave and they'd never have to see our "annoying and pathetic" faces again. So it was pretty much a no-go on the contractor.
Fast forward a week and we found out that these next-doors had a friend in the power authority who asked them to keep away private contractors from the neighborhood so the authority could take credit when the power is eventually restored.
23. 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.
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. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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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28. 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 straight 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.
29. 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.
30. 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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31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. 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.
35. 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.
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36. 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.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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 an inflatable 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.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. 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 inebriated driving that night in an unrelated incident.
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43. 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.
44. 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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45. 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.
46. 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!
47. 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.
48. 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 dark 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.
49. 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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50. 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.
Sources: Reddit,
