A bad neighbor has the power to become your greatest enemy. From petty conflicts over property lines to unbearable noise-makers, these neighbors prove that they're the most annoying and the most stupid.
1. A Strange Electrical Problem
My dad had a neighbor when he was young who played his radio loudly all day, even when he wasn't home or was gone on vacation. But he didn't realize my dad is an evil genius. Every time he left the house and his radio was still on, my dad would go and trip the circuit breaker to his condo. One day, he sees my dad, who was an electrical engineer, and asked him why his breaker kept tripping.
Was it faulty wiring? No, my dad explained, the loud radio was probably just putting too much strain on the circuit when left on all the time. My dad suggested he should try turning it down or off when he wasn't home, and see if that fixed it. So, the man tried it, and surprise surprise, the circuit breaker stopped tripping! He was very thankful to my dad for helping him with that annoying electrical issue.
2. Get A Move On
I had a problem with a neighbor who drove over my lawn with his ATVs and damaged the grass/shrubs. He said he'd pay for damage, but that never happened and he kept doing it. So, I put my huge trailer across their tracks to block their path. They went around it. I put up two other barriers that they also drove around. It took a while, but I finally got my revenge.
I found this huge branch that had fallen in the woods between our properties and dragged it across to cover the third path they were making across my yard. But, the branch got caught on a cable. What is a cable doing over the lawn instead of properly buried? So, I called the cable company to have it buried. They said I was the only registered client on that box and to disconnect it.
So, I did. After the weekend, my neighbor came by totally angry at me for disconnecting his cable. He yelled he was going to call 9-1-1 on me. So, I left. I got a call from the officers. They asked if I disconnected the cable because of the ATV issue. It was interesting because I wasn't even going to mention the ATV issue, but my neighbor already did.
So long story short, the neighbor got a warning ticket for trespassing and admitted to looting cable. I took an offer on my house that very day and moved.
3. All The Help In The Neighborhood
My neighbor is an overweight middle-aged woman who seems to have a bad knee only when my kids are outside in the summer. It quickly got weird. If they are playing in my fenced in backyard, she'll pretend to fall down so they can help her up. I went from, "Kids, you should help her, that's what neighbors do!" to "She fell AGAIN? It seems like she only falls when you guys are playing. She doesn't fall when I'm working in the garden" to "If she falls again, come get me".
When I started saying that, she seemed to be able to get up pretty quickly. I had to go over there in August and tell her that I can't have my kids helping her get up anymore, they are seven and eight years old and they can't give her medical aid. I get that she is probably lonely, but three or four times a week, I'd hear her yell, "Kids, Kids! help me up, I fell AGAIN".
4. An Eye For An Eye
There’s a couple that lives across the hall from me. They fight often and loudly. One night, the girl found something on the guy's phone that she found objectionable…either photos or evidence of cheating. Either way, she was yelling a lot about hos and whatnot, so she threw his phone off the second-floor balcony onto the concrete walkway below where it shattered.
The guy then goes back inside, grabs her phone, and does the same. The moral of the story is that an iPhone for an iPhone makes the whole world entertaining for the neighbors.
5. Enough To Write A Book
My constantly inebriated neighbor came up with the brilliant idea that he could collect the leaves in the gravel parking lot with his snowblower! It went so much worse than I even expected. He duct-taped a plastic garbage bag over the discharge chute, and off he went. It actually inflated the bag for a few moments...until the stones started flying.
He broke three windows on his garage door and splattered a bunch of cars in the lot. I lost my britches laughing. I could write a book on all the stupid things I saw him do.
6. The Noxious Neighbor
I was off sick one day, and my roommate came home for lunch and checked the mail. We got a letter with no return address, sent to "the rooftop potheads" with our address on it. We knew it was for our next door neighbors, not us, since one of them had a chair on the roof and toked up there. Since it had no actual name, and our address on it, I was like, “Of course I'm going to open this, it'll be hilarious!" It was more like a nightmare.
As I'm opening the taped envelope, a little bit of white powder sprinkled onto my lap. My roommate and I looked at each other and thought, “Uh, what?” So, I got up and took the letter outside to open it. A ton of white powder came out of the letter when we took it out of the envelope, so we grabbed a ziploc bag and some tongs, and sealed up the letter.
The letter was typed and said random things like, "To the jerk who likes lighting up on the roof and yelling at people on the street with kids, you'd better have good insurance because I'll damage your stuff. I'm an ex-officer and have nothing better to do than to watch over you. You angered the wrong guy". But the most disturbing part was at the end: "By the way, the substance in this envelope is noxious, so you might want to get yourself to a hospital".
At that point, we were half laughing, half concerned, so I called 9-1-1 just in case. They took it very seriously and sent out everyone: officers, paramedics, fire trucks, RCMP, and the tactical unit. The street was closed off, we were quarantined to our garage, and every neighbor who was home at the time came out to take a look.
Everyone was told to go back inside and stay put. The tactical team got suited up in hazmat suits and went into our house to test the letter/envelope. We were in the garage for almost three hours. The tactical guys came back out and said the substance was found to be non-noxious but they still had to do some more tests to figure out exactly what it was.
At that point, we were taken into the ambulance for a look-over and then back to the garage. It turns out the white powder was pancake mix. My roommate and I, along with the officers and tactical guys burst out laughing together. We thanked the response teams and they left. The RCMP officers stayed behind to get our statements and questioned the next door neighbors to whom the letter was supposed to be sent.
A detective followed up with us a couple of times. Since it was a threat and sent through the mail, it was a serious offense. The letter/envelope was sent off to forensics for testing. Unfortunately, nothing was found and the case was closed. The people in that house caused some nonsense the entire time they lived there, such as noise complaints, and trash left everywhere outside, but this incident really takes the cake. Luckily, they have all since moved out.
7. A Misplaced Sense Of Anger
I own about eight acres of land. The house next to me has a right of way drive that goes through it. A couple bought the house about 10 years ago. One day, they were down near the mailboxes planting some plants. I went down and very nicely told them that what they had done was fine but in the future, before they do anything on my property, they need to ask me first.
He argued with me that they had rights to all of the property on 35 inches of each side of the right of way. I explained to him that this just wasn't true. They haven't spoken to me since and won't even return my wave when I wave at them. If they want to be mad at someone, it is the agent who sold them the house, not me.
8. I’m That Neighbor
Maybe I was an idiot neighbor...or a crazy one. When my son was a newborn, he was very colicky and barely slept for more than a few hours at a time. I was so tired and literally losing my mind. There was a house of old bikers down the street and they would constantly drive down our road and rev their engines. I mean, my husband rides, I know it is possible to drive down the street and rattle windows.
It would wake the baby up. So, I went down there and asked a question very nicely. I said, "Hey guys, I know it's your street too, but I have a young baby who you wake up every time you do that, can you guys just not rev your engines on the street?" They seemed super cool about it and I was so thankful. But, it made it worse, not better.
Now it was like a game to REALLY rev when they went by my house. It became like the tell tale heart and started to drive me mad. Every time I heard it, I became one step closer to buying heavy machinery and mowing them down. I became completely irrational one day and stormed down the street. I burst into their backyard where they were hanging and yelled at them like a crazy person, threatened to kick their butts, call for enforcement officers, cut their tires, whatever it took for them to stop revving their engines.
It finally stopped, but I am still embarrassed by how crazy I acted. Sleep deprivation is a heck of a drug.
9. On Yours But Not On Mine
I live on a 50 acre New England farm. About two thirds of it is wooded. After I'd been here for about a year, I was walking the boundary stone wall, which is on my side of the land. From a neighbor's yard I hear a bellowing voice, "YOU'D BETTER NOT BE ON MY LAND". I replied, "I'm not. I'm on my own land". He yells back, from somewhere in the trees on his side, "JUST SO YOU KNOW, NEVER STOP FOOT ON MY LAND".
Me: "OK, we've got a deal. And you stay off mine, OK?" I hear a grunt. Then I ask, "By the way, is this deer hunting tree standing on my side of the wall?" At which point he exploded, "THAT STAND HAS BEEN THERE FOR TEN YEARS!" He picked a fight for absolutely no reason, and ended up agreeing to not trespass on my land...and had been trespassing for a decade.
10. Those Darn Teenagers
We have a grandma next door who is raising her three grandchildren. They are complete teenage idiots. They got in trouble for robbing our neighbors. The kids would offer to cut their grass and ask to use their bathroom when they were done. Then, they would take medication from the bathroom. It was extremely obvious who took the medication.
They pulled this scheme up and down the block. It wasn't too hard to put it together.
11. Not So Nice Guy
When I was a kid, we had this dude living next door who seemed like a nice guy. This is the mid 90s and he had a neon business, so he was doing pretty well for himself. Then, he got together with a crackhead and his house slowly started going down the drain…literally. At one point, his septic system went up and since they were lighting up every dime he made, he decided that he was just going to make a cesspit. I wish I was joking.
We live on the East Coast in the mid-Atlantic, so it gets hot and humid come July. Thanks to this guy, our entire neighborhood smelled like a temporary toilet at a mid-summer festival for about three months. Fast forward to January, it’s nice and snowy, and we come home to our house being broken into. Our computer is gone, the TV is gone, and a bunch of movies and medications are gone.
Officers show up and they start dusting and looking around. They go outside and lo and behold, there are tracks going from our side door back to the neighbor’s house. Of course, they denied everything and are at least smart enough not to keep the stuff around after we got home. They were not smart enough to use different names; they pawned everything though.
Needless to say, we had new neighbors within a few months of this incident.
12. Too Large Of Holes
I grew up on a small farm with cows, and turkeys. Across the street, there was a small produce farm. When I was six or so, we got a new neighbor. He had been a corporate lawyer in New York City and then woke up one day, said, "I really hate my job, I'm going to buy a farm and raise exotic animals". This guy did not know much, but by gods he had a dream and he wasn't going to give up.
He and his wife were both city folk, born and raised in New York City. They moved in during the winter and he asked my dad a lot of questions about pens, fences, vets, and the works. Spring came and I was awakened by frantic knocking on the door. It's the wife, Jen, panicking because, "It smells like poop! Is there a problem with the sewer? Who do we call?!"
My mom starts laughing, which frustrates Jen more. My mom explained that it was spring and the produce farm across the street just laid down their fertilizer. My mom had to further explain that fertilizer is just a nice word for cow poop. After she left, we could hear her screaming at her husband that she hated it here and this was the dumbest idea he's ever had and she wants to go back to the city.
Keep in mind that our houses were pretty far apart, as we were both on six to 10 acre lots. She could really project. They got some emus and llamas shortly after. This is like 1990, when most people had never even heard of an emu at this point. My father is suitably impressed with the livestock, less so with the fencing Arthur chose.
It was wire fencing with pretty large holes in it. Large enough for both the llamas and the emus to stick their heads through...and then they'd decide they were thirsty so they'd snake their heads back through a lower hole and get stuck that way. Arthur would then come running to our house for help getting his animals unstuck before they drowned in the water troughs.
This happened at least once a month for over ten years. Arthur never changed the fencing, despite my dad asking him why he wouldn't change the fencing or at least move the troughs into the center of the pens. They've since moved, but I'll never forget the zaniness of runaway emus and llamas, fantastical escaping pygmy goats, or Jen freaking out because it smelled like poop.
13. Caught In The Lies
When I lived with my parents, we had a knock at the door one day from our neighbors across the road. They were all flustered, and told us that someone had stolen their car the night before. Apparently, the wife had seen a strange looking man wandering around the street late at night. He had apparently been looking into car windows which were parked on driveways, including our cars.
The next morning, their BMW was gone, including the keys, which were hanging by the front door of their house. They "assumed" the strange man looking in car windows had somehow fished the keys from the house via the letterbox. The whole thing sounded very strange. To not call law enforcement when a man is literally peering through car windows on people's driveways was strange enough.
Months later, the neighbors got a divorce and sold their house. That's when the insane truth came out. Turns out, they'd made the whole thing up, and had dumped the car for the insurance, as they had fallen on hard times. Apparently, their story hadn't held up well, and they were found out. Who broadcasts a story like that? Why make yourself look stupid for not calling law enforcement when seeing a strange man eyeing up cars? And then tell all the neighbors about the man?
14. Fooled Him Twice
My neighbor, after someone had attempted to take his bike and being advised by me to get a better lock, proceeded to save his time by not locking his bike up at all, but balancing the lock so that it looked like his bike was locked up unless you actually looked at it for a few seconds. I warned him that someone had already tried to take his bike and that it wasn't really clever leaving it unlocked like that.
He says, "I promise you I'll lock it up". Why he's promising me anything, I have no idea, I was just being neighborly. He then leaves his bike unlocked like that for about a week until someone takes it, just like I said someone would. I guess it did save the thief time. Then, he did exactly the same thing again! About two months after his first bike was taken, he left another bike out unlocked for weeks and it was also taken.
15. Saw That Coming
I have crazy neighbors. They are actually very nice as far as neighbors go, but the family is totally dysfunctional. They have two grown up daughters living there, along with their teenage daughters and their boyfriends. One has a kid. There are roughly 10 people living there ranging from five to 70. They keep the yard mowed and keep to themselves mostly, but they are entirely insane.
I actually like them for two reasons. First, they are notorious and crazy around our town, so everyone leaves them alone, so there are not many misdemeanors around us. Second, they are entertainment. One morning, my aunt was visiting. We are on the front porch and I am telling her about all the neighbors. I was telling her a story about how one of the younger granddaughters got in a fight with her boyfriend at two in the morning on a Tuesday night.
They are screaming at each other, walking up and down the street, explaining that something like that happens once a week. What happened next was too perfect. Like clockwork, one of the daughters comes out screaming back at someone and gets in her car. Her daughter comes out and tries to stop her from backing out. She grabs a shovel from the back of the truck and starts hitting the front windshield of the card, shattering it.
They call 9-1-1. Meanwhile, the granddaughter with the shovel calls her biological dad, who lives down the road. He picks his daughter up. Two minutes later the officers show up, but she is gone. I have hundreds of stories like this.
16. The Geniuses Next Door
Our neighbor home-schooled his kids and would always brag about how his children were geniuses with perfect scores on all the standardized tests. Sure, they got a 1600/1600 on the SAT, but he would never let them play with us unwashed masses. Twenty years later, his kids are still living at home and all of them lack the social skills to make connections and get a job. Book smarts will only get you so far.
17. Popular For A Reason
Back in high school, one of our neighbors moved away and their house sold to this older woman and her mostly grown sons. She was a strange one. She cut down every tree on her property because of the "bad spirits" in them. The sons seemed to be popular, having people drop by at all hours. All was relatively quiet until one day, while I was home alone, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and my blood ran cold.
Two gentlemen in very nice black suits and dark ties then identified themselves as FBI and asked me if we were ever approached by a crazy lady or her sons to buy anything. I basically replied that they are crazy and we don't talk to them, they don't talk to us. They hand me their business card then proceed on to the next house.
I look out the window and I see five blue Ford Tauruses, three red Ford Astro Vans, and one VIACOM truck that was being loaded with box after box from the neighbor's garage. It turns out the sons were making those special cable boxes that got you all of the channels for free. After this, it was only the strange lady left in that house.
18. It’s Always Time To Rake
My neighbor of the last house I lived in had about one third of his property inside our backyard because the previous tenants didn't measure correctly when they installed the fence. Two or three times a week, my neighbor raked leaves. He started in his backyard and then dragged a giant trash can to his one third of the property of my yard and raked for hours.
Then, he'd go to the front and rake that area and walk the trash can back through our backyard and into the woods where he'd dump the leaves and yard clippings. This neighbor was so obsessed that his one third of the yard didn't have grass growing from how often he raked and walked through it. In the summer, he'd mow this dirt patch, sometimes after the sun had gone down and it was completely dark.
19. Scared The Guy Away
I was out planting grass over some holes I had filled in, and I heard my neighbor yelling. He's an older guy, but big and threatening looking. Anyway, I look over and there's a groundhog lumbering around his yard. He's yelling at the groundhog to go away, but it doesn't give a shot and just keeps walking toward the garage.
The guy grabs his water hose from the garage and gets ready to spray the groundhog, but it starts running toward his garage because the noises scared it and it couldn't hear where they came from. I have never seen a grown man run like he did that day. He got inside his house faster than I would have thought possible. I went over and scared the groundhog out of his garage, but never told my neighbor I did it. I think he hid in his house for a solid three hours.
20. No Parents In Sight
This happened a couple of days ago, so I am still rather annoyed. We live in a small block of flats, with six floors and 39 flats. We had just returned from a big shopping trip and were waiting in the garage for the lift. We waited a few minutes, heard it move, and heard lots of giggling and banging. Five minutes more, there was still no lift.
My partner went to see what was going on. The awful kids had jammed the lift open using a screwdriver and were running around like crazy. There were no parents in sight. Now the lift isn't working, I said on the building's Facebook page that we caught the kids messing with it, but did the parents take any responsibility?
No...They just keep saying that there must've been an automatic problem with the lift. Even though we caught them! The joke is on them, I'm on the ground floor, the annoying families now have to drag prams up six floors just because they are unable to discipline their kids.
21. The Worst Solution
My older neighbors across the street are very sweet and like to help out. One morning when my windshield was frozen and I was dealing with it. It was just frost, not solid ice, so I was diligently scraping and had the heat on in my car. Well, the man of the couple pops out his front door with a pitcher of steaming water. It was like something out of a movie, where he's just happily trotting towards me and I'm trying to get around my door around the hood to get between him and my car. I watched in horror, but there was nothing I could do.
I don't make it in time and he splashes an entire pitcher of hot water on my windshield. Miraculously it didn't crack, but it was still cold as heck outside, so instead of a little frost here and there I now had a solid half inch of ice on my entire windshield. I still don't understand how an older fellow like him who has clearly lived around here for a while still thought that was a legit solution.
22. The Cows Upstairs
My upstairs neighbors moo at each other. Very loudly. I used to live in the country and it sounds exactly like a cow, and me and my roommate have no idea why they do it. Nobody believes us until they come over and hear it for themselves. We "moo" back at them sometimes now if they get too loud and they usually stop for a while. They're just weird people though.
23. From Bad To Worse
My neighbors bought their house three years ago and they have been working on it since then. No matter what day or time, they are drilling, hammering and screaming around. They even tore down most walls inside so we can hear almost everything they say or do. It drives me nuts. Talking to them doesn't help because my neighbor is a stubborn idiot who just screams at you and tells you to go screw yourself.
A few days ago, a full squad of officers busted into their house. I have no idea why, but I can't imagine it was because of their renovation noises.
24. Had To Rock With It
My neighbor before I bought the house everyday would park, but use a wide sweeping arc to get into his spot. Over my lawn. After asking many times for him to stop, I put an enormous rock directly in that path on my own property. Lo and behold, he smashed into it hard. After threatening to sue very loudly and forcefully, I informed him I'm a lawyer and he damaged my rock on my property and is liable for all the damages to my brand new rock. He stopped driving on my lawn after.
25. Poor Decisions Were Made
My law teacher’s neighbors had a fence built on his property. He normally wouldn't care, but since they were always rude to his wife, he decided to pursue it in court. The judge ordered the neighbor to pay to take down the fence. Trying to avoid paying, he tried to dig the fence up himself. Big mistake. The guy avoided paying to take down the fence, but in the process he accidentally severed a $10,000 fiber optic cable which he had to pay to replace. Moral of the story, don't be rude to your neighbors.
26. Right Where They Took It
The summer before moving into an off-campus apartment my junior year, I was staying in free on-campus housing as a part of my RA compensation. I had bought two bicycles for me and my girlfriend to ride around on during the summer. After taking them for a ride and locking them up outside the residence hall, we went out to dinner.
We came back to find the bike lock clipped and one bike missing. After reporting it and having law enforcement collect pictures of the logos, I didn't hear back for a month or two. I moved into the off-campus apartment and eventually got a phone call telling me that the officers had located the bikes. I went down to the local pawn shop to find my bike in perfect condition.
I rode it home overjoyed and glad the officers found it relatively easily. I remember reading the letters from the state's attorney updating on the status of the case when I made the connection to the thief’s name. It was my next door neighbor. We shared a wall between our bedrooms and I'd frequently hear his girlfriend yelling his name through the wall.
It turns out he was the guy who took my bike and just happened to move into the unit next to the person he chose to rob just months before.
27. Brain Full Of Junk
Our bulk trash day is on Saturdays. We were doing a lot of remodeling in our house so we had a lot to put out over the course of two months. The last set of stuff we put out, our neighbors parked in front of it on the curb. I woke up the next morning to find a little tag on my trash that basically said, "Sorry, we couldn't get to your trash".
We were irritated because the junk had to sit on the corner for a whole week because we weren't about to haul it back into our backyard to just haul it back out again. And guess what? They did it again the next week! What made us mad was that they didn't park there at any other time in the week, they did that ONLY on Friday nights, so the trash couldn't be picked up on Saturday mornings.
So, I took the initiative and parked at the spot on Friday night, then got up early Saturday morning to move my car. The trash finally got picked up after three weeks. Fast forward three or so weeks later, the idiot did the same thing to his own trash, so his bulk stuff stayed out there for multiple weeks. I just relocated my junk to the other side of my yard so my stuff could get picked up while his stuff stagnates.
28. Stuck In The Snow
One old man neighbor asked a young man neighbor for help getting his car unstuck from his driveway after a heavy snowfall. I tag along to help push him out. We put tracks under his front tires since it was a front-wheel drive vehicle, and get behind and push, while the old-neighbor drives out of the snow. He gets on the street and I see his rear tires not moving at all. Only the front ones were moving. That's when it dawns on me.
I turn to the young neighbor and say, "Did he leave his parking brake on?" Yup, he did, and that's why he was stuck.
29. Right Over His Head
I had a neighbor who decided that an easy way to carry a broken dishwasher down the stairs was on his head. The other neighbors watched him wondering how he was going to get it off of his head. The answer turned out to be by dropping it on his foot, and then cursing up a storm.
30. Living By One Rule
When I was little, I had these neighbors who lived by the theory, "God giveth, God taketh away". So, they would never take leaves or clear their driveway of snow and ice because they figured if God wanted them to be able to drive then He'd make it warmer.
31. Basketball Over Everything
In college, I lived in a big apartment building. I lived in a two bedroom apartment and only had neighbors on one side. They also shared a wall with only us. One day, they just started this constant loud banging on the walls. This went on and off for days and was extremely loud and annoying. Finally, we figured out what it was via one guy's Snapchat story. I could barely believe it.
These guys had installed a full-size basketball hoop on the wall we shared with them and were constantly trying to make baskets. This was especially annoying because the wall directly across from where the hoop was, was not shared with anyone. So, we talked to them about it and asked if they could move it. The next day, we hear loud drilling in the wall and assume they are taking it down. Nope! They either installed a second hoop or made the first one more secure in the wall.
32. Some Silly, Funny, Things
We have a neighbor who isn't all there. But, she does some silly funny things. Once, we got a call at our door. It was a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses. After they were done with us, they went next door. We saw them walk across from our window towards our crazy neighbor’s house. 15 seconds later, they sprinted passed our window in the opposite direction, with said crazy neighbor is pursuit.
33. Caught Red Handed
My neighbor and my dad never got along. Long story short, he was a grumpy old man who hates kids, including my sister and I. One morning after weeks of bickering over various issues, my dad suspects the neighbor might be throwing some gravel on his car every morning. This car was my dad's first car he ever bought. It is older than I am.
My dad’s a terrifying man, hence my ps and qs are on point. I expected him to do something irrational and full of spite. He simply woke up a little early, lied down in the back seat with a camera and filmed him throwing gravel on the hood. I'll never forget the smirk he had as he got out and just said, "Thanks".
34. The Plant Must Be Fed
I think the funniest thing my neighbor did was grow weed in their back garden. Now, I know that doesn't sound funny, and I'd like to say that to each, their own. If that's your thing, that's cool, but the way they went about it was comical. They grew a single plant in a huge plant vessel, which they would haul out of their house for several hours of the day so it could get sunlight.
Eventually, the plant got pretty big and it was time for them to take it wherever they needed to. So, they hauled this huge plant vessel out to the street and stuffed it into the back of a car. The car's suspension wasn't happy with that. The boot was also left open so the plant could stick out and not get crushed.
35. Take It Out In The Morning
Unfortunately, the dumb neighbors are my friend’s family. I always remember, for a good 10 years, my friend's family put the garbage on the side of the road every week the night before the garbage truck came around. We live in the suburbs, just on the edge of a large forest and river, so there's no shortage of wildlife. Just about every morning, the garbage would be all ripped open and scattered on their lawn and on the road and on other people's property, because the raccoons would get into it.
My dad told them a few times to get some bins to keep them in and take it out in the morning like everyone else. They always said they would, but never got around to it until maybe two years ago now.
36. The Very Last Time
The house next to mine became a rental property. The woman and her daughter who moved in seemed nice enough. Through getting to know her over the next few months, it became apparent that she was a little slow and not very together. One day, I was replacing the faucet in my kitchen and the shut off valve under the sink snapped off while I was trying to close it.
As you could imagine, water started getting out all over the new laminate floor. Knowing I had no exterior water shut off on my house, I quickly ran outside to shut off the water main to the house. My kitchen was quickly flooding, and I was desperate to close it ASAP. It was buried under a foot of sand, so I am frantically digging to access it and close it.
Anyone looking would see that I am panicking and very engaged. At this time, my neighbor comes out and stands next to me. She tried to start a conversation with me, but I ignored her as I had no time for that. She continues to talk to me, even though I do not talk back. She tells me how her daughter asks her to make some Chinese chicken.
She goes into detail of how she made it, how it tasted, and what else they ate with it. Needless to say, as I am soaking wet, dirty as heck, and finally got the valve closed, she continues to talk to me as I get up and go back into my house to clean up all that water. As I left, she just stood there and continued to talk as if she had an audience.
My wife and I refer to that as the “Chinese chicken incident". We ended up moving a few months later, but that was the last time we spoke to our neighbor.
37. Cruella De Cars
We live in a courtyard of eight houses. One neighbor, let's call her Cruella, controls the parking spaces. Having moved in one year ago, she halved our parking allowance from two to one car for no reason. She, at 37 years old, bullied an 18-year-old who lives with his parents. Us other residents collectively responded. Now, she has two parking spaces, down from five, and hides when we're out front. She will never win.
38. A Bad Situation All-Around
My neighbor had two big dogs that barked a lot when she was gone from home. Polite requests to do something about it always resulted in, "It is not my dogs barking". Take note that this was often late at night when we're trying to sleep. Sometimes, she would leave them outside all night alone to bark while we tried to sleep closeby. In our county, barking for more than one hour is a unlawful.
We took her to a barking "court," actually a hearing, where parties present evidence in front of a "judge," We took her there four times and she always lost. She also never paid the fines. Finally, her soon to be ex-husband came over and took the dogs to the animal shelter. He was tired of all the neighbors calling him to complain even though he did not live with her.
She could not get them back from the county shelter without paying the fines. But this story has a tragic end. They were ultimately put down. She had never trained them and had no control over them at all. They were basically dangerous and un-adoptable. She eventually lost her house to foreclosure after her divorce. It was a bad situation for all concerned.
39. It Won’t Be Long
We used to live next door to a horrible couple. They seemed nice at first, all smiles, but they soon dropped the façade. There are a bunch of stories that lead to us moving houses, to a much nicer place later on. We decided to get chickens, first checking with our closer neighbours if this was okay, to which they all agreed.
However, when we upgraded from three to six chickens, the couple to our right sent a complaint to the council, claiming we were keeping non-domestic animals. A quick phone call to the council confirmed we were fine to keep chickens, and our reply to the couple included the fact that the Latin name for a chicken is Gallus Gallus Domesticus.
Another time, we received a note saying that after we took our Caravan out for a holiday, they noticed how much light was blocking out, being in our front yard. They asked us to remove it, and also to kill three of our chickens. We obviously refused, so they told us we were going to pay for a fence, taller than the Caravan and blocking out even more light, to be built between our properties.
We also refused. One day, we came back to see builders erecting a fence and tearing up the picket fence on OUR property. Apparently, they had been told they could remove it by the meaner of the couple. My dad threatened to call law enforcement and the builders just left, causing the couple to confront my dad later that day.
After this incident, they started being vile. They would bang cupboard doors and literally laugh like cackling witches, all of which we could hear through the walls of our home. They would drive slowly alongside my mum walking my brother to school and glare at her for minutes at a time, and once, one of them yelled out the window at my dad, calling me and my siblings brats while we were there.
Soon after this, we moved out, but we have in on good authority that their new neighbors are extremely loud compared to us, so I don't think it'll be long before they start on their new neighbors.
40. Not A Moment To Forget
One evening, while having some quiet time at home playing COD with my spouse, we heard a tentative knock on our door. Not expecting company, I hopped up to discover our neighbor's 14-year-old daughter peeking through our door and looking rather pained. I opened the door to greet her and she immediately started talking like crazy. Her story was probably the weirdest thing I've ever heard.
You see, her grandmother, who was staying with her for the night as her parents were at a wedding, was unclothed. And, she has just peed on the floor. Now, I am not unaccustomed to having very bizarre situations happen. For some reason, I tend to be a magnet for other people's problems that are, in a word, unique. But, I admit that this one had me more than a bit flummoxed.
I then asked 20 questions…"Has she hit her head? Has she taken any medications? Has she been drinking booze? Is she slurring her speech?" Debating between calling law enforcement and going over there to see what is going on, I against my better judgement, took the 14-year-old to go grab some clothes so she could just stay with us until her parents got back.
I also wanted to see if this was a stroke, drunken episode, or mental health crisis. So, yes, the grandmother was unclothed and did not care. There was a puddle of pee on the floor, which I tried to avoid but sadly no luck as it was everywhere. She offered me some pizza, which I declined. We finally got a hold of the parents, and mom was so angry.
She told the 14-year-old to go over there and tell the grandmother to go to sleep. So, as it turned out, the grandmother was a pill popper. I washed my shoes, and rested well in the knowledge that I helped a worried child. But, I will forever have that whole evening burned into my head.
41. Took It To Go
A new neighbor moved in. I go over to introduce myself, and he is friendly. Then, he introduces me to his three rottweilers. No big deal, I like dogs. A couple hours later, I see him pounding in three huge metal stakes in his yard and he chains up the rottweilers. They proceed to bark from about four in the morning until eight.
Within three days, there is no grass on his lawn and it's just a muddy mess. I ask him to do something about the barking nicely multiple times. He gives it a lame amount of effort, so I just kept calling animal control. Running out of options, I gave him $1,000 towards putting up a privacy fence. He did, I sold my house immediately and moved. I heard a short while later he moved and took the fence with him!
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42. Searching For Evidence
When I was in high school, our neighbor had a bunch of baby geese in her backyard. We never found out where she got them. They just showed up one day. Then, a few months later, they were gone. After that, she told everyone in the neighborhood that my dad had harmed her geese. According to her, my dad had scaled her massive privacy fence, fended off her two German shepherds, and used a length of fishing line to cut the heads off of all eight of her geese.
And then, he managed to clean up the murder scene and take all eight bodies back over the fence with him. Now, my dad was not Hugh Jackman. He was 65 and flabby. Obviously, after a few months, the geese just got old enough to fly away. So, we told everyone to just ignore the crazy nutbag. But, that's not where it ended.
The next morning, I went downstairs for breakfast and saw my dad staring out the window. "She's robbing our garbage," he said. Sure enough, our neighbor was taking our trash bags from the curb and dragging them back to her house. Apparently, she was going to search our garbage for evidence. She must not have found anything, because my dad never got incarcerated for goosicide.
To this day, I have no idea why she decided my dad of all people was a goose murderer.
43. They’d Been Warned
My old neighbors didn't have a fence, and we did. We had two dogs who remained fenced. They had one that was primarily an inside dog, but seemed pretty well-trained so they didn't leash him outside. One day, we noticed one of our fence boards had broken on the side of our fence facing the yard. We grabbed an extra board and went out to replace it, no big deal.
The wife came running and screaming up to us about how we need to get off her property and we don't have permission to be there. I told her we lived at that house since we had only been there a couple of months, and she told me she knew who I was and that I had better get off her land or else her dog might attack me. I should add I was around eight months pregnant at the time.
Apparently, this woman had no idea that property almost always goes past a fence line, and we had a survey done when we bought the house. I demonstrated to her where our property line was, which was a couple feet past the fence. I told her I was calling law enforcement if she crossed over that line. They built a fence a few weeks later and didn't get a permit. I knew because they didn't meet code and did everything themselves. You better believe I called the city. I hope they got fined.
44. Just Like Their Own Daughter
I had neighbors who were a pair of 80-somethings and were sister and brother. They lived in the apartment below me in a duplex home, and the landlords despaired of what they were going to do when they finally passed, because their place was like a cave of old people stuff. The sister cooked in their dark kitchen with lots of oil that had been splattering everywhere for years.
So, it seemed like there was a fine, sticky, yellowish brown film of oil on everything, which then picked up all the dust. Basically, if you had allergies, it was the last place you wanted to be invited into. No matter what it was in their place, if it didn't smell of oil, it smelled like other musty stuff. They decided I was going to be their replacement daughter.
This sounded nice when the brother said he would happily take out my garbage, but then I found out that they were also going through my garbage after I went to work, because they started commenting on what I was eating and drinking. Then, they got wildly offended when I started taking my garbage to work with me and accused me of not trusting them.
This was also somewhere around when I told them I didn't need them to make food and leave it outside my door. It wasn't that they weren't being nice, it was the way they would then make sure I told them for days how grateful I was and what a great cook she was. After we crossed that rubicon, they started complaining about everything from how late I stayed up to my company.
They whispered about my private life to the neighbors and generally made themselves a super PITA. I lasted 18 months there and realized why the landlords couldn't stand them. Apparently, they did this to every normal tenant who moved into the other unit, but because of their age and because they paid their rent, they couldn't be evicted. Really, they were the worst neighbors ever.
45. A Very Particular Lifestyle
My neighbor is a middle aged guy who doesn't work. He’s up at four and in bed by eight and expects everyone else living around him to be in bed too. There are a lot of young working professionals in a condo community, so in the summertime on a Friday and Saturday, people are at the pool or barbecuing until 11 in the night. He would constantly lose his mind demanding people around him cut it out at eight instead. One night, he got so mad he slammed his bedroom window so hard it shattered.
46. They Just Want To Be Involved
My neighbors would come outside every time I did. If I mow, my neighbors will mow at the same time, sometimes a bit after I finish. If I get a delivery, they come outside and say, "Wow, working on another project!" If I have company pull up, they come outside to let their dogs go to the washroom or "check the mail". There are only five of us on a back road and they are all over 60. I am 27.
Although it's annoying, they are always pleasant and I'm sure they watch my house when I'm at work and would be quick to call the authorities if something happened when I wasn't home. I'll take the annoyance over having pesky young neighbors who party any day.
47. Just Trying To Keep Warm
During hurricane Sandy, my street was without power, heat or hot water for 14 days. It was unbearably cold in the house, and at night we could see our breath because it would get down in the 20s/30s Farenheit. I have the west wing of the house to myself. There is a family that lives in the house proper, and another tenant in the small studio in between us.
I come home from work one day to just swing by the house and get clothes so I can shower at a friend’s house, and my road is blocked off. There were fire engines and officers everywhere. My neighbor approaches me as I'm making my way up the street through the craziness and I ask whose house it was. He said, "Oh, it's yours".
Immediately, I run towards my house because all I care about is my cat. I arrive and find total chaos. Coming down the driveway, I see the people from the main house being carried away on stretchers. I don't see fumes or fire, but my front door is kicked in and my cat is roaming around outside. Basically everyone that lives on my street is congregating in my driveway/on my lawn.
One of the firemen came over to tell me the people in the main house were cold, so they brought their charcoal grill in the house and lit it to heat the house. It filled the house with carbon monoxide, the mom passed out, the daughter felt weak and called for help.
48. All That Over A Snake
Our neighbor had a clump of banana "trees" at the corner of his lot. He thought he saw a snake crawling into the banana trees, and decided to smoke it out and get rid of it. This was a big mistake. Dry banana leaves burn like crazy. Whoosh! The whole patch went up in intensely hot flames. By the time the idiot had gotten a hose, his pine hedge was on fire as well as the neighbor’s wood fence. The joker had to save the neighbor's fence while his pine hedge burnt halfway across his yard. Suffice to say, we couldn't tell whether the snake survived.
49. Filled To The Brim
We lived next to this big guy in an apartment building, with our front doors inside a hallway. Now, he was a nice enough guy, but he was always cleaning a puddle up in front of his apartment every other day. We'd always ask him if everything was alright, and he'd talk some incoherent nonsense about how he hates management.
So, out of curiosity, I asked management when I happened to be in the rental office. The lady's response made me burst out laughing. She rolled her eyes and said, "This idiot fills up his tub to the brim, and sits his fat butt in the tub. The water, of course floods his entire apartment, and comes out into the hallway, and this idiot has the balls to blame us somehow!"
I pretty much said, "Geez, that sounds rough," and scurried back to my place. If the tub story is really the truth, this guy must be dumb as rocks.
50. A Costly Error
A neighbor messed up when building a home and put his entire home well within my property. It’s a large piece of land with two huge clearings connected to two roads, but separated by a large isthmus of trees. I didn't notice because I had taken an eight month vacation right after he started building. It is a huge property, I didn't go around and inspect it often.
So, I got a real estate lawyer and surveyors to confirm it was on my property. I was going to sell him that clearing for a good price...until I went to talk to him and he was the biggest jerk I had ever met. He essentially told me that he is going to sue me for "leading him on" despite the fact that I did not know him, nor had I met him before that day. His wife flipped off my girlfriend and I as we were pulling out of their driveway.
Well, he messed with the wrong guy. Four months later, I filed a lawsuit saying he must destroy the property or turn it over to me immediately. It would've cost him more to demolish it and return the site to original condition, so he signed the house over to me. He was still out for construction costs. I was living in a single house with my girlfriend, then I had a brand new, 2,600 square foot house with all the hookups for water, electricity, and cable for free.
I got the land for next to nothing, and sold it for almost 50 times the value.
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