There is nothing better than having a friendly relationship with your neighbors. After all, you see them frequently and they can oftentimes “make or break” a home or apartment choice. While loud neighbors are one thing, some people have dealt with far worse and decided to share their horrific neighbor stories. This content has been edited for clarity.
Double-Dare
“An old neighbor of mine basically set themselves on fire.
It was the mid 90’s and a middle-aged couple with twin daughters moved in opposite our apartment. My mom and dad had always been very friendly people and had a very lovely relationship with our previous neighbors. After about a week, my mom cooked some homemade sweets and accompanied by a very willing me, we rang the doorbell.
The lady of the house opened the door and asked very rudely, ‘What do you want?’
My mom was unfazed and explained that were the neighbors and came to share some sweets and invite them to dinner.
The lady responded, ‘If we have time, we will see. Is there anything else?’
Baffled, my mom said ‘No, nothing more’ and we returned home with the sweets still in hand.
The husband and wife would fight very loudly and slam doors at all odd hours. Polite requests asking them to quiet down (my very old granny was living with us) were met with unfailing rudeness. They would also leave their garbage bags in the stairway to rot until my overly nice mom or apartment cleaning service would take them out.
This went on for two years until one night, around four a.m., we heard unusually loud yelling coming from their house. While my dad wanted to visit them with a cricket bat, my mom calmed him down and said it would only get our blood pressure up and nothing would change.
Thirty minutes later, our doorbell started ringing incessantly and we wondered what was being unleashed upon us. It was one of the girls. She was catatonic and could barely get a word in.
Their door was open and she took my dad inside. It turned out the couple had another fight and the woman poured kerosene on herself threatening to take her own life.
The husband said, ‘Go ahead and see if I care.’
She went ahead and double-dared him and set herself ablaze. Remorse or instinct kicked in and the husband tried to save his wife but he also caught on fire. Both were rushed to the hospital with third-degree burns.
The girls lived with us for two days while their relatives came in from out of town. Unfortunately, within a week, both the husband and wife passed away from their burns.
The uncle took them away to Mumbai a week later and that was the last we heard. I tried to locate them on a social network and sent one of them a friend request. We spoke briefly and that was the last bit of contact we ever had.”
Violation Of Privacy
“When my wife and I moved into our house in the summer of 2019, the neighbors on either side of us warned us about the people renting directly behind ours. Apparently, they had been known to cause trouble and blow things way out of proportion and were paranoid about everyone around them. We kept it in mind but had no issues for the first six months or so after moving in.
Their house sat on a hill behind ours and overlooked the majority of our backyard due to the elevation change. One night at about three a.m., we woke up to security camera notifications on our phones showing a video of our front porch – there was a man standing barefoot in a sleeveless shirt pounding on our front door.
We spent two or three minutes watching him on the app thinking maybe he was under the influence and had the wrong house.
But then he said, ‘come out you nasty pervert, I’m gonna mess you up!’ He then left the porch and started to head around the side of the house toward our backyard.
Considering we had no idea who he was, my wife immediately called the police as I moved out of our bedroom toward the external doors to look/listen for any attempt of a home invasion. At that point, our neighbors directly behind us had thrown a huge spotlight into our backyard from theirs.
We thought, ‘Okay cool, they know something is up and are trying to help us by shedding light on our backyard.’
The cops arrived several long minutes later and we explained the situation. They headed out back to look around and get the scoop from the neighbors with the spotlight. It turned out that the spotlight neighbor was the one on our porch, he had jumped our backyard fence into his yard so he could turn the light on.
He told the police that several nights prior, I had let my puppy out into my backyard in the middle of the night and because I was in my boxers, I was ‘trying to expose myself to his family’ because they could look down on our entire yard from where theirs sits.
He then showed the police ‘evidence’ which consisted of videos he had taken through our windows of my wife and me inside our home doing totally normal things like chores and watching TV. There was nothing inappropriate or scandalous (not that it would have mattered as we were in our own home). Because of the elevation difference, if they went out of their way, they could slightly see through our closed blinds due to the angle. Long story short, they had been filming us for no reason at all and expected the police to see that as reasonable.
The cops came back in and my wife was devastated. It was a huge breach of our privacy and the accusations were totally unfounded as we had never done anything to anger these people we had never met.
The police told us, ‘Don’t worry about it, if he tries something again just give us a call’ which wasn’t the most comforting thing at the time.
They moved out a few months later without any additional issues. My wife and I celebrated like it was a holiday when we saw the moving van in their driveway.”
Animal Control
“We rented a house that had another apartment in the basement. The lady who lived below us kept to herself for the most part so we didn’t see her much.
Part of our rental had a detached garage and she asked if she could put a small deep freezer in it. We were using it for storage so we were fine with it. After a couple of weeks, her freezer somehow got unplugged and she came unglued and wanted us to replace everything. I understood her frustration, but we hardly ever went into the garage because it was only for storage. In other words, we definitely didn’t unplug it and our landlord agreed. But she was ticked.
She had a son in college who came home for the summer. During that summer, he found a cat and brought it home. His mom said no cats inside so he would feed the kitten outside. When he left for school again in the fall, we noticed that the cat was getting very thin so we started feeding her outside in her usual spot. Around Christmas, we bought a bag of cat food and made a plate of cookies, and left them both at the neighbor’s front door. The next day, they were both back on our porch. Rude. Whatever.
We continued to feed the cat because the neighbor obviously wasn’t feeding her. A few weeks later, the cat came to our door crying. She was trying to come inside which was super weird considering she was wild and we had never let her inside before. I let her in and noticed she was pregnant. I made her a little corner and she had babies the next day. We let her stay in the house with us but knew we couldn’t keep her. I went downstairs to talk to our neighbor and she said that her son’s cat was a boy so the cat we had obviously wasn’t his.
I posted on Facebook to see if anyone was interested in fostering a cat and her kittens because we couldn’t keep her. Her son saw my post on Facebook and got super mad at his mom. She then called the cops and said that I stole her cat and lied to her when she confronted me about having the cat in my possession.
The police called animal control who then contacted us. They asked us to take the cat and her kittens to the shelter so that if our neighbor really wanted them, she would have to pay the fee as well as get her vaccinated and licensed. I was heartbroken to have to take her to the shelter but we were about to move to a place that didn’t allow pets.
As far as I know, the neighbor paid the fees to pick her up. However, I saw her on the animal shelter’s Facebook adoption page not long after that. Poor baby. It was the dumbest, most frustrating thing that had ever happened to me as far as neighbors go.”
Secret Agent
“My easily aggravated neighbor liked to pretend she was a secret agent. The woman was aloof and paranoid, and she’d imagine threats from almost everywhere. This was already concerning but it started getting obnoxious when she tried to convince everyone else of her status.
She’d stage loud telephone calls with ‘headquarters’ about the alarming behavior of other tenants – like my tendency to get home after nine in the evening, which was clearly scandalous – and frequently yell at the people who’d stand on the corner to smoke. On one occasion, I heard her shouting at someone over the placement of a flowerpot in their window which was ‘obviously an indication that they were selling illegal substances.’
When I’ve told the story in the past, people have suggested the woman was probably schizophrenic. Personally, I think she was just an easily excitable individual with too much free time, too little tolerance, and a desire to control everyone around her. Put simply, she came across as being less of a menace and more of a nuisance until the day she took it a little too far.
One afternoon, I found this taped to a wall in the stairwell (see above).
The atrocious grammar, poorly Photoshopped seal and the distinct absence of any legitimate contact information made the ‘notice’ about as realistic as a scene from NCIS. Furthermore, the reference to ‘the past two years’ seemed to indicate me as her primary target, since I was the only resident who had been there for less time than that. Since the flyer was clearly meant to scare someone, I decided to return the favor by standing outside of her apartment and staging my own fake phone call:
‘You should see the notice, it’s terrible! Ha, yeah, it’s like they didn’t know that impersonating a federal official is a felony. Anyway, the real FBI are on their way and they’re going to dust for fingerprints!’
I went back inside my apartment after that and within seconds heard my neighbor’s door open. There was the sound of hurried footsteps rushing toward the stairwell followed by an equally hurried retreat. When I went out to check five minutes later, the notice was gone.
I viewed that as evidence that the woman wasn’t actually schizophrenic because after the above-described events, I never had any trouble with her again. Maybe she’d just decided that I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Harassment
“When my husband and I moved into our apartment, the neighbor downstairs got upset with the landlord for renting above him. Even though we only had a mattress and no other furniture, he kept calling the landlord saying that we were moving furniture around at two a.m. and had our TV at full blast.
After the eighth complaint in two months about us moving furniture around and having the TV too loud, we finally showed our apartment to the landlord. We wanted to prove that we didn’t even have a TV and still only had our mattress.
Then the neighbor started leaving notes on our car telling us to keep it down and he even put in writing, ‘There needs to be no noise after 10 p.m. or else I’ll call the cops.’
We usually didn’t get home until after 11 p.m. and made sure to keep things down because we knew that not everyone had our work schedule. We tried to be as quiet as possible but there were many instances where we’d be eating dinner, cuddling quietly, or even sleeping and he’d be banging on his ceiling/our floor.
When he started calling the cops, they told him to stop calling about a noise complaint because it was a landlord issue, and every time they came they never heard anything. The last time they showed up, I was asleep and my husband ended up talking to them and explaining everything. They suggested that we file a harassment complaint against the neighbor.
Then he started leaving threatening notes on our car and front door and we kept hearing our doorknob jiggle. He claimed that he and a friend had sat outside our apartment for two hours and listened to all the noise we were making. He also said he was a retired cop and would call in a few favors if we continued making noise. Lastly, because he knew where we parked, he threatened to damage our cars.
We kept the notes and made copies for the landlord to let him know that this was what we were dealing with. We wanted to keep him in the loop before things started getting real.
The last complaint was when he ran outside to the landlord screaming that something needed to be done about us because he heard our bed squeak the night before and how dare he rent underneath some crazy college kids who were partying and fooling around all night. The landlord finally told him to knock it off and stop being a bitter old man.
After that, the neighbor made a total 180 and we found out he had sued the landlord and was moving. Suddenly, he kept offering us rides when one of us was walking and stopped complaining and leaving notes. Around midnight, our door knob would still jiggle and turn but as we’d approach the door we’d hear someone running down the hall. He eventually moved away and we haven’t gotten a complaint from any other neighbor in the last three years we’ve lived here.”
Garbage Wars
“We had some neighbors that used to leave their garbage out in plastic bags the night before garbage day instead of putting it in a bin. Where we lived, that was ringing the dinner bell for raccoons and other critters.
Sure enough, come morning there was always garbage strewn all over the neighborhood. What the raccoons and skunks didn’t spread around, the wind picked up. Some of the people on the street kindly approached the guy and asked him to put his garbage in a bin and he told them to buzz off.
Thus began the Garbage Wars.
Every morning of garbage day, people on my street would collect all the half-eaten and rotten trash from their lawns and toss it back into the dude’s backyard. He would then collect it and dump it back in their yards or cram it into their bushes. People started finding half-eaten burritos and candy wrappers in their mailboxes. The street started to look like a slum. The police, health inspectors, and city by-law enforcement were called. Each side was calling in whatever authority they could muster to get their enemy in trouble.
The dude and his family lasted about eight months then moved. Every once in a while I find a random margarine lid or piece of styrofoam in my hedge, and my mind goes back to those dark days of war.”
Call CPS
“The matriarch of my crazy neighbors nailed all of the windows shut in their house and removed the door knobs to install several deadbolts. This was to keep her grandkids home while she was at work and everyone else out. Child welfare stopped by and was okay with this. The kids were able to get one window open without her knowing and would usually leave during the day and make it back before she got off work.
Eventually, there were maybe a dozen young adults living there and they all used the window as the main entrance. It, unfortunately, bordered my driveway and was mere feet from my house. All hours of the day, people would be out there wiggling in and out of the window.
The kids got tired of being cooped up and major fights would break out. I regularly heard bodies hitting walls, furniture, or fists.
I would hear yells, ‘Well stop threatening and get your weapon already!’ I have PTSD so I had to put a lot of effort into keeping myself calm every day.
One of the kids had a toy weapon that shot bb pellets and shot at my neighbor’s car one morning. When she shut her car door leaving for work, all the glass fell out of the windows. Later that morning, he shot a window out of the school across the street. And a bit after that, he shot my husband in the shoulder when we were outside planting flowers.
He kept shooting, even after the police arrived. The police called the matriarch, who unlocked all the deadbolts, took away the kids’ toy, and dragged them outside so they could be cuffed and taken away. Since no one confessed or ratted, the police weren’t sure which of the three did it and they were released without charge.
After the damage they had already caused, the kids went to the landlord’s house and shot her windows out. They were arrested again, but being juveniles, had no repercussions. A couple of weeks later, her vehicle and garage were firebombed, but no one was charged for that.
Thankfully, the act of physical violence against my husband got them evicted. I’m so glad they are gone. I live in a wonderful neighborhood and it’s hard to enjoy the community with that going on next door. I hope they somehow find some peace in their lives one day.”
Surround Sound
“I lived in an apartment building with paper-thin walls. You could clearly hear the next-door neighbors having conversations, walking up the stairs, and hooking up. For some reason, they thought it would be a good idea to install a surround sound system and affix the speakers to our shared wall. It was so loud that it shook the wall and we couldn’t hear our own television unless we turned it up really loud in return.
The neighbors did not respond kindly to our request that they place the speakers elsewhere. It ultimately ended with the cops being called after the guy got mad that we asked him to turn them down and started pounding the wall screaming that he was going to mess us up.
We begged the office to let us move to a different apartment building and they agreed. However, our new neighbors had a parrot that never shut up and their daughter spent hours banging on their piano all day.
Once our lease was up, I was so glad to leave that apartment complex. While some noise is expected in apartment buildings, when there’s zero sound insulation and neighbors who don’t care, it sucks pretty bad.”
Get Out Of My Apartment
“When I started my first job post-college, I was thrilled to live by myself for the first time in my life. I had this beautiful one-bedroom apartment in a solid part of town.
Everything was great until six months later when new tenants moved in next to my unit. I had a package go missing but Amazon had posted a photo of it at my door, so I thought that it was just a fluke. Then it happened again, and again, and again. The office wouldn’t accept packages, so I had to get my items delivered to friends’ places instead which was very inconvenient. When I reported it, the police didn’t care in the slightest so I just figured I’d deal with it.
Fast forward a few weeks, I came home after being gone for less than an hour to see that my doorknob and front door were scrapped up and the knob was barely hanging on.
Long story short, I had been parking in plain view of this guy’s window, so he could tell when I was home. I am 100 percent convinced he tried to break into my place and that my coming home early interrupted him. I googled his name after I moved (I got it off a package at his door) and found that he was a convicted felon with charges that included grand theft auto, domestic assault, dealing, and an attempted break-in.”
Morning Coffee
“I had a crazy neighbor a couple of years ago. She was around 50 years old with horrible taste in men. She dated the kind of guys who used her for a place to live because it was a nice neighborhood.
While living there, there was a polar vortex so I was stuck in my house for a week. When it was safe to be outside, I was delighted to finally see another person. I said hello to her but should have known better.
She immediately burst into tears and started telling me how she found out her boyfriend ejaculated into her coffee every morning. She had been spying on his phone and saw he texted a friend saying he did it. At the same moment, her big dog burst through the front door and bit me in the stomach before she could finish saying,
‘He won’t hurt you.’
Luckily, I kindly excused myself and went back into my home to regret ever leaving in the first place.
In another instance, my 17-year-old cat whom I loved dearly went missing. She was my mother’s cat and I got her when my mom passed so she meant a lot to me. After a few days of not seeing her, I posted on Facebook about it and it was shared a lot. I’m thinking my neighbor definitely saw the post.
Shortly after, I was getting into my car one day to go to work when my young neighbor (about six or seven) shyly came up to tell me she saw my crazy neighbor throw my cat over her fence. We lived next to an elementary school so the cat ended up on the kindergarten playground. I spoke to the head custodian and he said there was indeed a dead cat on the playground.
My neighbor is so far off her rocker that she’d rather throw a dead cat into an area where young children play than dig a hole or do the noble thing by telling me what happened.”
