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I've been lucky not to have terrible neighbors. In fact, living in a big city, I'm more likely to hear stories about people's terrible roommates. Every now and then, New York Magazine publishes another piece of long-form journalism about awful people doing terrible things to other people for no apparent reason, like this piece about a roommate from hell. No, thank you. Hard pass.
But some people are unlucky. Really unlucky. They shared their stories after Redditor DistributionOk9089 asked the online community,
"What is your worst experience with bad neighbors?"
"When my wife and I moved in..."
"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 the house directly behind ours. Apparently, they had been known to cause trouble and blow things way out of proportion, bordering on paranoia of everyone around them.
We kept it in mind but had no issues for the first 6 months or so after moving in. Their house sits on a hill behind ours and so overlooks the majority of our back yard due to the elevation change.
Well, one night (morning, technically) at about 3 am we wake up to Ring notifications from our phones showing video from our front doorbell - there's a man standing barefoot in a sleeveless shirt on our porch POUNDING on our front door.
We give it 2-3 minutes just watching him on the app thinking maybe he's drunk and has the wrong house… essentially giving him the benefit of the doubt. But then we start to hear him say "come out you f**king pu**y, I'm gonna f**k you up" etc and he leaves the porch and starts to head around the side of the house towards our backyard.
Considering we had NO idea who this was, my wife now immediately calls the police as I move out of our bedroom towards the external doors to look/listen for any attempt of a home invasion. At this point our neighbors directly behind us throw a HUGE spotlight into our backyard from theirs.. we're thinking okay cool they know something is up and they're trying to help us out by shedding light on our backyard.
The cops arrive several long minutes later and knock, we explain the situation and they head out back to look around and get the scoop from the neighbors with the spotlight. It turns out that the spotlight neighbor was the one on our porch, he had jumped our fence into our backyard and up into his yard and then threw the light on.
He told the police that several nights prior, I had let my puppy out into MY OWN backyard in the middle of the night and because I was in my boxers, that I was "trying to expose myself to his family" because they could look down on our entire yard from where theirs sits.
He then followed this up to the police with "evidence" which consisted of videos he had taken THROUGH OUR WINDOWS of my wife and I inside of our own home doing totally normal things like chores, watching tv, etc.. nothing inappropriate or scandalous (not that it would have mattered anyway, we were in our OWN HOME). Because of the elevation difference, if they went out of their way they could technically slightly see-through our closed blinds due to the angle… so they had been filming us for no reason at all and expected the police to see this as reasonable?
The cops came back in and my wife was devastated, a huge breach of our privacy of course and totally unfounded accusations as we had never done anything to anger these people, we hadn't even met them. The police told us "just don't worry about it, if he tries something again just give us a call" which wasn't the most comforting 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."
I bet you have celebrated. In fact, I have no doubt that you did. Those people sound like a nightmare.
"The dogs were able to get through..."
"Their dogs got into my backyard and attacked my dog. My dog ended up ok but it was a long recovery and he still doesn't walk right. He was and is the happiest dog ever so to see him on the ground covered in blood was the worst thing ever.
The dogs were able to get through because their kids had taken a plank out of my fence (they didn't have a fence).
I left a letter on their door explaining the situation. They showed up at my door to tell me that it was my fault for not having a stronger fence and that they wouldn't be paying any medical bills.
After a lot of them yelling and me calmly explaining why they actually would be paying, they eventually complied. They did build a fence, backward, with the flat side facing them.
They are also loud as f***, got chickens that escape on a regular basis in our suburban neighborhood and are overall scummy people."
That poor dog! What is wrong with people? It sounds like you still live there, which blows.
"When I got my first job..."
"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 1 bedroom apartment in a solid part of town.
Everything was great until 6 months later when new tenants moved in next to my unit. I had a package go missing (a phone case). 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. Overall wildly inconvenient and the police didn't care in the slightest when I reported it, so I just figured I'd deal with it.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I come 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 was able to tell when I was home. I am 100% 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 include grand theft auto, domestic assault, drug dealing, and an attempted break-in."
That is disturbing. Thankfully nothing more dangerous happened. Hopefully you don't live there anymore.
"The upstairs neighbor's..."
"The upstairs neighbor's dog peed on their patio and it dripped down onto me while I was sitting outside reading. I yelled and ran to shower and when I texted them to ask them to take their dog out to pee in the future they said it wasn't their dog and it must have blown over from somewhere else. What?"
People will truly say anything at all to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. It's truly outrageous.
"I had an upstairs neighbor..."
"I had an upstairs neighbor let their dog take s**** on their balcony. I'm guessing this was going on for a while as I started to notice a brown viscous substance leaking on my potted plants on my balcony. It wasn't until it rained that I could smell that it was dog sh*t and piss. At that point, it was very obvious. I got him evicted because it kept happening."
"Lived on the bottom floor..."
"Lived on the bottom floor of a two-story Victorian. There was very little sound insulation between the two floors. When we moved in there was a friendly older couple that had a dog. We could hear it running around but honestly no big deal. Then they moved out and these three young guys moved in. Seemed nice at first but they turned out to be horrible.
Officially the rental agreement said quiet hours started at like 9 pm. We basically told them, look, we're usually out of the house a lot and not home until late. As long as you're quiet by midnight during the week and 2 am (bar time) on weekends we're cool. This seemed incredibly reasonable to me. Within a couple of weeks of them moving in it was non-stop crappy techno music being blasted at all hours. As we had said, we weren't home much so that didn't bother us all that much. What did was the Tuesday night parties going until 4 am. I'd go to their front door to ask them to quiet down and it would take a few minutes of ringing the doorbell and pounding before anyone would come down. Usually, eyes were glazed over from either booze or drugs. I complained to their landlord multiple times but nothing really fixed it. I finally just started calling the cops and that would get them to stop for that night at least.
"The final straw was they had a party with easily 60 or 70 people. Again, not a big deal, until it was 3 am and the club music was blasting and everyone decided jumping up and down would be a great idea. I actually could see the ceiling flexing. I finally sat down and wrote a cease and desist letter detailing the city's noise ordinances and various other legal sh*t that would give me cause to sue them and put it in their mailbox. Sent it to their landlord as well. That stopped things. Should have done it months before that.
Finally, the landlord had enough I guess because he came in and raised their rent to something insane like $6000 a month. We live in an expensive city but that was like 2x market rate at least. There was no rent control for this building so they were out within the month. Was pretty glorious to hear them yelling at each other about finding a new place to live."
"She's had to call the cops..."
"My mom has a neighbor who literally looks through her window to try to see into the house. She's had to call the cops on her multiple times."
There are few things more aggravating than Peeping Tom neighbors. Had a friend who dealt with one. It was invasive and unnerving. Thankfully, they don't live there anymore.
"I used to live in a house..."
"I used to live in a house that was split into two apartments. My neighbors had the lower half, and I learned we had issues with the HVAC when their cigarette smoke came visibly pouring out our registers: stank up everything we owned.
Then one of them stole my car."
Again... I am counting my lucky stars that I have never had to deal with a horrible neighbor. On the off chance that I manage to own property someday (ha, that's a lauigh), I pray that I don't end up dealing with anyone that terrible. Hopefully I don't jinx it!
Have some stories of your own? Feel free to tell us in the comments below!
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