Frustrated People Share Their Neighbor Horror Stories
When you buy your home, you expect a certain level of politeness and consideration from your neighbors. Keep your dogs off each others lawns. Let them know about any loud parties going on. Trim your hedges and keep your sports equipment off their roofs. Simple, right? Not for some, apparently, as evidence by these frustrated homeowners answers to Reddit user, u/narwhal_attack2394, who asked: What did your a--hole neighbor do?
What...Why?
I moved onto a dirt road with several houses on it. My friend has lived down the road his whole life. The people next to my house only come up for the summer and are never there in the winter. When summer comes, however, there's multiple pot holes on the road. Curious, I asked my friend. He said the neighbors come up in the summer and dig the holes themselves in order to 'slow down' traffic.
So, that.
Picking A Fight With The Wrong Senior Citizen
Picked a fight with our 70 year old Indian neighbor. Like, an actual physical fight.
Indian neighbor has seen waaay too much BS in his life to tolerate any more and hit him with a nectarine tree in a pot.
EDIT: yes the tree is ok. Hilariously, he actually gifted it to me last weekend after I helped him do a bunch of trellis work (we're both keen food gardeners). I haven't been able to look at it without cracking up.
Being TOO Nosey
He used to stand on the footpath drunk every afternoon and yell to my husband about what a b**** I was. Once my husband told him to go home and he shaped up to try and punch my husband, who was around 50 years younger than the neighbor.
My infraction? He rang one day to be nosy check why my husband's car was home on a work day. I politely thanked him for his call and let him know my husband was sleeping and had a cold, nothing to worry about.
Apparently I was meant to praise him profusely for being such a caring neighbour, and my husband was meant to follow up with a call once he was awake and also lavish him with praise for caring. Because we didn't, we got to hear about it loudly every afternoon until we moved several months later.
Calling Out Your Kids
Called the cops on our then 6 yr old son because he was playing outdoors in public property.
It wasn't a road or anything. There was no danger whatsoever. He wasn't screaming or anything, she just didn't like kids.
She also told our 3 yr old daughter that she was ugly.
Water On Concrete
Late last year mine said he'll bash me because I got his driveway wet while I had the sprinkler going to water my yard. Not even joking - he flipped his s*** over his driveway getting water on it!
False Accusations
Yelled at me for entering a shared garage to get some of our stuff. He later claimed I was after his gun, which was stored in a gun locker with a lock, that only he had the key for. He was in his 60's or 70's at the time.
Jerry Sounds Like The Literal Worst
Ah, Jerry.
When I moved in, he seemed eccentric, but harmless. Apparently my landlord had a conversation with him and told him to leave me alone. This upset Jerry greatly. He cornered me one day while I was unlocking my door and asked me to come sit with him in his apartment. I don't think the place had ever been cleaned and he had Hoarder mentalities. He drank a bottle of wine in about 30 minutes, commenting on all the sad things in his life. Luckily he passed out, so I could leave.
A couple weeks later, he got into a 3am fight with his boyfriend, which resulted in his boyfriend trying to get into my apartment for safety, and eventually breaking into an empty unit down the hall. Cops were called and Jerry was taken to jail.
About a week after that, same boyfriend was over and a fight ensued. This time it ended in very loud sex.
Jerry would flush things you're not supposed to flush down the toilet and would back up sewage into mine and my neighbor's bathtubs and bathroom sinks. Eventually he clogged his toilet so badly that he just ripped it from the wall and left it there.
The cops came twice to my door to ask if I had seen Jerry lately, and asked to search my apartment to make sure I wasn't hiding him.
One day while I was getting ready for work, he came into my apartment with another guy and tried to measure my walls for the "renovation" he was going to do to combine his and my apartments into one unit. But, don't worry, I could just live with him when it was all finished.
Eventually, Jerry got evicted, but would still convince people to let him into the building. For months his mugshot was pasted on all entrances saying to not let him in.
Misusing Your Authority
Got his cop buddies to come put stickers on our cars claiming they were illegally parked so we had to move them so he would have room for his guests to park.
I bought a corner lot in a newer subdivision so i have curb and sidewalk on two sides of my property. The side of my house has plenty of room for parking which i sometimes use, my stepson uses, and sometimes the other neighbors I like use. New neighbor bought a house on the other side of the street from my side, and doesn't have a lot of street parking for his lot. He claims that the parking on my side of the road is his because it is across the street from his house.
When confronted about the fact that it is just parking and no way belongs to him, me or anybody he told us he knows people in the police department that can take care of this. He also picked this time to scream pretty specific mean things about all his new neighbors and how each one was s**** like he is watching us.
I Need To Sleep, Jerry!
Rang my doorbell at 4am over and over and asked me to go with him because there was an emergency and it was important. Went with him and he took me over to his car and started asking what I thought of it and looked very proud.
In other words this dude rang every apartment in the building at 4am to get people to look at his new car.
When They Do ALL The Things Wrong
Ahhhhhhh! Please allow me to vent because I am in the throes of this b.s. at the moment.
First, they have 4 mini-Dachsunds that never shut up. I cannot even open my backdoor without these little dogs going off, and they just leave their dogs outside all day. I enjoy sitting outside on a nice day and reading, but nope, I can't concentrate over the ear-splitting constant yapping. Now, I am a dog person, I own dogs and love dogs, but this complete lack of consideration is mind-boggling.
Second, they rent (and I own), but the crazy wife told me she owns a 3' strip of my property and they'll be moving the fence over. I don't have a huge yard, 3' is a lot of space, and did I mention THEY RENT. I brought out my survey to say "No, you don't own it and no, you aren't going to be moving the fence," and she continued to say that they had their own survey but refused to show it to me.
Third, they seem to think it's no big deal if they come into my yard. I came home from work to find they'd moved their water drainage into my backyard.
They complain about my tree and asked me to cut it down. I said no. They put their garbage cans in my driveway. I've witnessed the wife empty her vacuum cleaner in my driveway. She has blown piles of leaves that haven't even come from my tree into my driveway. Even after I put locks on my gate, she climbed up on a ladder, LEANED OVER THE FENCE, and leaf blew all the leaves IN MY YARD AND THAT WERE ALREADY IN PILES all over my yard. After that, I put up cameras and have future plans to press charges for trespassing the next time this crazy b-tch pulls another stunt...
Cats Are People Too, Darn It
Moved in with 2 cats. Decided she would rather have a dog. Took the 2 cats, set them on her porch, and made them "outdoor cats". Stopped feeding them. Didn't spay either. Now our neigbhorhood is overrun with 10 or so male cats and these 2 have a new litter each every few months.
A--holes. Animals aren't a decoration you can just throw out when you're bored with them. They are living creatures, damnit.
Early Morning Shots
One of them was a cowboy builder who even conned his elderly nextdoor neighbours into getting their roof done for £10,000 even though their tiles were almost brand new, he then took all their tiles to re-tile his roof for free and put about 10% of his old crappy tiles on their roof then abandoned the project completely, don't worry though we got him arrested and he had to sell his house to pay back his victims although the cost of his house didn't even come close to covering the full costs
another neighbour would stand in his back garden really early in the morning then start shooting local birds with a crossbow when they woke up and he put the bodies in regular bin bags and left them in the street where foxes ripped them open and dragged dead birds all over the place, now we have no songbirds in the area
Sicking Her Son On You
Not one of her neighbors can stand her, she's pissed off everyone on all sides of her.
Her son's a cop so she'll send him over to b**** at you if you violate any of her peeves. She did that about one of the dogs, (she hates animals) and my wife answered the door. Her poor kid got an earful and told to go home before she called his captain to complain about the momma's boy that lives next door harassing people. Hilarious.
She regularly gets into it with her neighbor on the other side, which is a mistake, since that woman is taking care of a dementia suffering husband and puts up with zero BS. I can hear her regularly telling her to get bent.
GLORIOUS
- Screamed obscenities through the wall at my children because they were "talking too loudly" in the middle of the day.
- Screamed at us through the walls in the middle of the night so we could "see how it felt to be disturbed."
- Regularly dumped his old food out of his bathroom window into our shared backyard. Rodent infestation took place shortly thereafter.
- Stopped paying rent to our landlord because he felt that the landlord should have warned him that he might be able to hear his neighbors.
- Dumped his trash on our shared front porch.
Landlord did not renew his lease. Took him to court, got his unpaid rent money back plus additional payment for damages to the apartment. It was a glorious vindication.
Worst Dinner Guest Ever
On a near daily basis, he throws temper tantrums, yelling, stomping, throwing tools, slamming doors and screaming at his family over some petty nonsense.
I feel bad for is family and I'm genuinely annoyed each time I hear his voice.
Creative Plumbing
It started by letting her kids and animals run wild in my back yard. So, I dropped $5k on a 6' privacy fence that my father-in-law and I built. Then she had her water turned off for lack of payment and began pooping in plastic bags and throwing them over my fence. When confronted about it, she kindly denied and then took to social media.
I called the landlord and had an eviction notice served the next day.
Offer Unsolicted Gardening Advice
Ripped up and threw away my mum's sweet pea plant that she got from her friend who died of cancer.
When she complained he started ranting about how our garden is a disgrace and an embarrassment to the neighborhood and we need to replace all the grass and plants with concrete.
It's A Neighborhood, Not A Club
He would blast EDM music almost every day starting from 9 AM, especially on the weekends, and once I asked him to please keep it down until 10 AM he changed his habit.. to 8:30 AM.
Pure. Evil.
When I was 10, my neighbor -- an 80-something year old man with a Christian radio station -- shot and killed one of my dogs. When I went looking for my dog, I asked my neighbor if he had seen him.
He told me that he shot a dog like that this morning.
Frozen, I asked where he was so I could bury him. The old man told me that his body was in the dumpster and that he would shoot me too if I didn't get off his land.
I ran through the woods back to my house, screaming out loud in anger and punching trees until my knuckles were torn and bloody.
When I got home, I called the police and the K9 unit came out to my house. He retrieved my dog's body and I buried him.
The worst part was that my dog was very sweet (I know that generally sweet dogs can be threatening, but it was very against his nature) my neighbor had tied him up and broken all of his legs.
I have never felt more rage in my life. My mom took the man to court and he was charged with animal cruelty and the judge asked how much money I thought the dog was worth. I was dumbfounded and croaked out that I didn't want money -- I wanted my dog.
The neighbor was fined $500 and I made him pay it to the local humane society.
The man had the ten commandments posted all around his house, so the next night I took a red sharpie and circled "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on all of his signs.
I doubt anyone will see this comment, but damn... writing it was kind of therapeutic. My dog's name was Hershey, he was a mutt that was born in my bedroom -- he was only 2 years old and such a good boy. Thanks Reddit.
Ignoring The Ones You're Supposed To Not
Neglected their daughter to the point that she'd sneak into our house and steal food from our kitchen.
CPS was called.
...Wow.
When I was a teenager and lived with my parents we had this one neighbor family that seemed sorta off. One day the father knocks on our door and tells my parents they haven't had power for a long time and begged to run an extention cord to one of our outside outlets for the day so his young kids could have cold milk with their cereal in the morning.
My parents agreed to do this for one day. The neighbor kept up their part and disconnected the cable after that day. A week later they hook it back up again without us noticing. A month goes by and our electricity bill is basically double what it normally is. Parents head to the backyard and find the cable plugged in, yank it out, and confront the neighbor.
At first the father doesn't show his whole body and cracks the door, but my stepdad gets him to open up the door after pointing out that he is concealing a gun (he didn't have to pull the gun out). Stepdad demands and explanation as to why the cable was run to our outlet and the dude just sorta mumbles incoherently and shuts the door, locking it.
Bad neighbor family was in a duplex and their neighbor, sharing the building, comes around and asks what's up. Parents explain the whole story and how the next step was calling the police. Good neighbor is a former police chief and is friends with the entire force, he offers to make the call.
Several cop cars arrive. Bad neighbor father and mother are arrested. Turns out they were running a meth lab inside the house. The mother was a prostitute and the kids (a boy and girl between ages 7-10) were malnourished. The kids were put into foster care.
No other bad neighbor has beat that high score yet.
H/T: Reddit
Before there was Seth Rogen and Zac Efron duking it out on the block, it was John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in 1981's Neighbors, available here in retro packaging designed to make your blu-ray look like a VHS tape.
If Rogen and Efron are more your style, you can get 2014's Neighbors here.