No neighborhood is the same—and the same goes for your neighbors. These folks discovered the crazy things going down right next door.
1. Open Up!
A few weeks ago, I watched from my yard as officers used an axe and a sledgehammer to break down my neighbor’s door. Later, I found out the chilling truth. Turns out she had come home to find someone in her house and called the authorities. I could see through the window as they went in and subdued the guy. He was clinging to a rafter, so they had to pepper spray him.
The weirdest thing about it though was that the guy only had one leg and had no apparent escape plan besides running away.
2. A Lifesaving Warning
My mom usually walks around the house when she's on the phone. I was asleep at the time, but she was sitting in our living room on the phone with her mother and decided to adjust her seating on the couch. She adjusted in a way that she could see bright orange out of her peripheral vision. That’s when she made a disturbing discovery. Out the front window, she could see flames raging out of my neighbor’s roof.
She immediately told her mother she had to go, that there was a fire next door, and called 9-1-1. She woke up my dad all frantic. He got up, threw on shorts and a T-shirt, and ran across the street, hopping their brick wall and pretty much bashing down the front door. The entire family was standing in their kitchen, looking around wondering why their fire alarm was going off.
They didn't speak much English, but they knew enough to understand "YOUR ROOF IS ON FIRE, GET OUT!" I still wonder here and there what would have happened if my mom had gone to sleep with my dad that night instead of staying up a bit later.
3. The Eyes Are On Us
We were the spied-on neighbors. I was just out of surgery and not really fit to be left unaccompanied for more than an hour or two without adult supervision. After about a fortnight, one of the neighbors pulled my husband aside on the way home. I still laugh when I think about what she said. She told him that I was having men over to the house in his absence. She thought something unsavory was going on.
He thanked her kindly for the information and informed her that he was well aware that my dad and my brother were visiting me on a daily basis. We weren't offended. It's actually quite nice to know that there is someone around to keep an eye on the house, sign for parcels, etcetera. It's also quite nice to know that she'd risk a negative response to tell us something like that.
4. Getting In Some Practice
About eight years ago, I was going on holiday with my family, and due to the early morning flight, we had booked an airport hotel the evening before. The design of the hotel was quite unusual as the interior rooms all had windows facing into the center of the hotel, looking onto the bars and restaurants. These each had opaque blinds which when drawn you couldn't see in.
My mum and I were having a drink in the bar and when I looked up, I saw an overweight man in his early 50s standing on his bed practicing his golf swing...club in hand. The guy had obviously drawn back his curtains to take in the view and completely forgotten to shut them again. To make things worse, he just didn't stop.
He got more enthusiastic and began punching the air after a particularly strong swing. Still to this day I can picture him and hear my mum laughing when she realized what I was looking at. But hats off to the guy, he was having a wonderful time.
5. Telling Them Off
I live in a little apartment complex that's made up of three-story walk-ups. We're on the third floor so I can see most of the parking lot and the dumpsters. One morning, I watched this slick little low-rise car with tinted windows pull up to the recycling dumpster. I was expecting someone young, but an old fella got out.
He was probably north of 70, white hair, the works. I can see the interior of the car and it is absolutely spotless. He goes around to the back seat and takes out a bag. This isn't unusual as a lot of people will drop off their stuff when they're on the way out of the complex rather than making a separate trip. He throws his recycling in, and then he sticks out his finger and shakes it angrily at the dumpster.
I can't hear him, of course, but he's definitely saying something. He moves a foot to the left and does it again. And then once more. Having sufficiently rebuked the recycling dumpster he then gets into his sweet little car and peels out. I haven't seen him since. The recycling dumpster is the strong, silent type, so I haven't heard how its feelings were affected by the tongue-lashing, but it seems fine.
6. Are You Allowed To Do That?
Our neighbors have built walls in their garage, cut down all the trees in their front lawn with axes and chainsaws, ripped out all of the bushes with their truck, and encouraged their kids to play in my driveway. The best part? I'm pretty sure they don't own the house but rent it instead. I remember peeking over and seeing that the house was up for rent when they moved in. I have no idea if the landlord even knows the landscaping in front of the house is gone.
7. An Ironic Fire
I lived in an old rental house on a busy street across from a fire station. We would sit on the front porch drinking and spying on the firefighters. One day the alarm went off and the crew rushed out on a run. A few minutes go by, and someone says, "Hey is that smoke in there?" Yep, they left food cooking, and the firehouse went up in flames.
9-1-1 didn't believe me at first, but finally, the crew raced back to put out the fire in their own station. It was a total loss. They had to put up a new station. You never saw a more embarrassed group of people in your life. Of course, we were young punks and were laughing our butts off. They hated our guts from that moment on.
8. Taking It Seriously
Two women who live next door were arguing. I am not sure about their relationship, because several people live in the house. The older woman walked into the backyard, and started screaming into the house, "THAT'S WITCHCRAFT! WITCHCRAFT! FREAKING WITCHCRAFT!" I heard an indistinct voice from inside. The old woman screeched again, "IT'S WITCHCRAAAAAFT!"
About two minutes later I heard the shower turn on and the other lady started singing the song from Frozen in a rather pretty voice. Witchcraft? Were they watching Frozen??
9. Getting Good
I lived in a not-great neighborhood in college, but there were a lot of families around. We shared a fence with a family with a few boys, all seemingly spaced out in age. One time, I was watching the oldest kid was playing basketball with the middle kid, and he yelled at this little kid "WHY ARE YOU SO BAD AT BASKETBALL?!", to which the younger kid responded, with gusto, "I'm 8!". I just about fell out of my chair.
10. Practicing Our Moves
I must have been around five, but my cousins were over, and we decided to look into my neighbors’ window on the side of their house. Two almost adult sons of our neighbor were watching wrestling and imitating the moves on each other in just their underwear. One of us burst out laughing, and they closed their blinds once they realized we were watching.
11. A Show For Graduation
After I graduated high school, some rich kids rented out the rooftop of a hotel to throw a party for pretty much everyone in our school. The hotel was L shaped, so when you were standing near the railing, you could see into the windows of all of the rooms below. There was one room with the lights on and the curtains open, where a woman in her wedding dress was being helped out of it by her eager new husband.
A few kids noticed it pretty quickly, and soon enough the entire student body was watching these two newlyweds on their wedding night. I was standing next to a couple of the waiters, who were standing there laughing and trying to decide if they should call the concierge to let the couple know all of these kids were watching them.
I guess they didn't, because the couple took about 30 minutes to notice that we were all watching them and put on robes and came to the window to look out at us. 200 high schoolers cheered in unison to congratulate them. It was quite a sight.
12. The Sounds In My Sleep
I was getting over a breakup and sleeping poorly anyway. But unbeknownst to me, the sounds of my neighbor's TV shows were sneaking into my dreams. So, I would walk around days with these half-remembered dream shows in my head and this nagging sense that there was something weird just below my consciousness. After a week or so, a thought coalesced in my brain, but it didn't make any sense and I didn't know where it came from.
I assumed I was going bonkers! But every morning I would have this thought in my head that I couldn't understand. Finally, I asked a friend: "Does the phrase 'fooly coollie' mean anything to you?" Turns out, my neighbor was watching an anime show at night! I was so relieved when he explained it, because that show was awesome.
13. A Sudden Turn
My neighbors recently divorced and were still working out custody plans over their 10-year-old. The mother was forced to leave but would bring the son back to the father every weekend or so. I remember one night after the son was dropped off and went inside, I heard the former couple yelling pretty loudly outside the house.
My bedroom window is right next to their driveway, so lots of profanity from either side was being spewed. I then heard a rather loud thud and was worried the argument had gotten physical. I went outside to try to break up the potential fight—I still can’t believe what I found. The two of them were sprawled out on the hood of her car, making out ferociously. So much for a fight.
14. The Wake-Up Call
My neighbor's kids' bedroom is right over ours. The older boy isn't a morning person, so his mom used to stomp into their room and wake him with a really loud "What the heck are you doing?! Wake up!" I would hear this every morning. Eventually, I got sick of hearing it, so one morning, I stood up in bed and screamed back "I AM AWAKE!" There was sudden silence, then the sound of feet shuffling out of the room. It was a little childish on my end, but to my credit, it worked.
15. Are The Alarms Working?
Well, my neighbors began opening up their windows this summer and my room is directly next to their house. For about a week straight, I heard their smoke alarms beeping, meaning the batteries had run out. After a week of hearing these beeps, even with my windows closed, I decided to go over to their house to see if they could fix it.
Apparently, after I helped them fix the batteries, they told me they had been going off for seven years. They had been living with this noise for that long! I couldn't believe it.
16. The River Bandit
We live on the lagoon, and a river in our backyard connects to the bay and then the ocean. A lot of our neighbors have boats, including the guy who lives across the lagoon from us. We also have a huge window in our living room so we can see across the lagoon to this guy's house from our couch. My dad was sitting on said couch and saw a man open the usually locked gate of his backyard.
The guy who broke in then climbed up the outside staircase and walked into the house from the roof. I guess our neighbor was on vacation or out, so he wasn't home. My dad, being a member of the force, got in his car and drove there around the lagoon. By the time he got there, the burglar was carrying a boat motor down the stairs.
My dad, even while wearing a leg brace from surgery, flashed his badge, and the burglar surrendered. My dad then called for backup while holding him down, and they put the burglar in the car and drove away.
17. Caught In The Act
I came home mid-morning from an appointment, and saw my neighbor's house from across the street getting broken into. The dude was standing on their front porch, peering into their sidelight window of the front door, he looked around. He looked RIGHT at me, standing in my driveway. I know he saw me. I went inside, picked up my landline phone, and then told authorities what was happening.
While I was on the phone with the authorities, the guy went around to the back of their house and broke a window to get in. He was now in my neighbor’s house, and I knew that my neighbors were all at work and school. I also knew that my neighbors were hunters and had dangerous items in the house. I shared this information with the dispatcher.
The closest patrol cars just happened to be only a few blocks from the house at that time, and shortly thereafter, pulled up with about three cars. They caught the guy trying to climb out of my neighbor's house. He ran, and they tackled. He was one of the neighbor's teenaged kids' friends...He was caught and ended up doing time.
18. Who’s The Visitor?
I was a spied-on neighbor—but apparently, I was the one who freaked all my neighbors out. I have a Corvette that I keep in my one-car garage. About two months after I moved into my house, I had a drive shaft sensor fail on the Corvette. Totally gone. I had to have a tow truck hook up a rope to the Vette just to pull it out of the garage to get it on the truck to be taken for repair.
As this is happening, my next-door neighbor comes out of his house and says to me "What happened, did the Vette get repossessed?" I was like "No, it's just broken, but do you mind if I ask why your first thought was that it has been repossessed?" He said, "I don't know. Officers are always showing up at your house, so I thought maybe something was going on".
What my neighbor didn’t know was that I have a good friend that is a patrol officer. He helped me move into this house even. I took a week off from work after I moved in to get everything set up in the new house. My friend knew this, so he'd stop by while doing his patrol and we'd have lunch together and hang out for a while.
From the neighbor's point of view, they saw this guy move in and now officers in uniform are showing up all the time. At least he and I are all good now.
19. I Can’t Sleep!
My downstairs neighbors have had officers called on them countless times. We called once because out of nowhere at two in the morning, the son or husband began yelling and slamming doors shaking my apartment. My son woke up terrified. Then, the mom or wife began yelling and screaming like a banshee and slamming the sliding glass door out to the patio.
She kept repeating "Stop it! Get the heck out of my house! GET OUT! STOP IT, GET OUT!!!" She kept slamming and breaking things. The apartment is still shaking. Finally, it stops for about 10 minutes then right back up again. That’s when we called for help. the fight lasted until five in the morning, and the next day, they are all smiling and acting like nothing happened. I really hope they move out soon.
20. Nighttime Fights
My favorite neighbors to listen to are one up and over from us. They are a young couple, and on a nightly basis are fighting. They take turns being mad at the other for something. It was always fun to listen to her calling him names, him insulting her intelligence, and there was even one time that another guy was there witnessing the fight. He would try to say something now and then, but one of them would tell him to shut up.
I say it was fun to listen to, until it got ugly. One night, in one of their most intense arguments we've heard, at one point, we hear her yell "No, get away from me! Get the heck away! Don't! Don't!" And then, we hear a CRACK, the sound of skin on skin at high speeds, so loud I would swear it happened in the room I was sitting in.
Then nothing. Absolute silence. Even the crickets were speechless. My girlfriend and I just looked at each other, unsure of what to do, and even unsure of what we actually heard. Then, we heard sobbing for a bit, and then we hear her apologizing over the sobbing, and we realize it was the guy that was crying. After that, all we hear coming from their place anymore is normal conversation. We refer to that night as the slap that saved the relationship.
21. Coming Out In Spring
I was the one spied on. I had my daughter in the summer, and as a stay-at-home mom, hibernated as much as possible throughout the winter months with my six-month-old. It was also a really bad winter that year, so I didn't go out much. Come springtime, I went outside to go to the store by myself, and the old lady next door stopped me.
I kid you not, her words were: "Did your baby die?" I stood there in disbelief and stammered, "What?! No!" And she replied, "Oh, I noticed through your pantry window that you didn't have the bottle sterilizer anymore and was hoping nothing happened". That was awkward.
22. Spilling Onto The Street
I lived in a second-story apartment, and one night my downstairs neighbors directly beneath me, who were a mid-30s married couple with a couple of kids, were fighting so loudly I could hear it through the floor. At first, I was just really annoyed that they were being so loud, but after a few minutes, the fighting turned to screaming and slamming doors.
I realized they'd gone outside, so I slipped out onto my balcony to make sure the fighting was over so I didn't have to call for help. I figured the husband was leaving, so basically, I wanted to make sure he left without issue, plus I was being just a little nosy. But nope. These people were not done. They started screaming at each other at the top of their lungs so loudly that I couldn't even make out what they were saying.
Finally, the husband reaches out and punches the wife in the face, so I figured that was my cue to make the call. I called and the authorities showed up a few minutes later, but that didn't stop the guy. He resisted them until they had to tase him on the sidewalk. By this time, it's like one AM and the rest of the complex was awake, so we all got to watch him get cuffed and put in the car while the wife yelled that she loved him and that she'd bail him out as soon as she could.
23. Anonymous Letters
My neighbor growing up was really awful. If he had a problem with anyone in the neighborhood, which was frequently, he would confront them by writing an "anonymous" letter while simultaneously giving away pretty conclusive details about who wrote the letter. It was mostly things like "The front of your car is on my property, and this is trespassing. Do not park on my property or I will call the authorities".
Anyway, he figured out that whoever built the fence for his yard was a little off and there were about two feet of his property outside of his fence that went into our fence-less yard. Well, our dog liked to play-hunt over there and would pee occasionally, and he apparently had noticed this "dozens of times" and ordered to "properly train our dog to not come onto his property or the animal control will be called". Signed Anonymous.
So instead of that, my dad built his own fence that wasn't on our neighbor’s property, causing that patch of our neighbor’s grass to yellow within a month. My dad removed the fence so that my neighbor could see the patch of brown grass every day. Since my dog didn't want to pee on it, the problem was solved.
24. Keeping An Ear Out
One night, an officer knocks on the door around two in the morning, and made a bizarre request. He quietly asks we turn off all exterior lights before asking if we had seen or heard anything from the people across the road. It was a fair question to ask: they were always horrible people, always shouting at and hitting each other as well as their kids.
Plus, we were the only two-story house on the block, so we had a good view. But we hadn't heard or seen anything that night. The officer asks if anyone was going to be awake, and if so, if I could keep an eye or ear out. He tells us that they've evacuated the house after some guy kidnapped his 6-week-old kid there and if we notice anything to immediately call emergency services.
I, being the outstanding citizen I am, do so, and after about 45 minutes, I hear a back window break and I can see torchlight inside. So, I call the authorities. Within about two minutes, there were like three or four squad cars, canine units, and whatever Australia's version of SWAT is. There is lots of barking and shouting.
Another 40 or so minutes pass and I get a phone call from one of the more senior officers in my city thanking me for my help, and that because of me, they found the baby alive.
25. Gran’s Sleeping In
When I was a kid and staying at my gran's house, a noise was waking me up every morning at 6 am. So, one day I asked her what it was. The story: my grandmother used to get up at 6 am to open the shutters at her house, then went back to sleep, sometimes until 9 am. The reason? She didn't want the neighbors to know she was sleeping so late... so she was opening them for "appearances". And she did this until her late 80s. That always made me laugh.
26. Laser-Sharp Vision
My sister is two years older than me, and when we were both in high school, she noticed a laser pointer shining into her room a few times but couldn't figure out where it was coming from since there are a lot of houses across the way from ours. So, she gets out of the shower one day and goes back to her room in a towel and is about to shut the blinds, when she sees the laser on her wall.
That’s when she came up with a plan to catch the creep. She pretends not to notice and yelled to me to look out my window and figure out where it was coming from. She didn't close her blinds and started drying her hair or something, and a minute or so later, I saw it fire again from a house across the way. We went downstairs and told my mom, and all three of us went over to the house and knocked on the door. I have never seen my mom so mad.
The kid who was doing it was 14 or so and had a pair of binoculars and a laser pointer and was using it to mess with people in the neighborhood. The kid’s mom made him bake brownies and write my sister an apology letter about why it was wrong. It was awesome watching my mom rip him a new one, but I felt bad for my sister. She was pretty upset about her privacy and kept her blinds shut most of the time from then on.
27. People Need To Sleep!
I used to live in an apartment complex with a bunch of small kids around. One night, one of the women there got into a fight of some sort and there was a bunch of thuggish dudes outside the building screaming while sitting on their cars waiting for something. One of the fathers who lived in the complex came out to ask them to quiet down, as his daughter had school.
Then, they started talking back to him. I was on my balcony overlooking the courtyard with my roommate, so we walked down there, and just stood around talking to him, trying to figure out what was going on. And to make sure if he got beat for trying to keep the peace, he wouldn't have gotten beat all alone by four dudes.
When we went down there and he told us what he knew, I went over to talk to them, and they just got in the car and left. The next day I woke up to a knock at the door, and his wife was standing there with a thank you card and two cases of the brewskis we were drinking. I helped them set up a fish tank for their daughter’s room before I moved out. They’re good people.
28. Not So Hot
My former next-door neighbor was a newly married man. His wife was a young, 20-something really hot woman. All the local teens thought she was hot. They had a young child, about one or two years old. On more than one occasion, I overheard her yelling at her husband, "You're a loser!" One time, my brother was with him in his side yard, and he was shaking his head and saying to my brother, "Don't ever get married. Because then your life is over".
They moved away and I learned from my brother that they got divorced.
29. The Early Bird Gets… Secrets
I used to work nights, and when I got home in the wee hours of the morning, I unwound on my front porch. I caught a couple of interesting happenings. One of my neighbors turned on his bedroom light around 4 AM, and a car I didn't recognize pulled into his driveway shortly after. A woman disembarked and he answered the door for her.
Soon, the unmistakable sounds of passionate love echoed throughout the cul-de-sac. But this was not his wife. She was away on business. This happened daily that week, until his wife's car pulled in around 5 AM on Sunday, obviously earlier than he had expected. The ensuing shrieks haunt my nightmares to this day.
30. The Vampire Next Door
My fiancé and I are convinced that our neighbor is a vampire car thief or something. We almost never see this guy, and the lights are never on in his home, even when it seems like he should be home. But when we do see him, he is meticulously and constantly cleaning his car, far more than is normal. We've seen this guy cleaning his car more than him taking his trash out.
The other day, my fiancé said he got a glimpse of the inside of his house and saw that his windows are boarded from the inside. Dude is mysterious.
31. When The Schedule Stops
My dad is a nosy neighbor. The guy next door to my parents is a bit of a drinker. He comes and goes a lot on drink runs. My dad hadn't seen him leave in a few days and became concerned. He went to check on him, but got no answer, so he Googled the next-door neighbor’s parents’ phone number to do a wellness check. I thought he was ridiculous—but I was so wrong.
Turns out he had fallen in the basement and couldn't move. He was in really bad shape when his family came to check on him and left in an ambulance. My Dad's nosiness up saving his life.
32. Going Through The Window
I lived in a small apartment complex, and my husband woke up once at 3 AM to see someone dressed in all black climbing in the window of the apartment directly across from us. We called the authorities, and they came, but it turns out the person who lived in the apartment had forgotten their key. They were happy we were looking out for them though. It was pretty funny.
33. It’s Really Not That
I had just gotten married, and my father moved in with my husband and me because he lost his house. My dad and I were walking my dog, and my neighbor came running up to my dad and proclaimed that she had seen me cheating on him—my dad—with some guy who lived down the street. I replied, "I'm pretty sure I'm not cheating on HIM".
The "guy down the street" was my husband. He'd walk home from work, and so she'd always see him come home in the morning and leave at night before my dad would get home, so I'd make sure that whenever my husband and I would go out, or he'd walk me out to the car, I'd kiss him because I knew she was watching.
34. The Crash Outside
I couldn’t sleep one night and just heard a crash a few blocks out of my apartment in the middle of the night. A car crashed on a post, and I saw two guys come out of the car just booking it. One tripped facedown on the floor out of nowhere, and his buddy had to help him up. They ran for the trail in front of my apartment.
A few minutes later, a bunch of patrol cars and paramedics showed up. I heard one guy explain the situation to them and pointed toward the trail where the two guys ran. They sent for the K-9 unit and a couple of officers with these huge dogs went to hunt for the two guys. It was getting late at this point, and I had to work early tomorrow, so I passed out. I lived on the fourth floor of the apartment and as I was watching all of this unfold, I felt super nosy.
35. I Just Caught The End!
We live on a residential street in a mid-sized city, so the houses are pretty close together and there's always a lot of wild and wacky stuff going down. My personal favorite was a few summers ago. I came home from work a little early, probably around 3:30-4, and my husband was sitting on our front porch watching the neighbors across the street.
The neighbor’s wife came home on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle, and the husband was none too pleased. All three were outside yelling at each other, with the wife saying, 'I can do what I want!' while the boyfriend is yelling for the husband to “come fight me, bro”. This went on for probably an hour and a half before the wife got her boyfriend to leave and she went inside with her husband.
I was glad I got home at the end of it.
36. Watching Them Closely
My former neighbors were an absolutely awful couple who was living with the woman's mother. I, a woman, exchanged words and threats with the man on a daily basis when I'd catch him sneaking around my property, and even had him locked up for trespassing. Obviously, I watched him closely. One night, I saw my neighbor climb out of his bedroom window and sneak over to the house next door.
The owner was using it for storage and had quite a lot of antiques and hunting equipment such as bows and such. The neighbor comes out half an hour later, toting a couple of weapons and some fishing poles, which he stores in his shed. He goes back and comes out with bows, and stashes those as well. He sneaks back into his window, probably giddy that he'd gotten away with it.
I called for help first, then the landlord, and woke him up to tell him what happened. He was so mad that he pressed charges, and my neighbor ended up behind bars for theft and breaking and entering. The rest of the bunch was evicted, and I lived happily ever after.
37. Everyone Knows…
The guy next door was a real jerky type. He would walk around his property and pick up rocks that he insisted us kids threw into the backyard and toss them onto our land. One time, the neighbor’s kids and I actually organized a mini parade past the front of his house to make as much noise as possible. This was how crazy he was...even the eight-year-olds nearby knew he was paranoid.
So, one night after I was in bed, I heard some yelling outside and I opened up my window. The guy was outside arguing with my father. Apparently, he thought that my brother and I had dumped our garbage cans into his, but we absolutely did not to this. So, he was out there trying to pour it back into our cans when my father heard the noise and went out to investigate.
They got into yelling, which led to shoving, and then the neighbor sucker punched my father. That’s when my father finally got back at him for years of annoying behavior. He took it pretty well, but he did fall back over the cans. But he stood up and hit the guy back three times and had him on the wall. He told him never to go on our property again and walked away. When he came upstairs to wash his face, I got out of bed and told him I thought he was the toughest, coolest guy I'd ever seen.
38. At The Retirement Home
I have a retirement home across the street. At the same height as my apartment on the first floor, they very obviously have their staff room. It’s always lit, and there are always people walking about. One night as I was looking out my window, I noticed a guy having a smoke out the window. I took notice since I know that is banned in all public buildings. Shortly after, a woman walks up to him, kisses him intensely, and closes the blinds.
39. Get Some Curtains!
I had neighbors with a bizarre shower setup. The tub was directly against a window, and they did absolutely nothing to cover it. Anything I saw was purely accidental on my part, but it happened more than a few times. I'm quite sure they knew that my bathroom was directly across the alley, and our bathroom was over there too, so often I'd turn my head to the left while relieving and see a very sudsy woman or a seemingly hairless 20-something guy. It was very odd.
40. How Many Kids Are There?
My neighbors had several children. I say several, because they constantly changed the kids’ names, and because I was never sure how many there were, total. It was at least four. They also had multiple dog problems. Occasionally we'd have to return their dogs after they escaped the chain fence around the yard, to try to get to our house or merely away from them.
They always ended up putting the dogs down after the kids injured them or after they were injured in escape attempts. A construction crew working on the house's renovation called it off and left after multiple incidents where they went into the house's bathroom to find the kids had smeared the walls entirely with their own poop.
41. The Orphanage’s Story
I saw these kids go inside this abandoned orphanage to hang out in a subdivision. The owner still maintains the house, but no one lives there on the regular. They broke the lock on the door inside the garage. The orphanage shut down because the foster mother was taking all the money that she was receiving on spending it at the casino. There were nice kids that used to live there though.
42. The Sound Of Office Ambience
My neighbor had a messy divorce. They live two houses away and my home office window looks directly at the road in front of their house. When the husband comes over to pick up and drop off the kid, they argue at his car once the kid goes inside. The way our street is shaped, I can hear just about every word when I'm sitting at my desk, even though they aren't yelling. That’s how I know all their secrets.
He cheated on her with their accountant and wants to make it work and move back in. She isn't having it. "It only happened twice!" I feel bad saying hi at the mailbox when I know so many intimate details of their life. At least they seem to be very cordial to each other when the kid is around, but as soon as the door shuts behind him, they are at each other's throats.
43. The Auction Next Door
I had these neighbors who were basically the McPoyles from It's Always Sunny. They’re weird as heck white people. They had a family reunion once in their backyard. I could see from my window, and I was like 12 or so at the time.
This reunion had an auction at the end to raise money for the next reunion. But instead of the prizes being family heirlooms or drinks or whatever, I'm pretty sure what I saw was the young men being auctioned, to the older women. They straight up stripped in front of them, and the old ladies were hooting and hollering. Those dudes looked really uncomfortable. It was a long time ago but I'm sure of what I saw.
44. The Newlyweds
I heard a loud conversation going on with the couple below me. It piqued my interest, so I put my ear to the thinly insulated wood floor. There was a full-on fight going on. First, I learned she thought his friends didn't like her. Next, I learned it was true. And then I heard how she didn't like them anyway. Then about how they never slept together.
Then, she asked why he sometimes left in the late evening to "go for drives". That’s when the dark truth really comes out. They fight some more, and it turns out he was having an affair with a woman he met at his bachelor party. I left at this point in the conversation. I came back a while later to them discussing how they were going to sell the condo and who was going to get the car.
She was going to move back in with her parents in the suburbs. I’m not sure how things resolved because I couldn't possibly stick around for more, plus they kept moving locations throughout their unit and I couldn't keep up any longer. It apparently was resolved though since the couple had a baby a year later.
45. Let The Dogs Out
I've seen an old lady who lived across the street take some kid's dog. She locked herself in her apartment, refusing to give it back. When the kid’s dad found out, he went berserk. He got pretty violent and banged on her door for a while, making threats to get the dog back. I called the authorities, and they got there pretty quickly. They told the man to calm down and persuaded the old lady to open the door to let the dog out.
When the door opened, the officer made his way in and apprehended the woman. I then overheard another officer telling the man who made threats that the old lady was mentally ill and that they were taking her in for her own safety. Once all of them were gone, a calmer dad explained to his kid that he shouldn’t have said those terrible things and that the lady was ill, so it wasn’t her fault.
46. The Parking Spot Thief
I did see my old neighbor cheating on her long-term boyfriend. The first big mess-up was on the other guy’s part, he accidentally parked his Mustang in my spot two times. I saw him ride the elevator and then enter her apartment, so I rang the doorbell and she answered, apologized and when he tried to introduce himself to me, my neighbor kind of pushed him back into the apartment.
I was wary after that and kept somewhat of an eye out. One night I was walking my dog, and clear as day through their hallway and bathroom window, I saw my neighbor and another guy in the initial stages of getting it on. I walked away pretty quickly. A few weeks later, the real boyfriend knocked on my door and asked me if I had seen anything.
He didn't tell me, but he must have found a tie the other guy left behind and suspected something was up; he even looked like he might be about to ask if it belonged to me. I told him what I had seen, the guy, and about the Mustang too then not three days later a U-Haul was parked outside our building for a few hours and I never saw her again.
47. Banishing Spirits
One time I overheard my neighbors—and what they were doing was seriously terrifying. They were performing an exorcism on their 20-something-year-old son. They were trying to cast away sloth and lust demons because he had gotten fired from his minimum wage job and they caught him lazing about during work hours. There was chanting, incense, and a Catholic priest involved. The parents were crying, and their son seemed to be playing along. I never saw my neighbors the same way again.
48. The Shifty Guy Next Door
I lived next to this really shifty dude who used to constantly be playing the worst music at ridiculous hours or he would be screaming into his phone really inconspicuously about getting his money back. Then one day he vanished. It's been about eight months since I've seen him—but the story doesn’t end there. Last night, I got home to notice a guy in a giant black panel van parked in front and one guy dressed in all black hopping into the van and then driving away.
I woke up today and looked out my kitchen window to see a freaking noose hanging from the neighbor’s clothesline.
49. Some Sketchy Parties
In college, we had these annoying neighbors who lived above us. Their guests would stay for weeks at a time and clog up the driveway we shared, and gravity was not on our side when it came to balcony parties. One morning, my roommate walks outside with his robes on to be greeted by a squad of officers. I hear him say, "Oh my GOD". He was told to go back inside, and they proceeded to ram the upstairs door in.
Our entire house woke up to the sounds of a raid and thought we were getting raided. Turns out our neighbors had a massive number of pills and other awful things. It made the news because they seriously had pounds of this stuff. For the next week or so their regulars would knock on our door asking for information. We did end up keeping their cat though, it was a cool cat.
50. These Troublesome Kids
My other neighbors were on vacation. I got home at 3 AM and went to check their mail for them at their request. The light in their garage was on, and shadows flickered across the windows. Concerned, I peeked in the window. A bunch of underage neighborhood kids were inside playing frat games. I politely knocked, and said something about how they really needed to not do what they were doing.
They grumbled their assent and began to shift things around. I walked home and ducked in for a drink. When I came back out, these kids had just put a tarp over the window. Well, I wasn’t about to let them get away with this. Miffed with this insult to my intelligence, I called the authorities. They ran and were caught. It was pretty amusing.
Sources: Reddit
