We've all had that one annoying neighbor who never fails to disturb the peace in the community. Whether they blast music at odd hours of the night or refuse to pick up after the dog during walks, you know the kind of person we're talking about. While it's not very neighborly to seek revenge, sometimes we just can't help it. Here are the best ways people have gotten revenge on their neighbors.
1. Noise Pollution
I used to have a terrible work schedule. I'd have to wake up at 2:30 am every morning so I could be at work by 4 am. My downstairs neighbors would blare loud music at all hours of the night and I could feel the bass through my mattress. I went downstairs and politely asked them to turn down the music, and they seemed to kindly agree.
As soon as I got back into bed, they turned it up even louder and kept it going until about 1:30 am. They didn't know who they were messing with. Before I left for work at 3:30 am, I turned over my amplifier so that the speaker was facing the floor. I turned the volume up and set my guitar on top of it. I left for my 12-hour shift, and the feedback was still screaming when I came home. The neighbors never blasted their music again.
2. A Messy Message
We lived in a neighborhood of townhouses. One neighbor let her dogs go #2 all over everyone’s lawn and she never picked it up. We tried asking her to be more considerate, but she didn't listen. We even tried picking the mess up for her and putting it on their doorstep, but she still refused to do it. So, my one neighbor decided to get a piece of it and smear it all over the front of the house. After that, she started picking it up.
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3. Don't Be Crabby
My mom's neighbor called the city on my mom to force her to repair the fence that divided their yards. This lady had always been a crabapple for 10-plus years, but this move really ticked my mom off. The fence did need a few mild repairs, and my mom would have done them right away if the neighbor just talked to her about it (she was already in the process of getting quotes).
The city contacted my mom and told her that she needed to maintain her fence. My mom asked if she had to have a fence by law and the person she talked to could already sense where this was going. Turns out, there are rules about maintaining a fence, but she was not required to have one. So my mom paid a contractor to tear it down entirely.
The neighbor came to talk to my mom and asked when the new fence will be built. My mom replied, "If you want a fence, build it yourself!" A couple of weeks later, my mom had a nice new fence, courtesy of her annoying neighbor. A little petty, perhaps, but hilarious nonetheless.
4. Nature's On Her Side
My grandmother had a neighbor who refused to help her repair the fence between their properties. It was still fully functional as a boundary line, but it was falling apart. Any conversation about fixing the fence ended with him saying that it was on her property, so it must be her responsibility to repair it. I guess that was fair.
She took a fall and was hospitalized for a few weeks. Upon her return, she found a new fence built an extra five feet into her property and a bill in the mail from the neighbor. He argued with her for months that she owed him, saying that the original fence was actually on his property and that where it was now was the boundary line. So my grandmother got a surveyor and...surprise!
The neighbor had taken five feet of her yard. At that point, she was already very old, frail, and tired of fighting her neighbor. But she had an ingenious way to get her revenge. She planted blackberries along the back fence and within two years, it was covered. Every year, she’d walk the fence and throw seeds over it because, of course, it was still her yard.
After five years of fighting, the blackberries had reclaimed her property. She’s been gone for a few years now but the blackberries remain, and it's her way of haunting her neighbor. He’s tried ripping up the ones on his side of the fence on numerous occasions, but the plants reseed themselves and grow back every year from her side.
5. A 'Hole' Lotta Trouble
My great-grandfather was one of the last people in town to get indoor plumbing, and as such, he had an outhouse in his backyard. Every year on Halloween, the neighborhood kids would come into his yard and knock over the building, exposing the cesspit. He got tired of it. So one year, the night before Halloween, he moved the building forward and covered the fess with burlap, disguising it in leaves and grass clippings.
In the dark, it was almost impossible to tell it was there. On Halloween night, he sat in the outhouse and waited. It wasn’t long after sundown when he heard the wet splat outside as a couple of kids fell into the muck. He lowered a ladder into the cesspit for them and said they could leave, but only if they promised to never mess with his outhouse again.
The kids honored their promise and even spread the word around the neighborhood not to mess with that outhouse anymore.
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6. Shade Of Blue
My dad was talking to our neighbor about what color he should paint the house and he said, as a joke: “Well, I might as well paint the old house blue.” The neighbor became angry and responded, “You can't do that! A blue house? How stupid and annoying! Don't be dumb,” etc. And that’s how I grew up in a blue house.
7. The Foolproof Solution
I was visiting my aunt a couple of years ago in Arizona. She lives outside of Phoenix. Her next-door neighbors had three or four kids who were super annoying. There was a brick wall dividing their backyards, and such is common for the area. Upon my arrival, I found out that the kids next door were throwing things over the wall for fun.
Not just like harmless objects like twigs and pebbles, but like rocks, toys, garbage, and even knives. My aunt’s family had to keep their trampoline on the other side of the yard so it wouldn’t get stuff thrown into it. I asked my aunt about it and she said she talked to their parents, but they still kept throwing stuff. So that night, I went online and filed a report with their address.
A couple of days later, the neighbors left a note at the front door with a long apology that basically said “it won’t happen again.” It pretty much stopped after that.
8. This Land Is My Land
When I was really young, our neighbor demanded we move our septic tank because he claimed it was partially on his property. He was a complete jerk about it and just kept hounding us to do it. My dad's a really laid-back person, but eventually, even he got annoyed. So one day, he had the property line surveyed. Turns out, not only was our septic tank on our own property, not his, but the corner of the guy's house and part of his driveway was actually on our land as well.
My dad spent the next few months asking him when he was going to move his house off our land.
9. Lawn Invaders
My neighbor had a super annoying son. His friends were constantly running over into our yard and breaking stuff. So, we got a dog named Molly. Every time she had to poop, I'd put her on a leash and walk over to the property line so she could drop off some landmines for the kids. They were always on my property so the neighbors couldn't complain about my dog pooping in their yard.
Finally, the bratty kid had his bratty friends over for a bratty birthday party and his parents sent them all outside to play. Of course, they were running over into our yard. I ended up getting three or four of those little jerks with Molly's landmines. After that, they never came into our yard again. Molly got belly rubs and a hamburger that night.
10. I've Got The Power
My upstairs neighbor was noisy late at night. At like 2 am, he'd blast music and walk around with heavy feet. We had repeated conversations about it, but he blew us off. He bought us earplugs and told us to simply "deal with it." Unfortunately for him, the breaker box for the building was in our unit. After conducting a few tests with his friendly roommates who hated him just as much as we did, we zeroed in on the breaker to his room and an unoccupied area.
Guess who had strange power issues at night while he was being disruptive? He wasn't the brightest bulb in the box and he never suspected us. The landlord was aware of his disruptiveness and he was already on thin ice, so we asked him not to follow up on the guy's complaints and he was on board. After he got aggressive toward one of his roommates over an unrelated incident, he was kicked to the street at the end of his lease.
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11. Right Back Atcha
My grandpa's neighbor's septic tank started leaking into his backyard. He repeatedly asked him to fix the septic tank and clean up the mess in his yard, but he completely brushed him off. So my grandpa took matters into his own hands. He rigged up a "plumbing" system in his yard and installed an upright PVC pipe that pointed at the neighbor's backyard over the fence.
I don't know how the system worked (I was only about eight years old, as this happened in the early 90s), but it was set up to spray the neighbor's own septic waste over the fence and into the neighbor's beautifully polished yard. And just like that, the neighbor fixed his septic tank. They remained enemies until my grandpa died a couple of decades later.
I miss that old crazy man.
12. Full Stop
My old boss had a problem with tipsy kids taking his mother's mailbox. He got tired of replacing them, so he told me to go out there and make sure whatever hits it doesn't keep going. I bought a six-foot-long steel post with under three feet sticking out of the ground, then poured concrete around it and installed the mailbox.
The next tipsy kid that hit it never got a chance to take out the rest of the mailboxes on the street.
13. Shut It Down
The rich brats next door were always throwing loud parties whenever my mom and dad went out of town for a few days, which was often. One Sunday morning, I did a quick inspection of the property and found a bunch of litter had been left in the street or thrown into the grass. The worst part is that there was a public bus stop at the corner of our street, so we started getting complaints.
That night around midnight I gloved up, collected a bunch of them, then snuck into the neighbors' yard and scattered them around the pool, the garage, and the back door where mom was sure to see them when she came home. There were no more parties.
14. Mind Your Own Beeswax
Beehives. Putting them up is allowed where I live, and I have had them for over 10 years. They don't bother anyone and most of my neighbors love them as they are good for their gardens and they get free honey. However, one of my neighbors who moved in five years ago does have a problem with them, apparently. She has called the council and the authorities too many times to count, and they say all tell her the same thing:
They're allowed, they're not annoying anyone, and the bees were there first. So, she tried to take matters into her own hands whilst tipsy—she jumped the fence in the middle of the night with a can of fly spray. It was very dark, so she accidentally jumped into my neighbor's yard instead. Their very large guard dogs bailed her up and she pretty much destroyed their gardens, boat, shed, and car windows trying to get away from them.
When officers arrived at the scene, she admitted that she had tried to poison my bees but went into the wrong yard. She tried to sue me, saying: "If I wasn't trying to poison her bees, none of this would have happened." The officers just laughed at her. They threw the book at her and now my neighbors are suing her for all the damage she caused.
She is now beyond broke. The bees are still there. When I hand out free honey around the neighborhood every few months, I always make sure she is around watching me and I intentionally don't give her any. Other neighbors tell me they regularly mention my bees around her just to see her lose her cool.
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15. Saturday Sale
When I was 10 or so, an old lady yelled at my brother and me for sitting on "her" curb. She could have asked nicely, but she decided to be a jerk instead. So we came up with the most ingenious prank we've ever pulled. We decided to have an estate sale for her. We got up at like 4 am on a Saturday morning and put up homemade cardboard garage sale signs we made with her address on them.
In big, bold letters, we also wrote: "Early birds welcome." We then sat on the curb a little down the street across from her house and watched people bang on the door for an hour or so. The best part is we didn't put a date on the signs, so if she didn't find them all, people would just keep showing up every Saturday.
16. Peace Offering
I think I was the annoying neighbor. I used to live in a townhome complex where the back "porches" were just slabs of concrete and there was a field that connected all of them together. One night, I had like six friends over and we were on the slab grilling some chicken wings. We weren't too loud (we had no music playing and we weren't trashed), but I imagine we were still audible to the other buildings.
A woman from across the way started hollering at us, threatening to call the authorities. A few of my friends were like, "Screw that lady," but I decided to take a different route. I plated up about eight wings with our scratch-made buffalo sauce and walked it over to the lady on a paper plate. I then apologized for disturbing her, handing over the plate as a sort of peace offering.
She told me she overreacted and was sorry for yelling at us. I told her it was okay, but I also asked her if she was doing alright because she'd probably had a terrible day; yelling at strangers for a little noise at 7 pm on a Friday like that. She ended up confessing that she did have a bad day, and I told her I was sorry. Moving forward, we kept our volume at a reasonable level as a courtesy to her.
A little while later, she yelled back over that they were the best wings she'd ever had, and we gave a little cheer back to her. Never heard from her again. Hope her days are better now.
17. Get Out (Leave)
After all of my siblings moved out for college, my parents changed the basement into a liveable unit and started renting it out. The first two tenants stayed for five years and they were great. We never had an issue with them. The third group of tenants, however, gave us a lot of problems. They stopped paying rent after three months and since it was winter we couldn't evict them.
My parents had to suffer through their parties while not receiving rent that was meant to go to 70% of the mortgage...They almost lost their house because of these jerks. Well, my brothers and I were home for Christmas that year and after hearing about the issues, we decided to take care of it. Since it was my parents' house and the tenants stopped paying rent, we decided to "move in" with them. These people were such jerks, I don't even regret what we did.
We had the keys, so we would come in and out of the apartment as we wanted. A friend needed a place to sleep? No worries, we had a unit downstairs with two beds and two couches. We'd let them stay for as long as they wanted. The bars were closing but we wanted to keep partying? No problem, we had a furnished apartment and we wouldn't be bothering my parents.
I would go there to shower at 2 or 3 in the morning so I didn't wake my parents up. My brother slept in one of the beds for five days. I invited 20 people once and we were all drinking until 5 am, up until one of the tenants left for work in the morning. They did complain about privacy. We told them that according to the law, we were not allowed to throw them out at that moment; but since they stopped paying rent, they lost all privilege over the unit.
They called 9-1-1 the first night they found my brother sleeping there. We explained the situation to the authorities and said that they'd have to take us to court if they wanted us to stop using our apartment. Some other things we've done: We brought our pets (the tenants were allergic, so I borrowed my friend's cat), we used one of the bedrooms as storage for stuff we were supposed to get rid of, we opened all the windows in the middle of winter, and we disconnected the water heater. We told them to take care of it themselves since they weren't "tenants" but squatters.
18. Music Mayhem
We had neighbors (one girl above us, one girl below us) that were good friends with each other. The one above had two small dogs (we were only allowed one per apartment) and the one below had a bigger dog. We all got along fine, but the girl above us was a bit of a jerk—she would leave her dogs alone for far too long and be very invasive of our lives.
She'd constantly beg to use our internet or drop by and make herself at home. I was sitting in the living room one day and I heard dragging in the hallway. I went to check it out and saw both of the girls moving a mattress upstairs. They told me the girl below was moving in with the girl above us, making the living room her bedroom so she could sublet her apartment to save some money.
This was an old building, so there was not much in the way of soundproofing. That meant that we would have girl #1 still living there, who was loud enough, as well as girl #2 and the three dogs above us. We decided to keep the peace and not say anything....until that first night. They decided to have their own dance party at 3 am, in HEELS, while screaming wildly.
We said "screw it" and called the landlord. The next morning, there was a pounding on my door. I went over and saw that it was the girl above us. She was flipping the heck out. We apparently ruined their lives by revealing to the landlord that the girl who lived below us was subletting her apartment. That's when the serious battles began.
It turned out she had been behind in rent, so the landlord was sick of her and gave her an eviction notice. That led to her going absolutely nuts. She would constantly stomp on her floor, run the hot water in the building for hours so it would run out on everyone else, encourage her dogs to bark, etc. We changed our WiFi password, enraging her more.
We wanted to take the high road, but soon enough, we needed to take action. We were going away for a couple of days and we knew our next-door neighbors quite well, so we mentioned our plan. They thought it was hilarious. Right before we left, we turned on that annoying French nun song, "Dominique." The upstairs girl may or may not have been named Monique. We hit the replay button, cranked it to full volume, and left for two days.
The landlord called us after about 24 hours. We feigned innocence and claimed that it was a simple oversight on our end (but really, he knew what was up). We gave him permission to go into our place and turn off the music. Both the girls ended up leaving by the end of the month. They did not stop being jerks, but it was satisfying to know how much they suffered for at least 24 hours.
19. I See The Light
My friend had a neighbor who put in a very bright yard light that was pointed at her bedroom window. She asked him to re-aim or dim the light, but he just gave her the cold shoulder. Cue theatre stagehands. She put up a parabolic mirror pointed directly at the dude's bedroom, then used an old projector dowser and an old lighting board to program a chase sequence that was put on repeat for hours on end.
The end result was a beam of randomly blinking light aimed at the neighbor's bedroom window. When he complained, she let him know that it was his light source and all he had to do was turn off his yard light.
20. It's Raining Snails
My parents have an extremely nosey neighbor who would just stand at the fence and watch what we did. I mean, with her nose resting on the top of the fence. This woman was in her 60s and she had kids and grandkids. I found out the other day that my dad was in the garden with a shovel. Turns out, he throws the slugs and snails in their trampoline and on their veggie plot for being annoying every time they aren’t there.
I couldn’t stop laughing at how petty and hilarious this was. Still makes my day.
21. Chain Of Fools
My neighbor used to insist on mowing his lawn at 5:30 am every Saturday morning. He had to drive on our property to access his back lawn and he would buzz right past my window with the mower deck down. It would always wake me up. I asked him to stop but he brushed me off. One Friday night after working a late second shift, I left my dog's chain in the tall grass on our property between our houses.
5:30 am Saturday came around and I woke up to the sound of the mower sucking the chain up into the mower deck. The next weekend, I got to sleep in.
22. Feeding The Problem
We briefly had a neighbor who was a complete jerk. My personal pet peeve was when he would yell at our kids to "shut up" while they were playing in the backyard. Next to his driveway was a big tree and I noticed he'd throw occasional hissy fits over the birds defecating on his car. One week, he was out of town but his car was still in the driveway.
Each day, I put a heaping pile of berries (blueberries, strawberries, etc.) next to the tree. He returned home to a car absolutely COVERED in technicolor bird poop.
23. Are You Chicken?
My neighbor is a cop and his kids would always come over to my yard and throw rocks at my house, screech loudly, harass my chickens and leave their coop open, etc. I put up a no trespassing sign and they still showed up. I put up some wire fencing and they still showed up. There was nothing I could actually do to get them in trouble because they felt they were “above the law," given that their dad IS the law.
But luckily, last year I worked at a Halloween store, and so I put a rubber pig mask on the light post in my backyard. Needless to say, he doesn’t let his kids over here anymore.
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24. Cat-vantage
Our cats did this all by themselves. Our neighbors got a small yappy dog and they would let it go outside. Our cats figured out if they sat on the fence and stared at him, it would drive the dog completely insane. They were completely safe because the dog couldn't jump that high. They would sit there just watching him lose his temper.
The neighbor asked us to please tell our cats to stop torturing their dog, and we said, "Well, they're cats...they're not really gonna listen to us. How about you don't leave your dog outside all the time?" The guy was kind of a jerk anyway, so we didn't have much motivation to stop them anyway. The dog seemed to be on the verge of losing its sanity, so eventually, they just stopped leaving the dog outside all the time.
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25. Oops, I Did It Again
In college, the guy in the dorm room next to mine was apparently a bit insane. He would bang on our shared wall whenever he heard any noise. The first time he did it, I was just talking to a friend in my room at normal volume in the middle of the day. It kept going like this for months. He once banged on our wall for like five minutes because I sneezed. One day we noticed that he had a large pair of panties and a pair of earplugs taped to his door.
There was a note that read: "Put on your big-girl panties and deal with it." Apparently, his neighbors on the other side were sick of him, too. So one weekend, I was leaving the dorm to visit home, and he started banging on the wall because I flushed a toilet. That was the last straw. I ended up putting a Britney Spears song on repeat, with my speakers up against his wall, and I left for the weekend...being sure to lock all the doors behind me.
26. That's Bananas
I had a girl at my old apartment complex open the washer with my clothes inside, take them out, and put them on the folding table. She did this right in front of me as I was removing my second load into the dryer. I asked what she was doing and she was like, “These have been in here for like 20 minutes,” and I was like, “No, they haven’t."
I used the laundry app and it said it had just finished washing two minutes prior. I was literally about to put them in the dryer, so I told her, "Please don’t touch my clothes like that." She just let out a rude scoff. I went back 45 minutes later to take my clothes out of the dryer and she was in there doing the same thing AGAIN with someone else’s load. She was taking their damp clothes out to put her own load in.
I knew for a fact the clothes were just done because the cycle only goes for 45 minutes. So I decided to teach her a lesson. I threw my half-eaten banana in with her wash.
27. Over The Moon
In college, our neighbor kept trying to get us evicted because we had too many cars. She also installed cameras to spy on our house. She called a noise complaint on us one day while we were playing basketball in our driveway and my roommate told her to kiss his butt. He then mooned her and she did not like that one bit. She proceeded to call 9-1-1, saying he had been indecent in front of her kid.
The officers who arrived watched the tapes over. Seeing as we did nothing wrong (and my friend only mooned her as a joke), they just told us to ignore her. We ended up hanging a giant sheet of plastic 20 feet up in the trees along the entire property line so they couldn’t see us. It looked trashy as heck, but it actually brought us peace until our lease ended. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to renew.
28. Gas Guzzler
My friend John had a neighbor named David who would siphon gas out of everyone’s vehicles. Nearly all of John’s neighbors had cameras, so they knew who it was, but couldn’t get the guy to stop. John went to the store to purchase a locking gas cap and while he was there, he had a bit of a light bulb moment. He decided to buy one for David’s car instead. John waited until David was asleep that night to hatch his plan.
At around 9 pm, he installed the locking gas cap on David’s car. Apparently, David flipped out and went door-to-door asking all of the neighbors he knew had cameras to tell him who did it. Miraculously, everyone’s camera failed to work that day. John said the car sat up for about a week before David was able to remove it. After realizing how much his neighbors hated him, David decided to move.
29. Get A Waft Of That
My previous neighbor was the biggest jerk I'd ever lived next to. I got passive revenge one day by deciding to fertilize my yard with that stinky fishy liquid formula when I noticed he was having all his mates over for a barbecue.
30. House Calls
Years ago, when you could advertise house sales in the paper without too many pictures, my brother put in an ad for his obnoxious neighbor’s house. He priced it at about $75K under market value as a private sale with the neighbor's phone number. He found out the guy was inundated with calls for weeks.
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31. Break Up With Your Boyfriend
We did this at our last rental house. The neighbors were constantly fighting and we'd hear it through the walls since we lived in a semi-detached property. They would also get tipsy every weekend and blast loud music until 4 am. Well, one time, the girlfriend went out of town for a week for some work training thing and while she was gone, we saw another girl park outside the house. We also heard the boyfriend and the new girl going at it very loudly.
At their next party, my partner and I both went over to ask them to turn the music down. The boyfriend opened the door and started shouting that we should mind our own business. Then, the girlfriend appeared behind him and said the same. That's when my wife casually asked the most devastating question: "Oh, did you get back together? What about that nice blonde girl who was here all last week?" Then we just went home and enjoyed listening to them throwing everyone out and having their last fight.
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32. An Ominous Voice
I have some upstairs neighbors that are obnoxious. Their subwoofer quakes to action movies around midnight. They also have LOUD, bed-breaking intimacy. But the worst thing they do is tan leather in their apartment, which means there is hammering and dragging around of equipment at all hours of the night. Sometimes, I blast my stereo for 30 seconds and they quiet down.
One weekend, I had my kids over and the neighbors were being super loud. Things were being dropped on the floor and people were rolling around. It was like they were wrestling with all the yelling and laughing. I remembered seeing a Bluetooth speaker show up on my devices list when they moved it. It wasn’t secured with a PIN, so anyone could join it. I instantly had an idea—it was evil, but it had to be done.
I waited until the kids were gone and at around 10 pm I connected to their speaker. Then. I found a creepy ASMR video on YouTube where a guy role-plays as a slayer and describes what he will be doing to his victim in detail. I turned it to max volume, then after a few minutes, I turned it off. I heard frantic running around all over the place with doors opening and slamming.
I couldn’t stop chuckling. Dead silence for two glorious weeks.
33. Snowed In
My neighbor had a bad habit of parking too many cars in our really small parking lot. There were only enough spots for two cars per apartment, and there were four apartments total. They often had three to five cars parked at any given time. I always had to ask them to vacate our parking spots when we got home. Every day practically.
The neighbor on the other side of me got their Pontiac stuck in the driveway because of the snow. They left it there overnight and the next morning when everyone needed to leave for work and whatnot, it was right in the middle of the driveway. Everybody started yelling at me because I guess they both expected me to fix the situation with my truck.
I told my boyfriend at the time that we were NOT to help either of them. They both went to HIM and asked if my truck could be used to get the car out. My truck. No. I dug out enough of the snowbank to get myself out and let them deal with the rest. Both of the neighbors got in my face, so at that point, I definitely wasn't lending them my truck.
34. The Innovation Is Immaculate
On my last day in my old apartment, I went #1 on a plate and stuck it in the freezer. Then, I waited until it froze, detached the frozen disc from the plate, and slid it under his front door so that it would eventually melt on his carpet. Thanks to three years of loud music at 3 am every night, neighbor.
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35. On The Fence
I decided to fence in my backyard and I asked my neighbor if he would pay for half of it since it also ran along his property line. He declined. So I installed a fence around my backyard a few inches on my side of the property line. My neighbor then tied a new fence into my fence, as well as to our other neighbor's fence on the other side.
So he only paid for about 40 feet of fence altogether and he managed to get his entire yard fenced in. Jerk move! But it wasn't a big deal, even though he got a few extra square feet of backyard space and a free fence on two sides for free. Sometime later, his dog knocked a hole in my fence. He asked me to fix it since his dog could escape.
I declined. I told him to fix it since it was my fence and his dog did the damage. He called code enforcement and the homeowners association. It turned out that if I have a fence, I have to keep it in good repair. I was out of luck—but I knew how to get my revenge. I repaired the fence and then painted the side of my fence that faced his property high liner yellow, blue, green, mixed with slates of black and brown.
According to the bylaws, I get to choose the color of my fence as long as it is in good repair. He complained about it to the HOA but they told him they couldn't do anything. Eventually, he caved and painted over my fence. I had him charged with vandalism and he was fined. He also had to repaint my fence with the original terrible colors.
But he didn't stop there—he then bulk emailed the entire subdivision, asking them to support him in his attempt to get me to paint my fence. Instead, the neighbor to his other side and behind him all painted their fences to match mine. He moved a few months later.
36. Float On
I live in a weekend lakefront community. My neighbor is just a weekender, but when he comes out, he acts as if we all work for him or something. It's like he thinks we owe him—he expects us to be completely silent and be essentially invisible to him. He hates dogs and physically hurts my puppies through the fence. Naturally, the dogs are terrified of him and bark as soon as they see him.
It drives him crazy and it simply makes things worse. I don't let the dogs bark for long, but I refuse to keep them inside all weekend just for his sake. Anyway, the lake flooded a few years ago, and it presented the perfect opportunity to teach him a lesson. I went around securing all my neighbors' boats and kayaks—all but his stuff. I enjoyed watching his boat float away.
37. That Sinking Feeling
When the house next door was being built, the "new" owners told the builders to use my electricity to build their house. When I said heck no, they put a really big generator on the border of my house and placed boards along the side to force the noise in my direction. Well after three days of that nonsense, they all went home for the weekend.
I went out with my sprinklers from the front and back and I let them run over it until Sunday night. Needless to say, after they walked over to start it on Monday, it sank in about six inches. They tried to tow it out with their truck but it sank too, and they had to call a heavy wrecker to pull themselves out as the truck sank to the doors.
They threatened to sue for damages but couldn't prove anything and all the other neighbors sided with me.
38. Cinderblock Surprise
The street I grew up on was paved to a certain point, and the rest was a dirt road that ran up through a farm. A family lived in a trailer on that dirt road and their son, Gary, would FLY down the road in his '84 Lincoln. We, as kids, were always riding bikes or playing hockey in the street, and pretty much every parent had complained about Gary to his parents.
They didn't care. We had county leaf pick-up, so we could blow all our leaves into a pile near the street and a truck would come by and suck them all up. This was Gary's favorite time of the year as he would drive his car through the leaves with multiple passes to hit both sides of the street. My neighbor across the street was fed up with him and decided to act.
He put cinder blocks in his leaf pile. It was 2 am and the neighborhood was awakened by a loud BOOM followed by people laughing on their front porches as Gary's '84 Lincoln had a cinder block through his grill.
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39. Crowdsourcing
I moved to a small rural town where everyone knows everyone. The townspeople love to inject the “will of the Lord” into everything. It’s quite annoying. I was just some random guy nobody knew. Last year was my first time having a garden and I was so proud of my tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. I told a trusted neighbor to help herself to some of my crops.
When the time came to pick a bunch of tomatoes and peppers, I went to the garden and found it absolutely picked clean from the day before. Knowing that the frail old lady didn’t do this, I set up cameras in the garden to catch the thieves in the act. Over the course of a week, I caught four different fully-grown adults on camera snooping and taking from my garden.
I did some research and found out that all but one of them worked full-time and they were in no need of food or financial assistance. I left the needy family out of this. I went to the community Facebook page with 5,000 members and posted pictures of them stealing from my garden with the caption: “God blessed me with this beautiful bounty and I’m so thankful he led the less fortunate and hungry to my garden to nourish their HONEST souls.”
I sat back, and watched the notifications and hate comments fly. Never again has a tomato been picked without someone asking.
40. Not An Olive Branch
I have an old neighbor who represents maybe one of five white households in a mixed minority neighborhood. He likes to call code enforcement on everyone for every little thing. He did it once when my trash can lid didn’t close completely. It’s gotten to a point where the code enforcement guy just texts me directly because he’s obligated to respond to every complaint.
I get someone to do a massive trim of my three pecan trees every other spring. This past fall, after an incident in which he contacted the city over my just expired registration, I got a knock on my door from the power company. They were present “on behalf” of my neighbor. They had recently fixed the street lamp dividing our front property which had been out for two years, and a singular large pecan tree branch was preventing light from shining on his driveway.
They couldn’t do anything to force me to trim the branch, but they were still requesting I do so on behalf of my neighbor. So naturally, this year, when it was time to trim my pecan trees, can you guess which branch didn’t get cut?
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41. Blades Of Glory
The woman who lived above our apartment was a psycho when it came to noise. I’m talking just regular, run-of-the-mill, everyday noise. My partner and I are very quiet. This woman could not stand the ceiling fan in our apartment. She said she heard it over her TV at all hours (even though we only ran it in the afternoon when we were in our living room).
Our landlords said she was a nuisance for years about the ceiling fan. They had technicians come in several times and they all said there was no real sound coming off it. Yet, the woman would be so upset over it that she'd throw tantrums, stomping her feet back and forth across her unit whenever it was on. We had no AC, so it was really our only source of air circulation when we used it.
The day we moved out, we knew the apartment wouldn’t be accessed for two weeks. We cranked that ceiling fan up to 11, closed the door, locked it, then dropped the key in the mail back to the landlord who was five states away.
42. Strength In Numbers
I deliberately don’t mow my front lawn because it’s seeded with lots of native wildflowers, which makes it a magnet for bees, butterflies, hoverflies, etc. My neighbor complained about it, saying he thought it didn’t fit in with the other manicured lawns and green spaces of the area. Fair enough. But rather than give in to his demands and mow my lawn, I wrote to the local council and suggested a “help the pollinators” wildflower initiative.
The local council doesn’t mow the verges anymore in summer (about half the neighbors don’t either), so all of them resemble my mini “unsightly” wildflower meadow rather than the neighbor’s chemical patch of a lawn. It drives him mad every summer without fail.
43. Home Entertainment
Our neighbor hit our car and when we tried to work it out with her, she threatened to kill our cat. We set up cameras at our house and decided to let karma run its course. Sure enough, a few months later, her husband filed for a divorce and she began stalking him. She ended up getting apprehended by the authorities three times due to her unruly behavior.
Every time she had a tantrum, it happened in full glory right in front of our house, so we caught it all on camera. We'd set up chairs with snacks to enjoy the show of her getting placed in the wagon.
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44. Salt On The Earth
I poured salt all over my neighbor's lawn after his kids threw bricks at my dogs. The best part is, he owned one of the largest lawn care companies in my hometown. He lost a tremendous amount of business after his prize-winning lawn turned into a barren wasteland.
45. Going Out With A Bang
Our neighbor was a pain in the butt. He would call the authorities on us even if we were just standing in our yard, minding our own business. He didn't have a mental problem; he was just a jerk who thought calling 9-1-1 would scare us. We would hear him on the phone saying, "They're standing in their yard, talking again."
The officers would often apologize for coming by, explaining that they had no choice but to respond to the complaints. Sometimes, they would just drive by and wave to us while shaking their heads. So one night, we had enough. We bought a thousand-count string of firecrackers, made a makeshift fuse, put it in his garage, and waited. Needless to say, it was super lit.
46. Brassy Revenge
When I was in middle school, our upstairs neighbor made a ton of noise every night around 9 pm. She'd be moving furniture, arguing with her partner at top volume, slamming doors, etc. So my mom always had me practice my tuba under her bedroom before school in the morning. A simple payback.
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47. A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
When my boyfriend was 14, he was living with his mom and sister on a housing estate. It was summer and he liked a bit of light in his upstairs bedroom, so he left the curtains open at all times. That included when he was getting dressed and after having a shower, so if you purposefully stared at his window, you could see him from his waist up (and only his waist up).
Well, their neighbor did not like that one bit. She went pounding on their door, yelling at my mother-in-law that her son was a disgrace, hanging around always naked and exposing himself to her daughter. My mother-in-law told her he had every right to do whatever he wanted in his bedroom, and that if they didn't want to see him all they needed to do was not to look.
A couple of days went by and lo and behold, the authorities showed up at the neighbor’s door. Turned out the neighbor had been filming and taking pictures of my boyfriend to show to the housing people as evidence of his wrongdoing to get them kicked out. Except that the housing office called the authorities on her for taking pictures and videos of an underage kid and kicked her and her family out.
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48. The Grass Is Greener
In our first house, my wife and I had a neighbor who disliked us from the start. Apparently, the people who lived in the property before we did were his family friends—they went through a divorce and ended up selling the house to us. He was petty and mean to my wife, who doesn’t like confrontation, and he'd do annoying things to mess with her.
He'd park across our driveway before she left for work, throw pieces of wood over the fence, let his dog go all over our lawn and not pick any of it up, etc. I tried talking to him a couple of times, but he promptly told me to screw off. That was the last straw—I had to fight back. I knew he loved his lawn because he'd always brag about how it looked to everyone, so the next time it rained, I went out back and threw an entire box of oxo cubes into their backyard and let the rain melt them into the grass.
His dog absolutely destroyed his yard looking for the smell and I would make sure to comment on it every chance I got. We moved shortly after.
49. Rock On
My house is right on the corner of an area where the road turns into a T, and I had issues with people cutting the corner and driving through my yard. One time, someone even nearly hit my dog. So I bought a boulder that was probably 300 or 400 pounds and put it right on the corner. That winter, we had a bad snowstorm.
Someone was coming through in a lifted Dodge and he hit the boulder going about 20 mph. He totaled the truck. Since then, I’ve had zero issues with people.
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50. Snitch To Win
I had a neighbor who won the lottery (about $800k USD after taxes) and he decided that made him God. He also had an addiction problem and would stay up late partying and playing music at all hours of the day and night. I live in a small mountain town and the sound echoes terribly. Well, this guy "Dear John'd" his husband of 8 years and at one point was making violent threats against him.
The authorities got involved and the neighbor got slapped with domestic charges. But that's just the beginning: AFTER the charges were filed, this neighbor decided he would buy a firearm, which was totally not allowed. He had to lie about the pending charges to get it, and then he told his ex that once he got it, he was going to end him. After that, he decided that partying out in Portland was more important than attending his court date, and he subsequently had a bench warrant issued to him.
On the Friday of a St. Patty's weekend, he was blasting his music again, so I called 9-1-1 to register a noise complaint. He likely had a scanner, because every single time, before they came, he turned down the music. They'd arrive not hearing any music, then let me know there was not much they could do. At that point, I let it slip that he had an active warrant. They ended up taking him in.
Because he blew all of his lottery money and alienated himself from every friend he used to have, he spent the whole long weekend behind bars with every other jerk who was there. About three weeks later, he put his house up for sale. A crowning achievement for me.
51. Bringing The House Down
I had the neighbor's house condemned and torn down. It's kind of a long story, but it was so worth it. So, the property next to me had two houses on it. The owners decided to gut and remodel one of them, and they piled the demolition debris in the front yard...directly next to my house. That stuff stayed there for a full year, with the owners ignoring my every effort to get them to do something about it (they did not live on the property, they were renting it out).
So I eventually checked with the city about their remodel permits and found that not only did they not have permits, but as far as the city was concerned, the house didn't exist. It had been built with no plans or permits filed and tied into the other house utilities. So I talked to the city planner’s office and they came out to put a stop-work order on the house (which was not really necessary since no work had been done in a year).
They also condemned the house. They told the owners they wouldn't be fined or prosecuted if they demolished the property. That sounds drastic, but the house was already gutted with no windows or doors, and they weren't going to let them restore it. So that's how I got someone's house torn down.
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