The saying goes "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick you family". Well, at least you can move away from your family. When you end up with a terrible neighbor, things aren't so simple. The situation can easily escalate into a total nightmare. These Redditors came together to share the stories of the worst neighbors they've ever had—and they make that one guy who sometimes goes through your mail look like an absolute angel.
1. 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.
2. Open Your Mind, Man
I had a neighbor who had a drug-induced mental break and decided to break into my house in the middle of the night. He was in serious tin foil hat territory. He told me the aliens that we're beaming the movies into his brain and said he had to come to talk to me. It took me several attempts to get him off the proverbial ledge but eventually, I had to get the authorities involved. Downward spirals are terrifying to witness.
3. Unexpected Waterworks
One morning, I was in the shower getting ready for work when water started POURING into my bathroom. I mean, water blasting out of my sconce, shower tiles turning brown from being waterlogged, etc. I threw on shorts and ran down to the office. No one was there. I went to the maintenance office. Empty. I called every number for the company I was renting from. No answer.
Lastly, I went to my neighbor's apartment above me where this was coming from, but still no luck. By the time I got back to my place, the entire bathroom ceiling had collapsed and I had water damage visible in two other rooms and a whole hallway. I later found out that his girlfriend had nodded off while filling the bathtub to do laundry (despite there being a giant laundry room in the basement) and the water was running full blast while it overflowed.
She destroyed my apartment and damaged thousands of dollars worth of my stuff. She admitted to exactly what had happened. He came home and tried to talk his way out of it. The maintenance guy shut him down and told him he knew what had actually happened and that he was basically boned. He then made a throat-slashing gesture at me in view of the head of maintenance.
He got evicted as a result of the damage she did and the fact that he threatened to end me. But the nightmare still wasn't over. He blamed me for his eviction, so he started vandalizing my car by kicking off the side window. He slashed a tire as well.
4. It Was A Big Red Flag
I had a creepy neighbor who was a male in his early 40s. I was in seventh grade when I first met him. He was a very nice guy, but there was just something off about him. My mother was very patriotic, and our whole house was red, white, and blue inside. One day while I was walking home from school, he was sitting on his front lawn and told me he was having a "red, white, and blue sale" in his backyard and that I should check it out.
I told him sure, but I needed to get money first and walked off. My other neighbor was a big guy, mid-30s, covered in tattoos, who had turned his life around but was VERY intimidating if you didn’t know him. Since my parents weren’t home, I went to his house and told him. He walked over to that guy's house with me, and the creepy neighbor took him to the backyard.
Sure enough, it had red, white, and blue items for sale. But I still thought something was off. After we left, the neighbor I was with called the authorities to let them know that something strange was going on. He also told my parents, who then told me to walk home on the other side of the street. Two years later, the creepy neighbor was taken into custody for attempting to lure a child into his house.
5. Pool Partying Pest
I moved into a new house a few years ago. My retired neighbor was helping himself to my backyard swimming pool during the day while I was at work. I didn't realize it until another neighbor let me know. I went over and confronted him, and his excuse was that the previous owner let him use the pool whenever he liked. Trying to be neighborly, I told him he could use the pool as long as he let me know in advance.
Well, that was a brutal mistake. He soon moved his own lawn furniture over, showed up first thing in the morning on Saturdays with a cooler full of booze, and hung out all day. He even hosted a pool party for his daughter and grandkids. Finally, I had to install new locks on the pool gates and told him that the arrangement wasn't working out for me anymore.
I also installed security cameras to keep an eye on his activities. His reaction was chilling. He retaliated by letting the air out of my tires in the middle of the night, putting dog poo in my mailbox, and firing off high-powered fireworks at my house, leaving burn marks on the roof, sidewalks, and driveway. I called the authorities.
Luckily, karma took over—he had a stroke and was moved to an extended care facility.
6. 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 flaring up 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.
7. It Was All A Set-Up
New neighbors moved in across the street from me when I was in middle school. They were very odd people that kept to themselves. They had two small children who were adopted. One day not that long after they moved in, the lady came over and apologized to my parents that her kids were always screaming and crying. But there was something off about what she was saying.
I remember it being bizarre because neither my parents nor myself ever really heard the kids screaming or crying. Soon after that, my father was home, and he heard the lady yelling in her backyard. He went over, and she was screaming that she found the younger of her two children unresponsive in the backyard. The authorities arrived, and unfortunately, the kid didn’t make it.
Then things got real. There were tons of officers, unmarked vehicles, and yellow tape. It looked like something out of a movie. She had beaten the child and tried to stage it as if the kid fell and hit his head on the back patio. They had apparently moved out of their last house because numerous neighbors had reported them to child protective services, so they were not welcome in that neighborhood.
But the story didn’t end there. Beyond the brutal tragedy, it turns out that the children had never been officially adopted—they had been purchased.
8. No Safe Haven
While I was going to college, I lived in my mom's apartment with her. The building only had four units in it. Her neighbors across the hall and down one floor would perform bedroom Olympics on an almost nightly basis. I'm talking out-of-proportion screaming and banging on the walls—think of the most over-the-top things you can and you may be close; it was obviously done so that people would hear it.
The same neighbors were selling substances out of their apartment, which was right across the hall from where the landlady lived. They left a quart-size Ziploc bag full of the stuff out on the front porch one day, apparently for someone to pick up (it was hidden in a potted plant). The landlady found it, knew what it was, and threw it out.
I can only imagine their panic. Also, since they were shady as heck, they found my mother's phone number on a piece of trash (I'm assuming) and gave it to debt collectors as their "primary phone number".
9. Better Yours Than Mine!
My parents’ neighbor owns a landscaping company, so he has a dump truck. His house is set further back from the road than theirs, so his driveway, which is right on the property line, extends past their house and next to their backyard. One time, my dad noticed the neighbor turning the dump truck around in my parents’ backyard when the ground was very soft from some recent rain.
He went back, and sure enough, there were giant ruts in my parents’ yard. When my dad confronted the neighbor about using their backyard to turn around, the neighbor's response floored him: “I’m sorry, but if I turned it around in my yard, it would have left ruts in my lawn.” So he knew it would leave ruts, then decided he didn’t want them in his yard, so he left them in my parents’ yard instead.
10. Something Seemed Out Of Focus
My neighbor was an older gentleman who lived with his wife. He would randomly call over and ask about lights coming from down behind the shed I had at my house. His house was probably a good 1,500 feet from there with quite a bit of dense woods in between. The only way he could see that would be if he was using binoculars.
He had also "staked" out our other neighbors by parking across from their house and spying on them for hours. That neighbor called the authorities.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. What A Gas
My downstairs neighbor decided to sandblast his brick wall on the down-low without telling the landlord. Living in an old brick building, I asked him if he sealed up all the cracks in his unit, and he said sure. Fast forward a week later, and sandblasting commences. It ended in disaster. I’m watching football when suddenly this white dust starts coming up from the floor.
I look around and it’s coming up everywhere. Five minutes later, my entire unit is completely filled with white dust. So now I’m in a gas mask, terrified it’s asbestos or another dangerous substance. I can’t really do anything. I tried to tell him to stop, and he told me to go screw myself in so many words. It’s Sunday, so the landlord isn’t around, and I think it’s a bit extreme to call the authorities.
So I guess I’m just going to sit here in my gas mask...
14. Let ‘Er Rip
I once lived in an apartment where the walls were thin. The neighbor’s bathroom was on the same wall as my bedroom. This neighbor had the loudest flatulence I've ever heard in my life and he liked to come home late at night, run a bath, and let it all rip. He could hear me laugh and he'd be like "IT'S NOT FUNNY DUDE"!
Any time we saw each other around the complex it would be kind of awkward.
15. Back To The Beginning
My neighbors used to be absolute hicks. I live in a small town, sure. But these guys took it a step further than most. Makeshift hot tubs made of a tarp and a radiator, drunken fights every night, etc. They were also notorious for not paying for ANYTHING. They would drive away from the gas station after fueling up and "forgetting" to pay.
Same with groceries. Everyone knew they were dirt poor, so the community as a whole let it slide. My mom is the town administrator, so she takes all of the payments for land titles and utilities, and such. This house was supposed to be foreclosed on about 14 months prior. After one too many drunken fights, my mom decided they had gone too far.
One of our windows got smashed. When we asked “What the heck, man”?, they said, "Well maybe you should mind your own business then"! So what did our family do? My mother gave them their notice of foreclosure and after it was seized, we bought the property and bulldozed it to build a garage.
16. Not-So-Secret Service
There's a particular type of person who, for some inexplicable reason, feels like they're the only thing standing between society and total collapse. That was my neighbor. She was aloof and paranoid, and she'd imagine threats from almost everywhere...which made the fact that she thought of herself as some kind of secret agent all the more annoying.
This neighbor was always trying to find ways of getting me (and anyone else whom she thought of as suspicious) to move out of the building. She'd stage loud telephone calls with "headquarters" about the alarming behavior of the other tenants, like my tendency to get home after nine in the evening, which was clearly scandalous.
She'd also frequently yell at the people who'd stand on the corner to light up. On one occasion, I heard her shouting at someone over the placement of a flowerpot in their window, which was obviously an indication that they were selling illicit substances. Then, one afternoon, I found an "official notice" taped to a wall in the stairwell.
It was perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at a government-sponsored document that I'd ever seen. The atrocious grammar, poorly Photoshopped seal, and the distinct absence of any legitimate contact information made the thing about as realistic as a scene from NCIS. Furthermore, the reference to "the past two years" seemed to indicate me as her primary target, since I was, as far as I knew, the only resident who had been there for less time than that.
Still, since the notice was clearly meant to scare someone, I decided to return the favor by taking a page out of my neighbor's own playbook. This led me to stand outside of her apartment while staging my own fake phone call: "You should see the notice; it's terrible! Haha, yeah, it's like they didn't know that impersonating a federal official can get you into some serious trouble! Anyway, the real FBI are on their way, and they're going to dust for fingerprints. Whoever made that notice is looking at a lot of time behind bars!"
I went back inside my apartment after that... and within seconds, I heard my neighbor's door open. There was the sound of hurried footsteps rushing towards the stairwell, followed by an equally hurried retreat. When I went out to check five minutes later, the notice was gone. I've since moved away, but for the rest of the time that I lived there, the lady never bothered me again.
17. One Word: Crazy
When I was 13 years old, a new neighbor moved into the house next door. We shared a driveway with her. The families in our neighborhood are really close to one another and everyone likes to have get-togethers and block parties. So, when she moved in, we all got together and had a little celebration to welcome her. Immediately, it became clear that she did not like my dad.
A while later, we found out that she’d been telling our neighbors that my dad was being inappropriate to her at the party. I know my dad would never act like that, but he isn’t a native English speaker (he’s Middle Eastern, which is relevant to the story). Maybe some wires got crossed and there was a misunderstanding. So my dad went over to apologize to her. It did not go well.
She told my dad to leave, which he promptly did. Then, she put up the security cameras. They absolutely covered her house getting views of pretty much every angle including lots of shots of our shared driveway. “Whatever,” we thought. “A lady has a right to put cameras on her house”. But then the authorities started showing up. She called them claiming that we had messed with her cameras and that my friends and I were shining laser pointers at them.
The officers ended up leaving pretty quickly because the supposed "offense" she accused us of was not captured on any of her cameras. We thought she was done with her antics after that, but we were wrong—she then started claiming that we were sabotaging her yard. She spent a lot of time on her lawn gardening and growing plants, and for some reason, every six months or so, she’d cut everything down and start over.
Anyway, the authorities came back but they couldn’t find any evidence. We didn’t even have any poison, nor had her cameras picked anything up. We had absolutely no motive to poison her lawn. So she started an inquest with the department of agriculture. A pesticide use investigator showed up, interrogated us, and took samples from her yard.
While that was going on, we had a few other interesting encounters with her. Once, she bought a giant floodlight and pointed it into our windows in the middle of the night. The fire department had to come and unplug it. Another time, our dinner was interrupted when a massive hazmat truck came blaring down our street. Men in heavy gear poured out and charged into her house, then, minutes later, they disappointedly filed out.
One guy came and told us that she had bought a Geiger counter and used it wrong, and she had thought that we had irradiated her house. Finally, things came to a head when she sued us to get an order of protection. She claimed that my dad was a member of a sleeper cell intent on destroying her. She also claimed that he had used his skills as an engineer to develop a device that she referred to as a "white ion laser" which would allow him to turn invisible and sneak into her house.
She submitted one terabyte of film from her cameras, all of which was annotated with such incriminating evidence as “My neighbor leaves the house, my neighbor enters the house.” There were also tons of photos and notes. But that's not the most horrifying part. It was here that we discovered that her cameras were pointed into my bedroom and she had been filming me for years.
I was a young lad by this point so there’s probably video evidence of some pretty embarrassing teenage behavior out in the aether now. We later legally forced her to move the cameras, but she kept moving them back, so I just kept my blinds closed for the better part of a decade. During the trial, the department of agriculture report came back.
It was determined that our neighbor had poisoned her own lawn by over-fertilizing it. She received a fine for contaminating the groundwater. We obviously won the lawsuit and countersued her to get our own order of protection. We also had to legally get the files on us at the FBI and CIA closed since she had reported us to both agencies.
Despite losing the suit, she continued to live next to us, occasionally calling the authorities on us for non-issues. They were called on us a total of 37 times. It’s now been ten years and she’s finally moving out. Why you might ask? Does she feel guilty for accusing us of stuff with no evidence for a decade? Had her paranoia finally driven her to move? No.
She didn’t pay her property taxes for six years and her house got taken from her. She tried to sue the city on a bunch of occasions as well and failed. This is only a summary of the situation. There are tons more. I haven’t even gotten into her kids, her horrible husband, the video she posted to YouTube of her dog passing...
18. Bad Bunny
When I was seven, we had a family pet that we kept in our backyard. One day, our next-door neighbor came pounding on our front door. He was screaming at the top of his lungs and threatening to off my dad. He said that our pet was being too loud. Our pet was a rabbit. A RABBIT!
19. Mom Freaked When She Got The Scoop
When my sister and I were about five and six, we lived in a small town of about 600 people. We would frequently play outside without parental supervision. Our neighbor would—unbeknownst to our mother—take us to the local ice cream shop for ice cream. One day, we moved without any explanation. Years later, we found out the disturbing reason why.
We were told that the neighbor was a registered offender, and our mom moved for our safety. She freaked out when she learned about our trips to the ice cream shop. Neither my sister nor I were ever harmed, but it is still terrifying to think about.
20. Going Ape
We had these two neighbors who had dozens of stuffed monkeys they would treat like their children. It was bizarre. They would even talk to them, even though they weren’t real. They moved out years ago but once every few years, we would see them on TV in the stands of some nearby sporting event. They had all their monkeys with them as well.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. Music To My Ears
I lived in the basement suite of a fourplex, and the people above me were awful. The guy's alarm would go off every day at 5:30 am. It would go off continuously for two hours when he would actually get up around 8. No snooze button or anything, just constantly blaring the entire time. On multiple occasions, I would get mad enough to go up and bang on his door to get him up and shut off the alarm.
He was nice but never changed... until he got a roommate. She was a sex worker, which I don't really harbor any negative opinions over. The problem was that she did her business at home and my room was directly under hers. Sometimes I would be outside and these guys would come out with their heads down and scurry off.
Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night to someone outside my window, tapping on hers (above mine) to get her to answer the door. I would hear her with these guys almost every day. But the worst part of it all was that the only song I ever heard her listen to, ever, was Creed, “With Arms Wide Open”. Every day, that song, at least a few times.
Day and night. I still cringe thinking about it.
24. The Voices In Her Head
I had a lady live above me who had severe schizophrenia. She constantly thought the units on each side of her and below (me) were yelling at her and making noise. Being that she did not work, this meant she spent a good 12-16 hours a day stomping around the apartment yelling at us and kicking the walls. The authorities were called out there so many times they stopped responding.
Unfortunately, the leasing office had a bloated eviction process they had to go through before they could get rid of her. It escalated to the point where she started vandalizing our doors by spraying ketchup on them, knocking and running, and calling officers on us for making the phantom noise. I ended up having to sleep with earplugs and move my bed away from the wall just to get four to five hours a night.
25. Nosy Nelly
My neighbor from behind my mom's house once literally asked her, "Why don't you use the master bedroom? I never see you go in there with my binoculars". He wasn't joking. She actually doesn't use the master bedroom, which is visible from his back window. On top of that, he also started harassing the repair guy from DirecTV, who happens to be black.
This guy had a uniform, expensive equipment, and everything. The neighbor claimed he looked like he was doing something "suspicious". Oddly enough, he didn't seem to think the white kid who did try to break in (in broad daylight no less) was "suspicious”. On top of THAT, he asks my mom one morning if he could have his lawn man remove a tree that he didn't like.
Seeing as it was on our property (even the branches, it was small), she said no. Three hours later: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. What heck was even the point of asking?
26. A Purple Solution
I had a neighbor who always let his dog run free. It would get into our yard, give our dogs fleas, eat all their food, and teach them how to escape. No matter my mom's complaints, this neighbor denied his dog was getting out. So, being fed up with the situation, my mom got some satisfying revenge: She dyed his dog purple (with an animal-safe product, of course) and sent it on its merry way.
The neighbor kept his dog contained after that.
27. It's A Roach Party
I didn't really interact with my upstairs neighbors when I was living in my first apartment, but I did know that their religion prohibited them from ending any life...including roaches. Their apartment became a breeding ground and the roaches would spill into the rest of the building, including mine below. It was a horrible experience and I felt so hopeless because it didn't matter how clean I was. Those bugs were always everywhere.
28. Burning Down The House
When we moved in, our neighbor came over to tell us the house had previously burned down twice, which was news to us. We got the feeling that he wanted to brag about how he had saved people from the fires. Then a few years later—after leaving our garage door open—we found our stored grill with all the unlit burners on and a bit of burnt paper sitting underneath.
After that, he disappeared, but we started locking up our propane.
29. He Was A Peeping Tom
My wife and I had a neighbor in the apartment complex we used to live in who we called “Creepy Guy”. He had some mental disorder and would roam the complex all day doing his snooping. He once got caught by one of our neighbors cracking their front door open to peek in. When I would leave in the morning, he would come running out of his apartment to see who was leaving.
The bottom floor units were partially underground, so the windows were at ground level. If someone didn't keep their blinds closed, he would peek into the windows. Maintenance would catch him going into empty apartments that they would be working on. The final straw was when my wife went to check the mail. The mailboxes were all together in a central location in the complex.
He had followed her to and from the mailboxes wearing a thick leather jacket in 90℉ heat. My wife reported it, and management finally decided to evict him. For the rest of his time there, before he left, he would walk around saying hostile things about apartment management.
30. She Was Holding On To Dirty Laundry
When I was growing up, there was a middle-aged lady who lived across the street with her young daughter. Every day I would see her walk down the road carrying two large laundry bags, and later she would return with them. She did this almost every day. I was curious as to how just the two of them needed to do so much laundry so frequently.
I thought she was just a total weirdo—but later, I learned the heartbreaking story behind it. Years later, my mom told me the lady had been a refugee from WWII Germany. She was terrified that she would leave the house and the Gestapo would raid it when she was out. Therefore, she always carried all of her clothes with her everywhere she went.
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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. 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 illicit substances, 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.
34. 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??
35. That Was A Close One
I live in a duplex. I work pretty early, and on the weekends, and generally go to bed around 11 pm. This Friday night, my neighbors in the duplex on the far side of me threw a "Welcome home from the clinker” party for somebody. Sure enough, loud music late at night, but I figured "Meh, it's Friday, people should be able to party".
Plus, like the Blues Brothers say, "You can't call the cops on him, he just got out of the joint". So I just try to tune it out. Not so for the neighbor who I share my backyard fence with. He comes out and tells them to shut up. Angry words are shouted back and forth, kind of across my yard. It escalates so fast. Pretty soon, it becomes threats.
At this point, I start to get the phone and dial—but a twist was coming. "I will shoot you”! "Bring it! I'm in the 512 Crips"! (I think that's what he said) "You're in the 512? So am I"! "No way”! "Well, come on over and have a drink”! Crisis averted, music turned down, no other incidents that night.
36. Beyond My Help
This roommate I used to have accused half the house of conspiring to assault her. Banging and kicking and knocking with fists and feet against walls as well as her own and other flat doors. She messed with the gas lines in the cellar. When the landlord finally had all the legalities required to evict her at hand, she threw their lawyer's bag—including laptop and whatnot—out through the third-floor window and onto the street.
I was lucky, though. She said she was in love with me (because I reminded her of Jesus Christ) so other than the door smashing and occasionally cutting off my electricity because of "TV noises" (I have no TV or anything that could sound like one), not much happened to me personally.
37."Am I The Drama?"
This happened on a week-long cruise. The first two mornings, our neighbors on both sides were ridiculously loud. They were basically screaming in Spanish and constantly waking us up. We didn't go to bed until 4 am, so they cut into your sleep. On the third night, at around 11 pm we went to our room, blasted the TV, and left it like that all night.
You could hear it outside our door, and it was very loud like they were. The next morning, what do you know—the neighbors realized that other people could hear them and they were quiet for the rest of the cruise.
38. He Was Itching To Get In
I lived in an apartment building, and at night would hear weird scratching at my door like someone was trying to get in. Then, I would hear someone knocking at my door. I answered the knocking precisely two times. It was my neighbor, and the dude terrified me. He would show up wearing nothing but an open bathrobe and wanted to "just talk".
I actually called the authorities the second time he knocked and gave them the whole story. I was a 20-year-old girl living on my own and had some middle-aged man trying to get into my apartment. It was scary. The authorities and my landlady must have worked together to get that guy to back off because after calling law enforcement, he stopped coming by.
39. My Neighbors Were Bird Brains
I lived in an apartment that was on the first floor—which was really half underground—and my windows were all on the same level as the parking lot. I had two weird neighbors there. One was an older guy who would stand just inside the glass door to the building and look out. As you might imagine, that made getting into the building a little awkward.
He wouldn’t acknowledge my presence until he had to move out of the way to let me in. He would sit in his car in warmer weather, with the driver’s side door wide open, blaring “Endless Love” for hours. But he wasn’t the only creep. The other was the older lady next door. She was tiny and had those giant glasses that made her eyes look magnified. She wore a lot of Tweety Bird-themed clothing and chain-smoked all the time.
She would come around, ask me for $5, saying her social security checks were late, pay me back, then ask me for $5 again. It was a weird place.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. 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.
43. 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.
44. Where There’s Smoke…
I am a blacksmith. One day my forge broke, so I ended up using a wood-burning forge (I heard it would work, it didn’t). I usually use a coal forge that is relatively smokeless if I use a fume hood. This time, however, I was doing it in my garage with the garage door slightly open to let the smoke out. Fast forward a few hours, and an unexpected effect starts to happen.
I didn’t realize it, but my garage was now entirely filled with thick, black smoke, which is also pouring out my garage door, making it look like my house was on fire. So one of my neighbors comes bolting out his door and into my garage, only to see me, making whatever it was I was making, not even noticing the smoke.
He screams at me, and in the end, the smoke was cleared out, the fire department was called, and he reamed me out for a good hour about being irresponsible and inconsiderate towards my other neighbors for almost burning down my house, which would result in his house being devalued. And I kind of had to give him that one.
45. Doo-Doo Delivery
When I was in elementary school, our neighbor's four dogs would always poop in our backyard. My mom asked the neighbor many times to pick it up, but he never did. So every morning before school, my mom would send me and my brother on 'poop patrol'. At first, we just put the poop in the neighbor's yard, but our neighbor never got the hint.
My mom then had us put the poop on his porch...That's when he got a fence and the problem stopped.
46. Petty Planting
I had two neighbors; we'll call them A and B. They absolutely hated each other—Neighbor A really took pride in his lawn being “pristine” and that caused Neighbor B to complain over things like leaves and lawn clippings ending up on his lawn. The authorities were even called over this issue multiple times. This went on for a year.
Eventually, Neighbor B got fed up—and pulled the most diabolical move ever. He intentionally planted clover on his lawn. He waited for it to flower and then set up an industrial fan to waft it over to Neighbor A’s lawn. I aspire to this man's level of pettiness every day.
47. 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.
48. 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.
49. 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.
50. I Couldn’t Deal With This Neighbor
I lived in a relatively quiet neighborhood. A high school kid who lived next door to us was a dealer. Our house was on a corner, and he would tell buyers to park in front of our house—on the side street—so his dad couldn't see them. There was so much traffic; it was like a drive-through. Strange and creepy people would often walk into our backyard or driveway thinking that the kid lived at our house or trying to figure out a way to get over our fence into his yard. It was really scary.
51. The Mysterious Mercedes Man
I lived in an area that was not the best, but not the worst either. Pretty quickly after moving in, I noticed that my neighbor was a bit sketchy. He always got picked up and dropped off in an expensive blacked-out Mercedes. I also once saw a stranger handing him a roll of $20s about two inches thick. I just assumed he was dealing, but if he stayed out of my way, I didn't care.
I installed a camera doorbell outside my door and started to notice a lot of extra weird activity. I would get flooded with notifications several times an hour and throughout the night. It seemed like there was that one guy who lived there permanently, plus several additional men in their 30s/40s staying there with him at a time. Then they would disappear, and new guys would take their place.
They all seemed to have keys and never arrived or left at the same time as each other. They never seemed to speak any English or understand me and tried very hard not to make eye contact with me. Also, when a new guy would “move in”, I would never see them move in any boxes or belongings. He would just show up on his own with a key and then disappear weeks later.
I also never heard any noise coming from their place either—no talking, TV, music—nothing. That always creeped me out because the walls were thin, and I could always hear every other neighbor, but this flat was always completely SILENT. Then, one day they all disappeared, including the permanent guy. I never saw any furniture or boxes being moved out.
About a month later, the authorities came to my door looking for one guy in particular. I recognized him as one of the many temp guys. They wouldn't say why they were looking for him.
52. Something Had To Change
I had a landlord who lived next door to me. He would accost me outside and prattle on and on for as long as you'd let him. He would call me at work and do the same thing, come into my backyard unannounced, make inappropriate comments about all the neighbors, and generally act crazy. He was also obsessed with coin collecting. He always wore the same jeans and grey Member's Only jacket.
He even tried to cheat me out of my deposit when I moved out, so I had to take him to small claims court.
53. 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.
54. 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.
55. 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 dead. 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.
56. Sometimes The Wrong People Win
Back when I was in elementary school, I lived in the upstairs portion of a split house. Neighbors lived in the basement. Eventually, the good neighbors moved out, and some people that slept during the day and worked during the night moved in. Except I'm pretty sure they never actually worked because they were always partying or something when it was night-time and we could never go to sleep.
I never understood why they were partying either, because it was an old guy, his girlfriend, and their godchild. Anyway, after we complained to them and asked them to stop playing their music so loudly, they complained to the landlord that WE were the ones keeping THEM up. Then we got kicked out. My parents never told me the actual reason we had to move until I was older, though. But it doesn't end there.
I had an adopted stray cat that would come to my house to be fed every so often. When we moved a few blocks away into a full house, the stray cat actually followed us, but eventually stopped coming to our new house. I rode my bike down to our old house and was greeted by the old man, now in control of the entire old house.
He told me to "get off our street or I'll have my dog kill you just like he killed your cat”. What is WRONG with people? I should also mention that these people were Catholic, and I was also friends with the kid that lived there for a bit. But eventually, she randomly started to hate me. Meh.
57. It’s Like An Oven In Here
I was living in a shared house at the time with my neighbors living downstairs. They were the typical annoying neighbors. They would play loud music early in the morning with a bass that shook the entire floor, use up all the hot water with their half-hour showers (it was an older house with a single shared tap), and attract jerks who would burst through my front door because they neglected to mention to their friends that they live downstairs, etc.
This one day they had all gone to a wedding of some friend of theirs, and I was loving every minute of the peaceful silence that had finally settled over my house. Looking forward to a relaxing Sunday afternoon, I put my shoes on and grabbed my keys, intent on stopping by the nearest corner store to grab a few drinks for the quiet time ahead of me.
That's when I smelled the smoke. I didn't think much of it at first; it was summertime and the area I lived in was quite dry, so grass fires weren't uncommon. As I sat there, though, the scent became increasingly potent. With a groan, I got up and looked out of my windows, searching for where this fire could be. Not being able to see any smoke or flames, I realized the scent was coming up through the vents of my floor.
Great. Unable to get downstairs in an attempt to douse whatever it was before it got too large (there were only two doors to get down there, and I didn't have the key to either), I just sighed, shook my head, grabbed everything of value I had, and went outside to sit on my front lawn as I was on the phone with the fire department.
They arrived shortly after, sirens blazing. But then it got REALLY bad. My idiot neighbor was parked in front of the fire hydrant, so the firemen had to bust through his windows to fit the hose in. I probably would have smirked if my house wasn't burning down. By this time, visible smoke was streaming out from the cracks in the basement window.
I directed the firefighters to the exterior entrance to the basement (locked, of course). Donning his mask, one of the firemen brought out his axe to hack down the door. Their stove and surrounding area were burning in a red-orange flame. After 1-2 minutes of showering the fire with the house, all that remained were the smoldering black ashes of that part of the kitchen.
Thankfully, nothing of mine was damaged. Oh, the look on their faces when they returned a couple of hours later, I'll never forget it! They had left a chicken in the oven before leaving for the four-hour wedding. Darwin awards for them, I know. My floor smelled like a firepit for a week, but it was worth the silence that came from the neighbors being kicked out by the landlord.
58. Spring Breaker
Allow me to tell you a tale. The first day of welcome week my freshman year, I'm put in a small group to tour the campus and whatnot. We're all sitting in a room, learning each other’s names, and in comes a 7-foot giant. She's barely dressed with horrible tattoos all the way up to her butt cheeks, which are entirely visible to everyone in the room.
She informs us she is a go-go dancer. She's odd, to say the least, but hey, who am I to judge her? But I didn’t realize the most crucial detail. She lived right next door to me. The first night on campus there's a loud ruckus in her room. Now I'm a pretty tolerant person, but this was ridiculous. I go out of my room and can hear her screaming a dude's name.
I go down the hall, and can still hear her clear as day. Finally, I go down the hall, around a corner, and into a closet area, curious just how far her voice carried. Still able to hear her screaming. It was a long night. Fast forward through the year. Every night she has multiple dudes over, blasts god-awful music until 3 am, and my personal favorite, shouts on the phone at all times.
I don't know what kind of cell plan this girl had, but it must have included unlimited calling. She talked to people in the bathroom (which was shared by about 20 other people), usually putting them on speaker phone. Or she'd be shouting to them while she was in the shower. Or yelling at someone in her room loudly enough I could hear the whole conversation.
I must have sent in at least a dozen complaints to the housing director, but she stuck around until the end of the year.
59. How I Met Your Mother
Back in the late 70s, my mom had a terrible upstairs neighbor who would play loud music all the time. She would bang on the ceiling with a broom to get him to turn it down, but he never would. One day, there was no music, and my mom, an aspiring nurse, was concerned. She went upstairs to investigate and found that the guy had broken his leg.
He was laid up in a cast so he couldn't get up to keep changing the records. She, being the nice person she is, nursed him back to health. That solved the music problem because...that was also how my father met my mother.
60. One Man's Trash...Is Still Trash
I was living in a shifty part of town at the time. I had a couple of older neighbors who could have starred in a Hoarders marathon. The garage door was bowing out and splitting in areas due to the amount of garbage forced into it. To top that, they had hundreds of feral cats with horrible defects. They kept the front door open 24/7 so the cats could come in and out of the house, at least the ones that lived long enough to.
I would have to crawl under my house to remove the lifeless ones so my house didn't reek every few days.
61. 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.
62. 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.
63. 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.
64. 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.
65. Like It Or Lump It
I lived next to this woman who was extremely irresponsible, had four noisy children, and her mother all occupying the same small space. All day long, I got to listen to children screaming and throwing things and her yelling at them, and all night long I got to listen to her blast music and fight with people. It was unending. There was never quiet for very long.
I couldn't really call the authorities, because they wouldn't do anything when I did call them, and my neighbors would punish me for calling by smearing dog poop my door and leaving garbage around my front step. I was the new guy living in the complex, and a lot of people were noisy like her, so she knew it was me calling the officers.
Eventually, you just learn to sleep with Ke$ha blasting through the paper-thin walls. I was so glad when I finally moved out.
66. Flexing His Power
My current neighbor has had my parents and other neighbors go to court because of him. Long story short, he has a history of messing with the law because of his "connection". So he likes to screw with his neighbors, trying to get them put behind bars for his own pleasure. He files protective orders against my parents, yet stalks them to their workplace.
He's gone to the restaurant my mother works at to eat. Keep in mind that he knows she works there and has a protective order against her because "she threatens him". He then sits there for hours just staring. But here’s the kicker. He really does have connections, and every time someone calls the authorities on him, the officers take his side and we end up getting screwed over.
One of my neighbors was taken into custody last night because he called the authorities on the bad neighbor, as he had been flashing a laser pointer from his porch at him and my father. Officers came, but they just said the good guy neighbor was violating the bad neighbor's protective order, and they cuffed him. All thanks to this jerk.
67. Up In Flames
It was the middle of the night, about 3 am if I recall, and I woke up to some crazy loud noise and shaking that felt like a pretty strong earthquake. Living in California, BOOM! I was in the doorway, as back then that was the place they told you to be in an earthquake. Within minutes there are officers swarming our apartment complex, banging on all doors REALLY loudly, and yelling for everyone to evacuate.
It was all very surreal. Most of us still thought it had been an earthquake and meandered out into the street away from the other complex. We were in our pajamas still not knowing what had happened. Apparently what happened was some guy in the apartment complex next door to ours was trying to off himself and had left the gas on in the kitchen and then went to bed.
The apartment filled substantially with gas. Then his on-again, off-again girlfriend showed up in the middle of the night, with a child (toddler-ish age if I recall) and, APPARENTLY not having the wits to smell all the gas, lit up a ciggy and BOOM! The whole place exploded in a fireball and destroyed a whole bunch of the units in that complex.
It also caused the ground to shake massively, which is why we all thought it was an earthquake.
Miraculously no one perished, but the three who were in the apartment were badly burned. I didn't ever see any further follow-up in the newspapers.
68. Unfair Warning
My neighbor accidentally fired a pistol and the round went through our sliding glass door and ended up in the pantry. We were alerted when 80% of the glass in our sliding glass door fell onto the floor. I'm 5'7" and I could walk through the sliding glass door without opening it. The round was found in a box of pancake mix about six inches over my head, so the odds of it hitting me had I been in the kitchen or walking around my house were very high.
69. Catch The Klepto
I moved a lot growing up so I've had a few. One of my neighbors in Florida was a known kleptomaniac, but he would take the most random items around the neighborhood. When someone moved out of a house, he would dig up the plants from the yard and sell them online. We would just wake up one morning and all of the plants would be gone with the trail of dirt leading to his house.
When his house foreclosed, he took all of the doors off their hinges before moving out. He also took another neighbor's bicycle when they left their garage door open. The owner knew it was him, so he just walked over to his house and took it back without calling the authorities. We also later found out that he was going through a nasty divorce from his wife... who was once his therapist.
70. Make Yourself At Home
I used to have this obnoxious neighbor who invited herself over all the time. If we had multiple cars in the driveway, she assumed we must have had company over, which meant free food for her. She would peek over the fence, see that we were grilling, then would come over to find out what was up. My dad had a semi-trusting relationship with her and he let her know where we kept a spare key should there be an emergency. BIG mistake.
We walked in a couple of times after being gone and found notes from her on the counter. That meant she had used the spare key, gone into our house while we weren't there, and probably snooped around. My dad told her she was not allowed to come in when we weren't there and she apologized...but then, the next day, there were brownies on the counter with a note that said "Sorry".
She clearly disregarded what he said to bring us apology brownies! But the last straw was the worst of all. My dad had left the house one day and I was taking a shower. When I stepped out in just a towel and ran to the laundry room, there was a random woman sitting on the couch.
After freaking out, I learned that she was a Jehovah's Witness and was let in by my neighbor who apparently was snooping around while I was in the shower. She just left the lady alone in my house. My dad came home and changed all the locks that day and told her not to come over ever again. We also ignored her any time she knocked after that.
She hated us after that and she clearly thought all of her actions were completely normal.
71. 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. After it was all done, 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.
72. 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.
73. 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.
74. 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.
75. 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.
76. We Tried To Shut Her Out
My roommates and I used to live in a tenement before we moved to a different area. Our flat was on the ground floor, and the tenement had a small community garden that was right in front of our living room. We couldn’t eat lunch or even watch TV without seeing one of our old neighbors watching us from the corner of our eyes.
They wouldn’t even pretend that they weren’t watching us. It was really creepy. At the end of our second week there, we agreed we would always keep the blinds down. We never lifted them again until we left.
77. He Was Going Postal
I lived in the country. My neighbor, who was old, was about a three-minute drive down the road from me. He used to have a mailbox next to mine, would go through my mail, then bring it to my door. He would take my magazines and then put them back a day or two later. I got a locking mailbox. Then, suddenly, one day, it fell over, and he came over in a panic.
He told me that a locking mailbox was too heavy and I had to use a regular box. I called the sheriff on him, and a few days later, he got a new mailbox installed at his house. He would also go through my recycling and then judge me based on the number of booze bottles he found. The funny thing was, I barely drank. So, I would have a month or two worth of bottles dumped out at a time.
Therefore, he thought I was going on an occasional bender. Finally, one day he came over to tell me to clean my gutters. I had enough. I told him to get out of my face and never come over uninvited again. He drove up a few days later and asked, "So when is that invite coming? I thought my wife and I were supposed to be expecting an invite soon". I told him, "Never, get out of here. You creep me out".
78. School Daze
Many years ago, we had neighbors who broke into our house when we were asleep and took a lot of valuables. They were a weird bunch. We lived across from a school, and one day, the wife came running out towards the school. She got chased out of her house by her son, who dragged her back inside by the hair. Six officers jumped over our fence to deal with whatever the neighbors had done.
After that, my little sister was scared to be home alone for the first time ever. It took her a long time to recover.
79. 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.
80. 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.
81. 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.
82. When The Schedule Stops
My dad is a nosy neighbor. The guy next door to my parents is a bit of an alcoholic. He comes and goes a lot on liquor 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.
83. 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.
84. Timing Is Everything
I was in a fourplex that was older but had been stylishly remodeled, especially on the outside. Since it was older, the interior walls were pretty thin. The remodeled exterior, however, included double pane windows as well as sliding doors, and the heavy front doors had such intense weather-stripping that we had to push/pull pretty hard to get them to close.
The neighbors on one side had a child that would throw temper tantrums of doom at least a couple of times per week. We could hear her screaming and whining and yelling and crying, and the parents trying to calm her down, sometimes very nicely and sometimes yelling right back at her. Anyway, we lived there for almost 2.5 years.
The first Halloween comes around and I throw a party. The neighbors with the screaming offspring come over, bang on the door, and demand we turn it down. We do, but obviously, it's not enough. They come back a second time, we turn it down again. Apparently, this isn't enough either because a little while later some of the partygoers start freaking out that there are two patrol cars out front of our apartment.
I run upstairs and look through the window at them and I see them standing there, observing...but then came the twist. They get in their cars again and leave. That’s because while the neighbors could hear all the party sounds, the officers couldn’t hear anything through all the exterior wall improvements. Anyway, the next year progresses with the kid continuing to have these horrible tantrums.
We're getting close to the second Halloween party and my roommate and I hatch a plan, but he makes ME follow through with it because it's technically my Halloween party. We wait for the week of the party, knowing the kid's going to tantrum again, and just wait for it. When she does, I slowly meander to their front door and wait until she's in top form of her screaming and then knock on the door.
The father opens the door (the one who knocked on our door twice the prior year). He's got a look on his face like he fears we're going to flip out on him because of his screaming kid but instead, I smile brightly and inform him that the following Saturday we're going to be having a party and that it might be loud and we wanted to apologize in advance for any loudness.
I said we promise to keep it down as much as possible as we know that the prior year he was concerned about volume, etc. I continue to smile brightly. With his child still screaming bloody murder in the background, he begrudgingly states that the noise won’t be a problem that year. And it wasn't.
85. Another Day In The Neighborhood
I live in the Netherlands in a type of 1930s apartment that seems to be unique to this country, with my own front door at street level leading into a small staircase with some steep stairs, and the rest of the apartment on the 2nd and 3rd floor level. I have one downstairs neighbor, one on the left and one on the right. The walls are pretty thin.
The neighbors left of me were obviously careless as well as very noisy, including at night. They never gave me any other sort of trouble, except that they would often get random visitors at 3 am or something, and sometimes one of them would ring my front door instead of theirs by mistake. But one day it all came to a disturbing climax.
All of a sudden a SWAT team came and busted in their front door so violently that my wall got damaged too. I looked and they yelled at me to get away from the window. One of the guys then tried to flee over the balcony onto the inner courtyard but was caught in time and ended up on my balcony, so the officer kindly asked if he could come into my place to take the guy out my front door.
Later a lady from the department came and asked me if I had any questions or wanted to talk about the experience. They wouldn't tell me what they had done, though, but it seems pretty likely that they were dealers.
86. Normal People
I rented a room in what I later realized was a sketchy part of the city. The landlord owned both sides of a semi-detached house. Then he made a strange confession. He told me he'd put me in the “normal people” half. One of my roommates is a woman named Charity, who later told me that she was studying “Dental Administration” in college.
So far everything is fine as she is paid by the landlord to keep the place clean and everyone keeps to themselves. About a week in, though, I start noticing that she's always bringing these random dudes home, who I keep bumping into in the kitchen. They're typically big, muscular Black guys, always a different dude each time. This was a bit strange considering she was quite the opposite of in-shape and attractive.
But whatever, maybe she found a trove of ripped guys. Then came the loud, loud intimacy that would last hours and hours of her screaming like a dying elk. Three months later, I realize I had it all wrong. I find out that she's actually married and has an apartment down the street with her husband, but she rents out her room so that she can hire male escorts.
87. Getting Along Like A House On Fire
When I was 14 I lived in a duplex with an elderly woman and her husband, my family, and I on the bottom floor. She had smoked when she was younger and was in possession of oxygen tanks. She was also an obvious past user. Now, we knew she wasn't the greatest of people from day one, but her husband was an awesome, also elderly man.
He collected scrap metal, and one day, when locked out, he climbed to the second story Spider-Man style and went in through the window. The year we moved into the house was turbulent for my family, but we were okay. My mother was with her dying grandmother over Thanksgiving, and at the same time and day her grandmother passed, so did this woman's husband.
We offered condolences and part of our Thanksgiving meal to her, and we had always been kind to them. Christmas wasn't the greatest to begin with that year, but it would end tragically. Around 10:00 Christmas night we were going to head to bed, all of us tired, but my sister insisted we watch the movie she had bought for me, The Goonies, so we put it on.
On the opening credits, my mom smells something and my father heads to the kitchen window. It smells smoky. I immediately head to the room in-between the two houses and the door to this lady’s apartment is wide open, filled with smoke and fire spitting from the stairs. I call 9-1-1, get my dog out of the house, and my dad rushes upstairs with a fire extinguisher fully ready to pull this woman out of a burning building.
It turns out the fire had been burning for 30 minutes and this lady had tried to put it out for 20 minutes, then ran across the street to her friend’s house. No one calls the fire department, no one tells us. You literally cannot leave the building without passing our door. She made an active decision to leave us. All the neighbors thought the authorities had been called already.
Soon enough everyone in town is at my house, staring at me in my Christmas pajamas as I’m watching my house burn. While watching, my upset mother shouts, "Oh my God the house is on fire"! This old woman turns to her and says, "What are you talking about?! My house is on fire"! That is my worst neighbor experience.
88. 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 got sent behind bars for theft and breaking and entering. The rest of the bunch was evicted, and I lived happily ever after.
89. 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.
90. Thou Shalt Not Covet...
Years ago, my wife, kids, and I rented a townhouse. We had been there for four years, and we were on a month-by-month lease. The owner told us that she would not be extending the lease because she was selling the unit. No big deal, but the lease ended in July and we were told this in May. We scrambled but were eventually able to find a great house in an excellent neighborhood to buy.
It was during the housing crisis so we got a huge deal, too. We paid about $100K less than the neighbors. Anyway, at the townhouse, there were a few neighbors who would ogle my wife. I don't blame them, but they were all married except for one guy named Brian. Brian was divorced a few times and had kids in their 20s that lived with him.
He would constantly run outside if he saw my wife out there. He would mention to her that he saw her going to the store or to the mailbox or whatever. But then it started getting creepy. We had a community pool and when he saw her going there with our kids, he'd follow so he could hang out with her while she was in her bikini.
It creeped her out so much that she would wrap a towel around herself until she confirmed he wasn't at the pool. I had to have words with him more than once about this. Moving day came and we hadn't told any of the neighbors we were moving because why would we? Brian came over as we were loading the truck and asked my wife: "Which one of you is moving out?"
I stopped and told him, deadpan as could be: "Both of us". He was hoping it was a divorce situation so he could try to take my place. But wait, there's more...I came home from a work trip one day and my wife told me that Brian was driving past our house. I don't know how he did it, but he found out where we live. We still live in the same city, so I think he either saw my wife and followed her home one day or just drove around until he found us.
We live in a cul-de-sac. There was no reason for him to be driving there. One day, my wife took my car because I had to take hers in for maintenance. The doorbell rang and it was none other than Brian. He was obviously stunned to see me answer the door and he started to stammer some nonsense about why he was there. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if I ever saw him near my home or my wife ever again that it would be the last thing he did on this Earth.
I made him acknowledge that he understood me and he scurried to his car and left as fast as he could. It's been a few years and neither of us has seen Brian. Every now and then I'll see a car I don't recognize on our cul-de-sac and I always look at the driver...just in case.
Shutterstock
91. Keep Your Hands To Yourself
My next-door neighbor came over to borrow a ladder when my husband wasn't home. He gave off a really weird vibe—he "steadied" me from behind when I was taking the ladder down from the wall hook. At the time, I just told myself I was being overly sensitive, but I should have paid attention to the red flags right then and there.
Later that week, my husband and I ran into him and his wife in a store. He greeted me with a kiss on the cheek...It was weird, and my husband thought so too, but we still didn't look into it too much. We shrugged it off and assumed he was just being overly friendly. Then, a few weeks after that incident, we were visited by a government agency that asked us a couple of questions about him.
Apparently, he needed a security clearance where he worked. There wasn't a lot to report as he seemed okay. But one early Saturday morning, he knocked on our door while my husband was at work. I had all four of my kids there. I don't even remember why he came over, but at one point, he took an opportunity to rub himself against me in front of my kids.
I kicked him out, then I immediately called my husband and his wife. She called me back, begging me to retract it, but I assured her that he really did what he did. Somehow, it got back to his supervisor and his clearance was put in jeopardy. They ended up divorced.
92. These Neighbors Stunk
I lived in an apartment complex of 40 units, and one set of neighbors—a family—was just off. One day, I bought a bunch of starter packets to grow some herbs on my balcony. I was out there watering, and the mother came outside and shouted into the empty parking lot how disgusting tattoos were—I had a half sleeve on my right arm.
Not wanting an issue, I went back inside, confused, and texted my husband. I heard her go back inside, so I went out to finish watering my plants, and she came out again, this time shouting that something smelled bad and asked what I was doing because she could smell it. I politely told her I didn’t smell anything and went back inside.
On another occasion, my husband and I rearranged our balcony furniture so we could eat outside. The daughter came out and yelled, “I DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU’VE DONE THERE. CHANGE IT BACK”! Later that evening, the authorities showed up at our apartment. My husband and I had just been grocery shopping, so we had been out. The officer—laughing under his breath—started by apologizing.
He said, “I’m sorry to bother you guys. We got a call about someone harassing some of your neighbors”. He told us they called because we copy them, and sometimes my husband gets into my car. The officer told us we should contact the building manager and let them know if they bother us like this again, so we did. The building manager told us that these neighbors target someone new every month.
93. 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.
94. The Parking Spot Stealer
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.
95. Your Term Is Up!
I had one neighbor who was the self-appointed mayor of the block. He would tell me all the time what I was doing wrong, from having my sprinklers on at the wrong time to not properly sorting my recyclables. I took his suggestions under advisement and even read the four-page typed note he wrote to me about the correct timing of the crabgrass preventer.
One evening, when I was cleaning off my deck, he walked up and began telling me about the latest landscaping issues. My niece, who was 13 at the time, was showering off after being in the pool. She walked out in a robe from the shower area and slung her suit over the fence to dry. I thanked him for his vast landscaping knowledge and told him we were off to dinner and shooed her inside.
I closed the slider and remembered I left the hose on, so I slipped the door back open and I saw her suit slid over the fence. I took two steps to the edge of the deck expecting to see her bathing suit on my grass. That’s when I spotted him—and it was the most disturbing sight of my entire life. The mayor was on his hands and knees in my grass, sniffing the suit crotch. We had a long talk about how he was going to come with me to the station.
96. Excuses, Excuses
Long story short, my neighbor Greg was into me. We made small talk once in the elevator and a week later when he saw me walk outside, he chased me down the street and asked where I was going. When I told him I was going to get coffee he asked if he could come. But there was something huge he didn’t know. I’m not only in a relationship, I was also 15 weeks pregnant at the time but not showing at all.
I told him I was meeting a friend for coffee just so he would leave me alone. He then asked our doorman for my phone number, claiming I told him they could give it to him. I wish my door people would have asked me first, but they gave it to him. Ever since then, he has been non-stop texting me, asking me to do stuff. Well, enough was enough.
Finally today I replied and told him I’m moving into a house in October with my long-term partner, that I’m pregnant, and while I think he’s a nice person I’m not interested in spending time together. His reply stunned me. He said lol, you don’t have to make things up just to not hang out. I didn’t even want to sleep with you. I replied and said not making anything up, but ok.
You know, take care and best of luck to you, etc. Now I’ve had multiple people in my building tell me that Greg is running around telling everyone that I’m lying about being pregnant and being in a relationship because I don’t want to date him. I’m shocked that a 35-year-old man is acting this way. The good news is my other neighbors know he’s full of it.
Still, it’s going to be so uncomfortable now if I run into him in person. I feel like I’m in high school.
97. Not Fit To Parent
I had neighbors who had six-year-old twins (a boy and a girl). Then one day, we made a horrific discovery. They had been locked in a room for almost four years. The boy managed to escape this past February and was found wandering the streets, super dirty. The authorities were called and upon entering the house they found a padlocked door.
In this room was a small bed and a toilet chair. In another bedroom, there were five pitbulls chained to a bed. Needless to say, the kids were taken away and the parents were taken into custody. But wait, there’s more. When the mother appeared in front of the judge, she actually told the judge that she didn’t know what she did wrong.
98. They Say He’s A Real Blockhead
We grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in my state. It was really rough. Anyway, 80s childhood being what it was, we used to ride our bikes everywhere, regardless of danger. Our home street was divided into three parts. The upper and middle parts were relatively okay in the daytime. The lower part was off limits no matter what, because that’s where the creeps and dealers lived.
We moved out finally and went somewhere a lot safer. Years pass. Our old neighborhood makes the news every so often for various outrages. One day, I saw in the newspaper that a woman had recently been found deceased in her house—she’d been sitting there for a month on her couch. It was already sad, but then things took a horrific turn.
When authorities showed up to deal with the situation, they discovered a big slab of cement in a strange place in the backyard. A neighbor told them that they’d frequently seen her at night sitting near and talking to the slab. If you knew how strange the people were in our neighborhood were, you’d have brushed this off as yet another weirdo.
Well, it turns out it was her husband. Only they weren’t officially married, so when he passed on—it was suspected to be natural causes, surprisingly—she couldn’t live without his Social Security check every month, so she buried him in the backyard and kept up the pretense that he was alive and living with his out-of-state relatives.
We used to ride by that house frequently when he was already buried in the yard. Oh, the 1980s.
99. Leave It Well Enough Alone
For the past few months, I've suspected that my upstairs neighbor has been taking some of my mail. I buy a lot of things online like books and craft supplies and every now and then there's been small things that were meant to arrive on a certain day that never did. One day, I caught her wandering around my front door. When I asked her what she was doing she said "Oh, I was looking for something I think I dropped into your yard”.
I got surveillance cameras installed a while ago, which were not noticeable to my neighbors. The camera that's pointed at my front door isn't visible from the driveway. So here comes the trap. I purchased a few postage boxes to set up for her. The first one was a glitter bomb. I set up the box to make sure she would get glitter to the face as soon as she opened it.
I packed it to make it look like a postage parcel, then sat it at my front door. 20 minutes later I saw her walking to my front door. She looked around then picked up the box and walked away. My only regret is that I didn't get to see her reaction when she got a face full of glitter. I haven't noticed any other mail going missing after that, but she will regret it if she does it again.
100. HOA Karen
This happened over a year ago. I'm 29-year-old man and am a homeowner. I bought a house in 2019 from my uncle because he was well set and wanted to retire to his second home by a lake. Before buying the house, my uncle warned me that the neighborhood has an HOA, but it only affects those who joined it and my uncle thankfully did not.
Besides that, the price my uncle was offering was half the home's value. I couldn't pass up the offer. So I bought a house in an HOA neighborhood that wasn't a part of the HOA. I thought I was okay. I was so, so wrong. Right after I moved in, I got a knock at the door. When I opened it, I was greeted by an older woman with short greying blonde hair and a face covered in thick makeup.
She was holding a welcome to the neighborhood gift basket. She introduced herself as the president of the HOA and asked to come in so she could help me fill out some forms. I knew what she was trying to do because my uncle warned me she did this to every new homeowner in the area who wasn't a part of the HOA. I quickly and bluntly stated I was not going to join her HOA. The change was frightening.
Her smile quickly disappeared and she started saying that I did not have a choice as all new homeowners are mandated to join. I told her I knew in advance that was a total lie, and that I will not be paying any dues or fines. I said will be ready to call a lawyer if I have to. She called me a thorn to the neighborhood at that point and said she'd be back.
We did not speak to each other for some time. I expected her to start sending me fines in the mail, but the most I usually got were letters stating that my grass was getting too tall, or my driveway needed sweeping. Those never bothered me because they are normal home chores and need to be done regularly anyway. But several neighbors that were on the HOA's side made it clear they didn't like me because I didn't join, just like my uncle.
I said that was fine. We're neighbors, but we don't have to be friends. They said that was fine too because I'm an outsider and they'll never accept me until I join the HOA. Later in early 2020, I got word from a friend that people were starting to buy a lot of disinfectant, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer in mass. I decided the best option was to order these things online.
I got eight big 12-packs of toilet paper, a case of 20 bottles of hand sanitizer, three boxes of disposable latex gloves, a couple of boxes of disposable face masks, and a case of 20 large cans of name-brand disinfectant spray. I set for the delivery to be signed for only me as I did not trust anyone not to take my packages if they were just left on my porch.
When the packages were delivered, several neighbors saw me getting lots of toilet paper and some other packages that contained the other stuff. And just because I'm a paranoid guy, I still bought more of the same stuff when I saw it in stores. Like those small cheap four-packs of toilet paper, or off-brand disinfectant sprays. I bought them because I had a feeling some friends or family might need some soon.
And I was right. As expected, toilet paper, disinfectant, and sanitizer pretty much disappeared from store shelves for miles around. And people were fighting over hoarding it. Meanwhile, I've got a very generous supply that I still haven't come close to using up. However, word of my supply got around fast when people started needing some.
A friend of mine ran out of toilet paper and had no hand sanitizer. So I gave him a couple of the generic four-packs of TP and a bottle of sanitizer at my door. A few family members ran out too, and I shared with them as well. They were all extremely grateful. But then came the downside. I ended up with several neighbors knocking on my door and asking to buy my supply or wanting handouts.
I refused and said I only gave some of what I had away to friends and family. They made it pretty clear to me before that we'd never be friends since I refused to join the HOA. Moreover, if I were to give some to one neighbor, they'd all want my supplies, and then I'd run out really fast. They didn't like this and harassed me several times from the sidewalk.
I just ignored them. Later the HOA Karen showed up at my door and told me several neighbors had run out of all the items that this post is about. It got ridiculous fast. She then said she wasn't asking, but demanding I share my stock with my neighbors to set a good example. I told her to buzz off because that had nothing to do with me. I may be a jerk, but I'm a well-prepared jerk.
Also, I've read her HOA bylaws online. So even if I was a member of her HOA, which I was not, I wouldn't have to give up my stock either way. She left while yelling at me that one day I'd regret not being a good neighbor or being a part of her HOA. Well, I did regret it. The next time I went to work I was notified around noon by the cameras I had at my house that there was a thief breaking into my home.
I could see video of them on my smartphone and it looked like a woman in a spandex suit with her face covered by a hockey mask. I called the authorities immediately and was allowed to clock out at work so I could rush home. Right around the time I got there, officers were walking HOA Karen out in handcuffs to a cruiser. She'd broken into my home by using a crowbar to force open the back door.
When they caught her, she was tossing all of my toilet paper and any other supplies she could grab out into my backyard, where her kids were picking it up and bagging it. I pressed charges and HOA Karen got six months in the slammer and probation. HOA Karen's husband called me to apologize for his wife and told me that he had been planning a divorce for a while because this isn't the first time she's been in trouble with the law.
CPS got involved too because she was using her kids to help pilfer me. So he was going to file for full custody in the divorce. HOA Karen didn't return and someone new was elected HOA president in her place. Her husband didn't move and I see him from time to time. There's no hard feelings between us. And yes, he did get full custody of his kids because his wife had a darker history with the law than I thought.
We're sort of friends now too as we've occasionally had a drink together and he helped me replace my back door that his ex broke. I'm making this post more than a year later because I just saw HOA Karen again. I was visiting some friends in another city and saw her working at the local supermarket there, bagging groceries. As soon as we saw each other she obviously recognized me because she scowled and refused to look at me again the entire time I was there. Karma is a real witch, isn’t it Karen!
101. Let The Dogs Out
I've seen an old lady who lived across the street abduct 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 detained 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.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , , , , , ,
