Neighbors, at the very least, should be kind, respectful, and non-intrusive. But not all of them come that way—unfortunately, there are plenty of cases where the people living next door or across the street are the complete opposite of neighborly, and all they seem to do is make living in a new community a total nightmare. From nosy creeps to full-out Karens who terrorize everyone and everything, here are some of the worst neighbors to ever exist:
1. The Selfish (Not) Giant
There was one angry old guy in my neighborhood—the one who yelled at kids and had his house egged every Halloween—then one day, he became a totally new person. He woke up and out of nowhere took out his back fences so the kids living on either side of him had a bigger area to play. Other neighbors loved it so much that they did the same thing, creating a massive field with sandpits, swings, slides, a treehouse, little vegetable and herb gardens, etc.
It was the greatest thing ever. Kids used to put four slip and slides in a row. There was a trampoline, an above-ground pool, and a soccer net. In the winter, it was snow forts and an outdoor rink. He also painted his house bright colors, adopted senior dogs from the shelter that were everybody's to enjoy, hosted cocktail parties, played saxophone on his back porch, etc.
I lived on a different block, but spent a lot of time there—he made his block a paradise for kids and families, and people loved him. When he died, more than two hundred people showed up to the cemetery for his funeral. Before he had his sudden change of heart, he might have been gone a week before someone probably smelled something.
No idea what happened or how he suddenly became sane. I think he was probably mourning his wife and woke up one day and decided to move on. I like to think he had a dream where she appeared and told him to let go. Everybody I know who grew up around that block wants to be the exact same guy when their time eventually comes.
2. This Is One Messed Up Neighborhood
Instead of just one person, my whole neighborhood was chock full of THOSE people. At the top of the street was the so-called de facto neighborhood watch leader who had followed my friend's car, honked constantly at my house only to drive away when I would go to see what was going on and sat at the top of the street asking anyone who entered the road if they were going to MY address.
Down the way a little bit, was a couple who minded their own business, but always had their dog outside barking. They also had, presumably, their adult son sit in front of the window naked at night. Across from them was an almost senile elderly woman, who had cinder block sculptures in her yard. The neighbors on my side consistently called law enforcement on my house, ranging from disturbing the peace to accusing my brother and me of taking things from their shed.
When an officer came to investigate, he informed us the neighbors believed we were the thieves, along with accusing us of selling illicit substances and turning the neighborhood into garbage. Well, the next day, the truth finally came out. it was revealed the thieves were some of the family's son's friends. The mother of the household was extremely cocky about the situation and flat out refused to accept her own son's friends did it and refused to apologize for the incident.
However, the worst one of all was my neighbor across the street. He lacked any common sense and spent most of his time revving his motorcycle or driving his just as equally obnoxious truck. When we first moved in, he immediately stated that we were NOT to use his driveway for parking, which was understandable and which we never intended to do because…why would we?
Throughout the months I had officers knock on my door around a dozen times, ranging from theft claims to claims our cars were blocking the neighbor’s driveway. Each time the officers were extremely polite to us and were on our side, realizing what the neighbor said was a lie. He threatened us with a weapon as well as repeatedly told us not to "try anything" as he had his whole yard hooked up with cameras.
He took pictures of my friends' license plates and would call law enforcement to try and dig up ANYTHING incriminating, even something as minuscule as a slightly outdated sticker. We served him with a trespassing notice, and he upped his ante. Now I have officers knocking on my door about once a week and they are just as sick of him as we are.
3. Don's A Dog
My old neighbor used to walk his dog on a leash to let it take a dump in my yard. My mom had me throw the mess back into his yard once and he called the authorities on us. A few months later, my family and I were going out of town and after we left our house, my mom had realized she had forgotten something. We turned around—and what we witnessed made our blood boil.
There's our awful neighbor, standing in the middle of our yard with his dog on a leash dropping a nice present in our front yard. All I remember is my mom winding down her window and yelling, “Screw you, Don!”
4. Something’s Fishy
Our neighbors seem to be into preserving their own food. That’s cool, I suppose. However, the task has become fishy. Literally. For the last few weeks, they have been drying fish in their driveway. By that I mean that there are like 2-3 dozen whole fish just laying on their driveway on tinfoil. No protection, no pans. Just fish. On the driveway.
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5. Go Away Doggone-It
My one neighbor would try to organize huge doggy play dates. She would try to get upwards of 20 dogs together in this 50x50 fenced area our apartment complex provided. If you didn’t go, she would knock on your door and ask if she could take your dog without you. My dog didn’t like being crowded with a bunch of other dogs that were twice his size, and I didn’t need her to tell me how to take care of my pet!
He's happy and healthy. I wish she would quit knocking on my door!
6. Black Tie Event
My next-door neighbor growing up had someone in the family pass. On the day of the funeral, he came to our door and asked my dad if he could borrow a tie. My father complied and gave him a nice black silk tie, suitably appropriate for the occasion. He felt bad for the guy and thought it was an easy way for him to help the guy out during his time of sorrow.
We showed up at the funeral and saw the neighbor, strangely not wearing the tie he borrowed. Then we looked at the casket and my dad's tie was being worn by the corpse. Not wanting to be rude, none of us said anything, and as a result, the tie was buried with the corpse, never to be seen again.
7. Glow Up
Every spring, sometime in late February or March, our neighbor puts up a fluorescent light strip of the size of a bed in her living room window. It's on day and night for a few months. You can see the light from the window a mile away. At first, I thought she grew weed. But she's like 80 years old—a gray-haired frail lady. But, then I realized she grew pelargoniums.
Pixabay
8. Total Eclipse Of The Spot
I was living in an apartment a while back. We all got two parking spots, I used one for my car and the other for my motorcycle. My neighbor had a newer Eclipse and a big 4-door 4x4 truck that would barely fit in the spot. One day I came out to notice that the Eclipse was completely over the line into my parking spot, next to my motorcycle.
I brushed it off and figured it would stop. After about a week of her taking up more and more of the spot, to the point where their car was right next to my bike, I decided to take action. I moved my bike and parked my car inches away from hers. About two hours later, my door was being beaten upon. I opened it to find my neighbor, who happened to be about 5'2", 300 pounds, and one of the ugliest women I have ever seen in my life.
She was cursing and yelling about how she needed to go to work and I had her car blocked in. I knew exactly what to say. I looked at her and suggested that she climb into her car from the passenger seat. This infuriated her further since it is obvious with her size this would be impossible. She then said she was going to call the housing manager and have my car towed.
I pointed out that I was WELL inside of my parking spaces and welcomed her to call. She pointed out that since she had two "real" vehicles and they didn’t both fit well inside of her parking spots, that she was somehow entitled to some of mine since I only had a motorcycle and smaller car. I laughed at her and headed inside.
I watched out my front window for about five more minutes while she stomped around yelling at people on the phone, getting more and more frustrated as she went on. She has realized that almost no matter what happens, she was going to be late for work, so she called her work crying. I let another couple of minutes pass.
Once I saw the look of defeat overcome her face, I walked out and moved my car. Huffing, she crammed herself into her compact car and drove off, obviously without a word of thanks. We lived next to them for another couple of months before they started a fire in their apartment and almost burned the whole place down. She didn't cross that line again.
9. You Think You Know Someone
I lived behind Bob Berdella, the notorious figure from Kansas City. I lived there for five years and I talked to him daily, as he was the head of the neighborhood watch. Little did I know that he had also been living a secret life, kidnapping people and sending them without remorse. The day he was caught, it was because one of the young gay men he captured escaped and ran down the street wearing nothing but a dog collar.
Because I listened to tapes and CDs at the time, I had not heard anything about it on the radio. I drove home that night to a neighborhood full of officers, and it took me by complete surprise. When I found out the truth, I sounded just like every other neighbor in that type of situation: "But he was such a quiet and nice guy..."
They used excavators and backhoes to dig up his yard, and they tore down my fence as well. Eventually, he was given life in prison, where he eventually passed. His house was later sold and demolished. It was very weird. He had a store in a flea market, plus four skulls in the window with a sign that read "Final Four." One was from a victim.
10. Water Over My Head
The neighbor stealing water almost led to my toddler getting, at least, seriously injured. The neighbor was opening my gate and helping herself to the water for her flower beds. I suspected it from the high water bills, but had no proof. We always kept the gate closed because we had a dog and I had two kids under 4 years old at the time.
The youngest was 1 1/2 years old, and he loved to run around the backyard with the dog. One morning, the youngest begged to go outside to run around, so I let them do so while I cooked breakfast and watched them from the kitchen window. I went to the bathroom real quick, checked the laundry, and then heard a knock on the door.
I went to answer it and there was a man holding my youngest. "Is this your kid?" the guy asked. "They were running up the road up there," he continued. Holy moly! I thanked the guy profusely, then went outside to figure out how they got out. The gate had a latch that was way too high to reach for a little one, so I didn't even suspect that option.
Lo and behold, the gate was wide open with the hose suspiciously thrown near it. I was so fricking furious. I bought a lock for the gate and ended up wrapping the hose in and around several cinder blocks. It took all I had not to go over and scream at the woman who was responsible. But from then on, she never complained about my kids near her precious flowers, and I didn't care even if they did pull up every single one after that.
11. Nosey Neighbor
We have a nice wooded area behind my parents' house where my brother and the other boys from the neighborhood would go play paintball. This one time when my brother was walking back home, a woman called law enforcement on him because he had his paintball gun out while he was walking back. Despite being covered in paint and having the gear on, she saw the weapon and freaked out. I get it, not a huge deal.
Officers came, asked my brother a couple of questions, and reassured the lady that it was just a 12-year-old with a toy. That should have been the end of it—but it wasn’t. This woman proceeded to tail us whenever she saw any of us leaving the development. The neighborhood is nice and full of families who walk around with their kids at night.
So, whenever my mom would go for a walk around the neighborhood to get some air, this lady would follow her. She would also stand on her porch to watch my dad every time he stepped outside to have a smoke. Once, we were pulling into our development at the same time and she pulled into our driveway after me to "introduce" herself and ask invasive questions. One was, "So how long do you guys plan on living here?"
12. The Psycho Next Door
My aunt, who was a single mother at the time and ran a daycare service in her house, lived next to a psychopath. After a bad ice storm one day, my aunt had a bunch of tree limbs fall into her backyard. Her neighbor's husband came over and cleaned it up for her; you know, just being a good neighbor. In turn, my aunt thanked him with a case of drinks; you know, just being a good neighbor.
Well, his wife took that as flirting, and so began a one-sided feud against my aunt. It was a while ago, so I don't remember everything. What I do remember, though, was horrifying. She tried to run over my aunt's dog once. Another time, she called child protective services and told them my aunt was a night worker and working at her house during the daycare hours.
Probably the worst one though was when my aunt found a bit of grass near the house burnt. She's old high school friends with the fire inspector, so he came and confirmed a fire was started using a propellant. My aunt took her to court over these things, but I don't remember what came of it. I'm pretty sure she at least got a restraining order.
13. Guess Who Is Watching
Our neighbor stalks us. Like every time I get home, she’ll walk outside and tell me I was either 3 minutes later getting home this time or that I was home 2 minutes earlier and then ask me why. One time my friend and her sister came to pick me up. The neighbor was against her window with her hands and face pressed up against the glass.
Said neighbor was trying to get a look at who was coming to pick me up. My friend and her sister were so terrified that they called me, telling me to hurry up because a crazy lady was staring at them through a window. I calmly replied to their frantic call by saying, “Oh, it’s just the stalker neighbor!” Yes, that was a funny day.
14. The Sounds Of Sirens
The neighborhood I lived in had several characters—but the strangest had to be the siren dude. He was maybe 35-40 years old, skinny, and bald. He would walk around the neighborhood at seemingly random hours pulling a small cart behind him with whatever he felt like having that day, imitating siren noises with his mouth.
It didn't matter what time of day it was either. He would sometimes wake me up at 7 AM, and other times, I would see him strolling around during the day, or even at 1 AM. He made high-pitched noises that sounded like cruisers pulling you over. You could hear him coming from a few streets away until he would walk by, and wave to you. If you made a siren noise at him, he would continue on his way. It was so weird.
15. A Huge Disturbance
Our neighbor burned something in his oven. Rather than open his windows to get the smoke out, he opened his door to the hall and set off the building's alarms. We all had to stand out in the cold and wait for the fire department while he watched from his apartment. The fire department opened his windows and told him he was an idiot.
We still had to wait outside for them to do mandatory checks of everything to make sure it really was just him being stupid. It was January. In New England. During a cold snap.
16. Stay Out Of My Trash
So, we had a neighbor whose trash was being rummaged. Instead of moving his trash or getting locking lids, he stalks your car at night to throw his body in front of it to protest your suspected raccoon-like activities. All the while, the true trash pandas are in the background, having an absolute field day with his trash.
17. Boombox Boomer
There was a fit guy who was about 55, who rode around on his bike in a 90s wind suit kind of getup and played a boombox. He used to have a set up where the music played from small speakers bungee-corded to the back shelf area of his bike, but then he upgraded it to a fully installed, encapsulated system that would light up. He would just ride, sit, and listen to old school Motown and early hip hop for hours.
18. When Greed Takes Over
I live in Puerto Rico, where most of the island has been without power for the past two months following Hurricane María. Due to our government's power authority being quite slow in the recuperation process, a lot of neighborhoods in my area have been hiring private contractors to bring the electricity back. In my case, I found a contractor willing to bring our neighborhood's power grid back on, but I needed unanimous support from the neighbors to pay and authorize the process.
Most were on board for this, but two of my next-doors opposed it for some reason. When we asked them why they were, their response floored us. They said that they wanted the neighborhood without power so the rest of us would eventually leave and they'd never have to see our "annoying and pathetic" faces again. So it was pretty much a no-go on the contractor.
Fast forward a week and we found out that these next-doors had a friend in the power authority who asked them to keep away private contractors from the neighborhood so the authority could take credit when the power is eventually restored.
19. (A)Corny Story
My strangest encounter has been with the next-door lady. At one point, she was standing on her driveway yelling at me because acorns had fallen from a large oak tree on my property onto said driveway. This was deemed unacceptable, of course. Thus, she was demanding that I cause the tree to cease and desist from this intentional criminal activity.
20. The Second Coming
In my first apartment, I lived next door to a guy who was pretty much the second-coming of The Dude. He had shoulder-length hair, was often seen in a flannel bathrobe, and regularly offered me White Russians from his porch where he was blasting classic rock. He also had the most adorable four-year-old daughter ever who spent most days with him.
He often had friends come in and out of his apartment and would tell stories that went like, "One time, I was at a Grateful Dead concert in Indianapolis...And then three days later, I woke up at a Grateful Dead concert in Cincinnati..." He kept an eye on me, since I lived by myself, which was nice, and would invite my then-boyfriend and me over for dinner with him and his daughter. We still keep in touch.
21. Ulterior Motives
My next-door neighbor was always creepy. He always asked us to come inside and play with his cats. Then, when he was moving out, he offered me an Air Force One jacket. I was about 10 at the time. He said that if I wanted to get the jacket, I had to come with him to get it from some guy's house. After I told him I needed to ask my mom, he disappeared.
To this day, I think he wanted to abduct me.
22. My Way Or The Court Way
My family's neighbors took my parents to court because they didn't like that we bought two unused laundry rooms to enlarge our tiny 38 square meter flat. When they couldn't do that anymore, they invented a story where we played basketball in our flat on the night of Christmas Eve. This, they claimed, happened while we weren't even home and had multiple pictures to prove it since we were visiting grandma for Christmas.
23. No More Room In The House?
There's a woman in my town who has a house but lives in her car, in the driveway of said house. A car that, I'm almost certain, doesn't even run. She's seen at least once a week walking around our neighborhood picking up any trash she finds, which she then brings back to her house. She then throws it in a huge pile in her backyard.
The pile is so big, it could probably fill an industrial-sized dumpster. It's a miracle she hasn't been fined by the township for it, or maybe she has we don't know. She's never spoken to anybody. We are not even sure if she can speak. We have attempted to ask her questions, but she just smiles and continues walking. Weird.
24. Caught In The Middle
My neighbors had...problems. They had constant, nightly blowouts and physical fights. They were together but not married, so they were constantly on and off. The dad was an avid drinker and the officers knew him by name. Once, when we were sleeping, we heard the screaming and cries of their son (who was my little sister's best friend). A minute later, the boy was knocking on the door for my mom to help.
She pulled him inside and a few minutes later the mom showed up, bloody and beaten up. She asked my mom to lock the door and held onto her son. She wouldn't call the authorities out of fear they'd take the son, so my mom pulled the couch out and made them a makeshift bed. She locked the door and made the mom food while my sister and the son slept. But that wasn't the end of it.
About an hour after they'd showed up, the dad started kicking our door and screaming. My mom fought with him through the door for over an hour, and he eventually left. My mom then arranged for a place for them to stay in a women's shelter an hour or so away and brought them there the next night after he thought they'd already left.
She spent two weeks sneaking as much as she could to them until she found an apartment back locally and felt it was safe for them to come back.
25. One Man Home Improvement Project
I lived in a really nice suburban neighborhood and the diagonal across-the-street neighbor was always strung out. He would be in his boxers in his front yard literally at all hours of day and night. He would water his front lawn over 10 times a day, cut the lawn with a hedge trimmer for hours on end and it'd look terrible afterward.
He also tore down his backyard fence and painted his house in multiple colors. He took down all his blinds and keeps his windows open 24/7. He would also keep his garage open all day and night. It was the strangest behavior I have ever seen in my life. Luckily, he was taken away after his wife had had enough of his behavior, I guess.
He alone turned a nice quiet street into the most stressful living situation I have had in my life. He would passively harass my wife and I as we walked down the street. He would also shadowbox in the corner of his lawn closest to mine or rap out loud with his phone at full volume in the quiet neighborhood and only when we were outside the house.
26. Don’t Drink The Water
I lived in a suburban town in New Jersey before I went away to university. There was this one field behind a church that all the town kids used to go to hang out at. There was a jungle gym, four baseball diamonds, a basketball court, a concession stand that was open on the weekends, and a big open field to run around in.
The only issue was that there were only two ways to get into this field, and they were about half a mile away from each other. Therefore, if you didn't want to add an extra 10 minutes to your journey, then you had to walk past the "water guy's" house. The water guy would stand outside his house every day from March until October, straddling a bicycle and saying, "Don't drink the water," to anyone that walked by.
His voice was very reminiscent of Hector Herbert from Family Guy, although not quite as high pitched or whistle-y. It got so bad that parents complained to the town. However, being weird isn't an actionable offense and he never did anything but stand on his lawn and say, "Don't drink the water" to passersby. This went on for the entire time I lived there. He was by far the weirdest guy I have ever seen in my life.
27. The Dog Days
My current neighbors are the worst. I'm in the Navy and so I'm often away, leaving my wife to deal with things alone. Our neighbors recently got a Staffordshire Bullterrier and rather than walk it, they would just throw it into their yard to do its business. After a while, it ran out of places to go in its own garden, so it started to jump into ours to take a dump.
My son is also scared of dogs, so he feels unsafe about going into our own yard to play. Since I'm at sea most of the time, there isn't a great deal I can do apart from telling my wife that I'll deal with it when I get home. But now the dog is growling at my wife in our own yard as it spends so much time there that it probably thinks it's his. I told my wife to leave the gate open and if the dog jumps over, it can go outside to do its thing.
The next day, my wife opened the door to a man screaming at her and calling her a witch because his dogs ran away and might have been run over. He then threatened my wife and son over the issue and left. So my wife called the authorities and to her astonishment, the jerks next door said we were being unreasonable by not letting their dog do its business in our garden; our property.
Anyway, he got a warning from the officers and an order to control his dog by building a fence or risk having it taken away by the dog warden.
28. Wiping Away Evidence
We had a house blow up in our neighborhood years ago. It turned out they were cooking stuff, and it wasn't dinner. A few days after the initial boom, we were all surprised to see a fire raging in the same house. It turned out that one of the guys not home at the time of the first blow-up got the brilliant idea to come back days later to commit arson.
He reasoned they wouldn't have started the investigation yet and he could burn the evidence from the last fire with a new one.
29. Sweeper Swiper
We have this one family on our block. There must have been at least 10 people living in a modest-sized row home. Once when it snowed heavily, I had to dig my car out with my shovel and I also brought a broom to sweep it off. I barely got my car out, but I left the shovel and the broom next to my spot which was right in front of their house.
I forgot it at first, so I figured I would just circle the block and pick it up. Sure enough, I came back around and the shovel was gone and standing where it used to be was their 12 or 13-year-old daughter holding my broom. I asked her for it back and she started telling me I had to prove it was mine. At this point, I was furious.
I told her to leave the broom and get her parents. Of course, she ran inside with the broom and locked the door. I started pounding on the door for 10 minutes. No one answered. I was confused as to why anyone would want to take a broom! My only hope was they used it to clean the mess they lived in. I knew this because their front door was always wide open when they were outside. Luckily, they moved.
30. The Pesky Beggar
I once had a neighbor in college who would knock on my door and ask me for money. I would just say that I was a broke student who couldn’t spare anything. It was weird as heck because it was a weekly occurrence at the least. She was in her 50s and working, so I didn't understand why she would do that. One day, I got fed up, so when she knocked on my door, I said, "Yeah, I got some money for you."
I asked her to hold out her hands and gave her like, two dollars worth of nickels that I had in a change jar. Surprisingly, she never bothered me again after that.
31. A Man’s Castle Is His RV
I have a neighbor who speaks with a Western Massachusetts Hilltown drawl. He renovated his house so that it is now at least one-half auto garage, so he could park his RV inside during the winter months. He would get sloshed and drive his daughter's Barbie power wheel around the neighborhood, often ending with hilariously injurious results.
He would often yell at people driving too fast down on our street, every so often kicking the doors or tail lights of said violators. Apparently, he has lived on the same corner of the block his entire life, having grown up in the house right next door to his current one. Overall, he is a pretty helpful dude and totally rocks.
32. Stop! In The Name Of Law!
My neighbor pulled us over pretending to be a police officer, saying that we had somehow broken the law while pulling out of our driveway and that she was “going to call it in.” She isn’t a cop. After chatting with the other neighbors, it turns out she’s just the “wannabe HOA president” in a neighborhood with no HOA. So, mostly harmless. Just very annoying.
33. Problem After Problem
I lived on the top floor of a sketchy house in college because it was the only place that would let seven of us rent together. The first week we were there, the SWAT team did a raid on one of the units below us. They busted in the door and used flashbang grenades on them. One of the other units smelled like urine and constantly had people coming in and out buying illicit substances.
Our keys barely fit in the lock because people had tried to pick them so much. Our cable and internet stopped working, so we called the cable company to check it. The guy took us over to the box outside and showed us nine different lines that were ripping our internet. I could go on and on. On the plus side, we could shoot bottle rockets in our hallway because it wasn't like anyone was going to call the authorities on us.
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34. Can’t Get Better Than This
Our next-door neighbor was the nicest guy in the whole world. He's an old Vietnam Veteran who connected with my husband and me because he found out we're both Veterans, ourselves. Every week he brought home freshly baked bread rolls from work and would give us a big bag full. He would also invite us to bring our two-year-old son over to check out the latest model plane he built.
He would always offer to help me clean my car off after a snowstorm, and he is just generally the nicest guy ever. We would try to repay his kindness by bringing in his mail when he would go visit his daughter and by bringing over baked goods that I've made. He's just the kind of guy who brings out the best in anyone he meets.
35. It’s A Plant
We lived in a four-plex. At the end of our driveway was a eucalyptus tree that occasionally shed its seed pods which are shaped a bit like a sleigh bells, about the size of a quarter. Evidently, she slipped on one and broke her foot. She kept trying to get my kids to admit they had placed the eucalyptus seeds there as a booby trap and that they needed to pay her bills.
My kids were six and eight, by the way. I told the kids not to talk to her. So, then it became this rant about how my kids were so disrespectful and her grandson would never ignore a grownup like that and get those kids out here right now to apologize! But, she'd say this on repeat. One time I just stood there listening and she repeated herself for 20 minutes.
It was truly bizarre. Eventually, her hoarding caused a rodent issue so I had to call the landlord. She got evicted but I didn't feel bad because she owned another house. In fact, the only reason that she was renting and was living there was because of her hoarding too. Simply put, she had hoarded so much at the other house she couldn't live there since there was no room.
36. Doorbell Bandit
We had a neighbor of ours—a retired officer in his 50s—doorbell ditch us for around a month. The crazy thing is we never knew it was him. Apparently, he was mad at us because we had a dog that would bark and disturb him. He never told us about this, so I didn’t feel too bad about his little prank. But we did want to catch him in the act at least once, just to spook him a little.
Finally, one day before we were moving out, he doorbell-ditched us. My wife and I looked at each other dead in the eyes, and without a word, I sprinted out the front door. She, on the other hand, went out the back door. We had this unspoken thing where we were like, “Let’s trap this jerk!” I was so impressed that we did this without needing to say anything to one another.
I caught up with our shirtless neighbor and he put his hands up, saying, “Okay, you got me.” I said, “Dude, what the heck? Why are you doing this?” He was tipsy as heck, and he proceeded to tell me about my barking dog. He apologized and said he should’ve told us about it.
37. Window Watcher
There used to be an old lady who'd lean out her second-floor window every day, just watching the neighborhood. She would just stare at everyone for hours. Last summer she stopped and we assumed she'd passed away. Then a couple of months ago I saw her again. It turns out she and her housemate don't use the upper floor anymore.
I guess hanging out the lower windows is less appealing. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed seeing her being weird until she wasn't there anymore.
38. Dogging Your Steps
My old downstairs neighbor blocked my car to tell me that she was reporting me to the authorities for injuring her dog. Apparently, we were so loud the night before that her dog jumped off the bed and injured its eye and was now blind. The funny part is that we weren't home the night before. We had stayed at my brother's house.
She also used to follow me around with a camera, yelling things at me about the dog situation. She also posted letters in the public areas outing me as gay and calling me a sinner, even though I'm straight and, at the time, lived with my girlfriend who she had met. So, not entirely sure how she came to that conclusion.
She was a character. They kicked her out of the complex shortly after.
39. Downstairs Disturbance
I rented a house that had a rental basement suite. It was a one-bedroom, but an adult mom and her two adult sons all moved in there. They would fight, burn their food, and it would stink up our house. But the worst part? The mom had the yappiest dog ever. At the time, my five-year-old son had seen something on TV and told the mom that he heard that yappy dogs have short lives. She got offended and from that moment, she stopped talking to us.
They all eventually moved out, thankfully.
40. Get Off My Lawn (Not Everyone Though)
This older lady lives across the street from me and she is obsessed with leaves falling on her lawn. This is to the point that she will come out of her house and pick up one individual leaf off the grass in the fall, or any other time. She spends hours a day outside with the leaf-blower in fall just blowing the leaves away.
She will go and knock on other neighbors' doors if she thinks you have too many leaves on your grass. She'll even come over into your yard and do it herself if you're not home. What I think is weird is that she's in her 70s, no kids or grandkids living with her, and lives alone in a pretty large four-bedroom house with an amazing in-ground pool in the backyard—with a slide and diving board and everything.
Nobody has used that pool in at least five years yet she opens it up every summer. Somehow, she likes my family and has never once yelled at us about our leaves and, in fact, randomly brings things over like half-eaten gallons of ice cream and asks if we want it because she's not using it. I do not know what to make of it.
41. Slip-N-Slide Set Up
Our neighbor would have a bonfire going every day. One day he decided to put a TV in front of the bonfire and he would put a trash bag over whenever it would rain. He then got a gigantic banner that said something, something "USA" that he used as a slip and slide. He also had a taped-up hose on the side of his house that he would use to water his plants and slip and slide, which were fantastically set up next to his barbecue grill.
42. Right Back Atcha
I had this one downstairs neighbor who lacked any respect for the fact that our building wasn't sound-insulated. He would listen to loud music mostly through the day and sometimes late at night. This lasted for months, but nothing had yet been done by the landlord. One day, though, I think he discovered that he really, REALLY loved Gnarles Barkley's "Crazy."
He decided it was appropriate to play it half a dozen times in the course of an hour, and I just had it. So, being a karaoke jockey and having my equipment on hand, I decided to show him what "loud" was. I connected my speakers to my computer through my console, then I went hunting for the absolute worst "karaoke cover" of that same song.
I remember vividly it was a cover by this creepy fat basement dweller in his late 40s and it was horribly off-tune. I played it with the speakers flat on the floor so he'd get the full brunt of it. I played it three times in a row, loud enough that he would definitely suffer the consequence of his lack of respect. And, wouldn't you know it, he never played that song again.
He started being much more conservative in his volume levels. He left that summer and I never heard "Crazy" again from his collection. I wonder why.
Shutterstock
43. Birds Of A Feather (And Other Things)
The old lady who lived below me left me multiple cryptic letters blaming me for the birds chirping too loudly in the mornings. Not pet birds. The sparrows and other birds outside. This went on for months. The notes were quite accusatory. For instance, one of the notes said, “AGAIN, your bird dodo is on my railings, bird seeds on my porch & chairs, & your birds are ruining my nite rest, wee hours of the morning, birds in your feeder chirping.”
I did not have a bird feeder when I received this note. Yes, for a brief period I had had a bird feeder, but I had taken it down after a few months after multiple cryptic letters. Also, eventually, management had gotten involved and took her side even though bird feeders were explicitly allowed per the lease. So, no more bird feeder.
However, there were several trees nearby, including one that literally hung onto both her and my balconies. I assure you that birds existed before I set up the feeder, and they continued to exist after. My sister and BIL took over the lease four years ago, and they still get the occasional note from "bird lady." Apartment management has even inspected their unit to verify there's no bird feeder or any other bird luring devices.
44. Balcony Boneheads
The balcony people at my apartment complex. There are two to four of them who would always be out on their balcony chatting nonstop. I don't know how they have conversations because it seems like they are always talking over each other. They would listen to a radio station that had terrible reception loudly on the balcony at 3 AM in the middle of the week. I’m pretty sure that is not a requirement for anything.
45. Exam Stress
My upstairs neighbor, who was quiet and respectful for the entire year, decided to crank his music during finals week in my senior year. I knocked on the door twice and asked him to turn it down, only to have him crank it up minutes later. It was so loud that my windows were shaking from the bass. Finally, on the third try, I called the authorities who issued him a citation.
After the officers left, he decided to bring three or four friends over to knock down my apartment door. It took pointing a pistol at them through the window to make them go away. I was happy to be done with college.
46. Silence Isn’t Golden In This House
If the sun is up, my neighbor has to be making noise. Yet, he goes ballistic on anyone who makes even the tiniest peep after the sun goes down. This is what a regular day seems to be for him. From 8:00 AM–10:00 AM: mow the grass, and get out the LOUD leaf blower to blow even the tiniest particle of grass off the sidewalks and driveway.
10:00 AM–1:00 PM: get out the pressure washer to wash the sidewalks, driveway, siding on his house, his boat, his cars, the dog, whatever he can find; break for lunch, but play talk radio in his garage at maximum volume while he eats; fiddle with the engine on his motorcycle, revving it every 30 seconds to make sure it "sounds right."
1:00 PM–6:00 PM: get into a screaming match with his wife, all on the front lawn; fiddle with the motorcycle again; get out the table saw and randomly cut a pile of lumber that he will never build anything with; get out the chainsaw to cut up wood for his fire pit; dinner time...with loud talk radio blasting in the background.
6:00 PM–9:00 PM: pressure wash the sidewalks...again; get out the weed trimmer and mercilessly destroy even the slightest hint of a blade of grass that is too tall; leaf blower time again; and, finally, the last shouting match with the wife, with talk radio playing, until the sun goes down and he is, apparently, done for the day.
And, then…9:05 PM: go bananas at a neighbor (me) for coming home and parking my car too loudly after dark.
47. Slingblade Sorrow
We called him Slingblade. He introduced himself when we first moved into the area. He was in his mid-50s, wore overalls, and lived in the shed behind the neighbor's house. He said he would, "Never bother anybody. Except for some nights you might see me drinking a little and dancing around the burn barrel." Which he did, quietly.
He showed us how to properly use a maul to chop firewood. He also let us know when strangers stopped by when we weren't home. He kept to himself and never asked for a lift to the store that was two miles down the road. One day we saw the neighbor chasing him down the road with an ax handle. The day after that I saw him hanging out downtown with the homeless people. I kept hoping to see him again, but haven't in several years. I hope he's doing well.
48. Heavy Footed
I live in Brooklyn, NY. I recently got my own apartment in Greenpoint. I have a pretty great job in midtown Manhattan that offers a lot of overtime, so I have crazy hours and I commute to work. So, when I leave work late (usually around 11:45 pm every night), I catch the late trains and it takes me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get home.
When I get home around 12:30 am, I’m exhausted—I just kick my shoes off and just throw them and my duffle bag wherever they land (usually on the floor right by my apartment entrance). When I first moved into my apartment, I always heard banging from the neighbor downstairs. I never thought anything of it, and I was always like, “Is this person serious? They’re working on their apartment at 1 am in the morning?!”
It wasn’t until maybe three weeks ago that I realized that he was getting upset about the banging that I was doing over their heads. I guess our apartments are set up differently and their bedroom is directly under my living room? I’ve since become more conscious of the noise I make when I get home—I started gracefully taking my shoes off and placing my belongings on the couch.
Regardless, the person who lives down there has never actually come up to my apartment to address the issue, but I find it hilarious because I just picture them laying in bed cuddled up with a broomstick or something similar and just waiting for the slightest pin drop to jump on top of their bed and start stabbing their ceiling.
49. Hear Me Roar
My previous tenant was super quiet. These new guys scream all night and day at each other and never seem to sleep. Their front door gets slammed no less than five times an hour. Their kid even shows up occasionally to get in a screaming match with her boyfriend before they get back in the car and peel away from the house again. Plus, they have about 10 cats that they released outside the second they moved in and which constantly end up under our house driving our dogs insane. Truly lovely people.
50. Grudge Holding Granny
Our ridiculously awful and crotchety old neighbor had an ongoing feud with my grandparents, who moved into the area over 30 years ago. The woman called the city on my grandfather when he was renovating because she was sure he hadn't applied for permits and wanted to get him in trouble. To her surprise, he had. She then called saying the front yard was a mess.
In our city, if you have a bunch of stuff on your lawn, such as spare tires, car parts, or other attractive things, you can be forced to remove them. We had a full garden instead of a lawn, so we wouldn’t have to mow. The inspector agreed it was ridiculous because it is clearly a garden and not an eyesore. She would also wash her driveway after the rain, wasting water, as well as her car every two weeks. This, despite the fact she was in her 80s and never went anywhere.
She would mow her lawn in diagonal stripes and flat out screamed at her daughter when she mowed it the wrong way once. Every time someone new moved into the neighborhood, she would "warn" them about us. We still have no idea what she would say, but we know she would do it, because of her other feud with a new neighbor.
A young family moved in beside her with their two lovely children—they didn’t know what they were getting into. She would engage in extremely passive-aggressive tactics until things blew up and the man and she got into a screaming match on their front lawns. The neighborhood is well to do. People screaming on their front lawns is something you wouldn’t expect to see here.
While they were screaming at each other, my grandma was out front working on the garden, something she does regularly. The crotchety neighbor decided to call over to my grandmother, telling her to mind her own business. Next thing I knew my grandfather was screaming over to her to mind her own business, as we are on our property.
The man came over shortly afterward and we talked about the crotchety neighbor, and he confirmed that she had warned them against talking to us.
51. Driveways And Fences
My current neighbor wants us to tear out our driveway because she doesn't like the fact that it's on a slant and lets water roll downhill. She’s a loon. When the driveway was put in 25 years ago, it was all done by contractors and it is up to code. She’s threatened to sue us because her yard is at the bottom of the hill. We’re in Georgia and last year we had a BUNCH of rain—like, more than normal.
So of course, she had three inches of standing water. She said she talked to a lawyer and apparently, he said her case was solid. Then, later, she corroborated everything with our builder neighbor across the street. When intimidation didn’t work, we came home to a fence separating our properties. I guess it was supposed to offend us? Anyway, that was the best fence ever!
Guess what they say is true... great fences make great neighbors. She hasn't bothered us since then and we're both pretty civil nowadays.
52. Thar She Blows!
I recently moved out of an apartment I shared with some friends and moved into a new place with my partner. While we were looking, we saw the unit next door to my shared apartment had become available. The apartment was in a great location, and it'd be nice to live next door to my good friends, so I called the number listed but didn't hear back for over a week.
The housing and rental market in my town is always quite crazy, and lately it has absolutely skyrocketed. So, when my partner and I had the opportunity to look at another unit in a different building, a unit that was way bigger and nicer, for the same price as the unit in my old building, we pretty much jumped all over it.
I eventually got a call back from the realtor listing the unit next to my old one. As we talked, I politely told him that I'd found something else but that I had lived next door to his unit and loved living there. In response, he was very smarmy and told me he'd have no trouble finding someone else to rent it. And, I agreed with him. He was so smug—but he wasn't smug after what happened.
A couple of months after I moved out, my friends posted on social media that a fire in the unit next door had evicted everyone else in the building temporarily. There was an explosion that blew out the windows in that unit, and the people living adjacent to it are still displaced, even though it is almost four months since.
My friends told me that the people who did move in were sketchy. They were always yelling at each other, and there was a quiet teenaged daughter (?) who never seemed to go to school. Additionally, theft in the area got worse immediately after these people moved in—mostly cars getting rummaged through. I ran into someone else I know who lives in that building and she agreed with my friends.
It turns out that the accepted theory among the people who live there is the new tenants had a lab that exploded.
53. Clean Freak Ken
When I lived in the city, there was Ken. I only knew Ken's name because when we moved into the house, the landlord said, "Oh, and that's Ken's place." I never met Ken, but I would watch from afar, as my bedroom window overlooked a room in Ken's house. I'm pretty sure it was either his bathroom or his kitchen, which means one of two things.
Either he did his dishes by hand every night as naked as the day he was born, or every night he stood in the bathroom and vigorously scrubbed his junk for sometimes upwards of a half-hour. My girlfriend at the time and I used to get wasted and watch him. Sometimes even in the middle of getting busy, one of us would casually go, "Ken's back," and we'd giggle to ourselves.
The funny thing is, he kept the curtains in place during the day, so I never had a reasonable chance to peek in some more. He kept to himself. We kept to ourselves. And every night he would clean the bejeezus out of something with the curtains pulled back, daring the world to peek in on his proud vulnerability.
54. Open Fire
Just three days ago, the neighbor's dog attacked my dog in the street. My dog was on a leash, while the other dog wasn't—it just came charging at us. Being that the dog looked like a pitbull and was about 60 lbs, and I didn't know if it had diseases. Not wanting to risk getting bitten, I tried to shoot it. Just one shot and it ran away.
The shot woke up the entire neighborhood and the owner came out yelling at me as if allowing my dog, or myself, to be ripped open would have been the better choice. Three officers showed up and it created quite the show. Now I have to go to court for discharging a firearm within city limits. I can't wait to go actually.
55. The VIP Syndrome
We had a woman in my old neighborhood who used to pretend she was a cop all the time. First, I encountered her screaming at the post office staff because she’d arrived past the pickup time and they couldn’t guarantee her letter would be in tomorrow. She was there almost an hour just pitching a fit while they opened the other counters around her. Her rant was along the lines of “Do you know who I am?!” and all that stuff.
The second time that I encountered her she’d cornered some poor child on the bus and was telling her she’d have her taken away because she was an officer and she didn’t like the way the kid was eating a bag of crisps or something like that. Real invective stuff. I stepped in and politely asked if the child knew this person, at which point she backed off.
Anyway, I guess she saw me leave at my stop because I woke up the next morning to find my garden torn up. Total weirdo.
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56. Barefoot And Bananas
There used to be a girl who lived in my neighborhood who was downright crazy. She would always walk around with no shoes on and hated me because I dated someone she was into, who also happened to live in the neighborhood. She came over to my house late one night and harassed me a couple of times, usually when she knew my parents were gone.
When I refused to come outside, she broke a car window with a rock. I’m so glad I will never have to see her again.
57. The Worst of The Worst
I saw my neighbors hang their pet dog on its hind legs to “train” it. It was at 5 pm and my sister and I were chilling at home, watching some Doctor Who. We then heard this really loud yelping outside our house and my sister and I decided to walk outside and peer through a bush and see what the heck was going on in our neighbor’s backyard. When we saw it, our blood ran cold.
We decided to call 9-1-1 and get the authorities over to apprehend the jerk. By the way, it turns out that they have mistreated animals before, but it was only when we caught them that they were taken in.
Wikimedia.Commons
58. I Will See You In Court
An ex-member of our condo board lawyered up and said she'd sue the new member running for her position and the condo as a whole because she claimed he was falsifying documents and was slandering her. When her lawyer saw the signatures of the residents, he laughed and said, "She's got nothing." Only two people voted to keep her and the 74 others voted for the new guy.
59. What Kind Of Wizardry Is This?
We have a guy who was known as “The Wizard of Belgrave.” You would just see him walking around with his walking stick/staff. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night, it could be 7 AM or midnight, he was always walking. We would also see him in different suburbs, over 40 km (25 mi) apart. He would occasionally stop and cast spells on people.
60. Floridian Feud
We moved to Florida and our neighbors there were the most messed up people I've ever met. There's almost too much to get into, but here are some highlights: They threatened to poison our dog, they threw stuff in our yard all the time just to try to get a reaction out of us, and they set up two webcams in a window to watch our house. It goes on and on.
One day, a shoe landed in my pool while I was swimming, so I, being a 13-year-old kid, picked it up and threw it back over the fence. I kid you not, they called the authorities and told a total lie—they said I threw a shoe and it hit their grandma in the head while she was watering her plants. It almost got me in serious trouble.
To this day, I swear we didn't do anything to provoke their horrible behavior. We were friendly with them until they started acting out.
61. Binning It
I once totally randomly caught my neighbors on camera, at 1 am, dumping trash into and onto my bins which were already on the curb for morning pickup. I wouldn't mind a little trash if there's space in my bins, but they put in about twice as much as can fit, causing the bins to overflow and mixing the recycling and compost with their trash.
I promptly returned it, neatly piled on their porch with a note written on a bill with their name and address on it, quoting the county ordnance on dumping (the volume was enough for a $5,000 fine), and that they were on camera. A couple of days later they left an envelope saying, "Sorry, neighbor," with tickets for a concert.
It was a "free" concert in a sketchy venue with a printed invitation that screamed "MLM recruiting event." I wonder if they even understand that what they did is not an apology. I haven't crossed paths or words with them again.
62. Attention Seeker
When I was between 10-13 years old, there was a girl next door who was two years younger than me. Her parents were extremely strange. We hardly saw them. The girl was basically an only child, as her older sibling was about 20 years older than her. As a result, she constantly craved attention from all the kids around us.
There would be times we would all be playing together, and she would just act weird. For example, she would try to lick us or would brag about things regarding her parents. However, the weirdest encounter I ever had with her was when it was just me and her in her house. She asked if I wanted to see something cool, so obviously, I said yes. I’ll never forget what she did next.
She then brought me to her bathroom, where she grabbed a diaper and proceeded to undress her bottom half and put on the diaper. She then had me watch as she pooped herself in the diaper. She even took the diaper off and showed me the poop to prove she had just gone in the diaper in front of me. This may have been the weirdest encounter I have had with anyone, EVER.
63. No Consideration
I can tell so many stories about my current next-door neighbor. One time, she decided she didn’t like the bush that was next to my mailbox, so she tore it out. She also has four dogs and none of them are EVER on leashes. They always run over to everyone else’s yards to do their business, and she doesn’t bother to pick it up. She also allows them to run in the streets, and gives people dirty looks when they need to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the dogs.
I myself recently got a puppy. When I take him outside, I have him on a leash in my front yard. If her dogs are outside, they’ll come charging over, scaring my dog, and he’ll run up the steps to go back inside. I have asked her to put her dogs on a leash so that they don’t come into my yard. Her response? “They don’t like being on a leash,” and “Your dog needs to get used to other dogs.”
Yeah, screw you and your poor dog ownership.
64. Too Loud Up There
My neighbor, an old lady, complained about many things. First, she complained that my “dog ran around at all hours of the night,” even though I never had a dog, or any other animal for that matter. Second, she claimed that I was "always too loud." This despite the fact that I lived alone and I'm in the Navy and would literally be away for weeks at a time.
Also, understanding that I lived in a condo, I had bought an expensive Bluetooth headset to use with all of my devices. There was literally not a speaker in the house connected to an entertainment system. She also complained that the rainwater coming off of my deck would drip on hers, because I apparently engineered the building in such a way that her deck stuck out further than mine.
I sent her letter to the property manager and the strata board, ccd her, and said that the next time she left me a letter like that or screamed through the ceiling at the top of her lungs I was going to charge her with harassment.
65. This Ain’t No Country Club
Some neighbors lived a block away, on the same block as a country club and golf course. Million-dollar riverfront homes would start about seven houses away from them. However, they wouldn’t ever cut their lawn, or clear their snow. They would keep a pile of old mattresses and garbage in their backyard/alley. They would also have 'meetups' in their front yard, complete with cars parked on the sidewalk and bonfires.
I even caught one of them going through my shed last summer at 2 AM.
66. Neighborhood Karen
When I was around 10 years old, my neighbor would occasionally watch me open my mailbox to see if my GameStop magazine had arrived. She would threaten me each time, saying that she would call the authorities on me since it was unlawful for me to check my parents' mail. I actually believed this until I was 15 years old.
67. Privacy? What Privacy?
When I first moved in my neighbor walked into the house, unannounced. Now, when my wife gets home, sometimes she wants to stay in her car having a phone conversation. He will come out and walk down the side of his house, checking his sprinkler controls and looking at my wife. He also has two huge bushes he refuses to cut.
It blocks our view of backing out of our driveway. The fire department came by to clear trees and bushes around the fire hydrants. The neighbor came out and yelled at the fireman. "This bush is older than you!" Needless to say, I just hope there are no house fires.
68. Serial Mower
I lived next door to a guy who would mow his grass every single day. He was nice enough to start at 8 AM, although I think that was only because according to the law, that was the earliest he could do it. Same thing with the rain. As soon as it was over, out came the mower. At that time I would work until 2 AM or 4 AM, so sometimes I didn't get to bed till 6 AM. It sucked, and earplugs didn't seem to help much. I moved out ASAP.
69. The Best Revenge
We lived next to a family when I was younger and they were the worst people. They were loud and obnoxious, always playing their music loudly and throwing trash on our lawn. They also had a Great Dane who would always run into our lawn and take huge dumps, sometimes on our porch. My dad talked to them a couple of times and they said there was nothing they could do.
My dad took matters into his own hands one day and started picking the mess up with a shovel to catapult it back into their yard. But that's not even the best part—they had kids our age who were not very nice. One day, they were playing in a blow-up pool that was placed on the hill. We were watching them play when all of a sudden, the best thing happened...
The whole pool tipped over, and those little jerks went sliding down the hill. They stood up, covered completely in their dog's mess. Best day ever.
70. Water, Water Everywhere
The neighbor behind us had a leak in his water pipe and, rather than fix it, he just had the sump pump drain it out into the back yard. This meant that all year round the back of our yard was a little bit damp. Eventually, the leaky pipe burst and filled the house with five feet of water. His solution to this was just to keep the pump running and flood the entire neighborhood.
After about an hour, a posse of all the neighbors whose yards were being flooded confronted him and called the city to shut off the water. The city fixed the water pipe and the neighbor ended up with a large fine. At least my yard stays basically dry now.
71. The RC Man
I'm in a new neighborhood and THAT guy, thus far, is this guy who is 50ish and has a ton of RC vehicles. He often sits on his porch and speeds them around. I've seen half a dozen different cars and a helicopter. The other day I saw two boys playing with their RC car. One ran over and knocked on the guy’s door. They talked for a minute, and the kid ran back over to his friend and they both brought their car to him. He began working on it, apparently fixing it.
Wikimedia Commons, Santeri Viinamäki
72. About The Garbage
A retired woman on my street follows the garbage truck and moves the garbage cans off the street while the rest of us are at work (because they are an eyesore). This would be fine, except she leaves them in the middle of the driveway, and that's a problem because there is no stopping on our street during rush hour. You either need to park a block away to move the garbage can, then go back to get the car, or risk getting a ticket while you move it.
Since the houses are quite close together, we found out what she was doing for the first time when we turned and hit the garbage can. It was just far enough back that you couldn't see it until you turned.
73. My 30 Seconds of Fame
One time in 2004, my mom participated in a TV show. This was a show where a singer would visit your house and a professional chef made food for both you and the singer. My mon’s neighbor, apparently, could not stand this. So, the result? Well, she constantly yelled at the camera crew and tried to hit their equipment with a broom.
74. Trail Of Destruction
My next-door neighbors had a daughter who was an addict. She would come around fairly often. She looked like Mickey Rourke in booty shorts and would wear an undersized tank top, and had a super bleached, teased mullet. She would usually help her elderly parents with yard work, etc., and was always nice to me. Her arrival, however, was usually accompanied by screaming matches with her friends.
Her little dog would be yapping and pooping everywhere too. There was even paraphernalia left in the yard, and sometimes she and her friends would appear to stash drugs/stolen goods in the shed that was out back. I've seen her mow the lawn in a negligee and nothing else. She would arrive with different people and cars nearly every time she showed up. The rest of my neighborhood was normal, but I swear sometimes looking out my back door was like going to the zoo.
75. Family Feud
One got the authorities called on them because their eldest son was under the influence of something and got into a huge fight with the mom on the front lawn. Turns out, he was also wanted for a number of federal offenses. The officers got to the wrong house and started banging on our house at 1 am in the morning until my very irritated father pointed them to the real home.
76. Let Them Eat Cake
She throws baked goods of all sorts into our yard, bagels, half loaves of bread, German pancakes, literal unbaked dough, all while knowing I have two dogs with sensitive stomachs, and even after I throw the bread back into her yard every time. We finally caught her on camera today literally chucking white bread pieces over the fence and into our yard so I think we might confront her soon.
77. Green Acres Is The Place To Be
My 72-year-old neighbor is the best. He climbed up on my roof in the freezing rain to help me patch it without asking. He let me use his boat to take my son fishing. I came home one Sunday afternoon and he gave me three dozen brown eggs and six pounds of bacon. He has orange and grapefruit trees that he gives me fruit from.
I borrowed a five-gallon gas container from him one time to get gas for my lawnmower. I returned it full, even though I got it empty and he refused to take it back. I had to put the gas in my truck to empty it before he would take it back. I thought moving from the city to the country was going to be bad, but thanks to him it’s the best move I ever made.
78. Case Of The Ex
I heard a really loud banging one evening and walked outside to see a fire extinguisher on the floor and a woman on her phone. I was puzzled, but I put the extinguisher back and went back inside. A few minutes later, I heard the banging again and opened up the door to see the woman trying to beat down the door across from mine with the fire extinguisher.
Apparently, she was the ex-girlfriend of one of my neighbor’s friends and she was trying to find him even though he was quite clearly not there. I called the authorities, and interestingly enough, my neighbor told me she got charged for driving under the influence that night in an unrelated incident.
Shutterstock
79. A Cat Lady (Not So Much)
I have this neighbor lady who makes a big issue out of one of our cats and she can never just leave us alone about it. One of our cats was hit by a car at a young age and as a result, she’s a few cards short of a full deck but for the most part, she functions normally. Well, one time the cat was outside and found its way onto neighbor lady’s porch.
So, neighbor lady brought her over to us and explained that our cat got into her porch somehow. We thanked her for bringing our cat back and made sure to not let it happen again. Everything about that interaction seemed perfectly normal—we were so wrong. We later found out that she had reported us to the authorities because our cat was “very thin and hungry like they were being starved.”
This was even though that cat was a chonker at the time. It turns out she had done it to our other neighbors who have cats too. The cats don’t even have to leave the yard, if the cats are out of the house then according to the neighbor lady they are being neglected and starved. She’s, suspiciously enough, never done such a thing to our neighbor who has dogs though, even though that neighbor regularly plays with her dogs outside.
Pexels
80. This Old Man Needs To Go
Our boring suburbia has but one issue—this old man. He has knowingly loaded and pointed a weapon at kids playing at night, tried to poison his neighbor’s dog, and threw boards with nails pounded into them into the bottom of a neighbor's 3-foot pool. He also brings shady people around and was taken in for filming underage kids doing various things.
81. What Could Have Been
My next-door neighbor when I was growing up was bipolar-schizophrenic. He was always doing bizarre and invasive things, like repainting our front door with this awful purple color when we were on vacation. After his wife left him, he parked his car under our balcony, doused it in gasoline, and set it on fire. Luckily, the fire department was quick to respond. But here's the creepiest part...
We later found out he had installed a deadbolt lock on our fire escape beforehand.
92. Free For All
We rented a house from my mom's coworker who grew up in this house and was renting it out. Across the street was Jeanette, an 80ish-year-old lady, who had lived in that house most of her life and knew our landlord very well. Well, because she knew the landlord, that meant she felt she could come into our house whenever she wanted.
She watched us through her window and had every excuse to come by. I have never really locked my doors, but obviously, we started to. It didn't stop her. If she knew we were home, she would ring the doorbell incessantly. Our blinds always had to be down, living room lights off, so she wouldn't know we were home. Just got in? Quick, run inside before Jeanette sees you.
We saw her peering out of her blinds on a regular basis. One morning was my breaking point. The doorbell was going. I hid in the bathroom to pretend that I wasn't home. How did she see me?? The doorbell stopped, but the doorknob kept rattling. She tried for five full minutes to open our door. It probably would have been longer, but I gave up and let her in.
Some of the notable things that she did/said included coming in when my husband was cooking and calling him a good little housewife. She also told our neighbor he shouldn't be dating his daughter. They were, of course, not father-daughter, and were in fact a 40-year-old couple, and there was not actually a big age difference.
Why didn't I tell her to go away? Look, I'm a nice midwestern girl. I can be confrontational if someone is being mean, but she was just...lonely? A tad crazy? But harmless. It's like she was a character from a sitcom...we didn't know these people existed.
93. He Restored My Faith
My neighbors restored all sorts of cars. It’s cool, but not what you want to hear at 4 AM. I went over once when they were working on a car in their driveway to tell them that I thought the car was awesome. I then asked if they could try and be a bit more mindful. I explained that I understood that it is almost impossible to not be loud in that car, but I would appreciate it if they could keep from any unneeded revving and loud music until they got it moving.
If not, I asked if I could trade them cupcakes for a chance to drive it. We had a good laugh and they apologized. They worked nights/early mornings so they were so used to that being their middle of the day. They hadn’t thought anything of it. They let me drive it up the road and back too which was awesome. I made them car-themed cupcakes, and I was finally able to get some sleep.
94. NOT Welcome
When I moved into my house, I made an effort to meet all of my neighbors. Instead of being a creep and knocking on doors, over a few months, I just waited until I saw someone outside and casually walked over to introduce myself. Well, one night, a Black neighbor of mine was having a big loud party, and I walked over to say hi around 8 pm.
It was a birthday party for one of his grandkids, but there were folks all out in the yard, so I thought it was okay to say hi. I said "Hey, I moved into this street a few doors down a couple of months ago. I was just stopping over to introduce myself." He said, "Do you look like the color that's supposed to be in this yard?" I apologized and went home.
He passed of a heart attack a couple of years later; probably from being such a hateful jerk.
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85. Not On My Turf
I had a situation where I didn’t want my neighbor using our driveway. It was a long driveway, like 60 feet long two cars wide. The problem was the across-the-street neighbor would pull into my driveway still driving about 30MPH, slam the breaks while putting his truck in reverse, then floor it back into his garage across the street.
I never said anything to him about it until one day he almost hit my 5-year-old using chalk 40 feet up the driveway. I was watching and jumped on the hood of the truck to get his attention. He apologized profusely, then did it again five days later when I was leaving the house with my dog for a walk. In both scenarios he used more than 60% of the driveway.
He didn’t apologize that time and just parked in his garage and closed it. For the next month, I parked on the street and didn’t let my kids play in the front yard until the 30 feet of staked razor wire across my driveway found a new home. So, I guess I’m technically the crazy one but I don’t really care.
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86. What A Treat
I used to live across the hall from a couple. The man worked for a major tech firm and the woman worked part-time, so they seemed pretty comfortable. I was living with two pretty much broke guys at the time, and I think they must have noticed our complete lack of housebroken-ness. Twice a week, we would get a knock on the door with a basket full of tasty treats. It had everything from tandoors full of delicious meat, to baskets of bread and pastries.
The woman was an absolute gem and was always there if we needed advice on something house-related. Without her, I would still be doing laundry once a day. Although the husband didn’t drink, now and then he would come over to hang out. They'd never take money, never ask for favors unless we offered, and they would always have a smile on their faces. They genuinely just seemed to enjoy being part of the community and helping out.
87. A Horrible Trade-Off
I started mowing our lawn when I was 11 or 12. We only had a push mower and it sucked. Our next-door neighbor had a riding lawn mower and told me I could use it whenever I wanted; I just had to leave the gas tank full. I was ecstatic. Then my dad told me, in exchange for that favor, I should mow my neighbor's lawn too.
Well okay, I figured I could still do that in less time on a riding mower. But, then, my dad decided he didn't like it when the other next-door neighbor's yard wasn't even with ours, and he felt bad that I was mowing only one of our neighbors' lawns and not the others. Like, he didn't want to show partiality to one neighbor. Mighty big of him.
So at that point, I was mowing three lawns, over four acres, every Saturday. Luckily, a new neighbor moved into that third house within a couple of years and he wanted to mow his own lawn.
88. Squirrelly Business
We had a couple living downstairs from us, in a condo, who thought that they were living in a single-family house on a 20-acre lot in the woods. Among all the things they did to their neighbors, one of the craziest things they did was leave a note on our door threatening to sue us and make us pay for their Pomeranian’s surgery.
This was because my mom had a bird feeder on our balcony and the squirrels running up to try to get the seeds made their dog bark constantly. The dog had a collapsing trachea. They did not think that the fact that they walked her on a retractable leash attached to her collar, and that they would hit the stop button on it if she started running so she jerked so hard she flipped had anything to do with it.
Even the fact that they dragged her around by the leash couldn’t be a reason, apparently. It was obviously the squirrels. They dropped the threats after I filmed them walking their dog when they did their little stop maneuver. My mom tried to talk to them about it and they both denied posting the note, each saying that it must have been the other one because, "I don't think it's the squirrels, but my husband/wife does."
They moved out after six months.
89. This Guy Blows Me Away
Growing up, I had a neighbor who would leaf-blow his yard EVERY SINGLE DAY. Without fail around 3 PM that annoying wail of the blower would start up and go for at least a half-hour. On weekends he would start at 9 in the morning. He would begin on his roof, then blow off his whole yard. One day he couldn't get it started.
He threw it in the garage, got into his car, and bought a new one an hour later. My neighbor's kids glued leaves on his driveway to mess with him. Rain would only postpone the annoyance. Once it had stopped raining for a few minutes, he would be out there. In the summer, when I would get home after a long day at work, I would just want to take a nap.
Without fail, as soon as my head hit the pillow, I would hear that dreaded whir.
90. Here's Your Proof
When I first moved into my house, I didn’t know my exact property line yet, so I put a marker by a tree I thought was mine. My neighbor came over and said I had to remove the marker since the tree was on his property. So I went ahead and got a survey done to settle any troubles. His face when I showed him the surveyor's findings was priceless—turns out, I actually owned the tree, plus the 10 feet beyond it. Problem solved!
91. Drawing The Battle Lines
My neighbor seemed to have opened hostilities against me for reasons unknown. He cut down my row of cedar trees, removed the branches, sharpened the trunks, and pointed them at my property. I never thought I would see the modern use of an abatis outside of trench warfare. Well, I guess, you see and learn something brand new every single day.
92. The Phantom Neighbors
My story is a bit different—but still totally weird. I have lived two houses away from the same neighbors for 20 years and have never seen them. None of the other neighbors have seen them either, but they do exist. The light on their garage door turns on at night and off during the day. They drive their car into the garage, then close the door. When they leave, they open the garage door once they are already in their car and drive off.
The windows on the car are tinted, so you can't see in. They don't answer the door when you ring the doorbell and put a "no candy" sign on the door during Halloween. They have no mailbox by the curb, instead, you have to put it in the door mail slot, and they hire people to do yard work. I think they must be serial killers.
93. Blood On Her Hands
Some 15 years ago, when my parents and I lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we ended up befriending one of the neighbors and her two kids. Well, one day, we were all hanging out together when I noticed her son had some pretty bad bruises and a nice size knot on his head. I just shrugged it off and we continued playing. Then, that night, the mother came over and made a shocking confession to my mom.
She said she ended the boy's life. She went into some pretty disturbing details, and she wasn't remorseful at all. When she left back to her house, my mom called the authorities immediately and she was taken to the station shortly after. The worst part is, she vowed that when she got out, she'd do the same thing to my mom. We noped the heck out of Indiana and moved to another state.
94. The Missing Spark
I started getting random power cuts multiple times a day, and had the landlord call the electrician out a few times before we realized that someone was turning off my main electricity switch by hand. The switch is in a room accessible by everyone in my building. When I told my landlord it had to be someone in the building turning it off, he said he had a thought.
I got a call back 10 minutes later. My downstairs neighbor had just then made multiple noise complaints about me. I guess the landlord had called and asked if he'd been switching off my electricity, and the neighbor chose then to actually complain. This is when I realized that all the power cuts happened when I was in my kitchen, right above my neighbor's bedroom/where he spends most of his day.
I had thought my appliances were causing the power cuts before. It turns out he thought that turning off my electricity frequently would magically make me understand that I was being too loud when I used the kitchen late at night. When I didn't receive the telepathic message that he was trying to send me via power cuts, I guess he got angry and did it even more!
Somehow, it got even worse from there. Every time I went into the kitchen, any time of the day, he would turn my electricity off. I had to leave my apartment, go to the other side of the building and turn it back on every single time. It happened 2-3 times a day usually, but at worst it happened 5 times in a day. I started tiptoeing and being as quiet as possible.
However, he listened for me and turned off the power to punish me for using my kitchen at any time. By the way, as soon as he actually complained, I started being as quiet as possible late at night, because I do stay up late and hadn't taken care to be quiet before. But by now, he had decided I should be punished any time I use my kitchen.
The letting agents were unable to do anything without any proof, and installing CCTV wasn't an option for some reason. So, one day a lady from the office offered to help me catch him. I met her in the street, she waited near the electricity box, and I went to my kitchen and started making myself a drink. The power went off.
I get a text from her saying that she had caught him, and the sting operation was a success. Right then, I hear an unholy tantrum begin below me. For the rest of that day he bangs, screams, puts on his vacuum cleaner for 20 minutes straight. Anything to get revenge, I guess. After this, the landlord locked my electricity switch away so only I could access it.
In between the guy being served an eviction notice and him leaving, he decided to just scream at me through the floor when I was in the kitchen, and go outside and throw stones at my window. I installed my own CCTV camera and the stone-throwing stopped. I was so intimidated by the thought of using my kitchen I actually lost weight before he left.
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. Slipper Sniffer
My across-the-hall apartment neighbor is so weird. Like, just overall off-putting. Anyway, I leave my sandals out next to my door every night since I don't wear shoes in the house. It so happens that one night, I had to meet my best friend, who came over in the dead of night at the front since she doesn’t know my place very well. As I opened the door, I caught my neighbor doing the most deranged thing imaginable.
He was caressing and smelling my sandals. I froze and mildly freaked out. He saw me staring, did a weird giggle, said something about his kids calling him back inside, and then yanked me into this weird side hug. Now I leave my shoes in a box inside my house. Ugh.
97. Boarding House
My neighbor was an 85-year-old widow who lived alone. She had two vehicles, a car and a truck. Over the course of a few months, I realized that she was no longer parking her car in her garage as she had for the many years prior to that. Then, suddenly, the truck was not being parked inside the garage of the lady either.
It turns out she no longer had room in her garage to park her vehicles because she was walking down to a residential construction site about a block away every evening and she'd grab two 2"x 4"s and bring them home. She had over 500 boards stacked in her garage and when she was questioned on what she was going to do with them, she didn't have an answer.
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98. Stay In Your Lane
I lived in an apartment complex with assigned spots, and every day this person in a white Civic encroached into my parking spot. So every day I was parking closer and closer to her car. I was getting good at parking close enough to her, without hitting her. One day I was walking to my car to head out to work, and I saw her climbing through her passenger side door to get into her car, cursing up a storm.
She saw me, we locked eyes as she was climbing over her middle console. She started her car and drove away. Since that incident, she has stayed in between the lines of her own parking spot.
99. Noise Complaint
I lived above a guy in a really old fourplex and I guess the wood floors squeaked really loudly whenever I walked around. It wasn't like I was stomping around or anything, but the dude would constantly come upstairs and bang on my door to yell at me about the noise. I felt bad for him in the beginning because he seemed genuinely frustrated, but he didn't seem to understand or believe that I wasn't intentionally causing a ruckus.
I called my landlord several times asking him for a solution. I couldn't move out because I was locked into my lease, but my landlord was just like, "Buy a lot of rugs." It got to the point that I couldn't take the constant yelling and I was literally either tiptoeing around or hopping from my couch to my chair in order to get out of my living room.
Finally, I went downstairs one day and asked if we could talk about the situation. I felt that maybe if I looked him in the eye when he was calm and explained that I wasn't doing it on purpose, he would maybe understand. After I gave him my spiel, he had a chilling response: "I'm about at the point where if it happens again, I'm going to show up at your door with a really big knife." And then he just stared at me.
I basically ran out of there, called my landlord, and said that I had just been threatened by my downstairs neighbor. A month later the guy moved out, and then as soon as I could, I did too.
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100. No Parking Zone
I lived in a duplex that shared one large driveway with another duplex. Parking could be tight, but all of us cooperated and made the best of it, except for one woman. She left a note on my car two days after my husband and I moved in, telling me not to park there because she didn’t like that I was "in front of her door."
I was at least 15 feet away from her house and that was the only spot I could park in without blocking anyone else. I left her a note back explaining this. She banged on my door at 11 PM and screamed at us, calling me the c-word, and demanding that I get rid of my car. We eventually shut the door on her. The nasty notes persisted and were ignored.
I confirmed with my landlord that this is where I should be parking and he said yes, ignore her. Then, she started barricading that part of the driveway, so that every day when I got home, I would have to get out of my car and move her stuff before I could park. This became a real pain in the neck when I broke my elbow.
She used her trash can, a pedestal with a birdcage on it, and a bench to block the driveway and I had to move all of them to park. I started just picking them up and gently moving them towards her porch. Then she came up with something else. She started putting Vaseline on them. I grabbed her trash can and got a gloppy handful of Vaseline. Sure enough, everything else was coated in it as well.
I decided to use my foot to push everything up against her house. Mind you, nothing was damaged or knocked over, just moved. She called law enforcement and reported that she saw me vandalizing her things by picking them up and throwing them into her house, kicking stuff over, and smashing them into the ground. The officer was angry.
He thought that I was the teenage girlfriend of the guy who lived there, not the adult leaseholder. So he pounded on the door yelling, "Sheriff's department! Come outside!" We went outside. He pointed to me and asked, "Are you the girlfriend!?" I resisted the urge to say something snarky in response to what I found to be a misogynistic and demeaning statement.
He went off on me saying, "Your behavior needs to stop right now, I don't know where you're from, but in [town] we do not tolerate this kind of disrespect blah blah blah!" Well, he didn’t know what he was in for. 15 minutes later, once we'd gotten a word in edgewise, he changed his tune pretty quick. He realized he'd been misled by our neighbor. We told him we were sorry he got dragged into a petty parking dispute.
He told us he's been dragged into stupider stuff and told us that if she puts up the barricades again, to call them instead of moving it ourselves, to protect ourselves from false allegations. In fact, he wanted us to call any time she does anything to harass us. She also received a mean letter from the landlord telling her to knock it off.
We got a mean note from her saying, "The reason I don't want you parking by my door is because you are trash! Your druggie psychopath girlfriend runs amok vandalizing! I want nothing to do with you," among other things. We called law enforcement and she got spoken to by them, and the landlord sent her another mean letter. Hopefully, that'll be the end of it.
101. Double Eviction
My first apartment had a creepy old man who lived on the basement floor and this equally creepy kid in his early thirties on the top floor. Both of them regularly sat out on the porch entrance at varying times of the day and would catch me whenever I came home. I lied to the old man, (we’ll call him George) about my name in a moment of panic.
When he found out that wasn’t my name, he started getting more aggressive in greeting me with my real name to show me how I’d done him wrong. He would circle the building when he realized I started using the back exit, and he'd even sit on the back steps to wait for me to pass by. I told my landlord twice about it and all he did was tell him not to talk to me, which made matters worse because just continued to harass me but with more of a vengeance.
He ended up stealing the wreath that was on my door because nobody else had one on their door and threw it in the trash. At that point, I no longer cared about causing my landlord grief and asked him to pull up video footage. Turns out, he’d been coming upstairs several times to see when I left for work and would stand in front of my door. He ended up getting evicted. But the nightmare didn't end there.
This was all happening while the kid on the top floor was still there. He was weird, but I didn't pay him much mind. After the whole George thing, I wanted to be on good terms with the other tenants, so I started saying hello when I came through the entrance or in the hallways. Bad call. Such a bad call. He started going around telling the other dudes that lived upstairs that he was sleeping with me and how I wouldn’t waste time jumping his bones.
Whatever, I stopped saying hi to him. About two days later, however, I went to take my trash out and I passed my window that was facing the alleyway. This dude was pressed up against it, sliding his face around the glass trying to see me. He saw me and tried to play it off, but the situation was already screwed for him. I called the authorities and it turns out he’d been pegged for"peeing" before on two other charges. He was also evicted.
102. Stay Away!
My friends used to live in a gentrifying neighborhood near the beach in my city. They had a regular apartment, but someone bought the building in front of them—it was beach adjacent—knocked it down, and put up a few luxury homes. Among all the people who bought homes there, a crazy woman bought one.
She had a two-car garage, and a driveway, and best we could tell, she had one car. But NO ONE was allowed to park on the street in front of her house, which was clearly marked as a public street and where people had been parking since forever to go to the beach or because their building didn’t have parking. We could see this street from their apartment.
She went out and keyed any cars parked there. It took a while to figure out it was her, but eventually, people saw her doing it. All the neighbors warned their friends not to park there, and people started putting up cameras to get evidence of it. Some dude with an ugly truck started parking directly in front of her house every day just to mess with her, because he didn’t care if she scratched it up. Well, that just made her get even worse.
She slashed his tires. It got to the point where every time she opened her door to walk outside, neighbors would cuss her out through their windows. One night she went out in the middle of the night, and then painted the entire curb on that street red. Someone got it on video, and several neighbors called the city.
I think she got a talking to and a fine, and she had several insurance claims pending against her from damage to cars. She finally stopped. Everyone still hates her though, even new neighbors, who are told the story of her from older residents.
103. Trouble Spot
Back when I was little, we lived across from a popular public pool on a tiny street, so parking was premium. We had issues with people parking across our driveway, but we were close with the pool owner and would get him to ask over the loudspeakers, and whoever parked the car would come over, apologize to us, and move.
But one day after coming home from school, I saw somebody had the audacity to not park in our driveway but inside our garage. My dad was dumbfounded. We went over to make the usual announcement. Then this woman in her 30s came stomping over in a huff and said she would fix it when she had finished her exercise routine. So, my dad just parked behind her, and we went out for dinner for a few hours.
She was mad, but she didn't learn her lesson and kept doing it two to four times a month! Eventually, my dad stopped caring about parking her in and let her out at his leisure. It wasn't our problem just hers. She even called officers on us. They just told her not to park on private property and then wrote her a citation. Then one morning, she had the gall to park us in our own driveway. Dad had had enough.
He made sure she was doing her laps, grabbed a coat hanger, jimmied the door open, dismantled the passenger seat, and left it on the curb by the pool exit. He then waited on our front deck, sipping his tea as she came out of the pool to get her car. She walked by the passenger seat without a second glance. Scowling at him as she got in her car, she did a double-take as she went to put her bag down.
She freaked out, realizing that my dad had had access to her car the whole time. She ran over, grabbed her seat, put it in the trunk, and drove off. We never heard from her again.
104. Keep Your Friends Close…
I suspected that my wife was cheating on me with a co-worker. I confronted both who responded by calling me a jealous husband. They were just best friends and I needed to understand that. So, I befriended him, became his workout partner, and learned everything I could about him. I’d even invited him to my dinner table.
Physical revenge was often considered, but neither he nor she was worth me spending a life sentence in prison for. I played dumb. He was a bodybuilder and taking steroids. He wasn't incredibly smart and had just barely gotten through college. And he was working minimum pay jobs while he worked towards his true desire.
He was applying for the firefighter school in our major metro city. If accepted, it would be a lifetime job for him and a career he’d wanted since he was young. He talked often during our workout sessions about how much it meant to him. I have had countless EMS and fire department contacts through my healthcare career.
He also knew I was knowledgeable about medicine. After he started to ask questions about steroids, I made sure to give him just enough info to have him want to ask me more. I then made sure he started emailing me his steroid questions. Ironically, he used an account that even had his full name in the address.
After a private investigator confirmed the affair, I moved my plan into action. So, when I was ready to leave my wife, I contacted several of the FD officers who sat on the review board. I gave them the emails from one of their candidates admitting he was using substances and lied about it during the interview process. He was slated to be a part of the incoming class as he’d done quite well. But he was rejected.
I used my contacts in the EMS community to make sure that he’d never be accepted to a major fire department within a 200-mile radius. He and my wife took my dream marriage, so I took something that had just a profound effect.
105. While You Were Away
I was living with a friend of mine, and this girl who I didn’t know that well. We became friends and started hanging out. I ended up getting into a car accident on the freeway and had to move home. It took me a few days to get back to pack, and when I did, most of my stuff was missing. I was furious and upset about it. The girl told me my friend had people over who'd maybe taken things.
While she was gone, I stopped packing to go into her room and snoop. I couldn't believe my eyes. This girl had taken over half of what was in my closet and hidden it in her room. She had everything from my CDs, antique perfume bottles from my grandmother, down to socks and bras. I was livid and packed the stuff that she was trying to take from me.
With more garbage bags, I grabbed all of the clothes she had hanging up and anything else I could find. I lit it all on fire. She called me franticly and said her things were missing. So, I told her the people who'd taken my stuff must be responsible. Once she knew she'd been caught, she threatened me and told me she was going to call the authorities.
I told her to go ahead because they wouldn’t have found anything.
106. 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.
107. One Problem Too Nanny
As a nanny, it’s weird when your boss is a mom with no actual experience being a boss. I worked for my neighbor who was my worst boss. She wasn’t that bad when I first started working for her. Over the course of the year, she kept adding more and more things for me to do. Eventually, I wasn’t just taking care of the baby. I became their maid.
If you think I got a pay increase, think again. And then, things got even worse. Eventually, I was basically this woman's personal assistant. She got a taste of power and took advantage of it. As a young 19-year-old, it was hard for me to see how bad it was. But I knew one thing: my boss was a nut job. One day, she got mad and fired me. The very next morning, she called me asking where I was. It was so confusing.
But I was broke and young, so I went back. At that point, I did everything from taking care of the baby to hand washing her delicates. She gave me a “uniform” and reprimanded me if it and my hair and makeup were not well kept. When she got pregnant with baby #2 and suggested I become a "wet nurse" I just flat out said no. So she fired me. Then, a few weeks later, she showed up at my house begging me to come back!
Saying "no way" and slamming the door in her face was so, so satisfying.
108. I Can See It in Your Eyes
My boyfriend’s younger brother and I were taking a bike ride down the street to the shops late one afternoon. As we get onto the main road, we notice a dude across the street heading in the opposite direction. He is walking with a limp, his head is bowed, and he’s got a plastic bag in his hand. We're only a few meters away from him when he crosses the street onto our side.
As the bro rides past him, this stranger lifts his head up and smiles in his direction as they pass each other. I'm a little while behind, so I don't pay too much attention to this—that is, until the bro stops, turns around, and gives me a funny look, just as this guy is passing him by. I still don't think too much of it at this point, assuming that he had just stopped to let me catch up.
As soon as I myself passed the stranger and made eye contact with him, I realized that this was not the case. When the stranger looked over and nodded at me, I saw nothing in his eyes. When I say nothing, I mean like black pits where his eyes should have been or just an eyeball that looked entirely black. I don’t know how else to describe it.
When I finally catch up to the bro, we stop around the corner and he says to me "Did you see that???" "You mean his eyes?!" I asked. "Yeah, it looked like they weren't even there!" he replied. We then kind of sat there for a while processing what we had both just seen. Had the bro not related the same feeling and experience to me as I had felt when the stranger looked at me, I doubt I would have ever thought anything of it.
I probably would have just assumed it was the light angles playing tricks on me or some such thing. It was a sunny afternoon, so glare certainly could have played a part. He could've been wearing contacts, I don't know. But none of those explanations feel like they fit. We got home later on and told everybody what had happened, but no one believed us. They still don't to this day.
109. A Good Foundation
So, I do a lot of insurance work, and I try cases of all kinds, large and small. I had a small case, over about $2,600, from where a contractor drove into a retaining wall at this lady's house (who also happened to be his neighbor) and damaged it. He wouldn't fix it, and, after like eight months, the homeowner allowed her insurance company—my client—to have it fixed and then sent the bill to the contractor.
Surprise surprise, the contractor wouldn't pay. There was lots of squabbling between my client and the contractor's insurance company, who offered less than $500 on a $2,600 bill. We had a trial to settle it. I brought our claims adjuster and the homeowner. The defense attorney brought the contractor and an adjuster from the contractor's insurance company.
Everything goes fine with questioning the homeowner, who was a sweet, middle-aged woman. She, like most people, knows nothing about the finer points of masonry. Then, we get to my claims adjuster. He says, "Well, we paid $2,600 to have this fixed, but I'm not an expert on masonry." However, he also discussed how estimates on masonry were made.
I close my proof. Next, the contractor gets up on the stand. They go over what exactly happened with the retaining wall. Then, he testifies that he "knows for a fact" that the $2,600 invoice includes overhead and profit and accuses my client of "running a scam." The judge strikes the answer. I look down at the estimate for repair and grin from ear to ear.
It says, in bold print, "This amount does not include overhead or profit." I look at the invoice. It's the same amount as the estimate. This guy is lying through his teeth—and I’m going to catch him. On cross-examination, I show the contractor the invoice. "Sir, this is a $2,600 invoice for repair, correct." "Yes." Then I show him the estimate.
"Sir, this is a $2,600 estimate for the same repairs, correct?" "Yes." "They're the same amount, correct?" "Yes." "Does the estimate say it does not include profit or overhead?" "Uh..." "Does it?" "Yes." "Didn't you just testify that you knew for a fact that the estimate included overhead?" "I don't know." "What don't you know?"
At this point, the contractor is furious and beats his hand on the stand. "It doesn't include overhead and profit, does it?" "I guess not." "But you said it did, right?" I pass the witness. But I wasn’t done yet. Next, the defense attorney calls the contractor's insurance company's adjuster. He testifies about how much he thought it should cost, like $500.00.
I cross-examine him. "How did you make this estimate?" "I put the numbers into a computer program." "How do you know what numbers to put in?" "Uh..." "Are you a contractor?" "No." "Are you an expert in masonry?" "No." "Have you ever worked in construction?" "No." "And the computer programs spit out what you put in?" "Yes."
"And you can just put in whatever numbers you want?" "Yes." "And it makes an estimate based on the numbers you pick?" "Yes." "But you don't know anything about masonry?" "No." The adjuster just testified that he made up the estimate. Defense closes proof. And the judge takes the matter under advisement. So let’s recap all this glory.
The contractor lied and was discredited, and the adjuster for the contractor admitted he just made everything up. We got $1,000 out of the trial. Less than half of what we sought but double what the defendant argued it should be. It was a win in my book.
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110. I’ll Huff And I’ll Puff
When I was 14, we shared our house with another man who lived on the floor below us. I was home with my younger brother while our mom went out. All of a sudden, the man came screaming and banging on the door. He was yelling about how downstairs was flooding and it was coming from our bathroom. I didn't know what to do.
But because he was an adult, I trusted him and opened the door. He came in, ran into the bathroom, and did something. After I told my mom, she called management. What they told her was truly disturbing. There had never been a leak. There didn't find water marks or any other signs of flooding. So, my mom told us not to open the door for him again.
The next time my mom went out, he came banging on the door again. We told him that our mom said we shouldn't open the door for him. His reaction was terrifying. He did not appreciate that and he went absolutely crazy. "Let me in now!" He screamed over and over again all the while banging on the door. We never found out why he wanted to come in.
111. Home (Almost) Alone
Once, my brother and I were sleeping, and my dad had just left for work. A little while after, someone entered the house and told the dog to be quiet. I didn't recognize the voice. I was 100% sure it was a burglar who thought the house was empty as my dad had just left. I sneaked into my brother's room, shaking with fear, woke him up, and told him that a stranger had just entered the house. He called the authorities on the spot.
Two minutes later, two official cars and four law officials were at the door of our house. Turns out, our neighbor was just playing a sick joke on us. He had put on a "funny voice" or something for no reason whatsoever. My dad was furious with him when he found out.
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