People From Around The World Share Tales Of Nasty Neighbors

Good neighbors can make for a cohesive community and a happier home life. On the other hand, bad neighbors can turn what is otherwise a suburban paradise into a living nightmare. Good neighbors will invite you over for barbecues, offer to cut your grass if you don’t have time, and will always let you have a cup of sugar.

Bad neighbors don’t clean up after their dogs, practice the tuba at two o’clock in the morning, or sunbathe in the most revealing bathing suits they can find. Most of us have had a less-than-perfect neighbor before, but have been lucky enough to avoid living next to someone truly terrible. The people in the stories on this list were (or still are) not so lucky, having to share a property line with some of the most annoying neighbors ever…

NOT ENTITLED TO MY FENCE

Our neighbor complained that we fixed something on their fence. I said I thought it was my fence because that’s what’s on the deeds and plot plan (this was a brand new development).

They insisted on an investigation and I said, “Hold on, let’s discuss it. Even if it turns out to be my fence, I’ll move things so you can’t see anything.” Nope. They complained to the developers.

Turns out the developers had gifted them a strip of land when they built our house, but their sense of entitlement led them to believe that the brand new fence on my brand new plot was theirs too.

The developer contacted me telling me I’m in breach of contract because they’re scared of the neighbors who’ve commissioned before and sent a letter with the contract text to prove it.

Only they sent only the first half of the paragraph. I sent back the full paragraph which fully explains how I’m perfectly within my rights. Reddit: SoForAllYourDarkGods

YOU CAN’T WAKE HIM

My neighbours son used to go out partying all week, bring his friends back and then party at his place till 5/6am. The issue, he would party upstairs in his bedroom, music blaring, yelling. If it was just constant noise I could sleep through it but not that.

I was running on no sleep and had to be up at 8 to go to work. I was getting in trouble at work for being exhausted and no one believed it was because my neighbour wasn’t letting me sleep… It was hell. So after trying to talk to the dick, we posted a note through the door.

His mum worked nights. She got home and all hell broke loose. The note was reasonable, we asked them to move the after party downstairs because we couldn’t sleep through all the noise. We didn’t intend for his mum to get the note. Wow, she was so mad.

When my alarm went off an hour or so later he was angrily yelling that it wasn’t fair that my alarm woke him up every day. Yes, an alarm going off once or twice before work was totally unreasonable and his music blasting all night was. The parties stopped though. Reddit: Zanki

FOSTERING KITTIES

We rented a house that had another apartment in the basement. The lady who lived below us kept to herself for the most part so we didn’t see her much. Part of our rental was a detached garage and she asked if she could put small deep freezer in our garage. We were using it for storage, so we were fine with it.

After a couple weeks of having her freezer in there, it somehow got unplugged and she came unglued on us and wanted us to pay to replace everything. I understood her frustration, but we hardly ever went into the garage since it was only for storage.

In other words, we definitely didn’t unplug it and our landlord agreed. But she was PISSED. She had a son in college who came home for the summer. During that summer he found a cat and brought it home. His mom said no cats inside, so he would feed the kitten outside. She was pretty wild.

He left for school again in the fall and we noticed that the cat was getting very thin. We started feeding her outside in her usual spot. Around Christmas we bought a bag of cat food and I made a plate of cookies and left them both at our neighbor’s front door. The next day they were both back on our porch. Rude. Whatever.

We continued to feed the cat because she obviously wasn’t feeding her. A few weeks later the cat came to our door crying. She was trying to come inside. Super weird considering she was pretty wild and we had never let her inside before.

I let her in and noticed she was pregnant and for sure about to have babies. I made her a little corner and she had babies the next day. We let her stay in the house with us but we knew we couldn’t keep her. I went downstairs to talk to our neighbor. She said that her son’s cat was a boy so the cat we had obviously wasn’t his.

I posted on Facebook to see if anyone was interested in fostering a cat and her kittens because we couldn’t keep her. Her son saw my post on Facebook and got SUPER mad at his mom. She then called the cops and said that I stole her cat and lied to her when she confronted me about having the cat in my possession.

It was the stupidest, most frustrating thing that had ever happened to me as far as neighbors go. The police called animal control who then contacted us. They asked us to take the cat and her kittens to the shelter so that if our neighbor really wanted the cats she would have to pay the fee as well as get her vaccinated and licensed.

We did take them to the shelter and as far as I know, she did pay the fees to pick her up. However, I did see her on the animal shelter’s Facebook adoption page not long after that. Poor baby. For the record, I was heartbroken to have to take her to the shelter.

I felt awful for moving her and her babies around like that, I am sure that she was so anxious and scared. We would have tried to keep her but we were moving to a new place that same week (hence the urgency to find her a foster home) and we weren’t allowed to have pets.

All authorities involved thought that she was nuts and I think they were also frustrated to have to deal with this stupid situation. Reddit: LePointlessPorcupine

THE SQUEAK THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

Lived above a guy in a really old fourplex and I guess the wood floors squeaked really loudly when I walked around. It’s not like I was stomping around either but the dude would constantly come upstairs and bang on my door and yell at me to stop moving around.

I felt bad for him in the beginning because he seemed genuinely frustrated about it, but he didn’t seem to understand or believe that I wasn’t even slamming my feet on my floor/his ceiling.

I called my landlord several times asking him if he had a solution. I couldn’t move 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.

I was literally either tip-toeing around or hopping from my couch to my chair in order to get out of my living room so that he wouldn’t be standing at my door yelling at me.

Finally, I went downstairs one day and asked if we could talk about the situation because I felt like maybe if I looked him in the eye when he was calm and explained that I wasn’t doing it on purpose and that there was literally nothing more I could do (I had already bought areas rugs!) he would maybe understand.

So I went downstairs and very nicely explained and he seemed to be listening. And then he said, “I’m about at the point that 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 was more or less being threatened and a month later the guy moved out. And then as soon as I could I did too. Super crappy situation. Reddit: ElleTheFox

TOMATO TOMATA

My significant other and I rented the middle unit of a one-story, three-unit triplex. A sidewalk led directly up to our front door. On either side of the sidewalk, about 10 feet directly in front and slightly to the left and right of our front door, there were two very small garden areas fashioned out of landscape timbers.

For six months of living there, nothing was planted in them, so we decided to buy and plant some flowers to brighten it up. The next day we found a handwritten letter on our door in which our left-side neighbor informed us that he was deeply offended that we had taken the liberty of planting flowers in his garden.

As he explained, the planter box was on his side of the sidewalk. He intended to plant a tomato plant there and he planned to follow through with his plans whether there were flowers or not.

In a letter of our own, we explained that a tomato plant was not the intended use of a flower garden and that his planting a tomato directly in front of our door would be inappropriate.

Next day, we come home to find our flowers dug up and placed in front of our door and a tomato plant, complete with a metal cage, planted in its place. Reddit: LikeChicken

SPRINKLER KAREN

On Thursday my entire lawn was turned into dirt to prepare it for resodding. My sprinkler system was also repaired. Friday my lawn was resodded and my sprinkler system programmed to water everyday. All within the city guidelines for resodding of lawns.

While I was still talking to the man that resodded my lawn as he turned on the sprinkler system, this woman from 2 houses down was approaching my house and taking pictures and video. She walked away when the man walked towards her asking “Can I help you?”. Seems harmless, right?

Saturday morning at 5:30am this woman knocked on my door telling me I should turn my sprinkler off since it is not my watering day. I explained to her my lawn was resodded and I am allowed to water everyday for 3-4 weeks.

She gave me a speech about how I’m stealing water from the city. Water that should be conserved so others won’t have to worry about getting what they need. I told her we are not in a drought and that once 1 month passes by that my sprinkler system will be programmed to work on watering days only. I kept my cool.

All while she had her phone pointed right at me. I had enough, so I told her to leave and closed the door. Yesterday morning, she knocked on my door and began recording me. I reminded her I was allowed to water everyday for up to a month since my lawn was resodded and she needs to leave me alone. Door closed.

This morning, same thing. I opened the door long enough to tell her if she didn’t stop harassing me early in the morning, I would press charges for harassment. About a half hour later there was police at my door. It seems that this karen called the police saying I threatened her.

I showed them video surveillance of her taking pictures and video on Friday and of her knocking on my door in the early AM hours shouting at me about my lawn. It was obvious from what I showed them that I wasn’t the problem. I wished them a nice day.

As I was closing my door, this karen approaches them with her phone showing pics an video and tried to say me saying I would calling the police was a threat. I listened as they told her that it’s obvious she is the one out of sorts and what she is doing is stalking and harassment.

She yelled at them saying I was stealing city water. She shoved one of the officers. As she was being arrested she kept shouting this was my fault and I better pay her bail. Fat chance. Reddit: CaseyN77215

NOT CAMPING IN MY YARD

Several years ago, I lived next door to this lovely family: a single mom with her two young kids (about six and eight) and her mother. Everything was perfectly pleasant until one day her brother came to live with them too.

This uncle would be a total jerk to his niece and nephew, and actually blew cigarette smoke in my kids’ faces when they were over there playing. My kids stopped going over after that.

But one day Uncle Fester comes over to our house and knocks on our door. He has a favor to ask. Apparently, his friend is about to get out of prison, and he’s going to come to stay with them for a little while until he gets back on his feet.

So what does he need from me? Well, we lived on the corner lot of a cul-de-sac, so we’ve got a really large backyard. They don’t have any room to put him up in their house, so he wants us to let his fresh-out-of-prison buddy pitch a tent in our backyard and spend his nights there.

When I let him know that this was in no way okay with us, he responds, “You know, your yard is so big… He could probably do it anyway and you wouldn’t even know.”

I let him know that I would prosecute him for trespassing if I found that he had and that I’d be watching our backyard like a hawk now that he had made that threat. Reddit: HotKarl27

THE NEIGHBORHOOD HERO

Lived in a small apartment and my neighbours always cranked up their music to 11. Like loud, loud. And until something like 7am. Maybe later, but that’s when I would leave for work. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear my own tv over it.

My neighbours and I would bang on the door but they would never open the door. It was like trying to sleep at a festival. Then at some point I found out they often left for a bar across the street but would just leave the music on.

So I would pull the breaker for their apartment, but they would just come back at 5am and turn it back on. It was reported by heaps of people, but nothing was ever done.

So at some point I would jam their lock when they went out so their keys wouldn’t work anymore and they had to get the property manager in while the music was blasting inside. After a couple of times of that happening they were evicted. Maybe I’m the bad neighbor in this story… Reddit: time_to_reset

GOOD DEED FOR A VERY BAD NEIGHBOR

When I was a teenager and lived with my parents, we had this one neighbor family that seemed sort of off. One day, the father knocks on our door and tells my parents they haven’t had power for a long time.

They begged us to run an extension cord to one of our outside outlets for the day so his young kids could have cold milk with their cereal in the morning. My parents agreed to do this for one day. The neighbor kept up his part and disconnected the cable after that day.

A week later, they hooked it back up again without us noticing. A month goes by and our electricity bill is basically double what it normally is. My parents head to the backyard and find the cable plugged in. So they yank it out and confront the neighbor.

At first, the neighbor will only open the door a crack. My stepdad realized the reason: he was concealing a weapon. That’s when we began to suspect that there was something really wrong with these people.

Stepdad demands an explanation as to why the cable was run to our outlet and the dude just sort of mumbles incoherently and shuts the door, locking it. The bad neighbor family was in a duplex and their neighbor comes around and asks what’s up.

My parents explain the whole story and how the next step was calling the police. The good neighbor is a former police chief and is friends with the entire force, so he offers to make the call.

Several cop cars arrive. The bad neighbor’s father and mother are arrested. Turns out they were up to some illegal shenanigans. The kids were put into foster care. Reddit: Naleid

SOMETIMES A FENCE IS NOT ENOUGH

My neighbor sprayed our hedge between our houses with something that killed it, which we planted there next to her cyclone fence so we wouldn’t have to look at her. Everything we’ve planted there dies, and they always start dying from her side.

She’s super nosy and is always watching out the window which is why we plant things there! She also moved her in-ground sprinklers onto what I think is our property, touching our driveway, and sets them to go off in the middle of the night when our cars are parked there.

She refuses to set them to go off while we’re at work because it “interrupts her yard work time.” The water spots on our cars are irrigation water, and leave huge white amoeba-shaped marks down one side of our car!

I paid someone $250 last year to use acid to remove them and they were still faintly there. She actually had the nerve to suggest our son park his car there because the color of his car won’t show the water spots as badly!

Her husband walks up and down the backyard fence and whistles at our dog to make her bark, then the wife complains to us about our dog barking (our dogs are inside dogs, never outside for more than a few minutes at a time. They’re not out there all day barking).

When we have a family member house sit, the neighbor complains about the number of cars in our driveway and parked in front of OUR house. Says she doesn’t like looking at a “used car lot.” She’s a real peach. Reddit: 41andfun

DROP THE BAG

Okay so, 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.

It takes me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get home. Anyways, when I get home around 12:30 AM, I’m exhausted and 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).

So when I first moved into my apartment, I always heard banging from the neighbor downstairs. I never thought anything of it, I was always like “Is this person serious? They’re working on their apartment at 1:00 in the morning?!”

It wasn’t til maybe 3 weeks ago that I realized that he/she 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 become more conscious of the noise I make when getting home and 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. Reddit: [deleted]

DING DONG DITCHER

We had a neighbor of ours—a retired police 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 us.

He never told us about this, so I don’t feel too bad. He also keyed the car to one of my houseguests at the time. Finally, one day before we were moving out, the doorbell ditched us and we caught him. My wife and I looked at each other dead in the eye and without a word I sprinted out the front door and she took off out the back.

We had this unspoken thing where we were like, “Let’s trap this loser!” I’m more impressed that we did this and were so tight that we didn’t need to say anything to one another. I caught up with our shirtless neighbor and he put his hands up and said, “Okay, you got me.”

I said, “Dude, what the heck? Why are you doing this?” He then proceeded to tell me about my barking dog. He apologized and said he should’ve told us about it. Reddit: Anastik

CAUGHT DRINKING ROOT BEER

He was really nosey and for some reason he hated me. I was a 14-year-old girl and I don’t remember doing anything to this man, but he would always rat me out to my parents if he saw me outside.

He told them I was smoking, having sex in the tree in the front lawn, dealing, hurting animals… he just made things up! If I were in my backyard, he would watch me through our privacy fence.

Once I was out back drinking a root beer (one of those in a glass bottle). He popped up from behind the fence with this huge smirk on his face and said, “CAUGHT YOU!” and tattled on me for drinking underage.

My dad brought him out back and showed him it was a root beer and then explained to him that if he ever caught him looking through our fence again, he would call the police. Reddit: HaphazardSquirrels

GRASS GROWS BACK ANYWAY

The neighbor I used to have across the street from me once yelled at me for having a car parked partially on the grass (of my own lawn). The streets were narrow, and you’re technically not supposed to park in them.

The car was parked so that the tires on the passenger side of the car were both on the grass (by about a foot) but it was at least helping to not block the street. This was only temporary.

When she started yelling at me from her house, I thought it was because she didn’t like seeing the car in the street. I could have at least understood that. But no, she was furious (and I do mean furious) simply because the tires on my grass were going to ruin my lawn, and my ruined lawn was going to lower her property value.

She told me that parking on my grass was illegal, that her husband was an attorney, and that she was going to be calling the police. I dared her to call, and I invited her husband to come talk to me. Neither happened. Reddit: manticor225

THE COMMUNAL POOL

They insisted that we pay to have a gate installed between our backyard fences so that they may use our above-ground pool as they please, preferably when they invite friends over. When we denied it, they threw a hissy fit and found an excuse to “punish” us.

You see, the pool was going through some (expensive) issues with leakage into the yard. They threatened to call the fine-happy HOA because the water was (barely) leaking into their yard they rarely used and their dog was getting sick drinking the water (it wasn’t).

Not wanting to deal with that crap and also wanting to clean our own backyard of the pond that began housing frogs, my father spent his birthday day off from work in the Texas heat digging a trench and installing a pipe so that the water could drain.

The neighbors came outside and harassed dad the entire time he was digging the trench, telling him it would’ve just been easier to install the gate. Would’ve been easier to install a shovel into your frontal lobe, freeloaders. Reddit: Vinyl-Bread

OVER THE LINE

When I first moved into my house I didn’t know my exact property line yet, so I put wood by a tree I thought was mine. The neighbor came over saying it was his tree.

So I went ahead and got a survey to settle any troubles. He was pissed when I got 10 feet beyond the tree. Problems solved though! Reddit: icecreampopncereal

SHOT IN THE DARK

Upstairs neighbor came home from the bar with his friend, both wasted. They were screwing around with a pistol and accidentally shot through their floor – down into my apartment. I got hit in the stomach.

Called 911 and when the ambulance was taking me away, my panicked fiancé was getting ready to leave because the EMTs told her to follow instead of riding with. My neighbor came down and was like “what happened? We heard a commotion!” Cops were called and he got arrested. Reddit: narcolepsyinc

MAIL POLICE

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 she was calling the cops and that it was illegal for me to check my parents’ mail. I actually believed this until I was 15 years old. Reddit: mugniftw

DIABOLICAL BIRD

I’m probably someone’s bad experience, although they don’t know it’s me yet. The malfunctioning smoke alarm in my apartment complex hallway has almost become a sort of a bitter joke among my neighbors–it’s been chirping multiple times a day for the past two months, but no matter what, maintenance just can’t seem to make it stop.

What my neighbors don’t know is that the smoke alarm only chirped consistently for about three days. Everything since then has been my parrot, who liked the sound so much that she’s been mimicking it as often as she likes (read: 57+ times daily, this being about month 4).

They don’t know I have a parrot. The woman immediately next door does think I have a dog, though, because the feathery little brat also likes to bark and then scold herself for it. Reddit: criminyWindex

PUTTING OUT THE TRASH

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 would leave them in the middle of the driveway and there is no stopping on our street during rush hour (bus route) so you either need to park a block away to move the garbage can and then go get the car or risk getting a ticket while you move it.

Since the houses are quite close together we found out the first time by turning in and hitting the garbage can because it was just far enough back that you couldn’t see it until you turned. Reddit: GrumpyKitten1

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

My old neighbor used to walk his dog on a leash to poop in my yard. My mom had me throw it back in his yard once, he called the police and claimed he never did that. A few months later my family and I were going out of town and after we left our house, my mom realized she had forgotten something.

We turned around only to find our neighbor standing in the middle of our yard with his dog on a leash dropping a nice dukey in our front yard. All I remember is my mom winding down her window and yelling “[Bleep] you Don!” Reddit: thewikemeston

THANKS FOR THE FREE FENCE

She wants us to tear out our driveway because gravity and water roll downhill. She’s a loon. When the driveway was put in 25 years ago, it was all done by contractors and 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. More than normal. So of course she had 3 inches of standing water. She said she talked to a lawyer and her case was solid. And that she corroborated everything with our builder neighbor across the street.

When intimidation didn’t work and hubby basically told her to get lost, we came home to a fence separating our properties. 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 and we haven’t talked to her in a year. Reddit: IanandAbby

PLAYING FOOTSIES

My across-the-hall apartment neighbor is married has two kids and he is so weird. Like just overall off-putting. Anyways, I leave my sandals out next to my door (no shoes in the house) every night.

It so happens 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 open the door I catch him caressing and smelling my sandals. I freeze and just mildly freak.

He saw me staring, did a weird giggle, said something about his kids calling him and then he yanked me into this weird side hug. Now I leave my shoes in a box inside my house. Ugh. Reddit: MsAtomicBomb97

PURPOSEFUL POTHOLES

I moved onto a dirt road with several houses on it. My friend has lived down the road his whole life. The people next to my house only come up for the summer and are never there in the winter.

When summer comes, however, there are always multiple potholes on the road in front of their house. Curious, I asked my friend why. He said the neighbors come up in the summer and dig the holes themselves in order to ‘slow down’ traffic. Reddit: emf3rd31495

HUMMING AND DISTRACTING

My upstairs neighbor — long story short — got super heated about how I didn’t see him in the hallway and say hi once and then blamed his outburst on the fact that laundry makes him cranky.

After having a couple of dozen drinks, he tried to get into my apartment last Wednesday afternoon and then asked if I had a problem with him.

When I explained that his behavior makes me uneasy, he called me passive-aggressive and then said EVERYONE forgets where they live sometimes, and he’d forgotten where his apartment was because he was humming as he walked up the stairs. Reddit: clocksailor

THE WONDERFUL JERRY

When I moved in, Jerry seemed eccentric but harmless. Apparently, my landlord had a conversation with him and told him to leave me alone. This upset Jerry greatly. He cornered me one day while I was unlocking my door and asked me to come sit with him in his apartment.

I don’t think the place had ever been cleaned and he had hoarder tendencies. He drank a bottle of wine in about 30 minutes, commenting on all the sad things in his life. Luckily he passed out, so I could leave.

One day while I was getting ready for work, he came into my apartment with another guy and tried to measure my walls for the “renovation” he was going to do to combine his and my apartments into one unit. But, don’t worry, I could just live with him when it was all finished. Reddit: TracingBroads

BAD NEIGHBOR, GOOD MUSIC

My upstairs neighbor was trying to force me to move out. So she put her speakers on her floor pointing straight down and blared them at full volume. The instant it started, I leaped up in outrage at her audacity, but after a few seconds, I realized I really, really like this song.

So I give it one song and as it’s winding down I prepare my outrage once again, only to be choked off when the next song is also a perennial favorite. I didn’t even bother getting upset before realizing that I liked the third song, too.

She stopped at midnight when she was legally required to, and apparently realized she wasn’t getting much “bang” for her buck as far as irritating me, so she didn’t try it anymore. Reddit: Oudeis16

BLACK THUMB

This neighbor guy ripped up and threw away my mum’s sweet pea plant that she got from her friend who died of cancer.

When she complained, he started ranting about how our garden is a disgrace and an embarrassment to the neighborhood and that we need to replace all the grass and plants with concrete. Reddit: annoyednerd2

SO VERY LUCKY

His dog went through our trash and got sick. The dog ended up needing to go to the vet and told me when he bumped into me at my old job.

“Yeah, it was like $5,000 to get her back to health. You’re lucky I don’t bill you guys.” Mind you this guy let his dog go through everyone’s yard and poop wherever it wanted; it’s not like the dog escaped, he just willingly didn’t care. Reddit: The_Axem_Ranger

IT’S SHARED FOR A REASON

Yelled at me for entering a shared garage to get some of our stuff. He later claimed I was after his gun, which was stored in a gun locker with a lock to which only he had the key.

He was in his 60’s or 70’s at the time. Reddit: Sharkey_B

NO PRAISE FOR NOSINESS

My neighbor rang one day to be nosy and check why my husband’s car was home on a workday. I politely thanked him for his call and let him know my husband was sleeping and had a cold, nothing to worry about.

Apparently, I was meant to praise him profusely for being such a caring neighbor, and my husband was meant to follow up with a call once he was awake and also lavish him with praise for caring. Because we didn’t, we got to hear about it loudly every afternoon until we moved several months later. Reddit: macadamiaicecream

LITTLE BAGS OF BAD

It started by letting her kids and animals run wild in my backyard. So, I dropped $5,000 on a six-foot privacy fence that my father-in-law and I built. Then she had her water turned off for lack of payment and began pooping in plastic bags and throwing them over my fence.

When confronted about it, she kindly denied it and then took to social media. I called the landlord and had an eviction notice served the next day. Reddit: Durania

NEIGHBORHOOD MEAN LADY

She called the cops on our then-six-year-old son because he was playing outdoors on public property. It wasn’t a road or anything. There was no danger whatsoever.

He wasn’t screaming or anything either, she just didn’t like kids. She also told our three-year-old daughter that she was ugly. Reddit: azerty1976

REDEFINE EMERGENCY

He rang my doorbell at 4 am over and over and asked me to go with him because there was an emergency and it was important.

I went with him. He led me over to new his car and started asking what I thought of it while looking very proud. Reddit: Aqueluna

NEVER TOO LATE FOR COOKIES

I just moved into my new apartment in Chicago and was woken up at 3 AM to some loud knocking on my door. Given it’s Chicago, I thought the worst and assumed someone with a loaded gun was on the other side of that door.

A moment passes and I sit silently in my bed running through self-defense scenarios in my head. I then hear a woman yell something through my door that had me on tilt.

This lady says, “This is your neighbor, I was just wondering if you’d like to buy some girl scout cookies.” Naturally, I ignored her offer and proceeded to go back to sleep angry and confused. Either my neighbor was high or trying to rob me. Reddit: Norezu

UNFINISHED WORK

My neighbor tore down a part of my freaking fence under the guise of fixing two posts… but hasn’t gotten around to actually FIXING it for almost two months.

The last conversation was me asking him to get estimates to have a fence company come in for the repair and him agreeing. Reddit: challam

WHAT A SCUMBAG

My neighbor is a complete sociopath. He takes advantage of the fact that my grandmother (whom I now live with as her caretaker) has dementia.

He would send a rotation of the three people that live there over about three times a week to mow her lawn and cash out on her inability to remember previous payments. Reddit: raisedinyourhands

JEALOUS PARKER

When we are parked on the street normally with her car either in front of us or behind us, she would move her car as much as possible away and get the other car’s owner (in front or behind us) to move away as well.

So it would look like we took two spots… then she would complain that we were always taking two spots. Reddit: CaptainChrisNova

DIDN’T HAVE ANOTHER 20

When I was a kid, my next-door neighbor sued the guy across from him because his tree got tall enough that it blocked the sun for an additional 15 minutes each morning from when he had purchased the house 20 years prior.

He was about 80 years old and his argument was that in another 20 years, it will likely be 30 minutes. He died less than a year after his case was thrown out. Reddit: righthanddan

LOUD, MEET LOUDER

I was living with my brother and a new family moved in downstairs. It was a mother and two boys in their teens, and the mom had just been divorced. From what we could tell it was a bummer time.

So these two teenage boys fought constantly. They were incredibly loud and I tried really hard to be empathetic and not complain. We would mention it to their mom every now and then and she was very apologetic but it kept going.

One Sunday they woke us up at 6 am, slamming doors and throwing stuff and just being ridiculous. My brother and I set up every piece of audio equipment we had in the house — a bass amp, two PA’s, and a full drum set.

And we blasted Hypnotize by Biggie for about 10 minutes and played along on bass and drums, PA’s on full. Never heard those kids make noise again. Not sure if we shocked them or if they finally got it or what. But we did prove who could make more noise, I guess. Reddit: abeuscher

PAINTED CAT

The neighbors have two outside cats. They wander in our garden all the time. One day the neighbor lady comes stomping over, her grumpy husband glaring at us over the fence between our yards. She proceeds to yell at me for putting something on her cat. She points to the cat’s tummy, which is covered in pink and blue, and yellow streaks.

To her, this is proof I’m poisoning her cat. I point out my young daughter’s sidewalk chalk all over the patio and explain that the cat keeps coming over and rolling all over her drawings. The lady looks at the chalk, looks at the cat, looks at me, and then stomps away. Reddit: mumfywest

ONLY THE COMPLAINER

I was clearing out some trees in the woods next to my house. This lady stopped and asked, all snotty and arrogant, “Did you ask your neighbors if you could do that?”

I replied, “When my neighbors start paying my mortgage I’ll get their permission.” It should be noted that many people stopped and complimented how cleaned-up and nice it looked. Reddit: [deleted]

PUMPKIN WORSHIP

My neighbor attempted to sue me for letting all the neighborhood kids carve pumpkins with my kids. We bought a lot of pumpkins and plastic carvers and the neighbor’s kids came over too.

When they took their pumpkins home, their parents called the police and filed a report saying we were trying to influence their kids with Satan. Reddit: ob12_99

APPLE FELL FAR FROM THE TREE

I live outside the city limits on a wooded acreage. A year ago, I took one of my dogs out at 10 pm for her last pee before bed. I noticed a light on my neighbor’s property on the other side of his pond, close to the edge of the woods.

‘That’s odd,’ I thought. ‘I’ve never noticed that before.’ After looking at it for a minute, I realized it was fire. I called him and told him there was a fire in his woods. He blew me off and told me, “Oh I was just burning some leaves today.” He was totally unconcerned.

I called him a moron, hung up, and called the fire department. They came out and he was all apologetic to them. He said he didn’t know it had still been burning. It’s really his parent’s place. He moved in after his father died. We lived next to his parents for 35 years and never a crossword. Lovely people. He’s not. Reddit: [deleted]

HOW DARE ANYTHING CHANGE

She grew up in the neighborhood but moved out when she got married. About 10 years later, she buys her parents’ house when they decide to retire someplace else and moves back to the neighborhood.

She immediately has a problem with how everything isn’t the same as when she was a kid. My youngest son and her oldest son were the same age, but my son didn’t want to hang out with hers. So she tells everyone in the neighborhood who will listen that my kids are bad and other kids should stay away from them.

The bus stop by our house has been in the same place since before we moved onto the street, but it’s not where it was when she was young so it has to be moved back! She had to walk an extra 30 feet to the stop and she couldn’t see her kid at the stop from her front windows.

She calls the school and the bus company for TWO years to get it moved. Lo and behold, the new school year starts and the stop has been moved back to where she wanted it. Her kid rides that bus for about 12 DAYS and she puts him in a private Christian school and he no longer rides the bus. Reddit: ROOster7431

SHE “KNEW” BETTER

The old lady in the condo below us called CPS because, in her words, “I’m a retired nurse and I KNOW a baby shouldn’t cry that much.” First of all, I had newborn twins. So she wasn’t hearing one baby cry, she was hearing two babies cry.

Second of all, one of my twins was colicky, so from around 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm there was basically nothing I could do to get him to stop crying. Third of all, how about knocking on the door and seeing if everything is okay or offering to help before calling CPS?

The investigation was open and shut because it was obvious our kids weren’t being neglected or abused in any way, but it added a whole new level of stress to an already crazy-stressful situation. Reddit: thisisgettingstupid_

YOU ARE A MONSTER

My neighbor and I share an outdoor laundry room. A couple of feral kittens were trapped on our property and we mutually agreed they could stay in the laundry room. Though they were initially pretty feral and aggressive, I tamed them to the point where they were cuddly babies.

However, they never really liked my neighbor (she was really grabby and didn’t let them warm up to her, she just tried to touch them and it freaked them out). One day, I came home and the cats were gone. Apparently, my favorite of the two had bitten her in response to her grabbiness and she had them put down. Reddit: fyresflite

SURE IT DID…

My wife and I were tearing down our shed to build a new one. After it was torn down, we had a pile of wood and siding waiting for a company to pick it up. After a week, I called them to remind them it still needed to be taken away. We started building the new shed, and a week later the pile was still there.

A couple of days later, I got a letter from the city stating the wood and tin needed to be gone within 30 days or I’d face a fine. My old lady neighbor came over the next day and said the pile was an eyesore and the city would take action.

To be clear, this pile of wood and siding stood three feet tall and was nicely stacked on the side of our privacy fence; our side of the privacy fence between her and us.

This is a fence we erected because she complained our kids were playing outside and she wanted quiet when she was hobbling around. A couple of days later the company finally picked the stuff up. She again came over, then said, “That letter must have worked…” Some people just have nothing better to do with their time. Reddit: JamesTheMannequin

EXTREME MEASURES AND CONSEQUENCES

Neighbor threw a “bark reduction” machine into the backyard because my dogs were a little noisy. And when that didn’t work, he threw pieces of hamburger with blueish pills inside of them over the wall.

I thank god that I was swimming in the pool when I saw the meat flying over the wall or else my dogs would have died. Jerk was arrested and charged. He no longer lives behind my parent’s house anymore. Reddit: DaemonDrayke

MAKING MARKS

Our neighbor called the utility company to mark up our yard for no reason other than to be petty. She called them acting as my mother and said not to call and confirm the appointment or ring the doorbell when they showed up to mark up our property as we have a newborn that will be sleeping.

The thing is the “newborn” was my 8-year-old brother. The utility company called, apologizing profusely for bothering us, but they had to tell us they would not make it today. Well, they record all phone calls so they provided us with the appointment call and we could tell immediately it was our neighbor.

We called the cops who gave her a talking-to. After listening to the tape, he could tell she was lying, but there was nothing we could do as no vandalism occurred on our property, and service was not provided. DJConwayTwitty

CLEARING SNOW

I started snow blowing at 8:30 one night when I got home because couldn’t get in the driveway. The neighbor leaned out her window screaming that she was trying to sleep. She also wanted me not to snow blow onto the four-foot section of lawn next to my driveway because then she couldn’t access her A/C unit in the middle of winter.

There was nowhere else to put the snow, so I simply told her no. She freaked, so I just stopped clearing her sidewalk, which I used to do to be nice. Reddit: rage675

UNCALM WATERS

The neighbors don’t like the pond that my parents have in the backyard. Frogs live in and around the pond and they make noise, particularly at night. The neighbor’s house is quite close and he has crazy thin walls. But it’s not my parents’ fault if the guy didn’t insulate his walls.

One day, the neighbor had had enough of the frogs, so he poured detergent into the pond — which is not only full of fish and frogs, but also where all the neighborhood cats go to drink. He gloated about it to another neighbor.

My parents confronted him about it. At first, he denied it and invited my dad to meet him in front of his house to fight it out. Then he came back all sorry, saying he had a hard job (we all do, dude).

He also said that he loves the pond and that the frogs are lovely, and that he wouldn’t do such a thing. My parents didn’t believe him and told him that next time they’ll call the cops and an environmental NGO. Reddit: glouns

NOT A PLAYGROUND

They felt it was appropriate to block the street so that their kids could play, and they constantly harassed my wife for driving 20 mph when residential areas are 30 mph. It came to a head when they decided to step in front of her car.

I went over to “discuss” things with them. After enduring the screaming, cursing, and threats of bodily harm, I told them to call the cops. That didn’t go over well. So I called the cops on them.

They were told to stop and that the street is no place for young children to play. They kept it up, so I took it up with code enforcement. It turns out that illegally blocking a public street without a permit is really expensive. Reddit: dreamscapesaga

A SLOW ENCROACHMENT

When I was a kid, our next-door neighbor decided to sell his house. One day, my father found him outside marking the property boundaries for a fence but he was way off the line. After a bit of a heated discussion, that neighbor, my father, and another neighbor with abutting land agreed to hire a professional to mark them.

The surveyor marked the line about twenty feet into the neighbor’s land on all sides and just over a hundred feet in the back wooded areas. Turns out he was trying to steal land from all the neighbors by slowly expanding his yard; the fence was an attempt to make it permanent for sale. Reddit: Data-Minor

MUD HAPPENS

When we moved in we had two concrete runners for a driveway and it was really muddy. It wasn’t on my parents’ “to-do” list to get a full driveway when the house needed new windows, siding, and a roof. When my dad would back out in bad weather he’d drag mud into the road.

Well, this was apparently a personal attack on the neighbor’s white driveway, which he power washed at least once a week. So he called the county on us every time it rained, but they didn’t do anything.

Then one day my mom was carrying in paint and the neighbor charged at her! He wanted to spill the paint on her car. My momma isn’t a witch, so she charged him back. He called the cops, who just showed up, chatted to my mom, and left. Reddit: Muhryzzle

PROVOKING PUPS

First, she started complaining about our dogs and how they’re upsetting everyone in the neighborhood but they hardly ever bark. So we went around to all the neighbors and asked them and no one knew what she was talking about.

We even caught her on our cameras sticking her hand through our fence to provoke the dogs to bark so she could record it. Eventually, we explained to the municipality that she was bonkers and that they don’t take her dog complaints too seriously anymore. Reddit: about_34_ninjas

NOT PAYING FOR YOUR GARBAGE

They would put their garbage cans in front of my driveway because they were not paying for garbage pickup and (somehow) thought he would be picked up in addition to mine by being in front of my house.

I was mostly mad that I had to see their ugly garbage cans in front of my house (along with cleanup the inevitable garbage that would fall out on the ground). Call the garbage company, and mentioned what I could do.

They knew about it, immediately marked their records, and sent someone out to put the street number on the bins. From there it only went downhill. Reddit: PabloXPicasso

KEEPING AN ODD LOG

He would log the times I would get home from work (I work late and get home around 1-2 am). He confronted me one night about driving too fast down the road.

Fair enough, speeding is wrong, but it was 1:30 am, and he was watching his neighbor’s movements. Reddit: ColeAppreciation

WANT YOUR SPOT?

He parked in my spot while I was out during vacation. That’s fine, I wasn’t there, whatever right? But when I got back he continued parking there, looks at me as I’m pulling in after an 18-hour trip and three airplane rides, and questions if I want to park AT MY SPOT.

This wasn’t a rhetorical question, he was literally upset that I wanted to park there. Reddit: mortryn

INDOOR SWIMMING

A few years back, my dumb neighbor bought his little kid (maybe four-years-old) one of those hard plastic pools to swim in. This is in an apartment building.

They lived above me. Long story short it breaks, water everywhere, leaks down through my ceiling all over my couch and coffee table, etc. Then he proceeds to say it’s not his problem. My landlord screwed him up financially, and his family was kicked out of the building for being idiots. Reddit: plagues138

TRASH PICKING

We had this super gross family living next to us in a suburban townhouse. They had like six kids between them who were constantly screaming and screwing with our stuff. The kids started going through our trash.

One evening, I threw out a broken suitcase. I guess it had some slinky Halloween costume in it or something because one of the kids came up to me as I was getting out of my vehicle and said: “We took your suitcase and my mom took your costume tehehehe!”

So I filled a box with cat poop, taped it up, wrote “handle with care” all over it, and put it in the trash. Then I watched from my window as the whole family took a box of cat poop into their house, opened it (presumably), and then brought it back out to the trash. Reddit: kmaexo

BOOBYTRAPPING THE FENCE

My neighbor that I share a backyard fence with decided to screw a bunch of grabber screws into the said fence, about dog height.

Not into anything, not to secure fence posts or slats, just random, pointy, knee-high screws resulting in doggy stitches. TWICE. Reddit: gingeslc

THE WORST NEIGHBOR IN THE WORLD

My neighbors and my family were absolutely fine for about 7 years. It’s a nice old man that was recently re-married. They have a 20-year-old student who parties from time to time which is fine.

But then one day out of nowhere we find our 1-year-old cat dead in their garden. Obviously, we cannot be mad. The cat probably died of a heart attack or something. So my family shrugs it off as a coincidence.

Fast forward 2 months we have a new cat, younger, cuter. I come home one day and my cat comes crawling to me giving the loudest meow of his life. Turns out my cat was shot. SHOT. WITH A BULLET.

Our gardener told us that he clearly saw the neighbor with a gun (shooting pigeons or something) minutes before my cat was shot. So yeah, as you can imagine we haven’t been close to our neighbors since that day. P.S.: our cat survived with surgery, perfectly fine, but only has 8 lives left. Reddit: JoBusser

NICKEL AND DIMED

I once had a neighbor in college that would knock on my door and ask for money. I would just say I’m a broke student and I can’t spare anything. It was weird as anything and a weekly occurrence at the least. She was in her 50s and working.

One day I got fed up when she knocked on my door (I think I was stressed about exams) and I said yeah I got some money for you. I asked her to hold out her hands and gave her maybe 2 dollars worth of nickels that I had in a change jar. She never bothered me again. Reddit: ItsOfficiallyME

FALSE CLAIMS

Moved into a brand new house. Noticed an old toilet, garbage, and a broken-down hot tub in the neighbor’s front yard. Ok. Made cookies for all the neighbors and went over to introduce ourselves. He laughed and slammed the door in our faces. Ok.

Out landscaping our new yard with my husband and laying some bricks. Husband is on his knees making sure they are level while I stand and hand him the bricks. Neighbor walks by and yells “Well, I can see who wears the pants!” My husband and I looked at each other perplexed. Okaaayyy.

Got a puppy. Our other neighbor lets us know she witnessed the neighbor’s grown son throwing lit cigarettes over the fence at our puppy when he was in the backyard. We found about 50 cigarette butts in our yard. We do not smoke.

Then she also had to call the police because his other son broke the lights on her garage and defecated on her Welcome mat (all captured by her Home video system).

About 6 months later get a complaint for dog barking with a $500 fine. It was ridiculous. Our dog never barked, unless someone walked by or came to the door. We had letters from all 16 surrounding neighbors attesting that our dog never barked, what great neighbors we were, and how crazy the complainant was.

The letters were not admissible. Since there were 2 pathological adult sons and the neighbor’s word against ours-2 sane, working adults, we lost and had to pay. We sold the house and moved shortly afterward. Reddit: ToeSchmoe