It’s Like A Speed Bump, But More Annoying
“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 multiple potholes on the road. Curious, I asked my friend. He said the neighbors come up in the summer and dig the holes themselves in order to ‘slow down’ traffic. They literally go out in the dead of night, like ninjas, and use shovels to dig a few good holes. There’s never any holes elsewhere except right in front of their house, which also happens to be right in front of my house. And it’s a terrible, awful road in its own right already.
The thing is their driveway is all rocks. So I just took their rocks and used them to fill in the holes when they were away.
Though I volunteered over the winter to foster rescue dogs. Guess who’s lawn was used as the potty?
That’s a good boy! laughs maniacally.”
Something’s Not Right
“When I was a teenager and lived with my parents, we had this one neighbor family that seemed sorta off. One day, the father knocks on our door and tells my parents they haven’t had power for a long time and begged to run an extension cord to one of our outside outlets for the day so that 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 their part and disconnected the cable after that day. But a week later, they hook it back up again without us noticing. A month goes by and our electricity bill is basically double what it normally is. Parents head to the backyard and find the cable plugged in, yank it out, and confront the neighbor.
At first, the father doesn’t show his whole body and cracks the door, but my stepdad gets him to open up after hinting that he is concealing a weapon. Stepdad demands an explanation as to why the cable was run to our outlet and the dude just sorta mumbles incoherently and shuts the door, locking it.
The bad neighbor family was in a duplex, and their neighbor, sharing the building, comes around and asks what’s up. Parents explain the whole story and how the next step was calling the police. Good neighbor is a former police chief and is friends with the entire force, he offers to make the call.
Several cop cars arrive. Bad neighbor father and mother are arrested. Turns out they were running a speed lab inside the house. The mother also sold herself out cash and the kids (a boy and girl between ages 7-10) were malnourished. The kids were put into foster care.
No other bad neighbor has beat that high score yet.”
If A Tree Falls In The Forest…
“He had 2 access roads to his property (he didn’t live there, he just had livestock there) and insisted on using the one that cut through our property, despite the fact that it was the longer route and it was a literal unpaved road through the woods. He didn’t have an easement or anything, just assumed that since he had to drive through our property to get to that horrible lane road, he was allowed to do so. He was a total prick to us for no reason, never said hi, got upset if we were too close to his property despite the fact that he literally drove through our property every day.
Revenge came when lightning struck a tree in the woods and it fell right across the access to the lane road… on OUR property. He hired a service to chop the tree up and told them they could have the wood as part of the payment (it was nice walnut). My dad wasn’t having any of that. He walked down there with a copy of the sale documents, pointed out the marker that clearly separated our land from our butthole neighbor’s land, got the neighbor to admit that the tree in question was both from our land and currently laying on our land, not his, and then my dad sent the crew packing and told them if they took so much as a branch from that tree, it was theft and he (a lawyer) would see them in court for it. It’s been over 15 years and that tree is still laying across the access to the lane road. He can still access his property via the other road, so he didn’t have a leg to stand on to force an easement. Forget you, Jim.”
A Cursed Lot
“My parents live in a rural area not too far from a major city in the Pacific Northwest. They’ve had a lot of trouble with any neighbor that moves in across the street, and we’ve all speculated that the house is cursed. The lady who originally owned it died of cancer. It went on the market and was bought by an older gentleman that did home staging for realtors. We believe he has dementia due to some things that have happened.
He started renting the house out to some people in their early 20s, and that’s when stuff got weird. They were straight white trash and avid substance users. They completely trashed the place and had laundry and trash bags sitting outside for more than a year. Break-ins around the area started happening around that time as well.
Then the neighbors had a couple with a 3-year-old move in. The new couple tried to confide in my parents and told them that they were trying to clean up the place and that one of the girls living there had a dancing pole up in the living room and had strange men over all hours of the day. Eventually, the former tenants moved out, and the couple with the kid stayed. They made an honest effort to clean up the place and everything seemed okay for a while. This is about the time my parents learn it’s more or less a squatting situation going on over there. Landlord is suffering memory loss and hardly ever gets out to property and doesn’t seem to care. Well, my parents don’t think too much of it until the boyfriend starts coming over and asking for $5 here and there to ‘pay a bill.’ My parents are nice people and usually oblige. Anyway, the boyfriend starts coming over more frequently and my mom is getting fed up. Then one night the girlfriend calls my mom stating she needs her help (mom works in law) and that a domestic dispute happened. Both are recovering addicts, but the boyfriend had relapsed. The girlfriend is pregnant (not his baby, but he doesn’t know that), and the boyfriend slammed her head into the wall and is trying to get custody of the toddler (also not his kid, but he knows this). She ended up miscarrying. Cops get involved. Girlfriend moves into a protected living arrangement.
Here’s where it gets messed up:
They had some pets in the house. One was a rabbit my sister had given them because she couldn’t care for it anymore due to her schooling. They also had 2 kittens and apparently a dog. Well, the girlfriend texts my mom about animals being over there. She wants to save them, knows BF isn’t there because he’s out on a bender somewhere and is wondering if my mom can help assist. Mom calls Animal Welfare and they claim they can’t confiscate the animals, but if they were ‘out roaming free like they were lost,’ they could take them in. The girlfriend goes over there, slips in through the window, and opens the front door. It turns out that the boyfriend had purposely been starving the bunny because he knew the girlfriend loved it, the poor dog had gone potty all over the place and ripped away at the carpet trying to escape, and the kittens were locked in the bathroom. All pets with no water. They’ve been like this for days. Animal Welfare takes them to shelter, they get adopted out a few weeks later thankfully.
A few days later, the girlfriend starts texting my mom trying to get info on what’s happening. Meanwhile, my mom finds out that the couple had different aliases over the years and that the boyfriend is awaiting charges on auto theft, fraud, etc. She also finds out GF is dating another loser, and so the cycle continues for her and that poor kid.
The boyfriend tried to come borrow money another time or two, but my mom blew him off. He’s still living across the street, shooting up, and we’re hoping he gets locked up eventually and that that house gets demolished.
Oh also, I think the toddler is a little messed up in the head too. Sometime last summer, my sister came outside to him trying to drown the kittens in our pool.”
The Village Idiot
“My aunt has a terrible neighbor who tried to cordon off some of their land which his farmer father had been grazing his sheep on in prior agreement with my aunt and uncle. After they called the son out on it and made him take down the fencing he’d put up, he began a tirade of abuse every time he saw my aunt, which was nearly every day, as he’d moved into a barn next door that had previously been abandoned. The police have been called to the house several times because the neighbor—let’s call him J—has refused to leave their property and has been verbally abusive to my aunt, and threatened my uncle.
To make matters worse, this abuse has begun to escalate in the last year or so. J has begun to throw dead animals (mainly foxes) into my aunt’s garden, greatly upsetting my nine-year-old animal-loving cousin. They’ve installed CCTV around the house, but J’s presence makes them very nervous.
Last year it was my uncle’s 60th birthday, and my aunt arranged a party in a marquee in their garden with friends and family. It was a really lovely party, but halfway through the evening, the lights all went out. There was a power cut all through the village, and when the power company came out to investigate, they found that a car had been driven into the transformer. They didn’t know who’d done it, but everyone else in the village could guess. My uncle’s car also got set on fire while parked outside a friend’s house in the village while they were visiting. Again, police didn’t have any leads, but everyone could guess who’d done it.
My aunt and uncle feel threatened in their own home, which they’ve lived in far longer than J has lived in the barn next door. Their two children are very frightened of J and paranoid to play in the garden. My aunt has considered moving away, but my uncle refuses to abandon the house they’ve spent so much time and money and love rebuilding. They’re taking J to court for dumping the dead animals on their property, which they have CCTV evidence of. Hopefully this time something will be done about him.”
Night Rider
“He mows his yard at night. With a flashlight. Never any earlier than 10 pm. And it’s not like he has a weird schedule or anything that would require him to do so at such an unusual time. He leaves for work in the morning at the same time I do, and we get home at the same time. He literally has from 5:30 p.m. to whenever to mow the yard. Or he could even mow it on the weekend when he’s got all day. But no, he mows it at night. In the dark. Using a flashlight so he can see where he’s going.
I questioned it one time, and he told me with a completely serious face that he does so because it’s ‘cooler that time of night.’ Well, that’s probably true. But you know what else is cool? Being a normal human being who doesn’t run a lawnmower at 10:30 p.m. on a weeknight when your neighbors are either already asleep or trying to enjoy some peace and quiet on the couch before they go to sleep.
Other than that one thing, the dude is pretty chill.”
Hidden In Plain Sight
“Just recently, my new scumbag neighbors have decided to throw dirty diapers in my driveway. We know it’s them, they have the only diaper wearing child on the block. My wife tossed them back into their driveway. Two hours later the same diapers reappeared in my driveway, followed by a third that was only a few feet from my door. I told my wife to leave them to me for when I got home from work. Upon arriving home, I tossed all three diapers onto their roof, likely never to be seen again…until the humid Midwest summer bakes those diapers into a glorious, colonic blasting poop storm of a smell for the trashy neighbors. They live on the top floor of a four unit quadplex, roughly 25 foot to the roof, well out of reach of my ground floor home haha.
My own mother suggested that I light my own fecal matter on fire in a paper bag and have a heave-ho at their door… Haven’t stooped that low… Yet.”
The Worst Neighbor
“I grew up in a rural area on a fairly big property. It had been a large farm that got parceled out as the owner aged. So there were 4 3/4 acre lots and my parent’s 10 acres behind them. The house was relatively far away from our neighbors.
One neighbor was an absolute piece of trash. When I was 8, I remember seeing the cop lights at his door. Found out when I was a little older that he had tried to murder his father over his oxy prescription (father owned the house, 30-year-old kid lived there rent free). He did a few years in jail, then moved back in with his father who he had tried to kill. He grew pot on our land, then threatened to kill my mother when my father and I tore it down (but didn’t call the cops). Frequently threatened to assault/kill my mother. I can remember multiple times when I was younger, him banging on our door and screaming threats at my mom. Other times I can remember thinking about the weapon in my father’s office, in case our neighbor actually got inside the house. This occurred 8-10 times a year from ages 8-14.
He has calmed down a little after a second arrest and some anger management classes. Nowadays, he just has massive bonfires with tons of loud music and leaves empties on our property, which is still an inconsiderate move, but better than physical intimidation and death threats.”
Poor Hershey…
“When I was 10, my neighbor—an 80-something-year-old man—shot and killed one of my dogs.
When I went looking for my dog, I asked my neighbor if he had seen him.
He told me that he shot a dog like that this morning.
Frozen, I asked where he was so I could bury him. The old man told me that his body was in the dumpster and that he would shoot me too if I didn’t get off his land.
I ran through the woods back to my house, screaming out loud in anger and punching trees until my knuckles were torn and bloody.
When I got home, I called the police and the K9 unit came out to my neighbor’s house. He retrieved my dog’s body, and I buried him.
The worst part was that my dog was very sweet. My neighbor had tied him up and broken all of his legs, then shot him point blank in the chest.
I have never felt more rage in my life. My mom took the man to court, and he was charged with animal cruelty. The judge asked how much money I thought the dog was worth. I was dumbfounded and croaked out that I didn’t want money—I wanted my dog.
The neighbor was fined $500, and I made him pay it to the local humane society.
The man had the ten commandments posted all around his house, so the next night, I took a red sharpie and circled ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ on all of his signs. My dog’s name was Hershey, he was a mutt that was born in my bedroom — he was only 2 years old and such a good boy.”
Tile Thief
“One of my neighbors was a cowboy builder who even conned his elderly next-door neighbours into getting their roof done for $10,000, even though their tiles were almost brand new, he then took all their tiles to re-tile his roof for free and put about 10% of his old tiles on their roof then abandoned the project completely. Don’t worry though we got him arrested and he had to sell his house to pay back his victims, although the cost of his house didn’t even come close to covering the full costs.
Another neighbor would stand in his back garden really early in the morning then start shooting local birds with a crossbow when they woke up, and he put the bodies in regular trash bags and left them on the street where foxes ripped them open and dragged dead birds all over the place. Now we have no songbirds in the area.”
The Day That Bob Lost It
“I lived next door to ‘Bob’ for 10 years with no issues. He’s a retired prison guard, cop, military, about 70 or so. I was 25. We share views on many of life’s situations; political, legal, etc. We always got along swimmingly.
We share tools, chat now and then, but we’re not really ‘buds.’ He spends 6.8 days a week at his girlfriend’s house, so we never really see each other more than 2 hours a year seems like.
At the 10 year mark, a policeman walks into my backyard where I’m raking leaves. He’s there about the complaint from Bob. Huh?
We go to speak with Bob, and when I ask him what’s going on, he interrupts, yelling about my kids on his lawn, me riding motorcycles on his lawn, and more. He’s absolutely livid, spit flying, and he looks like he’ll have a stroke. I just looked at the cop and shrugged. We’ve all heard or read stories of neighbor spats escalating into retribution or violence, but all of his accusations are false. Completely baseless and out of the blue.
Cop says he has to give me a criminal trespass warning, so if I ever step foot on his property again, I can be arrested. I told him that’s like telling me I can’t sleep with his sister anymore. Never happened, never will. I spoke with him privately, and the best we can come up with is some mental illness, or he’s off his medication. It really was the strangest thing.
What annoyed me the most was two days later, as I’m driving away, he’s on his lawnmower, and waves and smiles at me like nothing ever happened. We’ve never determined if that was genuine because of the crazy, or he was taunting me.
That was nearly 15 years ago, and I have never spoken to him since. I keep my family away, and we leave if we ever see him. Oh, and he’s moved back home this year, so he’s baaack!”
That’s Not A Neighborly Attitude
“Growing up, my family slowly sold chunks of the family ranch to keep afloat. Primarily post the .com bubble when my grandfather lost most his retirement savings. One of the neighbors who purchased a parcel and built a home started out as a decent guy but as time progressed became a cold spiteful man. He ran a horse manure hauling business so he had a truck and tractor, he decided one day to use that tractor to widen his accessible property by eroding the hillside that our road was built on. We warned him not to do it, or at least to reinforce the hillside. Then an El Nino winter hit and washed out our road completely. It cost around 10k to get a crew out to fix our road in an emergency during the storm. He refused to help at all it took almost a decade of court battles to finally get him to pay up.
My current house is surrounded by neighbors who refuse to help pay their legally obligated shared cost to repair our shared lot fencing so we are stuck with a slowly collapsing fence on all sides of our house because we cannot afford the time or cost to take them to court to help pay to fix it and we cannot afford to do so ourselves.”
You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out
“Between my house and my neighbor’s house is a stretch of empty wood; there’s one fox trail that goes through. When I was younger, I would walk through there to pick wildflowers. My neighbor was a little kid, under 10 at the time, and he shot at me with a Red Ryder.
The sadistic little brat aimed for my stomach and got the back of my head while I was running away. Dad went over there and broke his Red Ryder and threatened the kid’s grandpa with the police if it ever happened again.”
