Patricia Grisafi
At some point in your life, you will have to deal with a neighbor from Hell. Whether it’s someone who is loud, nosy, or straight-up threatening, neighbors can often make your everyday existence intolerable.
On Reddit, people are sharing the worst experience they’ve had with a neighbor, from late night raves to children with guns to goat killers.
Some of these stories are so extreme that they might even have you feeling grateful for your elderly neighbor who collected junk on the street and tries to sell it to you.
1. Stolen Packages
“When I started my first job post-college, I was thrilled to live by myself for the first time in my life. I had this beautiful 1 bedroom apartment in a solid part of town. Everything was great until 6 months later, when new tenants moved in next to my unit. I had a package go missing (a phone case). Amazon had posted a photo of it at my door, so I thought that it was just a fluke. Then it happened again, and again, and again. The office wouldn’t accept packages, so I had to get my items delivered to friends’ places instead. Overall wildly inconvenient and the police didn’t care in the slightest when I reported it, so I just figured I’d deal with it. Fast forward a few weeks, and I come home after being gone for less than an hour, to see that my doorknob and front door were scrapped up and the knob was barely hanging on. Long story short, I had been parking in plain view of this guy’s window, so he was able to tell when I was home. I am 100% convinced he tried to break into my place, and that me coming home early interrupted him. I googled his name after I moved (I got it off a package at his door) and found that he was a convicted felon with charges that include grand theft auto, domestic assault, drug dealing, and an attempted break in.” — Ladyringo
2. “Like Trying To Sleep At A Festival”
“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 neighbour in this story…” — time_to_reset
3. Loud Sex Every Night
“I used to live in a horrible apartment with paper-thin walls. The people next door were a woman who looked like she was in her 70s and what I thought was her 30-something grandson. They would yell at each other all day, constantly blast their TV, and the smell of their cigarette smoke would waft through into my apartment and make the place absolutely reek. The worst was at night when the two of them would have loud sex (which is how I figured out they weren’t related). Every night for an hour– creaking bed banging against my bedroom wall and the old woman moaning like a stuck pig. Nightmarish. I also think the guy kept track of my schedule and watched for me because whenever I came home or went out, even when I took out the garbage, he would be there outside his place, trying to chit chat with me while staring at my body and being completely gross. Lived there a year, but it felt like ten.” — Thin_Host
4. Dog Pee
“Apartment building- The upstairs neighbour’s dog peed on their patio and it dripped down onto me while I was sitting outside reading. I yelled and ran to shower and when I texted them to ask them to take their dog out to pee in future they said it wasn’t their dog and it must have blown over from somewhere else. What?” — ClubWithAJungleTheme
5. The Garbage Wars
“We had some neighbours that used to leave their garbage out in plastic bags the night before garbage day – instead of putting it in a bin. Around here, that’s just ringing the dinner bell for raccoons and other critters. Sure enough come morning there’s garbage strewn all over the neighbourhood. What the raccoons and skunks didn’t spread around, the wind picked up the slack. Some of the people on the street kindly approached the guy and asked him to put his garbage in a bin. He told them to go f*ck themselves. Thus began the Garbage Wars. Every morning of garbage day some people on my street would collect all the half eaten and rotten trash from their lawns and toss it back into the dude’s backyard. He would collect it, then dump it back on their lawns. Or cram it into their bushes. People started finding half eaten burritos and candy wrappers in their mailboxes. The street started to look like a slum. Police were called. Health inspectors. City by-law enforcement. Each side was calling in whatever authority they could muster to get their enemy in sh*t. The dude and his family (amazingly his wife seemed perfectly pleasant) lasted about 8 months then moved. Every once in a while I find a random margarine lid or piece of styrofoam in my hedge, and my mind goes back to those dark days of war.” — kor_hookmaster
6. Spying Neighbor
“My mom has a neighbor who literally looks through her window to try to see into the house. She’s had to call the cops on her multiple times.” — HappiestCorgi5639
7. “Smell Something Real Weird”
“I lived in an apartment with slot of rotating tenants. An elderly lady moved in across the hall from me promptly started hoarding. I started to figure it out when her deck/porch started to fill up with odds and ends furniture including but not limited to a roll top desk. She also yelled at me once for taking her key out of the front door and putting it in the mail slot. Anyway after a couple of weeks I started to realize I hadn’t seen her in awhile and started to smell something real weird. Turns out she had died and no one knew about it for a week hence the smell. Her family came and cleared out all her stuff about a week after that. This is Wisconsin in the winter and I had my good doc marten workboots outside my door because they were wet. They used one of my boots to prop open their door while they moved out and then stole them when they were done.” — According-Height-866
8. Neighbor Tried To Open The Door
“The first apartment I lived in I had a neighbour that would try opening the door. Didn’t hear it myself because I worked nights but I came home early one night around 2am and he was trying to get. Had a huge argument with him and he stopped doing it after that. I’m guessing he thought it was just my two female roommates living there because he never tried anything after he knew I was there as well. Kinda opened my eyes at the time to the sort of sh*t women have to deal with.” — frontal_pin
9. Smelly Smoke
“I used to live in a house that was split into two apartments. My neighbors had the lower half, and I learned we had issues with the HVAC when their cigarette smoke came visibly pouring out our registers: stank up everything we owned. Then one of them stole my car.” — Smooth-Revolution958
10. Child Safety
“They were crack heads. They had two kids, were physically and verbally abusive to each other and were hoarders on top of it. Tried called child protective services and the police over and over and was never taken seriously. They ended up burning down their apartment and caused thousands of dollars in damage to the rest of the apartment building because they were cooking meth. We had to move out, as did many others. The silver lining is that they finally got their kids taken away after that.” — bedofneuroses
11. Kids With Guns
“The matriarch of my crazy neighbors nailed all of the windows shut in their house, then removed the door knobs and installed several dead bolts. This was to keep her grandkids home while she was at work, and everyone else out. Child welfare stopped by and were ok with this. The kids were able to get one window open without her knowing, and they would usually leave during the day and make it back before she got off work. Eventually there were maybe a dozen young adults living there too, and they all used the window as the main entrance. It unfortunately bordered my driveway, and was mere feet from my house. All hours of the day, people would be out there, wiggling in and out of the window. People got tired of being cooped up and major fights broke out. I regularly heard bodies hitting walls or furniture or fists, yells of ‘well stop threatening and get your goddamn gun already!’ I have ptsd, and it was just day after day of trying to keep myself calm. The kids had a pneumatic bb gun, a lookalike handgun, and one morning shot up my neighbor’s car. She left to work at a hospital early in the morning, before first light, and didn’t notice. When she shut her car door, all the glass fell out the windows. Later in the morning, he shot out a window in the school across the street. And a bit after that, he shot my husband in the shoulder, when we were outside planting flowers. He kept shooting, even after the police arrived. The police called the matriarch, who unlocked all the deadbolts, took away the kids’ guns, and drug them outside so they could be cuffed and taken away. The youngest was maybe 9. Since no one confessed or ratted, and police weren’t sure which of the three did it, they were released and not charged. Thankfully this act of physical violence against my husband got them evicted. After tearing up the house–breaking all the windows and ripping out the electrical boxes and punching random holes in the walls, the kids went to the landlord’s house with their lookalike handguns and shot up the windows in her house. Again arrested, but being juveniles, no repercussions. A couple of weeks later, her vehicle and garage were firebombed, but no one was charged with that. I’m so glad they are gone. I live in a wonderful neighborhood (not rich by any means, but the most awesome people), but it’s hard to enjoy the community with that going on next door. I hope they somehow find some peace with this life.” — raisinghellwithtrees
12. Restraining Order
“Had one that would basically steal our mail and other stuff from our porch and yard. Caught her once to confront her and she started yelling at me to stop attacking her and tried to say I was stealing her stuff. Ended up with the police getting called and us filing a restraining order against her.” — kamekukushi
13. Hoarder
“Dude pretended to be a reverend but was actually just a filthy f*cking hoarder. He insisted on wearing sandals all of the time, and whenever he left his flat, the entire stairwell would stink of century old unwashed feet. Eventually, the beetles that had infested his flat crawled up and into our kitchen and then everywhere. Took months to get him evicted. F*ck that guy.” — _Nick_2711_
14. Shot The Dogs And Goat
“My neighbor once shot both my dogs and his goat and made me bury both. One dog survived thankfully. He then tried to make us pay for a new goat claiming that our dogs attacked it. The goat had bullet wounds and no bite marks.” — cheese_n_apples
15. Deadbeat Dad
“I rented a flat with an ex and the upstairs neighbour was an absolute nightmare. Deadbeat dad who had his kid every weekend and left them screaming all the time. He’d blast music until sunrise every day even when he had his kid. Got the council involved, nothing happened. Got child services involved, nothing happened. He used to argue every Sunday with his ex about how he wasn’t paying child support. They’d argue right outside our door (we were on the ground floor). The guy was unemployed, owed the landlord a lot of money, and only left his flat to get groceries or drugs. He kicked off at me because my cat meowed loudly once.” — jenjudges
16. Neglected Dog
“Probably our neighbors in our apartment that just let their damn dog bark all day long on their porch. Like I don’t think that dog is ever inside even during the winter until it’s night time. It’s so annoying.” — kxiyaz
17. Rusty Cars
“Guy owned 6 cars and kept them all parked on the street in a very congested block of apartments. Spent hours tending to them, and they somehow always looked rustier when he was done. If a leaf landed on one of his cars he would accuse the neighborhood of intentionally placing leaves on his car to annoy him.” — Vampilton
Featured Image: Unsplash
