Arguing and butting heads with your neighbor is never a pleasant experience.
It makes sense that you'll get into a few tiffs with those living closest to you. But most of the time, all issues are resolved and the parties involved can move on. But what happens if they can't?
If you've never been cussed out, had your property vandalized, or had to call SWAT on a neighbor, consider yourself lucky. Not everyone shares this luxury.
Find out why these people have every right to genuinely hate their neighbors!
Shutterstock
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 Creating Their Own 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 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. So, that.
#2 Unnecessary Trespassing (And Epic Revenge)
My neighbor had two 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, he just assumed that since he had to drive through our property to get to that lane road, he was allowed to do so. He was a total jerk to us for no reason. He never said "hi." He 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 neighbor’s land. He got the neighbor to admit that the tree in question was both from our land and currently laying on our land, not his. 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.
#3 Misplacing Their Apartment
My upstairs neighbor 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.
While under the influence, 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.
It must be so paralyzing to be that allergic to admitting fault.
#4 Beyond Eccentric Tenant
Ah, Jerry.
When I moved in, he 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 mentalities. He drank a bottle of an adult beverage 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.
#5 Aggressive Garden-Hater
My mom's neighbor ripped up and threw away my mom'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 we need to replace all the grass and plants with concrete.
#6 Irresponsible Pet Owner Neighbor
My neighbor's 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.
Last time I saw him the cops were in his driveway with an apparent domestic incident.
#7 Anticipating Praise For Dialing Down Rudeness
He used to stand on the footpath under the influence every afternoon and yell to my husband about what a jerk I was. Once my husband told him to go home and he shaped up to try and punch my husband, who was around 50 years younger than the neighbour.
My infraction? He rang one day to be nosy check why my husband's car was home on a work day. 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 neighbour, 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.
#8 Noisy, Untidy and Cruel
He screamed obscenities through the wall at my children because they were “talking too loudly” in the middle of the day.
He screamed at us through the walls in the middle of the night so we could “see how it felt to be disturbed.”
He regularly dumped his old food out of his bathroom window into our shared backyard. A rodent infestation took place shortly thereafter.
He stopped paying rent to our landlord because he felt that the landlord should have warned him that he might be able to hear his neighbors.
He dumped his trash on our shared front porch.
The landlord did not renew his lease. He took him to court, got his unpaid rent money back plus additional payment for damages to the apartment. It was a glorious vindication.
#9 Blacklisted Fraternity Brothers
My neighbor partied too hard. As I got home from work one evening, I saw the neighbor chuck an adult beverage bottle at one cop then throw a punch at another. Things did not go well for him after that. I found out after the fact that someone had called a noise complaint because it was something like 11 PM on a weekday.
This neighbor was a double jerk though. He had moved off campus with a pair of guys from his frat. The other two guys were cool. We had him over for grilling and vice versa. The guy who got arrested not only screwed himself but caused so many issues that the other two guys who were on the lease got blacklisted by pretty much every place in town too
Sign Up For Our Newsletter
Stories that matter — delivered straight to your inbox.
#10 Enjoyable Musical Torture
My neighbor was both mean and dumb.
My neighbor (above me) 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 leapt 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/effort on her part, so she didn't try it any more.
#11 A Disgusting Retaliation Against Privacy
It started by letting her kids and animals run wild in my back yard. So, I dropped $5,000 on a 6' privacy fence that my father-in-law and I built. Then she had her water turned off for lack of payment and began going to the bathroom in plastic bags and throwing them over my fence. When confronted about it, she kindly denied and then took to social media. I called the landlord and had an eviction notice served the next day.
#12 Insanely Reckless And Ruckus-Inducing
My neighbor was busted by SWAT last summer. I had to call into work because of the barricades. No arrests (??) and never got the story on that.
While we live in houses, we do not have fences around the backyard. They got a dog. They used to sit on their porch while the dog roamed the neighborhood. Then they would just let him out to roam the neighborhood while in their house.
In the winter, they would put on a coat and leave him out for hours. Then they'll stand on their porch screaming "PETE! PETE!" forever at 11 PM. Pete has disappeared, I think someone else in the neighborhood took him in. Now they have another puppy named Zero. He's probably 12ish weeks and, of course, wandering the neighborhood.
We can hear them beating the heck out of each other. So can people across the street. Police are out at least once a week arresting one of them. They bail each other out.
#13 An Egotistical Liar
My neighbor 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 and he took me over to his car and started asking what I thought of it and looked very proud.
In other words, this dude rang every apartment in the building at 4 AM to get people to look at his new car.
#14 A Tree Fight
My neighbor picked a fight with our 70-year-old Indian neighbour. Like, an actual physical fight. The guy is in his 30's. The Indian neighbour has seen waaay too much bull in his life to tolerate any more and hit him with a nectarine tree in a pot.
#15 Scary, Snail-Torching Child
I remember having an older neighbor kid ask the rest of us younger kids to collect snails so he can have a snail pet farm. Me and three others collected them and gave them to him in a cardboard box. Then he said "watch this" he then showed us a can of hair spray and a lighter and torched the snails to death. I didn't talk to that kid after that.
#16 A "Momma's Boy" Police Officer
Not one of her neighbors can stand her, she's upset everyone on all sides of her. Her son's a cop so she'll send him over to yell at you if you violate any of her peeves. She did that about one of the dogs, (she hates animals) and my wife answered the door. Her poor kid got an earful and told to go home before she called his captain to complain about the momma's boy that lives next door harassing people.
It was hilarious. She regularly gets into it with her neighbor on the other side, which is a mistake, since that woman is taking care of a dementia-suffering husband and puts up with nothing. I can hear her regularly telling her to get bent. Her college age other son comes home now and then and they get into shouting matches in the back yard with him calling her jerk and other things you just don't call your mom. It must be tiring to be such a raging jerk all the time.
#17 A (Literally) Crappy Battle
Just recently, my new jerk 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 stupid neighbors.
#18 Policing Someone Else's Lawn
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 meant that it was going to lower her property value. She was trying to sell her home. She argued that parking on my grass was illegal, that her husband was an attorney and that she was going to be calling the police. I told her to call, and I told her husband to come talk to me. Neither happened.
#20 Accusing Cat Of Provoking Dog
My neighbor yelled at me because my cat was sitting in my tree in my yard... And making his dog bark.
Literally ranted and raved for nearly five minutes.
#21 Infestation Of Abandoned Cats
My neighbor moved in with two cats. She decided she would rather have a dog. She took the two cats, set them on her porch, and made them "outdoor cats." She stopped feeding them. She didn't spay them either. Now our neigbhorhood is overrun with 10 or so male cats and these 2 have a new litter every few months.
Wikianimal
#22 Ruining Newly Washed Cars
My neighbor takes sadistic pleasure in placing his yard sprinkler close to the property line so that it soaks our cars in the driveway.
Not only that, but he waits until we've washed and dried the cars before he turns his sprinkler on.
#23 Early Morning EDM Neighbor
My neighbor would blast horrible electronic dance music almost every day starting from 9 AM, especially on the weekends. Once I asked him to please keep it down until 10 AM he changed his habit... to 8:30 AM.
#24 Chewed Out Over Problematic Pup
My family was on vacation, and the person that was supposed to be caring for my dog left him outside in the rain. My neighbors called the police on my dog for barking at 9:00 PM at night. We talked with them on the phone and politely asked them to just call our cell next time. The next day, they did it again. My dog has had more encounters with the law enforcement than me.
Carol Kaliff/Hearst Connecticut Media
#25 Obsessive About Eyesores
My neighbor has called the police on us for our pool not being clean and running by the beginning of May, children's hockey sticks and Wiffle Ball bats on our front lawn, our fence not being of the best quality, our pool gate being too short and has a demon spawn grandson living with him that pulls up my flowers on a regular basis. He has called because we had a storage container in our driveway. He has also called because of a vehicle being parked in our laneway for too long. Meanwhile, the guy's got a car that's been parked at the end of his driveway for longer than I have been living there.
#26 Going Nuts Over Little Noises
My neighbor called the cops on my 3-year-old daughter because she was WALKING too loudly at 2 PM on a Saturday. Another time he tried kicking our door down because my husband flushed the toilet too late at night. A number of other things happened that resulted in a judge granting us a "do not contact" order against him which he violated twice within a month. Our landlord let us out of our lease early without any fee and actually went with me to court to testify against him.
#27 Fence Off
He tore down part of my 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. Two months. I hate him.
#28 Why
He plugged his sink pipes with toilet paper and flooded his bathroom, flooding our apartment below him. We told him to stop and he refused to, said he was trying to destroy our apartment to get back at the landlords.
The police said it was a landlord issue and the landlord said it was a police issue. After the police asked him to stop that night (said they couldn't do anything about it legally and that it was our problem, they were awful), neighbor ran his sink for 2 more minutes, stomping his feet and shouting at us, causing the most flooding yet.
We called the police back and they were condescending and laughing at us, telling us to deal with it ourselves. A few days later the police, landlord, and plumber had to force his door open to fix the sink because he wouldn't let them in without a warrant - which they came back with.
He was kicked out a month later.
#29 Stay Back, He Has Clippers!
My neighbor lets his yard guy cut onto other neighbors' property. As in, he thinks that 3ish feet on both sides are his. No, those 3 feet belong to the people that bought the land. And the yard guy is NUTS. He threatened one of the neighbors with clippers after she asked him to stay out of her yard after cutting too low and pulling up her newly grown grass.
#30 Sick Kickflip Bro
This dude would practice his skateboard ollies in his living room. I lived next door and would hear this constant THUNK sound. Never mind that we lived two blocks from a nice park that had tons of space he could practice in. No, that would require him to make an effort. I and the neighbor on the other side told him multiple times to stop and it took getting the property manager involved to make him stop. A few months later, he got evicted for failure to pay rent. Can't say I was sad to see him go.
#31 Be Careful What You Ask For
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. 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!
#32 Living Beside a Club
My neighbor loves the song "Yeah" by Usher. Like, she really, really loves it. I relive the early 2000s club hit almost daily.
#33 Should Have Just Stayed In Bed
I lived in an apartment years ago and the people above were posh middle class but a bit noisy. The floors were solid concrete.
About once a week we would hear the noises, always the same, they haunt me to this day ...
Metallic sound, like a clattering thing falling to the floor and bouncing. A thump. A thump. A thump. Heavy, so very heavy, so awkward and ... pained.
I swear they were doing some freaky stuff but, one evening after working nights all weekend I could take no more. I went upstairs and banged on their door. The husband answered.
“Please, for the love of all that is holy, will you stop with that unearthly metallic crash and the thump, thump, thump. It’s driving me mad” I rudely implored.
“I do beg your pardon. It happens when my wife drops her crutches and she has to hop around on one foot” he replied, calmly. Exit left.
#34 Revenge, A Dish Best Served Cold
I had a neighbor that complained about noise all the time. We had never had a complaint from neighbors on that property before, or on the other side. The first few times we tried to be nice, but when she started swearing at my wife for vacuuming at 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday we realized there was nothing we could do to make them happy and just ignored them.
The next winter we got hit by a major snowstorm that dumped a massive amount of wet snow, froze it into solid ice, then another storm 2 days later covered it with more heavy snow. It was an absolute monster to shovel.
A relative came over to help us dig out, and brought a backhoe. Our driveway was done in 3 minutes. The neighbor had been shoveling for 2 hours and made almost no headway, so they went to my relative to ask him to help them out.
He said "Are you the neighbor that complains about noise? I wouldn't want to make any loud noises in your driveway. Better for you to do it by hand" and then drove off.
It was glorious.
#35 A Nosy Neighbor
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.
#36 That’s One Way To Handle It
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 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 for exams) and I said, "Yea, 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.
#37 “Buy a Lot of Rugs”
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 badly for him in the beginning because he seemed genuinely frustrated but he didn't seem to understand or believe that I wasn't 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 in to 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 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 ffs!) 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.
#38 Too Much Time On Her Hands
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 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.
#39 Bullied Out Of A Neighborhood
Moved into a brand new house. Noticed an old toilet, garbage and a broken down hot tub in the neighbors 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!” Husband and I look at each-other perplexed. Ok.
Get 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 two adult sons and the neighbor’s word against ours, we lost and had to pay. We sold the house and moved shortly afterward.
#40 Your Pool Is Our 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, they threw a hissy fit and found an excuse to "punish" us. You see, the pool was going through some 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, and also wanting to clean our own backyard of the pond that begun 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.
Sources: Reddit,
