“They Were Arrested”: 63 People Who Have Experienced Living Next To Neighbors From Hell

Had a neighbor who let his dog run free, it would get into our yard give our dogs fleas, eat all the food and teach them how to escape.
No matter what my mom said the guy denied his dog was getting out.
So being fed up with the situation my mom dyed the dog purple and sent it on its merry way.
The neighbor kept his dog contained after that.
* note the dye was a nontoxic semi permanent dog dye. No harm came to the pupper.

Neighbour hated cats so put out cat traps (the type which crushes a leg) which my cat got caught in and dragged home. It crushed his leg and pelvis so he had to be put down. Neighbour was given a warning for animal [mistreatment] and was later charged due to his treatment of his own pets. Hated that guy.

I didn't really interact with my upstairs neighbors when I was in my first apartment, but their religion prohibited them from [unaliving] anything...including roaches. Their apartment became a breeding ground and the roaches would spill into the rest of the building, including mine below. It was a horrible experience and felt so hopeless because it didn't matter how clean we were or how diligent. The buggers were always everywhere.

My neighbor locks her kids outside no matter the weather and she doesn't answer the door. They're probably 3 and 5. Just one example...we were having a huge evergreen tree cut down in our front yard, maybe 7 feet from the property line. I told her, "you might want to back your car into the street so it doesn't get filthy." She moved the car, but locked her 3 year old son outside the entire time. I mean....

My friends upstairs neighbor has a dog he never takes for a walk. So the dog just [does its business] on the balcony and when it dries he shovels off the balcony onto the cars below. Then throws water on it to clean it up and [nasty] water drips down onto her balcony.

She has called the landlord, the city, the maintenance company. No one will do anything about it. We have shouted at him while doing it and he stops for a minute but continues when we are gone. If you knock on his door, he won't answer.

We had a neighbor at my old apartment that would sit outside my window and meow for hours to try and get my cat to come out. She would also scratch at my door. She was an adult woman. A few times she would try to follow me inside to see my cat.

There's a particular type of person who seems to feel like they're the only thing standing between society and complete collapse, and about seven years ago, my downstairs neighbor was one of them. She was aloof and paranoid, and she'd imagine threats from almost everywhere... which made the fact that she thought of herself as some kind of secret agent all the more annoying.

Said neighbor was always trying to find ways of getting me (and anyone else whom she thought of as suspicious) to move out of the building. She'd stage loud telephone calls with "headquarters" about the alarming behavior of the other tenants – like my tendency to get home *after nine in the evening*, which was clearly scandalous – and frequently yell at the people who'd stand on the corner to smoke. On one occasion, I heard her shouting at someone over the placement of a flowerpot in their window, which was *obviously* an indication that they were selling [illegal substances].

Then, one afternoon, I found an "official notice" taped to a wall in the stairwell.

It was perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at a government-sponsored document that I'd ever seen, and I'm including the time that my friend Jonathan – then nine years old – made a flyer for bodyguard services. The atrocious grammar, poorly Photoshopped seal, and distinct absence of any legitimate contact information made the thing about as realistic as a scene from NCIS. Furthermore, the reference to "the past two years" seemed to indicate *me* as her primary target, since I was (as far as I knew) the only resident who had been there for less time than that.

Still, since the notice was clearly meant to scare *someone*, I decided to return the favor by taking a page out of my neighbor's own playbook. This led me to stand outside of her apartment while staging my own fake phone call:

"You should see the notice; it's *terrible!* Hah, yeah, it's like they didn't know that impersonating a federal official is a felony! Anyway, the *real* FBI are on their way, and they're going to dust for fingerprints. Whoever made that notice is looking at a *lot* of jail time!"

I went back inside my apartment after that... and within seconds, I heard my neighbor's door open. There was the sound of hurried footsteps rushing towards the stairwell, followed by an equally hurried retreat. When I went out to check five minutes later, the notice was gone.

I've since moved away, but for the rest of the time that I lived there, the lady never bothered me again.

**TL;DR: My idiotic neighbor liked to pretend that she was a secret agent.**.

Had a shared driveway. Outside at 4am with a laser pointer trying to find property lines, wants to put a gate up blocking the driveway and we would have to knock on her door to come and go. Would turn around on our property and almost crush our sewer line. Tried to sleep with my husband. Party on her roof. Kick down our signs and shoot bbs at our dog. Tons more things I'm choosing to forget.

You don't know a neighbor from hell until you've lived next to two different residents who were into dogfighting.

The house next to ours was always pretty suspicious because literally no one could move in there without something bad happening. When I was about ten, the house caught on fire, and I was told it was because the teenage boys who lived there were burning pennies or something. After that, the house was purchased by a few men and one woman.

I was maybe twelve when all this happened - I walk out to my backyard one day and there's about six little pit bull puppies trotting around the yard, with their mother hanging out somewhere in the distance. Occasionally, the smallest one would come over to stare at me a bit, and he'd run after me if I ran back and forth along the fence.

Months went by, police increased on our street, and the puppies gradually disappeared - all except the little one. We never saw or heard what was going on, but there were a lot of dog cages in the owners' cars. One day I actually saw one of the men 'training' the last dog. As in, deliberately irritating him, shoving him, hitting him with things to make him bite. And whenever that dog was left outside on his own, he'd come to the fence snarling and barking at anyone who came close. Almost got my mom one day when she was trimming our bushes back. Our two yards are separated by a single steel fence, and towards the back the fence sags dangerously inward towards our side. The dog would've made it into our yard had Mom not used the pepper spray.

And then one day they were just gone. The neighbors, the cars, the cages, the puppy I'd watched grow from a sweet pudgy-faced baby into a vicious, angry, poorly socialized fighting dog. To this day I still find this to be one of the most depressing things I've ever experienced growing up.

I was living in a [trashy] part of town at the time. I had a couple of older neighbors who could have stared in a hoarders marathon. The garage door was bowing out and splitting in areas due to the amount of [stuff] forced into it. To top that they had hundreds of feral cats with horrible defects. They kept the front door open 24/7 so the cats could come in and out of the house, at least the ones that lived long enough too. I would have to crawl under my house to remove the deceased ones so my house didn't reek every few days.

I used to have this obnoxious neighbor who invited herself over all the time. Multiple cars in the driveway- we must be having company over which meant free food for her. She would peek over the fence and see we were grilling and would come over to find out what was up.

My dad had a semi- trusting relationship with her and let her know where we kept a spare key should there be an emergency.

We walked in a couple times after being gone and found notes from her on the counter stating she had stopped by to chat but we weren't there. Which means she had used the spare key, gone into our house while we weren't there and probably snooped around and then left a note.

My dad mentioned to her how she wasn't to come in when we weren't there and she apologized. The next day there were brownies on the counter with a note that said sorry. She clearly disregarded what he said to bring us apology brownies!!

The last straw was when one day my dad had left the house and I was taking a shower. When I stepped out in just a towel and ran to the laundry room there was a random woman sitting on the couch. After freaking out I learned that she was a jehova's witness and was let in by my neighbor who apparently was snooping around while I was in the shower and just left the lady alone in my house.

My dad came home and changed all the locks that day and told her not to come over ever again. We also ignored her any time she knocked after that. She hated us after that and clearly thought all of her actions were completely normal.

TL:DR- obnoxious uninvited neighbor let in a jehova's witness to my house when I was in the shower and then left her alone. I had no idea and ran into the lady with just a towel on.

NeighborLady and her (male) fiance (NeighborDude) kidnapped NeighborLady's ex-wife. Confine ex-wife for two days, beat on her, force ex-wife to admit she inappropriately touched her own son (which she didn't) and recorded it, threatened to turn recording over to police if ex-wife didn't sign over custody of child to NeighborLady. Ex-wife eventually escapes, calls police, and neighbors are arrested for aggravated kidnapping.

My parents’ neighbor owns a landscaping company, so he has a dump truck. His house is set further back from the road than theirs, so his driveway, which is right on the property line, extends past their house and next to their backyard. My dad noticed the neighbor turning the dump truck around in my parents’ backyard when the ground was very soft from some recent rain. He went back, and sure enough, there were giant ruts in my parents’ yard. When my dad confronted the neighbor about using their backyard to turn around, the neighbor responded by saying, “I’m sorry, but if I turned it around in my yard, it would have left ruts in my lawn.” So he knew it would leave ruts, didn’t want them in his yard, and left them in my parents’ yard instead.

When I was very young, we lived next door to an elderly couple and their adult daughter. The adult daughter had kids and grandkids of her own but she had some issues and couldn't live on her own or with them.



I don't remember how it started but she (the adult daughter of neighbors) started venturing further into our property until one day she walked right into our house while we were in the living room. My mother was pregnant at the time and babysitting other children. Mom was so startled she jumped up and chased her out of the house. On another occasion, she came storming over to our house with a mop in her hand determined to attack my mother. She had to call my uncle to come over and I remember him putting his entire body weight on the door to keep her out. The police end up getting called and she is taken away for psychiatric evaluation. After that, the police had to come back to talk to my parents because while being evaluated, she claimed that my mother had kidnapped her son, chained him in the basement, and then cut him up and cooked him. Obviously none of that was true. After that, if we were playing outside and she came outside, we immediately ran inside and locked the doors. I don't know what her diagnosis was or why she fixated on my mother. We eventually moved when I was around 12.

There’s a guy that lives down the street who is a real piece of [trash]. He also has serious problems with women. When I bought my house I had a boyfriend living with me. As such, he left me alone. When that relationship ended, I became this guy’s arch nemesis apparently.

He would come onto my property and take [stuff]. He stole a porch chair, my garden hose, string for my trimmer, my doormat, whatever he could find. When confronted he told me these were my “husband’s” property, not mine (I’ve never been married). The police were called but as long as he gave the property back, nothing happened.

If I had a female friend over, he would shout homophobic slurs. If I had a male friend over, he would shout derogatory names at me. Police were called, warnings were given, no arrests were made.

He would alternate between trying to hit my dog with his car and trying to come on my property and take her. Police and humane officers were called. Again, he was warned but nothing further.

He would loiter on my property all the time. He cut down my rose bushes, he dug up all of the tulips in my flower bed, he brought his animals into my yard. I confronted him and told him he was not to trespass. He told me he had the permission of the deceased former owner of my home to come onto the property whenever he wanted. I told him I owned the property now and he was no longer welcome. He told me I had “no authority” and asked to speak to my father (who lives 1800 miles away). Police were again speed dialed at this point. He was served a written no trespassing order. He violated it twice and was cited. He never paid any of his fines and no further action was taken.

Two things happened at this point - a new magistrate was elected and I installed security cameras. Between having ample video evidence to easily charge and convict him of a crime and having a “changing of the guard” at the magistrate’s office (the previous magistrate was very difficult to deal with, even for the police), the whole situation has changed dramatically and while the problems with this guy aren’t completely nonexistent, the frequency has decreased dramatically.

My neighbor accidentally discharged a gun, and the bullet went through our sliding glass door and ended up in he pantry. We were alerted when 80% of the glass in our sliding glass door fell on the floor. I'm 5'7 and could walk through the sliding glass door wihout opening it.

The round was found in a box of pancake mix about 6 inches over my head so the odds of it hitting me had I been in the kitchen or walking around my house the odds of being hit were very high.

Downhill neighbor had a wide-open view of our beautiful lower yard. They got a barky dog that they left in their backyard all day. Dog torn down our fence trying to get out and get to our dog. We build a new solid wood fence and then they complained, now that they couldn’t see our yard, that we were spying on them from our yard. Whatever. Then they build a raised deck so that they could see over the fence. We planted a row of bamboo and haven’t seen them since.

They called the building department about our fence. The building department came out, said it was legit, and cited them for their illegal deck.

I had just moved to a new state by myself at the age of 22. My dad, who lives 3 hours away from my new place, helped with everything. While he was moving me in, we met my next door neighbors—an elderly couple in their 60’s. They seemed nice, especially the wife. They took down my phone number and told me to call if I needed anything. Nice people, I thought.

A few weeks later, I’m outside and the man invites me over for dinner later that week, promising his wife’s lasagna. I agree, somewhat reluctantly, because I’m a bit of an introvert. But they seem so nice and mentioned missing their kids, who don’t come around so often.

I show up on time and knock. The man answers. I ask where his wife is, and he tells me “oh, she’s in Florida, visiting her sister.” Okay... that’s weird, and definitely doesn’t sound like the dinner I signed up for. I ask if it was unexpected, the visit? He says, no. I mention that he had said we would be having her lasagna, so I had assumed it was a dinner with both of them. He gets kind of flustered and says “she forgot to make it before she left, I was planning on us to have what she was supposed to leave in the fridge.” Okay... definitely feeling like I was asked here under false pretenses. But maybe he doesn’t like it when she’s gone and just wanted to have company for dinner? I don’t know. I’m uncomfortable, though. I don’t know this man, and my family and friends are hours away.

“Dinner” is a day old pizza he pulls out of the fridge. And he seems much more interested in opening one of the three bottles of wine he’s got out on the counter. He offers me a glass, and at first I refuse, but he reeeallly insists. I agree to be polite. I go to sit at the dining room table and try to start talking casually about the area, asking for tips on places to visit, etc. He says “oh, let’s be friends, no need to sit at the table, let’s go into the living room.”

At first, he sits across from me in a different chair. Eventually, he moves to the couch where I was fidgeting, clearly uncomfortable. He continues moving closer, and changing my attempts at small talk to weird and personal topics—asking me about my “partying” in college, prying about men in my life, etc. All while trying to refill my glass. I’m not drinking what he pours, but he keeps pouring it higher and higher until it’s at the brim of the glass. Eventually I say “sorry, I’m not a drinker, and I don’t plan on having anymore.” He.. almost pouts? My alarm bells are going off like crazy and I just want to bolt. I keep saying that I have to go, something has come up with a friend, but when I stand to go he calls me back each time and says “you agreed to have dinner! Your friend can wait. Plus, you’ve just moved here—who can already be so important?”

I’m basically almost paralyzed at this point. I need to get out of there, and my brain is going a million miles a second planning an escape and dealing with the weird feeling of still wanting to be “polite.” He tells me to “loosen up.” And then He comes over and proceeds to start rubbing my shoulders. I’m in full out panic now. I flinch away, pull out my phone, and say in a dead voice, “I have to leave, right now.”

Idk what did it, but he let me go at that point. He tried keeping up with me as I nearly ran out of the room. He met me at the door and said he was sorry I couldn’t stay longer. And then, he somehow casually slipped in a reminder that he and his wife had a spare key to my house, if I ever locked myself out (the person who had lived there before me had given them one and used to have them cat and house sit).

I ran home and just... bawled. I was mad at myself for getting myself into a scary situation like that. I was furious at how STUPIDLY committed to being “polite” I was. And I was scared.

I called the only somewhat friend I had at that point, a guy I had met at my graduate school, and asked him to stay on my couch for the night. He very kindly agreed (he’s also my boyfriend now and lives with me lol). And then I called my dad in the morning and he drove 3 hours to change every single lock on the house.

When I see my neighbor outside now, he avoids eye contact. I haven’t spoken to him, or his wife, since.

When I was thirteen, a new neighbor moved into the house next door to mine (which we share a driveway with). Our neighborhood is really close and like to have get togethers and block parties, so we all got together and had a little celebration to welcome her. Immediately it became clear that she *did not* like my dad.

A while later we find out that she’s been telling our neighbors that my dad was inappropriate to her at the party. I know y dad would never act like that but he isn’t a native English speaker (he’s middle eastern which is relevant) and hey maybe some sort of wire got crossed and there was some kind of misunderstanding. So my dad goes to try and apologize to her. It does not go well and she tells my dad to leave which he promptly did.


Then she put up the security cameras. They absolutely covered her house getting views of pretty much every angle including lots of shots of our shared drive. “Whatever” we though. “A lady has a right to put cameras on her house.”


Then the cops started showing up. She called them claiming we had messed with her cameras or that me and my friends were shining laser pointers into them. The cops would leave pretty quickly because the supposed crime involved a camera which somehow hadn’t captured any evidence of the supposed crime.


Then she started claiming that we were poisoning her yard. She spent a lot of time in her lawn gardening and growing plants but for some reason every six months or so she’d cut everything down and start over. Anyways the cops started coming asking about our supposed poisoning of her lawn but they couldn’t find any evidence. We didn’t have any poison, her cameras hadn’t picked anything up, and we had no motive to poison her lawn. So she started an inquest with the department of agriculture. A pesticide use investigator showed and and interrogated us then took samples from her yard.


While that was going on we had a few fun encounters with her. Once she bought a giant floodlight and pointed it into our windows in the middle of the night. The fire department had to come and unplug it. Another time, our dinner was interrupted when a massive hazmat truck came blaring down our street. Men in heavy gear poured out and charged into her house and then, minutes later disappointedly filed out. One guy came and told us that she had bought a Geiger counter and used it wrong and had thought that we had irradiated her house.


Finally things came to a head when she sued us to get an order of protection. She claimed that my dad was a member of an al Qaeda sleeper cell intent on destroying her. She also claimed that he had used his skills as an engineer to develop a device that she referred to as a white ion laser which would allow him to turn invisible and sneak into her house. She submitted one terabyte of film from her cameras all of which was annotated with such incriminating evidence as “squamesh leaves the house. Squamesh enters the house.” There we’re also tons of photos and notes.


It was here that we discovered that her cameras were pointed into my bedroom and had been filming me for years. I was a young lad by this point so there’s probably video evidence of some pretty embarrassing teenage behavior out in the aether now. We later legally forced her to move the cameras but she kept moving them back, so I just kept my blinds closed for the better part of a decade.


During the trial, the department of agriculture report came back. It was determined that crazy neighbor has poisoned her own lawn by over fertilizing it. She received a fine for contaminating the ground water.


We obviously won the lawsuit and countersued her to get our own order of protection. We also had to legally get the files on us at the fbi and cia closed since she had reported us to both agencies.


Despite losing the suit, she continued to live next to us, occasionally calling the police on us or suing us again. All things accounted for, the cops were called on us 37 times, we were sued five times, and of course there were the investigations with various federal agencies.


It’s now been ten years and she’s finally moving out. Why you might ask. Does she feel guilty for accusing us of crimes with no evidence for a decade? Had her paranoia finally driven her to move? No. She didn’t pay her property taxes for six years and her house got taken from her. She tried to sue the city on a bunch of occasions as well and failed. Womp womp

This is only a summary of the situation. There’s tons more. I haven’t even gotten into her kids, her husband scam, the video she posted to YouTube of her dog dying, her faking a disability and so much more!


TLDR: crazy neighbor accuses us, spies on us, calls cops on us, and starts investigations with several federally agencies against us. Finally gets her house taken after not paying taxes.

*EDIT*

People have been asking for more stories so I'll post some of my replies.


*The husband scam:*


So when she first moved in she had a husband. We thought nothing of it since plenty of people have husbands. He seemed like a nice guy too. Unlike the crazy lady he was willing to talk to us and be cordial. He owned some local construction company and was pretty well off (just barely a millionaire if I had to guess).

Well after about six months we see him loading a bunch of his stuff into a truck and then we never see him again. By this point, we’re well into the insanity and so any crazy neighbor related activity sent off alarm bells at our place. So my mom starts investigating. She’s a lawyer so she knows how to search through people’s legal histories with a fine tooth comb.

It turns out that this guy was husband number four. We googled the previous husbands and what do they all gave in common? All were independently wealthy business owners. None lasted more than a year with. Each one had a prenup which promised crazy neighbor a healthy sum of money.

That made things start to make sense. Our neighborhood isn’t crazy high class or anything but the people around us do well for themselves. Crazy neighbor didn’t work. She barely left the house. Turns out she was living off of husband money.

While she’s lived next to us, we’ve seen husband number five and six fall victim to the same scheme. She actually would have been kicked out of her house sooner but she convinced one of them to pay her backed taxes for her, buying her some time.


*The Kids and the Fake Disability Scam:*


I'll preface this by saying that her insanity inspired a certain level of reciprocal insanity in my family and my mom especially would take time every month or so to she what she could dig up on crazy neighbors activities.

Because of that snooping, we knew that the kids were supposed to live with her, but we never saw them. One was around my age, the other was about six when they moved in. We'd see them maybe once every couple years leaving the house but that was about it.

I can't say with any certainty that they were actually living in that house, but they were supposed to be. And if they actually did then they had very little contact with the outside world.

The disability thing comes from a similar snoop fest. We found out that she sued the city for violating her fourteenth amendment rights as a disabled person somehow. We looked into it and she was claiming that she couldn't stand or walk for more than about five minutes. And yet most every day we'd see her out in her yard for hours doing manual labor.

That suit ultimately didn't go her way (shockingly) and I'm pretty sure it had something to do with her eventually losing her house. I think she was trying to leverage the disability thing to somehow get away with not paying her taxes? But honestly I'm not sure.



*Some other weird [stuff] that I just remembered*



Since we share a driveway with her our garages basically share a wall. This setup has led to some funny encounters. One time, after we already had an order of protection against her, she waltzed up to our door and rang our doorbell to try and get us to sign a document letting her tear down both of our garages so that she could enlarge hers. We told her to get off of our property.

When it snows we only shovel our half of the driveway/garage area since we don't want to start any trouble. One time my dad and I were out shoveling and she "accidentally" let her dog loose (not the pug from before. This is a breed I dont recognize, but to paint a picture its a medium sized dog with a jacked body and a tiny head). It ran over and started barking at us and being threatening so we threw snow on it and it ran away.

One time I noticed that the wood of our shared garage wall had cracks in it and I got curious so I peeked into her garage. It was full to the brim with cardboard boxes and the door looked like it had been jerry rigged somehow. I like to believe it was booby trapped but that's probably an embellishment.

One of her notes that was submitted during the trial cryptically read, "I fear the man with the beard." The issue was that no one in our family had a beard at the time. That one was a head scratcher.

My upstairs neighbor liked to blast Black Sabbath all night long on the weekend. The funny thing is I like Black Sabbath. But I didn’t like it at 3AM when I’d just got home from work a hour before after working a twelve hour shift. I’d be there laying in bed hearing the tune from “Symptom of the Universe” and my brain would be filling in the lyrics.

As many times as I banged on his door to get him to turn the music down you’d think he would have learned to have the volume at a decent level by 1AM.