“Love your neighbor” is always easier to put into practice if the people living next door to you are kind, wholesome, polite, and respectful. (Oh, and if they bring you cookies, hot from the oven, at random times throughout the week.) Though the adage becomes incredibly hard to live by when your neighbors are the opposite of this. That’s the true test of your patience as a good neighbor.
It’s likely that you have at least one neighbor in your building or on your block who is a tiny bit annoying. But we guarantee that they’re probably nowhere near as bad as some of the people internet users had to deal with. To show you exactly what we mean, we’ve compiled a list of stories, shared by redditors on the r/AskReddit online community, about some of the very worst neighbors they encountered. Scroll down and have a read, dear Pandas. Though, keep in mind that far from everyone is like this: most neighbors are absolutely lovely people (metaphorical neighBROS if you will).
I reached out to Reddit user u/gigi_c16, one of the authors of these viral threads, for a chat about (the lack of) neighborly love in some people's lives. We spoke about the importance of honesty, trust, community, and building genuine bonds. "I hope people have somewhat normal neighbors but I know not every neighbor is going to be that way," they told Bored Panda. Scroll down for the full in-depth interview with the redditor.
Pssst, Pandas, in case you really do need a small pick-me-up, check out Bored Panda’s article about the most wholesome neighbors ever once you’re done with this list. However, if you'd like some more stories about neighbors from hell, you can read our previous article about them right here.
#1
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...
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259points
In redditor u/gigi_c16's opinion, what lies at the core of being a good neighbor are honesty and being someone others can trust. There's a practical element to being a good person and neighbor here at work, too. "You could be away on vacation and something could happen inside your home, you would want your neighbor to be the one person to help out and tell you everything including taking care of the house, especially if you have pets," they told Bored Panda that it simply pays to be someone your neighbors care about, whether you're being kind for the sake of being kind or because you think it might be useful to have them on your side in the future.
"In this day and age, I believe we are starting to learn more about our neighbors because of technology, now everything is just a call or text away," they said that they're skeptical that we're getting to know our neighbors less nowadays.
I posed a hypothetical question to u/gigi_c16 about how we should react if a certain neighbor keeps making our lives miserable day in, day out. I was curious whether we should ignore them, try to reason with them, try to be compassionate, or go for some other tactics, instead. In the redditor's opinion, it's best to get all the other neighbors on the same page and on your side if things are getting seriously out of hand.
#2
When I was seven, our next door neighbor came pounding on our front door to scream at and threaten to kill my dad because our pet that we kept in our backyard was being too loud. The pet was a rabbit.
A rabbit.
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203points
#3
My old neighbour was perfect, quiet and always had a nice chat when we met outside our flats. He was obviously dealing drugs but he kept all the junkies in line, they were quiet as well when they were knocking on his door all hours of the night. Then he stabbed the s**t of two guys that came to his door. The hallway was covered in blood. It was crazy. Still, after he got sent to prison a new guy moved in that played music constantly as loud as he possibly could. I'll take ol' stabby back any day.
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194points
"I think we should react to our neighbors making us miserable is to tell others that are around your street to just look out for this neighbor and try to have another neighbor to trust," they said. "It’s always good to be compassionate but if it gets to the point this neighbor doesn’t respect you back, I wouldn’t try to be. I feel like it is best to ignore them as long nothing extreme happens."
I was also curious about the inspiration behind the redditor's thread in the first place. As usual, it's real-life experiences that usually drive us to see if others can relate to us.
"There are so many stories about annoying neighbors, but I wanted to see how weird these stories can get. I had a couple neighbors that were annoying or just a bit odd so I wanted to ask others about their stories."
I’ll be completely honest with you that I don’t know even know the majority of my neighbors. I don’t know their names, what they like or dislike, what their dreams and ambitions are. I do, however, know what they like to cook (the smell of their cooking wafts into the corridors) and what breeds of dog they keep (I say hello to them when they take them out for a walk). I’d go as far as to say that I’m better pals with the cashiers at my local shops than I am with the people living, quite literally, next door to me.
I’m not alone in this disentanglement from neighborly bliss, however. One British study found that a whopping 75 percent of respondents see their neighbors as mere acquaintances. And that’s at best! Community spirit seems to be in short supply these days. Though, of course, that can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood.
#4
When I was growing up my rear neighbor, Janet, and my mom were both going through rough divorces at the same time. My mom mostly kept to herself at first. Janet did not take that approach.
At first it seemed frustrating but reasonable. We had dogs and a fenced in yard in the suburbs. One day the dogs were left outside and barked too long. Janet filed a noise complaint.
Then she started filing noise complaints any time she saw the dogs outside. Then my mom started keeping them inside more. Then Janet filed complaints when she could hear the dogs barking inside, or when she heard someone else’s dogs, or really just whenever she felt like it because this wasn’t about the noise it was about Janet feeling a sense of control over something during an out of control divorce.
Eventually, the cops must have told Janet she had to stop calling them, so she started calling animal control instead. The cops had (we presume) told her that she was at risk of a criminal charge for abusing police services, but animal control had no such protections. They had to come out when someone filed a “loose animal” report.
It got to the point where animal control knew what was happening, and would come to our door to make small talk with my mom just to file their report. They told her though that as long as the calls happened they had to at least come out.
Then my mom had a feather brained idea.
Whenever animal control showed up, my mom would buy a two-pack of lawn flamingos and put them in our yard. She was a teacher, so she got up early. When she did, she’d take the flamingos and make them stare at Janet’s front door. Then she’d get home earlier than Janet, and move them around just like normal decor.
Whenever Janet made a call, my mom bought more flamingos. And whenever Janet made a call, a bigger and bigger flock of lawn flamingos stared her down the day after she left for work, but would be casually mingling when she got home.
I can only imagine what she must have thought. One would have to think she questioned her sanity, both because of the movement and the incremental growth. But by the time it got to twelve or so lawn flamingos giving her the hundred yard glare, she made the connection.
Janet never called animal control again after that.
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162points
#5
When I was younger and living in a different city our front neighbors stole our dog from our backyard one day and we didn’t find out it was them until a few months later when we saw our dog in their yard. They denied they stole it and wouldn’t give it back to us until we got the police involved.
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148points
#6
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.
131points
According to The Washington Post, being a good neighbor means adhering to neighborly etiquette and helping others do the same. For instance, if somebody new is moving in nearby, you can help them out by providing a list of useful information. From information about the best local handymen and places to eat in the neighborhood to a list of your own contact details.
By being proactive and helpful, you can preempt a lot of potential disagreements. Before they can even begin to bubble up.
#7
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**k 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 s**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.
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127points
#8
Very religious neighbor came to pick us up for church every Sunday morning.. We kindly declined every time, never made a big deal out of it.
Sold the house, the new owners got a judge to issue a no-contact order, the overly religious neighbors were not even allowed to walk by the house anymore.
117points
#9
I lived in a 3 story apartment building on the middle floor. The bottom floor was basement apartments. It was a very quiet building and a lot of people were older and lived there 10 years or more. Then this weird creepy a**hole moved in below us. He would play music loud all night and I had to be up for work at 5 am. He wouldn't answer the door so we could ask him to turn it down. So I had to jump up and down until he heard it. He had pisssed off girls banging on his door screaming for hours and he was home but wouldn't answer. She ran out and poured nail polish all over his car. His apartment was basement but he had a huge window that was right next to the stairs to get in. He never closed the curtains and you would see directly down into his living room where he had built a sex swing with bondage stuff hanging on it. Had to explain what it was to everyone that came over even my Mom. Then one day a cop knocked on the door he was holding about 20 pairs of women's underwear and asked me to pick out mine. It was like 3 pairs and the cop said throw them away the downstairs neighbor had been wearing them because he was stealing them out of the laundry room. I guess the upstairs neighbor was walking in the building and seen her underwear hanging on the sex swing and called the cops. So they arrested him for stealing our underwear, The landlord evicted him. When he got out of jail he was so pissed he was getting evicted he went and bought a bunch of sand and covered the whole apartment in sand and turned the air conditioning all the way up and left it after he switched the electric back into the landlords name. He was a nightmare neighbor.
109points
Part of being a good neighbor means maintaining the looks of your piece of suburban paradise. Be sure to mow your lawn, clean the gutters, regularly repaint your home, and generally spruce up how the outside looks. It’s nice to live in a nice home, as cheesy as it sounds. And your neighbors will thank you because you’re helping increase property values because of how good your house looks.
It’s also important to be responsible pet owners. Clean up after your dog. Make sure your pets aren’t left to run loose wherever they want. Many of us might love pets, but not everyone’s happy to see a random doggo going number two on their manicured emerald lawn.
#10
When my wife and I moved into our house in the summer of 2019, the neighbors on either side of us warned us about the people renting the house directly behind ours. Apparently they had been known to cause trouble and blow things way out of proportion, bordering on paranoia of everyone around them.
We kept it in mind but had no issues for the first 6 months or so after moving in. Their house sits on a hill behind ours and so overlooks the majority of our back yard due to the elevation change.
Well one night (morning, technically) at about 3am we wake up to Ring notifications from our phones showing video from our front doorbell - there’s a man standing barefoot in a sleeveless shirt on our porch POUNDING on our front door.
We give it 2-3 minutes just watching him on the app thinking maybe he’s drunk and has the wrong house… essentially giving him the benefit of the doubt. But then we start to hear him say “come out you f**king p**sy, I’m gonna f**k you up” etc and he leaves the porch and starts to head around the side of the house towards our backyard.
Considering we had NO idea who this was, my wife now immediately calls the police as I move out of our bedroom towards the external doors to look/listen for any attempt of home invasion. At this point our neighbors directly behind us throw a HUGE spotlight into our backyard from theirs.. we’re thinking okay cool they know something is up and they’re trying to help us out by shedding light on our backyard.
The cops arrive several long minutes later and knock, we explain the situation and they head out back to look around and get the scoop from the neighbors with the spotlight. It turns out that the spotlight neighbor was the one on our porch, he had jumped our fence into our backyard and up into his yard and then threw the light on.
He told the police that several nights prior, I had let my puppy out into MY OWN backyard in the middle of the night and because I was in my boxers, that I was “trying to expose myself to his family” because they could look down on our entire yard from where theirs sits.
He then followed this up to the police with “evidence” which consisted of videos he had taken THROUGH OUR WINDOWS of my wife and I inside of our own home doing totally normal things like chores, watching tv, etc.. nothing inappropriate or scandalous (not that it would have mattered anyway, we were in our OWN HOME). Because of the elevation difference, if they went out of their way they could technically slightly see through our closed blinds due to the angle… so they had been filming us for no reason at all and expected the police to see this as reasonable?
The cops came back in and my wife was devastated, a huge breach of our privacy of course and totally unfounded accusations as we had never done anything to anger these people, we hadn’t even met them. The police told us “just don’t worry about it, if he tries something again just give us a call” which wasn’t the most comforting at the time.
They moved out a few months later without any additional issues, my wife and I celebrated like it was a holiday when we saw the moving van in their driveway.
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96points
#11
My mom, dad and I moved into a condo when I was about 14, it's set up like an apartment building, so we we had a neighbor on our right and one below us. When we first moved in we met Trina our downstairs neighbor, she was an older woman (60's) taking care of her mentally challenged grandson (my same age but mentally a 6 year old with minimal language development) she seemed sweet and welcomed us. We had a few small issues but kept them to ourselves; she smoked A LOT, like 3-4 packs a day, and the smell would over take our house, and he grandson would "scream" a lot in the early morning but nothing serious and we never said a word. We were all friendly enough and life was fine.
About two years after moving in my mom bought a portable hose, to water her outdoor plants and clean the balcony off. This is when s**t hit the fan. Trina lost it when my mom washed the patio for the first time, just water no chemicals, just rinsing the dirt off. Trina promptly started screaming about killing my mom for doing this. She then complained to the condo association every single day for years. She started to burn small fires in a coffee can under our windows in an attempt to smoke us out. She once saw my bedroom window was left open and literally flooded my room with her hose. She would call the police on every single noise we ever made, it got to the point that if she called the police and they showed up and there wasn't an issue she would be fined $50.
A couple years later I become pregnant young (18) and my boyfriend moved in and we had a baby. She told my boyfriend that I had a revolving line of men, and I was unsure who the father was but chose him because he was nice. (Completely fabricated) She continued with her nonsense for years and years, she once was driving down the drive way while I was getting my then two kids into the car; she literally tried to hit my oldest son with her car. I had to physically pick him up and throw him out of the way. When the police came she denied everything.
She harrased my family for years to the point of the condo association having to have private meetings with her and my dad, which nothing ever came of. The condo association was just as fed up as we were.
Three years ago my mom died suddenly of CJD and when she realized my mom was no longer around she laughed and told my dad and my kids that my mom deserved to die. She was an awful, awful woman. She recently fell ill with Covid, and subsequently had a stroke. We don't know if she is still alive or in a home but my dad (who still lives there) says it's nice to be free of the constant harassment.
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93points
#12
Neighbour took me to court and tried to sue me for $24,000 because my dog growled at her and caused her emotional distress.
Didn't get very far in court.
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91points
Finally, probably the most effective way of becoming friends with your neighbors… is to become friends with them. You can’t like someone if you don’t know them! So invite ‘em over! Grab some dinner together, watch some TV, play charades. Do whatever you feel like you want to do to get to know the people in your local community.
You’re not just having a wonderful time, you’re also laying the foundations for peace in the future. After all, any disputes you might get into in the future are far easier to solve when you know and like the people on the other side of the white picket fence.
#13
When I was a little girl, like 10, I had this grown man neighbor that spanked me every time I saw him when I was playing outside. Just one swift slap, like, daily. It was obviously only when my parents weren’t around, but it was incredibly inappropriate. So maybe not creepy so much as pedophile-y, but still...
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83points
#14
My neighbour came into my back yard when she thought we (university students) had gone home for the summer. I still lived in the house. In fact, I was sitting by the window when she entered or back yard. I thought nothing of it - I chalked it up to her looking for her cat.
I went back to reading my book and completely forgot about her until I saw movement out of the corner of my eye some while later. She was walking out if my backyard with all our plants.
She stole our garden. I was so astounded that I just sat there and stared at her. I never even tried to stop her.
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77points
#15
Growing up there was a middle aged lady, lived across the road, with her young daughter.
Every day I'd see her walk down the road carrying two large laundry bags, and later she'd return with them. Did this almost everyday. I was curious how just the two of them needed to do so much laundry, so frequently.
Years later my mum told me the lady had been a refugee from nazi Germany. She was terrified she'd leave the house and the Nazis would raid it when she was out. So she carried all of her clothes with her. Always. Everywhere.
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75points
#16
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 delievered 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.
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73points
#17
I lived in an apartment building and would hear weird scratching at my door like someone was trying to get in at night. Then someone knocking at my door. I answered that exactly 2 times because the dude terrified me.
He would show up wearing nothing but an open bathrobe and wanted to "just talk."
I actually called the cops the second time he knocked and gave them the whole story. A 20 yo girl living on her own and some middle aged man trying to get in to her apartment? Scary. The cops and landlady must have worked together to get that guy to back off cause after calling the cops he stopped coming by.
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71points
#18
A bunch of old folks moved out and some new neighbours came in. They met us once to ask permission for barbecuing. That was literally the only time I saw them.
They'd never come out. You'd never see them morning or evening. They were never at the local shops and when they moved in we did they had like 15 mattresses for a 4 bed house which raised some red flags but we didn't think much of it because they were quiet.
Turns out they were running a brothel in there.
Yes they were arrested.
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70points
#19
When we moved in, he came over to tell us the house had previously burned down twice (news to us). Got the feeling he wanted to sort of brag about how he saved people from the fires. Then a few years later after leaving our garage door open we found our stored grill with all the unlit burners on and a bit of burnt paper sitting underneath.
He's since disappeared (moved or dead, idk), but we lock up our propane now.
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70points
