Nifty
People Are Sharing Their Nuttiest Neighbor Stories, And They've Got Me On The Edge Of My Freakin' Seat
1. “I lived on the first floor of an apartment, and my upstairs neighbor, one suite over one day, yelled at me that my body wash (from Bath and Bodyworks) wafted into his suite every time I showered and made him sick. The way he was carrying on, he made it sound like I bathed in poop. He said he was going to go to management and have me evicted if I didn’t use something else. I learned from another neighbor that he was always trying to cause ridiculous problems with the neighbors.”
—Anonymous
2. “When my neighbors moved in next door, they had all their bills sent to my address and all other mail sent to theirs. When I asked them to do an address change, I was told that wouldn’t be necessary; I could just walk it over! Three complaints later to the postmaster and a lovely mail carrier, I no longer get their mail.”
—Anonymous
3. “My downstairs neighbor built a literal shrine to Trump in front of our building. It started with a couple of cheap American flags around Memorial Day, but it grew to include campaign signs, fake flowers, and a little platform with a framed picture. I finally got in touch with our landlord and had them take it down because he started leaving Catholic prayer candles (with Trump’s face on them) lit overnight, unattended, under a tree. It was a fire hazard. He got evicted shortly after, and I asked the maintenance guy what happened. Apparently, he’d rewired multiple rooms in his apartment and built an extremely unsafe neon-and-candles shrine inside instead.”
“I found out later he and his brother used to own a gun shop in the area and had been busted and shut down for selling illegal weapons to locals and several Russian customers overseas. That tracks.”
4. “They fire a real-life cannon multiple times every Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veterans Day. Yes, a fully real cannon. The first time he did it, I thought his house exploded.”
—Anonymous
5. “My best friend and I moved into an apartment with a common driveway that bisected the entire center of the block. Our parking was directly behind our apartment. When my roommate called me to look at the apartment, he told me, ‘Make sure you park in front of the barn,’ which was across from our parking spots. I pulled in and exited the car when this old lady came flying out of the corner house, yelling and wielding a broom. She chased me around the car, trying to hit me with the broom. I looked at our apartment, and there was my roommate laughing his butt off. This became an initiation for all our friends. We’d tell them to park in front of the barn. Then, we’d sit out back with some beer and wait for them to arrive. We’d laugh like fools when we heard the screen door and the screaming as she chased them around their car. I’m sure we’ll burn in hell, but it was great fun.”
—Anonymous
6. “I had a tiny wind chime I hung on my front porch. It made the sweetest, but not loud, sound. One day, there was a rubber band around it, keeping it from tinkling. I removed the rubber band, and the next day, it was bound again. I put it in my backyard where no one could get to it. I had one neighbor and green space on the other side, so I can guess who didn’t like my chimes.”
—Anonymous
7. “I had a neighbor at my old apartment who had just gotten out of the military and was apparently having difficulty adjusting. He was a nice enough guy, but every morning at 6:00 a.m., he would take his trumpet out to his balcony and play Reveille (that military wake-up song). I didn’t set an alarm for three months; he was just gone one day.”
8. “My neighbor is currently ordering large palettes of cinder blocks, which he has arranged in a sort-of wall just on the front of his lawn — not on the sides or anything. The wall is also not secured in any way. It’s a neat pile of cinderblocks next to some messier work-in-progress walls. No one knows why he’s doing this.”
9. “My neighbors across the street (we live in apartment buildings) have a live comedy show every month, complete with an audience, PA system, food, and a live DJ for the after-party. The noise level is off the charts. I have to threaten them with calling the police to get them to quiet down at 3:00 a.m.”
—Anonymous
10. “We had an interesting neighbor a few years back. He was in his 50s or so and liked to play his oldies rock pretty loud sometimes — no big deal. We came home one night to find him drunkenly wandering the parking lot and picking random leaves for what looked like a big bouquet. He saw us pull in and insisted that my little Hyundai looked like a Porsche. A few nights later, we awoke to him and a buddy playing accordions at 3:00 a.m. I knocked on his door and heard him telling his buddy to ‘just let the music flow, man.’ I let them be. That dude was awesome.”
11. “My neighbor bought the house next door five years ago. He has people clean the entire street (leaf blower AND lawn vacuum simultaneously) DAILY. Sometimes, MULTIPLE times a day. They also clean the ENTIRE exterior of the house — gates, fences, etc. I think I have even seen them cleaning rocks. What makes this even more bizarre is that no one actually LIVES there. People just come and clean everything and leave.”
—Anonymous
12. “I once lived in a town right outside of Birmingham, Alabama. I had a neighbor who lived down the road, and their house was down a long driveway. I didn’t know they had a little farm. But, unlike normal farms with horses and cows, they raised llamas and ostriches. Imagine my surprise after living there for over a year when I walked outside one morning to go to work, and I had a front yard full of llamas and ostriches. My boss was like, ‘Yeah, right…’ when I called to say I would be late for work because they were between me and my car, and I wasn’t going near them!”
—Anonymous
13. “When I was a teenager, a new family moved across the street from us. I lived with my grandfather, who was a retired policeman, and he always made an effort to welcome new families into the neighborhood. He strongly believed that people knowing their neighbors made for safer and better neighborhoods. Normally, new neighbors were happy to be welcomed. Not this guy! He straight-up told my grandpa to stay the hell off his property and never to attempt to talk to his wife or kids. I asked if his children would be attending the high school I attended, and he looked at me like I was a freak and responded directly to my grandpa, saying that he should teach his child that it’s wrong to ask questions of adults! Mind you, I was not a young kid.”
“This family never went outside. The kids were homeschooled. They would do all their yard work at night with flashlights. They even mowed the lawn around midnight. They were only there for around four months and left in the middle of the night to avoid the police, who began looking into them after many calls from concerned neighbors, especially my grandparents! It was so weird that I felt something wasn’t right with that family! I seriously hope those kids turned out okay.”
—Anonymous
14. “Several years ago, at a holiday dinner, my grandmother explained that her brothers would be staggering their attendance because they were neighbors and in a property line dispute. Rather than handle this like mature adults, one of them decided to annoy the other by populating his side of the property line with non-functional toilets and really, really tacky lawn ornaments. He knew his brother could see them from his house and would be ticked off. They did indeed stagger their visits so they didn’t have to see each other. These men were in their 60s at the time.”
15. “Unfortunately, our neighbor is a board member of our HOA. In the late afternoon, late into the evening, and early morning even, he ‘holds court’ with friends/employees and plays music, and if it’s chilly, he will have a natural gas-burning flame lamp lit INSIDE his garage! We are concerned about the flame potentially getting out of control and possibly creating a fire. Geesh.”
—Anonymous
16. And: “One of my neighbors occasionally gets wildly drunk and sings off-key loudly in the street, usually between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. He does classics like the British National Anthem and ‘Angels.’ One night, after about an hour of awfully loud warbling, one of the other neighbors went outside and yelled at him to shut up; he kept going, so she threatened to call the police, and he barked and clapped like a seal at her until she went back inside.”
