28 Pure Trash Tenants Who Made Life A Waking Nightmare For Their Neighbors
We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us all about the worst neighbors they've ever had. Lucky for us (and unlucky for them), we received all kinds of off-the-wall nightmare neighbor stories that'll probably make your noisy upstairs neighbor look like a saint. Anyway...here are their wiiiiiild responses:
1."I had a neighbor in his 50s or 60s who always seemed very friendly and would smile and say hello whenever I saw him. One night around midnight, I was out smoking on my patio with the light off. I saw him come outside with a slingshot, pick up a rock, and shoot it at another neighbor’s car! I was shocked, and it wasn’t until he did it a second time that I said, 'What the hell are you doing?' He was startled, mumbled something, and went back inside. Apparently, he had been harassing this neighbor, a single mother, for months because he thought her dog tracked in some dirt from outside into the common area. I gave a statement to the police, but she decided not to press charges because she was moving out."
"A month or so later, he actually accused me of vandalizing his car and shouted all sorts of obscenities at me. A week later, he apologized and said he realized it was someone else, then laughed like it was no big deal. I told him not to talk to me ever again. Fortunately, he also moved out not long after."
2."My next-door neighbor hated my dogs. He would let them out of the yard and call animal control on them. We spent lots of money bailing them out of the animal shelter. The worst was when he called animal control to tell them that one particular dog was out and attacking a child. The animal control officer asked him to describe this dog, and he did. My husband was at the animal shelter with that dog getting him microchipped AS THIS WAS HAPPENING. After that, animal control didn't take his calls too seriously. The dogs mysteriously stopped getting out when my husband told the neighbor that we had cameras and we had caught him letting the dogs out."
—Anonymous
3."It started with my Amazon packages and doormat getting moved around. I thought it was kids until I caught this neighbor in the act. He claimed it wasn't him, and then a few hours later, he started trying to force open the door to my apartment. I called the cops, and they were there when he tried to do it for the third time that night. He got belligerent, but then went into his apartment and didn't open the door, so they couldn't do anything else. This became a pattern. Sometimes he wasn't wearing pants when he tried to do it, and then other times he was completely naked. The cops who came the first night were great and tried to intimidate him into stopping, but all the other ones who came refused to do anything because he was a 73-year-old man who they said was 'harmless.'"
"Another officer said, 'He probably just wants you to be his friend,' and 'Or, he thinks you're a hooker.' There were days where I had to work from home because he was hanging around outside my door or car. My apartment refused to evict him, but finally agreed not to renew his lease once he started standing around naked outside my door in the breezeway (within sight of potential renters). Over the next two months, he kept leaving jewelry, knives, and money on my doorstep until I was finally able to get a court date for a restraining order. After that, he kept his front door open for weeks so he could hear when I came and went. At one point, he even followed me to my car with a gun! Safe to say that my bar for 'good neighbor' is way lower than it used to be."
—Anonymous
4."Our old neighbor used to physically chase her son around the outside of her home like 20 times before she would come over to our house and ask, 'Can I have a popsicle for my son so he will finally go to bed?' My parents thought they were ridiculous, but always did it to stop the screaming bedtime tantrums. One night, the family loaded up their truck and escaped to Canada after racking up a lot of debt. Hope Canada was stocked up on popsicles."
5."I lived below a guy in his late 40s who was quiet and easygoing when he was there alone, but his annoying family was there at least half the time. Unfortunately, we shared a staircase, and they had to go by our door to get to his. The easiest to deal with was his sister, who would knock on our door and ask to use our phone, bum a cigarette (neither of us smoke), or to get a glass of water. It was always something. We'd politely remind her that her brother lived just up the stairs, so she should ask him for the things she needed. Far worse were his two brothers. One of them would show up at all hours and ring our doorbell to let him in if our neighbor wasn't home. Once, he rang it about 10 times in the middle of the night, and when I went to the window to yell at him to go away, he had the police with him, who asked us to let him up. I just wanted to sleep, so I opened the door."
"After that, we disabled our own doorbell and just asked our guests to call us when they arrived and warned them to watch out for anyone sketchy who tried to enter after them. The other brother would show up whenever he felt like it, open all the windows, and watch TV or listen to music at top volume for hours. Whenever all the siblings were together, they would get drunk and scream at each other and sometimes knock furniture over (also with the windows and doors open). Any attempt to ask them to be quiet or at least shut the windows would result in horrible insults shouted at you. In the mornings after the chaos, our neighbor would be terribly apologetic and promise his family wouldn't come around anymore, and of course they'd be back the next week. The neighbor worked for the landlord, so not much was done about him. We got out of there as soon as we could."
6."We lived in an apartment at the time. This guy lived five apartments down in the adjacent building, but he and his daughter would both take turns either standing directly in front of our kitchen window or on our actual doorstep to smoke their cigarettes. This happened multiple times a day, every day. He also would allow his grandson to throw his rubber ball against our front door for hours on end. Once, my husband and I had an argument, and when my husband went outside to cool off, there was our neighbor, sitting outside our kitchen window smoking his cigarette. He asked, 'Is everything okay in there?' Zero privacy with this guy around."
7."While mowing the lawn, I noticed that my storm drain kept smelling worse and worse. As the smell became vomit-inducing, I started sleuthing. Eventually, I found a pipe that didn’t belong in my grass and realized the smell was because of the neighbors. Their sewer line broke, and instead of fixing it, they ran PVC pipe directly from their bathroom’s main line into my storm drain. Nothing says good neighbor like turning someone's yard into a toilet!"
—Anonymous
8."One time, I was having game night with some friends when I looked outside and saw a bag floating through the air. Now, most of you are probably like, 'What does that have to do with neighbors?' Well, the bag was on FIRE because my neighbor had decided to create a floating lantern from a Walmart bag. Idiot. He set my tree on fire!!! It all turned out okay, but I refused to acknowledge that dumbass ever again."
9."We were halfway through our one-year lease when these neighbors moved into the building next to us and we had to start sharing the alleyway with them. They were constantly taking things off of our deck/patio and using them. My fiancé left a remote control car out once and we found the bed full of cigarette butts. Their apartment did not come with an outside sitting space, so they’d put chairs & junk right in the middle of the alleyway, blocking everyone’s access to the building's trash cans. They stayed up all night, screaming and crying and having drama. They’d have shady characters stay with them who would lurk around our building. My fiancé is a recovering heroin addict and they kept offering him drugs. That’s when I got really pissed."
"After repeatedly asking them to move their junk from the alleyway, they put out cameras and threatened us not to touch anything or move their stuff out of our way. Then, they broke into our apartment when we were in the middle of moving. They ripped shelving from the walls and took literally everything they could, including my jewelry collection, which had taken me 35 years to curate and contained gifts from loved ones and priceless family heirlooms. The police didn’t have enough evidence to do anything to them. I hope karma gets them in a big way."
—Anonymous
10."I was certain that my neighbor was a vampire when I was a kid. He was an old man who sat in his house all day and never turned his lights on at night. He said he 'preferred candlelight.' I never saw him in the daytime, and he would only come out at night to leave creepy notes in our mailbox to try and hit on my mom or lurk in the shadows (and scare the shit out of me while I was taking the trash out). I even hid some garlic bulbs in his bushes, just in case. Anyway, he was arrested after he got drunk and almost ran over my neighbor’s kids."
11."In uni, I was living in a house that was split into two separate apartments. The only thing I shared with my upstairs neighbors was the laundry room. They were constantly loud and partying, but what takes the cake is the weekend that I went to do my laundry on a Sunday morning. When I opened the dryer, I found a cardboard box full of vomit, which I assumed was from their party the previous night."
12."Since this girl moved into the apartment below mine, my life has been a living hell. There is a continuous weed smell from her apartment and she and her boyfriend have ridiculous fights for hours on end at least a few times a week (which are heard by my coworkers while I’m on work calls). I am constantly berated through her ceiling/my floor anytime I make even the tiniest bit of noise. Vacuuming? Forget about it. Drop a plastic cup? She screams that she’s going to beat my ass. She used to come to my door to scream in my face, but she’s since been told by the management company to stop. I’m legitimately afraid she will try to fight me in the stairwell. I can also hear her harassing the other neighbors next to and below her."
"The girl who used to live below her decided to move to another unit because of it. I’m super conscientious and have a lot of anxiety related to being an inconvenience to others, so I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid confrontation. I’ve bought thick foam slippers, reduced my vacuuming to once a week, bought a small, hand-held vacuum instead of using my expensive Roomba, I don’t have people over, I watch to see if she’s home before I do anything even slightly noisy, etc. I have repeated panic attacks and am always on edge in my own home because of it and the management company won’t do anything about it because she’s threatened to sue them for discrimination. I’ve lived in apartments for 12 years without a single complaint from anyone. I know I’m not doing anything to deserve that kind of reaction."
—Anonymous
13."My neighbors have four boys and they built a two-story fort overlooking my yard. Then they stand on the roof and see who can piss in my yard. It’s a contest."
—Anonymous
14."My family had a terrible neighbor who was very territorial. My dad was setting up our sprinkler in the corner of the yard right next to hers. She came storming out screaming at my dad because he was standing in her lawn to set up the sprinkler. Then, she sat on her back deck watching the water to make sure it didn’t touch her lawn. Another time, she came over yelling because we were sitting in our yard in the shade that her tree was producing. She went as far as getting an arborist to cut her tree so there wouldn’t be any shade in our yard. The arborist warned her that the tree would die because it would be lopsided, and sure enough, it did."
—Anonymous
15."My partner and I lived in an apartment complex. Our neighbors in the next-door unit frequently got into loud screaming matches. It was mostly him screaming at her, and sometimes we could hear him getting really agitated and starting to throw things. We called the police a few times because we were concerned for her safety. It sounded like a possible domestic violence situation, and we assumed it was a couple. One day, they started screaming at each other again, and we could hear them right through our living room wall, just as always. They were getting into it when the woman said something, and the man screamed back, ‘Well fuck you, MOM!’"
"Yeah, turns out it was a mother and her adult son who lived with her. We saw them a couple times after that and they didn’t seem to realize we could hear everything. He would be polite and offer to carry things for us, as if we couldn’t hear him screaming and throwing things at his mother on a weekly basis. Creepy."
16."They called the cops because we didn't return a bowl they let us borrow, LOL."
17."In our last apartment, the people above us had about seven people living in their two-bed, two-bath unit. For some reason, they used a hot plate with burning oil outside on their patio to cook. Their patio was made of wooden slats, so all that oil would drip down onto our patio and into our air conditioner, which broke a few times because they let their hot oil overflow. Luckily, it never dripped directly onto us. I complained a lot, but when the building tried to charge us for the third air conditioner repair, I had enough. I finally videoed them cooking from that stinking, hot, oily cesspool, showed it to the manager, and she waived the charges and told them to stop. They didn't stop for the remaining time we were there, but I heard from the tenant that moved into our unit after us that they got evicted because they started an oil fire. OH GEE, they didn't think that was ever going to happen??"
18."I once had a neighbor shoot out the driver's side window of my car with a BB gun for no reason. I had never interacted with the dude before."
19."Our neighbors sent a violation through our HOA because of my husband's truck in the driveway. It's a very nice truck, not some rust bucket. They only submitted the violation on him and no one else in our neighborhood with a truck because they said it ruined the aesthetic of our cul-de-sac!"
20."At my last house, I didn't have any close neighbors, but there was a large property across the street. I could just barely see the roof of the guy's house over the hill. Never met him. He was one of the sons of a family that owns a famous beer company, so he had tons of money and didn't need to work. This. Freaking. Guy. He would get up in the middle of the night and run heavy, loud equipment, just to move piles of dirt around for fun. At 2:00 a.m! I'd have work in the morning but would spend all night listening to an excavator. Or, in the winter, he'd ride a snowmobile around his property in the middle of the night. Also, he kept guinea hens. I shouldn't say 'kept' because he didn't actually *keep* them anywhere. They roamed around all over the area, hanging out on the road and blocking traffic, or screeching in my yard first thing in the morning. If you're unfamiliar with the sound guinea hens make, you're fortunate."
21."I've had a lot of loud, messy, and inconsiderate neighbors, but when I was an onsite apartment manager, the family two doors down were awful. I assigned one of the few available parking spaces to a disabled tenant. Awful Family was furious. One of them repeatedly blocked in my car, making me late for my second job, to retaliate. Awful Family also ran up enormous water bills every month because one of them showered multiple times a day and they complained nonstop about the shower leaking. Five different plumbers couldn't find any leaks in their bathroom. When the water main broke in my apartment and had to be shut off, they threw a tantrum because they couldn't shower at 1:00 p.m. Then, the power went out and they had a second tantrum. They also pounded on my door like animals instead of using the doorbell, were constantly too loud, and harassed me over another tenant doing laundry at 9:00 p.m."
22."My nightmare neighbor built his house on an empty lot behind a row of homes and next to mine. After dumping truckload after truckload of dirt, he built it much higher than the lot had been, without the proper permits, of course. The next spring, we had record rainfalls, and it flooded the basements of all of the homes around him, including ours. He had not made any accommodations for stormwater runoff. All of us had to make expensive changes to our own properties to redirect water because of his stupidity. And he was really surprised that none of the neighbors like him!"
—Anonymous
23."I recently bought my first home as a single, independent woman and have learned that my neighbor doesn't think a woman can do anything on her own. He is constantly telling me all the things I do wrong. He accuses me of mowing my lawn at the wrong angle and will measure the grass between our fence lines so he can come and tell me that my grass is uneven. I have caught him multiple times on my video camera coming into my yard to fix things that 'a woman wouldn't understand.' It's gotten so bad that his grown son has come over to apologize for his actions, but his dad is still on me every day and is making me want to sell what I thought was my first dream home."
—Anonymous
24."We live in a condo building in an urban area. In late March 2020, just into the COVID lockdown, our neighbor bought a drum set so that he could play along to Nickelback songs."
—Anonymous
25."The neighbors below me had very loud sex. I left them a note in their mailbox indicating that I could hear everything and asked them to keep it down. However, they then chose to yell MY NAME while going at it, having learned it from the note. It was really freaking uncomfortable. They have since moved out. I don't think they were anyone's favorite neighbors."
—Anonymous
26."During the height of pandemic, while everyone was in lockdown, my upstairs neighbor decided to remodel their entire apartment. This process took about six months to complete. Now I can hear every little noise coming from their unit because they installed wood flooring without the proper insulation. Every single noise can be heard — from the scratching noise when they move their desk chair to the creaky hinges on their closet door. I even hear the percussion from the footsteps of their 5-year-old daughter. What was once a peaceful place is now a living nightmare. The lack of insulation is so bad that I can hear their iPhone ring when they receive phone calls and I can also hear their phone alarm early in the morning."
—Anonymous
27."For 12 years, we lived in a quiet, rural area. Two years before we left, a new person moved into the house next door that once belonged to an elderly woman. He was a younger, single guy. I have two daughters that shared a room that faced his house. After about a week, we noticed that he installed bright lights in his backyard that shined directly into my daughters' room. So, we got light-blocking shades — no big deal. But, then the parties started. They would begin around midnight and continue all throughout the night until about 6:00 a.m. My husband would have to get up for work at 3:00 a.m., and we just couldn't sleep. The music he blasted would shake our windows, and there would always be yelling and screaming. Sometimes fights broke out. No matter what we did or said, he wouldn't stop."
"It only got worse. We ended up leaving as soon as possible. We found out recently that he built a 'stage' in his yard and he and his buddies play guitar and sing all night now."
—Anonymous
28.Finally: "I once had a neighbor who would come sit on my patio while drunk. He also kept asking if my wife would be interested in a threesome. On more than one occasion, I woke up to find him passed out on my patio. One day, he came home drunk and found that his wife had locked him out. He tried to kick the door in, causing damage. His wife called me for help. While fixing the damage for her, he returned and started punching me for messing with his wife. My wife called 911 and he fled. Police issued a warrant for him. I never saw him again."
—Anonymous
Have you ever had a terrible neighbor who made you want to tear your hair out?! Tell us your story in the comments below!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
