Let's share about our worst neigbors ever!

T

Tallchick

Cathlete
Mine? Well, okay, I'll tell.
This is a decent middle class neighborhood in sunny CA. A couple of years ago the nice seemingly sensible woman across the street (let's call her Gertrude)threw out her alcoholic husband after years of his irrational behavior. All was going well and she seemed happy until....... a new man (lets call the creep) moved in with her. Not really an attractive fellow--a few teeth missing and no muscle tone on his rail-thin body (definately not a Cathe follower). Well, with that particular look, one generally sees red flags. Not her, oh she was in love. I realize we all have been stupid over men, but come on...this stupid?!

So, he is living with her acting like he is making his living selling eggs from his 10 or so chickens in the backyard. My husband, ever the nice guy, always bought eggs from him (which I promptly threw away) to be neighborly. I am sure you reading this already know that he wasn't making his living selling eggs. Not with all the different cars stopping at the house at all hours for maybe 15 minutes at a time.

One beautiful September day, I was taking out the last of the trash and I see four white cars park down the street. About 10 men get out of the cars (I am thinking "oh too bad, the salesman isn't home to sell his wares, they will be dissapointed"). What I didn't notice at first, is that all these men are wearing vests reading "Police". Oh, I was so thrilled! They broke into the house (I am watching from my living room window). Then the Creep drives into the driveway and the cops come out and bust him. Whee-hee!
Gertrude comes home later and she too gets busted. Then his horrible child comes home and he too is arrested. Whoopee! Later in the evening with all the neigbors watching, a large truck arrives and some undercover officers (I recogized one as coming to the house before--must have been working the case) by the what seems like dozens. Yeah!
To sum up. Seems the creep was making crank at motels in the area and selling the stuff along with his lousy creepy son.
My husband later told Gertrude that no one really looked at her as the bad one, she was kind of under his spell. She then started to defend him explaining that he wasn't getting his disability and he needed to do what he needed to do. Whatever.
Anyway, she sold the house (good good good) and then bailed him out of jail (his bail was $250,000.00, her was $20,000.00--her mom got her out). He had to go back in and is in for the next ten years.

Ah, neighbors.

So, please share!!!!
 
Wow, that's pretty crazy! I've been lucky and haven't had any that were THAT bad but I did have this one single lady as a neighbor. She had two school-age children. Anyway, she would have a party every night on a specific night. I think it was a weird night for a party, too. Like every Monday or something. Anyway, they weren't really loud or anything BUT her guests would park in our driveway and in our yard! I'll never forget the first time I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a car parked right in front of our window! :eek:

We should have complained but we never did. We were afraid to find out what kind of party was going on and they seemed like the rougher type of people. Fortunately, I don't think she lived there for more than a few months.
 
Thats a good story! I never had any really bad neighbours either.Thank goodness.
We did have this one guy who wasn't bad but he kept putting garbage on his plants he was trying to grow.Banana peel...any peel actually and then fish.He use to throw fish on it and what a stink in the backyard, it was disgusting!Thats about the worst of my stories.
Now I just have a neighbour who likes to talk my ear off so everytime I hang clothes on the line I pretend I don't see him.He aslo shows NO facial expressions so when he tell me something, I don't know if he is serious or if I am suppose to laugh.
Lori:)
 
Mine's not bad, just ridiculous.

Last summer the county was doing work on a storm drain (cleverly disguised as a creek) which runs along our street. There were lots of young construction-type guys around all day for the entire summer. The woman across the street took to mowing her lawn in a tiny orange bikini and workman's boots. She is in her 40s and in decent shape, but she still looked ridiculous! My kids could never figure out why I'd be in hysterics when we turned the corner!

:+ :p :7

Marie
 
Well I have a story to tell. It is when we lived in PA. We lived next to the Jones. They lived up to their last name, let me tell you. They were obsessed with perfection to the point that it was sickening to watch. I know I obsess with cleaning, but this was beyond.
My other neighbors had different issues. One was marital, I suspect. The recycling bin was always full to the top with beer bottles. LOL! The Ms. there was a real B#tch! If you said, "hello" or "good morning" on a bad day, you might get a evil look. One day she was at the bus stop and I mentioned that she might catch cold with her hair still being wet. She swung her hair at me and just gave me a snotty look. I would send over cupcakes to her children and she would send them back. I would give them strawberries from our garden and instead of saying, "thank you" she would just say, "oh, how small they are". She and the other neighbors were involved in "the social club" in our neighborhood. I don't like "clicks" and could not wait to move. It felt like wintertime all year long there because our neighbors were so cold. Now down the road, a different story. Nicest people everywhere else...we just got stuck inbetween a few goobers.
 
At our last assignment (dh is in the army), our neighbour happened to me my dh's boss. His wife took it upon herself to befriend me. At the time it seemed harmless, and on the surface she seemed like a normal mother and wife, but she turned out to be anything but.

It started when she asked me to start walking with her. Little did I know that she meant for me to walk 5+ miles a day with her in the intense southern heat. Now, I consider myself a fit person but these "walks" turned into something I dreaded more than ANYTHING!! First, her cadence was so fast for me!! She would not slow down! Her goal was to walk at least 4 miles an hour, which for me is a very slow jog. So I always had the feeling that I should be running. Second, (and this is the worst part), she used me as a dumping ground to tell all of her secrets on these walks!! At first I was flattered that she entrusted me with her personal details, but it didn't take long to understand that she was just wanting to talk AT someone for hours on end. She rarely asked me anything about myself and when she did, she always changed the subject back to herself.

After a couple of months of this, I felt like I knew every (and I mean EVERY) detail of her terrible,loveless marriage. I gave her advice from time to time but I became convinced that she didn't want to have a good marriage. She never made any attemp to make it better between them. She wanted something to complain about! It was like watching a soap opera with no ending. It became very stressful for me. I eventually had a hard time even looking at her husband (who was my husband's boss) without thinking of the emotionally abusive way he treated his wife. There was no physical abuse between them, but they were not close at all. In fact, they would go weeks and weeks without talking! I became convinced that they hated each other. And to top it off, they had 2 children!

It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have to walk with her everyday(5 days a week) but I felt like I had no choice. After 4 months, I told her I had to cut down our walks to 3 times a week so I could "focus on my workouts at home". It was such a stressful situation for me because I truely felt obligated to be her friend because she was DH's boss's wife and our next door neighbour. Also she was 14 years older than me so I felt intimidated to some extent. I was so relieved when they were stationed somewhere else!! To top it off, when she moved she never called me again! It cemented my suspicion that she didn't care about our friendship one bit!! When they left it was literally like a 100 pound weight was lifted from my shoulders!! I did learn a lot from that relationship. I will never allow anyone to use me like that again!!

Ok, I'm done:) :) Now that I've brought this up I feel stressed out again!! I'll just repeat...she's gone she's gone she's gone....

Carolyn
 
>Mine's not bad, just ridiculous.
>
>Last summer the county was doing work on a storm drain
>(cleverly disguised as a creek) which runs along our street.
>There were lots of young construction-type guys around all day
>for the entire summer. The woman across the street took to
>mowing her lawn in a tiny orange bikini and workman's boots.
>She is in her 40s and in decent shape, but she still looked
>ridiculous! My kids could never figure out why I'd be in
>hysterics when we turned the corner!
>
>:+ :p :7
>
>Marie


Marie,

That might have been me that you seen. I have a tiny orangish bikini, but I wouldn't have been wearing boots...so maybe not. LOL!

Charlotte~~
 
I rented this little house in college & every month or so I'd get woken up at 2 or 3 am by the couple who lived behind me. It was really awful--screaming the worst swear words imaginable at each other, obviously drunk or on drugs, and often you could hear the guy beating up his wife or whoever she was. After my 5th call to the cops I gave up b/c either she wasn't pressing charges, or it was a different woman every time, or the cops just weren't getting there fast enough.
 
When I first separated from the ex - I moved into these brand new town home appts. With me having the top two floors and someone below me. Since they were new - I didnt have anyone around me for a bit, then one day I saw someone had moved in. So I stopped by to say hi and tell her that I do have 2 little boys (5 and 7 at the time) and to just let me know if they were too loud or anything.

One night I am out with some gf's and my boys are at home with a sitter - and I get a call. "someone" had called the cops on me saying that I left my children home alone. So the cops come - scare the wits out of the sitter - see everything is fine and leave. I was mad - but ok - one time. Then New Years Eve - I go out - have a sitter - come home - sitter stays the night too - and at 2am - knock on the door - it is the cops again. She called the cop AGAIN!!! Of course it was all ok - I was there - showed the cops my sitter was even still there, but that was a bit much. Then 3 days later I get a letter from Child Services!!!!!!!! She had called them, saying I left my kids home alone all the time, from like 6am in the morning til I get home at night and on and on. I was freaked out!!!!! I was still going through my divorce and this was the last thing that I needed because I NEVER left my kids alone!!! Very very frustrating... I called CSD and talked to them and the put a strongly worded response in my favor against the complaint and filed it away - but still..

She was an older lady too - but not handicap or anything and also demanded her own handicap spot in front of her door - and would still park in two spots. Which was a huge problem considering there was a huge lack of spots to begin with and would yell at neighbors for parking in the spot she overlapped into. Accused the management of unplugging her refrigerator when she was not in and moving around the stuff in her house. She was a real peach!

The best had to be when she called 911 because someone door dinged her car. 911!! So when I pulled up after being gone all day - she came storming out of her apt and started yelling at me in front of my boys that I had done it. She said I was just there - dinged her door - drove away and had come back. But I had been at soccer practice all night - and I tried to explain that to her. Then the cops show up - and try to sort it out - she is beligerant - I am trying to be nice to say hey - we are neighbors - cant we talk this out kind of thing. She did have a big white door ding on her passenger side door, but the kicker for me is that my car is a beige SUV with black plastic around the door wells. The cops even showed her that physically my door came to the middle of her window and could not have possibly have done it. And she still was yelling at me. Then something clicked with her that it wasnt me - and she started yelling about some other neighrbor it had to be. Those poor cops - the look on their face was priceless really - they knew they were dealing with a wacko.

The management had several other struggles with her and let me move to a different apt. They finally were able to evict her. And come to find out they cops had had these sort of run-ins with her at other complexes...

She was a real gem...
 
My neighbors which I was no longer friendly with were now swingers. They would have this couple and there 6yr. old daughter come over every weekend and stay the whole wk-end. My neighbors had a 10 yr. old daughter at that time. One afternoon I was in my kitchen, when you look out my window you see there back yard. And to my extreme shock the 4 of them were outside NAKED sunbathing and walking around in broad daylight. It wasnt a pretty sight. What if my kids would of went in our backyard and saw them? When I thought about it later I thought I should of called the police. Thank God they moved last December. Lori BC
 
The last 3 moves have had a recurring theme: weirdo next door, good people across the street. One guy we took to calling "norman Bates" because that's who he reminded us of.
The next move, we got a guy who was separated from his wife. He had custody of the 2 daughters. Soon, she moved back in. This woman would be out on her deck naked in full tattooed flabby splendor using the grill. I couldn't even go outside for all her weirdness. Long story short, they started fighting, she got a restraining order. He moved out and her drug addict boyfriend moved in. Cops and cars in and out all the time. And this is in a almost Stepford like neighborhood. Everyone felt badly for US that we lived next door. We eventually moved and they moved a couple yrs. later.
We got a house w/ a vacant lot next door and had 2 yrs. of no drama. Then a house got built, a family moved in complete w/ 2 pitbulls and a rotweiller that were constantly coming into our yd. harrassing our dogs and kids. Complaints to the humane society etc. and the dogs still there, unleashed. We finally put up a fence Read in the paper that the 19 yr. old son was arrested for having pot, mushrooms, LSD and an illegal dagger in his possession during a routine traffic stop. It's like I'm not clever enough to make this stuff up!
Valerie
 
Kudos to Valerie for the description of the year....Tatood Flabby Splendor. I laugh just thinking about it. You got a way with words, girl!
Melissa
 
We have had a few neighbors from hell, but when I was living in chicago the people below us took the cake. It was a guy and his mother and a dog. When we moved in, the landlord told us "I don't mean to sound awful or anything, but I want to warn you about the neighbors downstairs. The woman is just about the ugliest woman you will every lay eyes on. I just want to warn you so that you don't do a double take when you see her. She is also deaf and you will have to go through her apartment when you go down to the storage, so wait until her son is home." And he was right - I mean her no disrespect, but I'm glad he warned us - she was a sight to behold. The only time we ever knocked on her door to give her some mail, she opened the door, yelled "I'm deaf" and slammed it on our faces. Anyway, we didn't see them much, but one morning at about 9 I kept hearing "Help me! Help me!" in this little voice. It went on for about an hour before I figured out it wasn't on someone's TV. It was her. The police had to break the door down and she was lying there in a litter of cigarette butts, dog poop & pee, food garbage and the smell was so bad that the fireman and cops had to wear masks. It stunk up the whole 4 flat with the door open. Roaches were crawling everywhere and there were actual RATS in the apartment. She had fallen into the stink on the floor and could not get herself up. For every family you have seen living like this on the news....you really can't believe it when you see it in person. The dog saw his out and ran away when the police rammed the door. Anyway, a new landlord had bought the building by then and he did admit that the old landlord told him that he should make them clean up every other month or so, but he hadn't taken it seriously. A week later we had a rat crawl out of the radiator hole and guess what - we broke the lease and moved out (unheard of in Chicago) with no penalty.
Melissa
 
>Mine's not bad, just ridiculous.
>
>Last summer the county was doing work on a storm drain
>(cleverly disguised as a creek) which runs along our street.
>There were lots of young construction-type guys around all day
>for the entire summer. The woman across the street took to
>mowing her lawn in a tiny orange bikini and workman's boots.
>She is in her 40s and in decent shape, but she still looked
>ridiculous! My kids could never figure out why I'd be in
>hysterics when we turned the corner!
>
>:+ :p :7
>
>Marie

LOL....LORD HAVE MERCY.....CAN WE ADVERTISE WHAT ONE WANT OR HAVEN'T HAD RECENTLY ANY CLEARER....LOL...



:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
I had some interesting neighbors when I lived in an apartment in DC. The neighbors on one side were very "active" and I could hear them going at it every night and sometimes in the morning! I decided to sleep in the living room because I really didn't want to hear all that. Well, in the living room, the woman on that side of the apartment was practicing to be a preacher and was really loud (used a microphone) and when her husband came home (or the man that she lived with),they got into some really bad arguments - so bad that the police came out several times. THe lady across the hall banged on my door several times a week late at night (around 11PM or so) asking for money. She was drunk, or so I thought. A few months later, the police broke down her door and confiscated large packages of white powder (I was watching from my door). She was led out with handcuffs on. She yelled some obscenities at me, but because she was in handcuffs with two burly police officers at either side, I wasn't worried. I should mention that there was a weirdo who liked to pull the fire alarm at 2 or 3AM. We all had to trudge down to the street in our pajamas! Right before I moved out, the retired guy down the hall (his eyes were always red), asked me to move in with him. A year of that place! UGH!!

Now, I just have a couple of neighbors who constantly whine or steal things, but no real drama!!
 
Can't say I have any neighbors as bad as the one's you gals have talked about, but my present neighbors are no picnic. Note that we live in a neighborhood with a covenant (that isn't inforced, but the houses are mostly pretty nice).

First, the neighbor to the right has a house that is on a corner and at right angles to ours. They insist on having a dog run in their side yard - our front yard - with a couple of mutts they ignore 99.9% of the time. They even hire someone to come in and clean the poop out of the run rather than clean it up themselves! A year or so after we both moved in, we had a bit of a propertyline dispute - their junk (they usually have a pile of scrap wood, etc) was creeping into our yard, so my DH stretched a line of twine along the property line while we considered fencing. The twine kept getting moved by the neighbor, and eventually they put up a (drum roll, please!) bright orange temporary fence like you find at construction sites. Oh, and they didn't have enough orange, so they finished the property line with some green temporary fence.
One day after a fierce wind storm (we live in Kansas), they called the police saying one of our kids had cut their fence. They didn't even bother talking to us about it first!
Several years later, they replaced the temporary fence with 6' black chain link - just on our property line.
Occassionally, one of the dogs will get loose and get hit by a car, and they will get another one to ignore.

Next, the neighbor on the left: husband is a retired Air Force officer? (he didn't say if he was enlisted or an officer), wife is a gal he probably met and married in Vietnam. He's got an attitude. When they moved in, he wanted to hire the local landscape/grass seeder to do his yard, but the seeder told he wouldn't seed unless he had a well. So, retired A/F neighbor spends $800+ (we paid about that for our well) to have a well dug, but NEVER (not to this day, 6+ years later) put a pump in it. You can't get the water out of the well without a pump (these wells are 80+ feet deep). So, the seeder does his yard, and they have to water with their faucet from the house. They probably got the first $200 bill for that and quit, because the seed all died and they now have crab grass for a "lawn". Now, A/F neighbor has been living on base for the last 20 years and is fed up with having to keep his grass shorter than 6", so when he does start getting grass, he won't mow. Won't let his wife or daughter (teenage) mow, either. We call the county and report him a couple of times, and a couple of other neighbors do, too. But, he tells my DH, "I'll mow when I feel like it". Who ever feels like mowing the lawn? When he does mow, he scalps the lawn and goes 10 feet or so into our yard. We have mostly fescue, which needs to be kept at 4" or taller. So between his crab grass and scalping, we have fun keeping the weeds out of our lawn.
Anyway, because he never bothered with his lawn, or the water main sinkage, we now have a good portion of his former topsoil in our drainage ditch, as does the neighbor on the other side of him.
Retired A/F also uses his 3rd car garage as his weightroom, and we've seen him practicing his numb-chucks in the backyard. He's grown his hair long, bought a motorcycle and a trans-am.

Neighbor across the street isn't so bad - their house is the farmhouse from before the farmer sold out to the housing developer, and for some time they had an old barn just across the street from us. The owner is a divorcee, and has a couple of boys. One summer, they must have been playing with fire or something and burned the barn down. Now they have more lawn to mow instead of the barn. They have trouble getting the ditch mowed - they'll get the rest and leave the ditch for a week, then they'll mow the cuttings into the street. So many people do that - drives my DH crazy. They have mostly grass, but tons of dandelions in the spring - its really pretty until they go to seed and start blowing into our lawn! These neighbors also have a couple of dogs that they let wander around loose.

Enough ranting! At least the police don't show up at all hours!
 
A little back story first. Before I met DH, he bought investment properties (duplexes) in a run down neighborhood that was gentrifying. This was about eight years ago and a great financial decision as the houses have done nothing but appreciate. He decided to live in one of the units. He was a bachelor at the time, and never around so he didn't really care where he lived. I met him and moved in after about a year. The neighborhood was quiet. Not really where I wanted to live, in a bunch of rental row houses, but it was quiet and neat and we developed a 5 year plan to build our dream house. Not a problem. Then, two years ago the SPAWN OF HELL neighbors moved into one half of the duplex next door, that we do not own (we love the people in the other half). The Spawns consisted of alcoholic, pill-poppin' mom, boozin' out with his girlfriend all the time dad, overweight, troublemaking 15 year old daughter, loud, ADD 11 year old son, bipolar/ADD (and in my opinion, sociopathic!) 8 year old twins, and two adult sons who popped up from time to time. They also had 4 unfixed cats which eventually turned into 8. Mind you this is in a two bedroom rental! I mean, small. From what I heard, they basically trashed the inside of the place within a few months. So anyway, first few months are actually not an issue for us, because it's winter and cold out. Then the summer comes around and all hell breaks loose. Mom and dad are god knows where while the four kids run wild all over the neighborhood. Their yard turns into a pile of filth. The kids, while rampaging, dump their snack trash anywhere they see fit in the woods or street. Then, friends of theirs move in down the street with two little boys. The older one is quite possibly the loudest kid I have ever heard. He's constantly talking at the top of his voice. So these two boys join the rampage. I had to chase six kids out of my yard, my trees, my woodpile on a regular basis. They'd ride their bikes across my yard, leave their bikes at the end of my driveway, dig for snakes in my wildflowers. No upbringing whatsoever. And they were nasty. All of them with dirty clothes and foul mouths, constantly barefoot. (just as an aside, when they moved in we had 32 kids in the 'hood and no problems with any but these). So then, the older girl starts in. Word gets out that her house is a free for all and every teen and preteen (and some older) in a 10 block radius shows up at the house and stays there all day. I mean all day: 9am till sometimes 11pm in the summer. I can't even begin to describe the noise they made. These are small houses close to the street and yards close together; 10,15, 20 unsupervised kids ranging from 4-20 in a small front yard, all day, every day. We, and other neighbors, couldn't open our windows or sit on our decks. DH and others complained to the dad, who said he would take care of it but never did. Mom could sometimes be seen staggering back from a neighbor's house, drunk, but she basically stayed in the house, even as the chaos raged around her yard (remember, this is a duplex, there's another couple living in the same property, and one of them trying to work from home!). We thought it couldn't get worse but two things did it: the Spawns bought a trampoline for the kids and installed it in the tiny back yard, which bumps up to ours. So now we had to endure large groups of screaming and *bouncing* kids. Even when it was only the Spawn kids and a couple of others, the noise was incredible. They were on it all hours, sometimes even before school at like 6:30am! These kids LIVED on that trampoline, which of course had no safety net. By this point DH and I are videotaping everything. One day we saw the three little kids jumping on the trampoline; mom comes out, dumps a box of pizza on it, the kids grab slices and continue jumping. Pizza is flying out of the box, all over the trampoline, and the kids are just picking it up and eating it! This is how they live. Of course, once the younger kids went in for the night, the teenagers got on the trampoline, cursing, vulgar talk ("hey, who's *&%%$ can I stick my finger in tonight?) acting like animals. The second thing is that the older kids started to drift into the street on a regular basis. DH and I live on the end of a dead end, so the teenagers would gather there, again, 10, 20 strong, and literally be there ALL DAY, at the end of our driveway. Their big thing was to throw rocks and sticks at each, shrieking and swearing the whole time. This went on for months, older kids in front, little kids in back, or older kids in back, younger kids in front. There were times when we had the windows shut, the AC and tv on and we could still hear them screaming and yelling. It sounds funny but it was psychologically horrendous. We (the other neighbors) stopped having people over, spending time outside, anything. I really have, in all my life, seen anything like the way these folks lived. DH and I filed a police report eventually, which didn't do much. Then we finally started calling their landlord, which again, didn't do much. The good news is they bought a house and moved this past May. The neighborhood has been a different place since the day they moved. A bunch of us watched them drive the moving van away, and it was all we could do to not link arms and high kick down the street behind the van. We recently heard that they never made one payment on the house, which has gone into foreclosure, and that dad has moved in with his now pregnant girlfriend while mom has moved her new boyfriend in. Rednecks x(

The postscript to this two year nightmare is that I am no longer willing to live here. OUr 5 year plan has been nixed and we are moving ASAP. :D The spawns are gone but mentally I can't risk going through that again. I'm the type of person who can deal with anything as long as I have a peaceful home to go to at night. In all seriousness I almost lost my grip on sanity living next door to these people, so we are looking for private acreage to move to, not a neighborhood! it's odd, because I've lived in Boston, Los Angeles, NYC, London, Knoxville...major cities most of my life, and never had a problem with any neighbor. I guess I'm a city OR a country gal, just not a suburban one....

Ugh, it's been such a nightmare!

Sparrow
www.scifichics.com
 
Our across-the-street neighbors are in their 70s and have lived in the same house since they were newlyweds. We moved in 8 years ago. The first night, the husband walked into our house (didn't ring the bell) and wanted to ''make sure we weren't burglars.'' The smell of booze coming off him in waves was so strong it made my eyes water.

So, I kept my eye on them, and they didn't disappoint. There are too many stories to recount, but here's my favorite:

Our local cable company comes through about once a year to do yearly maintenance on the lines that run behind everyone's houses. No problems for him on our side of the street - then he moved to the lines behind the neighbor's house. They both came out screaming, hitting him with their fists (fortunately they are both frail and small) and drove him off the property. As he drove off, they pulled the long ladder off the back of his truck. The whole time, they screamed at him ''Violator! Violator!'' He came back about 10 minutes later, rang our doorbell, sheepishly said his company badge had fallen off in the melee, and he couldn't continue working without it. He wanted us to go on their property to retrieve it, but we said no way, you'll have to call the cops.

To this day, my husband and I refer to them as the Violators or Mr. and Mrs. Violator. I'm hard-pressed to remember their real name, and have almost called her Mrs. Violator to her face several times.
 
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