I moved into a new house with a troubled neighbour, no warning from previous tenant who I was ‘friends’ with.
The neighbour lives alone, doesn’t have any visitors, never goes out, has one very noisy young visitor who is dropped off almost daily and a few loud aggressive dogs chained in the garden.
Since I moved in I’ve had nothing but aggression and bullying. I tried to be nice when I moved in but I was blanked by her. Almost immediately she began to slam doors and hammer walls during the night. At first I thought perhaps it’s temporary so I ignored it, but after a month of this daily I realised it was malicious with the intention of waking us, which it did.
she would walk slowly past our kitchen window and look through giving me ‘evil looks’ and encourage her dogs to bark at us. The young visitor (I presume grandchild but there doesn’t appear to be any relative visitors) screams and cries the entire time they are there, lots of running around and banging toys and balls on the wall.
eventually I had enough and spoke to someone at the council noise department who took it very seriously. They wrote her a letter and within days she was banging on my door saying I was telling lies and it’s the central heating and weather causing the noise. I was very shocked by the denial of what she had been doing and how aggressive she was, I chose to leave it there as I was early stages of pregnancy at the time and didn’t want to risk my baby coming to harm.
Since then she has ramped up the noise to the point where all I can do is cry in defeat. The council accepted her explanation of central heating and wouldn’t come out to test it due to funding. Im now suffering it in silence. I dread coming home and never sleep.
I’ve found dog poo in my garden (I don’t have a dog since my boy passed away last year), smashed mugs and glasses in the grass, hammering for 3 hours from 4am every night and scratches on my car.
I try not to retaliate as I know it makes things worse, but after months of this I’ve snapped and began doing it back ie slamming doors and hammering at anti social hours. Probably not the best way to deal with it, but I’m full of anxiety and scared stress will damage my baby. It doesn’t affect my partner as he’s out until late for work and sleeps through anything, but I’m at the end of my tether now. I can’t prove anything I’m saying so another report will make things worse and there’s nothing serious enough to report to the police.
Ive resorted to wearing noise cancelling headphones whenever I’m home so I feel like a prisoner. Sometimes I have the TV at max volume to drown her out which helps, but isn’t fair long term to my nice neighbours the other side who I have spoken to about this and they sympathise.
i know nobody here can help me so it is more of a rant, but I’m exhausted, drained and upset. Our plan is to move house but we can’t afford to right now so we are stuck here for at least another year. I’m scared to have my baby here and ruin all the important first memories with him. I just don’t know what to do to make it more bearable right now and would really appreciate some kind helpful words.