Hi, this will be long so sorry in advance. I’m living next door to a woman who seems to really hate me. She has been very cold and unwelcoming from the day we moved in (last summer) when I said hi and introduced ourselves. I accepted she may not like to socialise and left it at that, continuing to be polite by smiling etc whenever we cross paths (often as we share a front path to our doors). We have only spoken once and she was very rude and passive aggressive, but for the sake of neighbourly relations I ignored it.
It came to light after a week or so that there was an issue as we’d hear regular thumps against our bedroom wall between the hours of 1am-6am. It gradually became her bedroom door slamming against the shared wall of our bedroom repeatedly for hours in a row. During the day if we were home (usually only weekends as we work in the week) the noise would be heard every half an hour from the shared lounge wall and then kitchen cupboard doors slamming when we were cooking in the evening.
I felt unnerved after a while of noticing a pattern and routine to it, that she was aware of our presence and wanted to make us uncomfortable and also wake us during the night. The house is well soundproofed and we can’t hear anything from another room within the house, or from outside as we live on a very busy main road. We’re not inconsiderate people so I don’t believe it would be a retaliation of some kind either. The previous family had several children and were very noisy according to my other neighbour, so I thought I’d being quiet adults who work all day would be a welcomed silence.
It got to the point where I was stressed and full of anxiety at every banging noise I heard so I reported it to the council as a noise nuisance. They investigated and she lied to them so it was dropped. It went quiet for about a week then came back with a Vengeance. My husband got angry by this point and put our tv up to maximum volume for the entire day to drown out the noise. Obviously this isn’t feasible all the time and is considered more anti social that banging on walls, but it’s the only way I can get peace without hearing the constant thumps.
Again she got her own back by having small children visit every day who now bang on the walls from 5am with toys, bounce balls against the walls and stomp on the spot for hours. I’m guessing they’re either grandchildren or nieces/nephews but I never notice visitors arrive or leave otherwise.
There is absolutely nothing I can do because the council will not act on child noises and the banging on the walls cannot be proven. We’ve tried doing it back but as she clearly doesn’t sleep she always gets the upper hand by waking us very early.
Im also pregnant and very nervous about how this will affect us by baby’s arrival. It’s obviously not safe for baby’s ears to have a tv on a high volume so we will have to listen to the constant banging and thumping day in day out on top of no sleep. This is likely to trigger my depression reappearing and may ruin the important moments with my new baby. It may seem extreme but the noise has caused anxiety for me to the point where if I’m out and hear a car door slam for example, I will jump out of my skin and need time to calm down.
I’ve told my husband I want us to move but we are tied to a contract for the time being. I’ve run out of ideas on how to cope with this, I have a white noise machine which doesn’t drown it out, I use ear plugs which help but will not be possible to use when baby arrives, we’ve rearranged furniture to dampen the sound but it hasn’t worked. We’ve avoided giving her any reaction as she likely gets pleasure from knowing it bothers us.
She lives alone and rarely leaves the house, if she does leave the house then it’s completely silent until she comes back so I know it isn’t plumbing or anything else out of her control causing the sounds. I’ve recently noticed out of the corner of my eye she stands at the front window watching our coming and goings. It’s making me incredibly uncomfortable. If I make any further reports I know it will fall on deaf ears and ramp up the behaviour, plus we’d be just as guilty for the retaliating on some occasions.
Can anyone suggest any final attempts at making it more bearable until we can move please?