Weirdest neighbour antics you’ve ever come across?

[Mariohatesmushrooms]

I have a neighbour who comes running out of her house to stare at me whenever I go outside, but pretends that she’s doing something else like watering her plants or looking out for visitors. I have no idea why she does this, she is a bit odd in general though. I was taking the rubbish out once and she came dashing out so quickly that she tripped over a bucket and went flying! She landed on grass so would have been fine but it really cracked me up.

When I lived in my very first flat I had an 50+ year old alcoholic neighbour. He appeared in my kitchen one day when I was bringing in some shopping, made sexual advances and took ages to kick out (I was very polite and awkward about it when in hindsight I should probably have seen red!). After that he’d periodically throw things repeatedly at my door when he was very drunk like a bike, fridge shelves, his kitchen bin, a coffee table. It wasn’t too bad and I wasn’t there for long.

I’ve had a few other bizarre neighbours over the years but these are the two who really stand out for me. What sort of neighbour antics have had you chuckling or raising an eyebrow?

Oh god.

When I first moved in with my then boyf, now DH, we lived next to a lovely woman who would rent out her spare room. One person was clearly an alcoholic who would leave empty wine bottles on people’s door steps or in the gutters in the early hours. She thought she was being discreet but we would see her as up early for work. It was constant. She must have been permanently pissed up. Never saw her sober to say hello, just depositing bottles.

and in that same house, I am ashamed to say I WAS THE WEIRD NEIGHBOUR. For some reason, after a party or buffet I would like to throw random pieces of food down the gardens and wonder which garden they’d land in. Sometimes I was drunk, sometimes sober. So if you lived in Cardiff 2010-2013 and often had a piece of quiche or egg sandwich in your garden from nowhere, it was me. Sorry.

A fairly volatile couple moved in next door. They would sit in the front garden, usually on a palette, drinking until all hours and cursing each other.

Our front doors each had two glass panels in the upper half. One day, we were pulling onto our drive to see him stomp indoors and slam the door. She promptly stands at the door, stands sideways-on, leans her body away from the door, lifts one leg and karate kicks one of the glass panels in.

They subsequently did a flit, leaving the house unoccupied, and a little while later, it was gutted by fire. Chatting to the loss adjustor, he let slip that the owner took out insurance a couple of weeks before the fire. They didn’t pay, and the house was auctioned off, but all worked out well, as the next family to live there were brilliant neighbours.

I lived in a converted house once. I think the woman upstairs was a bdsm prostitute from the noises that came out of there.

She was always leaving the communal front door open too.

Then one night I the early hours, there was this knock on the door, the police were evacuating us all as they had the house surrounded and some bloke to do with her was out on the roof.

Que a big stand off for ages and half the road out in the street watching.

Our neighbour is retired and does up cars. When we moved in he converted a mini into a funeral hearse for children.

He has since done up a sports car and now he's doing a grocery van. That's all well as good, but he has a blow up doll in the passenger seat.

Nothing is as strange as folk!

Mainly people that move to the countryside and then complain about the countryside. Bizarre deranged wankers.

In a student house years ago, an elderly neighbour that constantly spied on us, made delusional complaints and accusations and reported us to anyone she could think of.
We got it, the police, social services, uni etc all got it, she was very elderly, lonely and suffering some form of dementia. What was weird was another much younger neighbour with a professional career deciding to back up her claims.
Eg accusing us of running a strip club and only pretending to be students, keeping livestock in the garden, stealing her windows and putting them back before the police arrived, being international drug smugglers etc. Extremely sad coming from someone very elderly and no longer coping alone, utterly weird from someone barely middle aged and otherwise entirely sane.

I lived in a large block of flats around a carpark/courtyard. One night a young woman living in a flat across the way had a mental health episode that took the form of her throwing all of her possessions out of her windows while naked and screaming abuse. Police arrived in surprisingly large numbers (maybe 8 cars) with sirens and flashing lights. It was the early hours of the morning and obviously this woke me up. Being awake and not wishing to gawp at the poor lass having the episode, I walked from my carpeted bedroom across my carpeted hallway to my vinyled kitchen, boiled the kettle and made myself a brew. The next morning the woman who lived under me left an abusive note under my door slagging me off for having the temerity to walk in my own flat at 3am. Never mind that half of the local police force was outside at the time loudly trying to reason with a screaming woman who was throwing pans off cars, apparently I was the noisy one!

Woman next door put a mattress on the floor and set fire to it on the day they were supposed to exchange on a sale. We were all out an missed it- fire brigade, road closed for days etc. Developer bought it and used most of the roof beams in his building works…. Detached from us thankfully!

We had simply awful neighbors once. Egged all the houses, fireworks in mailboxes, keying cars - just the very worst.

We called them “the demons.” I don’t remember their real names.

I had neighbours who were frankly scruffy, one morning as I was getting ready for work I saw the husband run out the house in his underpants & grab his trousers & shirt off the clothesline, then try to put them on. It was in the middle of winter & they were all frozen as stiff as a board.

Years ago DH and I lived in a terrace next door to a very volatile couple who would argue loudly and frequently.

My favourite was when an argument culminated with him shouting "Well you're from SOUTHAMPTON".

We lived in Portsmouth at the time, it was quite the insult.

They also had dogs that were kept in appalling conditions but the RSPCA refused to do anything.
He had a very unhinged brother who would stay when he'd had a row with his wife and stand in the garden making very loud and threatening phone calls to her.

One day he threatened to go to her house and shoot her so DH called the police.

Coppers turned up, arrested him, took one look at the poor dogs and immediately removed them. Later found out that the dogs were adopted by the officers who rescued them which was nice.

We moved out soon after this, I do wonder if the couple are still together or if he couldn't move past her being from Southampton!

One who appeared semi naked in the coal cupboard, then asked us if we wanted "a dryer". He'd had an argument with his wife and she had chucked him ( and the tumble dryer) out.

I bent over backwards to accommodate the woman downstairs when I lived in flat above her. She was just horrible, selfish woman and nothing would have satisfied her. In reality I was hardly ever even there - was often working away- even then there would be complaints which could be quite unnerving - the first couple of times I was worried I had intruders!

As a student we lived in a house, but basement was rented out separately to us. They used to regularly have loud, awful arguments and hit each other - we called the police a few times and that was when we realised they could access our house through a door that they could unlock at top of internal stairs their side. The bloke came in a couple of times, so we barricaded it. We came home to him holding our front door in his hands another time.

Have had a good relationship with all other neighbours thankfully.

Did you live in Kilburn OP?? That man sounds like a neighbour I had in the early 00’s 🤢

When I lived in my apartment building, in my late teens and twenties, I had the most batshit neighbours. But with 150 flats meant you had a wide range of people.

Memorable mentions - the girl who lived two doors down and had a psycho boyfriend. He banged on her door screaming ‘I love you Teresa! Let me! I love you!! Please let me in!’ She didn’t. So he started hanging out in the garbage chute room (basically the room at the end of the hallway where you threw your rubbish down the chute). I caught him lurking there a couple of times before I alerted management. He also was caught smoking crack in there and left her a bouquet of dead flowers wrapped in bin bags.
The naked drunk man who hammered on my door repeatedly on a random Tuesday night. Turns out he had shagged Wendy at 413 but was so drunk got the wrong floor. Called the cops and when they came none of my floor neighbours answered their doors to corroborate my complaint. It was that kind of place.
The girl who would finish her shift at Tim Hortons at 5 am and would blast her music and fight with her boyfriend. One morning we could hear it getting physical so my boyfriend decided to go over and ‘help her’. As he opened the door, the boyfriend flew out of theirs, shaking and shouting ‘don’t ever ever touch me again you bitch!’
The guy who was evicted for hoarding. There must have been nearly one hundred rusty bikes taken out of his place - a tiny studio!
The security guard who would get so stoned on duty he regularly locked himself out of the building. The warning letter I received because I was apparently letting in homeless people - they would be behind me as I entered and I would hold the door open for them, assuming they lived there…The time we were stuck in an elevator for three hours and the fire brigade had to rescue us. But the ‘weekend’ drunk had just been to the shop so he let us swig from his bottle of vodka as we waited …
I would be turning up my nose now of all of the above but back in the day I thought I lived in the most interesting place😁

In student halls I lived in a 6bed flat. I never laid eyes on one of the occupants at all the entire year I lived there. I know he was there because some of my other housemates saw him and I shared a wall with him and sometimes would hear him cooking things in his room at 4am. He went to extraordinary lengths to avoid us, and never used the communal kitchen if there was anyone around, but he did cause problems by buttering bread before putting it in the toaster.

Today I live next to a reclusive academic. He’s actually lovely, and well past retirement age and still working, but he does not appreciate being doorstepped. We have a brilliantly cordial relationship by email, he’s very obliging when I have requests eg access from his side to fix something, but he will literally cross the street to avoid acknowledging my presence.

I’ve done both the shocked face and laughed at your last comment. Not sure how I feel about this. 😂

My next door neighbour goes out twice a week in his car then sweeps his drive on his return and goes round with detergent spray and nail brush removing any stains on his block paved drive.
He has a new car every year and does about 500miles a year. They must love him at the dealership.
When he had the block paving done they didn’t quite get the level right at the top of the drive where it meets the pavement so he got the dealership to bring out their demo car to check whether the exhaust would catch. The angle of the drives along our road does mean that some cars do ground when driving on and off the drives.
He washes his car every Fri am for 2hrs then checks the tyres on Sat am at 7am , uses a hand stirrup type pump to put more air in.
During the winter he spends 30mins scraping the ice off every mm of every window of his car even on the 5 days he doesn’t go out.
The only visitors he has are tradesmen, who he runs ragged with the minute details he complains about, very nicely.

After 26yrs we are used to his odd behaviour but it’s entertaining watch new neighbours happily make his acquaintance only to gradually back away.
We tend to quietly wind him up by leaving the garden to overgrow a little.
He will be delighted when our new windows go in and we no longer bring down the tone. However, since our windows are the newer style sash flush windows I will not be surprised if he has his replaced again fairly soon. He has form.
He has a thing about animal statues in his garden, a collection of Peter Rabbit ones are my favourite.
I can’t wait for our new windows, no more squeaky air pump or ice scraper waking me up at 7am.

I lived next door to quite a nice lady who had obviously had a difficult life.

She took a lot of speed and had a lot of unneutered cats and so unsurprisingly a lot of kittens. She fed the cats more than herself. The whole house reeked.

I quite often ended up babysitting tiny kittens and cleaning their eyes when they weren't in a good way. Called the RSPCA more than once and did the odd trip (on the bus since I didn't drive) to the local pet hospital with a cat I'd borrowed to get it done.

She also once asked if I could keep some speed in my freezer for a couple of days. I'm not really sure why but I politely declined.

As a kid, we had a neighbour once who lived in the opposite back lane to us; she used to nick all the dustbin lids from everyone else - those metal ones that came before wheelie bins.
No idea what she did with them, this was the 70s and years before satellite dishes were invented.

We have a neighbour who sits in a chair on the pavement all day every day to watch anyone who happens to be in their front garden or walking or driving down the street. Every day, during daylight hours. If it's raining a waterproof coat with hood is deployed. Literally nothing happens here. There's nothing to see. Doesn't even read a book to pass the time. Just stares.

Not ‘weird’ in the same sense as some of the other replies but my ndn had a massive fuck off house party the day I brought my 12 hour old baby home from hospital. They knew I had just had him because we spoke as I got out of the car when I arrived home. The noise was ridiculous, loud thumping music, screaming and shouting in the back garden which is directly below our bedroom window. I remember just being sat up in bed in tears as obviously I was sooo tired. DP knocked on, they said they would be quieter, but nope. He knocked on again and finally they found the sense to tone it down. It was like 2am

One of my old neighbours (old as in it was years ago, not an OAP), snuck into my house and hid under my stairs as he thought it would be funny to jump out and scare me 😳

Our neighbour now drives past our house about 5 times a day, does a u-turn a few metres past our house and drives back into his driveway again (and peers in as he passes at 5 mph). Drives me nuts as we live rurally and it makes my dogs bark as they think someone is coming to our house (and wakes my baby up from naps). We are moving in two weeks 😁

Oh dear that's me, looking for slugs!
I often wonder what my neighbours think 😂

Many years ago I lived in a block of four flats. There were four separate gardens at the back divided by three foot fences.

Trevor who was above me was a rather stern young fellow, during the week he was always smartly dressed in expensive suit and tie etc and did the London commute similar to mine.

He never had a single visitor and was at home on evenings during the week.

He went out on his bicycle at weekends and had all the cycling gear and I gathered from brief conversations I had with him that he had a married sister who had children that he used to go and visit.

Never had any problems with him and he was very quiet.

Except that he wore a Pink Tutu when he used to go out and put his washing on the line. A couple of times on a Saturday when he was out, I took a parcel for him and he answered his door wearing the pink tutu.

It was just so completely out of character and it was a proper full on sticking out tutu, not the kind you would feel comfortable sitting down in to watch the tv. It was pared with a normal man's t shirt and socks. When he went out to hang his washing he also wore normal men's trainers.

He was manly, wore nice aftershave and completely dead pan whenever I spoke to him.

We had neighbour who use to harass women and stare at young girls, complete creep, would follow you round the block while walking his dog. Would stop when you stopped etc..

He had a little peep hole in the fence at the back of our garden when we were young (his backed onto ours) and he used to just look through it at us.

He also used to wank cucumbers off in front of women's windows to try and intimidate them.

Ironically he got brain cancer and turned blind before he eventually died.