Unreasonable batshit neighbours - what have yours done?

[Waitingforwaiter]

Something on another thread (about outside sockets for Christmas decorations) made me think of this.

A couple of years ago my upstairs neighbours (we're in maisonettes) decided to install a plug socket outside. Only it wasn't an actual proper outdoor socket, just a normal socket like you'd have in your living room ... But on a brick wall outside.

It is gone now. But - wtf?!

Assuming I am not BU about this!

But ... now I'm curious - What's the most batshit thing others' neighbours have done?

My neighbour is at war with the pigeons. He likes to feed the birds but not pigeons. As soon as a pigeon enters his garden, which is constantly all the time, he comes screaming out of his house to chase them away. They always flutter up on to our roof. He used to throw stones at them, until one nearly hit DD in the garden and we had words. Now he fires nerf guns at them. I have 2 huge carrier bags of nerf bullets in the shed. I'm not giving them back, it will only encourage him. We keep all the local children in bullets.

Oh where do I start??

They acted nice at first. Retired couple on a new build estate. Very friendly and chatty etc. We went on holiday a few months after moving in (we moved in at the same time as did the whole street really)

Came back to find they had added extra panels to the fence that was slats that you could see through before. Didn't mention it even though it's a shared fence but whatever. Then they proceed to start coming round to the door telling us we can't hang our hose or little flower pots etc on "their fence" even though it was our side. Title deeds show it's shared. They still seem to think it's "theirs".

They come round to complain that my partner closed his car door too loudly and woke them up. It was around 9pm.

Came round to complain the end of a plank of wood that had been propped up against something on our driveway for literally a few minutes by a workman was resting on their grass.

Reported us to environmental health for a few occasions of our small dog barking when we weren't home despite knowing I was heavily pregnant, high risk and had loads of appointments so had to leave the dog at home sometimes due to it being summer (couldnt leave her in the car) and having nobody nearby to help. She seemed to be experiencing some anxiety due to probably sensing pregnancy but we did our best to minimise it and they were fully aware of it because they had seen us ask on our community social media page asking for recommendations of pet behaviourists etc. Didn't bother speaking to us about it. Funnily enough this barking stopped as soon as we installed security cameras which showed the dog lying around sleeping most of the time we were out.

Came round to complain about outdoor cameras that didn't face their property and tried to demand to see the footage.

Carried out work on their garden including a new patio which was pressure washed and all the debris and whatever else came through into our garden and also a fence between the sides of our houses which was put as close to the boundary as possible meaning we could no longer have 2 cars in our driveway because we couldn't get the doors open and I couldn't get a double pram down the side path to the back of our house.

Complained our kids bubbles floated into their garden. This was my favourite.

They stare in our front windows any time they drive or walk past. Not just a fleeting glance. They make a very very deliberate point of staring the entire time they are passing. I find this really odd behaviour. Their patio also meant the ground level was raised so she stands and stares over the fence now as she hangs her washing out.

They are clearly always watching because any time they want to come round and complain about anything they're round minutes after the "issue" occurs. Strangely, they've managed to convince all the other neighbours they're just so lovely and seem to get on really well with them and the ones they're most friendly with (also mostly other retired couples) don't seem to like us very much. Probably because they've talked shit about us to them haha.

I remember a thread where a woman made it her job to put everyone's bins out on the street. There was a huge divide of what posters thought. I thought it was odd.

Me too, the untidy and overgrown garden that throws bindweed and bamboo in to my garden from one side and the other side have near permanent building work going on but after reading these horror stories about neighbours, I am so grateful to have them.

They are always pleasant and helpful, I love them and would beg them not move, in fact I have on one side. 😁 ❤️

Elderly neighbours - Put a white rowing boat on top of their shed to reflect more light in the winter.

We're at least 10 miles from the sea and they were most definitely never sailors.

There's a lot more, but it would be too outing. They're not bad neighbours, just absolutely bonkers.

Yelled at me (I was standing with my sons then aged 7 and 9) that she would 'kill' their pet cats if they ever came into her garden again. Then complained a couple of years later that they didn't like her and ran away every time she spoke to them!

Yes, she’s Hungarian and quite elderly and you’ll be having a totally lucid and normal conversation, and you’ll say “oh it’s a lovely day” or something and she’ll go “well yes but you know the Germans WANT us inside our houses so they can listen to us so it’s best to stay outside”

Ndn ( second home owners🙄) decided they owned the land we parked on, outside our gate. Kept telling us they’d fence it off so we’d not be able to walk into our house. Eventually we paid them a few thousand pounds, all drawn up legally except they insisted they kept 2 feet along their house wall to allow for maintenance. Workman turns up to erect a fence further than the two feet and threw his workbench across the lane when I stopped him.
We sold, moved on then a year later the new owners contacted us. NDN says he owns the parking space, he’s going to fence it unless we pay him ££££s……… we directed them to the legal document we’d given them when they bought. CF. They were two of the grabbiest, entitled people I’ve ever met.

Not our neighbour but I know a family who live next door to a woman who has hot and cold water pipes running down the back wall of her house.

They're connected to a bath that she uses to wash her laundry.

Threatened to burn our house down.
Spat all over our living room window and front door.
Pissed all over our front door.
Threatened visitors to our house.
He's a joy to live next door to!

I do hope the hats are lined with foil as well.

A few years ago we had some who were drug dealers and used to dip into their own supply regularly at weird times of the day and night, leading to some horrible encounters.

They used to light fireworks and fire them at our rabbits.

One time about two weeks after we moved in, one of them jumped out of the Velux window on their roof then just laid on the patio screaming for an hour while the others laughed at him until eventually an ambulance arrived (which turned out to be called by another neighbour).

We moved bedrooms after that as the screaming in the back garden was a regular feature of their parties. Unfortunately they also regularly had loud sex parties where you could hear them having sex in the next room to our relocated bedroom.

While we were extending our driveway, they came and ripped up the cones the construction company had put down to stop people parking where they were jackhammering concrete, and parked their car there.

We also ended up with a crossbow bolt embedded in the top of the rabbit shed and a smashed egg on the side of it, but these were from the other side who were also batshit.

Obviously after the first of these incidents we brought the rabbits indoors.

When I reported the first incident, the police officer didn't bother recording it and was quite contemptuous about the whole thing. Environmental health were equally useless about the noise nuisance and after the third time I tried to report them, they gave me a fucking leaflet for ex convicts and "other people who have frequent contact with law enforcement services" so I don't know WTF they thought was happening but they clearly thought I was the problem so I gave up trying. I think the people who lived there before must have contacted them a few times and they just thought as it was the same address it was the same people reporting them.

We didn't report any of it again, we just moved, and 2 years after we moved, I was very satisfied to note the news that the neighbours ended up getting arrested in a drugs bust and got serious time for their drug selling activities when the police finally raided the place. If any of the correct organisations had actually listened and investigated instead of assuming I was being vexatious or something, they could have prevented so much more stuff ending up on the streets.

We left York after that. Lovely nice safe place my arse.

Our ex neighbours had ivy that grew through the roof of our garage damaging the felt etc . Whernever we spoke to them about it they would gaslight us and start laughing 'o no not that again ' as if we were being crazy by asking them to cut it down when surprise surprise it had grown back again! It was really awkward as we had been neighbours 30 years and ours sons were best friends etc .Thankfully lovely new neighbours hate it as much as we do and had it cut down! Such a relief from the stress of having to mention it every year !

So the bottom hat is actually a foil lined one, it’s like a legionnaires type hat. The others balanced on top are bucket hats and I do not believe they are lined.

We were 4 students who rented a nice place in an upmarket private housing estate with about 12 flats, private parking. Most residents were well off, retired and did not appreciate us at all. Lots of incidents of them harassing us. When we tried to enter the shared parking if one of them was leaving, they would park their car so we couldn’t enter the car park. And
they would often sit there for over an hour so we couldn’t drive in. Bonkers!

Next door neighbour on the attached side on our semi detached.
Lived in complete squallor, he was only about 50 and divorced, his kids refused to see him.
If we dared to hoover during the day or have some friends over for a quiet drink and maybe laughed a couple of times he would bang on the wall with what sounded like a baseball bat screaming for us to shut up.
Apparently it was our fault he couldn't sell his shit hole of a house because one of our fence posts were loose 😂
Somehow he managed to bag a decent woman on Tinder and they got married, sold the house and moved.
He was an absolute pig, I have NO idea why any woman wanted to go out with him. She must have been desperate.

I had a mysterious neighbour who scraped my car of ice every day
I worked odd shifts and I would come to my car and it would be free from ice and perfectly scraped, ready to drive off whether it was 9pm or 5am
Only found it who it was when he died

Called the police on us twice accusing us of beating our child.

Called the gas board on us several times accusing us of gassing her and them having to come and investigate “the strong smell of gas” that didn’t exist.

Shouted at me in the middle of the street whilst I walked with my newborn screaming that I need to give her her chimney stack back.

Banged on our door at half 11 at night accusing us of something, I forget what now.

She’s got severe mental health conditions. But that doesn’t make it easier to live with when the police are at our door to check if my kids are okay because ones had a tantrum and screamed. I’m on edge all the time.

That's bloody clever!!!

We live in a built up area with standard size gardens. Our old old neighbours had a horse. The stabling was expensive so they decided a normal residential garden was ok.
It lasted 2 days. When her horse was biting all her washing off the line, she gave up.

Not next door but... and bear with, this is complicated...

The detatched property next to the end of my row of terraced houses (so I am number 2, then theres 1, then a space for 1's drive, then the detatched properties garage, drive and then their house...) has clearly tried to claim from his home insurance co. for his subsidence that means his brick built garage is falling down.

Ins. co. have employed some cowboy tree specialist surveyors... who are sending terraced property 1 and 2 lengthy info packs about how a tree is causing this damage... and we're liable for billionty pound claim etc etc.

There are diagrams galore and much info about the type of tree..

• 1 hasn't got a tree in his yard at all.
• 2 (me) has got a tree, it is a 5 year old sapling ash (now deaded), nowhere near the marked imaginary tree on the diagram
• the damage to garage predates any trees by about 15 years
• you can see from the street that no such tree exists
• you can see from googlemaps that the damage predates any tree

It is infuriating, mostly because someone, somewhere, is earning money for this bullshit!

Historic batshit neighbours - my parents were loudly accused of having stolen the adjoining cottages skirting boards between buyer visiting property and actually moving in.

The entire village was told how dastardly we were, that we had shamelessly gone in (no details as to how we got in though) and stripped every single skirting board from the place, because... 'they don't like people from Bedford'...

The property in question is a 200ish year old stone built welsh terraced jobby, walls 3ft thick of unplastered whitewashed local stone. It had no skirting boards when the previous resident lived there (he sold milk, from a big fridge in the living room so everyone in the village would have been in several times a week), nor when any of his long line of ancestors lived there. None of the properties did, except for the upstairs extension we added over our kitchen, as the internal walls in that room were plasterboard - and she'd seen us bringing the materials in and jumped to her bizarre conclusion!

The fact they were unloaded in front of her from a truck marked with a builders merchants details... irrelevant apparently.

She also didn't like that the whole village was laughing at her... mysterious that.

@CloudPop @MzHz it all really messed me up, that's not all they did but one of the worst things. I fled my home in the end the police didn't do anything to help me.

Same entitled second home owner before the parking debacle. I came home from work in my lunchtime to find all their washing on my rotary line. She explained that as they’d not got around to installing one she didn’t think I’d mind her using mine…. Yes, I did.
Another house, another neighbour. Large open patio at the front of my house, I heard her children who sounded unusually close by. It was a nice day so she’d thought she’d given them their tea sat at my table on my patio as they didn’t have one….

How awful of him! 🤣

I do this when I remember. It’s far easier to have to dry off a bit than try to find somewhere to get the car cleaned. It’s one of those things that others would mock but it makes a lot of sense.