to think this couple in the guardian are strange and this was not an appropriate subject for a book?

[HildegardVonBingham]

My jaw was on the floor as I read this. Obviously it’s awful that they were subjected to a campaign of harassment, absolutely no excuses. But I do think it’s insensitive to write a whole BOOK about it, given that the perpetrators killed themselves in a double suicide?! I also don’t know who just lends a neighbour £10k!!! Whole piece compounds my suspicion of everyone who chooses to live in the arse end of nowhere…. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/05/dream-home-turned-nightmare-in-wales-stalker-neighbours-stalked-book

Profit? Did you read it?
They were scammed for tens of thousands and had their property damaged.
I would be milking every fucking penny out of the "poor suicide victims"
Good luck to them.

Yeah I do (I mean, I posted it)

Its waffle, its trying to be poetic and missing the mark completely.

Yes, that sounds perfectly possible.

I think these kinds of ‘real life unfortunate event’ books are always a bit odd, even when entirely true, because while you’d expect fully+realised characters, motivation, some kind of clarity at the end in a novel about harassment by psychotic neighbours, in RL people just do odd things, like lend people money, or end up petrolbombing the neighbours because of nothing objective.

After the debacle of the Salt Path couple, who I think ended up with a hefty amount from book sales and film rights I can understand people monetising traumatic situations. Worked for the Sussexes too!

Misery money. 😂

Why does it bother you? Just let people get on with their lives. If you go into any Waterstones you'll find scores of books with people recounting horrific things that happened to them - from abuse to crime to war.

Thing is, this was always going to happen after the Salt Path debacle - that any similar 'real life' story' was going to be questioned in a way that hadn't occurred to anyone much before.

Only skimmed the extract, btw, but they did seem to make a lot of stupid decisions, didn't they? 🤦‍♀️

Yes! I read this article yesterday and thought it was the oddest thing ever.

That article in the Guardian looked like it was written by ChatGPT.

I also read it and thought it was weird - poorly written and at points made no sense. Why on earth did they lend these people money?

For 99 percent of that, can I recommend 'One Moonlit Night' by Caradog Pritchard. No AI within a country mile of it, and by his own conviction, did not want it translated from the Welsh, so the English translation came over 30 years after it was written, done in 1995. Might put some of the romanticisation of the house and the land parcels into a little perspective (but this is not its purpose in any way).

Clarity at the end, though? Technically, but a last page that shines and then smothers everything that's gone before in one moment. I turned right back to page 1.

Exactly. The couple (they thought were weird) were buying the land THEY wanted, so why did they end up lending them large sums of money? And also the description of how the land was split up didn't really make any sense.

I haven’t finished the article but I got as far as them having dinner with the couple the first night they met then, lending £25K in total to these people they’d known less than a year and the sale not yet going through.

That just makes them very different from me as I would never lend any money to anyone, except potentially my sister, and certainly not thousands of pounds. It just causes problems and anyone worth having as a friend understands that and doesn’t ask. That’s why there are banks.

Also I don’t think I would have dinner with someone I just met either, although I suppose thinking they were going to be neighbours makes a difference…

So I suppose I feel reassured that I would not end up in that situation which is something!

Relied to wrong post sorry

For the royalties? 🤷‍♀️

You last line made me laugh out loud.
" petrol bombing the neighbours because of nothing objective"

-What did you do this morning?
-Oh, just threw some Molotov cocktails at
the house next door
-Really, why?
-No particular reason.

😂😂😂

1000s books written in same vein. if they want to write about it you do not have to buy it

If someone put me through the absolute hell that these two did to their neighbours, you can bet your arse that I wouldn’t hesitate to make money out of it. Why should they have sympathy with Cassie’s family. Cassie seemed to be a willing accomplice and when they died the family went on about what an amazing couple they were. Doesn’t sound like she was trapped and we can’t assume that just because she’s a woman. They both sounded like horrible people.

I found it interesting and well written. Poor couple having to suffer all that. I hope they can start to recover and enjoy their home. Although I'd probably want to sell it and start afresh because of the bad memories. Thank God Cassie and Francis can't harm anyone now. Can the couple claim what they are owed from the estate?

Well, it sounds not unlike a Mn thread — a combination of the door a neighbour cut in someone’s wall, the Mexican house thief and the standard ‘nightmare neighbours’ thread? Wasn’t there a very fraught one a while ago about the disputed ownership of some woodland?

Someone cut a door in the neighbours wall?????

I'm going to have to look that one up!!!!

I felt so sorry for them, even if they did some inexplicable things - that sort of conflict would end me.

But frankly, the last thing I'd then want to do is open another conflict with those people's relatives... 😰

Someone will remember. I think it involved access to a shared courtyard?

This.
I think writing a book is a very good way of processing and dealing with what happened. Don’t know what there is to criticise about it.

Oh, I don’t know. I love ‘fine writing’ (very subjective though) and I also love, and have spent money on, the sort of real life stuff you can read without using too much brain power. But that extract was absolute tripe. Most very commercial writing about real life events isn’t exactly Shakespeare, but it can still flow well and carry you along with the narrative. Make you feel sympathy. I found the writing made me want to laugh. Or cringe. Both to be honest. It definitely took away from the absolutely terrifying and stressful experience they had.

I also think if the writing was better handled, there would be a lot less victim blaming from some of the posters on here. It has turned the couple into figures of ridicule and mockery, which I’m sure wasn’t the intention.

I think I have worked out what happened. There was one original farm with a farm house and lots of surrounding land. The older couple buy the farm house, and they would also like to buy some of the additional land but not all of it, but they don't have enough money yet. In particular they want some paddocks. The original owner Bryn initially says he will wait to sell the land so that the couple can buy the paddocks they want, but then he changes his mind because it's too much paperwork. The crazy Collins offer to buy ALL of the land, including the paddocks, and Bryn agrees. They say that once they've bought the whole lot, they will sell the older couple the paddocks, because they are seemingly willing to partition the land up into smaller lots whereas Bryn isn't.

When they're about to purchase the land Collins says to the older couple I'm 10k short, can you lend it to me and it will be a deposit on the paddocks. That is why they agree - they're not just lending 10k out of the goodness of their hearts. It was because they thought it got them one step closer to owning the paddocks they wanted. The land sale goes through so Collins now owns ALL the land around the house. The agreed cost of the paddocks was 25k in total, so they then send the additional 15k and wait for Collins to sort out the paperwork. He then says he doesn't want to sell it to them after all and it seems like at this point it turns sour but it's not entirely clear why. Perhaps the older couple felt deceived and like it was a ploy all along. I'm not sure what Collins actually wanted after this - maybe he didn't want to pay the 25k back and claimed it was a gift or something. At first I wondered whether what he actually wanted was to buy the farmhouse so they could live the life that the older couple were living, which would make the initial fawning etc make more sense. But it doesn't sound like they ever had any intention of selling their house 4 miles away so not sure what the end game was, or if there actually was one or he was just a total nutter with no plan.

Obviously the main error the older couple made was not using a solicitor to purchase the paddock, but presumably they were trying to avoid fees and save everyone money. But they weren't just lending them money - they were trying to buy the paddocks.