People Share Hard-To-Believe Nightmare Neighbor Stories

Mom Dyed the Neighbor’s Dog Purple

Many adults living on their own have had their fair share of neighbors that were a nightmare to live with. The funky smells and sounds that you hear seeping through the shared walls are, to say the least, interesting. But the people of the internet came together to put the typical obnoxious neighbor experience to shame with their stories.

Dream neighbors look different to us all. For some, it’s someone who doesn’t wake up around 2 am with the sound of the latest Post Malone bop that’s dropped on Spotify. Maybe a small family with a dog you can give a pet to if you run into them on the way to your car is your ideal neighbor. One thing’s for sure: the neighbors in these stories are as far away from that dream as possible.

Upstairs Neighbor Pees Off Balcony

I had a neighbor who let his dog run free. It would get into our yard, give our dogs fleas, eat all the food, and teach them how to escape. No matter what my mom said, the guy denied his dog was getting out. So being fed up with the situation, my mom dyed the dog purple with nontoxic semi-permanent dog dye.

(No harm came to the pupper.) And she sent it on its merry way. The neighbor kept his dog contained after that. Reddit user: [redacted]

Underneath Their House

I often had to look twice to see if it was raining. I live in a flat, and my upstairs neighbor pees off his balcony. I can see and hear his beam going past my window frequently. Maybe my neighbor is trying to single-handedly help a local drought? I don’t want to be any part of it though.

I really hope that one day the maintenance crew sees. But why doesn’t he just use his own bathroom? Reddit user: [redacted]

They Were Cat Hoarders

My parents used to have a landlord (also their neighbor) who would crawl underneath their house and just sit there. My parents only lived there for 3 months; my mom says they figured out a week or so in about their frequent visits. They confronted the dude and everything. It didn’t stop, so they left.

I don’t know what he was trying to accomplish sitting under there, but it was just creepy. Reddit user: [redacted]

Opera Singer

I was living in a crappy part of town at the time. I had a couple of older neighbors who could have starred in a hoarders show. The garage door was bowing out and splitting in areas due to the amount of crap forced into it. To top that, they had hundreds of feral cats with horrible defects.

They kept the front door open 24/7, so the cats could come in and out of the house (at least the ones that lived long enough to). I would have to crawl under my house to remove the dead ones so my house didn’t reek of dead cats. Reddit user: Arrendersi

She Wanted to Pet Their Cat

The old lady who lived across from us decided to become an opera singer and “sang” to her plants almost daily, from 7 am to around noon and from 6ish pm until like 3 am. I’m talking full-blown, “OoooOOooooooaaOO,” practically all day every day. It literally just never stopped. I don’t know how she could speak.

In addition, the middle-aged guy who lived below us was worse. He would yell and curse about any sound we made in the apartment. And this wasn’t all; he would also have episodes where he would bark randomly, even in the middle of the night. This was a weekly occurrence. Reddit user: [redacted]

Tans in the Nude

I consider myself to be a cat person. I go crazy and want the attention of any cat I see, but this was too much. My neighbor would sit at the window and meow for hours to get my cat’s attention to come outside. Sitting anywhere for hours is hard, but in front of a window to try to get a cat’s attention?

If that isn’t bad enough, you may be thinking that this was a child neighbor, but no. This neighbor was a middle-aged woman. Does she not have anywhere else to be? Reddit user: fonpon

Off the Balcony and onto Their Cars

I fully claim to have seen more of my neighbor than he has of himself. Jane tans in the nude. On a floaty. In our shared pool. I just can’t imagine being Jane in that scenario. When she runs into her neighbors in the grocery store, does she mention her extracurricular activity of tanning naked?

Or does she avoid her neighbors? I feel like you would have to be a pretty confident neighbor to tan in the nude and know your fellow neighbors see you. Terrible, but confident. Reddit user: [redacted]

Dirty Diapers

My friend’s upstairs neighbor has a dog. He never takes his dog for a walk or out for a poop. The dog just craps on the balcony, and when it dries, he shovels off the balcony onto the cars below. Then he throws some water on it to clean it up, and the crap water drips down onto her balcony below.

What’s up with people throwing literal poop off their porches? Is this a thing that’s common? Reddit user: billbro_swaggins

Rang Every Apartment

These people actually use our trash bin and ram it full of bags of their gross diapers. I so badly want to take the bags out and leave them on their doorstep. I can’t stand that diaper smell, and they have their own dang trash can, so I don’t understand why they don’t just use it for themselves.

The only problem with taking the bags out and leaving them on the doorstep is that I would have to touch the bags, and that sounds almost as bad as dealing with the smell and inconvenience of not being able to use my own trash bin. Reddit user: Clairdassian

Waking Up to the Sound of Car Horns

My neighbor rang my doorbell at 4 am over and over and asked me to go with him because there was an emergency and it was important. So I went with him, and he took me over to his car and started asking what I thought of it and looked very proud. In other words, this dude rang every apartment in the building at 4 am to get people to look at his new car.

If you wake me up at 4 am to show me a car, it better be a car made by fairies out of clouds and a full night’s rest. Reddit user: [redacted]

Every Single Year, That Family Calls the Cops

I used to have trouble waking up and getting down to the bus stop on time, but my parents would have never pulled something like this. My neighbors used to honk their horn in their driveway at 7 in the morning every single day multiple times, causing me and my family to wake up.

The dad would sit in their car and just honk the horn until their kids came outside ready for school. Reddit user: kklolzzz

Loud Opinions

And here I’m thinking that cops being called onto parties stopped at college. Every year, my neighborhood hosts a big block party for the 4th of July. Every year, we invite every single house on the block. Every year, this one particular family refuses to come and stays inside with all the lights off, shades drawn.

And every single year, that family calls the cops.  Next year, we should just invite the police to our party. Reddit user: findlesthehuman

Roosters AND Trumpets?

Apparently, it’s impossible for my new neighbor to get home from work, get out of his truck, and walk into his house without loudly ranting and swearing about “the evil government” and whatever policy or paperwork is currently making him crazy. Maybe he moved here because he got a new job as an actor.

He’s practicing for his new role in a made-for-TV movie. It’s about a man who likes to make his neighbors uncomfortable with his loud opinions about conspiracy theories, and he hates his job.  Reddit user: pbrooks19

Peacocks as Neighbors

My neighbors decided they wanted to learn how to use the French horn or a trumpet and practiced all hours of the day. Oh, and did I mention that they owned a rooster along with some chickens? They were SO loud, and there was absolutely nothing you could do to escape it.

We so desperately wanted to make a report to the landlord, but he was never around and didn’t answer his phone. Reddit user: [redacted]

Wild Kids and Theft

Our neighbor had purchased four peacocks. It shouldn’t have been an issue. We lived in the country, but they did not contain them in any way. As a result, these four feathered rats spent most of their time on our property. You’re probably thinking peacocks aren’t that bad. That’s what I thought too.

Then they started waking us up at 4 am every day with their call. They sound like a dying cat in an amplifier. Next, they began crapping EVERYWHERE. It looked like a large dog had been relieved of weeklong constipation all over the driveway and yard. Reddit user: Ser_Laughing_Tree

 Dance Parties Ending in Chaos

The people in my neighborhood were all victims of this family. My neighbors from 2006-2007 were the worst. The kids would run wild. They threw rocks at all the cars in the neighborhood. One put a huge crack in the window of my car. I tried bringing it up to them, but they would just deny, deny, deny, and yell at everyone.

They would also steal any packages they could from any neighboring house. I saw them do it and went over to them, and they immediately went defensive. Reddit user: AGeekNamedBob

 Poisoned With Pee

The neighbors next door used to have parties every day of the week. They especially favored a particular dance game that involved the song, “I Like To Move It Move It” being blasted over and over again. Ear plugs did nothing. One night, we heard smashing glass at 2 am. I peeked through our kitchen window, which had a view over to their kitchen window.

Their window was smashed right through because someone punched it, and then I saw the flash of a knife. That was it for me; I called 911. Reddit user: ollynch

 Skateboarding in His Living Room

While we were on vacation, our neighbour, who was always nice prior to this, apparently did not like our fig tree being so close to the fence (which is fair enough). So when we came back home, we were welcomed to a horrible stink and a half-dead fig tree in our yard.

Turns out, every day or so, he dumped petrol and urine on it to kill it. I just feel like there were a few steps that should have been taken before poisoning your neighbor’s tree with pee. Reddit user: [redacted]

 Always Angry and Yelling

My neighbor would practice his skateboard ollies in his living room. I lived next door and would hear this constant THUNK sound. Nevermind that we lived two blocks from a nice park that had tons of space he could practice in. The neighbor on the other side and I told him multiple times to stop, and it took getting the property manager involved to make him stop.

A few months later, he got evicted for failure to pay rent. Can’t say I was sad to see him go. Reddit user: apocalypticradish

Hold a Grudge

Many years ago, I lived for a brief amount of time in a basement suite in an old post-war bungalow. Initially, there was a nice old guy above, but he left. Then an awful hillbilly family with a dog moved in. The wife was the worst sort of human garbage you’ve probably ever encountered.

She was always angry and would yell profanities at her kids and husband all the time. The guy drank like a fish. I don’t think I ever saw him sober; living with his wife, I have no doubts as to why. Reddit user: videoismylife

 A Cop Showed Up

We had the new property manager move in below us. It was him, his wife, and two kids and a couple small dogs. We lived there for a year and had no problems. Once football season started, it got really noisy, and they’d have a big football game party at their house. Okay, I guess.

We eventually complained, and then suddenly we started to get letters from the leasing office about us making “too much noise.” Which is ridiculous, because we’re computer nerds. We’re either sitting at our computers playing games or on the couch watching TV. Reddit user: Roook36

 It Was an Actual Brothel

I remember playing basketball and the ball going into the neighbor’s yard once in a while. A cop actually showed up at some point to talk to us about it. As a kid, I didn’t really think much about it, but the idea that an adult would phone the police on a kid playing basketball astounds me now that I’m older.

What kind of coward are you to call the cops on a kid without ever confronting them once yourself? Reddit user: shadowofashadow

Kids With Satan

My neighbors ran a brothel; it was crazy. Every so often, these guys would just walk into our house asking where the women were. One time, about a month and a half later, my dad was washing the dishes and saw through the window this guy climb out of the top window of the house next door.

The man was in nothing but his underpants. There was a police car pulled up outside. I’m not quite sure what happened after that. Reddit user: mcternan

 This Neighbor Is CREEPY

My neighbors attempted to sue me for letting all the neighborhood kids carve pumpkins with my kids. We bought a lot of pumpkins and plastic carvers, and the neighbor kids came over to carve them. When they took their pumpkins home, their parents called the police and filed a report saying we were trying to influence their kids with Satan.

It was a lovely time living next to them for a few years…if by lovely you mean constantly feeling bad for their kids and their kids’ ruined Halloween. Reddit User: [ob12_99]

 Car Soap

My neighbor always tries to stop and talk to me (usually when I’m running late for work), which isn’t awful. The awful thing is I’m pretty sure he looks out the window and waits. He always manages to open the door and come outside as I happen to be walking by and goes in promptly after I tell him I’m running late for work.

The same neighbor came outside at 11:40 one night as I was putting a new window decal on my car, practically climbed in, and insisted on helping me. Reddit user: [redacted]

 She Accuses People of Conspiring Against Her

I had my car in the back of the driveway washing it one day when I noticed the downhill neighbor lady taking pictures of me (and my GF) with her iPhone through her window. I thought this was strange, so after I finished washing the car, I knocked on the door and calmly asked why she felt the need to take our picture.

And she launched into a yelling, cursing monologue about how we were psychopathic jerks who were trying to poison her dogs with car soap. Reddit user: nocaptain11

 They Purposefully Flooded Their Dorm

We have a neighbor that’s been terrorizing residents for the last decade. From her sibling, the explanation is that she mixes alcohol and hard drugs with her prescription medicine for her condition. She regularly lies in wait, following certain residents (soft targets) leaving the building, then waits for them to be in a public place.

Then she verbally attacks them in a public space, trying to humiliate them. She also calls people in the building, mainly between 2 am to 5 am, accusing them of making suspicious noises, spying on her, and conspiring against her.” Reddit user: Dont-Fear-The-Raeper

 The Crazies

Freshman year of college was wrapping up when the ceiling started leaking water. It was raining inside. Took about an hour of continual rain before school officials turned off the water. My room was completely flooded, with about 2 inches of water everywhere. Turns out the people above us hated my roommate and me.

They packed up all their things and moved out earlier than they were supposed to. Then they intentionally stuffed the shower drain with towels and purposefully flooded their vacant dorm so we would get flooded too. Reddit user: [redacted]

 “Pictures of Me Changing”

My neighbor comes outside and stands in his driveway to watch me cut grass, play with my kids, and talk to other neighbors. My neighbor shoots the bird at me when he passes in his vehicle. He stalks/harasses people up and down the street. Pops up in people’s backyards (invariably with the same story of running off a burglar or chasing a cat).

Calls the cops on people on the street, accusing them of drug manufacturing, pedophilia, child endangerment, and kidnapping. He posts the street addresses and names of people he doesn’t like on social media. Reddit user: AmericanWigeon

Loud Late-Night Parties

The neighbor spied on me through my bedroom window and took pictures/videos. I should add that my parents’ house is on 2.5 acres, and he had to consciously find where to spy on me; it’s not like it was just across the way. Luckily, I was under 18 at the time.

Years later, when he sent his work laptop in to be serviced by his company’s IT and they found underage pictures of me changing through my window, his butt went to jail. Reddit user: pikapika427

 She Never Grew Tomatoes Again

I had one neighbor when I was five. They used to constantly have loud late-night parties at their house. My dad tried asking him to stop. They essentially told my dad to go away. My dad then waited for the guy to have his next party. The following morning, my dad had me and six other kids go to town, hammering pennies on an inch-thick sheet of metal outside party dude’s bedroom window.

He and a few other people were sleeping off their hangovers. They were not happy campers after that. Reddit user: Harhan

 Our Cars Aren’t Stolen

My mom used to grow her own tomatoes. They were amazing, delicious, and she was always so proud of them. We had them for years when I was a kid. Some new neighbors moved in. We never had any problems before. Suddenly their kids were spray painting our house and throwing junk in our yard, but the biggest sin of them all is that they took every single tomato off all eight of her plants.

They were all totally bare. My mom was heartbroken and never grew tomatoes again after that. Reddit user: Morbywoof

He keeps calling parking enforcement on us for parking on our own property. They actually just came out within the last hour to put tags on our vehicles to make us move them. The parking enforcement then tried to say our vehicle was stolen, and then they called the police.

 Trash on My Porch

Thankfully, the police told the parking enforcement that this is, in fact, our property, and our vehicles are not stolen. Hopefully this won’t be an issue for us anymore, but I’m sure our neighbor will still call every day. Reddit user: mjoallie

Her Ex-Husband

My neighbors have constant parties. I love to party and drink with friends, so I get it; you wanna have a good time, and I’m down with that sometimes. My neighbors, in my college town, drink and party every night. I’m even in a fraternity, but my neighbors will invite 20 plus people over every single night.

I wake up to trash on my porch every day. I just want three days of quiet. No matter how many times I call the cops, it doesn’t matter. Reddit user: mustangswon1

 He Would Slash Their Tires

She liked to knock on my door at all hours to try and get me to hang out with her. I’m talking like two or three in the morning. Then she hocked a big loogie in my doorway. She also kept knocking on my door when I was taking a shower or taking a dump and would get offended when I’d tell her I was busy.

She told me lots of personal details about herself. I know more about her ex-husband than I really want to know about anybody. Reddit user: [redacted]

 They Were Dealers

He would call the cops if you parked your car on the street in front of his house. When the cops showed up and told him you were legally parked and could not be towed, he would slash the car’s tires. He always called the cops for no reason, so often that when the cops showed up, we would have 20-minute conversations about how much of a piece of crap this guy was being.

The cops hated this guy as much as us. I guess he just never did anything “wrong” so they couldn’t do anything. Reddit user: Thinkcali

 They Robbed Us

My parents’ condo neighbors were pretty insane. They were dealers, and they would constantly be having fights with whoever they were selling to. Both of them would often fight each other for hours on end (punching and screaming). They loved to have these huge fights at 3 am. We had to call the police many times.

One time, they got into a fight, and the guy left. The chick put a towel in all the sinks and just ran the water non-stop for about a week. I think they got fined heavily. Reddit user: [redacted]

Full House

My neighbors robbed us when we went to the grocery store. About $7,000 in items lost. The cop said if it was them, they would tell on themselves, because the cop was friends with them. Sure enough, as soon as the policeman left, she came over, sat down, and immediately asked if they had any leads on the theft. We never even told her we had been robbed.

Naturally, we let the kind policeman know and it was sorted out shortly after that incident. Reddit user: Mianro9

Don’t Blame Me

I had some neighbors that were in a 1 bedroom next to me. I’m not sure how many people actually lived there, but there were at least 5 that I saw on a consistent, regular basis. They are also the only people who I’ve had to call the cops on because they were having a birthday party at 2 AM on a Tuesday. I asked them a few times to be quieter and, when the police arrived, they kept trying to tell the police “we’ll be done soon”. I counted 35 people leaving that apartment.

I also had my complex call out the exterminator no less than 4 times in six months as I kept finding German cockroaches everywhere despite my tidiness. Then, one day, I came home and saw papers taped to various tenants’ doors text-side down. One was the folks below me, and another were the neighbors next door. Being a jerk myself, I took a peek. What did it say? We are sending in a professional cleaning crew prior to sending the exterminator once more. They will not clean your belongings, but they will clean the apartment. etc. Reddit: moxiered

Upper Smith Neighbor Group

This is more of a funny story than a neighbor from hell. But in our apartment, we kept hearing massive bass (think like a rhythm game) starting at like 6 pm to sometimes going till 11 pm, and it sounded like it was localized right above our bedroom. Finally, one night I go up and bang on the door, but they don’t answer. About an hour later, I hear moving around in the apartment above me, so I walk out, hoping to catch them either on the stairs or so I can knock on the door again.

I go out, and he’s walking down the stairs. When he sees me, he asks if I can turn down the bass so he can sleep. It was like the spiderman meme where they are pointing at each other. I told him I thought it was him this entire time. So after we realized it was neither of us, we walked together and found the noise coming from a building two buildings down and it turned out the dude had a drumset in his closet and was rocking out every night. Since we talked to him, we can hear it, but he always stops around 8 pm now. Reddit: [redacted]

Drug Bust

I live in a very spacious country subdivision. We are about 25 years younger than the average owners. Everyone has at least an acre. My husband and I personally built a large shed next to a detached bed garage. It took us about 3 weekends to do it. We also mow our lawn once a week. Our yard isn’t meticulous but hardly neglected.

We got a letter in the mail one day. It was typed on a typewriter and came from the “Upper Smith Neighbor Group” (name changed). The letter read “when you first moved in, I wasn’t sure if you had the class, finances or breeding to be in our illustrious neighborhood. I see that you finally built a place to hide all the junk you insist on keeping in your yard. Now if only you could do something about that hayfield you call a yard.” The “junk” they were upset about was building materials for the shed that were delivered, used and cleaning up in 3 weeks.

I was so mad, and revenge was first on my mind for weeks. I couldn’t figure out how to handle it to my satisfaction. I figured it out right before the 4th if July. I got 2 old toilets and put one on either side of my driveway (by the street). I planted red, white, and blue flowers in the bowl and stuck in a couple of small American flags for flare. Then made a large sign that read “thank you Upper Smith Neighbor Group for your letter suggesting I take more pride in my yard.” I kept them for a whole year, switching out the bowl decorations for every holiday with the wackiest decorations I could find. Reddit: Widabeck

Cursed House Caused a Break-Up

At the time, we were living in a new construction neighborhood, one of the nicest in town. Our next-door neighbor was an older lady who lived alone and generally kept to herself. I was very surprised when she knocked on our front door one day and asked if I would walk outside with her. She led me to her backyard and across to the property line for the next house. A family with two young kids had moved in there a few months prior. I knew they had kids because the two were always outside, even though it was winter. My neighbor lady asked me if I smelled anything. I did but couldn’t identify it.

“They’re cooking meth in that house,” she said. “I wanted you to verify the smell, so I know I’m not imagining it.” She had owned rental houses and had encountered the smell from when tenants ruined one by making meth there. “I’m worried about those kids. You go on home now. I’m going inside to call the police. “Cops arrived soon after. The parents were arrested immediately. They were the first to live in that new house. It had to be completely gutted and redone inside because of the chemicals. That process took nearly a year. Reddit: AlarieBelle

Laundromat Steals Water

My boyfriend and I had a next door neighbor around our age who we thought seemed alright. Laid back professional, rented the house with his girlfriend, smoked a ton of weed, nothing really noteworthy. His girlfriend eventually left him and we watched the dude slowly lose his mind after that. After a series of episodes of his screaming arguments on the phone or when his ex would stop by, we eventually saw it peak when he took a hammer to his cabinets.

Our bedroom window had a direct view of his balcony and kitchen window. I was falling asleep when I started hearing a repetitive banging sound and looked out the window to see his perfectly lit kitchen window. In the window was our neighbor just smashing his kitchen cabinets. I know the landlord just renovated, and those cabinets were brand new. He was demolishing his kitchen while screaming and laughing and we could see everything from the comfort of our own bed.

He wasn’t able to see us, and I remember being frozen while witnessing this man just unhinge from reality like that. I grabbed my boyfriend as a witness to the event and the neighbor eventually calmed down and left the kitchen from our view. I don’t think I slept much that night. The property manager saw us outside a few weeks later and told us that he moved. Then she told me she thinks the rental is cursed because it’s broken up the last 3 couples she moved in. Reddit: cosmiceggroll

Cooking Food Isn’t Allowed

I don’t remember this well, as this was handled by my parents. Ever since we arrived to the building were currently living in, the water bill had been insanely high. After years trying to cut showers and stuff like that, they finally called the water company.

Turns out the laundromat downstairs, which was owned by another neighbour, had tweaked its pipes so that all the water they used was marked as used by us. Not any business: A LAUNDROMAT. Eventually it was fixed and we’re back to paying a reasonable amount, but I don’t remember if we were ever compensated for all the previous years. Reddit: JustineforKimPine

Can’t Sell House Because of Crazy Lady

My friends’ new neighbor asked them to stop cooking food because the smell bothered them (but only in the guest bathroom, when she cozied up to the air vent). She suggested that instead of hot, cooked food, my friends should eat lunch meat and nuts, or should they ‘heat food the natural way.’ She did not give any specifics on what that meant. Later in the message she said that if they MUST cook food, they should consider simply not cooking food instead.

Eventually she went to the leasing office to complain that my friends were cooking their food. Thankfully they declined the complaint because it was so ridiculous. If you’re this kind of person, please never live in an apartment complex. Reddit: Orcabros

Air BnB Neighbors

My sister was looking to buy a 3-bedroom house and she was not having a lot of luck finding something livable that she could afford. She came across a house that was absolutely beautiful. Large airy rooms, big eat-in kitchen, everything updated and decent property size. It had been on the market forever and it was cheap.

She was completely mystified. Until she was shown the property by the owner. Out comes the crazy neighbor, screaming at my sister, swearing, shaking her fist, and hollering like a fat granny Clampett. She followed them around the property screaming and when they went inside, she stood by the windows and screamed through the screens.

The owner basically said, “No way in hell you are going to buy this house, right?”

“Nope”

But my sister did sign a complaint and act as a witness for the homeowner. Reddit: [deleted]

Bedbugs

I lived next door to an Air BnB house. At first, it was fine, but then during tourist season the house was rented out to some dude that decided to invite all his boys over for a lovely party… on a Tuesday… till after midnight… in the pool… next to my bedroom window…and blocked our driveway with their cars.

We spent the next six months calling the police (non-emergent line) for one thing or another as a barrage of events unfolded. Other fun mentionables were loud pool parties till 2 or 3 in the morning, Goth metal music blaring from a stereo that made our windows shake on that side of the house, garbage left sprawled on our yard, cars parked in our driveway when theirs “was full”.

I eventually contacted the owners through the Air BnB listing and explained that if they couldn’t find tenants that could respect the residential area that I would be happy to talk to the HOA about putting in an ordinance against short-term rentals for our area. Needless to say after six months of BS they put the house up for sale and we finally had a nice neighbor that moved in. Peace at last. Reddit: Cantankerous_Won

Neighbor Tries to Steal TV

For a few weeks the apartment directly below ours was vacuuming at least a dozen times a day, around the clock. It was so weird. This was our first experience with an apartment, so we thought it was just a weird neighbour. After a couple weeks of this, we get a notice that we are being sprayed by an exterminator in two days. For bedbugs.

They said that while we don’t have them, one of the apartments touching ours had it so the bugs were going to migrate out of the first apartment and crawl through the walls into ours. We had so many bedbugs. I had so many huge, itchy bites. We had to do a super clean of the apartment. We never met these neighbours, but they are the cause of many headaches and nightmares. Reddit: Stephette

Cat Lover

My wife and I purchased our first house about three years ago. While moving in there were my new neighbors drinking on their front porch, no big deal. While bringing the last load of boxes into the house my neighbor comes up, welcomes me to the neighborhood, mentions how nice my TV is.

Fast forward one week, we are headed out to dinner, this neighbor stops me before getting in the car and asks how long we will be gone (huge red flag). I lie, tell him I’m just running to the gas station one block away, and will be back immediately. Twenty minutes later I get a phone call from the local police, this moron broke into my house in broad daylight with three other neighbors watching (luckily these neighbors weren’t terrible too). He cut his hand on the window he was attempting to climb through and used his bleeding hand on every doorknob in my house. He is now a number in the US penal system. Reddit: Ryanh1985

Kleptomaniac

We live in an older neighborhood with chain link fences. You can see pretty much everything in the neighbor’s yards. We have one neighbor who feeds stray cats and he’ll stand in the back yard every evening and call them to dinner.

He’s a big man with a huge belly and he stands on his back porch in his boxers calling the cats by name. “Here Fat Boy! Here Cry Baby! Here Big Momma! Kitty kitty kitty!” In this really high-pitched call. It lasts about 10 minutes and due to some weird acoustics, it sounds like he’s right outside my window hollering for the cats. I peek through the blinds and there he is in his underwear on his porch calling the cats. Reddit: metal_rooster

Sweet Revenge

One neighbor in Florida was a known kleptomaniac, but he would steal the most random items around the neighborhood. When someone moved out of a house, he would dig up the plants from the yard and sell them online. We would just wake up one morning and all of the plants would be gone with the trail of dirt leading to his house. When his house foreclosed he stole all of the doors off their hinges before moving out.

He stole another neighbor’s bicycle when they left their garage door open. The owner knew it was the klepto so he just walked over to his house and took it back without calling the cops. We also later found out that he was going through a nasty divorce from his wife… who was once his therapist. Reddit: ArtbyTMD

Vole Problem

A few years ago I lived in a bit of a tract home situation. In my cul-de-sac on trash day everyone would line their trash cans up on the curb where the trash truck with the mechanical arm could easily get to them. My crazy neighbor would get upset if everyone didn’t pull their trash cans in immediately after the truck came. Trash day was on a weekday so I couldn’t bring my cans in until after I got off work. Needless to say this totally pissed her off. It started with her just spinning the can around, or moving it in front of my garage. Eventually it escalates to her knocking it over or pushing it across the street into a small park. I’m at work lady what the hell can I do about it?

So eventually I had enough. I bought a tube of marine grease for my grease gun. For those who don’t know it’s intense stuff. It’s made to stand up to all conditions and difficult to get off your skin without a strong solvent like kerosene. So I lather up the handles and take the can out with a pair of gloves then head out for work. When I came home the can was moved a few feet and sure enough her stupid little hands had left a big imprint in the grease. She never touched it again. Reddit: addennis

Leaf Blower Guy

My neighborhood is fairly new, and the construction results in a vole problem in any new sodded yard. My next door neighbor has tried multiple methods to rid her yard of the voles, including spreading human hair, sprinkling vinegar, or maybe it was turmeric? Anyway, her latest vole removal effort involves lining her property line with used, bulging puppy pads as to deter the voles.

We live in the northern United States. These pads are now frozen solid. The first layer is frozen to the ground, and has a few inches of snow covering it. She just started the second layer. I have talked to her, and the neighbors on the other side and behind her have spoken to her about it. She refuses to stop, because, any other option will harm her dog and her 15 year old son… All three of us have complained to the city and public health. When these things melt in the spring, it will be more disgusting than it is now. Ten-fold. Reddit: bugsydonut

False Accusations

My neighbor at my parents’ house had OCD for sure. He would mow and leaf blow his yard every day. Every single day. If it rained, the second it stopped he would go out there and mow and leaf blow. He would leaf blow his roof. Then he would leaf blow his cars. Then wash his cars. Every day. He either had OCD or hated his wife. He never talked or waived to anyone either. Strange dude.

There had to be days where the blade of the lawn mower didn’t even touch the grass. He would leaf blow the yard despite nothing being on the lawn. It would seriously have been faster for him to just walk over and grab the 4 or 5 leaves that would be on his yard on a given day. My family just always dealt with it. It’s his yard, he has a right to do whatever he wanted on it but my god the sound of his leaf lower would just drone on forever.

My next door neighbor blew a gasket on a Sunday morning and walked over and yelled at him one day. He stopped and did his daily blow and mow in the afternoon. The neighborhood kids did super glue a leaf to his driveway. I wish I was there to see his reaction. Reddit: dontbthatguy

Grumpy Neighbor

I am 23 years young but happen to own what used to be my grandfather’s house– my mother passed away and left it to me. It is in a historic district of our city, and I am clearly the youngest person in the neighborhood. I was pulling into the alley that leads to my driveway once when my neighbor very blatantly backed out of her driveway and into my car. When I got out, she proceeded to verbally attack me, asking me if I hadn’t seen her, and sneering about how I was going to be in trouble when the cops arrived.

She spent the next 30 minutes telling anyone who was walking by that it was my fault and that I always “sped through” that area with my “radio turned up so loud” (I did not have a working stereo at the time). When the cops showed up, she started shrieking at me while he took my statement and she had to be escorted inside her house until I wrapped up my business. Cop told me there were witnesses and it wasn’t my fault. She moved out shortly after that incident, not sure if it was related. Reddit: areraswen

Lawn Retaliation

Lived in an apartment in third year university with 3 friends. Our neighbour was a 40ish year old man who lived alone, and seemed to hate everything…The walls were paper thin, and though we were by no means loud, he would bang on the walls and scream at us at any slight noise after 5pm. He would yell at pots and pans hitting the stove too loud…acoustic guitars…us talking too loud…our bathroom fan being too loud. And his yelling was scary and rather threatening. Eventually he wrote a letter to us which was something along the lines of:

“Tenants of #6, I think by now you have realized the walls are very thin, and I can hear everything you do. This is not a frat house, or a recording studio. Your bathroom fan can do its work in 5 minutes or less. Please respect my privacy.”

Our landlord eventually found him a new place, but I still see him walking around town once in a while. Crazy Lee. To this day we still yell “FRAT HOUSE!!” at anyone who makes unnecessary noise. Reddit: erockd

Mountains of Junk

On a summer in 1996, I strayed 2 feet onto my neighbor’s lot while cutting the grass. Our neighbor found this objectionable and began to stray onto our lot. I did not care because it was less work for me. The houses were no more than 20 feet apart, so a 24 inch pass was noticeable, but not worth getting upset about. The neighbor began to cut his grass three passes over the property line, and I retaliated by doing the same.

I thought it was funny and I was 13 or 14 years old. The neighbor couldn’t handle this and responded by leaving cryptic voice messages with his recognizable voice on the machine about hurting us. I initially thought it was a joke and deleted the message. After no response from us, the neighbor called 3 different realtors to schedule consultations to sell our house on different days. After the second realtor arrived, we had sense enough to call the police. The voice message was not as clear on the realtor’s early cell phone, and the police were not able to track the call, but I recognized the voice as my neighbors. The police apparently questioned him but the investigation ended quickly without result.

My brother and I placed a “For Sale” sign on our lawn, and placed large letters that said “NOT” above the sign. The neighbor sold his home a few weeks later and 12 new people with 4 unmaintained cars that buried old clay pots near a tree moved in (to a three bedroom 1500 sq ft Metro Detroit house). The cars were obnoxious but they were otherwise fantastic. They own a wonderful restaurant and have fun fights with me when I try to pay the bill. Reddit: IntoBoatsAndCars

Trashy Neighbors

I used to have a neighbor who I affectionately referred to as crazy. Shortly after I had moved in she began doing renovations on her home. Instead of renting a dumpster, like a normal person would she began piling the waste on her front lawn. When there wan no more room she started piling the waste on my lawn, subsequently blocking the entrance to my apartment.

I knocked on the door and asked her to move the junk, to which I was informed that she would not because she had nowhere to put it. So I spent the next three hours of my life piling bits of drywall into her driveway. She called the police on me for trespassing. (nothing came of that)

For the next week everyday I would come home to mountains of junk in my entrance way. I called by-law enforcement repeatedly. They sent warning after warning and finally after about two weeks fined her and cleaned it up at her expense. I thought the battle was won. That was until for the next few weeks when I would come home to a mountain of human feces on the stairs leading to my place. So I installed a camera. Printed a still of her pooping on my stairs and taped it to her door. That finally stopped her. Reddit: InspectorVII

The Hoarders Next Door

We lived in a duplex in an area with a lot of raccoons, and the best advice our landlord gave us was to keep our trash inside the garage until the day that it got picked up. Don’t leave it out overnight, because the raccoons will get into it and drag it everywhere. Our neighbors refused to do this, and our yard was almost constantly covered in trash.

They even decided once to hang a trash bag from the light by the back door, and our backyard was covered in trash within an hour because it was easier for the raccoons to get. I picked it up sometimes, but holy crap was it obnoxious. It makes me understand why some neighborhoods hate rentals. Reddit user: Brilliantchick1

The Gun Range

My neighbors in the crappy apartment I moved to after I moved out of my parents’ place were crazy to the extreme. We started getting roaches in our apartment about 2 months after they moved in. Then came mice. Then came RATS. It wasn’t out of place to see a mouse or rat or two run by every single night.

About once a month, we’d call 911 on them because we’d find one of them passed out in the parking lot, or on the doorstep, or on the stairs. They came over and asked if it was us who kept calling 911. Then they cursed us out because they didn’t have insurance and had to take out numerous payday loans to cover the ambulance costs. We broke our lease and moved out after “someone” took a crap on our welcome mat. I was not getting involved with human feces. Reddit user: Not_A_Good_Gardener

For the Love of Sheep

The neighbors set up a firing range on their property. It wasn’t a problem at first since there’s a lot of forests near me and I occasionally hear the pops of the shots. The problem was that the targets were set up in such a way that they were shooting towards my house. I don’t know whose smart idea that was to begin with.

I told them that wasn’t particularly safe. They told me it was, so I asked for the paperwork. In Ontario, a range has to be certified. You can have one on your property to shoot, but it has to be legally designated as one. I was promptly told to buzz off. So I tried to get info on their range certification. It turns out the police really don’t like illegal gun ranges. Reddit user: Drando_HS

They Never Stop

I live on a farm, and we had one guy who was a real jerk. He was known to have definitely stolen sheep from us; in some cases he had shorn the wool off them, sold it, and returned the sheep. He demanded that we front the bill to fix the fence despite it being between our two properties and refusing to split the costs.

He also had someone else’s bull jump into his property, used it to service his cattle for two years, and when the owner tracked it down, the guy demanded to be paid the adjustment costs or he wouldn’t return it. He had a house on the property that he rented to his farmhand.

One day, the farmhand found him in there one day going through his things. He told the farmhand that he wasn’t allowed to leave the property under any circumstances while he was working for him. The guy quit straight after that and then said that he wanted to work for us. Reddit user: goondalf_the_grey

How Long Will You Be Gone?

My next-door neighbor is lovely in nearly every way. He’s friendly, has a cute dog, and he brought us fish and chips for lunch on the day we moved in. He watches our house when we’re away and deals with repair people if we’re at work, since he’s retired. Practically perfect in every way.

BUT there’s one thing that gets on my nerves in a way that nothing else in the world does. His garden is full of wind chimes. Like, there could well be more than 100. The constant chiming 24/7 makes me want to garrote him. I hear them in my sleep. I hear them at work. I swear they’re following me. The chimes never stop. Reddit user: flosiraptor

Kids and Their Volume

My wife and I purchased our first house about three years ago. We had been saving up for a while and were pretty excited about it. While moving in, there were my new neighbors drinking on their front porch, no big deal. While bringing the last load of boxes into the house, my neighbor comes up, welcomes me to the neighborhood, and mentions how nice my TV is.

Fast forward one week; we’re headed out to dinner, and this neighbor stops me before getting in the car and asks how long we’ll be gone (huge red flag). I lie and tell him I’m just running to the gas station one block away and will be back immediately. Twenty minutes later, I get a phone call from the local police.

This moron broke into my house in broad daylight with three other neighbors watching (luckily these neighbors weren’t pieces of crap too). He cut his hand on the window he was attempting to climb through and used his bleeding hand on every doorknob in my house. He’s now a number in the US penal system. Reddit user: Ryanh1985

All About Pam

The neighbor’s kids, man. It starts every spring. They only have one speech volume, which is scream. It sounds like children are being murdered on a daily basis. They jump all over my porch swing even though I have repeatedly asked the parents to tell them not to. They run up and down the stairs of my porch constantly.

I have a narrow driveway, and last summer the one got his bike wedged between my house and my cars’ passenger door and scratched the crap out of it. Basically, they just run wild and the parents either don’t care or are too tired to notice at times. I don’t know when I turned into a crotchety old man at 30, but dang, those kids.

Going Number Two on the Wrong Lawn

Pam was a single mom with her teenage daughter, and for the first few years, we more or less got along. I helped her move some furniture in one time, listened to her complain about her work, and ignored the smoke that billowed off of her adjacent back deck. I don’t know what caused it, but Pam started to lose her mind.

Everyone was out to get her, myself included…and she loved to call the cops whenever she could. Once she called the cops because the garbagemen put my trash can too close to her driveway after emptying it. Usually, it was for watching TV at 9:00 pm at night, because she thought any noise was a pointed attempt to keep her from sleeping.

The craziest was when I was having an argument during the summer (and some windows were open). Pam called the police and told them that I had been recording an argument that she had with her daughter and was playing it back on loop to torment her. Pam was nuts. Reddit user: Yakra

Anything…Cops

My neighbor has 3 dogs, which they let outside twice a day to poop. The dogs are friendly and not very loud…except they always poop on our lawn. My husband and I have actually seen our neighbors encourage their dogs to use our lawn; they physically lead the dogs to our lawn or discourage them from going on their lawn, etc.

I finally had enough, so I got my garden trowel and flicked all their dogs’ poop onto their lawn, which they said nothing about. But today my husband went outside to mow the lawn and caught the neighbor encouraging their dogs to go onto our lawn. The neighbor acted like nothing was wrong but quickly called the dogs back. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Rabbitmaster

We just moved to a new neighborhood and haven’t really met anyone other than the two houses on either side of us. On our right is a great single dad with two high school-aged kids and a sweet freaking baseball diamond in his backyard (you can see it on Google satellite, it’s legit), and to the right is the woman who calls the cops on them.

Kids playing a game…cops. Kids outside doing nothing wrong, not even drinking on a Friday night…cops. Car in front of her house…cops. We’ve lived there four months now and her house has been egged twice. We’re trying to stay on her good side; thankfully, we’re quiet, so she probably won’t hate us. This is going to be an interesting life. Reddit user: [redacted]

Leaf It Alone

We’ve got a neighbor who we call “The Rabbitmaster.” This guy used to be the landowner of our housing division, and he set all the rules for what we could keep on our property. He was pretty chill about everything and never really troubled anyone. We started noticing domesticated rabbits appearing all over the neighborhood a few months after we moved in.

Apparently, this guy had a rabbit breeding mill in his backyard where he was breeding hundreds of rabbits to sell for pelts and meat. Eventually, he got charged with some random crime and decided to flee the country and run off to Mexico. He illegally released all his rabbits before he did, and we saw the last rabbit about a year ago; it’s been 11 years. Reddit user: Mandylee123

Stupid College Kids

This was like 20 years ago when I still lived at my mom’s house. The house next door was a rental for a while and had several charming tenants over the course of a few years. This one guy really set the bar though. Said neighbor’s house had two large maple trees, and we had zero trees in our front yard.

Come late November/early December, we got some leaves in our yard. No big deal, I’ll rake our yard. There are other houses on the block with trees too, and I’m sure the big oak at the back of our house was contributing to the leaf mess as well. I don’t expect anybody else to rake our yard, just like they shouldn’t expect me to do theirs.

I come home from work at like 8 or 9 pm, and this guy is blowing all his leaves into our yard that I just raked maybe a couple of days prior. I mean I park and literally watch as this guy just smiles and waves like this is just a normal thing for somebody to do. I didn’t say anything, he didn’t say anything.

The guy went to bed, and I raked all those leaves at like midnight and covered his truck in a giant glorious pile. Then I put the hose to it. It got below freezing that night. His truck didn’t move for days. He never said a word to me about it. He didn’t blow his leaves on our yard again though. Reddit user: BtDB

Farm Living

I have these stupid college kids that just started renting a house next to me. Every single weekend for the past three months straight, they’ve been throwing parties. That’s not so bad, even though they’re super loud and won’t shut up until about 3 am, and that’s only if I’m very lucky. In fact, I’ve learned to live with it.

What makes them the worst is that we live in a court, so whenever the party ends, all these drunk kids get in their cars and drive home. Almost every single neighbor, including me, had had windows shattered, cars dented, or side panels destroyed because of these idiots. Not a single note was left or insurance info exchanged. There were at least eight hit-and-runs in the last three months. Reddit user: Handlifethrowaway

Noise Complaints

I can’t decide if the worst was the Bible thumpers who moved next to my farm and then declared it an eyesore because of tall grass in pastures or the neighbor who stole thousands of dollars of equipment from my house. One cost me money, the other was a constant complainer to the cops because my goats were out grazing and making animal noises like animals baaing, neighing, and quacking.

I should be grateful my local police have learned to ignore them by now. Why did they move next to a farm if they hate farm animals? The wife called me mean after I told them to stop filling in my drainage ditch on my property that they felt was an eyesore. The eyesore drains their yard as well. Reddit user: Shiloh788

Not Ready to Live on His Own

I once had an upstairs neighbor who expected perfect silence at all hours in an apartment complex. I’ve had the cops called on me for watching movies on a Sunday afternoon at 2 pm. You read that right, 2 freaking pm. We didn’t have a sound system at the time we lived there, and there were still parts we had issues hearing.

The cops came and always sided with her because she was old and “disabled.” Eventually we got so fed up with it that we transferred to a better apartment within the complex. I got word from other neighbors that she was still trying to call the cops on us for noise only for the police to show up to an empty apartment. Reddit user: [redacted]

Partying All Night and Day Long

I had a neighbor who turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic. About a week after he moved in, a loud argument erupted in his apartment and continued more or less uninterrupted for 36 entire hours until I went and knocked on his door around midnight. It became totally quiet, and I started to realize he’d been arguing with/yelling at himself all this time.

The next morning, he started hanging out the window shirtless (in the dead of winter) and yelling at people on the street, and I started contemplating calling the police. It turns out someone else did, and when the cops showed up, they met him coming back from having threatened people on the street with a knife, and he had cut himself.

For the next several months, the apartment was empty, and I figured he’d moved out, but suddenly there was someone walking between the floors and yelling. It didn’t take long before the police showed up again, and I’m guessing he won’t be back again this time. Reddit user: friskfyr32

Looney Tunes Style

I once had this young guy as a neighbor who had some rather loud parties, which whatever…I was young once too. I mean I never took it as far as this guy, but you know, not all people are the same. One time that stood out was when he’d brought his friend home Thursday morning after a long night of drinking.

Now, getting woken up around 4 am on a weekday is annoying, but the party kept going through midday and the afternoon, and at a certain point, you’ve just had enough of loud music and drunken yelling. When midnight came around again, I started getting more impressed at the stamina than anything. He was evicted shortly after, although I’m pretty sure that was due to never paying his rent. Reddit user: friskfyr32

Oh Scarlett

In my first apartment, I lived above an old crazy woman, and that’s putting it very mildly. Our apartment was the only one on the third floor, and hers was the only apartment on the second floor. I had no idea what her problem was or why she had anything against me, but she did. And she took it out on me whenever she could.

She once poured vegetable oil on the staircase leading to our door and then sprinkled thumbtacks on top of the oil so that we would slip, Looney Tunes style, and fall onto tacks. She screamed at us whenever she saw my roommates or me; we were 17- and 18-year-old girls. We called her “the crazy lady,” and we were not wrong. Reddit user: stefernie

Their Personal Dump

I moved into my house back in Oct of ’14. I very quickly became good friends with my neighbors and their daughter, Scarlett. Within a few weeks, Scarlett was telling people we were in a relationship. We hadn’t discussed it, and there was nothing going on except for a few visits here and there.

Her mom even talked to me about it and told me Scarlett was in love.It seemed to be a bit weird to me, and I was already seeing someone at the time. I figured it would pass and I’d just keep to myself. Then the gifts started showing up. She demanded they be displayed so people would know she was my girlfriend.

She talked about me to her friends, and I’d get Snapchats from her saying how much she loved me.Then out of nowhere, she was telling people we broke up. Ok, it was over. No more worries, right? Nope. A week later we were dating again. I haven’t seen her in about a week, so I’m not sure if we’re still together or not, but I’m going to her first baseball game in a few weeks. She’s pretty demanding for a 4-year-old. Reddit user: TerribleTimmy

Why Have Dogs?

I used to have a neighbor that would constantly throw trash over their back fence into my yard. They did it all the time. During the summer, I would go out to the shed in the back and find the most random stuff, like a ripped open stuffed animal, used diapers, etc. I started throwing the trash back over, but it kept coming back no matter how much I battled it.

As if that wasn’t enough, the teen son who had dropped out of school would work on his car in the driveway and blast music all day long. They also used to have a basketball hoop in their driveway that they eventually took down. They discarded the hoop and backboard in our front yard off to the side like we wouldn’t notice.

I kept pushing it back into their yard against the same fence they kept throwing trash over, but it somehow kept finding its way back into our yard. They were truly neighbors from hell. They eventually moved away, and all the problems cleared up. Reddit user: osepht

The Undercover Cop

One lady has like six little dogs directly next door. Now, I’m not a hater on small dogs; my GF has a chihuahua, and he’s my best pal. He’s sweet and doesn’t bark often and I love him. That being said, these little jerks are the loudest, most vicious little demons I’ve ever met. The level of noise they make is beyond imagination.

She’s violating pet ordinances with six dogs, but she lets these things out at any hour of the day or night and makes zero effort to control them. The entire neighborhood hates her, and I’m reasonably sure she contributed to my dad’s depression before he died. He was very sick, and getting woken up at all hours didn’t help in the least.

I don’t know why she even has dogs because they live locked in the basement; she never interacts with them except to let them outside. Oh, but she leaves a TV on for them down there. Over the years she replaces them as they die, too. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Relentless Troublemaker

I had a neighbor who moved in just before I moved who was apparently a paranoid delusional. Everyone knew he wasn’t quite okay in the head, so we all tried to leave him alone. One day, he got into an argument with another neighbor and claimed to be an undercover cop working on a drug ring bust in the area. For proof, he showed him his uniform shirt and a badge.

The uniform shirt was a T-shirt with some random logo from a place he used to work many years ago on it, and the “badge” was literally a spiral-bound pocket notepad. I still own that house but don’t live there because of him. My renters haven’t had any problems that they’ve mentioned, but I haven’t thought to ask about that guy. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Hoarding Speed Police

We had permits for renovations and made 100% sure we were obeying every bylaw possible to avoid problems. We had a large disposal box for our reno garbage, and my neighbor called the company pretending to be us to remove it because the vibrations could potentially ruin his fence.

Our neighbor called inspectors, cops, and friends/fellow neighbors to stall us for the entire process. One day, just for fun, we lowered the permit for 15 minutes then put it back up. Within 30 minutes, an inspector came to check why our permit wasn’t up.

We had set up a video camera to record our neighbor doing it all: pooping, peeing, and tossing his garbage into our box. We tried to even sue him for harassment but ended up dropping the case because it was too much work to keep it going. Reddit user: Biffmcgee

Nancy the Nut

My neighbor is the textbook definition of a hoarder. They have two trucks (one broken down and one with a cab) that are full of trash, a pop-up trailer that’s full of trash, a pop-up tent that has trash all underneath it, and basically trash everywhere else. Their house reeks of cats from the sidewalk, and he just lets his outdoor cats breed and breed. Those cats come over to our yard and poop everywhere.

The only access to the driveways on my street is by the alley behind our houses. He likes to park his cars in the alley, and so does his son. He and his son also like to pretend they’re the speed police and will drunkenly scream at you and come into your yard to do so if they think you’re going too fast. Reddit user: minishaff

Neighboring Nudists

When my parents moved, they had a neighbor named Nancy or “Nancy the Nut.” One time my mom was walking me in the stroller, and Nancy’s mother came up and started asking about me. My mom then asked her how many children she had. My parents got a misspelled and expletive-filled letter basically saying how dare they ask how many children a woman has. It was Nancy that wrote it.

She also put traffic cones in front of her house for no real reason (my dad accidentally backed up over one and dragged it half a block under his car) and then managed to kill the tree in her front yard by duct taping it (we have no idea why). She’s since passed away, but wow was she weird. Reddit user: PAKMan1988

To the Pound

In my first home, I had neighbors that lived across the street that had no problem walking around outdoors naked. Considering they were pretty overweight, it was not a pretty sight. Go to get the newspaper? Naked. Push out the trash? Naked. Water the flowers? Naked. They basically performed all their household chores without clothes and in full sight of everyone.

They had the policed called on them, we had group talks with them about their behavior, we took pictures and gave them to the cops, but nothing stopped them from walking around stark naked in front of everybody, including children. Then one day, a miracle happened: they moved! When the new people moved in, we were so overjoyed that we had a block party in their honor. They thought we were the nicest people ever. Reddit user: irishamerican

Simon

I have this neighbor that found a crack in his foundation; he had to rip up most of his lawn to fill it in. It turns out there wasn’t any space on his lawn for the dump truck with the gravel, so they drove up on our lawn and dumped it (I probably would have let him if he asked, but he didn’t).

When we got mad at him for it, he said he would fix the tire tracks in our lawn; it’s been six years and he still hasn’t, that lying idiot. We thought just he was a jerk, but it turns out his wife was too. When our dog got out of our yard, she took it to the pound. Reddit user: [redacted]

Their Cooking

I once had a neighbor that came to be called “Simon.” We have no idea if that was his real name. Simon was special. He used to vacuum his house at about 4 am for HOURS. He was learning to play the guitar, but he would do it at times like 8 am when a lot of people still slept.

Later, it turned out he had also picked up singing and would let out yells that sounded like a walrus mating with an elephant in the afternoon. I never heard him sing a proper song; he would just let out screams that would make a banshee jealous. I don’t live there anymore, but I hope that Simon learns to play/sing one complete song. Reddit user: H3XAGON_

The Neighbor That Won’t Quit

Now that the weather’s nice out, it sucks because it’s hard to have the windows open, as my neighbor’s cooking ends up stinking up our whole upstairs. I’ve understood in the past when living in apartment buildings, but this is a townhouse development, and I don’t know what they’re cooking that’s that pungent.

Some days I can’t even go into the backyard without walking into a wall of smell. He (the neighbor) and his family have been the worst neighbors I’ve ever lived next to for so many reasons, but I’ve been smelling his cooking now since 7 am every morning, and it makes me want to rip my nose right off. Reddit user: TheDanimal438

Stolen Steaks and Cats

I had been living in a new area for seven months and found that my neighbor was pretty weird. Once, I looked out of my window to see my neighbor leaning over my 6-foot-high fence and stretching right into my yard to saw off some of the main branches of my tree. My tree had never extended over the fence, and her limb-hacking killed it.

A few months later, she cut one of the wires attached to our boundary fence that was holding up a shade cloth in my back yard. I called the cops on her. And a couple of weeks later, all the plants along our boundary fence mysteriously died and seriously damaged some of my trees. And I still have no idea what her problem is! Reddit user: gadget_girl

Fun Stuff

A neighbor stole my cat. The cat went missing for a few days, then showed up back at my doorstep. I took her back in. A few days later, there were “Lost Cat” posters on the doors with a picture of my cat! The neighbor came by while I was still figuring out what to tell her about the cat, and when I opened the door, the cat was standing there between my legs.

She was really flustered. When I told her that it was my cat and always had been, she said, “Well, I already paid to have her shots.” I can’t even fathom what she was thinking. This cat is a beautiful Bengal that likes to hang around on the steps outside of my apartment, obviously not a stray. Reddit user: sharksblessme

Peeping Toms

We used to have a pretty nice row house in a large east coast US city. The neighbors on the left side would let their dogs poop and pee in the concrete slab back “yard” and never cleaned it up. The stench was unbearable (as you can probably imagine), and poop water would drain toward our back door when it rained.

The house on the other side had a woman who left her six kids alone all night to destroy the house and keep us up. The oldest was about 8 and the youngest less than one. It was bedlam until about 2-3 am. They also never took out their trash. We were constantly fighting cockroaches coming into our house from theirs. Reddit user: UAintMyFriendPalooka

A Mixup with the Snow

The downhill neighbor behind us cut down the hedge between our house and theirs and complained we were ‘peepers’ trying to look into their house from our terrace above. Something that was absolutely absurd. When their dog tore up our old 4-foot fence, we put up a 6-foot one topped by a 2-foot section of lattice so they could no longer see into our place.

Then they built a 3-foot raised deck so they could see over again and called code enforcement and the police because we were ‘peeping’ again. I know, completely crazy, right? The police blew them off, and code enforcement cited them for the illegal deck, which they had to take down. I was more than happy when they moved out. Reddit user: Altarocks

Mailbox Wars

My next-door neighbors were the most irritating and confusing people I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. They once threatened to sue us because, get this, some of “our” snow ended up on their side of the lawn. I live in Canada, and we had about four feet of snow on the ground at the time. Pretty sure I’m not responsible for nature.

These same neighbors, the day we bought a second car, put up a little metal fence on their side of our driveway. We have a more than double wide driveway with plenty of room for two vehicles and have never once even come close to touching their lawn with one of our cars. They’re just super weird. Reddit user: pecca

A Danger to Nature

My sister had a new neighbor move into the house next door, and right away he took down their mailbox. When she noticed, they went over to get it, and he said it was his and that it came with the house, even though it had my sister’s family’s name on it (due to a divorce, there were several names on it).

The police were called, and they got it back, but he ended up taking it a few more times over the course of the next six months. They eventually took him to court, but on the court date, my sister was in the hospital and couldn’t make it. The guy won by default and went right home and took the mailbox again.

He then mounted it to the roof of his front porch like it was some kind of trophy he won or something. It was very strange pulling up to their house and seeing their mailbox standing on his roof with all their names written on it. Reddit user: citizen5645

All for a Tree

We had a pretty bad one. He would literally call the police on us once or twice a day. Every. Single. Day. At least we got to know our local police force pretty well. He would claim my dogs were mauling people, lives were in danger. I had two wonderful Australian shepherds, and they never bit anyone ever. But he would call daily anyway.

He made up so much random stuff, I can’t even remember it all. It started because he hated other neighbors and we defended them. He called hazmat on them once because they were rinsing off their jet skis and he claimed they were dumping waste in the street and it was headed to a stream at the end of the road.

Full-scale fire trucks and police responded to that one. For water. After we defended that neighbor, he decided to turn his attention on us. He would just make things up; I think he believed what he was saying. He was seriously crazy. Reddit user: shaylenn

A Two-Year Pool Battle

I was having a tree removed from the corner of my lot. My neighbor comes out and starts screaming at the tree remover guys (TRGs) that the tree is on her property and they’re making a big mistake, yadda yadda. Much swearing was used. I wasn’t home at the time, so to be on the safe side, the TRGs packed up and left.

I brought them back to finish the job but made sure I was home at the time and was outside with a video camera when they started the work. After 15 minutes or so, I got bored and left, and THEN the neighbor re-appeared and started her tirade again. The TRGs just ignored her and finished the job. Reddit user: BlackJacquesLeblanc

Wanna Hang Out?

I live in a hilly area. The neighbor above us hired a bunch of idiots (not contractors) to do landscape work. They didn’t take the appropriate measures to prevent runoff. Well, it started to rain very hard, which caused their loose dirt to go past our fence, all the way down to our new pool, filling it with mud, destroying the built-in cleaning system, and causing thousands of dollars in damage.

The jerk refused to take responsibility for the shoddy work done, making it turn into a two-year feud where eventually we had to sue him to pay for the damage. Within those two years, he would scream and yell at us whenever we were outside, put multiple cameras looking directly into our yard and house, and would throw things into our yard that we suspected to be food poisoned to hurt our dogs.

Eventually, like I said, we had to sue him (only requesting money to pay for the damages and lawyer fees; we ended up forgetting about the damage to our fence, which now barely stands up), which we thankfully won, and finally he moved. It was hell for over two years, though. Reddit user: stonedape00

She Still Keeps an Eye Out

When I was in high school, there was a neighbor kid that would come over every day of my life. He always wanted to “hang out,” but he was also impossible to get to leave. Now I understand what it’s like to have no friends and want to hang out sometimes, but I can’t devote my life to this kid.

One day, I was chilling in my room blaring music after school before my parents were home when I heard the doorbell start to ring wildly. I knew it was neighbor kid and was definitely not in the mood, so I just turned up the volume. Ten minutes later, I heard a knocking at my bedroom door.

I thought my parents had just gotten home and wanted me to turn down the music, but when I opened the door, there he was. Neighbor kid. He said, “Hey. Uh. You might want to turn your music down. I kept ringing the doorbell, and I even went around and looked in all of the windows, but I guess you couldn’t hear me. So…wanna hang out?” Reddit user: WILDCOX

The Radio That Never Turns Off

My neighbor wanted to borrow my pressure washer to clean his fence. As he was cleaning the fence, the bipolar neighbor behind him started yelling and screaming that we were “keeping her daughter from sleeping” (keep in mind that this is 3:00 PM) and was generally freaking out.

We couldn’t really tell what the problem was. Somewhere along the fence, a piece of wood got dislodged and hit her in the arm. She called 911, and when they arrived, she was screaming and complaining like a crazy woman. I explained to the police what had happened.

She was taken away in the ambulance, still in a fit of rage, claiming that the neighbor had been drinking all day (he just got home from working at a hospital). Now, since she’s returned to her house, she’s installed multiple cameras and now keeps her backyard lights on. It was like something out of a movie. Reddit user: Cricetinae

Most of the people in the world, except those who live off the grid or in some kind of self-imposed exile, have neighbors. These are the people who are supposed to have your back if anything goes wrong with your house, and generally, you hope they’ll be people you can count on to give you a nice smile and cheery “good morning” as you head to your car for work.

But that’s not always the case, as the people in these stories know. They understand better than anyone else that great neighbors can be extremely hard to come by. If you’ve got neighbors that you (at the very least) don’t mind, they should be treasured. Why? Because they’re nothing compared to the worst of the worst when it comes to neighbors. The people of the internet shared their shocking and downright crazy stories of the neighbors they couldn’t wait to get away from.

Screaming Match

My dad had a neighbor when he was young that played his radio loudly all day, even when he wasn’t home or was gone on vacation. Every time he left the house, and his radio was still on, my dad would go and trip the circuit breaker to his condo.

One day he sees my dad, who was an electrical engineer, and asked him why his breaker kept tripping – was it faulty wiring? No, my dad explained, the loud radio was probably just putting too much strain on the circuit when left on all the time. My dad suggested he should try turning it down or off when he wasn’t home and see if that fixed it.

So, the man tried it, and surprise surprise, the circuit breaker stopped tripping! He was very thankful to my dad for helping him with that annoying electrical issue. Reddit: TheFeshy

Accused of Sabotaging Their House

The walls were really thin, and we could hear the couple screaming at each other and the baby wailing most nights. She didn’t work and was there all day, so if a door accidentally slammed or you walked down the stairs too heavily, she would come out and yell that you were going to wake up the baby.

The Saturday we moved out we bumped the wall trying to carry the couch out to the truck, and she came out and screamed at all of us. We also had assigned parking and she liked to park in our spots. It was a nice apartment, but I was glad to get out mostly due to them. I felt bad for the guy, he had always been pleasant and seemed really embarrassed by her behavior. Reddit: ironylaced

Attempted Kidnapping

They accused my mom of having a garden on their property. They call a land surveyor who laid out the edges of their property. Sure enough, garden is ~4 inches over the line. This lady goes nuts, spray paints a huge neon orange line between the yards, digs up the garden, puts a tiny fence in it, then starts storing their trash bins on the area. Keep in mind, this is a neighborhood with a civic association. You are not allowed to even put up a fence without voted-on permission.

She accused my parents of putting dog poop in their yard. My parents don’t have a dog, but this family has 3 wiener dogs that don’t get walked. She stomps over to my parents’ house and starts screaming. My dad dealt with her. He said she was screaming nonsense and seemed super paranoid, that my mom was plotting against them and sabotaging their house. The whole thing is weird. Reddit: Mullinberry

Evil Monopoly Man

Ok, woke up at 1am one night to someone banging on my front door. No porch light so I couldn’t see who it was. Banging continues for about 10 minutes. I waited for the person to walk away and get a fair distance away before opening the door to ask what was going on.

Downstairs neighbor appears and starts yelling something about “he stole my baby” and then I see some dark figure running towards me (again, no porch lights). I freak out, deadbolt my door and call cops as I’m hiding in my bathtub. Boyfriend has the porcelain part of the toilet ready to strike someone if they get in, because whoever is banging at the door is back.

Anyway, turns out it was the neighbor’s boyfriend and he did have her baby but wasn’t trying to steal it. They were having a fight and I guess he was trying to get us involved. Reddit: CacaDeGato

Blower Dude

It all started when our new neighbor put up a fence that extended too far, which forced pedestrian to walk in the street, rather than the sidewalk. My dad said something to him and of course, the guy didn’t listen. My dad then contacted the city — this is when it all began.

Over the next year, the neighbor got his revenge: first, he placed multiple spotlights outside his house, which went on at 8pm and lit up our bedrooms. Next, he placed a school bell on the back of his house and connected it to his telephone. Every time his telephone rang, it rang.

Finally, there was a garage that he technically owned, but it was connected to our house, too. When he discovered we were trying to sell our house, he painted the garage neon pink, with neon green stripes. He must of known what he was doing, because he now owns 16 of 20 properties that were on our old block. He may have been some passive-aggressive genius. Reddit: Maebyimannyong

Need for Speed

“Blower Dude” as the whole family refers to him. When we moved in he told my dad none of the neighbors got along with him and then said since there were no deciduous trees on his property he would be blowing any leaves that fell into his yard over our fence.

This guy used his leaf blower 4-5 times a day. He would spend hours carefully blowing the snow off his chain link fence while it was still snowing. Want to sleep in? You’ll have to make it through his two backyard passes before 10, so good luck. It should be better in summer right? Nope, this guy actually mowed his lawn every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. Wish I were kidding.

He got too sick to mow the summer before he died and would sit on his back porch watching his poor 30-year younger wife doing it and yelling about how wrong she did it till he finally past. Reddit: [Redacted]

Wrong Apartment

A few houses down the road there was a family that was mostly quiet, but their adult son lived with them. He drove a late 90s chevy cavalier that he would ‘mod’ himself. The worst part was he would drive as fast as that car would take him in the neighborhood. In winter he took a turn too fast and ended up in my yard twice. He would come into the cul de sac and try to spin in circles. We asked him to stop, and he wouldn’t. We spoke to his parents, nothing. Finally, we called the county sheriff. That stopped it for a bit.

Right before they lost the house to foreclosure and moved out, he had cut the muffler off of the cavalier and was speeding around listening to it. He came flying into the cul de sac and couldn’t stop. He jumped the curb, kept going through the lots and ended up in the field with tall grass. Took the keys and just walked off. 2 days later they were gone, with the car still there. My neighbors called the city, but they spent a week trying to ‘figure out’ how to get it out. A different neighbor and I used his Jeep and winch to get it out, then towed it to the city building parking lot and left it. Reddit: [Redacted]

Dad Is The Neighbor From Hell

Not so much neighbor from hell, but still pretty funny. My neighbor broke into my house in the middle of the night in a drunken blur. We were all in our early 20’s and him and his buddy, in their late 20’s early 30’s, lived downstairs. One night, I hear all this noise and find him passed out drunk in my hall closet clutching a pair of shoes. I asked him to leave, and he said ok but still didn’t, I could hear him walking around. I was hiding out in my bedroom since the whole thing was a little un-nerving.

So, I called the police and then I hear them come into my apt and say, “hey you! do you live here!?” I found that approach rather amusing. Once they got him to be coherent for a few minutes, they told him he couldn’t just ‘break into pretty girls houses’ and then they asked if I wanted to press charges. Of course, I didn’t, I am sure the embarrassment was enough for him, I didn’t see him again for the rest of my time living there. Reddit: [Redacted]

The Grudge

My dad was the “neighbor from hell” for a while. For a long time, we lived in the middle of nowhere. Nearest neighbor was 3 miles away. My dad did mechanic work on the weekends in his shop. He would get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and Sunday and just start revving engines and making a ton of racket. Since we had no neighbors, no one complained.

We moved into the city and my dad opened his own business. He tried to do the same things he was used to doing out in the country, but the cops ended up getting involved. He would get up every day at 4am and just start making racket in his shop (right next to our house). He stopped only because the cops told him to, and that he was allowed to make as much racket as he wanted, just as long as it was in between 7am-10pm and you can bet, he’s making racket from 7am-10 pm. Reddit: duckmunch

Ant Infestation

I am currently living next to a weird neighbor that apparently has a grudge with everyone in our street. When my dad tries to park our car into our house and she happens to be outside, she would hide behind her car or run inside her house. Once while I was playing basketball with my sisters in the middle of the street and her car turned into the street, instead of flashing her lights or honks, she accelerates. Since the ball was still in mid air, I waited for it to come down so I can catch it and move aside.

She screeched to a stop next to us, opens her door and raged about how “we are blind and can’t see a car on the road”. Being 11/12 years old, I had no comeback ready. Funny thing is, I never knew what happened between us to make our relationship this sour. She was acting this way since before I was born already. Her husband is a good man though. Always smiling at us and greeting us. Reddit: Nellek_God

Breaking Bad

First apartment post-college, I move in and find that my next door neighbors are 2 party-hard, SoCal surfer, trust-fund, 7 years of college bros that call everybody “dog”. Our front doors faced each other and there was a sidewalk in between. These guys would take their garbage outside of their place and set it against the wall, on the sidewalk. They wouldn’t take it out to the dumpster.

A few days go by in the summer heat and ants are swarming it. I asked the “dogs” to please take their trash out as the ant infestation in my place was really sucking, and I had taken every step to not allow them in. After another couple days the garbage was piled up, and the ants were still swarming. I lost it. It’s 6AM, the “dogs” are sleeping after another night of partying, so I rip open all of the trash. Spread it out all over the sidewalk, on their side. I completely covered the ground within a 6-foot radius of their doorstep so that they couldn’t step over it or anything.

I came home that afternoon to find all of the garbage gone and them sweeping and mopping the sidewalk. I’m worried that they’ll think it was me. “Dog! You won’t believe this! A racoon or something ripped open all the trash and destroyed this place! Man, we’ll never leave our trash out again!” Reddit: YourWebcamIsOn

Hip-Hop Dance Class

In a 24 hour period, on average, about 20 different cars pulled up, were there for 15-20 minutes, then left. My bedroom window faces the street so I couldn’t sleep through an entire night without hearing loud bass from at least some of the cars that were stopped there.

There was always a lot of yelling in the middle of the night, too. One night I was awoken to an extra amount of yelling and looked out to see nothing short of a riot in front of my house. ~15-20 people pushing and screaming at one another, a few with bats or weapons. I called the cops of course, and as it turns out someone was stabbed, too. I’m not naive. I know they were dealing drugs. I called the property manager about 10 times about them and called the cops numerous times. Finally, they got evicted and things were quiet again. The house on the other side of me got new tenants. Guess who they were? Reddit: [deleted]

Neighbor Needs Money

I lived in an apartment in an older brownstone building built around 1910-1920 so the floors were a bit creaky. My roomie and I didn’t have an issue with that but periodically in the evenings it would sound like a herd of buffalo was congregating in the living room of the apartment above us. It was so intense the ceiling fan would shake, and things would fall off shelves in our apartment.

My roomie went up to ask them to knock it off one night. It turns out the neighbors were hosting a hip-hop dance class in their living room when the space they used in a dance studio was not available. They didn’t think it was unreasonable that they did this. Reddit: [deleted]

Can’t Park Your Car Here

I once had a neighbor in college that would knock on my door and ask for money. I would just say I’m a broke student and I can’t spare anything. It was weird and a weekly occurrence at the least. She was in her 50s and working.

One day I got fed up when she knocked on my door (I think I was stressed for exams) and I said yea I got some money for you. I asked her to hold out her hands and gave her maybe 2 dollars’ worth of nickels that I had in a change jar. She never bothered me again. Reddit: ItsOfficiallyME

Living Above The Scrooge

His adjacent neighbor teaches piano from home, so parents are coming and going for a few hours in the afternoons. If anyone is parked on the curb between their houses, he’ll go out of his way to back his car AS CLOSE TO THE BUMPER as possible. Even if he obstructs his own driveway. Puts a lot of work into it too. His Subaru B9 Tribeca doesn’t have a backup camera, so this pasty older man in a shirt and tie backs up, gets out, looks at the distance to the car, gets back in, backs up, gets out, checks the distance, gets back in, backs up, and on and on until he’s a hair from the other car.

I had to park near his house once while I worked on another car. He pulled this stunt while I was staring at him. For minutes. Was just waiting for him to make contact. Of course, his wife parked in front of my house all the time. He denied it. Now his wife’s car is permanently parked in front of their house. Reddit: K24Z3

Putting Up a Fence

Lived above a guy in a really old fourplex and I guess the wood floors squeaked really loudly when I walked around. It’s not like I was stomping around either, but the dude would constantly come upstairs and bang on my door and yell at me to stop moving around. I felt badly for him in the beginning because he seemed genuinely frustrated, but he didn’t seem to understand or believe that I wasn’t slamming my feet on my floor/his ceiling.

It got to the point that I couldn’t take the constant yelling and I was literally either tip toeing around or hopping from my couch to my chair in order to get out of my living room so that he wouldn’t be standing at my door yelling at me. Finally, I went downstairs one day and asked if we could talk about the situation because I felt like maybe if I looked him in the eye when he was calm and explained that I wasn’t doing it on purpose and that there was literally nothing more I could do he would maybe understand.

So, I went downstairs and very nicely explained and he seemed to be listening. And then he said, “I’m about at the point that if it happens again, I’m going to show up at your door with a really big knife.” And then he just stared at me. I basically ran out of there, called my landlord and said that I was more or less being threatened and a month later the guy moved out. And then as soon as I could I did too. Super terrible situation. Reddit: ElleTheFox

Car Insurance Scam

We’ve always had trouble with a neighbour going against our building plans or our fence colour or whatever. Just being a pain for the sake of it. My folks went to replace the fence that had always been out front, and he argued that it had always been on his property, and we would have to pay him to put the fence back there or pay to dig out a new section for a new fence.

My dad dug out the house deeds and found that as per old council rules, every house was responsible for the street out front. Seems however that our house somehow owned both sections of street outside the property itself and outside the neighbours. Dad agreed to pay to put the fence on the neighbours property in return for the neighbour paying to drive his car over the curb into his garden or for him or any visitors to walk on the street to get to the property. Neighbour shut up after that and the fence went up without issue. Reddit: kezza596

Visit From The FBI

When I lived with my parents, we had a knock at the door one day from our neighbours across the road. They told us a story that resulted in their car getting stolen the night before. Apparently, the wife had seen a strange looking man wandering around the street late at night. He had apparently been looking into car windows which were parked on driveways, including our cars.

The next morning, their BMW was gone. Including the keys which were hanging by the front door of their house. They “assumed” the strange man looking in car windows had somehow fished the keys from the house via the letterbox. The whole thing sounded very strange.Turns out, they’d made the whole thing up, and had dumped the car for the insurance, as they had fallen on hard times. Apparently, their story hadn’t held up well, and they were found out. Reddit: golfnthat

Neighbor Faking Fall

Back in high school, one of our neighbors moved away and their house sold to this older woman and her mostly grown sons. The sons seemed to be popular, having people drop by at all hours. All was relatively quiet until one day, while I was home alone, there was a knock on the door. Two gentlemen in very nice black suits and dark ties then identified themselves as FBI and asked me if we were ever approached by crazy lady or her sons to buy anything. I basically replied with they are crazy, and we don’t talk to them, they don’t talk to us. They hand me their business card then proceed on to the next house.

I look out the window and I see: 5 blue Ford Tauruses, 3 red Ford Astro Vans, and one VIACOM truck that was being loaded with box after box from the neighbor’s garage. Turns out the sons were making those special cable boxes that got you all of the channels for free. After this it was only the strange lady left in that house. Reddit: largecozz

A New Fridge

My neighbor is an overweight middle-aged woman that seems to have a bad knee only when my kids are outside in the summer. If they are playing in my fenced in back yard, she’ll pretend to fall down so they can help her up.

I went from “Kids, you should help her, that’s what neighbors do!” to “She fell AGAIN? It seems like she only falls when you guys are playing. She doesn’t fall when I’m working in the garden.” to “If she falls again, come get me.” When I started saying that she seemed to be able to get up pretty quickly.

I had to go over there in August and tell her that I can’t have my kids helping her get up anymore, they are 7 and 8 years old and they can’t give her medical aid. I get that she is probably lonely, but 3 or 4 times a week, I’d hear her yell “Kids, Kids! help me up, I fell AGAIN.” Reddit: Bmac1977

While these stories of awful neighbors probably had you thinking of living off the grid, wait until you hear about these nightmarish landlords. From neglecting rat and roach infestations to dealing with dishonest, money-hungry jerks, these people don’t hold back when describing their horrible landlords…

A Lack of Privacy

Renting is something that many people can’t escape – not everyone is fortunate enough to own their own home, after all. In a rental relationship, the tenant pays rent, and the landlord provides a safe, sanitary place to live. But things don’t always happen the way they’re supposed to.

Everything from people living in roach-infested apartments, to dishonest landlords trying to get their grubby paws on security deposits – and worse – have happened, and continue to happen. Some landlords have tried to keep their renters’ belongings, and taken them to court- and that’s not even the half of it. Here, people share the nightmare landlord stories that’ll make you want to save up for your own home and never rent again…

The Pest Problem

I lived in a studio apartment while I was in college and had a cheap, worthless landlord. Among the many stories I have, the worst was when my fridge died in May. Given that the apartment was furnished, I called the landlord to let him know. His solution, instead of replacing it, was to bring over a 50-gallon Styrofoam cooler filled with jumbo bags of ice.

I asked how long it’d be before he’d replace it, and he said he was just going to wait until my lease was up – in the beginning of July. I decided to contact an attorney ASAP and got out of the lease, but not before the cheap dude changed the locks, and almost took all of my stuff. I kicked the door in and moved everything off the balcony with three buddies. Reddit user: godbullseye

No Thanks, I’ll Pass

My (now) ex, a friend, and I all lived in a house together. We’d been there for almost a year, and were moving out within a month. The house didn’t have air conditioning, and I was six months pregnant. One day, I’m lying naked on my bed with a fan blowing on me. I hear the side door open, and think nothing of it.

My landlord was showing a couple our house without contacting us beforehand, or even knocking. He opened my door and they all walked in my room, and saw me lying there looking like a sweaty beached whale with my legs open, and all my goods on display. I’ve never been more angry and embarrassed in my entire life. Reddit user: smw89

Served For What?

My first apartment, when I was 18, had a rat and roach problem. My landlord refused to fumigate or call an exterminator. Instead, he just showed up one day and started opening up the walls looking for the pests. I remember sleeping that night, and I could hear the rats in the walls, which is a sound that doesn’t put you in the sleeping mood.

I’d wake up in the morning and there would be drywall in the kitchen because the rats chewed through and got into the pantry. I refused to pay rent until he called an exterminator. After six weeks or so he told me to move out, and just up and changed the locks, holding all my possessions hostage. Fortunately, I took him to small claims court and won. Reddit user: [redacted]

Squirrels, Cat Litter, And Ammonia

I rented a 500-acre ranch with an old ranch house from a 95-year-old man. He lived in town (small hill country town in Texas) where his live-in nurses cared for him, and the ranch was five minutes outside of town. I was very thankful because the ranch was really pretty and peaceful, and the rent was only $400 month – which was great.

I was in my 30s and I visited the owner in town to show him pictures of what I was doing to the house. I planted a garden, some trees, laid slate tile, etc. I seriously thought we’d become friends, like grandpa-style, because he acted so dang happy to see me. My boyfriend and I’d take him meals from Whataburger, we took him out to eat in town, our families sang Christmas carols to him, etc.

This man was old, but he had full use of his faculties. So when I moved out and went to tell him goodbye, it was sad for me. I was almost crying. That man looked me straight in the eye, and seriously said, “I gotta have ya. At least once. I want to make love to you.” You can’t believe how shocked I was. The man was 98 by then. I said, “Mr. Oldie! I have a boyfriend!” and walked straight out the front door.

His nurse was sitting outside. “I can’t believe what just happened…I can’t even say it.” She asked plainly, “Did he try to hook up with you?” Of course, I said “Yes!” Then she told me that every time people came to visit, she had to wrestle with him to put his pants on. And that part of her duties included returning the various “toys” he ordered. I was never able to think about him the same way again. Reddit user: [redacted]

Breathing Causes Mildew

I had to move in a hurry, so I took the first available flat I could find. I really regret it now. Here’s a brief list of all the stuff the landlord did at that time: First, he sent his brother to do the initial viewing and negotiating. When I accepted and started to move in, the landlord finally showed up in person and quoted a much higher price for the rent.

Second, he refused to produce a tenancy agreement until I withheld rent. Third, he said the tenancy agreement clearly stated that payment included all bills, as in the landlord would collect rent and bill money together as one lump sum. This’ll be important later. Fourth, He’d routinely enter my flat and rummage through my stuff. I later discovered that a silver pocket watch that my mom bought for my 18th birthday was missing.

Fifth, he entered the house every day and stole the mail before anyone could read it. Sixth, when told that the house was totally infested with rats and cockroaches, he said that “this is normal in India.” This isn’t India pal. Seventh, he turned up every other week to collect money for “additional bills” and wouldn’t specify what these bills were. When I refused to give him money, he changed the locks until I paid.

Lastly, the crowning glory of this walking sack of terribleness: he didn’t pay the council tax. As I said, he collected money for all of the bills along with the rent, but apparently failed to actually send this money on to the council. We (the tenants) were taken to court, sued, and lost in our absence. When we failed to pay the entire outstanding debt and court costs, bailiffs were sent to collect.

This was the first time any of us knew that there was a problem. I convinced the bailiffs of what’d happened by showing them my tenancy agreement (which no one else had) and got them to back off. I tried calling the landlord, and found that both of his cell phones had been deactivated. Reddit user: [redacted]

Unknown Recordings

The house was terrible and falling down, plus there was a mouse infestation. The landlord heard somewhere that cat litter keeps rodents away. I entered the laundry room one day to discover two inches of scented cat litter everywhere. She (perhaps fortuitously) didn’t realize that it’s used cat litter that keeps away mice, not clean, scented stuff that stank up the entire house.

It remained there for a year, until we moved out. One time, his same landlord attempted to drive to IKEA. The closest one was in NJ, about an hour away. She lived upstairs and after a few days, I realized I hadn’t seen her in a while. It turned out she got lost in NJ, couldn’t find her way back, and ended up just booking a hotel and staying for two days until someone came and got her.

At one point she believed that the house was overrun by squirrels, and would illegally enter our apartment to look for them. She also had all of the blooming trees (the only nice plants in the yard) cut down because of “squirrels.” I’m still not sure what was going on there. Any time I did anything she didn’t like, she’d accuse me of letting squirrels into the house.

Back in the laundry room, I overheard her teaching her son how to do laundry. She warned him to never ever mix bleach and ammonia, because it makes a toxic gas. She then proved this by purposely mixing the two. They instantly started choking and gagging, and abandoned the laundry room to run back upstairs. And get this – she was a mental health professional. Reddit user: [redacted]

An Ex-Landlord Or Ex-Girlfriend

I lived in a crappy two-bedroom apartment with no ventilation. It was more like a glorified shoe-box than a house. One day, I get mail from the landlord. She wrote a letter saying that she was walking past the property the other day, and noticed mildew on the corner of the front window. The letter said that this was really bad for the house, and that we had to get rid of it.

This was a little weird and pedantic, but okay, I thought, whatever, I’ll clean it. But the letter went on to say that we should take steps to prevent it from coming back. The letter included a list of things that caused mildew, and recommend that we avoid doing those things. I get to the last item on the list and it was, “Breathing.” Breathing can cause mildew. The landlord tried to ask me to stop breathing in my apartment. Reddit user: [redacted]

 Doesn’t Matter Who Breached It

I have a live-in landlord who’s one of the worst roommates I’ve ever had. He expects his tenants to do all the chores but never tells us what he wants done – he just expects us to read his mind. He rarely cleans up after himself, and ignores our requests for him not to have his loud friends over when we have work in the morning, or to not leave the bathroom covered in water.

I noticed something that looked like a security camera in our living room a few months back, which I’d always figured was just a wireless speaker. When I asked him about why it had a lens, he claimed that was just part of our security system’s alarm, and the lens was actually a speaker. I looked up the product online and found out that it’s a full home security system that streams audio and video direct to his phone.

He turns it on whenever he leaves, and turns it off when he’s home. He’s never mentioned this to me or the other tenant, and outright lied about it to my face. When home alone, I’ve walked through the living room naked after showering, and my girlfriend has as well, so he’s definitely seen that. But he’s been filming me now for almost a year without my knowledge. Reddit user: [redacted]

$1500 To Throw Away A Chandelier

I moved out on Halloween in 2016. Between Oct 31st and December 4th, my ex-landlord emailed me 17 times. Her emails were full of questions about my health, my boyfriend, etc. At first, I tried to only answer what I felt comfortable answering and hoped she got the message; nope – she’d click “reply” and copy and paste the same questions I’d deliberately ignored.

Eventually, I wouldn’t reply to emails with no “business” in them (i.e., no questions directly related to the apartment). To force me to answer, she’d email again and ask for my parents’ mailing address. On December 4th, I blocked her email address. I got a nice reprieve over Christmas and I thought, OK, now I can move on. On January 20th, I got a friend request from her on Facebook. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Outdoor Concerts

One apartment I rented had on the lease that they paid water and sewer. Three months in the water was cut off because they didn’t pay the bill, and they insisted that it was a mistake to put it on the lease, and I needed to pay it. I ended up having to pay for the water and sewer, but then when I moved out, they billed me $1,500 for breach of contract.

Seems the clause in the contract stated, “In the event of a breach of contract the renter will be liable for a $1,500 breach of contract fee.” When I pointed out they were the ones in breach of contract, they replied, “The clause has nothing to do with who breached the contract, it only states that you’re responsible for the breach of contract fee.” Reddit user: [redacted]

Cutting The Power

I subleased a room from my friend one summer while he did an internship. His three roommates were also out of town the entire summer, but paid rent and their portion of the utilities for the summer. At the end of my sublease, I cleaned the house, moved my stuff out, and turned in my key.

Three months later, I get served with a lawsuit for over $5,000, alleging excessive damages and cleaning fees. I sent them back a letter demanding an itemized list of all the fees I was being sued for. When I get the itemized list, it was absolutely stupid.

For example, they’d charged me a $500 “chandelier cleaning charge,” to clean the overhead light in the dining room; then a $300 “chandelier maintenance fee;” and then a $700 “chandelier replacement charge.”  $1,500 to clean, maintain, and then throw away a chandelier? Nope.

They also, obviously, completely fluffed their expenses, charging me something like $25 to replace a light bulb in the basement, and charging me $750 for two hours of “lawn maintenance,” which was the responsibility of the landlord in the lease anyway.

It turns out they also had ended up filing a separate lawsuit against each of us, so they were actually suing us all for $25,000 total for what couldn’t have been more than $1,000 worth of expenses, which would’ve been covered by our security deposit anyway.

Anyway, I work for the Housing Department of my city and sent them a response on my office letterhead, saying that I refused to pay for the damages, and that they could come and get me if they wanted to try. I never got a response, but the suit was dropped and I promptly advised the city to deny them any future city contracts. Reddit user: [redacted]

Unwanted Renovations

Before I started renting, I was promised a unit in a quiet area of the building. That wasn’t the case – far from it, in fact. They held outdoor concerts outside my window all summer. It drove me absolutely crazy. They wouldn’t let me move out before my lease was over, without a penalty of two months’ rent, and forfeiting the security deposit.

They also towed my car from the resident parking lot two days before I moved out for having a flat tire (no notice given). And when they did it, it was to the farthest auto shop in town, when there was a shop right across the street. Yeah, towing companies charge by the mile. And I was the one who had to pay the bill. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Creep

It was an apartment complex, and this one stands out still. When we were looking at the place, the landlord assured us that they had a great reputation. Less than one month in, they didn’t pay the power bill. Not, “they forgot to pay the power.” Not, “they were in financial trouble.” They just wanted to see if they could call the power company’s bluff about disconnection.

The power company killed the power, and proceeded to lock half the breakers in every building. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a riot take shape, but try cutting off the AC and refrigeration for a few dozen Alabamians in the middle of June, during a heat wave. It was crazy how fast they tried to pay the company once people were almost out with their pitchforks. Reddit user: [redacted]

Or We’ll Take You To Court

My landlord knew I was a clean and quiet tenant who loved baking. He “renovated” and removed the stove while moving the “kitchen” (cupboards, sink, and fridge) to the other wall. He replaced the stove with a toaster oven, and acted like the stove had never even existed. He also removed my living room door. He increased my rent by 30% for those “renovations.”

We’ve been in legal hearings ever since, and now he’s trying to keep my damage deposit out of spite, because I hung shelves (no storage in bathroom) and curtains (huge window almost to the floor by the toilet, which faces a busy street), and a few pictures. The neighbor upstairs flooded three apartments and kept their deposit, so what’s the big deal? Reddit user: [redacted]

Additional Charges

My fiancée and I used to live on the same property as our creepy landlord, and we paid rent directly to his dad. For many reasons, we decided that the place was no longer a good fit for us – one of which was because he (the dad) used to show up at night wanting to hang out, and talk about the weirdest things.

A week before we were due to leave, the son showed up at 11:00 pm claiming his dad had never seen a dollar of the money we’d been paying him, and he was threatening to block in our car. I gave him the details of the bank account I’d been paying into, and he went back to check. He came back later to tell us his dad had forgotten he had that account. Reddit user: [redacted]

Keeping The Deposit

We paid rent with electricity, gas, and water added on each month. One day, our power goes out. I call the power company, and they tell me no one has paid the electricity bill in six months. Even though we were giving our landlord money to cover the electricity the whole time we lived there, which had been about six months at the time.

Imagine my shock when I heard that, knowing that I also had the receipts from the landlord to prove it. I call him up and he says he’ll fix it, it must be a mistake. Two weeks later, I’m threatening to take him to court, and our power comes back on. That’s good because I have no legal experience, and had no idea what taking him to court would entail. Reddit user: [redacted]

He Ghosted

When I was an undergrad student, my landlord was some big shot lawyer who rented out a house to college students. Then, without fail, he’d take their security deposit at the end of the lease, and send an itemized list of all the additional charges they’d accrued. Often times they were completely made up, and made no sense at all.

We only stopped him from charging us an arm and a leg, or taking us to court, when we realized that one thing he put on the itemized list was a “lamp – $50, to help in repainting.” This was illegal, because he was just buying things for his personal use. When we told him this, he shut up pretty quick, and left us alone after that. Reddit user: [redacted]

What The Heck, Man

I once had a landlady do our walkthrough and agree, in writing, that there was no damage to our property, and that we’d be getting all of our deposit back when we returned our keys. Two weeks later we got a letter stating they were keeping all of the security deposit because someone had gotten drunk, destroyed a screen in the window, gouged a hole in the wall, and dented the refrigerator.

This occurred two days after we moved out. It turns out that she used the property as a place for her in-laws to stay over during Thanksgiving, and fully expected us to pay for their damages because our name was still on the lease. The judge was really hung up on why other occupants were in our apartment without our knowledge or consent, if the woman’s position was that it was still our apartment and therefore we were liable. Reddit user: golemsheppard2

Throwing Me Out While I Was On Vacation

The end of the lease was approaching, and we informed our landlord we weren’t going to be able to renew. We had trouble finding a new place. We eventually found one, but it was only available four months after the end of our lease. It was a two bedroom and our roommate was on his way out, so the landlord said we could stay the four months at a reduced rent. Good guy, right?

The time came to move out; we cleaned meticulously, shampooed the carpet, baseboards – the whole nine yards. About two months after we moved out, I contacted our old landlord about our security deposit, which hadn’t been returned yet. He claimed he applied it to our rent, there were damages in the apartment, and we’d broken a banister in the stairwell. Well, I had time-stamped photos before and after moving, and a check-out form signed by the management.

I also had a notarized statement from a neighbor who’d seen who broke the banister. Plus the fact is that in Illinois, any supposed damages have to be repaired and a bill presented; also, security deposits cannot be used as rent in any fashion. I took that guy to court, won, got a judgment for three times our security deposit, and he ghosted. Never did see the money. Reddit user: div4ide

The Broken A/C

We were moving, and paid an extra month of rent so we could move at our own pace. Some may have called it excessive, but we wanted to be comfortable. We got a call from our soon to be ex-neighbor that the landlord had gone into the house and taken a bunch of stuff out (including a desktop computer that contained our family pictures).When we called to ask what the heck he was doing, the landlord claimed we’d left all that stuff behind.

He also said he was going to charge us because he had to haul it to the dump. We were stunned! My husband lost it and reminded him, in pretty colorful terms, that we’d paid for the whole month, and we weren’t finished moving yet. He did go and get the items from the dump, thankfully. No apology though, and we had to fight him to return our security deposit. Reddit user: faerie03

Crazy Really Means Crazy

I went out of town on a camping trip that lasted four days and three nights, and I didn’t have cell service. At the time I had two cats, and so I gave a friend my key in order to come in and feed the cats for me, and make sure they had water and all that jazz. You know, the standard.

While I was out of town, the landlord thought I broke my lease agreement and sublet the place to somebody, threw most of my stuff into the parking lot, and changed the locks. Thankfully my friend was there to take the cats, and what she could of my belongings, to her house until I got back from my little trip.

When I got into town I had around 17 voicemails from the landlord – all with her yelling at me. When I went to talk to her, she said she had to do that because giving my key to somebody else is a safety hazard for the tenants, even though it wasn’t like a key to a larger building where you could then get to other people’s apartments.

My apartment was a ground-level corner with its own entry. I’ve never been so mad. She then tried to get me to move out early and when I agreed, she tried to charge me extra. When I did move out, she didn’t give me back any of my deposit, AND charged me an additional $200 for minuscule things. Reddit user: [redacted]

 Random Pop Ups

While I was deployed, my wife remained at our home in Texas. The A/C broke in the middle of summer. They told her that the temperature wasn’t hot enough to justify a repair. When she showed them pictures of the thermostat reading over 100 degrees indoors, they finally said that they’d send a repairman, but that I needed to be there because I was the primary name on the lease, although she had power of attorney.

I threatened to sue. A/C was eventually jerry-rigged (the repair guy told her that he was paid to do the bare minimum fix) near the end of summer. Fast forward. I’m home, it’s getting hot again, and the A/C breaks again. Same story as before, claiming it wasn’t hot enough. This dragged on for a while, and I finally got orders to move to a new duty station.

I gave them 30 days notice and moved out. They tried to tell me that I couldn’t leave the home with a broken air conditioner, and wouldn’t honor my military orders. I had to pay to fix the A/C, and wouldn’t get my deposit back. I once again threatened to sue, and contacted the actual owner of the house. He was a cool dude living in New York, and said he’d take care of it for me.

He flew all the way in from New York City to see me in Texas, fired the property managers, sued them himself for something or other, said I was actually the cleanest/most responsible tenet he’d had, and eventually paid me double my security deposit for my troubles. He ended up being a really nice guy. Reddit user: [redacted]

New Potential Tenants

My “crazy” landlord actually turned out to be crazy. She was committed about a year into our tenancy, and it wasn’t a surprise as she did bizarre things, like show up and start gardening in the middle of the night, or call to say she knew that we’d sold all her light fixtures (we hadn’t – they were all still attached to the ceiling like always).

About six months after we moved out, she must’ve been released because she called me at 3:00 am to scream at me for stealing a chest freezer from the garage when we moved out (there was never a freezer there). I’m so glad to own a house now, and I hope I never have to go back to renting. Reddit user: [redacted]

Stop Coming By Unannounced

This landlord would randomly come in the apartment around 9:00 pm saying he came to take out the trash. He gave spare keys to his father and the cleaning lady, and both kept randomly coming inside without any notification. He also forgot to mention that the garage directly under my room was actually a workshop, and he’d work there in the early morning/late night hours.

The final straw was when he came into the apartment at 8:00 am on a Saturday, and brought his wife and small son into my absent roommate’s room for several hours. I knew this because I was trying to sleep in the next room, but couldn’t because they were entertaining themselves. To this day, I still wonder if he was a sociopath, or just a complete jerk. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Crazy Vet

My best friend and I rented a duplex two years ago for $1,200 a month. It was a two bed, two bath home, which was a decent place for two 20 year olds. But it needed a few things – simple fix type stuff. We both are kind of handymen, so we fixed the sink and redid the back and front lawn, resealed the driveway (he worked at Lowes, and we got stuff very cheap) and more.

Anyway our landlord came over three months into the lease, and said, “Well Eatinbeav, I have new potential tenants for this spot. I gotta charge you $400 more a month, or evict you boys.” After we got over the initial shock of it, we both got the heck out. The duplex is vacant now, and gone to absolute trash. We couldn’t believe the audacity. Reddit user: EatinBeav

Not A Very Child-Friendly Conversation

The landlady would constantly come by unannounced, and would just let herself in with her key, without even knocking. I’m not sure if this was illegal, but it surely felt like an infringement of my rights. It was irritating, but since we had nothing to hide it, we didn’t want to make a big issue of it. Until the day she brought her husband around to do some maintenance (unasked for).

As all of us living there were girls, and we never thought twice about walking from the bathroom to our bedrooms in just a towel, and I ended up being trapped in the bathroom for half an hour (I had no intention of walking past him in a skimpy towel) while this old man fiddled with something right outside the door. Reddit user: zinzidec

No Painting For Nine Days

When I was living in a rooming house, my landlord was this crazy Vietnam vet. He had a plastic-looking fake eye that would weird me out all the freaking time, and he was obsessed with watching the security cameras. Since this was a rooming house, it technically counted as a hotel, and you didn’t have the renters’ rights you enjoy in apartments. He had a taser, loved to threaten to tase people, and did so several times.

So, if you were late with your rent, he’d change the lock or your room, take all of your stuff, toss it in garbage bags, and then just leave it out by the door. He’d leave notes with misspellings all over the property for the most insane reasons. Once he got pissed off at a guy who lived there, refused his rent, packed his stuff up, and stole the remote control for his TV. Reddit user: dizzyelk

All About The Smoke

When I was a kid, my dad lived in a different state from my mom and me – for financial reasons. The landlord was nice-ish when we moved in; I talked about how we were going to move in with my dad as soon as we could. The landlord started telling 6-year-old me that my parents were divorced, and I was never going to live with my dad (not true).

My mom worked in a factory, and had a lot of guy friends who would come over and fix things in the house, have bonfires with us, and bring their own kids over to play. The landlord started calling my mom a prostitute to everyone on the block, including her and me. My dad had to call him and tell him off for being an idiot.

The next day, eviction notices were posted on every window and door of the house. Within two days, we were loading a moving truck, and the landlord threatened to call the cops on us for the eyesore. My mom called the cops instead for harassment; the officer stayed with us for hours making sure our landlord let us carry on with our move peacefully. Reddit user: CausticMoose

Not Worth The Effort

We moved into our apartment only a few hours after the previous tenants moved out. I’m not even sure who scheduled the time-frames to be this close. Our building management company is very religious, and they refused to paint it that first weekend because it was a little known—but supposedly very important—yearly celebration, and therefore they could not work until the following weekend.

So, for the first nine days, we had to live with all of our furniture, boxes, and belongings pushed up in the center of each room, which meant we couldn’t unpack, or even move around. We refused to unpack and risk getting paint on our things. Sleeping on the one small sliver of my bed that wasn’t covered by boxes and suitcases got old very quickly. Reddit user: [redacted]

An Overall Crappy Landlord

I decided to find a new place to live. In the move-out process, the landlady demanded I use a specific carpet cleaning company, so I did. They clean the entire carpet, and I pay their $500 fee. When the landlady came by to do the final check she, A) smelled like a chimney and, B) said she’d have to call the carpet place to do it again, because the carpet wasn’t clean enough.

I paid $500, and the carpet wasn’t clean enough? We continue on with the check. At one point she mentions something about it smelling like dogs, and my husband said, ‘Maybe it’s the smoke,’ (referring to how she smelled). She got pretty quiet after that comment, and we finished up the look-around with no other issues. Later, when I got what remained of my security deposit back, she said they had to keep the cleaning ladies there longer because it smelled like smoke.

We’d never smoked in that house. Ever. She was being completely serious. When I asked her what she was talking about, she brought up the comment my husband made. About her. Which I then got to explain to her. When I asked her who her supervisor was to report her utter and complete nonsense, she said we could take it to small claims court. Reddit user: jaxinthebox14

One Too Many Sues

My sister had a horrible landlord. The landlord refused to give back the $800 deposit because they got a portable dishwasher (which required no installation, the landlord could’ve just gotten rid of it if she didn’t want it) and left it there when they moved, saying she could have it if she wanted. Meaning, my sister just gave her a dishwasher for free.

They argued and argued until finally the landlord said, “Okay, well you’re only getting $300 back because of the time and effort this caused me.” When she sent the deposit in a money order, she gave them $295, because apparently stamps and envelopes weren’t included in the $500 she took away from them. They didn’t even call; they didn’t want to deal with her. Reddit user: [redacted]

Going Easy On The Security Deposit

I had a landlord whose maintenance guy used his key to steal some of our things. We filed a police report and notified the landlord, just because we wanted him to know since he owned a lot of properties in the area, and didn’t want other people who lived in his buildings to be victims.

Not because we were blaming him. But a few weeks later, he made a huge deal about it, like threatening legal action, and made a big stink about us having a loud party one time – which, compared to other parties we’d heard in the building, wasn’t that loud at all.

Fast forward a few months; my roommate and I decided we wanted to break the lease, because the neighborhood was really getting pretty bad. We knew we’d most likely be forfeiting our down payment, but our neighbor, who happened to be the landlord’s nephew was at a party with us.

He let slip that the guy jacking everyone’s stuff was employed by the landlord. Needless to say, we were able to end the lease early after we had a frank discussion with the landlord about his employee helping himself to our stuff. Reddit user: hamsteaked

The Creepiest Of Them All

My mom’s landlord went into foreclosure in 2009, and she had to move out. The landlord took photos of the house with trash everywhere, and sued my mom for $15k, claiming that he spent nearly 50 hours cleaning – and charged the hourly rate he was billing in his job as a consultant. This was wrong for so many reasons on so many levels.

My mom lawyered up, and they went through all the pictures and found it was the same trash dumped in different places. The same bag would be in the kitchen, bedroom and backyard. Anyway, he had to pay my mom back the full deposit, all her legal fees, and was placed on the “vexatious litigants” list, which means he’s basically no longer allowed to sue people. Reddit user: ElToberino

Never Rent From Family

When we moved in, we paid the security deposit, the first and half of last month’s rent. We have emails from our landlord acknowledging that we did so, and he cashed the checks for that amount. However, now that it’s the last month, they’re trying to say that because the lease didn’t say we needed to pay last month, he wants the full last month’s rent.

We said we’d pay the remaining half of the month – which we owe – and would fulfill the total amount of the lease. When we said this, he said, “Just pay the full month, and I’ll go easy on the security deposit,” implying that he’s going get his money out of that one way or another. So even if we fight it, he can screw us with the security deposit. Reddit user: Flannel_Channel

Chemical Hell

This one landlord was just a really strange dude; very socially awkward, and he creeped out all the girls in the building. He lived next door to the building I was renting a room in. We had to go to his room to pay the rent, and he’d sit at his table and position his debit machine so you had to bend over right in his face.

He was very fond of tickling female tenants whenever he stopped by. We found him sleeping on our couch on several occasions, and a few times he took a bath in one of the bathrooms. Once I woke up to find him in my room – he claimed he was checking the window to see if it needed replacing. Reddit user: ihopeyoulikeapples

The Landlady From Hell

After my mother died (I was just out of college) I moved in with my grandmother, who had a duplex with available space. At the time, I was really just going through the motions. But living with her was the worst. She didn’t understand the concept of privacy, or why I locked the door between areas. She was super Christian, so I wasn’t allowed to have my girlfriend over.

After she ‘accidentally’ opened a letter from my work, she decided my rent should go up (she doubled it). After mentioning opening another person’s mail is illegal, she told me the police would always side with a ‘little old lady.’ The final straw was coming home and finding her entertaining the neighbors and their kids in my living room, playing with some freshly-opened rare collectibles. I haven’t talked to her in the five years since I left. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Leak

Our landlady was old, like 90. She was a sweet, sweet lady. One time we went over to help her clean the hardwood floors before we got carpet laid and moved in. We scraped off mildew and mold (yes, safely) for about six hours one night. We tossed the mold into a bucket of water so it didn’t dry out and spore. We decided to dispose of it the next day.

So, we come back the next day and the bucket is gone. Well, little ole’ Betty decided the bushes out front needed some water, so she took the bucket of moldy water and some chemicals and heave-hoed it over the porch into the bushes. I was surprised the bushes survived the chemical hell they’d just received. Also, she’d continually forget we paid the rent and demand money, otherwise she’d sue us. Fun lady. Reddit user: [redacted]

Gone To The Rats

The last landlord I had did several things over the nine months I lived there. First, things would break and she’d just refuse to fix them. Things like the washer/dryer, garage door opener, and there was some electrical sparking in the walls – nothing got fixed until I refused to pay rent until she did. She fixed everything, but made thinly veiled threats before doing so.

Once she asked if she could go into the detached garage while I was out of town, and I said she could. She actually went into my house and flipped the breaker off and on a few times repeatedly – to this day I have no idea why. This killed several electronics of mine, and she told me to prove it when confronted.

When I moved out I gave her a PO Box, instead of where I’d actually moved to. She threatened to have people find me if I didn’t give her my actual address. She then moved without a forwarding address, and refused to return my deposit, knowing I’d need to hire an investigator to serve her to get it. Reddit user: firemogle

I had a ceiling leak that grew and grew and grew. Eventually, it ended up all over the living room, and made the room unusable. The landlord put an industrial fan in there to dry it out, but took FOREVER to actually fix the problem. I can’t remember how long, but my roommate and I were confined to our rooms, and unable to use the majority of the place we were paying for.

We thought we should get some forgiveness on rent for this. He didn’t. So we simply stopped paying and moved out. He threatened to ‘take legal action’ if we didn’t pay the back rent, but knowing the guy, we figured he was full of it. I had a lawyer friend reach out to him on our behalf, and he totally stopped all contact. Reddit user: anschburman

Baby Gender Demands

My wife and I moved into a small basement. A couple of weeks later, we started hearing something in the walls. I figured it was just mice (pretty common here), told the landlord, and moved on. A couple weeks later, I realized it was definitely not mice. We got some big traps and caught six rats really quickly – one with its head eaten off. Another, my wife had to kill because it was caught in the trap, but not dead.

I come home one day, and the landlord says he’s found a new tenant to move in – we’re gone. But you know what he was doing? He wasn’t putting the rat traps back: he hid them all so that the new tenant wouldn’t realize the problem. We had no way to directly contact the new person, but we sent them a letter after we moved out to let them know. Reddit user: allie-the-cat

While some of these landlord stories were hard to believe, wait until you hear about how crazy these Mothers-In-Law can be. From being evicted to dealing with aggressive, obsessive behavior, these people share firsthand why you should stay single forever…

Monopoly Madness

Mothers-in-law are meant to be secondary maternal figures, who end up becoming permanent parts of one’s life the minute two people walk down the aisle. While it goes great for a lot of people, many folks have more than a few issues when it comes to their MILs.

Now that’s certainly understandable, because different personalities can often clash. But what if the personalities clash so much that it wreaks havoc on one’s life and relationship? That’s exactly what’s happened to many people, for many different reasons.

They’ve somehow managed to find the person they love above all others. Unfortunately, that bliss has sadly come with a woman who just doesn’t seem to know her place. Here are some stories people have shared about the worst mothers-in-law imaginable…

Evicting Me At My Lowest

When my husband and I were expecting our first child, my MIL demanded that we had to give her a girl. I explained that there was no possible way for us to guarantee that, but throughout my entire pregnancy, she continued to badger us about how the baby better be a girl. I mean what was she expecting us to do? Magically choose the baby’s gender?

We did a little reveal at a family party when we found out we were having a boy, and she tried to attack me, punched my husband, and got rip-roaring drunk. She was so drunk, she barfed all over herself – and her bathroom – for hours on end. We didn’t speak to her for years after that incident – something she also complained about. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Matchmaker

One Thanksgiving, my husband, son, mother-in-law and I started playing Monopoly. In the middle of the game, my mother-in-law says she needs to do something. She doesn’t say what, but she just gets up and leaves the dining room. We figure she’s gone to the bathroom, so my son continues playing for her. Little did we know, she went and took a nap.

So we’re playing for a few more hours, and then my mother-in-law returns. She’s all, “What are you all doing?!” Well, the fact that we continued to play for her while she disappeared for a couple hours peeved her off so much that she violently shook the board – sending all the cards, money, and pieces flying all over the dining room. I think we were all speechless. Reddit user: [redacted]

Hijacking My Sleeping Baby

My mother-in-law took me out to dinner and told me, at the end of it, that I had a little over a month to move out of the condo I rented from her, because they didn’t want to be landlords anymore, and that I had to deal with the taxes and stuff that went with it; she then proceeded to hand me a magazine with a list of places for rent. Not unusual, right?

Well, their son – my husband – had died there almost three months before this conversation took place. I’m crying, and she had the nerve to say that my crying made her uncomfortable. So yes, not only was I dealing with the death of my husband, but I also got kicked out of the place we’d made our home. She’s definitely crazy and terrible! Reddit user: [redacted]

She Went There

My mother-in-law loves my husband’s ex, and doesn’t seem ready to acknowledge the fact that he married someone else. I don’t really care that she stays in touch with her, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond when she tells us over dinner that his ex is single again and looking for someone special, followed by a meaningful look.

She’d also call me by my husband’s ex-wife’s name, like – always. She knew it bothered me, but didn’t care because she had no respect for me. Every time I see her at a family gathering, she’d always say, “Oh, are you guys still married?” Like, hello?! Isn’t it obvious?! Can you just please try to be happy for us? Reddit user: [redacted]

Not My Son’s Baby

My mother-in-law lives with my husband and me. He and I have recently been trying to conceive (first child for both of us). We’ve been talking about turning the spare bedroom into a nursery, and my mother-in-law said that there was no need, as the baby would be sleeping in her room with her. I told her that no, it wouldn’t.

She then became angry, and said that my husband and I sleep too soundly to hear a baby crying. I said that unless she plans on breastfeeding my baby, there’s no way she’s keeping the baby in her room. She answered, “Fine! Then I’ll be the one to pick the baby’s name.” Um, no lady, that’s not how this works. Reddit user: [redacted]

Getting Paid To Leave

After my three animals passed on (two dogs, one cat), my husband didn’t want another pet, even though I did. When my husband and I were talking about children, I really didn’t want any and he wanted two, so we ended up compromising and having one child. Which really turned out to be the best thing for us. All of this is relevant to the story.

So my mother-in-law was emailing about planning a family event. She asked my opinion, and I responded, “I don’t care. I don’t really have a dog in this race. Besides, my husband won’t let me get a dog. Ha ha.” She responded, “That’s OK. You won’t let him have another child.” Oh no, you didn’t just go there. Reddit user: celticqueen

Her Quest For Weight Loss

My MIL comes to stay with us for two weeks when our first baby was born. She sees my son for the first time, waits until my husband leaves the room, and says, “How did you convince the doctor to let you carry this baby for so long? He’s obviously four months old. Don’t worry, I won’t tell my son it’s not his baby.” I was like, seriously?

She also went completely against our wishes (and the doctor’s orders) to give him a bottle filled with whole milk and banana cereal. It’s something our parents did, but is no longer recommended until kids are 4-6 months old. So since we told her not to do that, she hid the bottle under the couch so that I wouldn’t find it, and kept feeding him with this dirty bottle.

About a week later, I notice my baby has white stuff all up inside his mouth, on the inside of his cheeks. We took him to the doctor, and he told us that he had a bacterial infection called thrush from a dirty bottle. We get home, and I freak out. MIL tells me, “Oh, all my kids had thrush. Just scrape it off the inside of his cheeks with a Brillo pad.” Oh, God. Reddit user: [redacted]

An Unwanted Announcement

My first husband (back when he was my boyfriend) and I were given contracts by his mother (after she found out that I came from a low-income family) spelling out the financial benefits of us breaking up. If we agreed to break up and sign the contracts, he’d get his college paid for and a new car, and I’d get $10,000.

Even after we both refused, she actually came to the house we were sharing and explained that I was an unacceptable girlfriend for her son, and offered me additional money and a new contract for $20,000. Yeah. She was my mother-in-law for nine years after that. We ended the marriage in part because I couldn’t stand the things she’d resort to as the years passed by. Reddit user: [redacted]

She Likes To Compete

Each Christmas, the whole family (10-15 people at least, plus their guests) would get together and exchange gifts. Each year, I’d get the same themed gift from my MIL. I’m overweight (actually, just a bit chubby), so she felt the need to emphasize it by doing things like giving me individually wrapped cans of slim fast, or a box of diet pills.

But my very favorite was one year when she gave me one of those neoprene waistband things that are supposed to make you sweat like a goat until you have a slim waist. After getting over the initial shock, I just had to laugh at the situation. Like, come on! Is my fat hurting you so much that you’re that bothered by it? Reddit user: [redacted]

 She Got Rid Of My Dress

When we were at a family event, I started bleeding very heavily and my mother-in-law was the only person who knew we were pregnant. My husband and I left immediately and asked her not to say a word, and just say I had an emergency in my family and had to go. We later found out that neither my life nor the baby’s were ever in jeopardy.

Instead, my MIL threw herself on the floor in front of the entire family (and friends of) and starting crying that I was having a miscarriage. Like we didn’t even know if I was miscarrying at that point, and we made her promise not to say anything. Then, while I was miscarrying, she kept telling me I had to understand how hard it was for her, so I couldn’t be mad at her. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Gem Of A Mother-In-Law

My wife’s mother is a horrible individual. She goes out of her way to belittle me in front of people. She doesn’t like me, and has made that very clear. It’s gotten to the point now that I just stay away from her. I’m missing family functions and get-togethers, as I hate being around her. She argues with everyone about anything and everything, and she’s “always right.”

A while back, my son was diagnosed with cancer (years ago, he’s doing amazing now). She tried to tell me that I don’t feel about him like she does, because she’s his grandmother and I’ll never understand. As if we were having a ‘who is more sad’ competition. I just don’t know what to do anymore, honestly. This woman is unbearable. Reddit user: xTc_Khaos

 A Winnie The Pooh Obsession

My mother-in-law has a huge house with plenty of storage room, so she offered to keep my wedding dress in a spare closet for me. Years later, when I had daughters, I asked if I could have it back. She informed me that the entire dress had been devoured by mice. Apparently, the mice didn’t touch any other items in the house – only my wedding dress.

My sister-in-law later informed me that my mother-in-law got rid of it out of spite. I would’ve loved to have been able to have some of the material to share in some way with my daughters. I’d have gladly taken the dress back if she no longer wanted to store it. She could’ve just asked. Reddit user: [redacted]

What’s The Point?

My MIL has called me fat multiple times, and at all but one of these times I weighed between 110 and 115 lbs, and I’m 5’5”. The other time I was pregnant, and hadn’t gained any weight yet. And she tells small lies all the time to get her way. She’s so absurd that I don’t even know what to think about her.

She said I’m ridiculous because I won’t throw away books that I’ve read. She told me I’m weird for putting things together for my son all by myself (following directions is hard) instead of waiting until a man is around to do it. The list can go on forever, really. It would be great to simply not have to deal with her, but it’s true what they say- you marry the family. Reddit user: silly987

The Trouble Starter

When I got married, my mother-in-law told me I had to pick a favorite cartoon character, because all the women in the family had one as their ‘signature thing’. I told her I didn’t really like cartoons, so she ‘assigned’ me Winnie-the-Pooh, since I have a big tummy. Now, every year, I get Winnie-the-Pooh themed gifts for my birthday and Christmas.

So far I’ve gotten embroidered overalls, pajama pants, numerous stuffed toys, a stamp set, wall decals, ornaments, earrings, a stencil to use to paint him on my walls, and even a gift certificate to a tattoo parlor to get the ol’ bear and his honey jar inked on my skin. It’s so annoying, but I’ve almost gotten used to it at this point. Reddit user: [redacted]

The Toxic Mother-In-Law

I sat around having dinner with my husband’s family one night, and my father-in-law asks my husband and me if we wanted to have a child. We both said not at the moment, to which my mother-in-law replies, “But what’s the point of your marriage then, if you don’t want children?” I then told her it was because I wanted to commit to her son and spend my life with him.

I could tell she totally didn’t get what I was trying to say to her. After a few minutes of silence, she pipes up with, “To be honest, if you’re not going to have children, what’s the point in being alive?” They’re a big part of the reason we’re not together anymore. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Bit Aggressive?

My mother-in-law didn’t allow me to have Wi-Fi or data on my phone, and randomly checked my phone to make sure I wasn’t sending men any nudes. One time, she and I had a private talk in her bedroom. As soon as I came out, my husband knew something had happened, so he went in and talked to her. When I walk back in past her, she mutters under her breath, “You sneaky brat.” I whirl around and get out a, “What’d you just call me?”

She runs past me, reaches the front door, and starts screaming on the front porch, “Oh screw you! I won’t have you treat me like this in my son’s house. I knew you’d take him from me. You brat!” I yelled back, “Don’t bother coming back in until you apologize.” She then sat in her car for two hours, refusing to speak to her son or me, and saying I started it. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Thing For Matching

My mother-in-law has repeatedly made me uncomfortable, and been offensive. One weekend, she decided to sit me down and tell me (in skin-crawling detail) about her sexual escapades with someone totally off limits. Mind you, I’m close with this person who is off limits. She does this under the guise of my being her confidant, but I’m not stupid – it was calculated and intentional.

Being around her is so uncomfortable, and no matter how much she pretends in front of her son, I know how she feels about me, as she’s made it clear. My counselor told me (yes, it’s intense enough that I mentioned it to my counselor) that she’s toxic in my life and I need to be clear about setting boundaries. But how do I do that while sparing the man I love so much? Reddit user: GirlBot22

Recycling Old Gifts

My step-MIL made me cry within the first five minutes of meeting her, by instantly challenging me on why our parents were not listed on the wedding announcement. Short answer: both of us have divorced/remarried parents – for a total of eight parents. We kind of wanted our names to be the memorable thing on the announcement, not the list of people at the top.

Secondly, we’re in our 30s and paid for our own wedding, so it’s not like they threw the party. It’s not hideous, but it set the tone for our relationship, and I’ve been terrified of her since that first “chat.” It’s pretty safe to say that I don’t talk to her much, and try to stay away however and whenever I can. Reddit user: MonsteraDeliciosa

Horror Novel

My mother-in-law is nice and well-meaning, but kind of crazy and unstable. When we were planning the wedding, she was obsessed with having her pantyhose match the tablecloths at the rehearsal. I mean, what? She just kept asking me what color, and I just kept telling her whatever she wanted. Eventually, I just passed it off to my wedding planner.

She also keeps giving me and my husband matching underwear, like Superman boxers for him and Superman bikinis for me. I have told her to please not give me underwear anymore, but she just keeps doing it. I haven’t even told her they’re the wrong size, because I never wear them. I just think it’s really weird she insists on giving me underpants. Reddit user: companionquandries

Making One Too Many Suggestions

I’m divorced now, but my ex-MIL was a strange bird. For starters, the ex-in-laws liked shopping for gifts months, or even years, in advance, so much so that for the first several holidays with my ex, I received gifts that they’d picked out for his ex-girlfriend. It didn’t go so far as to have her name on the items, but they were very clearly intended for her, and had her favorite colors and motifs all over everything.

I guess they assumed the items were generic enough that I wouldn’t know, and maybe it was my ex’s fault for telling me so much about his ex-girlfriend, but I knew these were leftover gifts from his last relationship. I dutifully and diligently wrote polite thank you notes and then either sold, donated, or gave the items to my ex if he found them useful. Reddit user: [redacted]

Overstepping Boundaries

I don’t have a mother-in-law horror story. It’s more like a novel. Honesty I don’t know how my husband turned out sane, or even as intelligent as he is. The woman’s crazy, and a very bad mother. My husband’s siblings all had a record by the time they were 20. She has five children, and four of them have been to jail. She either says it wasn’t their fault, or brags about it like it’s a medal of honor.

When my sister-in-law got dumped by her boyfriend, mommy dearest went to the boyfriend’s mom’s house and tried to kick the door down because he broke up with her daughter. The upside? I haven’t spoken to her in 10 years because, once I had a baby, I couldn’t allow that kind of crazy to be around the family that my husband and I have created together. Reddit user: GirlwitNoName817

Wanting To Be The Rich Grandma

“I think you should be a teacher.” “Here are some pamphlets that I brought for you for teacher’s college.” “You’d be a good teacher, and you’d have holidays to spend time with the kids.” “Why don’t you become a teacher?” These are just some of the things my MIL would tell me on an almost daily basis. I ended up enrolling in a teacher’s college (and not because of her).

“Why would you want to do that? You need to stay home and look after your kids.” She then told my husband not to marry me because I’d leave him, and take our kids overseas. That was 25 years ago. She then told me that I was a bad wife because I didn’t make lunch for my husband every day.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, she can’t change a light bulb by herself; she won’t let us have any water in the cat bowl because she’s afraid a baby might drown in it; and we have absolutely no privacy when we’re at her house – she just walks on in any time she wants to. Reddit user: Merkinfumble

 The Reorganizing

My MIL didn’t like some of the things that were on our wedding registry. She took it upon herself to personally remove them, and put what she wanted us to get instead. Since she changed some of it, nothing on there was stuff I liked by the end. She bought similar items for her son’s birthday, just a couple of months before the wedding.

She didn’t like the couch pillows, so she bought different ones. She hated the throw rug, so bought a different one of those too (that was too big for the space we had in our living room). They had keys to our home, so sometimes I’d buy stuff, only to see it replaced by things they liked more. Weird, right?

My husband said they’d always done things like that, and had always bought him things that were ‘like’ what he asked for on his birthday or at Christmas, but cheaper or a different brand that they liked more. It was completely maddening, and overstepped all the boundaries I wanted to have in my home. Reddit user: [redacted]

Possessive Much?

My MIL asked my wife how much money my mother makes. This was not a usual topic of conversation, so my wife made up an arbitrary number of $100K, and told this to my MIL. Well, about a month later, my MIL came back to my wife and said, “There is no way that your mother-in-law can make that much money.”

Apparently, she called my mother’s work and asked if anyone made more than $100K. She claims that my mom’s work told her that no one makes that much money, and it’s supposedly impossible for her to make that much. My mother works at a university as an experienced web developer, so of course there are people there that make more than $100K, and there’s no way someone relayed this information.

After this conversation was about done, she finished by saying that she was glad that my mother didn’t make that much, because she “wanted to be the rich grandma,” and it was her job to spoil the kids. That gets kind of hard when she has no money, and doesn’t even work! This woman must be crazy. Reddit user: skimice11

The Negative Nancy

My husband and I went on holiday. We left his parents our key so they could feed the fish and water the plants. We got back after a long flight and drive home at two in the morning. When we opened the front door, my jaw dropped. Our living room had been totally rearranged. Then I walked through to the kitchen/dining room. There was a new, hideous dining room table.

Then I went to our bedroom. It too had been rearranged. I was livid. So here we were, at 2:00 a.m., rearranging our whole house back to normal. And that wasn’t the worst part. I’m telling the truth when I say that we went on to find that EVERY SINGLE shelf, cupboard and drawer in the house had been changed. It took days for me to put everything back. Reddit user: mrsmarik

I Already Bought Your Ticket

The worst would have to be when I gave birth to my daughter; I was living with my in-laws at the time, as hubby and I were building our home. Twenty-four hours after giving birth, my mother-in-law says to me, as I was admiring my beautiful new baby girl sleeping, “Don’t look at her, that’s enough! You’re not allowed to look at her!” I knew this woman was nuts, but not to this level.

I was also told not to hold my baby, and that I had bad milk. This woman wanted to take my child for herself. She tried hard to break me, and really give me post-natal depression, but I fought back and came out on top. My daughter and I don’t have much to do with her anymore – we try to see her as little as possible. Reddit user: [redacted]

A Key Problem

My MIL was divorced and remarried to another man. Said man had horrible credit, and brought down her score as well. Due to this, they got a divorce, but stayed together. She tried to convince my now husband and I to do the same because, “…there’s no real point in being married.” And not just once, every single time we saw her.

ANY time we have good news, she finds a way to turn it into a lecture. We told her we were pregnant, and she lectured my husband for close to two hours that he had to look into a better job, and that it meant more responsibility. When we did a gender reveal, for her first grandchild I might add, she just kind of shrugged it off.

Her first words when seeing our son were, “Well, there’s no denying he’s (hubby’s).” I walked up on her at a family holiday get together, and she was telling my husband’s cousin about how my father was an alcoholic, and that’s why my parents divorced. There’s more, but thinking about it still grinds my gears. Reddit user: k0t00rf

Ruining The Wedding

My in-laws invited us to go on vacation to visit my husband’s extended family on the other side of the country. We politely declined, telling them that we were planning to visit some really good friends for our vacation that year. My MIL asked if we’d made firm travel plans yet; we said no, and that we were waiting for our tax refund to buy the plane tickets.

Her response was, “Then there’s no reason you can’t go with us, because we’ve already bought your tickets to fly out with us!” She legitimately thought it would be okay for us to change our vacation plans just because they’d purchased our tickets without asking us first. I was absolutely shocked at their audacity. We ended up not going, and did our own thing instead. Reddit user: [redacted]

As Delusional As They Come

My ex-mother-in-law has a problem with locks. She has a firm belief that family should never have to knock, and should be allowed to arrive and walk in uninvited. We don’t believe this, and she’d nag us about it. So, my significant other was at her house one day and accidentally left her keys there. My SO called her mother up, asked about the keys, and arranged for them to be dropped off.

Three days later, the keys arrive. A week after that, we’re sitting playing games when our front door swings open, and her family walks in. It turns out that my mother-in-law had taken my SO’s keys and made copies before giving them back; of course, without letting us know she did it. This woman doesn’t seem to understand what privacy is. Reddit user: [redacted]

Questioning Everything

My mother-in-law made our wedding a completely stressful, sad, and disappointing day. She told the wedding coordinator that we’d scrapped several key elements to the ceremony, so they didn’t happen. She stuck her tongue out, put bunny ears on my wife, and generally didn’t cooperate for any of the wedding photos. She talked throughout all the speeches. She was rude to guests who tried to introduce themselves to her.

This all culminated in us having a screaming match the morning after my wedding. My wife didn’t speak to her family for about a year after this happened, and barely has a relationship with them now, especially her mom. Too bad for her, because we’re pretty awesome to hang out with. I wonder what she’ll say when she finds out we’re expecting. Reddit user: infinitemedal

 An Inconsistency With Names

When my ex-husband was unemployed, which was often and by choice (not mine), my mother-in-law (his own mother) would call every single day. “Is he looking for a job today? Because he needs to be looking for a job.” Meanwhile, she’d continue to enable his childish behavior by paying all of our bills, and never saying anything to him directly.

During our divorce hearing, she said this about my parenting skills during her deposition, “I found evidence that she kept her child in a cage.” The “cage” she’s referring to was a playpen. She was clearly delusional. My favorite is something she told my ex-husband when he was a child. She told him not to go near a praying mantis, because it would spit acid into his eyes. What the heck is wrong with that woman? Reddit user: [redacted]

The Attention Lover

My mother-in-law is constantly questioning everything. She’d call to talk, and it would pretty much be her wanting explanations for everything. Where did I go shopping? Why did I go shopping? What did I buy? Why did I buy that? What did I pay for it? What did we have for dinner? Why did I make that? How long did it take to cook? What was I doing now?

This went on several times a day, every single day. She’d call when she woke up. She’d call before lunch. She called before we went anywhere, and called again when we got home. I’m so glad I got divorced before Skyping and video chat became popular. Could you imagine how bad she’d have been then? Reddit user: theladylucky

No More Pictures For Her

My MIL insisted on being called Mrs. [X] while we were dating. As soon as we got engaged, she sat me down at her kitchen table and said, “Now, we can’t have you calling me Mrs. [X] anymore. That’s too formal for family. What do you want to call us?” I answered that I’d be happy to call them by their first names. She replied that, “the mister and I don’t do first names.”

I then responded that I was uncomfortable calling them “mom” and “dad.” Meanwhile, she introduced herself to my siblings and friends by her first name, and never once corrected them. Annoyed by the inconsistency, I called her by her first name. She called my husband and complained that I’d disrespected her. When we sat down to talk it out, what I thought would be an airing of grievances and reconciliation turned into a huge, heated argument.

She finally screamed at me over the phone one day that I needed to “respect the pecking order of the human race!” My husband got involved at one point, and finally asked her what I should call her. She said, “[Husband]’s mother’” or “Hey you!” and hung up. So, “hey you,” it was… until the day I got a divorce. Reddit user: [redacted]

House-Guest Alert

Oh, where to start with this woman? She sent a card saying she couldn’t come to our wedding, and then showed up two hours early. She accepted our invitation for dinner at our new house. I stayed up all night prepping and cooking. That night, I got home from work, and found her leaving – just pulling out of the driveway as I pulled in.

After the birth of my first child, I had complications and was very weak. My husband was concerned for me, naturally. Angry at the lack of attention directed at her, she pipes in with, “Well I had a heart attack yesterday.” At her husband’s funeral, she came up to me and said proudly, “Everyone keeps telling me how good I look.” Reddit user: tollmansweet

 Miss-Pronunciation

I’m a photography junkie, so over the course of six months, I took professional quality pictures of my MIL’s sons and grandsons. I also took one of me, holding my son. I had them printed, then framed and matted. This was part of her Christmas gift two years ago. She pulled them out of the box, and was just like, “Oh. Ok.”

Later on, when we were cleaning up the boxes and paper, I found the one picture with me in it stuffed into a trash bag with other refuse from the evening. I showed it to my husband, and he didn’t know what to say. Needless to say, those are the last pictures she’s ever getting from me. Reddit user: southerngirlproblems

How Dare She?

It’s more of an ongoing living nightmare than a story. She moved in with us to downsize and because it made good financial sense, but then blew her nest egg on the HSN channel and cruises. She rearranges all the dishes in the cupboard, dishwasher, and all the food in the cabinets and pantry. But that’s not even half of it.

She answers the house phone and refuses to pass it off. She downloads viruses on the computer. She also burns food all the time, stinking up the house and constantly setting off the smoke alarm. She clips her toenails in the living room. She parks her car in the driveway blocking the garage, so I have to ask her to move every morning. It goes on and on. Reddit user: totallymadeupstory

Unstable At Best

My MIL is constantly mispronouncing regular, everyday words, and I know it’s petty but it drives me CRAZY, because I happen to be a grammar freak. For example, she says “flustrated” when she means “frustrated.” She says “per se” a lot, but never uses it correctly. She calls real estate agents “realestaters” instead of realtors. She also says “mute point” instead of “moot point.”

If she ever stopped talking, this wouldn’t be so bad. But if she corners you, be prepared to sit there a while and listen to her tell stories that go absolutely nowhere. You’re guaranteed to hear each of these clever mispronunciations at least once. Again, I know it’s super petty, but she’s in her 50s and talks like a child. Reddit user: lowsodiumcrackers

More Grandkids

My best friend’s mother-in-law accused her of “stealing” her son from his high school ex, who she was still friendly with. This wasn’t brought up until they were engaged after 10 years together. She also refused to go to her bridal shower if the bride’s mother was going to be there.

The mother-in-law told them she wanted them to marry in a church, but when they booked a church, she told them that the church was too over-the-top, and that it was ridiculous to pay that much. There was no offer of financial input from the groom’s parents, but there was a substantial amount from bride’s parents, so the invites went out with the bride’s parents names together with the couple’s name.

The mother-in-law called, abusing them, saying they were embarrassing her, and told them to retract the invitations so she could add her name to those that went out to her side of the family – even though she wasn’t contributing to the day! She didn’t end up coming to the wedding, and the couple lived happily ever after! Reddit user: [redacted]

Thanksgiving Cooking

I love my husband, but cannot fathom how he ended up so normal coming from my MIL. She’s not specifically crazy, so much as unstable. A few gems include her calling my mother a few weeks before our wedding to express her relief that we’d “no longer be living in sin.” Mind you, she has a boyfriend that she hasn’t married yet.

Less than 10 minutes before we were all supposed to walk down the aisle, she comes rushing back to tell me the toilet paper is out in the lady’s restroom, and then asks me to go fill it. Sorry, MIL, I’m already wearing the big white dress. She recently flagged one of the wedding photos on Facebook as “offensive” because she “never liked how she looked in that photo” – five years after the fact.

She continually insinuates that I’m fancy, and she’s not good enough. She may or may not (I’m not entirely sure) have tried repeatedly to get on disability, without having a real disability. Unless racking up huge credit card bills and demanding her children (one in college, another fresh out of college) pay her bills for her, counts as one. Reddit user: Elizavyeta

Search Party

My mother-in-law is obsessed with having grandkids, and is in complete denial that my husband and I aren’t planning on having any children. We’ve told her numerous times throughout the years, but she still hasn’t come to terms with the fact. The last time she visited, she stole one of my birth control pills, hoping that I’d miraculously get pregnant.

Well, I guess she thinks that I wouldn’t notice. And my husband isn’t even her only kid. He’s just the only boy, so his sister’s kids wouldn’t matter when it comes to passing down the family name and stuff. She recently said she’d pay me $30,000 to have a kid. I said raise it to $100,000 and get back to me. Reddit user: [redacted]

Merry Christmas

My husband and I agreed to go over to his parents’ house early to help cook for tonight. By that I mean, me and MIL are washing and drying produce, cutting everything up, and basically doing all the prep so that when we actually do the cooking later, it is streamlined. Apparently, I cut the potatoes wrong and she told me to get out of her [bleeping] house if I don’t know how to help.

My husband is leaving with me. I had already bought a bunch of stuff on sale because she never lets us take leftovers so we are going home and I’ll just make a full Thanksgiving on my own and have leftovers for weeeeeks. Forget her. Reddit user: JustNoThrowaway23

Yesterday, my husband, our two kids, and me got back from a family vacation. This vacation was planned, and my mother-in-law knew we were going. We came home to a nightmare. We found out this morning that she reported my husband missing on day two of our two-week vacation. We think it’s because he didn’t reply to her messages the second she sent them, so she decided to take drastic measures.

We’re not in full contact with my mother-in-law, and she’s been upping her crazy in the last few years, especially since we got married. We’re probably somewhere between medium and low contact. She’s also on a pretty strict information diet. We pretty much only tell her things when it’s too late for her to mess them up, or when we have no choice because other family members (or our kids, which has happened a few times) have let slip information that they didn’t realize we were keeping from her.

We’ve talked to the authorities this morning and said that we want it noted wherever possible that she filed a false report. They’ve said they can’t do more than that because technically they “found” my husband because he was missing for over 10 days. But he was on a planned vacation. What. The. Actual. Heck? I just…I just don’t know what to do anymore! Reddit user: [redacted]

My first Christmas with my husband, we were invited to his aunt’s house to celebrate with his family. I had never met any of them, since they live pretty far away and we eloped. Two weeks before, my mother-in-law calls my husband to ask him about my allergies, since I have several severe allergies and require at least three epipens on me at all times.

I thought that was really sweet! My husband told her most of my allergies are bug bites, animal dander, and several medications, but a major food allergy I have is shellfish and raw fish. When cooked, I’ll have a reaction to fish that to normal people would be severe but non-lethal. However, when raw I’ll go into anaphylactic shock almost instantly and stop breathing in less than a minute.
There is no fish in my house, ever. I don’t eat at restaurants that serve fish. It’s a major part of my life since I live in a very seafood-heavy area. On Christmas Eve, we were all opening presents and at some point my mother-in-law and husband’s aunt say my gift isn’t under the tree because it’s in the freezer. I’m confused, but that sounds super intriguing.

They bring out a box that’s blue cardboard and unmarked. I open it and nearly scream. It’s a variety pack of frozen fish filets. I literally threw the box out of my lap and my husband RUNS to the kitchen, grabs an epipen and hit me in the thigh. With my allergies, you don’t wait for a reaction to respond, you start immediately.

We’re about 70 miles out of the city, so my husband is already on the phone with 9-1-1 and we run to the car. THANKFULLY I don’t end up reacting badly to it, probably due to the box being frozen and the fish being individually wrapped, but being that far out of a populated area with only three pens can be lethal for me. When the reaction is severe enough, I’ll burn through an epipen in about 10-15 minutes before starting up again, and then I need an IV and an emergency room.

We got to the hospital and other than hives on my hands, I’m fine. I’m monitored for six hours to wait for a delayed reaction and sent home. When we got home, my husband had about a dozen sobbing voicemails from his mom saying WE ruined Christmas with our way over-the-top reaction to a thoughtful gift. She said she had “forgotten” and that we owed them all an apology.

We later found out it was the aunt that asked her sister to inquire about my allergies so she could cook safely for me. My mother-in-law told her I didn’t have any food allergies and suggested the gift. We’ve been no contact for six years. Reddit user: [redacted]