Neighbors Were Hosting Huge Parties Almost Every Night, And This Medical Student Couldn’t Get Any Sleep. So He Posted A Video That Went Viral And Got Their Parties Shut Down For Good.

Michael Levanduski

37 mins ago

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

Back in 2020, COVID lockdowns kept people isolated for months at a time and most took them very seriously.

Some folks, however, did everything they could to get around the lockdowns and socialize like normal.

The guy in this story had neighbors who really took that to the extreme, hosting parties almost every night, but in the end, he got his revenge.

Check it out.

Keeping me up at night with your parties? Enjoy being shamed on the national news

In september of 2020, the apartment next to mine was let out to two young women, both students.

After they settled in a bit, it turned out they wanted to have a party.

Not everyone took the lockdowns seriously.

No big deal, except Belgium was in full lock down at this point due to covid, and you were supposed to only have one fixed visitor over.

But then again, to be young again etc., so I didn’t really care.

During this time, I was working in healthcare.

I work with the mentally disabled, but I volunteered for the ad hoc covid team, meaning I got called upon to tend to those residents who were sick and needed quarantining, or were effectively diagnosed with covid.

This meant pretty long working hours and I spend about 10 to 11 hours a day at work, with a full hour bike ride to and from work.

Needless to say, I was pretty tired pretty much all the time.

So, I wasn’t looking forward to the noise from a party, but I’m pretty chill and know that living in the city, some noise is to be expected.

So they are having their party, and I can stand some noise and music.

This would be terrible even without the risk of COVID.

But this party was wild.

People shouting full on, in the hallway.

Wrecking things etc etc.

At about four in the morning, I introduced myself to the neighbors and asked them when they could expect their company (+20 people) to leave.

And if they could refrain from having a party the next day, as I have to work and get up at 6 every day.

So they promised they would keep it down the rest of te night (they didn’t) and that they wouldn’t have a party the next day.

Plot twist: they did have another party. And then did another one the day after.

At this point, I had been going a full three nights without sleep and was nearing neurosis.

Every night I had talked to the girls and every night they would be full of apologies and stuff, but nothing would change.

I also felt terrible when I had to enter their place, because it would be absolutely packed with people and I work with some very vulnerable people at work who I wouldn’t want to spread covid to.

This was pre-tests, pre-vaccins, pre much of the knowledge we now have about covid.

Luckily the weekend came and they went to their parents and I could recover a bit. Suffice to say, I wasn’t really liking my new neighbors.

During the next few weeks, they refrained from big parties, but they would have a constant flood of people coming over during the night.

What were they doing in there?

And by constant, i mean constant.

Like their bell would ring 70 times a night and people would always be coming or going.

And those people would be drunk and loud.

Our communal hallway is pretty much an echo chamber because it’s all stone and any noise will travel throughout the building.

Basically I couldn’t rely to sleep at night.

It drove me crazy.

I could only sleep Friday through Sunday, because then they would go off to their parents or whatever.

I couldn’t grasp how they could know this many people that would always be coming and going.

During one night, while knocking on their door to complain about the noise, I encountered my upstairs neighbor and decided that we would have to join forces to get this to stop.

Oh, that explains it. Basically a speakeasy.

My neighbor told me some important bit of information: the reason there were people coming and going all the time was because they used their apartment as a makeshift bar/hangout.

During this time, bars were closed due to covid and all those students were using the big apartment to hang out.

Moreover, across the street was another ‘frat house’ with 5 boys living there, and that too was a secret hang out.

So, people would hang out at those two places and cross the street if they wanted a different atmosphere or wanted to see their other friends etc etc.

And the boys from across the street would also come over 15 times a night.

Most visitors seemed to be law students or affiliated with them.

Basically our communal hallway was just a part of their café space now.

So we tried talking to the girls.

Then we started to talk to the visitors.

None of them had any sympathy for us when we were asking them to be quiet at 4 in the morning.

Most of them just laughed at us, as we were ‘the pesky neighbors’ no doubt.

Even more of them were just so wasted that they didn’t know what they were doing.

So we started calling the police, dozens of times.

Most of the times, they weren’t let in and police told us they couldn’t do anything.

We kept calling, as we wanted a record of our calls in the system.

Did the police not hear the party going on?

Belgium was still in full lockdown at this point and what they were doing was full on illegal.

Even so, police told us their hands were tied if they wouldn’t open the door.

When the police couldn’t help, I turned to the next best thing.

I’m a social worker and so I have no problems looking up information and calling around to look for help.

This is what I did.

Most places (student unions, police, town hall) were understanding but couldn’t really do much.

So I acted on the suggestion of the upstairs neighbor and contacted one of the girls’ dean.

I shot him a nice email about sorry to have bothered him and taking up his time, but I had this big group of students from his faculty ganging up every night.

Maybe he wanted to know about it since they were breaking every possible covid rule that existed at that time?

Especially since me and my neighbor were about to go to the papers with this story (as secret lockdown-parties were becoming a thing in the papers at this point).

This dean called me back right away and we had a nice talk about our problems.

He told me he was on it.

So basically what he did was call the law student girl, and her parents.

Big drama ensued and we finally got to sit down with the girls and they finally sounded like they were sorry.

Tears were shed (for which I had no patience tbh).

We learned that the police had actually been inside a few times and they were issued tickets for having secret parties.

They likely charged a cover fee to the people at the parties.

Those were 300 euro each a pop, so no idea why they didn’t just stop.

We learned they were not happy because the dean had called them up at 11 o clock and they were still asleep.

To which I said: well there is your problem.

You are still asleep at 11 o clock. I’m up at six every day and you girls haven’t been a bit understanding about that.

So we got to feel a bit like we got our revenge and we got to vent, but we kept it kinda nice and parted in good terms, hoping that this would been it and we could live together as nice neighbors.

But if that were the case, I wouldn’t be here, right?

You’d think they would have gotten the point now, and would refrain from making noise and partying.

Well, you’d be wrong.

Basically what they did was they moved to the frathouse across the street and started partying there.

There were slightly less people running to and fro, but the noise was still a problem and we were now in the middle of the second covid-wave.

These people were meeting up with big groups like crazy, while I hadn’t seen a soul in almost a year.

Never mind the people at my work, who were forbidden from even going to their own family.

The whole thing was just ridiculous.

My upstairs neighbor happened to film such a party across the street and had sent the clip to me.

We were thinking about going to the press with our story but weren’t really sure if it would be a good idea.

So, I posted the clip of the party on the subreddit of our country to test the waters.

It got quite some comments and upvotes and it seemed most people were also sick of people disregarding the rules and having secret parties.

After some talks with the upstairs neighbor, we decided to contact the press and simultaneously go up a step in the university hierarchy and contact the vice-rector.

He had the power to start up a disciplinary case against the students. (This person is one of 12 vice-rectors for a total campus of about 15.000 students, so quite high up).

At least thinks are moving.

Things moved fast.

Local news actually picked up our story from reddit and contacted me and we gave some background info.

They confirmed with the police that cops had been dozens of times to our address and across the street and weren’t let in most of the time.

We mentioned that the university was involved and that we hoped they would finally intervene.

The next day, the piece was on their website.

It went ‘viral’ there, and got promoted to the sites of most national newspapers.

It’s headline was sensational enough, mentioning the dozens of times police had showed up and also mentioning how health care workers were being kept up by selfish students.

At the same time, the vice-rector contacted us to take our statements (which we already had prepared up on paper) and informed us they would investigate and could possible start up disciplinary actions.

At the same time, more reporters were contacting me throughout the day and we made sure to mention that to her and link the university the printed articles.

The next day, while at work, I got a message from the upstairs neighbor that a film crew from the national news was at our doorstep.

He declined to talk to them (and I would have done the same, since this was getting pretty big now) but they made a segment anyway.

And sure enough, that night at 7, here was my street and a short section about cops standing in front of a closed door a dozen times and the local press-cop talking about the troubles of closed doors.

Best part about it was that a student from the offending frat house across the street had let the film crew in, and said on camera exactly what were were accusing them off towards the university: that they had been having parties and didn’t let the cops in and that they had done it multiple times.

No idea what made him think that was a good idea.

Anyway, trying not to make a huge story even longer: the press died down some time later (thank god) and the disciplinary action from the uni went through.

Before the hearing, we sat down with the girls from our block and cleared some things up.

We wanted to live like normal people together and we tried to make some amends.

I would have thought they would be kicked out at the least.

Because we put in a (kinda) good word for them, they got the lighter end of the stick: 40 hours of community service and some probation.

The guys across the street got 80 hours each, and each had to write us a letter of apology, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading every time I got one.

Sad part is, most of them sounded just like dumb young kids, but that was after getting called out on the news and being part of a disciplinary action.

But we never wanted to escalate things this far.

Some noise is to be expected when living in the same building and we were never going to go to these extremes for some expected noises.

But these people went to the extremes and so we were forced to do the same.

Rest of the year, a simple message on whatsapp was enough to silence any noises we had coming from their apartment.

If anything, I hope they learned that even very polite and chilled people can become very upset when presented with sleep deprivation and excessive noise.

I’m honestly surprised those kids got off so light given how seriously people were taking COVID at the time.

Let’s take a look at the comments and see what they have to say.

Here is someone with a different solution to this type of problem.