Her Neighbor Was Rejected By Her Mother-In-Law—Now He’s Making The Whole Family Miserable

Matthew Gilligan

13 minutes ago

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Well, this is a creepy story…

In fact, it sounds like it could even be a horror movie!

Just think of it: Revenge of the Handyman!

But, sadly, the story you’re about to read is the reality for these folks, and their handyman has turned in a bona fide psychopath.

Yikes!

Read on and check out what’s going on in this neighborhood.

Horrors of the handyman who lives down the street. Please convince me this is random and not targeted.

“In September of 2021, my husband, MIL, and I (we all live together as MIL prefers us to be here) hired a handyman who lives down the street on the adjacent side to knock out the wall between me and husbands’ room and the guest room to make it into a larger suite.

Initially, he was very kind, knowledgeable, and did the job exactly as asked. He and MIL have a lot in common, so they began to grow a friendship over their love of plants and yard work and DIY projects.

He did more, smaller projects (always paid more than what he was quoted) and even did work for a family member next door (again, always paid as asked if not more).

Well, doesn’t this sound nice…?

He sort of became a family friend, stopping by to drop off things here and there, MIL always reciprocating by taking he and his mother food, flower cuttings, etc.

About six months into his growing friendship with MIL, she invited him to a family cookout. At this point, husband and I were encouraging this friendship. We are close friends with most of our immediate neighbors and they just got along so well.

At the cook out, he is pretty easy going but had clearly been drinking beforehand.

Uh oh…

He starts rambling on about being able to see the future (which, fine, our family believes in alternative spiritual stuff but…MIL not super into it) and then at the end of the night, MIL walks him out and he kisses her.

She was NOT into it and didn’t really expect it, but later wrote a text to him that she didn’t see him like that and wanted to remain friends and keep hiring him for jobs as before. He said he understood and that things could remain normal.

That SHOULD have been it.

At first he was fine with this and continued to come over. But once again he tries to shoot his shot. He started sort of texting back and fourth, in a weird neck beardy attempt to woo/haggle with her about her stance on their friendship. He barges into the backyard unannounced to get a pitchfork he loaned.

This ain’t happening…

MIL is happy being single She’s in her 60s, still working in a career she loves and loving her life, she doesn’t want that to change. Instead of respectfully backing off, clearly wasted texts turned inappropriate in nature, and then progressively threatening and cryptic.

Finally, after requesting several times for him to stop contacting, he sends the most deplorable text, something I don’t care to repeat out of the cruelty and personal nature of the remark.

That’s it.

Husband and I have already been over this mans childish and misogynistic behavior, but that was the last straw.

This was about to get interesting…

We call the cops, and as we wait for an officer to arrive, handyman is now on the phone with my husband spewing misogynistic slurs and saying things no one wants to hear someone say about their mother and her body. I mean think of the worst things, he said it.

Husband starts recording the convo on another phone until an officer arrives to write an incident report (THIS officer was extraordinarily helpful and understanding) and gives us info on how to set our Ring cam etc., as well as pointing us in the direction of a formal no-trespass/harassment warrant, which we pursue.

Apparently he got upset believing we were “trying to ruin his reputation” because our neighbor and family friend of 20+ years did not wave at him as he drove by (no doubt assuming we told her what was going down which obviously we did).

Fast forward about 2 months.

Handyman sent one final message before being blocked but after being served a warrant (which DOES violate the no-contact) but MIL believed she had blocked him. After that, things are pretty quiet.

Until a family member from the other house next door and I are doing yard work and one of the dogs alerts us to the compost pile behind the shed.

Whoa!

I find the BIGGEST possum I’ve ever seen up close, dead, splayed perfectly across the compost pile on its belly (handy man helped MIL make this compost pile, and we have a back road that has access to our yard including behind the shed).

Obviously it had not died of a violent attack from one of our animals, and it was bigger than all of our pets. Now, if you don’t know, animals (especially wild ones) don’t die in the open of their own volition, and this one had not succumb to any external wounds.

So I found it strange that it didn’t just crawl the less than one foot gap and die under the shed, but other than that didn’t think much more of it until maybe a day or two later when the thought crossed my mind that handy man (who is not a squeamish dude) very well could have placed it there by simply driving down that back road.

Things weren’t adding up but I dismissed it as my anxiety getting the best of me, though I did share this with husband and next door family member, who agreed that it was a weird situation at the very least.

Now we are to the present time, around three weeks after the discovery and removal of the possum (regrettably, I don’t have photos for evidentiary purposes). Things have continued to be normal, albeit still very awkward when we pass him in the neighborhood, but we just ignore each other.

I want to preface this part with some information: My husband and I work from home, MIL does not. The home is almost never empty other than the occasional family outing.

Handyman lives at the end of the street where he has full view of our home from his work shop/garage.

He has been in every room of our house.

He is also in his 60s, not super tall but in decent physical shape

Approximately 10:30 pm on a Monday, MIL returns home from working all day. We do our usual routine on nights like this, open her wine bottle, go out to the back porch with the dogs, and talk about whatever happened that day.

Now what…?

We return inside after around 15 min, and one of our dogs begins to bark. At first, I assume he’s barking at the other dog, but realize he is the alone perched on the back of our living room couch barking into the closed window.

Weirdly enough, one of handyman’s cryptic threats popped in my head (“how alert are the dogs”) but again I shake it off as tired paranoia.

We have all returned to our separate rooms, MIL had just flipped on her bedroom TV and husband and I return to our spots. He at his desk and I on the couch seat (in our room) next to it. Between our spots (next to my head and facing him) is a window which has a very loose bottom pane.

Right as we settle in and I hit the play button on the show we were watching, the window pane FLIES into the room into my husband’s lap with a massive crashing sound knocking one of his monitors over.

What the hell is going on in this neighborhood?!?!

For a brief moment I thought it was a brick or a rock until my husband shouts “SOMEONE JUST PUNCHED THE WINDOW HE’S RUNNING AWAY!”

Not even a minute later we are on the phone with emergency services. We review the Ring footage only to find that since it was facing the front door directly next to it, it could not see the person at all.

They ran in the direction of handyman’s part of the neighborhood.

About 10 minutes later police arrive. They stay for all of 5 minutes, (later we see their were 4 squad cars on our but only two came in), comment on it “smelling” (we smoke CBD or whatever) and comment on my husbands bloody toe he probably cut when he jumped from his desk out of fear, acting as if we just got high and called the cops for fun.

Whatever, they leave to “patrol” and we are left with more questions, no answers and no follow up. My husband DID contact the initial officer from the first incident who was kind enough to give us some actual info on how to protect ourselves since guns aren’t an option here unfortunately. but handyman has lots he likes to brag about.

They’re pretty scared about this…

Now we are left constantly on edge and don’t want to leave MIL home alone.

Here’s a few details that don’t sit right with me but were hard to include in the story:

-The window that was punched in was used by handy man and furniture movers to bring in things that couldn’t be brought through the front door

-The window was also the only one that did not have closed curtains that block light, therefore you could easily see that the lights and TV were on in that particular room

-The ring camera did seem to pick up a small amount of audio but its hard to know exactly what we hear because of surrounding ambient noises but it does sound like breathing at the end of the recording of MIL entering the home.

I do believe you can hear a sigh. meaning if this were a crime of opportunity or someone casing the place wouldn’t likely try to rob a house when they see someone just came home. They also would have heard our voices outside at one point in my opinion.

-whoever did this knew to at least steer completely clear from the view of the camera

-Our first ring was mysteriously crushed in at some point between the first incident and the possum.

They need to stay FAR AWAY from this guy…

So we obviously all have our theories, and I have tried to rationalize this in any way that it could have been random, or someone else who helped move in furniture.

But none of it adds up. If it is handy man behind this, we think he must have paid some kid to do it, as the person who did it ran very fast not that I underestimate him.

No matter what something has to be done. I can’t let this man think he is successfully forcing us to live in fear.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and/or respond, you have no idea how much this has helped us.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person offered some advice.