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When you’re living alongside good neighbours, the truth is that you probably barely notice them. Sure you’ll say hi when you pass in the street, or you’ll clock when they’re in their garden while you’re in your own. But your day generally goes by as normal, with the neighbours a constant that live there, but don’t really flag much on your radar.

So understandably, when those respectful, good neighbours move away and a much less savoury family moves in next door, it’s suddenly all you can notice – and you’ll begin to wish you’d appreciated the old neighbours more while they were there.

Whether it’s yelling and door slamming, loud music, disruptive kids or pets, unpleasant smells or any other disruptive and unneighbourly behaviour, these disruptions can really affect your physical and mental health – and it may even reach the point where you’re considering moving away yourself.

That is certainly the case for the homeowner in this story – but then circumstances dictated something very different entirely.

Read on to find out what happened.

Neighbour from hell be gone!!!

My neighbour from hell, I will call her Susan, moved in a little over five years ago, in June 2021. The first year she lived there, we were cordial. But she began taking many liberties and acting entitled.

Each week she began encroaching further and further when cutting grass, she would scalp her yard, then half of my front yard would be scalped because she kept creeping a further and further each week.

It wasn’t like I had an unsightly yard, we have and always have had professional grass cutters for the last six years. She also would let her dogs and the many dogs she would sit on my property. She also had several cats. They roamed free all day.

But then Susan’s behaviour went from annoying to dangerous.

My elderly father was living with me with COPD and heart issues. She would see him leaving the house, going to his doctors appointment appointments, with his portable oxygen.

Yet she still had a habit of burning things, especially cardboard boxes, despite of us having free recycling in the area.

She also tried to use me. When she first moved in, the house had extensive mulch around all four sides, freshly installed by the previous owner. She did not like all that mulch, she removed it by hand. She had probably 12 to 15 huge black garbage bags full of mulch.

She asked me if she could put those bags in my garbage can for garbage pick up, even though she obviously had her own garbage. At first, I told her yes, but after I thought about it, I told her no. She did a few other things, I honestly can’t remember at this moment.

Then, things got even more serious.

Anyway, in 2022 my father ended up in a nursing facility. I want to go see him on Father’s Day 2023. It was my last Father’s Day with him. While I was visiting him on Father’s Day, I got an alert from my security camera. It looked like there was a fire. So I had to cut short my visit with my dad, to go home and see what was up.

Mind you, these houses are very close together, and she was using an old tree stump as a burn base, this time burning a broken down dresser. I was almost gonna leave the windows in my house open that day, in spite of a quality alert.

We were in a severe drought, and she breaking multiple ordinances that day. The smoke was drifting towards my property, big huge puffs of smoke. I reported her. They came, she was cited $50.

She left the burned remnants there for the next three years, until she passed away from lung cancer. The burn base had dirt, debris, remnants of the ash from the fire, and charred pieces of broken down dresser, all that she left all that there for three years until she passed away, and her daughter had clean it up to put the house up for sale.

Let’s see what the last few years of living next to Susan was like.

For those three years, Susan ignored me. So did her 80 year-old boyfriend. He even flipped off my security camera after the cops left and her inherited the grudge.

When she would come around to take care of the yard and such, she also would hard-core ignore me. The daughter‘s boyfriend also would hard-core ignore me. Whatever.

But now that is all in the past. It’s mind blowing that she left all of that there for three years, and acted like she did it for three years.

I know some people don’t like being told what to do, but I did talk to her the one time she was burning, telling her that my elderly father was living with me with COPD and health issues. But she acted as though I said nothing, and she continued to burn. So it’s not like I did not try to reason with her.

So of course, this homeowner tried to create boundaries with the neighbour.

Incidentally, I also put up a fence between our properties, six inches with property line, based on all ordinances, following all laws, with Township approval, and after first getting a licensed surveyor. My guess is she didn’t like the fence.

The first time she went to cut her grass after the fence was installed, she painstakingly went up the entire length of the black aluminium fence, which was quite lengthy, and was kicking the dirt in between each and every slat, hanging onto the top of my fence, and furiously kicking the dirt in between each and every slat.

I was surprised she didn’t damage the fence, or she did not completely exhaust herself, but I guess when you’re in that much of a furious rage, you just run on adrenaline?

And yes, I understand getting a fence was my prerogative, and she basically left me no choice, but she clearly did not like that Fence. It established boundaries that she did not like.

Let’s see how this homeowner is feeling now Susan is gone.

But the bigger issue obviously was that I reported her, and she carried a HUGE grudge for the remainder of her years. A 70-year-old woman. I guess age does not matter. But wow.

I understand, I’m also holding a grudge, I guess? But leaving that disgusting huge burn pile there with charred broken down pieces of furniture, for the remainder of the years until her daughter had to clean it up to sell the house?

Wow… I wonder what the neighbours thought? I’m sure she told many of them that I was the one that reported her, or they probably figured out that I was the one that reported her…

I’m not saying I wished ill will on her, but I’m definitely not sad that she is no longer living next-door…

It’s clear that it must have been difficult living next door to Susan, given her anti-social tendencies and her love of burning things that had serious consequences for the homeowner’s father.

But the truth is, Susan is gone now and these stories are a part of the past.

It must be a relief to be sure, but celebrating so much about a person’s passing feels a little odd…

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person encouraged the homeowner to be a great neighbour to the new owners.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who gets revenge on her neighbors after they keep using her trash bins.

While others thought the homeowner was more than a little hypocritical.

And this Redditor encouraged them to review their own role in retelling the story.

Certainly it’s not the most flattering story – not the components, but the grudge that the homeowner is still clinging onto even though the old neighbour has passed on. Really, they need to either process all the drama that they went through and find a way to leave it in the past, or at least focus on the present and the lovely new neighbours they have living beside them. The truth is that while there’s no need to forgive Susan, there will be a lot of mental benefits to no longer ruminating over what a bad neighbour she was and all the offensive things she did.

Rather than keep going over and over the details in retelling, this story should be confined to the past, along with all the hate and resentment that came with it. That will make for a much more healthy mindset – and probably a more cordial relationship with the new owners that isn’t in any way shaped by prior negative experiences.

That chapter is over now, and it’s about time this homeowner flips over the page.