There’s a lot to love about living in an apartment. Often they’re built in convenient locations, with plenty of shops, bars, and other amenities nearby. This means plenty to do with your time, and it’s all on your doorstep. No more having to get a cab out to the suburbs or crash on someone’s floor after a night out, because your home is just a short walk away.

They can be cheaper than houses, and the lack of garden to maintain can suit many folk too. Long story short, while apartment living isn’t for everyone, plenty of people from all walks of life live very happy lives in apartment blocks across the world.

And while in some countries apartments are generally more used by young professionals or folk relying on social housing, in other places apartments are viable and popular options for lifelong residents, including becoming the perfect family home. One stay in an AirBnB in a history European city apartment block will tell you just that.

However, that’s not to say that there aren’t issues with apartment living, with one of those factors being the noise from other folk living nearby. And noise complaints were exactly what the long-standing tenant in this story recently had to face.

Read on to find out what happened here.

I have become the neighbour from hell

I have lived above people literally all my life, starting from my childhood attic bedroom, to upstairs dorm rooms in college (during which I was an RA), and the majority of my adult apartments.

In all of those years, I have never received a complaint.

I walk lightly, PC/bed rot, work throughout the day, and barely have guests over. I’m not a loud neighbour at all.

Well, my current downstairs neighbor would disagree with that.

Let’s see what the issue is with the downstairs neighbour.

It all started about ten months ago when she moved in. Just for some context, I negotiated vinyl flooring instead of carpet when I first signed my lease here three years ago.

In the three years I have lived here with my vinyl flooring, I’ve never received a complaint or had a knock on my door at all, even when I had a couple with a baby living under me.

But it began one day when I was on a deep cleaning spree – yes, more activity than usual on my end, but I was cleaning during daylight hours, I’m not a stomper, and I had my headphones on as I was moving around.

Imagine my surprise when I sit down from a long chore and check my Blink camera to see that five minutes ago, the lady from downstairs had been spamming my doorbell and knocking on my door for a good couple minutes looking ENRAGED.

And things just got worse from there.

I think she thought I was ignoring her on purpose – my bad, lady. I was just listening to music in my headphones while I scrubbed the grout to my shower. I got up to start the dishwasher and she started beating on my ceiling.

I just ignored it because clearly she was aggravated and I didn’t want to engage with her. Plus it was like 6pm on a Thursday, so, I can do my chores. Things just escalated from there.

A week later, my family visited for about an hour while they were in town – my mom, two sisters, and four year old nephew. My nephew was just running around enjoying my apartment (so yes, a toddler running around and four adults in an apartment can cause a good amount of noise).

It was 4:30pm on a Friday this time when she started absolutely assaulting my floor/her ceiling. Like, she banged so hard that my nephew was startled and started crying and hiding in confusion.

Yikes! Let’s see how this family dealt with the woman’s behaviour.

My sister called the office who in turn called the lady. She then came up here and started banging on my door. Imagine her surprise when I opened the door and she saw my whole family standing by the door looking at her. She was wringing her hands, yelling, and seemed very upset. We apologized and sent her on her way.

Again, that was the start. Over the past six months, she has continued to assault my floor/her ceiling on multiple instances, and on at least four separate occasions she has banged on my door so hard that it sends my best friend who comes over sometimes into a panic attack because of how aggressively she beats on my door.

I have refused to answer since the time she assaulted my door for ten minutes straight, and the only reason I answered that time was because this lady was banging so hard on my door that my neighbours on the other side of the apartment starting banging on one of my walls thinking it was me making the noise.

That time she used curse words, was rolling her eyes at me, wringing and shaking her hands… so nope, no more door answers for her because im not about to fight anyone. My other older neighbour on the other side of the hall with three kids had her door propped open watching the whole time because this lady was scaring her kids with how hard she banged that time.

Of course, this person then decided they had to do something about this situation.

I called the leasing office the next day and told them everything. Leasing office told me to not answer the door, and to call the police the next time she knocks.

She has since knocked three more times super hard, and after the last time, the office told her to not knock anymore, so now she just beats on my ceiling like she’s getting layers of dust out of an ancient rug.

My friends, myself, and my family no longer feel I can live comfortably up here out of some level of fear or anxiety about what the lady may do. So cue now, me becoming the neighbor from hell.

I have decided to move because of this lady. And think what you want about me for doing this, but if I’m going to spend thousands of dollars and weeks looking for a new apartment and moving, just so that I can get away from you, I am going to make it as hard as a reasonably can on you.

Let’s see how this tenant is enacting their revenge.

As I have been in this process, I have recorded her knocking on my door and made a remix out of it (including a 911 call she made outside of my door). These past few weeks as I have been packing, I have been making all the noise that I can from the hours of 12pm-9pm.

The other night, my sister and I did a full 360 with my futon in the middle of the floor and then ran and jumped in separate rooms right over the ceiling fans.

If I’m going to be accused of it, I might as well do it. It helps myself and my folks laugh even though this lady has caused so much trouble for us. Again, I’m not a loud or inconsiderate neighbour. It’s like she can’t handle hearing me live life above her.

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The times when loud things happened were literally a month apart and lasted no more than an hour; it should not have warranted her so aggressively and persistently harassing me in my home. So hi guys, I’m now the neighbor from hell… at least until Wednesday.

After all this, it’s no wonder that this tenant wants to move out – and wants to actually create all the noise that the woman has been accusing them of all this time.

It’s clear that they were happy in this apartment, they had lived there for three years and had made it their home. But then this woman moved in downstairs and ruined everything.

Let’s see how folks on Reddit responded to this.

This person congratulated the upstairs neighbour for their refusal to pander to the woman.

While others hoped that she’d live to regret forcing the upstairs neighbour out.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who was angry after coming home to a surprise hole in their fence.

Meanwhile, this Redditor offered to help out.

The truth is, it sounds like this upstairs neighbour was about as good as the woman was going to get. Seeing as they live a relatively quiet life, there’s no way that they’re making hardly any noise at all – so either the woman downstairs has super-powered hearing, she’s extremely paranoid, or she’s making a big deal about something that never bothered the previous downstairs neighbours. Imagine if a family with young kids move in now, or a couple who are more active in the apartment on a daily basis. Is she going to try to drive them away too?

If you’re going to live in an apartment, you have to accept that you will have neighbours – and those neighbours have lives to live, with their number one priority not being you. That means they’re going to make noise – and so long as it’s not excessive they have every right to.

Have a problem with that? Maybe apartment living is not for you.