Trying to get along with your neighbors is always good, but when they won’t stop harassing you, you have to take the gloves off.

That is the case in this story where when her dad died, his neighbor started harassing her to get her to give up a piece of his property that he thought belonged to him.

After years of harassment, there is no end in sight. Even though she doesn’t live in her dad’s house, she still has to deal with the crazy neighbor all the time.

Read through the full story below and see what you think she should do.

Control freak tried to embed himself into my dad’s life; dad died, so he’s coming for me instead.

The neighbor at my parents house cut out about 40 feet of fence that was between properties the very night my Dad passed away (we didn’t know that happened for a few weeks).

He is up to something weird, that’s for sure.

Apparently, to cover it up as some maintenance thing, he came to the door that night saying sorry for the noise and that he was working on a broken pipe.

I’d never met the guy. Ever. He kept going on and on at the door, was resistant to leaving, and kept trying to get us to let him in… When he finally left, I immediately texted friends and family about this strange and inconsiderate guy next door. (Hello, my dad JUST DIED.🤦‍♀️)

What is wrong with this guy?

Sketchy vibes lead us to get a few cameras the very next day (in the midst of funeral planning, etc). Something in me said this guy was off, so quick cameras seemed necessary.

We had no clue how necessary.

He kept coming into the property knocking on the front door. We saw but weren’t there. Ok. He showed up at my dad’s funeral and told some weird story about going to see him the day before he died (this comes up again later). Lie. Who lies about such a thing?

That dog could have gotten seriously hurt.

As time rolled by, and just a few weeks later, we finally realized a chunk of fence was gone because my dog walked right out and down the street.

Hmm. Thought back to the night my Dad died. Started to connect the dots. All downhill from there.

He could be trying to claim ownership of part of the property.

We asked him about the fence. He literally tried to tell us that Pops gave him permission to do it – and from his deathbed, no less! All doped up on morphine. Unconscious. Um, what? Sure dude. 🤦‍♀️

So, we talked to an attorney.

He then started coming over persistently asking us about the “property line” and how “your dad promised to show me your grandpa’s survey” (lie), because the property line is definitely off and how my “dad said…” blah blah blah, constantly name checking my dad.

What is this guy’s end game?

We told him no, we don’t have that and wouldn’t give it if we did, and reminded him that he cut out our fence without permission.

His story then started to change. “Your dad said I could do it a couple years ago… Your dad said he didn’t care after his dog died… Your Dad ‘insisted’ I remove it when I saw him at the hospital” on and on.

Things just keep getting weirder.

His timeline kept changing, story got weirder and weirder. I had to literally yell at him to stop coming to our backdoor – get lost – and not come back.

Told him to stop trespassing. We put up no trespassing signs on every corner of the property, just in case we needed them, at some point. Guess what this absolute psycho asked for while running away? A hug!

I then stated, loud enough that neighbors could definitely hear, that he needed to leave or I’m calling the cops. On his way out he said, “this doesn’t have to get litigious…” and he then turned back to say, “oh, by the way, I’m a lawyer… we don’t want this to get in front of a judge.” Lunatic.

Don’t let him get one inch of property.

He kept trying to contact us, phone, text, coming to the backdoor (after we said not to), creeping up on us in the garage. We’d get the heck away from him asap. Always attempting to avoid more weirdness and confrontation.

He then waited until we physically left the house to go back home for a bit, and immediately walked on the property to lay down his very own “pink mason line” where HE believes the property line is/should be located. Apparently, this is his real issue. He wants property. Um. What?

I hope they keep all the recordings of this guy.

We got this creep on video walking next to our garage into our backyard, with his ball of string.

Next day he came over knocking on the front door, and a relative who had stopped by to check on the house had to tell him to leave, and not come back (as we’ve indicated many times).

Immediately after this confrontation, he starts texting me, over and over, trying to play damage control, trying to repackage what he did as “don’t you remember saying I could?”

He is just not giving up.

We removed his fake mason line. He put it back. Removed it again, and this went round and round, as he kept putting it back. Trespassing every time. He even took pics of his handy work, while standing in OUR yard.

At this point, we had him contacted and told emphatically to stop, by our attorney. We let him to contact the attorney if he had further issues. You’d think that might slow him down? Nope.

At this point, it should be considered harassment.

He then used our attorneys office in an attempt to grind us down by contacting them (literally, literally) DAILY, for weeks. Then stop. Then start up again.

(He persisted in his games, and still does. Eventually we had to call police. After that, he physically went to our attorneys office twice in one day, emailed them twice, called twice. He then proceeded to print out a copy of the emails he wrote sent them via priority mail – with signature required – and followed up a couple days later with more emails and calls to the attorney). Unreal.

Does their attorney charge for interacting with the neighbor?

After this, Mr. Demento kept at it, but took it in a new direction. He went full court press on our attorneys (mind you, he didn’t get representation of his own, because “he’s a lawyer” though he literally NEVER stated that to our attorneys, ever.

(I bet you’ve already guessed, he’s not a lawyer nor attorney, of course). Apparently he likes to play one at city hall, and with neighbors on our street. (No, really. Facts.)

So, he kept on. Trying to harass us by running up bills and irritation at the attorneys office. At this point I was never engaging with the weirdo, under any circumstances.

Now he is going after the other neighbor.

If one of us saw him, we turned around and exited the area. If he called or texted, I never once responded, except the single time I told him to contact our legal representative. Never contacted him first. Ever. We thought (hoped) it might die down. But of course, it did not.

Finally, about a year and a half ago, we stopped by the house. In minutes, heard him yelling at a different neighbor, so we went out to see what was going on.

Saw and heard him at the back corner of that guy’s lot, raising his voice and flailing his arms around, big talking, sounding very rude, pushy, and quite hostile.

He really could be dangerous.

We went out back and said “hey, leave him alone!” (The other neighbor is a kind, sweet, little old man, who lives on the other side of this creep). Psycho neighbor turns around and starts screaming “you ******* ***** (again, literally) started RUNNING after us, as we we’re standing outside our family garage.

Crazy. Scary.

We ran down the side of the garage, hurried into the house, and called the police – again. This time they said, straight up, get a restraining order. They went on to explain how, where, etc. later that day they went to talk with him, yet AGAIN.

Just block him at this point.

Weirdo couldn’t help himself, so even after the police were at his door, he texted me five times by the end of that night, trying to reframe things and get me to admit I said or did something, who knows what.

Trying to explain his insane behavior away as he was “super mad and frustrated”, accusing us of this and that, then doing a 180 and “supremely apologizing” for being offensive, but “only if [he] was wrong.” I did not respond.

They can’t even stay at the house.

I’m sure you can guess… Same day/night, he called the attorney and emailed them too, I believe five times as well. He then showed up at the attorney office, the next morning. (Let me reiterate, this is our attorney, not his.) He was there waiting at 7 am, outside their office, like a straight up stalker.

Because of the screaming and chasing us incident, we’ve never spent another night there at the house. (An important point for later.) The last time was almost a year and a half ago, and counting.

No shortage of evidence.

Anyways, we filed for a restraining order. We had video of him doing most of these things well inside the yard (unfortunately, no video of the screaming and running, but he admitted it on text, so we had that too).

We had 1.5 years of narrative including what he said, how he had behaved, his texts, his calls, his emails, even voicemails. We submitted it with our court filing. We were given an immediate, emergency order. But then we went to the actual court a few weeks later.

He must know the judge or something.

Let me skip to the punchline – the judge immediately dismissed my request, without letting myself, my lawyer, or anyone but the creeps attorney, to speak. She said, she “knows what’s going on here” and didn’t want to hear anything from us.

The judge then said, “this is just a silly neighbor dispute over a property line, work it out through your lawyers” and not to talk to each other. She then said, “seemed like a quiet street before you showed up.” Bizarre. Dismissed.

Creeper neighbor then had all the ammo he needed to go in on us, harder.

Things just keep getting worse with this guy.

Dude finally bites the bullet and decides to get a real survey of his property (after he had attempted to get the one we supposedly had, and attempting to bully us into paying for one).

He filed it with the authorities, and stated he was going to sue us for adverse possession, or tax theft, or sue us via title insurance, or any weird thing he could think of.

He threatened, through our attorney, to “remove the remaining fence if we don’t sign over quiet title by X date” and that he now considers X amount of our yard to be his, so if our dog “trespasses” over his invisible, imaginary line, he’ll have the dog removed by animal control. (Threatening or messing with someone’s pets, like the wicked witch of the west? That’s next level nuts.)

Getting a survey on record is important.

Anyways, you’re probably starting to realize, there’s no end in sight. And, there isn’t. Because of his insane antics, we had to get a survey of our property that cost thousands of dollars — just to file it with the local authority (which was NOT legally required by this state until the late 70s).

But, because we didn’t have one registered, he used that little loophole to slide his in and make it the “official record”. Mind you, this property has been in our family for 100+ years (no joke).

Oh, and this guy has lived next door door for all of 3 years when this mess started. Going towards 6 years now. He has been at this since he moved in, but hit the ground running in me.

They should just take him to court and be done with it.

Besides all that, we’ve had to respond to any number of complaints he has filed with the city, claiming we’re doing unpermitted construction (we aren’t), claiming we need a permit for a demo dumpster (we don’t), claiming we trespassed over his invisible fake property line (um, what?), claiming we messed with his survey posts (again, what?), on and on and on.

Remember, we have video of this lunatic walking into our yard with Mason line. We also have video from just a few months ago of him walking on the front easement with measuring tape, checking measurements of our front fence, at every elevation, until he found a spot that was 4 ft 1 inch, and reported us for that too.

Maybe they need to try for that restraining order again.

We’ve had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to deal with this creep. We want to keep our family home, but have considered selling out of the need to save our sanity.

We’ve learned that we likely can’t sell the house at the moment, because we now have a title dispute (due to him). He knows this and made sure of it with his submitted survey.

He continues to run out in his backyard, or the alley, to talk badly to us about this “getting litigious,” and how we can work it out without lawyers (mind you the judge told him and me to not speak unless it’s through our attorneys – I wasn’t speaking to him before that and have said exactly zero words since – he’s talking at us, we ignore it).

I sure hope they don’t give in to him.

He has an exorbitant amount of cameras. Many you can see and those you cannot. How do we know? He submitted as his own evidence, screenshots of two cameras you can’t see, trained right on our door, and the entrance through our gate.

At this point, even being states away, things have gotten so bad that we don’t go there at all. It’s not worth the potential nightmare awaits us, with his unstable mentality.

Nonetheless, if we ever want our own property back, or to sell it, we needed to file a “quiet title” against him and the wife. No brainer. And yet, it gets worse. It doesn’t end.

It is past time to get more aggressive legally.

In absolute retaliation, he’s now suing me and my parents “estate” for emotional damages – aka, extreme emotional distress, harassment, stalking, and elder abuse. Fun times. More money wasted on made up lies. More drama. More stress.

And that’s where things sit. He found an attorney careless enough to file some made up suit, to keep this drama going. So now, we wait. We waste money. We waste time. We can’t really go to the house, and definitely can stay there. It seems like it will never end.

This nightmare will never end.

(To reiterate, he immediately inserted himself into our existence. So, I/we set boundaries. Though initially we genuinely tried being nice and taking the high road, of course that did not work, so we stopped communicating at all.

At every turn, as things have gotten weirder and weirder, we’ve kept the same message and boundaries, but to no avail. We were compelled to file for title to our own land. And now, he’s claiming that I, personally, have been harassing, stalking and abusing them for almost 3 years – all while I live in another state, and haven’t been to the property in well over a year.)

Putting up with bad people is not worth it.

So, in closing, THIS is why I’m not a friendly neighbor, going forward, forever. Done.

Head down, eyes up. That’s the vibe now. And that makes me sad, because I am an outgoing, friendly, decent person.

Just because they ran into one bad neighbor?

I have neighbors here where I live that I have great interactions with, even relationships; we do Thanksgiving together, I mean how different can two places be?!

Not there. Not anywhere beyond these three good neighbors, not in the future, not ever. Lesson learned. ✌️

What a horrible situation. I hope they are able to hand this over to an attorney and let them aggressively pursue a solution.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Now this would be funny.

They have plenty of evidence. The lawyer needs to use it.

This commenter makes a really good observation.

Some people are just crazy.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a homeowner who doesn’t care whether or not their neighbors hate their yard flamingos, because they aren’t subject to the HOA.

This is exactly what I was thinking, too.

They really need to get a better attorney. As it is, their lawyer seems to do nothing other than charge them money and waste everyone’s time.