Couple in the next room bound to win a prize

September 23, 2018 8:21 PM

What’s worse than nosy neighbors? How about noisy neighbors? The Washington Post's John Kelly recently asked readers to share tales of strange noises they’ve heard from their neighbors.
posted by Johnny Wallflower (57 comments total)

I just have to h/t to the “Lincoln Duncan” reference, one of my favorite songs and one of the first I learned to play in the guitar.
posted by Miko at 8:25 PM on September 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

Props for the Paul Simon riff.
posted by KazamaSmokers at 8:42 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I know I know I know I know I know...
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:45 PM on September 23, 2018

Right now there is a kid who moved about a door or so down. She sounds like she is about two, very high pitched and frequently very unhappy. But the worst ones I ever had sounded like some kind of alien frog spaceship invasion was happening every time they had sex.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:57 PM on September 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

I live in a house not an apartment, but its a house that has shared walls because San Francisco. One time our neighbor had an alarm go off while they were away for a few days. Not a loud blaring alarm but more like a fire alarm out of battery beep. Every. Ten. Seconds. It wasn't loud but a soft audible "beep". At like 1 am. Till morning when I suppose they either came home or the battery finally went. It was torture!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:01 PM on September 23, 2018

There are two (?) children in the house next to me and I am always pleased at the sounds of their voices, which are usually disclaiming on slightly surreal subjects when they're that loud.
posted by solarion at 9:17 PM on September 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

"sounded like some kind of alien frog spaceship invasion was happening every time they had sex"

I am trying to imagine what this would sound like, and I have so many questions.

What type of frog?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 9:42 PM on September 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

When the woman downstairs left with the children, the man downstairs took up with a conga. I can feel my feet vibrate.
posted by pracowity at 9:51 PM on September 23, 2018

So not neighbours per se but I hope that the Blue will forgive me the slight digression.

A few years ago I was on a conference call for work. One of the people on the line sounded slightly distracted, but conference calls are like that so I was not really paying too much attention.

Suddenly we heard a very loud banging on their front door, "Ah, it's the police" they said in a surprisingly mundane tone of voice, "Must go." This was then followed moments later by the even louder sounds of them falling down a flight of stairs.

And then the phone went silent...

Never heard from them again.
posted by fallingbadgers at 9:58 PM on September 23, 2018 [37 favorites]

when the lunatic above me either figured out his meds or stopped doing all the meth in the world, he stopped going out onto the fire escape in a nude roid rage to scream and break glass, and he and his girlfriend made the frankly deranged decision to have A CHILD, and i was in a state of high concern over the prospect of hideous infant shriekings (as well as a bit of concern for the kid's welfare I GUESS but more about me and my needs, me me me).

WELL. it turned out that the baby was as bizarre as they were, although in different ways, the first of which was very odd: the baby was completely fucking silent except for an occasional burble or squawk of what i assume was demonic glee. it got to the point where i was starting to question if there really WAS a baby there and wondered if they were tragically cosplaying parenthood. this went on for a year. at no point did i ever see them with an actual baby, although i heard visitors exclaiming what an adorable baby it was at very high volumes, which is also unnerving when no baby is making sounds and did nothing to convince me of this baby's actual existence.

finally the kid started walking and at this point i was Very Alarmed because instead of the normal toddling/falling/crashing sounds infants make when learning to walk, there were slow and ominous thudding footsteps accompanied by the precise and dreadful sound pyramid head makes when he drags his great knife behind him. luckily they moved out before pyramid baby could murder me and a very nice filipino accountant moved in who was both quiet and not an eldritch abomination.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:06 PM on September 23, 2018 [45 favorites]

I once had an upstairs neighbor who would play the entirety of the Neutral Milk Hotel album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on an upright piano about three times a week. Including the trombone solos, on trombone.

It was great.
posted by q*ben at 10:12 PM on September 23, 2018 [44 favorites]

I lived in an apartment building for a decade and had some neighbors above me for about a year who made my life a repeat of this scene from The Secret of My Success. They would celebrate the end of each month in this fashion, and I could and did conduct as it came to its natural conclusion.
posted by bryon at 10:43 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I've just moved into an apartment and the noises... constant. I'm not one to mind except an awful lot of them sound like someone knocking on my door, which is yet to actually be the case. So I'm always jumpy that an angry neighbour is about to tell at me, which isn't great for my nerves

My best bet is a lot of them are pipes, but I'm also pretty sure a subset are my neighbours having sex, which is distinctive, repetitive and short-lived.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 1:31 AM on September 24, 2018

"Their ceiling is our stage ... and we're dancing across it"
posted by matthewr at 1:34 AM on September 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

Not a loud blaring alarm but more like a fire alarm out of battery beep. Every. Ten. Seconds.

I used to live across the street from a big electricity substation. One day it started beeping. A single beep, once a minute, 24 hours a day, loud enough to be heard with the windows closed.

It turns out one minute is just enough time for your thoughts to drift off to something else, and then the beep would come again and break your brain. It was torture. It took me *days* to get them to switch it off.

And of course for weeks afterwards I would keep hearing what sounded like the bleep starting again. It must have taken years off my life.
posted by grahamparks at 2:27 AM on September 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

Jeez - where to start. There was the guy in the terrace house behind us with a laugh that earned him the name "Chicken Fucking Man". Or the woman a few doors down that started screaming one night and just as we were about to call the cops, it settled into a more rhythmic "Oh god, oh god, oh GOD!". She moved away after a few weeks, thank goodness.

Then there were the vampire neighbours that would wake up about 6pm, put on loud techno and party until about 5am. I got to the point where I was considering putting a note on their door and pinning it with a pickaxe, but they were soon routed by the vampire's natural enemy - the home improvement devotee. A couple of weeks of the sound of power tools starting at 7:30am just as they were snuggling in their coffins soon had them on the move.

Then there was the alcoholic menage a trois at the back of us where one of the blokes and the woman would start brawling and the older chap would chime in "I just want to SLEEP! Can't you let a man get some SLEEP around here?" repeated in a mournful but penetrating tone for the duration of the brawl.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the batty art collector next door that would have various soirees and kept inviting some loud Irish man whose rendition of "Oh Danny Boy" could be heard in Donegal without the use of a phone line. And if it wasn't a party, she would spend her days shuffling her art collection around on her walls, and that generally meant 2-3 days of tapping as she hammered nails into her walls. How that dividing wall never collapsed, I'll never know.

We got so adept at ignoring the more egregious examples that when the corner store 30 metres down the road was the victim of an armed robbery, we didn't hear anything as we assumed the screaming and gunshots were just someone's loud TV and were rather surprised when the cops showed up taking statements. He asked me "Did you hear anything?" and I remember his eyebrows got lost in his hairline when I answered honestly "Well, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary!".

And now I've moved to a house in the burbs where the worst I get is the occasional dog yapping and the sound of next door's kid doing his best impression of demonic possession (howling, yelling, growling etc).
posted by ninazer0 at 3:08 AM on September 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

I haven't lived in an apartment in a long time, but when I lived in Alexandria, VA (not the nice part) we had a series of loud upstairs neighbors. There were the footie fans who shouted GOOOOOOOOOOL at like 3 AM. It was a World Cup year, too. But they moved out and were replaced by someone who we decided must be a crossdressing weight lifter due to the combination of weights being dropped and clomp clomp clomping of high heeled shoes being worn by someone with enormous feet and not much practice wearing heels. At the time, I thought surely we were hearing something else, not actual weightlifting though that's what it sounded like, because who deadlifts in their second floor apartment? Then a couple months ago someone here posted an Ask about how to better dampen the sounds of them deadlifting in their second floor apartment. I was gratified that the consensus response was join a gym.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:44 AM on September 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Bark bark bark. Ollie! Ollie! Bark. Bark. Ollie. Get in here.

Repeat every hour for six years.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:59 AM on September 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

I used to live downstairs from a horse who would do light sawing in the evenings.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:26 AM on September 24, 2018 [14 favorites]

"bound to win a prize." Heh.
posted by drlith at 5:30 AM on September 24, 2018

I used to live downstairs from a horse who would do light sawing in the evenings.

At one point we had a neighbor who would get strung out on meth and start major yard and house renovation projects at 2am, complete with gas-powered tools and loud banging. I never knew whether or not to make a complaint, because even though it was late I didn't want to discourage him from taking care of the place.

But worse was one time when we were moving into an apartment and the upstairs neighbors mentioned in passing that they had a regular "game night" every week to play board games with their friends. I put "game night" in quotations because from the sounds every weekend it was more likely that they were hosting orgy night with heavy and vigorous guests. I couldn't get mad about it since they sounded like they were having so much fun, but I do wish that they had had the courtesy to move to a first floor unit.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:49 AM on September 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

This morning my alarm clock was a loud and furious shouting match between two mothers who were with their kids, waiting for the school bus.

Not particularly interesting, but it was timely for this thread.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:56 AM on September 24, 2018

Long ago we had a neighbor who liked to use her rowing machine at 2 in the morning - over our bedroom. She also was a bird rehabber for a local rescue - some mighty odd noises...
posted by leslies at 6:08 AM on September 24, 2018

Last year I lived in a campus apartment. Our neighbors were football players. Kendrick Lamar is my favorite rapper, but hearing the entirety of DAMN. blasted through my wall on repeat was...not pleasant. He got into fights with his girlfriend sometimes that lasted hours and once we had to tell the RA because we got back at 2AM and they were still going. That time I was more concerned for the girlfriend than annoyed, tbh.
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 6:11 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Dad-through-the-wall loves his kids, and used to sing them sweet lullabies when they were tiny.
Dad-through-the-wall loves his karaoke, and would practice diligently for the big Saturday afternoon get-togethers.
Dad-through-the-wall is completely, utterly unable to follow a tune. Like, full-on amusia: no pitch, no timing, all volume.

(we love family-through-the-wall, though. Their kids help out with ms scruss's art installations, and we only get minor side-eye about our lack of gardening effort from the parents. We feel bad now about having to scream with laughter into a pillow at Dad-through-the-wall's heartfelt lullabies.)
posted by scruss at 6:11 AM on September 24, 2018 [13 favorites]

When I moved into my current top-floor apartment the only shared wall I had was with a delightful deaf gentleman with the world's cuddliest giant shaggy helper dog. The kids downstairs though? They seem to pick their own hours and have voices that pierce solid concrete and steel.
posted by Molesome at 6:15 AM on September 24, 2018

In my very first apartment out of college, I met one of my neighbors early on while I was trying to single handedly move a television console up to my sixth floor apartment. He joyfully stepped in to help, introduced himself, and I shit you not the very next words out of his mouth were, "So, do you blaze?" I said no, and then he asked me what I did for a living. I was half tempted to tell him I was a cop just to see his reaction.

Anyway, he lived in the apartment next to mine with his girlfriend and another guy. They had some animals - a cat and a turtle, at least. There was a little corner of the building where my bedroom window more or less faced their kitchen window, so they would often wake me up in the middle of the night smoking on the fire escape or chatting in their apartment.

They were decent enough neighbors until one muggy summer night when I was woken up to absolute chaos coming from their kitchen. "SCAT! SCAT! You get out of here!" Crashing and banging. More indistinguishable noise. I decided that a wild animal had somehow gotten in to their unit and was harassing their cat, and did my best to go to sleep.

I woke up the following morning to go to work, got dressed, stepped out of my door... and found the blood. Pools of blood on the landing, on the railings, and down the stairs. Literal palm-print smears of blood on the walls. It is early, I have not had coffee, and I am tired. "Must not have been an animal," I thought to myself, and then went to work.

Once I had caffeinated at work, I finally got it together enough to call the police. The blood was there for a few days until the management company got around to cleaning up. Several months later, I bumped in to another tenant who told me the rest of the story - my neighbors had invited a rando in to do drugs with them, he got violent towards the guy's girlfriend, there was a fight, and then the three tenants ganged up on him and threw him down the stairs. The weirdest part of the whole thing to me, to this day, is why they thought yelling "Scat!" at another human being was going to get them out of the house.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:20 AM on September 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

Many years ago I had neighbours similar to jenfullmoon's alien frog spaceship invasion people, except they were alien pig steam train people. I believe one of them was an opera singer, sure could project.
Less charming was the guy who used to be next door at my current place, who'd blast either a) Le Tigre or b) LCD Soundsystem at 2am and drunkenly scream at the walls, Every. Damn. Night. Great way to build a negative association with a couple of perfectly good records.
posted by threecheesetrees at 6:49 AM on September 24, 2018

The downstairs neighbors would leave their cat out on the screen porch whenever they weren’t home, where it would meow and meow basically nonstop for hours. The porch was directly below my bedroom and the meowing could be heard easily through the walls. Turns out a constant backdrop of meowing tends to kill the mood during sexytimes. I remember once, mid-foreplay, the girlfriend and I just cracking up out of exasperation after the meowing started up again.
posted by dephlogisticated at 7:04 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

For 15 years I lived in the same apartment, 2nd floor(top floor) of an old building. 9 years in a man, woman and their toddler moved in next door and things were never the same. We shared a wall, but it was brick, noise didn't come through. Something somehow enabled this kid to make noises that sounded like were people on the roof. Scared the tar out of me the first time, and I called the police. They came out, looked at all the surrounding roves (roofs?) didn't see anyone and came back to my place to tell me. While they were talking to me, heavy foot falls came from the roof right over the cops head. They went into attack mode, called for backup, got a FD ladder out, didn't find anyone.

The kid could also make noises (foot falls) in other places in my apartment, like under my desk. It took almost a year to figure out wtf was going on, found out who was doing it, but not how. The parents of the kid wouldn't talk to fagots so I could never discuss it with them, and the landlord went in to inspect and found nothing out of order, except that they were fucking slobs. I never found out HOW the kid was doing it.

Then the the kid discovered jumping off of furniture. My apartment didn't have a picture hanging straight for the rest of my time there. My friends/family thought that was hilarious.
I'm in a new place now(thank god!!!), just moved in last week and so far, so good.
posted by james33 at 7:15 AM on September 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I used to live above a bleary-eyed night shift fellow who would pound his ceiling furiously with a broom handle every time I closed a cupboard or the cat jumped off a chair.
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:28 AM on September 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

The apartment building we used to live in had parquet floors over concrete and honestly you can hear just about everything that touches the ground through that.

The first set of neighbours upstairs had a little kid who would run around, which was sweet. Sometimes the parents would get dressed up for an evening out; you could hear the high heels clopping. They had a couple parties where you could hear a bunch of guests walking around. A few glass things breaking as being dropped. Sometimes a little dog would visit, you could hear it skittering on the floor. We could also hear them in the bathroom; the exhaust duct just rose vertically up the building and you could hear muffled conversations from other people's bathrooms. The father would sing to the child. Sometimes the child would cry a little. There was one hours-long crying spree that was probably some kind of illness. They seemed like a loving family. And their noises didn't bother us. It was just nice knowing we had a community.

Then there was the week of random loud thumps, and I said, I bet they're moving out. And then there was the week of HELL NOISES as the management company did renovations, which included power chiseling out ruined parquet flooring and heavy sanding, plus redoing tiling and kitchen renos. Then it was quiet for a couple weeks. And someone else moved in, and they were quieter and we were a little bit sadder.

Our new place is a condo with reinforced concrete walls, ceilings and floors, and there are Rules Motherfucker about what kind of flooring you're allowed to have; the noise isolation requirement is insanely high. The only thing we can hear is occasional water running or gurgling through the pipes. If you stand in the hallway sometimes you can hear conversations or TV or stereo noises, or clattering dishes, but in one's own unit there's just silence.

Well, except that they're replacing the windows in the building now and using monstrous power chisels and apparently when you chisel reinforced concrete it makes the entire structure resonate, so no matter where they're working you can hear the walls and ceiling buzz and it's fucking annoying. But we are getting new windows so.

Anyway, I guess this is really dull but that's my experience living in shared housing over the past couple years. Before that we had houses, and before that I was a kid and just don't remember.

However, just south of us is a kind of sketchy apartment building and there are sometimes arguments from over there that come in our windows. Usually angry dudes.

It's just a city, I guess. There's people in it. They make noise. It's a thing.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:44 AM on September 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

I live in a town with an excellent jazz music program at one of the colleges. We used to have a neighbor that played trumpet in the backyard early on Sunday mornings. That sounds like hell but he played the most chill and sad but not depressing music. I miss him. Instead the people that live there now have loud ass parties on Fridays. Every damn Friday. And a dog that never seems to go inside, and barks at everything. Including falling leaves! Fall is going to be great.
posted by shmurley at 8:00 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Based on past experiences (no interesting stories, just loud assholes who liked to play loud music in the middle of the night), if I could magically invent one thing it would be perfectly soundproof floors, ceilings and walls.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:01 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

My boyfriend and I shared an apartment once with a couple who had the loudest sex. The bed frame was loose so it would WHAM WHAM WHAM against the wall, and then she would start up with the OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD, 5 nights out of 7. We complained, the neighbors complained, they just had to do their thing. We were not allowed to renew our lease. They actually asked us if we wanted to share a house. No. No, we didn't.

(TBH, I was a little jealous.)
posted by corvikate at 8:14 AM on September 24, 2018

We've been mostly spared loud sex noises in our various living situations, but I feel like I paid a lifetime worth of dues in my college house where one of my housemates (the one with the bedroom right next door to mine) was an absolute sex diva. Like, you kind of got the impression that she really wanted the rest of us to be jealous of all the mindblowing sex she was having. And it was quite a lot. She was also really verbally abusive to her boyfriend so basically there was always some kind of screaming coming from her room. She was terrible.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:28 AM on September 24, 2018

The worst neighbors I've ever had were homeowners - and believe me, when someone owns the damn home, they don't move very often.
First was the guy who moved into the house after his father bought it for him. I knew it was bad news when ran into the whiskey-barrel planter and just left it there, sad and broken on his front lawn. Next, up went the NHRA flag on the flagpole (National Hot Rod Association). The house had an enormous garage, so for months we'd hear the sound of powerful revving engines until late into the night/early morning (never did figure out what he did for a living, if anything). The best was when he had a party, and a live metal band - they started up at about 10 AM. Nearby neighbor was cop who worked nights. He walked up, asked them to quiet down, and was told to 'fuck off'. About an hour later, we spy a line of cop cars down the street, and SWAT team marching up two-by-two. The party ended with many arrests, and no more heavy metal there (not live, at least).
posted by dbmcd at 8:30 AM on September 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have to give thanks to the long dead brick masons who built our house and the apartment building next door that our house is attached to. Except a few years ago when the landlord was remodeling the units, we've never heard anything through the walls. Actually our house is so solid that we can't even talk to each other from one room to the next because the sound won't travel.

Of course we live three blocks from a 60,000 person football stadium so when there's a game or a concert we hear everything. Fortunately, concerts have to end by 11 and it's rare for a football game to go much later than that.
posted by octothorpe at 8:38 AM on September 24, 2018

At work so I can't read but I'll look forward to checking out the conversation later.

In the meantime, the question reminds me of this track from Tom Waits.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 9:20 AM on September 24, 2018

that upstairs roommate, the college years
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 9:34 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

In our early married years, while I was in grad school and we were living a thousand miles away from our families, the person in the apartment next to ours would play music. That was fine - we liked music. But late at night, he would play this creepy variation on "Three Blind Mice" over and over again. I never did find out who the performer was, but let's just say, that wasn't a nursery rhyme my children learned...
posted by jkosmicki at 10:03 AM on September 24, 2018

dbmcd, I love that story. I imagine the cop in plainclothes politely asking for an expected courtesy, being told to "fuck off," and calmly walking away to call up the squad to bust some assholes who could have avoided it and had a good time just by not being dicks.

Is it taboo to ask your neighbors to be quiet, or is there just too high a risk for a negative reaction and resentment so people avoid it or address it through passive means like a note under door. I've only been asked once in my life to keep it down, I keep odd waking hours, and I hadn't realized how loud my computer to TV was. They were polite as was I in return, I felt slightly embarrassed and from then on tried to be more conscious of my volume.

I once had an apartment and the people next to me were making strange noises I could hear because of a hole under the sinks between our apartments. I was always tempted to just ask through the wall, but that's hella creepy for obvious reasons. I think I asked about it eventually when they invited us over for dinner (which was good bc could always smell their cooking) and IIRC it was just kids doing weird kid shit.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:10 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have lived in a lot of inexpensive apartments so I've had my fill of weird neighbor noises. I mostly accepted them as being part of the whole cheap apartment experience. However, many years ago I was living in a little studio that was part of an apartment building that was a carved up Victorian (so basically, no insulation of any kind). The woman who had the apartment next to mine had an abusive boyfriend. Our building was directly across the street from the police station. I would call them every time I heard her being hit--which was frequently. The cops would walk across the street and toss the boyfriend out--but she would never press charges, so he'd turn up again a few days later. It was very depressing. I always told the cops that I would testify if it ever came to that, but it never did.

This was the same neighbor who caused me to do something I still feel guilty about. She and the boyfriend took off on a trip and left the radio playing, loudly. I tried to get the landlord to go in and turn it off but he was absentee, and wouldn't come over. I was getting zero sleep even with a fan, ear plugs, etc. So on day three, I went outside where the electrical panels for each unit lived and turned her power off. I'm sure she came home to a fridge full of rotted food but at that point I did not care. She moved out soon after.
posted by agatha_magatha at 10:38 AM on September 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I was worried when the German couple upstairs from us in our profoundly uninsulated triplex announced they were having a baby and that the nursery would be right above my bedroom. Turns out, newborn cries didn’t carry well enough to be bothersome and even if they did wake me up, I would be soothed back to sleep by the sound of a rocking chair and the father singing German lullabies.

(Our landlords were two elderly brothers-in-law, one German, and one Japanese, and their heavily accented bickering while doing maintenance was always highly amusing.)
posted by rebeccabeagle at 10:55 AM on September 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

These upstairs neighbors weren't unusually loud... other than the sex. During which They made very little noise, but they'd make our whole triple-decker shake so hard that the cowbell I had hanging on a door would ring in my apartment. I was very glad to figure out what it was, though, because I'd honestly thought it was an earthquake the first time it happened (decided to go google after it kept going for more than a minute and standing in the doorframe seemed silly, finally in the other room heard their quiet noises that clued me in).

Another upstairs neighbor got really in to Dance-Dance for awhile, oof.
posted by ldthomps at 11:08 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

In college I had an upstairs neighbor who had a weekly Primal Scream Therapy session in his apartment. No words that I can recall, just his loud hideous screaming.
posted by johngumbo at 11:09 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

In my old apartment the upstairs neighbour had a dog, who I never actually saw but was pretty big. When they first got the dog they would leave him out on the balcony every day while they were at work, and he spent the. entire. day. crying, scratching at the door, and sometimes howling. I reported it after a couple of days, and after the first week or so they stopped doing that. After that as soon as they left home, he would start The Game. The Game appeared to involve running from one corner to another, jumping onto furniture, and riding the furniture as it slid and sometimes crashed into walls. All with occasional happy barks. When they were home he was clearly not allowed on the furniture, based on what they yelled at him.

My kitten had a similar game but since she was only 6 pounds by the tie I moved out, couldn't move furniture, rarely vocalised at all, and I was on the ground floor, I'm pretty sure it was less annoying to neighbours. They probably couldn't hear her pulling all the tiny glass figures out of the shadow box one by one and playing soccer with them in the kitchen.

My bathroom and my neighbour's bathroom apparently shared a single medicine cabinet divided by a thin metal partition that acted as an amplifier. Conversations in the bathroom or adjoining bedroom sounded like I was in the same room. My first neighbours would rehearse choral singing in an unfamiliar language (something African I think) that was beautiful, but it felt to weird to tell them how much I enjoyed it. When a new set of roommates moved in, a bunch of girls who gathered in the master bath to gossip and pre-drink while getting ready for their nights out, I filled the cabinet with rags to muffle the sounds.

Currently I'm in a house but the next house over is only about 20 feet from my bedroom window, and their front door, living room, and kitchen windows are pointed at me because our house is on the corner. The mom over there is fond of frantic, panicked ,high pitched yelling, with a high percentage of obscenities. Sadly the other residents appear to be hard of hearing, requiring her to repeat every thing several times at increasing volume and vulgarity. This is how she announces mealtimes, asks the kids to do their chores, tells her husband what to get at the store, tells everyone that she's "fucking done with this" (spoiler: "this" was not, apparently, shouting) and asks "where did you leave the axe".

still worrying about that last one three weeks later

The teenage boys are surprisingly quiet, other than inspiring their mother to shout, and the loudest dad gets is chopping firewood (he has to turn up the metal music loud enough to hear over the chopping). Their cats believe our yard is part of their territory, use the awning on our back patio as a hammock, and chase each other over our roof, which is fun because it freaks out our indoor cats. The dogs are mostly inside, don't bark too much, and I only am really aware of them because of the mom yelling.

They have a possibly illegal firepit under the (highly flammable) tree in the backyard where they burn leaves, some trash, and maybe also the waste from their chickens, ducks and turkey. The smell is occasionally so foul it must be something other than leaves or paper and wood. Other times just the smoke just gives me massive allergy attacks.

I'm looking forward to the quiet of the turkey-less months after thanksgiving and before they bring home next year's dinner sometime in spring, but I sort of miss the confused rooster that was trying to figure out how to crow but mostly just trailed off and gave up. Ah-Ar...Ar.........Eh
posted by buildmyworld at 11:21 AM on September 24, 2018

Had a neighbor who went through heroin withdrawal in the attic next door all one night. Horrible screaming and begging for release. At 5am, state police came for him and took him away.

This was bad, and sad, but last week, same house had a smoke detector battery go in the same location (chirp every 30 seconds) and they couldn't get up to replace the battery for a day and a half. This, in truth, was worse.
posted by Riverine at 11:37 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Our apartments are sturdy brick affairs and generally -- if people aren't, like, actively moving huge furniture about -- you hardly hear a peep from any other unit. However, our upstairs neighbors had a large and active cat and many uncovered hardwood floors, and we could hear the cat's many thumps and skitterings -- especially during the night.

This was annoying for approximately 10 seconds before it became adorable, and soon we were using Upstairs Cat as an improvement example for our own lazy kitty: "Oh listen, Upstairs Cat is playing! Why don't you ever play, like Upstairs Cat?" "Sounds like Upstairs Cat really picks up some speed on that long hallway! You could learn a thing or two from Upstairs Cat, you know."

Those neighbors moved, and the apartment was empty for some time. But now the new upstairs neighbors...have TWO cats.

It's the best
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:20 PM on September 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

the dorm rooms at my university were built in the 50s and had a shared bathroom. for two years i could hear my neighbors scream at each other over who slept with who if i used the toilet at night

presumably they continued through the night and once again, i love being deaf
posted by lineofsight at 2:56 PM on September 24, 2018

My neighbor had a little nitrous habit. It was unnerving. I felt so bad for that dude's brain cells. (Those were all done by a single person in one night. Could see/hear it before he tossed all the evidence out the window.)
posted by heyho at 3:37 PM on September 24, 2018

My downstairs neighbors' kitchen vented into our bathroom. Every weekend they made bacon and it smelled AMAZING.

I currently have a next door neighbor in his 30s or 40s, dad of several kids. He sings very loudly in the mornings, to no discernible tune, and I don't understand the words because they're in Spanish. It is loud enough that we hear him next door even in the winter. When we first moved here I found it annoying but now it is endearing and I like his singing in the morning.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:31 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

GenjiandProust's mention of a horse reminded me of a story my pal Dan tells. It was a way long time ago in small town Texas before air conditioning, and he always slept with his windows open. There was a horse in the backyard next door who found a small tree on the fenceline about 3 feet from Dan's window. That horse commenced to start gnawing on that tree every night until he gnawed it completely to the ground. No amount of hissed complaining to the horse to leave off and go away had any effect. Dan said it was a good thing it was summer and school was out because he didn't get much sleep—that chomping was loud, and incessant,
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:43 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I like all these stories about how you get used to/ attached to sounds from your neighbors. I'm on the third floor(top) of my building with neighbors on only one side and giant pecan trees behind me... looking out of my window on that side i see tree branches and sky. It's nice.

I only hear next door noises when they are washing clothes. People below me moved out so we'll see who moves in.

I do remember one apartment where the people above us either had 10 insomniac kids or ran a 24 hour daycare.
posted by emjaybee at 10:23 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: Jeez - where to start.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:49 AM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

My upstairs neighbours, years ago, were a couple of university students who lined their windowsills with one empty can or bottle of each kind of beer they'd drank. They were also stoners who would watch The Muppet Show on DVD/tape late at night into the small hours of the morning. The same bit, over and over. Often, at five in the morning, I'd wake up to "Mahna mahna. Do doo, do doo doo" coming from the ceiling faintly right at the edge of my hearing.
posted by MarchHare at 5:36 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Had a neighbor for years who taught violin. Some of her students were pretty good.

On a warm spring evening, the struggling-but-heartfelt strains of a lovely tune gently wafting from her windows vastly improved the whole neighborhood.

She moved a few years back. I still miss her.
posted by kinnakeet at 2:28 AM on September 26, 2018 [2 favorites]