What have been your experiences with neighbours and noise?

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If there are neighbours, there will be noise and nuisance. That applies to their view of me as well.

Three specific cases from my files - I could go on forever.

Los Angeles, studentland. EVERY night parties throbbing from blocks away. People talking while using the washing machinde just outside my window at 2:00 AM. Active sexual encounters in the room above me. A party next door trying to catch and get back inside the somewhat substance overloaded girl who [said the shouts] was running around the courtyard nude. No, I did not go look.

Reaction - suffer and live with it, what power had I?

London: the guy in the next flat entertaining with LOUD music, starting AFTER I was half asleep. Paid NO attention when I politely asked him to tone it down.

Reaction - polite confrontation got nowhere. So - I would wait until morning - he is trying to sleep off the night before. I blasted the wall with recordings of songs from a bad children's play at top volume. He moved out.

Two years back - a small plane making loud circles flying low over head, on and on. Could not hear yourself think, he goes away - then comes back.

Reaction - called the police. After a while the authorities persuaded him to do his practice flights or whatever elsewhere.

So - that's about the range. Gritted teeth endurance, polite (maybe fruitless) remonstrance, creative revenge, appeal to the authorities. Nothing GUARANTEED to work.

Speaking of stench, about a decade or so ago a couple moved in in 1st floor with a kid. Not long after they had another one. As long as their sons were in diaper age, the staris stunk to high heaven. At the worst I just had to run up and down trying to not breathe in my nose at all. No-one else were new in the stairs at the time. The stench lasted while their kids were in diaper age, it was never there before and it never returned. Presumably they were lousy at throwing the diapers without sufficient packaging around it. There have been 7 other babies living here without the stairs stinking, so heavens know how these people managed it.

They were rather nuts; they took the main fuse from another couple who lived here because they thought their music was too loud. They didn't even complain first, the husband just took it. They guy who lived there saw him hurrying the stairs back to their apartment after all electronics died in their flat. (The fuses in the stairs all have the same key so anyone who lives there can get into the fuse box.) They had to throw away a lot of food afterwards, and buy a new main fuse from the electricity company, the only place to get a main fuse.
When the couple confronted him he denied it. They said that speaking of noise their kids were screaming and crying a lot. He denied that as well, which is partly BS. They weren't very screamish, but once they started, they went on for a long time.

There were a couple on 3rd floor some years ago who were mostly quiet and nice, but a few times they had parties and whenever they did, the music could keep a large portion of the neighbourhood 'entertained'. In addition there was loud talking during and after the music, and loud laughing, and from 1 to 4 in the morning people would run up and down tha stairs, rattling the railings all the way and making incredible noise.
At one time several of the guys (in their 20's) stood outside the small garden in 1st floor and urinated on their bushes, while they were laughing, and someone on the veranda on 3rd floor took a picture. Lovely, eh?

Last edited by Skilpadde on 04 Sep 2010, 2:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I tend to give people a bit of allowance.... if they are normally really quite and not bothersome, if they have the rare, occasionally party, I tolerate it. If it is a common occurrence, thats when I start having problems and issues with them.

My mom always held grudges for every little thing and it has literally destroyed her life and really impacted other people in her life. I don't want to end up like that.

I'm very lucky to have good neighbours at home, but while we were on holiday the idiots a few villas down kept playing the same s**ty compilations CD over and over, it drove the whole family mad but no one bothered to do anything about it!

If it was up to me, I'd have gone up to the guy and told him to turn his s**t off or buy some headphones, and if that didn't work I'd go the police and get them to deal with it.

i often have trouble with neighbors. i forget they don't always know or consider what annoys me. and i'm terrible at bringing up issues without seeming confrontational.

plus i am annoyed easily - for example right now i can smell lighter fluid from someone's barbecue, and i am going to have to leave my apartment for awhile it is so difficult for me to tolerate.

As I dislike noises I'm not making, I try to limit the number of potentially offensive neighbors. This generally means living in a house, although I realize not everyone has this option. If choosing an apartment, I'd look for one in a top floor outside corner, so as to limit myself to sharing a party wall with just one neighborhood. I'd be more comfortable if their bedroom(s) were next to my living room and my bedroom were on the outside wall. I'm bothered that carpeting has fallen out of favor in apartment and condo buildings--much quieter.

Inside my dwelling I create white noise. Fans are everywhere, something I can generally get away with in Florida. When and where I can't, a radio tuned to the static between stations serves as a (lesser) substitute. Bubbling aquariums (with or without fish) are useful, too. Music, in my opinion, no more covers noise than aerosol sprays cover odor.

I particularly dislike barking, since it's almost impossible to drown out. Virtually all disagreements with neighbors have involved barking dogs. Pushed to extreme measures, I will establish a policy of answering the animal back in a loud and annoying voice. This generally gets a reaction, not always good. The best outcome I can expect is that I get quiet along with the label of neighborhood nutcase. But at least I can hear myself think.

Would it surprise you to learn I live alone?

This is a huge post. Excuse any errors, I haven't had time to check for them.

I used to have an upstairs neighbour who would play music until 5am or later, intentionally setting the volume so high that it would shake the building, and would be louder in my living room than it would be if I was playing the same music too loud myself. I'm also not one to try and dictate to others what they do in their own home, but when they're affecting things outside of their own home I think a line should be drawn, especially during times which have been decided upon by consensus as times for sleeping.

If a person is prevented from getting enough sleep, their work will suffer, and in turn their ability to provide themselves with a decent quality of life will suffer even more. I don't think people should necessarily be arrested for making a noise, but at the same time I don't think this kind of thing is taken as seriously as it should be. It can completely wreck people's lives, even NT people, nevermind those with ASD who can be even more drastically affected.

Do you find that this has an effect on your own ability to work or perform other activities?



Are these things you have personal experience of dealing with? If so, do you care to expand on these experiences? Your complaints, the outcome/process of having them dealt with, the consequences for the neighbours etc? You say you don't usually belive in "the system" but speak as though you have had reason in the past to place more faith in it.



How did the ultimatum you gave your landlord work out? Were they threatened by the idea of losing your rent money or confident that they could just replace you, in the same way they'd replace the noisy people? Usually they are supposed to be bound by their agreement to deal with things like that, but in my experience things aren't always the same in reality as they are on paper. Sometimes I wonder what the most influential factors are in the mind of a landlord.

I assume that since the police ended up involved, things didn't go as smoothly as you and your wife would have liked. What were the circumstances surrounding the arrest, and the results of your neighour's encounter with the law? If you don't mind telling the story, of course.



I think I'd prefer to have vacuuming 12 hours a day rather than hearing the Britney cd at all. How could you possibly have survived hearing that for weeks at a time without drilling out your own ears?



Where is this fantasyland you speak of? I hope you intend to share the secret of how you managed to find such a place. Won the lottery? Found compromising pictures of Bill Gates? Joined a group of conspiring freemasons? Sold your immortal soul to science?



You come across as another person who has had experience in dealing with these things through legal action etc. If so, do you care to share your experiences, the problems and the outcomes of your attempts at resolving them? How has it all affected your quality of life, if at all?



Aha, sex is an extremely annoying thing to have to listen to. It's one of those things which are also very awkward to complain about, or to even decide whether or not you should complain at all. I wonder if any of the laws even cover such noise, and exactly what kind of "breech" it would be classed as.



I would kill to live in a rural area... And then kill again after finding it infested with bass-thumping rappers!

It sounds like it doesn't happen too frequently, but what kind of family things are we talking about here, what kind of noise?



I've long dreamed of living in an area full of seniors but unfortunately most of the communities I've looked at don't welcome people who are below a certain age. Which, I suppose, is hardly surprising, otherwise they wouldn't be senior communities. Hmph.

Kids mindlessly screaming and making ridiculous noises outside is also extremely annoying. It's strange that nothing is taught in school about noise pollution or respecting the rights of others to enjoy peaceful silence. Perhaps if such things were taught, it would make a difference, but then again, perhaps not.



It would be great if there were laws governing the level of obedience which a dog must be trained to have, with excessive barking being forbidden, but at the same time it would be unfair for the lesser trained dogs to be put in shelters or whatever simply because of their lazy and apathetic owners, or the dog's inability to learn. The rights of people to live peacefully should probably outweigh the rights of dogs to bark though.

I never knew that fireworks were illegal in some countries. That's actually quite interesting. Do you know which countries these are, or know anything about any of their other noise laws which may differ from the norm? I hadn't imagined that such places existed yet. Perhaps this shows that it might be possible to have things change a little in regard to other commonly accepted noise nuiscances too.



Interesting to hear something from the other side of the wall, so to speak. It sounds like all their efforts to cause you trouble failed, if the council called them mad, but did they ever actually succeed in having any kind of action taken against you? Did you ever try to have any action taken against them for their own antisocial harrassment?

It does make me wonder if the council is lenient with everyone though, or only with the people who genuinely aren't doing anything, such as yourself. Did they make any suggestions on dealing with him or were they just as quick to shrug off his actions as unimportant too? Bringing someone close to a nervous breakdown hardly seems like a small or insignificant nuiscance.

Personally I have also had someone contact the authorities about me when I hadn't done anything at all, and the authorities took their side, confiscating certain power tools which had never even been used, after being told lies about how I had been using them in the middle of the night. I can only assume that the tools were seen by the neighbours while I was moving in, and they just decided to pretend that I had been using them. There was no noise team from the council, no evidence, no nothing, and my property was just taken away to be destroyed.

I believe this was because in the eyes of the neurotypical police I was just "weird", so naturally they took the word of the middle-aged married couple next door over the word of myself, without questioning it for even a moment. Disgusting.



By locking it over and over I assume you mean by pressing the button on one of those little keychains that also activates the alarm and makes an obnoxious bleep every time. When someone sits doing that repeatedly it's no surprise that they're on drugs. Did you (or someone else concerned about noise) have any involvement in their arrest, or was it just a case of stupid people eventually getting caught doing stupid things?

As for the family... I have experienced the same thing. Family members intentionally singing to cause problems for me in full knowledge that it causes an unavoidable meltdown, making me want to rip my guts out just to get their voice out of my body. It really is abuse but apparently until NTs can be shown what it feels like it will be considered unimportant by the authorities, and a perfectly acceptable form of torture.

It's funny how people always talk about the importance of family and the ability of family members to rely on each other, but for some reason that often doesn't apply to autistic people who just want someone to stop making excruciatingly painful noises.



Yeeesh Thanks for writing such a detailed report. Assuming you didn't arrange the old lady's demise, have you ever tried to take any steps to have all of this dealt with? It sounds like you're just gritting your teeth and getting on with it. If you haven't tried to take any action, or have and failed, why is that? You seem to be at your wit's end, and apparently there would be no love lost if you were to get a third party's assistance.

Has it affected your life in any major way, as in interfering with your ability to pursue any of your life's goals etc?



While there probably isn't much you can do about the fast food place or the ambulances, you should probably keep trying to get the police/property manager to acknowledge the noise problems. In what ways have you tried to contact them, that they didn't respond to? Letters or something? Perhaps there is a more direct approach you can try, which doesn't give them room to simply not respond?

Ordinary sex noises like a banging squeaking bed are annoying enough, I can't even imagine putting up with a BDSM rampage complete with screaming, nor do I want to. It must be maddening.

And I'm sorry but I almost cracked up at "the homeless have taken up the habit of playing recorders when they are not dumpster diving"... Wow! It's something right out of an acid-trip-inspired modern fairytale, bizarre garbage gnomes whistling while they work.



Haha, calling the police works against aircraft? Who would have thought? Although it seems like you would probably have had grounds to alert them to flying drugged-up naked partygirl too. What rendered you powerless there?

I also did not expect that fighting fire with fire, or music with music, or music with fire, was often known to work. It seems as though such confrontational and obnoxious people who intentionally play music at inappropriate times would generally just play their music even louder if you tried to play them at their own game. Maybe you just got lucky? Or maybe that kids' play was just really bad?

You say you could go on forever, I would be interested in hearing more tales. You have apparently lived in several places too. Care to make any comparisons between the world's worst neighbours from an ASD perspective?



Well that's.... Repulsive.

A crappy stairwell... I would have complained about that for sure. If not only for the smell itself, for the health of the babies. If people can't dispose of crap properly, I worry about their level of hygiene in general. Actually I'm lying, it would be purely for the smell! Hopefully it didn't reach the inside of the apartments.

You have had an extensive history of bad experiences with bad neighbours!



Another one who speaks as though they've had some experience with troublesome neighbours. Do you care to elaborate on what your problems or issues have been, and how you've attempted to resolve them? The results etc?

I feel a similar way in regard to making allowances but it is not easy. I recently moved into a new flat, and the woman upstairs is mostly quiet, out of the house for most of the day and straight to bed when she gets back in. It's practically paradise compared to my previous homes, the silence is almost euphoric during the day, even living close to a railway line. The woman upstairs hasn't played any music yet at all and her tv, on the rare occasion that it's on, is on low volume. But a couple of times a week she has a guest or two and giggles on through the night into the early hours of the morning. Just giggling, incessant giggling. It really tries my patience even though I know she is a much better neighbour than the previous neighbours I have had.

It's things like this which make ASD very frustrating at times. Knowing that what a person is doing is not unacceptable or unreasonable, but at the same time being almost enraged by it, having to try extremely hard not to "lose it" over things other people don't even noltice.



How come you didn't take any action yourself when no one else was willing to? Do you believe that was because of your "disorder"? You make it sound like it was a pretty big deal at the time so it makes me wonder why you'd "suffer in silence", so to speak.

That's interesting though, makes me think. I hadn't even thought about neighbours on vacation. I wonder how authorities respond to things like that, and whether or not they go easy on them, knowing that they won't be around for long, or if perhaps they're even under pressure to turn a blind eye so as not to tar the image of theie country's tourist industry, like "You can't have fun here, go elsewhere" or something. At the same time though, by ignoring it, they could give the message "you can't have peace here, go elsewhere"... I wonder which they consider more important.



It is things like this which make me think that perhaps new laws should be introduced to protect people with autistic disorders etc, from things which may not cause any harm to NTs, but which completely ruin autistic people's quality of life. Stuff like being forced out of your home because you're unable to tolerate certain things, just seems unacceptable.

It is fine for people to say that those with AS are being unreasonablly demanding, but those people don't have to experience what it's actually like. If no one in the world knew what being punched in the face felt like, it seems like the first person to get punched in the face would have a hard time making other people understand why it was a bad thing and should be prevented from happening. It's the same with those with AS. They experience extreme discomfort which ordinary people have never experienced themselves, so it's not a real problem as far as they're concerned, and is allowed to continue without restriction.

Sure, everyone should have freedom to enjoy doing what they like in their own home, but that applies to autistic people too. Maybe it seems crazy, but I find it unreasonable that the law should not support autistic people in living peaceful lives, whether their demands seem unreasonable or not. There was a time when it was unreasonable to demand that the law protect you from being punched in the face too, but over time most people got used to not being allowed to do that whenever they felt like it.

I don't think someone's desire to have a BBQ at their own home is more important than an autistic person's desire to be in their own home, whether the BBQ'ers think that's unfair or not. If they're truly concerned about fairness they shouldn't want to do something they know will drive someone out of their home in the first place... Unless they're willing to have a gas pumped into their homes which is just as offensive to NTs as lighter fluid is to katzefrau?



I currently live in a ground floor apartment and don't have the option to live in a house, but I never stop working on it. Every creak of my neighbour's uncarpeted wooden floor serves as hi-octane rocket fuel propelling me toward that undying ambition.

When I eventually get there, if there still turns out to be noise, the label of neighbourhood nutcase is likely to be a compliment in comparison to the title I will earn myself. Barking dogs will go missing.

Well, maybe not missing... Maybe that's too much. How about... Partially missing?

That's probably even worse. Either way I agree that music doesn't cover up anything. It's like trying to cover up the disappearance of a dog by replacing it with a cuddly toy covered in mysterious dried crusty red stuff... I have never really had much success with fans either, and knowing my luck with neighbours, barking at a dog would get me taken to a vet and put to sleep. I'm not quite sure how you manage to avoid a similar fate.

At the begging of the summer they had a family reunion thing & wer celebrating some graduations. They had a microphone & they wer doing really horrible karaoke as well; it kind of reminded me of the movie Madea's Family Reunion. I haven't head much noise from em sense thou. I don't think any of the kids are still living there.
I sometimes hear music, talking/yelling ect from my neighbors on the other side to but they aren't as close. A couple times I went outside at nite & I heard a girl having sex to
When my parents bought this property like 30 years ago; it was supposed to be a corner lot but the plans changed after the lot on the other side was sold. Some rich guy bought out the land behind us & behind our neighbors & he keeps horses on it. He also got that piece of property between us & the neighbors where it was going to be a street & he fenced it off but he doesn't keep horses on it or do much of anything with it except let the grass grow & put a used car on it to sell every year. They are parked so close to the road that it's hard for us & our neighbors to see when pulling out the driveway. Us & our neighbors spoke to the police about it before but there's not anything they can do cuz the front tires wer more than so many inches from the road so it's technically legal. He doesn't have a car there rite now but he has a big campaign sign there for some senator. It's an obstruction as well. He puts $h!t like that there because we live in a major highway. I forgot to mention this in my other post because I do NOT consider him a neighbor; his house is in a subdivision

I'm not sensitive to sounds, maybe I'm just used, because I live close to railway station, bus station and big road. My neighbours aren't close and when I was a kid and I had scream attacks, they didn't hear them. Since 3 years I have new neighbours (couple with teenage daughter), pretty close and they were loud, now they're more calm. Father is nervous and he sometimes opens his window and shouts that our dog is too loud (she isn't).

They argued many times and when they did this, I got laughing attack. It was so funny to me! Now they argue very rarely.

Last edited by Valoyossa on 09 Sep 2010, 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tonight there was a group of people yelling and laughing so loud by the mini golf area in our apartments. They would not STFU and they were really loud with no care in the world. They didn't stop until 1am until finally someone yelled at them to keep the noise down. I thought "that dude is the hero of my night. I sure as hell wasn't gonna tell those people anything."

I think what they did is intolerable. Couldn't sleep because they were really that loud.

I have never used legal action, and I think that would only lead into a long-running dispute without resolving the problem. The police, local authority and noise regulators all have departments that act on public complaints. Complaints do work if they are specific, fall directly within the relevant law and are not anonymous. We also have community police officers who act as intermediaries with persistent antisocial noise, to prevent violence between neighbours.

I have stopped noisy equipment being installed by local businesses (and in one case had it removed after it was installed), because they did not have planning approval. I also did get all the forms for a planning complaint about a neighbour doing building at all hours of the day and night, but he became more reasonable about the night-time noise as soon as he realized that the council takes the case to court and not me, the fines are quite big and the project would stop completely until the judgement.

Let's just say that my experience has been one of repeatedly ending up traumatised because of neighbours, no matter when, no matter where I have lived, as my experiences have repeatedly been beyond simply noise.

Ah yes... Scotland...

I think that they had a long history of being completely intolerant of other people and the authorities were well aware of the fact they were actually the nuisance. I heard on the grapevine that the reason they were given this house by the council was to get them out of the block of flats they lived in because the council were sick of getting complaints from them and complaints from others about them constantly complaining. They called out the police because their neighbours on the other side were playing football in their garden and making too much noise. I don't know what they told the police but it can't have been the truth because then they wouldn't have come, you could tell from the pissed off expressions on their faces. They never got anywhere with any of their complaints and eventually they just moved away so I guess they're out there complaining about someone else now.

Thankfully at the moment, I live in a bungalow for up to 4 people with Asperger syndrome so I don't really get too much noise here. In the past though...

-My mum was shouted at because I was 'crying too loudly'. I was about 2 years old and was ill at the time...

-A new neighbour moved in and started to play booming bass music at all hours. He then decided to shoot fireworks right next to his back door, endangering his and our property.

-we moved into a new house (I'll moan about those in a moment!) on a new housing estate. The neighbour played music well into the night and they regularly got p****d and shouted swear words and other very innapropriate things (my brother was only 9 at the time).

-I got my revenge by playing loud(er) music, putting the CD on repeat then going out on my bike for a LOOOOOONG ride. (not when parents were at home!)

-The neighbour deliberately played bass music from his car as he knew it annoyed me. When I confronted him, he called me a spoilt little c-word then told my Mum that I threw rocks at his windows... (eh?) I was in trouble.

-The same neighbour shouted at me for jumping across his miniscule British lawn while delivering papers. I stopped delivering to him.

-After he had a baby, him and his schizo wife were ALWAYS coming over and complaining that I was making too much noise. I have Tourette syndrome so keeping quiet isn't always easy for me. He shouted at my mum during a particularly bad episode and called her a f*****g b***h.

Then we moved away and lived next door to a kind, reclusive elderly lady. The worst she ever did was vacuum once a week

MY RANT ABOUT MODERN UK HOUSES:

THEY ARE MADE OUT OF KLEENEX AND SPIT!! ! They build them all too closely together (even the 'posh' ones) so you have no privacy whatsoever. As for the 'poor people' housing (which I was in) they squished loads of 1/2 bedroom houses into a terrace with 2 3 bedrooms on each end. That was a good idea (sarc.). You can hear the noise from your next door neighbour's next door neighbour... That's the worst bit...

I am sooo going to get a good job so I can afford a detached house/bungalow in a village somewhere!

I have hypersensitivity to certain noises - I live in flats which have apparently been soundproofed between each apartment, but not above or below or out to the corridor. People are not that noisy and for the most part I don't blame them, nor can I really complain, but would prefer to hear nothing at all - mainly I blame the shoddy costcutting workmanship in these supposedly 'luxury' new flats. Most nights I am woken up by people getting back late (which they have every right to do), but it means I never get an uninterrupted night's sleep and am almost always tired. The doors are noisy even when closed quietly and the water pipes make a huge racket. I can even hear people using the toilet (and I don't mean just flushing it). However, it is the human noise that bothers me most - TV/music/talking etc. I could put up with low level traffic fairly well. These noises have always bothered me - I remember telling my parents to turn down the TV because I couldn't sleep when I was a child, and slamming their bedroom door to get my father to stop snoring.

There is the occasional burst of loud music - if it is during the day I can't really complain because I occasionally practise the violin - I am careful to do it only early in the evening for 30 minutes, 3-4 days per week and it is my only bit of noise which isn't directly related to essential living activities, but because of my sensitivity to other people's noises I am constantly worried about bothering them, or getting noise retaliation, which makes it much more effort to practice and I don't improve as I want to. Once there was loud music late at night and I did complain and it was stopped, so they are generally considerate neighbours once you explain the situation, but most of the time the noise is not unreasonable so I wouldn't want to force people to stop anyway.

My job tires me out, but I find nowadays that I dread coming home in case it might be noisy - it just creates a constant low level of stress that means I can never relax in my own home. A lot of the sounds I hear are practically subaudible to anyone else, but it still winds me up. If I am feeling really stressed I start thinking I can hear music/talking when I am doing something like running water or have the oven fan on - as soon as I stop the water/oven there is no sound, but my brain tricks me into thinking there is annoying subaudible sound under the noise I am making. I sleep with earplugs, but this does hurt my ears and still get woken up. I often have bizarre dreams where I wake up in bed and go out my flat and shout at my neighbours - I am fairly sure they are dreams (some have reassuringly bizarre qualities), but some are so lifelike I can't be entirely certain I haven't done that. One night I had six in a row - constantly rewaking into another dream of getting out of bed and going into the corridor.

I am considering moving to a terrace house in the spring (can't afford a detached and wouldn't want more than 1-2 bedrooms anyway), but that won't necessarily eliminate problems. When I lived in France I heard nothing more than the odd muffled thud from my neighbours (all 5 directions) - all we need is good soundproofing rules for all new houses/flats and then we wouldn't get these problems. Would probably save loads in health costs/lost productivity due to tiredness too. I'm sure it isn't just me who is woken up if someone slams the door (as happens occasionally). I am aware that it could be A LOT worse, and I am relatively lucky - if it was worse I would almost certainly either end up killing someone or going completely mad.