My neighbor is insane

L

LAktownhorn

250+ Posts
for a few months now, my neighbor has been giving me the evil eye. and no it's not my imagination. she always just stops what she is doing and stares me down. recently i was walking to my car in the parking garage and she blocked my path to my car with her mustang and stared at me from her car. her window was down and i said "what're you looking at?!" and she then pulled into her spot. and the look she gives isn't with some quaint expression. it's like she is about to kill me. it's very uncomfortable. she's an old woman probably in her late 50's who lives with her son who i think is a 40 yr old virgin type.

she also does the same to my roommate. he has a dog that he always takes out, and she's always watching from a balcony. there are many more anecdotes with her crazy staring behavior. the other day it rose to a new level when i was outside waiting for a ride, and she came up within 10 feet of me, took a picture, and ran off.

my roommate spoke to her this morning. after months of this going on. he said she was very angry at first and said that my roommate and i are stalking her and that we run some kind of illegal business out of our apt. she said we constantly make noise at all hours of the night and that she used to live in a mansion with a german shepherd and a chow. of course all her accusations about us are completely untrue. she said she was going to talk to her lawyer today about us. he said as the conversation continued that she calmed down and was quite nice.

i'm really scared this woman will flip out one day and shoot me like junior did to tony on the sopranos. i've never been mean to her at all and obviously she suffers from some paranoid disorder. what should i do?
 
you need to wait for her one day and where you see her just mess with her. Say something like, "I know you know." and just walk off.
 
Throw a coke on her
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You're afraid of a crazy 50-year old woman? C''mon man, not every crazy person goes killing.
 
She's just angry because you're destroying her world by refusing to begin sentences with capital letters.
 
Same thing happened to me when i moved to corpus except it was multiple neighbors. I just stared back w/ equal intensity. After about 3 months of this, a guy down the road (a ciy cop) came over to visit me asking to borrow a screwdriver (
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) We walk into my garage and he starts nosing around my homebrewing rig. He starts asking all of these questions and wipes the bottom of a couple pieces of galssware and sniffs it. I then explain the whole homebrewing thing to him and soon after he heads home w/ the screwdriver.

Months later, I got to know the cop pretty well and one night after a couple of homebrews he let me know the screwdriver visit was due to the fact several neighbors had reported to him I was cooking meth in my garage. I know to the ignorant, propane burners and pyrex glassware could only mean one thing, but hell I wasnt hiding it. The garage was wide open when i brewed.
 
have you tried talking to her son? He might be able to give more insight to her mental state.

I'd be worried... if she truly believes you're stalking her, she could turn violent.
 
I don't recommend this, it just seems sorta wrong. But I have seen this sort of thing used before. A tactic to deal with the paranoid is to direct their paranoia. Gossip about whoever is the neighbor on the other side. Be on "their team" against those "out to get them" . Not too fair to whoever you manage to direct their paranoia to. But it works. It is probably best to find out some more unattainable target they are paranoid against. The United Nations or the One World Government. Make them see you as a fellow defender against those "bad guys". The neighbor on the other side will appreciate it.
 
No don't **** with her head. Maybe she does have some mental health issues. As someone else said, talk to her son maybe even her without getting angry. If she were to have have paranoid thoughts like you describe, then to her it seems real. The chance of someone just because they have these issues attacking you are pretty slim. So yeah in the first instance try to have a rational chat with her son (without insulting his Mum).
 
Listening to NPR today, I learned paranoia is one sign of Alzheimer's.In reply to:
 
the comment about the sopranos was more of an exaggeration than anything. but i don't think some of you guys realize what its like to always be wary of some crazy neighbor staring at you like she's going to kill you. i'm not scared of her, its just extremely uncomfortable, and i don't know why i have to sit through it every day of my life while i live here. i own the condo i live in, she rents. all i can do now is ignore her.

i thought about trying to be on her side and blame some other person, but it just seems sort of crazy. and if it grew and i kept having to talk and lie about it with her everytime i saw her it would get really tiresome. oh and sorry about not using caps but i don't really give a ****.

a new thing she does now is watch us from the video intercom. i know its her b/c i can her hear voice. so everytime i come through the front door of the building i know that she is watching me. yeah yeah yeah no big deal, but it gets really ******* old.

and no she's not a cougar. she's very short, fat and unattractive. next time i see her son i will definitely talk to him. and yeah i'm not going to be an *******, i'll talk to him as sensitively as i can. i'm sure he's gone through this before. another thing she mentioned to my roommate is that she gets so scared at night that she makes her son watch tv in her bedroom with her all night.
 
Yeah you see that if she is suffering from some kind of disorder with paranoid and delusional thoughts, to her it will be fuggin scary and very distressful. I totally understand that it would make you feel uncomfortable and I am not in anyway discounting your feelings, but obviously she has some mental issues and if that is true about her son having to stay in her room watching TV, can you imagine how distressed the woman must be?

Understand that I have a lot first hand experience with things like this. I just think that here in the UK there is probably a lot more support for the mentally ill.
 
Agree with the advice to tactfully approach the woman's son. Paranoia is a symptom of many mental conditions. She could have schizophrenia or severe depression or who knows what else. Most of these people do not act out violently, but a few do, so I would be careful about fueling a fire.
You certainly should not direct her paranoia onto some other neighbor-that is sick.
 
if you live in a few different apartments over the years, you're bound to get someone like that. This sounds standard to me, who hasn't had a bi-polar/schitzo neighbor before? Once you confirm they're bat **** crazy, it stops being as "weird".

Saying that, I'm glad I don't live in an apartment anymore b/c there are some ****** up people in this world and you never know who you're neighbor will be.
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if I am not mistaken (and I could be confusing texas and florida law) if she feels threatened by a stalker can she not legally use deadly force against the threat?
 
maybe she is insane and needs taken care of, hence why she is living with her son. (not her deadbeat son living with her as you might of assumed).
 
About 1 in 125 people suffer from schizophrenia. Interestingly, 1 in 25 cap metro bus riders in Austin are hearing voices right now.
 
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