We live on the top floor with our son. We are usually homebodies and are always at home. We never have anybody over except for my son's cousins for sleepovers and only happens several months in between they have one. Our downstairs neighbor is a certified crazy lady. She came up to our door and in a loud voice accused me of trying to ruin her whole life. She said we were too noisy and we need to keep it down and she's been holding it in for months. I told her I was sorry she felt that way and I would work on it. I had a headache and I am not confrontational and a fight with this woman was not happening. The only thing that happened that was loud was my son falling over on his chair. Happened once that morning. She next came up and talked to my husband to complain about rolling noises she kept hearing. It was my son playing with a suitcase. She as pleasant to my husband and talked to him for twenty minutes. Talked about life and her kids. Also sneaked in that our toilet seat was loud and she could hear it downstairs. My husband said he had no idea and would try to remember. So we did. My son I cannot account for as he forgets all the time but he is reminded when I see or hear him in the bathroom. We have always been careful with our son making too much noise. He cannot run in hallways. No stomping or heavy footfalls, no screaming or yelling. No slamming of doors. No loud tv sounds. We even watch to make sure we put on our jeans carefully so our foot doesn't fall too loudly when it comes down. Anyway, she came up a third time during the day to complain to me. Apparently, we were too loud again. Only thing I was doing was working on dough on our dining table to make into Christmas ornaments. I wasn't even slapping it onto the table. Just kneading it a lot. No, hey um you're making too much noise again. Immediate screaming, yelling, cursing, and accused me also of rearranging furniture all the time. She threatened to call the cops on me. I told her to go ahead and do it. Later on, when I headed out, I could hear her clearly talking to the downstairs neighbor that she didn't know where I came from and what language I spoke to which I interrupted and said I spoke English very well and understand a lot of the language. She probably realized I had heard her and made an excuse that she was referring to me being psycho and that's why she said I didn't know anything. Oh, I am Asian by the way, full on Asian, immigrant, moved here permanently because my husband lives here. He is white by the way. I don't understand how she can call me psycho when our only interaction was 10 minutes from the 1st time she complained. She also talked to my husband pleasantly which surprised me and kinda made me a little mad that she was nice to him and not to me. I am home all the time, my husband works all day. So I honestly think she knows who she is going to talk to at certain times of the day. Daytime me, nighttime and weekends potentially my husband. We've lived in the same apartment for almost four years now. And while it might not be fun to be downstairs, her being so confrontational and being choosy with who to be that way with, has been no laugh trip either. We are being accommodating to her situation and we do not have any quarrels with other neighbors. If she can be nicer with her requests, with me not just my husband, then we would be more than happy to be more accommodating.

I thought I would give an update. Since our chat with the neighbor in November, there haven't been any more visits from the police. We're pretty sure that he can't hear the drums anymore, because even on the weekends when we are pretty sure he is home he hasn't called the cops. There's even been one or two occassions where he and my husband have had occassion to chat about something else. Things are much more peaceful, and I'm no longer fearful every time I hear the neighbor close his door or see him outside. The more time that goes by the less and less I believe the neighbor's story about how the cops and the apartment manager all told him that they were going to tell my husband to stop playing the drums. I'm just not buying it. It doesn't make sense that they would tell him that and then not put it in their reports. I only believed it when he first told us cuz he sounded sincere. Now I'm thinking he's just a very skilled liar. Based on his claim that the manager had told him she was going to evict all of us if we didn't settle things, and a few posts from property owners here and on other boards that they wouldn't renew a lease with a tenant that had a lot of complaints against them, I got worried that we wouldn't be offered a renewal. I didn't want to accuse the manager of telling us one thing and the neighbor something else, and I didn't want to bring up his accusation that she was going to evict all of us. But I wanted to make sure that we were going to be offered a renewal when our lease comes up in April. I had mentioned this to my husband, and just yesterday he had something else he wanted to talk to her about. So, while he was there he asked her if there was going to be any trouble with us renewing our lease after all of the trouble with the neighbor. She laughed, said if there was anyone she wasn't offering a renewal to it would be the neighbor, and asked my husband if he'd like to sign the new lease right then. I'm seriously doubting that she said anything to the neighbor about evicting us. So, given the evidence, or perhaps lack of evidence to substantiate the neighbor's claims, we're pretty confident that he's lying his head off. I figure that he realized that he wasn't going to be able to force hubby to quit the drums by calling the cops all the time, cuz they weren't on his side about it. He wasn't going to be able to get the manager to tell us to stop cuz she wasn't on his side either. Maybe he was even told by the cops that if he kept calling them they might write him a ticket for wasting their time after they had told him it was fine. So he tried an approach he hadn't tried before, he tried being nice. And it worked. So there's a tip for people with problem neighbors....if being nice doesn't work at first, try being an a-hole for a while. Then when you're nice again it'll be such a relief to your neighbor they'll be happy to listen. Now, why he felt he had to lie and tell us that the cops were telling him something different than they were telling us, I don't know. I think he was counting on us not having the police reports, or maybe that they wouldn't be as detailed as they were. Oh well, I don't care. I will feel more comfortable when he's gone, but at least until then things should be much calmer.

You sound as miserable as we are, that I wrote in the previous post. I know they all suggested we call the police, but this guy is a maniac, the management knows and we have called the police, but unless the wife does something about her husband, we can't press charges. I just wanted to say that I sympathize with you regarding unrelenting noise and we too have pondered about just forgoing our deposit and getting the heck out of here. We are planning on buying a house and it is in the works so once you know an end is in sight, the noise seems to not be so annoying. We deal with the same things, it seems that everything these people pick up, they drop, our ceiling fans shake, our pictures get all crooked from all the stomping, banging and they too don't know how to just close a front door, they must slam it as hard as possible and then thunder up the stairs. I never understood why people with kids would even think to live upstairs, knowing that they obviously are going to have a hard time respecting people below, but that is just me thinking that people care.......lol Best of luck to you, and yes, I would probably pack up, tell my friend I was sorry but I cannot live this way and chuck the security. I don't know what state you are in but in my state if you have made reasonable attempts to settle problems in an apt and to no avail, management cannot sue you for the remainder of the lease. Best wishes, angel

This is what I would do. Get to know the neighbors you suspect of complaining about you. Invite them down for coffee. Bring them donuts on Saturday morning. Do something to get them to know and like you. People are less likely to complain about people they like. I'm not surprised that people's first thought is intentional harassment, need to get a lawyer, going to sue, etc. Most things can be resolved by just talking about the issue. Then, if that doesn't work, then pursue other means. People always to go straight to the "They're harassing me and I'm going to sue." The court system is clogged with these types of complaints that can be resolved by other means. And "Old folks have nothing better to do than stir up trouble" - really? What a broad generalization. You and I must know different "old folks." Stating that "Old folks have nothing better to do than stir up trouble" is a broad generalization because you're implying something about a group of people. That's like saying "rich people are greedy," or "poor people are lazy." There are probably some greedy rich people and there are probably some lazy poor people. There probably are some old folks that have nothing better to do than stir up trouble. There are probably some old folks who don't have time to do that. And I'm not an "old person" - I'm 55. It just irritates me to see people painting a whole group of individuals with a broad brush.