We have an 83 or 84 year old neighbour who is said to have schizophrenia. I live with my mum and my brother and we live in the UK.
He has it in for my brother, accusing him of all kinds of weird things like “he’s stealing my water supply” “he’s blocking my TV” “he’s cloning my phone” “he’s going out into the garden at night making wolf noises to wake me up” (we have foxes visit our garden often, and you can hear them in the streets also).
Last year he started blasting his radio every day from 7:30 AM until 10:30 to 11:30 PM. Then, on most nights at 1:30 AM he’ll set off an extremely loud siren and then start screaming and occasionally throwing stuff at the wall/his room. My mum has cancer and she really does not need this.
I went over to his house about the noise, giving him the benefit of the doubt because he’s hearing impaired and has hearing aids, but then he explained to me he’s doing this on purpose to stop my brother from sleeping during the day because my brother is “going into the garden at night making these wolf noises to wake me up”.
We ended up calling the police on him last year, and shortly after that, he stopped and was silent. We had 8 months of silence and now he suddenly started again. The radio, the sirens and the screaming at 1:30 AM. We’ve done nothing to him.
My mum found out that the radio or TV (whatever it is) isn’t just in one room, it’s in EVERY room of his house (we live in a joined house). She found out that when it goes off, they all go off at once, so my mum concluded he has his radio/TV hooked up to some speaker system aimed at the walls. He knows my mum isn’t well and he’s been doing this for 2 weeks straight now. It’s so loud you can hear it over EVERYTHING, even games, films and music. I can hear it in the garden even. Constant low frequency noise that reverberates in every room in our house.
We did call the police Friday night and he hasn’t done the siren at 1:30 AM since but he wasn’t setting the siren off every night before that either. It’s keeping us all on edge. He doesn’t have a wife but his niece occasionally visits to tidy up his garden. We don’t have her contact info though. He apparently refuses to take his meds because he is the type of person to think he’s always right.
Sorry for the long post but I can’t sleep because I’m on edge about being woken up soon after going to sleep. Wasn’t sure where else to post this where I can get some quick replies.
I’m an American so I don’t understand why you haven’t just put a couple 30 round mags through the wall with your AR-15?
Do they still sell those novelty toy mics that broadcast and speakers pick it up?
I’m not telling you what to do with that, but there are many options.
The answer is contained in your post. You called the cops once, and it stopped for 8 months. You called them again and it has stopped (or just the siren?).
Call the cops. It’s working, and you owe him no more courtesy.
When the niece visits again, let her know what’s been going on. Maybe she can get him into a long term care facility.
The siren has been absent since last Friday night we called the cops. He wasn’t playing the siren every night before (referring to this episode of him starting up again 2 weeks ago) so we’re not sure if it partially worked or not, either way we’re recording everything so it’s all documented, and from the answers I got in this thread, we’ll be calling the cops every time he does this and getting in touch with the council too. We’ll try and catch his niece when she comes over next too
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Having dealt with similar situations before, that definitely sounds like schizophrenia. Unfortunately, short of just moving, there won’t be much that you can do directly, as ultimately getting any real solution for anybody involved is going to require professional intervention. You very likely won’t be able to convince him out of whatever incorrect beliefs he’s dug his heels into.
I would try seeing if he has any family you could reach out to. It’s likely not safe for him to be living alone anymore, and he needs somebody to help care for him. If not family, it may be worth putting in a call to whatever social services you have in your area.
Mental disorders like this generally don’t get better on their own. Especially not at his age. He needs help before he hurts himself or somebody else.
Exactly my thought. I had a next door neighbor develop schizophrenia, accuse my roommate and I of talking to him through the electrical sockets, and eventually attack us outside our door. He was taken away.
Keep a log of every time he does this. Also log every time you call police/council and include dates of all this when you next call.
It’s a good idea to send complaints by email too as there is a paper trail.
When you call the police/council log the time of the call and the name of the person you speak to and mention this in future calls, "I spoke to Josh 4 days ago and he advised…”
I believe the council still provides a noise meter to record loud prolonged noises.
Any time he is in your garden brandishing anything then call the police and advise them that he is on your property with a weapon.
Exactly this. A detailed log and evidence is important.
Also, talk to your other neighbours and see if they have, or would report it.
As it is, resident B has 2 noise complaints in 8 months from resident A. Without evidence of all the rest of it, this fits all sorts of scenarios. People make malicious complaints all the time and the authorities (rightfully) shouldn’t just take your word for it that there’s a long history.
Always have receipts
Kick his ass
This will resolve OPs problem by moving them to prison but their mother will still be in trouble.
Dudes probably got dementia or something
Start going out in the garden at night and making wolf noises. This sounds like an untreated mental health issue. If no one (council, cops, ambulance) is going to respond to the current levels, try to increase them. Consider calling in a welfare check rather than a noise complaint.
Shit advice.
Escalating the situation will not improve it.
Show him YouTube videos of the fox making the same noise? Hopefully you can convince him
If its actual radio, you could get a small bluetooth radio transmitter (you can buy them at best buy to connect your phone to car selecting the frequency, don’t know if you will find a strong enough one to broadcast to his place from bestbuy though) and then you can choose what sounds come out of his speakers, your favorite music, audiobook, porn, silence?
This might be illegal if you’re transmission is too strong, check local guidelines
oh boy would this trigger his delusions
“This is the voice of God. I am giving you a divine order to go seek mental health treatment at an intensive inpatient care facility immediately.”
(/s, obvs. don’t do that lol)
It also wouldn’t work, nor would it likely trigger his delusions any more than not doing it. My understanding is that fundamentally, schizophrenia is when someone’s running internal monologue gets cross wired and confused with external input. Your stray random thoughts gain as much, or more, validity as actual events that you can see, hear, taste, touch, etc. Sane people know they have imaginations and random BS thoughts, and we have the ability to distinguish those from reality… but even so, sane people can be disturbed by their own random thoughts too. Now imagine if you physically COULDN’T distinguish them, or even a subset of them.
Adding additional external inputs isn’t going to do jack shit when the problem is actually the internal inputs. Not unless your external inputs are really able to make him start thinking, and thus generate more internal thoughts.
A friend of mine had a similar issue. Also UK, West London a guy was blasting his car stereo every night in front of his garage, often till 8-9 pm, in some cases during the night while having some weird people over. It was very loud, walls vibrating, etc
Various neighbours called the police on him at least 5 times but nothing happened, he turned off the music for a while, ignored the cops and turned it back on after they left.
They told them they need hard proof to do anything, this would involve getting a regular recording of the music and they should measure the decibels and vibrations to prove how disturbing it is to start anything. It was just the most bizarre way of telling people the local council and police will do nothing. Who the fuck has this kind of equipment and knowledge to do this?
Needless to say nothing happened. My friend moved to another place because of work within 6 months.
I do hope in your case the local law enforcement will be more competent, I wish I could give you an actual advice instead of a story :(
I recommend moving some place with proper sound isolation between neighbors.
Or build a “room within a room” to insulate your own house, but its a very expensive retrofit
People don’t live in shared dwelling residences because they thought they’d really enjoy sharing walls…
Sharing walls shouldn’t be noticeable if the walls and floors are designed property
And yet every single apartment complex has paper-thin walls, because landlords want to maximize floor space instead of eating up square footage with thicker walls. Also, proper sound insulation costs big money. Like thousands of dollars per wall. Landlords building shitholes to rent don’t care if the tenants can hear each other fuck through the walls.
Sure. Fuck landlords. We need State housing and better regulations.
Some people can’t afford to just move, like if they are dealing with cancer, for example.
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Ok the only people that can help you are the council, noise complaints are the responsibility your local council unfortunately, given the cuts that have happened over the years this means that they are underfunded. What you need to do is get the local noise complaints number and call it every single time it happens. This is what is called a statutory noise complaint. Just Google it. At the same time you need to start a noise complaint diary,
the columns are date, start time, end time, severity*, weather, and details.
Severity is on a scale of 0 to 4, with 0 been nothing and 4 been OMFG argh. Details need to include what type of noise it is and most importantly how it affects you. Headache? Lack of sleep, emotional distress? Got to town however remember that this is going to be a legal document that could get used in court eventually. Also important is to do it daily even if there is no noise. Include if you are away on holiday etc if it regularly happens on a weekend etc. The council should send you this info after the first couple of incidents
Now for the nighttime banging on the walls and screaming, if it just randomly starts in the middle of the night that sounds to me like someone is or could be having domestic abuse. I apologise in advance if this upsets people. You should contact the police and let the know that.
If any of your neighbours are affected try to get the in on it as well, it’s much more effective with multiple people.
Eventually you will be asked to place a “noise recording device” in the room that is most affected, at this point you know something is finally going to be done about, eventually…
If you have any remote possibility of moving house in the next year or so don’t go down this route as i believe that you have to declare it to the next house buyer
The problem we have in the UK is that most of the laws, procedures and police are built around people not wanting to be complete knobheads. Unfortunately the people have realised this and also realised there are no consequences for their actions
I don’t know the laws or systems in place in the UK for this, but I work in 911 dispatch in the US, and I can’t imagine that something like this is too radically different across the pond
As long as the cops in your area are fairly responsive (I know a couple departments in my county will take their sweet-ass time responding to a noise complaints) call every time he does something.
Yes, you’re going to get sick of it, but more importantly the cops are going to get sick of it too. They really don’t want to be out at your neighbors house over this every day/week/month/8moths, or however often he does it. Before too long he’s going to get hit with fines and other consequences. Once or twice they might issue a warning
Speak to the officers every time. Make sure they’re seeing and hearing what you’re seeing and hearing, get it on video if you have to, don’t give them an opportunity to write it off because they drove by the house and “didn’t hear anything.”
Tell them he’s schizophrenic, refusing to take his meds, tell them he’s harassing you, that last part is important, tell them you want to file a report for harassment, discuss what your options are- pressing changes, restraining orders, whatever they may be, and pursue them. You’ll probably have paperwork and court dates and such, it sucks, but that’s how the process works.
Be prepared for retaliation from him in some form. Get security cameras, try to avoid any contact with him if you can avoid it. He already has delusions that you’re conspiring against him, and having the cops show up at his door repeatedly are going to feed right into that, it’s not out of the question that he might get violent, or start vandalizing your property.
Continue to report anything he says and does to you, no matter how small, each incident you document builds a stronger case for more consequences. Every time he accuses your brother of making wolf noises, or hacking his phone, any weird interaction at all, make sure you’re documenting it with the police.
Try to catch his niece when she’s over, explain the situation, explain that you’re going to have to take legal action if it doesn’t stop, see if she can possibly talk sense into him, or possibly if she or other family might be able to pursue some sort of involuntary commitment for him (read up on your local laws about that, I have no idea what they’re like in the UK except that I think it’s called “sectioning” over there, I suspect that you wouldn’t be able to start that process, it would probably need to be done by a relative, the police, or a medical/mental health professional)
Totally agree on the harassment angle. That’s where you’ll get the police to listen. Had to take a similar approach with a paranoid schizophrenic neighbour who equally did not take his meds. The harassment angle allowed them to involve other agencies such as mental health and care workers to improve his situation, and in turn, ours.
Thanks for the detailed advice! I appreciate it a ton. We’ll keep calling them every time he does this. I’ve got the radio/TV blasting and the siren/screaming recorded. He is a frail old man, he’s almost in an L shape. He did once go out into his garden shouting for my brother (my mum heard it and said it was mostly incomprehensible) with a frying pan in his hand. That was over a year ago. When he yells and screams after playing the siren we can’t make out what he’s saying. We already have a doorbell camera so if he comes to the door we’ll receive a notification about it and it’ll be recorded.
My mum has all his texts he sent her accusing my brother saved. These texts go years back so it’s all documented. When his niece comes over again we’ll see if we can talk to her. She did hide his siren before but she says he’ll probably end up ordering a new one from Amazon which is what seems to have happened here.
In the UK it is called sectioning. I’m not sure what the specific criteria are besides causing harm to others or ones self, I’ll have to research it more in the meantime. Once again I really appreciate the advice, we’ve all been so stressed out lately and something has to be done because we’re not putting up with this every day for months or even years
And I do want to just reiterate that the harassment angle is really what you want to play up with the police.
I don’t know the specifics of how policing and such works in your area, but there’s a pretty big difference between “my neighborhood is an inconsiderate jerk who plays his music too loud” and “my neighbor is intentionally targeting me with loud music and sirens to disturb our sleep”
The first one is a noise complaint, that’s low priority for the police and depending on where you are maybe not even a police issue but something like code enforcement.
The second one is a police issue, it’s harassment. This will vary from one jurisdiction to another, but where I work depending on some of the details I might enter that as “suspicious activity” or even a “disturbance” (basically a fight) which should get police there with some urgency.
And some of the other things you’ve said, like him walking around outside with a frying pan, I could definitely make an argument for putting in those calls as a “wellbeing check” or “suspicious person,” and if he’s acting particularly threatening maybe even “armed subject,” or possibly as a psych emergency to also send EMS to hopefully get him taken to a hospital for a psych eval.
I’m surprised the police actually came out at all, they usually don’t give a fuck.
As someone else said you need to go to the council, they will have a department specifically for noise complaints and anti social shit like this. You will probably need to fill out a form online and then they have officers for this specific problem who will call you and probably come out to visit. They will be your best recourse to finding a solution to this.
