Why don’t you just move?
If it didn’t work the first three times, why would he try again now? 
Oh, for… how on earth would this neighbor have any clue how his behavior was impacting someone he can’t even see? Presumably their shared walls don’t have windows in them. How could he know whether the OP was discomfited or hadn’t even noticed that his neighbor was laughing?
It’s FAR more likely that the neighbor is just living his own life and minding his own business. People laugh and talk to each other. Very few people in the world care about you so damn much that they’d actually follow you up and down the house just to eavesdrop and laugh. Most people have better things to do; the universe does not revolve around you. And most people are polite enough to cultivate the ability to tune out the normal living noises of people who share walls with you. It’s a normal part of apartment living.
Said neighbor is probably completely unaware of the comings and goings of the OP. Seriously, OP, they are not “interfering in your life.” They are probably barely aware that you exist. It’s not All About You. You’re not that interesting.
Shows what you know. We’ve really gotten a kick out of the way you slouch over while you’re typing.
BTW don’t come out to the garage for another five or so minutes.
That’s just it. It sounds like the neighbor is not polite enough to tune out the noises (or at least maintain the polite fiction that he’s tuning out the noises) - he’s commenting on the OP’s conversations. Ew.
I can totally see some lonely old person with no boundaries paying undue attention to a neighbor to fill their need for companionship. Again, maybe their lack of boundaries keeps them from having real companionship.
(Ew. Just thinking about this is making my skin crawl.)
AShowers, do you know anything about your neighbor - have you met, how old are they, do they have any kids, etc.?
Sigh. Did you even read my post? It’s not the neighbor who’s not tuning out, it’s the OP. There’s no evidence that the neighbor is commenting on the OP, rather than, you know, talking to the person in the same room as him. Occam’s Razor.
People laugh and talk to each other. It’s Not All About You. Get over it.
Hell, even if you insist on running with the fiction that your neighbors think you are SO IMPORTANT that they have to glue their ears to the wall 24/7, the best way to deprive them of the reaction (that they can’t see) they so desperately want, is to ignore them and not give them one.
Believing that total strangers care that deeply about you is a special level of paranoia, though. You’re not that interesting.
I don’t know. If the OP’s mom says her age, and just then, the next door neighbor says, “Damn.” which explanation is simpler - the neighbor is commenting on the mom’s age, or the neighbor, at that very moment, just happened to drop a hammer on his toe?
I don’t know anything about the neighbor, but if the neighbor is a shut-in with no other companionship, the OP will do. It’s not a question of the neighbor caring or being obsessed, but of having a need that the OP can unwittingly fill.
Are you serious?
I’ll tell you a story. Fairly often when I’m walking down the street I hear what sounds like someone calling my name, and it makes me look around for a second. You know what it really is? I happened to pass by someone as they were saying a word that rhymed.
But hey, what explanation is simpler… I just happened to pass by at the precise moment they said something that rhymed with my name, or total strangers are calling me just to mess with my head?
Good lord, some people want to be “special” so bad…
FYI, you guys who are insulting and making light of the OP, please consider the possibility that this a person with a genuine problem, perhaps even a psychological one, that is causing a lot of anguish. I think a lot of you are being quite insensitive.
Me? I mostly want to be invisible to people I don’t know.
I’ve seen posts on this board (not about to look them up right now) from people whose neighbors sat on the stoop and intently stared at them while they brought in their groceries. Listening isn’t that different.
I guess I don’t understand why the idea is so far-fetched. There are lonely people who need companionship and some of them don’t much care how they get it.
I’m not saying the OP is right, but I can’t dismiss the story out of hand.
I have to ask…
Since this is obviously one of three things, how long do you keep a thread like this open? The suggestions for this guy to seek the help of a mental professional are a bit out of bounds, even if they are warranted. My feeling is this person does not believe he is sick and therefor will not seek medical help. If he did, he would have never posted to a website. (maybe I’m wrong).
Which brings us to the second possibility. It’s true. This doesn’t seem like something that we can solve for him, as the obvious solutions have already been given (soundproofing, etc.), or the idea that if you don’t talk loud enough for the people next door to him to hear him for a week or so, the person in the wall will stop listening.
Or three, this is just a jerk around thread.
As I read through this thread, I have to ask… How much time is this person spending waiting to hear the reply from the “neighbor in the wall.”? Jesus, if this guy IS mentally sound, he won’t be after a month or two living like this.
So, the solutions?
1 - move
2 - get your apartment soundproofed
3 - before getting your apartment soundproofed, get a professional bug sweeper to check for hidden microphones, cameras, and random holes drilled into walls to watch your every move. (see the first psycho movie to get an idea how the hole in the wall works)
4 - get yourself some professional help. Because if he is at the beginning or in the middle of a psychotic episode, being near facilities where soft music is playing, shoestrings and belts are in short supply, and rooms that only have rubber walls is where he belongs.
Best of luck.
That’s the best we can do for him.
Bottom line is: someone at that address could use mental health care and we’re only talking to one of the residents so we’re suggesting he be the one to seek it. OP, it’s you or him. Get yourself checked out and you’ll know one way or the other.
It sounds like your family aren’t hearing the noises that you’re hearing. I second the suggestions to seek help.
I’ve had a few bad apartment situations with minimal soundproofing like that. You know the soundproofing is bad when you can actually hear what the neighbors are saying when they’re talking at a normal volume. Your neighbors apparently spend most of their time in a room adjacent to where you spend most of your time, so either your living rooms or your bedrooms are adjacent.
The best solution is to find another apartment, perhaps within the same apartment complex, but if you’re unable to do so, there may be some temporary solutions such as spending time in another room that’s not adjacent or at least moving your TV set, stereo and other furniture against the adjoining wall and adding some additional carpets to absorb noise.
I am no psychiatrist but we just watched one of my little sisters go through this…she was having auditory hallucinations. In her case it was “my boyfriend and his dad bugged my room, but they did it wrong, I can hear them talking about me from the walls where the bugs are.” Not too long after it led to an incident where she started knocking holes in the walls with an ax looking for the bugs and beat up our mom when she tried to stop her from destroying the house. Police, restraining orders, and jail time commenced.
you either
A: are seeing manifestations of mental illness
B: have a pacific heights grade nutter of a neighbor
A is unfortunately much more likely. Counselors and or psychiatrists have ways of helping you manage these feelings, I strongly urge you to at least consider the possibility and get an evaluation preferably before these feelings become so intense that you feel the need to act on them in a more dramatic manner.
There is of course at least one additional possibility here, but I suppose we should err on the side of compassion.
This is very true. My last few apartments have been on the top floor, and I never hear noise from the tenants below. And I don’t walk on tiptoes, but I try not to make unnecessary noise, like doing jumping jacks or whatever.
So, your neighbors can hear your conversations? That means that you are talking with someone else in your apartment, right? So when you are talking with your relative, then your hear your neighbor comment, does your relative not ever hear it? If you are hearing these comments, but no one else is, then either you have much superior hearing than your friends and family do, or those comments are only in your head.
Alternately, if they aren’t in your apartment (like on the phone), buy a cheap tape recorder and record some of these incidents, then play it back to see what the noises are.
Perhaps it is just something that sounds like laughing or talking, but is really something else. You could also use the recording to ask your land lord to do something about it if needed.
BUT, if the tape recorder does not record what you are hearing, you really should talk to a health care provider.
Kaio, I think you need to pay a visit to YouTube and do a search for “crazy neighbors”. I think it might be an eye opener for you and maybe a few others. There are quite a few videos of where people harassed by their neighbors have resorted to videoing what’s happening to them because it WAS too crazy and friends, family and law enforcement didn’t believe them.
Some of the crazy neighbors made it their LIFE to harass these neighbors. In some instances, the only way the harassment stopped was because they had indisputable proof with the videos. In other cases, they moved away.
Some of the videos are media coverage of how the harassment escalated and had to be settled by law enforcement.
Back to what you said about wanting to be special… I seriously don’t believe the OP feels “so special”. He sounds like he’s about to lose it, actually. I lived in an apartment once. It was awful! A mother and daughter, daughter 20ish, lived above us. They were extremely loud and once they discovered we could hear them and it bothered us, they deliberately got louder, slamming doors, stomping around, loud music, they would wash and dry their clothes in the middle of the night, they had two Sheltie dogs that barked ALL the time and management didn’t care at all. They had a waiting list of tenants ready to move in so they didn’t care if we moved out. No, I didn’t feel special at all. I was in college at the time, computer science, and was terribly stressed so I certainly didn’t need two idiots interfering with my studying and sleep!
Personally, I would find it exhausting to try to remember to STOMP REAL LOUD (or follow my neighbor from room to room so I could hear him and comment) every damn time I was home, the entire time I was home. People, really, honestly, truly, have better things to do with their time. They may be ignorant about how loud they’re being (even after you tell them they’re too loud – as mentioned earlier, what sounds normal in your own place is often amplified below), but that’s not the same thing.
Crazy neighbors are the exception, not the rule. It is FAR more likely that the OP (and you, for that matter) are attributing malice to, at best, ignorance; more likely in the OP’s case, the neighbor is having his own damn conversations, without regard to the OP or effort made to hear him.
Good lord… if my neighbors freaked every time I laughed (and when you get me going, I have a fairly loud laugh), they’d probably be as grumpy as the OP, but I have literally never laughed at my neighbors. I have laughed at things I’ve read online, or a movie, or something a friend or roommate said. When I get home, I want to decompress – write, watch TV, read, talk to the person(s) who live with me. I don’t give a flyin flip what’s going on in the neighboring apartment. The only way to make me care is to argue real loud and crash a few things around so it sounds like you’re beating your girlfriend. Short of that, I’m not paying any attention to them at all.