Real Encounters

*Psycho Neighbor*

Several years ago, we bought a house with a little creek running through the back yard. Who wouldn't want a house in such a tranquil setting?

TLDR: When we finally fled in terror six years later, we had almost 50 pages of documentation of harassment and terrorization from the next door neighbor - a 60-something female. Read on if you dare.

The third day we owned our new home, our next door neighbor came over to introduce herself. "Hi, my name is Ima Nassole," she greeted us cheerfully. We had an odd conversation and when she left, hubby and I looked at each other and asked, "What was that all about?"

That afternoon I joked to hubby, "I can't believe I just moved next door to someone with plastic flowers in her yard" (I'm an avid gardener). The next morning when we got up, all the plastic flowers were gone! It was a Twilight Zone Moment.

Whether I was gardening in the back yard or front yard, Ima was soon outside striking up a conversation. She had a way of making statements that catch you off guard and beg for a reply. She managed to get a lot of personal information from me before I figured out what she was doing.

Ima had several dogs and their barking was a nuisance. Every night, no matter what time we went to bed, the dogs would start barking under our bedroom window within a minute of turning the lights out. It took us months to figure out that she was watching for our lights to go out. How creepy is that?

I politely asked NFH to keep her dogs away from our bedroom window late at night. She put a huge grin on her face and said, "Nope, can't do that!" Then the barking got worse. And worse. And she stepped up the harassment several notches. I would either be polite or just put down my gardening tools and go in the house. Even though I never saw her watching me, she had ways of letting me know that she saw everything I did. I felt like I was being stalked. She never bothered my husband and my husband didn't believe me when I told him the things she was doing and saying to me.

One day I took hubby's car somewhere and Ima assumed I was home alone. She started in with her harassment and creepiness. When I got home, hubby was shaken. He never doubted me after that.

We had a nice neighbor on the other side of us and one day I asked her if she had ever had any problems with Ima. She unloaded stories of years of abuse. Oh, swell, what have we gotten ourselves into?

We finally contacted Animal Control and filed a complaint about the barking. They asked us to keep a record of when the dogs started and stopped barking. The result: they barked between 60-70 hours per week. After a couple of weeks, I couldn't waste any more time keeping track.

Ima was not happy about the dog complaint. Her next move was to call 911 the night of February 13. At 11:45pm, two police cruisers and four cops showed up at our door for a domestic violence call courtesy of Ima. Happy Valentine's Day!

Every few months, Ima would get the urge to call 911 and report me for harassing her even though by this time I no longer spoke to her and went inside whenever she came outside. What we didn't know then was that Ima had a wheelchair and after she called 911, she'd get in it before the police showed up. She'd tell the cop the sob story that she was a poor, old handicapped senior citizen being brutally harassed by me (I'm two years younger than Ima - yeah, I'm a senior citizen, too). Then the cop would come over to our house to ream me out for being such a horrible neighbor. Since my hair isn't gray (thanks to my hairdresser), I look much younger than Ima. So the cops assume she's much older and more vulnerable.

After several episodes of this, we installed covert video cameras. Two months after getting the cameras, Ima had a hankering for the company of a uniformed officer. After hearing her sob story, he came to our house and told us to move away and stop harassing all the neighbors. To his credit, he agreed to view the video footage. The viewing left him speechless. Not only was there no wheelchair in sight, but everything she told him that I said/did to her, she had actually said and done to me.

Shortly before we got the cameras, Ima tried to run me down with her car when I was out for a walk. When a friend of hers tried the same trick, we got it on camera. I didn't have to call 911 when that happened because Ima called 911 first with a pack of lies. The officer that responded refused to look at the video footage. Oh, well.

From time to time, Ima parked her car in front of our house and just sat there and watched us. She'd take photos and video of us inside our house. She only did that once after we got the cameras. They're covert only to a point. If you zoom a camera in on them, you'll see them. She toned down her act after that.

Things were quiet for almost a year. Then one night we heard a loud boom and the house shook. We peeked out the bedroom window and saw a couple of cars parked in front of Ima's house and a few people milling around her front yard. We got up and looked at the video footage and saw Ima's son light something and throw it at our house - toward our bedroom. Then the explosion that shook the house. We called the police, but since there were no injuries or damage to the house, only burned up plants in the yard, they wouldn't even file a report.

A few days later, we met with a realtor.