Here's a little tale about my neighbor.
I don't really know the people who live across the street from my house, even though they've been there for almost as long as we have (at least 17 years). I haven't even seen the father of that household in like a decade. The guy is older and started a family up after he retired, and now he's really getting up his years. Before there'd be an ambulance at their house every now and then, but that seems to have quieted down over the last year or so and everyone assumed the guy got healthier. Nobody really knows since he's become a recluse and never goes outside.
A couple of days ago, we found out that this guy's family had just up and left one evening, leaving him there. Nobody had any idea. He called my father asking for some help with the oxygen tank he's hooked up to, which is the only reason why anyone knows anything now. My father said that the inside of the house looked like it had been ransacked and that the guy was sitting on a couch covered with crap and there was feces and piss on the floor. The neighbor claimed that his back was so bad that he couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom and gave this sob story about his family abandoning him.
My parents then managed to track down his wife and get her side of the story. Turns out that this family didn't run away from home; they left out of fear-- the guy had threatened to beat the shit out of them if they stayed, and even the hospital where he previously stayed at warned his family to leave him alone. This guy is all kinds of fucked up due to various mental illnesses. He is psychotic and has been kicked out of multiple hospitals, banned by the staff from even entering because of constant mental and physical abuse. Even though he is hooked up to an oxygen tank and claims to have a bad back, he apparently can get around just fine and was abusing his family members, screaming at them and occasionally striking them. The guy basically cannot stand to not have attention and wants literally everything done for him. His family has been putting up with this for years, but they've reached a breaking point. The doctors and nurses couldn't take dealing with him for very long at all. They are now looking into having him committed at a specialized hospital that will give him the medical care he needs -whether he wants it or not- and keep him from doing harm to anyone else.
Right now though, he is sitting at home. It's five in the morning, and all the lights in his house have been on all night. All the doors to his home are unlocked. He seems to be getting food and medicine from some taxi service and also from one of his kids who stops by at night to drop off stuff for him, then bolts. The neighbor has been calling most of the neighborhood with his sob story, trying to get people to go out and bring him food and medicine, even though he is perfectly capable of doing everything himself (according to his wife). It's so fucked up.
This is in the US right? I pictured this story in Japan, while reading but only realized you moved back. Now its way less charming somehow.
Yeah, the U.S.
In Japan, my experience with fucked up neighbors came from these people who lived in the apartment building right next to mine. Every now and then, I'd hear what sounded like a samurai movie, with a scream and then the pitter patter of running feet on a wooden hallway/tatami mat, so it sounded like "GYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! *TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP TMP* GGGGGYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" Then some slapping noises. It was this older couple beating the crap out of each other. I found that I was able to get them to shut up if I just opened up the back door loudly enough that they knew or could see that I was there. Then they wouldn't do anything (that could be heard, at least) for several months. One time I opened up a window and just started applauding them after a few more yells. Never heard anything again, and shortly after that they moved away.
Directly across the way on an adjacent side was a family who would have company over at 2am on a school night. I say this because their (little) kids were up too. They weren't noisy very often, but the rice paper window covers do shit to keep out bright light, so I'd be sleeping and then suddenly it was like dawn came early. I had to go out and buy some blinds to install to stop the light from coming in. It was pretty tricky getting them to go over what was already there and I really fucked up the wood above the windows. Luckily nobody said anything when I moved out.
