We asked Edi students about their neighbours from hell

Let’s face it, we’d all be rich if we had a pound per complaint


Moving into your flat and escaping halls is one of the most exciting times of your life. No more running away from the men in red when they try to shut down your popping room pres, and, a prime opportunity for non-stop flat parties.

Well, think again newly-fledged fresher.

Judith from downstairs with three kids is a lot worse than your RA , and unlike Pollock’s pissed off security, she’s liable to call the police on you should you drop that bass just a fraction too loudly.

Read on to discover the moments when neighbours stopped reasonably shutting down your  Tuesday night 4am afters and started being downright ridiculous.

Hannah, 2nd year

“Four of us were sat in silence on a bed one evening, watching a film with no speakers. About half an hour in, the neighbours buzzed and we let them up, only for them to storm into the flat and demand to know why we were ‘running around the kitchen screaming’. We had to demonstrate the volume of the film and assure them that we weren’t having a wild house party whilst stood there in our pyjamas.

The situation was made even more ridiculous when they threatened to call the police if it happened again. They’d already complained once before about someone in our flat walking around at 3am and waking them up from the creaking floorboards.”

Eleanor, 2nd year

“One of our neighbours complained about us leaving our recycling box outside our door…

The woman downstairs has also left us a series of passive aggressive notes about all the noise we’re making, saying how when we ‘slam’ doors the ‘entire building shakes’. A quick note here is that it’s physically impossible for us to slam doors because they’re self-closing so we can’t control how they shut.”

Ed, 3rd year

“We had this absolute witch of a neighbour who wasn’t even our proper neighbour. She was our upstairs neighbour’s neighbour so her flat wasn’t even directly connected to ours. Once we had a few people over for pres and at 10pm she came and complained about the noise. We also had a bigger flat pres that she had plenty of advance notice about, and when I texted her the next day she responded really rudely, saying it was a terrible start to our tenancy. Apparently her children couldn’t be kept up late (they were 16).

She once came to our front door at 9am asking if the mysterious beeping noise was coming from our flat, a noise which I couldn’t hear.  She came again asking if we’d graffitied on her chairs that were in the communal garden.”

Polly, 2nd year

“We have these really weird neighbours who randomly invite themselves into our flat.”

Laura, 3rd year

“My flatmate had a parcel which had ‘been delivered’ but it hadn’t come to our flat. A few days later she went and knocked on all of the surrounding flats to see if they had it. She went to the flat of one of the guys running for a uni sabbatical position and asked if they had the parcel.  His answer was ‘oh I don’t know, but you can come in and look if you want’ so she stepped in and realised that it was the open box in the corner. When questioned on why it was open, his response was  to give her his campaign flyers and tell her to vote for him, completely ignoring the fact that someone had broken into her post (the elusive parcel contained contact lenses for all those wondering).”

And last but not least, when the tables turn…

Ethan, 3rd year

“My neighbours who lived above us last year had a party and played ‘sorry’ by Justin Bieber 5 times in 30 minutes”

The moral of the story? You can be as quiet as you want, but the likelihood is that you’ll still have a family of four inviting themselves into your flat to try and enforce a noise curfew after a particularly raucous episode of Bake Off.