Neighbor claims we're ruining his life with noise... and he's monitoring us 24x7 in our own home. legaladvice

In Maryland.

The Story

New neighbor moved in to the townhouse next to ours a few months ago. We've only ever spoken to him once or twice when he first moved in to introduce ourselves.

In early May I was on my back porch cleaning my bicycle and he came out on his back porch as well. I attempted to say hello to him; but he simply glared at me and walked back inside. I thought this was odd, but I let it go.

Then on Memorial day I saw him outside again and tried to say hello and was again met with a blank stare. I asked him if we had a problem and he looked at me like "you know what you did"... I spent the next 2 days wondering what I did to this guy. Eventually my wife and I decided we should try to make whatever it was right, and left him a neighborly note apologizing, and asking him to let us know if we'd done anything to offend him to let us know so we can fix it.

Then Saturday, he dropped off a packet. 2 full pages of complaint and then 7 pages of diagrams and figures... He claims that we're deliberately and violently making noises to piss him off. He claims we're slamming things into walls, "howling in rage", dropping things, and "jumping heavily from step to step down the stairs, with both feet" and apparently we're doing all of this just to make him angry.

All of the things he claims we've done are either completely fabricated or grossly misrepresented or exaggerated. A lot of the complaints he has are for dates and times when we were either asleep or not home.

The most troubling thing is that he also informed us that he has been "subjecting you to 24/7 surveillance monitoring across the walls adjacent our homes". He then proceeds to provide screenshots of the audio surveillance he's been conducting, along with some examples he finds particularly egregious. These noises he claims to be hearing are all 55db or below... which is the volume of a typical conversation (not loud at all).

He threatens repeatedly in his letter that if we don't discontinue "your aggression towards us" he will file a harassment charge and a restraining order... he also threatened to pursue civil damages for the welfare/health/financial stress we've somehow subjected him to. There's a lot more crap in this letter he sent, but that's the gist of it.

What we've done...

• Contacted our landlord - we've been here for 2 years without incident - we know them; they're on our side. They've contacted his landlords as well, as they're good friends.

• Filed a police report.

• Called the police to take a statement from us and talk to him. They're also on our side.

The police thought he was just nuts, and told us to avoid contact with him, which we'll definitely do... but I need to know if there's anything else we can or should do to protect ourselves from this guy. I feel like if I close the refrigerator too hard he's going to snap.

He's monitoring us 24/7 (isn't this very illegal??), and we don't currently feel safe in our own home...

What do?

Submitted June 13, 2016 at 08:23PM by NoisiestNeighbor http://ift.tt/234SaEw legaladvice