Couple says an older neighbor fixated on the girlfriend, parked in her reserved spot, and turned their apartment life into a court fight — while a second man was allegedly trying to break in at the same time

A Reddit user said what first looked like one strange note outside an apartment turned into two overlapping stalking scares that left him and his girlfriend feeling like their home was no longer safe. In the original post, he wrote that he and his 26-year-old girlfriend lived in an apartment complex where they first found a rambling note about pizza, dreams, and other nonsense attached to packages. Not long after that, his girlfriend started getting anonymous messages claiming she worked for NASA, the CIA, and the FBI, and saying the sender had a camera on their home “from space.” He said neighbors and the apartment manager were already aware of a man wandering around at night making bizarre claims about buying the complex.

Then the situation got more personal. The poster said one of the neighbors he and his girlfriend had actually been helping — an older man in the complex — pulled her aside one night and confessed he was in love with her. According to the post, she rejected him, reminded him he was still living with his ex-wife, and came inside shaken. He wrote that the man had already crossed lines before with comments about her appearance, gifts, and money, but they had brushed it off as awkwardness. After the confession, he said the neighbor’s behavior escalated quickly, including parking in the girlfriend’s reserved spot and acting angry when told to stop.

At the same time, the couple said a second man was showing up around their apartment. The Reddit user wrote that this separate person was caught on camera peeking through windows, leaving odd notes about pizza and NASA, and eventually pounding on the door, yanking the doorknob, and trying to get in while he was on the phone with 911. He said police arrived after the man had already run off, and that he later found social media posts that only made the whole thing sound more dangerous. In the post, he said the man had paranoid online ramblings about government agencies, dreams, and his “future wife,” which made the couple feel like the fixation was only growing.

The first major courtroom turn involved that second alleged stalker. In a later update, the poster said the man turned up at the police station himself and admitted trying to get in, but claimed he was a robot from the future who needed to recharge a forcefield in their basement. He also allegedly told the couple’s apartment management that he had purchased the whole complex and everyone would be evicted. At court, the Reddit user said the man claimed he had mistaken the girlfriend for someone else with the same name from NASA and that if she had corrected him, he would have backed off. The judge granted the girlfriend a one-year protective order.

But the older neighbor ended up becoming the longer fight. In later updates, the poster said that after the neighbor’s initial harassment, police advised them to seek a restraining order, and the dispute kept returning to court as the man tried to challenge the protection order. According to the Reddit account, he argued that the girlfriend was somehow trying to entice him, complained about how she dressed to take out the trash, and even brought a hand-drawn map of the street to court to argue she could avoid him if she wanted to. The poster said the man also questioned him about being trans, made bizarre accusations about hacked phones and credit cards, and rambled for hours badly enough that the courtroom looked exhausted by the end of it.

The final update did not end with a total victory lap so much as a tired push toward escape. The Reddit user said the judge ultimately granted his girlfriend a six-month protective order against the neighbor, while the apartment complex had also started the process of getting him out. He added that he and his girlfriend were moving and planned to keep the new address private because the ordeal had gone on long enough. What made the whole thread travel was not only that there were allegedly two stalkers at once, but that one of them was easy for people to label as openly unwell while the other kept trying to frame his behavior as romance, misunderstanding, or harmless attention.

The original Reddit post is here, with later updates here, here, and here.

What do you think — which part of this is more unsettling: the openly delusional stranger, or the neighbor who kept trying to explain away harassment like it was normal?