I have benefit a lot from other people sharing on the forums and the sage advice and kind acceptance. I guess I was wanting some advice on how to see a situation in a way that is not going to drive me increasingly paranoid.

I live in an apartment building and about two years ago, while I was playing the piano in my bedroom, someone banged on the wall, three times with calculated intervals between them, and it startled me. I could sense that it was done out of anger. It seemed to me there were two broad choices I had then: to stop playing and live feeling like a mouse to avoid angry outbursts from someone, or to confront the issue head on with the intention for a compromise. I was brave/naive/foolhardy enough to decide to seek out the source of the anger and try to figure out a resolution.  Well, what seemed obvious to me was that I had made someone angry, possibly with the music, and my intentions were twofold: to be fair to both me and whoever it was who was angry and find a compromise, and I didn’t intend to live like a mouse by cowering.

I found out that it was the tenant downstairs. We had a chat and he acted charming enough, while I tried to be civil as well (in spite of feeling outraged that he didn’t express his concerns by speaking to my landlord/me, etc. but hiding). I listened to his concerns. He said he worked at home in trades (stocks?) and he had been bothered by numerous noises that he was certaiin had come from my apartment, which was directly above his: footfalls, “dragging noises, etc.” I made some concessions about the piano playing (I’d move my piano away from the wall made of wood that transferred noises) and since I could not fathom the footfalls and “dragging noises, etc.” I thought it would be a neighbourly gesture to give him my number to text me the next time he hears those, since I did not know how they could be (I am light on my feet, not a heavy-handed person, and I don’t have anything to “drag” rather than the vacuum cleaner which I used on my carpeted floor.

Fast forward, one night, as I had been spending a good half hour to an hour in bed on my laptop, I got his text, in which he said he heard those “dragging noises” again. I replied to him to say I had been in bed for half an hour, and that it appeared I was not the source of that issue and wished him good luck getting it resolved elsewhere; I proceeded to block and delete his number, thinking that was the end of the matter. Of course I didn’t hear from him again had he texted back (which I began to entertain thoughts of given the progression of events).

A week or so later, upon my friend’s suggestion, I unblocked, then again deleted his number, since “he’s a neighbour after all. Having a neighbour’s number may prove useful.” (My friend is sensible in her outlook in general)

A few months later, I was in bed on my laptop, when I heard a bang and my cat startled, running from the living room towards the bedroom where I was. It was not unusual for my cat to knock something heavy over and give himself a fright, but I decided to check it out anyway. I saw some snow on the ledge of my window, and as I neared the window, I heard a male’s voice muttering obscenity and a threat in relation to a gun and another person’s head (I am not sure if it will prove too graphic if I were to transcribe it, even with the use of symbols instead of letters). I called the police.

To my great surprise, the police found out that the tenant living below me was involved. He admitted to chucking a pile of snow to my windows, and denied uttering the threat. He claimed that since he “complained” about the noises I made (I am not sure if that was before or after the wall-banging), the noises had got worse, and he was extremely frustrated. He told the police that he was “so frustrated that he was going to move out soon.” He was playing the good-guy/ victim, this I later surmised, because he did not move, and he was going to do/think of something even more bizarre.

That was Christmas 2016. In March 2017, I got a few text messages from a number not on my contact list (I hadn’t thought about him or the incident and didn’t put the dots together immediately) accusing me of the things he did to me (banging on a wall, throwing things at his window), persuading me to get “healing” at a church nearby he named, trying to diagnose me with schizophrenia and suggesting medications for me to take, and telling me not to listen to the devils who whisper in my ears. I had a gut feeling that these texts were sent by the tenant below for the acts he accused me of doing. I saved the text messages and didn’t think more of them.

Two months ago, in June, I got three more texts from the same number, only this time, unlike his previous messages in March, he signed off with his apartment number. Most he wrote was in capital letters and a number typos. He issued a somewhat vague ultimatum that “it was my last chance” (and then he’ll do what?), accused me of “appelfying (sic) elevator noises,” “listing (sic) into his apartment with mic’s,” and claimed he had collected evidence for my doing those things with his own mic’s. I called the police.  This time, I was scared.

My side of the story is this: I had formed the impression that the tenant below was capable of violence to resolve issues (banging on the wall), slick and untrustworthy (lying to the police), psychopathic (charming and manipulative), fanatical in the way he sees things, and probably psychotic or delusional or both (projecting his beliefs onto me). I did not want anything to do with him, least of all to provoke him further. So I lived as I normally would have: going to work in the morning, coming home and getting on to the couch and bed as fast as I can. I refused to live like a mouse when I knew I did not make deliberate noises, and I had tried to work with him with what was within my control (I have played the piano with headphones on since the first incident).

What is troubling me is, the noises he alludes to (footfalls, banging, elevator noises) I can hear in my apartment as well. I doubt if not everyone on every floor can hear them seeing it is an old building. The footfalls I hear from the burly man who lives next door to me, who come and go multiple times, and who shut his doors rather quite loudly.

Since the incident in June, I have noticed I began to fear of not being believed. I am also getting increasingly conscious of the noises. When they happen, even though I had been used to them before, I worried that the tenant below must be brewing in his hostility with the zealous belief that I was making them. I notice that is a trend towards the irrational, and I’m scared of feeling scared by the man’s irrational beliefs and behaviour.

Can someone please help me find a way through this in mindset?