not sure what to do about this situation. I’m disabled and vulnerable, and I need my rest. And my bedroom is right next to the communal hallway. A new neighbor has just moved in directly across from my apartment, and no sooner did he move in than he started to literally outfit the area around the front door of his apartment like Fort Knox. He has installed a commercial-grade surveillance system with a camera facing my door. Our doors are more or less opposite. A motion-activated stroboscopic flashing light attached to a potted plant, which he has put a couple of feet from his door, as well as some kind of industrial-grade alarm system, which every time he arms and disarms it makes a piercing beep, beep, beep, beep, beep sound.

And on top of that, he regularly wedges the front door to his apartment open, even though it has a self-closing mechanism, which I’m not sure if he’s gotten rid of, but it is a fire door, and it should be closed at all times. I’m assuming he does that for airflow or something. But it makes me feel intimidated in my own apartment, because if I have to open the door to get a package from my doormat, I get greeted with stroboscopic flashing lights, a camera, which is presumably recording 24/7, pointed at me, and his door wide open.

As for the intimidation, I tried speaking to him about it. The first time, he seemed reasonable. The second time, he blew up at me, shouting, “That stays where it is!” and going into a scary rant about police and prison and other non sequiturs. I don’t want to speak to him again because he frightens me, but I’m scared if I go to the building management, it will only make things worse because it will get pinned back on me, given that we are the only two apartments on the top floor of the complex, so he’ll know that it was me that made the complaint.

Worst thing is he has now seemingly made friends with all the other neighbors in the complex because I hear them cheerfully chatting and I think the neighbors underneath me even invited him to dinner … yet presumably none of them know about his crazy door set up and unpredictable behavior. It makes me feel isolated.

Most neighbors get the “front-of-house” version of him, polite, normal, even charming. Im the only one directly opposite the setup, getting the **full blast** of the alarms, lights, and behavior. I feel like I’m stuck in the twilight zone and it is disrupting my sleep and rest

The best victory is won without fighting

What would Sun Tzu do?

Edit: this is more like a condo where we each partially own our apartments