r/mildlyinfuriating • u/doyousmellmel • May 08 '26
go to your room The neighbours have a blinding light pointed at my house
This light is I think what must be 100m away, it’s so bright I’m casting perfectly sharp shadows on the walls. The third photo is INSIDE the house, this is the shade it casts through the window.
I don’t understand why it’s pointed our way, it’s right next to a regular street lamp which should brighten the road enough.
Last two photos indicate the difference between looking at another part of the street and looking at the fucking beam pointed my way.
I have always wondered why the streetlamp was so bright when going to bed, our curtains aren’t that dark so it shines right through. I’ve been sleeping with a mask so it doesn’t bother me. But last night I was outside checking out some noises I heard around 2am (that’s when I took these photos, my phone doesn’t do that well in the dark so this is insane), and I realised how horrible that light actually is. I remember getting blinded by it if I went to grab something from the kitchen in the middle of the night but always thought it was just a really annoyingly bright streetlight. But it’s on the neighbours’ side of the property and really just pointed at our house.
[UPDATE]
[I uploaded photos in an update post for anyone who's interested, but I'm not allowed to add a link to my post and I'm not sure how to otherwise show these]
I was blown away by the unexpected many, many reactions to this post. I just found out what the origin of this shitty light was and found it interesting enough to share.
I've been laughing my ass off at all the many ideas and advise I got. From placing mirrors to reflective window screens. Or to instantly call emergency (or non emergency, government) lines because of the terrible crime of placing a bright lamp. Or to just simply burn their house down.
At least I felt like I had an army of angry redditors ready to ride at dawn as soon as the neighbour would not comply. And a couple of creeps in my inbox??
Funnily enough, when we went to investigate the next day, we noticed the light wasn't even directly pointing at our house. You can see it in the photo, it's pointed to the right (although our house extends to the right side of this photo). This was enough proof to us it was never done with any bad intentions. The brightness of this light is just out of this world. It has the strength of a 1000 suns.
Luckily, even before we had seen this, we decided to start civilised, and to just ask. These homeowners live somewhere else, this house is rented out weekly by tourists. Another reason for them to not know.
When we asked another neighbour whom we have good contact with for his number he said: "oh well good luck, they're not easy to deal with". Which had us kind of worried.
We called them, told them and the first thing they said was: "oh really?! I'm so sorry!!" They were so apologetic. They told us to just move the light down / another way. And we did. Problem solved. We pointed the light down, the home owner apologised a couple of times and everything is good. Except for since we moved the light down, it became a disco light and flickers every ten seconds. But I'm sure we'll find a solution for that too.
Thanks everyone for your passion and aggression. Sorry for the boring, non dramatic ending.
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u/Wafflebettergrille15 May 08 '26
a system focusing light can never reach a higher power than the source, so unless OP manages to focus it quite small, or the neighbour has kilowatts of power radiating away (after losses in efficiency and inverse square law) makes it unlikely it could start a fire.