One of the wildest stories that Bob Borzotta ever heard is the one that begins with the woman whose neighbor kept speeding by her house, trying to run over her dogs - and sometimes succeeding.

The neighbors wound up in court. And as the case worked its way through the halls of justice, the woman who ran over dogs turned to a new tactic: disrobing, grabbing a video camera, getting on her horse, and riding by her neighbor's house, often when the children were home.

"So now," says Borzotta, who created the "Neighbors from Hell" Web site, "they're being videotaped by a naked, horse-riding dog killer."

Southeastern Connecticut has no spying, naked, horse-riding dog-killers … yet. But this corner of the state can claim its share of notable neighbor disputes:

The fluorescent "F-U" gracing the broadside of a barn in Stonington. The cease-and-desist order filed against the small-town farmers market in Lyme, whose owners then turned around to say they are "under attack." The lawsuit over goose poop and rodents in Waterford that was resolved with a court-mandated bird feeder.

Each is a tale of neighbor versus neighbor, of a boiling over of tempers and of private disagreements that somehow, at some point, escalated into very public fights.

The question is: How did they get to that point?

You could write a book

"In my research over 10 years, I find they begin mostly because people who live in a neighborhood don't necessarily know their neighbor," said Borzotta, whose book, "Neighbors From Hell," was published this month and is expected to be listed on Amazon.com in December.

"When you don't know the person next door, something that could be cause for a dispute becomes a dispute," Borzotta said, adding that if you know and like your neighbor, "You're going to be extra careful not to disturb them with whatever you might disturb them with."

Neighbor disputes are nothing new. But from the infamous and bloody feuds of the Hatfields and McCoys of the 1800s to the lawsuit-slinging spats between celebrities today, it seems clear that neighbor-vs.-neighbor is a unique breed of argument.

"A lot of people automatically go to psychology and focus on the individual," said Tom Hochschild, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Connecticut who is finishing a dissertation on communities. "From a sociologist's perspective, it's really about social control. It's about trying to maintain or establish right and wrong ways of behaving in a community."

He continued: "I think psychological explanations are kind of reductionist. This is really about people arguing about what is acceptable in our neighborhood."

Or, to use Borzotta's definition of a Neighbor From Hell: "You start out with a regular neighbor and remove all decency and maturity."

Last summer, Hochschild talked to 110 residents throughout the state as he conducted surveys and detailed interviews. All but a few, according to Hochschild, said there is less sense of community today than in the past.

Hochschild found a number of reasons, starting with an increase in dual income families that result in empty neighborhoods that lack for mingling.

"A lot of suburban communities are like ghost towns," he said. "Often times when I go out to collect survey data, it's hard to find people home."

Is it reality or TV?

Hochschild said a lot of people also pointed to the media. Any sociologist, Hochschild said, would point out that the media over-reports and sensationalizes crime, and a lot of parents said they were afraid to let their kids out on the street.

He said people who live in dead-end cul-de-sacs seem to know each other better than those who live on through-streets. The kids are more likely to play together in a cul-de-sac, he said, which compels parents to come out of the house and get to know each other.

Borzotta said a variety of multimedia influences project anti-neighbor messages, from the car commercial showing a young couple stomping over their older neighbor's apartment to the advent of what Borzotta calls "trash TV" and some people's tendency to be influenced by it "and (they) may even abscond (with) some of those lower-class values even though they were raised to know better."

Borzotta also uses the term "noveaux trash" to describe an "all-encompassing, equal opportunity group of jerks" comprised of people of any color, age, socioeconomic background and the like.

The big dispute often starts small, said Shannon Driscoll, a mediator with Community Mediation in New Haven.

"That seems to be what starts a lot of it: some kind of miscommunication," she said, "or somebody says something that maybe they shouldn't have, or somebody else interprets something that they see as rude; and that prevents further communication."

Whatever the underlying issue, the lack of communication is really what drives its escalation, she said.

In recent years, people have turned more and more to mediators, whether court appointed or voluntarily sought out.

The benefit to a mediator, Driscoll said, is the parties involved create their own solution with the help of the mediator.

Driscoll said her office uses a six-step mediation process that includes the mediator laying out ground rules, giving each side uninterrupted time to say what happened and what they want to occur, brainstorming, and concluding with a written agreement.

For neighbor disputes, she said, mediators usually set aside two hours and are typically able to stay within that time.

Although some disputes need to be handled by the courts, Driscoll said, mediation offers a benefit the courts can't offer: the chance to blow off steam.

"The most beneficial thing about mediation ... is there's a place to deal with the emotional things that are going on," she said.

"People have a chance to vent about things and sometimes that's really important. ... Mediation gives people a place to say that safely where someone will really listen to what they're saying."

Hochschild, the sociologist, said people should keep their neighbors in mind when buying a house.

"Social research can inform home-buying," he said.

He suggested that house-hunters spend some extra time learning about their neighbors and making sure they can live next to each other harmoniously.

"If you think about it, when people go looking for a place to live, automatically what comes to mind is the house or apartment, the physical dwelling," he said.

"It's rare that you hear somebody actually talking to their neighbor when they're thinking about buying a home. It's surprising that more people don't do this; these people are people you're going to be living 50 feet away from, potentially for the rest of your life."

k.crompton@theday.com