Multiple stalking

Paaskynen- Towards the end of my MIL's life, she would say that there was a helicopter that was shining their lights into her apartment. In addition, she said that someone would enter her apartment, and was stealing her cookies.

I took a quick perusal of a few of the strries on the site that you quoted. I could not say that there might be some truth to a few of them, (I really doubt that though) but basically, it sounds like a lot of paranoid ideation.
In the case of a paranoid schizophrenic, often the person appears quite normal, and may function well in society, except for the one paranoid delusion.

You have always had people with paranoid ideas. Often they would regale friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers with their stories. (I worked in mental health, so I am familiar with this phenomenon.) Now that we have the internet, these people can tell their stories to half the immediate world!

There is no doubt that once in awhile a person IS targeted for cruel pranks. I remember a story years ago, where some teenagers harrassed an elderly lady so bady, that she eventually had a heart attack. But those stories are the exception, and not the rule.

I understand that there are some fruitcakes around in any place, but this phenomenon appears to have something of a mass hysteria to it. A lone loony does not organise rallies in Washington DC or print T-shirts, etc. So I was wondering if after alien abductions this is the next big thing?

I noticed that one of the contributors to A2K is a self-declared victim of multiple stalking too, incidentally.

Mass hysteria is nothing new. Chat rooms, forums (like A2K) and the speed of news that is available to us, can do much to convince people of all sorts of things.

As I said before, once in awhile you hear of a person targeted to be the butt of continuous pranks, but I don't think that happens very often. I would suspect that more of this would go on in teenage circles.

I am not a big believer in conspiracy theories. Then again, I used to have a poster in my kitchen. It said:

"Just because you are paranoid, does not mean that they are NOT out to get you!"

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3225/is_n6_v45/ai_12307838

http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-05/delusions.html

What's the difference between multiple stalking and just plain ol' stalking?

Many many women who are victims of domestic violence are also stalked by the men in their lives. It isn't a hallucination, by any stretch of the imagination.

Multiple stalking, as far as I can tell from the few pages I perused, involves the stalking of a target by groups of people who are mostly total strangers to the target. The target is made subtly aware that (s)he is being stalked and the stalking consists of things that can occur normally in everyday life. The reasons given for multistalking vary, but range from political to plain fun.

Butrflynet- I don't think that Paaskynen is referring to the type of stalking that you describe. That kind is a one on one issue, with the stalker having an emotional tie to the person he is stalking.

The other type of stalking may involve a person who is not known to the stalkers, and least to any significant extent.

It seems an excellent subject for a very creepy film and it can be low budget too for no sfx are needed.

I'll read your link later paasky. But yes, that does sound like good subject matter for a movie.

BTW, how is your book coming along?

I'm reading a novel about a pandemic right now, and thought of you and your meteor.

oh wow....reading those exerpts was so sad.

I'm not sure that this is such a new phenom....it's just that people are more willing to report others to mental health departments that can help.

I had an aunt, that as far back as I can remember was a lot like these people. However, back in the early 60's it just wasn't talked about.

Her condition got worse and worse over the years. Even as a little kid, I thought someone should do something to help her, but I was empowered to make such a statement. The general attitude seemed to be that she could stop doing all these "crazy" things if she wanted to.

In another generation, these people would be thrown into an institution and forgotten, so we didn't interact with as many of these sufferers.

It's like a lot of things in this world, there's more people, so more people have problems.

Some of those stories were so off the wall as to make you laugh, but think of the hell these people are living in.

Weird...When I read this one:

...I thought, now why does that sound so familiar? After a bit of brain racking, I remembered waiting on a young woman at the clothing store I used to work at, who came in with all of her belongings in a backpack. She was very grimy, very poor looking, and she told me that she had to keep all of her stuff with her to keep it from being stolen, and that she had to buy shoes all the time, because "they" came every night and took her shoes and wore them out while she slept. It started out being just one girl that she knew who wore out her shoes, but now it was a whole conspiracy. She was broke from buying new shoes constantly. Very weird, and very sad how utterly convinced she was.

shoes seem to be a big thing. I knew this woman who said that every night her shoes hypnotized her.

Re my aunt, her husband had bought a new house right before he died, and she was living in a new neighborhood.

She started calling the police ALL the time because, for instance, her neighbor broke into her house every night and stole her choclate ice cream.

Well, here's this guy who's a complete stranger, and knew nothing about her. He of course called Elder Services who came out, evaluated her, and appointed her a guardian.

My older sister, who still lived near her, was so angry at the man who called the state in. She was telling me all this over the phone.

My response was..."someone should have made this call 40 years ago."

Then of course, she thought I was blaming HER for the situation. No, I think maybe I should have made that call too, at least when I got old enough.

I'm not sure by that time anything could have helped.

hmmmm.....

There are lots of examples of mass hysteria. Takes all kinds of different forms.

We have had witch crazes, inquisitions, holocausts, in parts of Asia there are epidemics of men believing their body is reabsorbing their genitalia, alien abductions, belief in the rapture and on and on ad infinitum.....and now multiple stalkings.

The net does seem abe to recruit widely for these crazes, but people have always been pretty good at it!

Tell us more!

Hello Ms Tea,

My research was coming along nicely and I had the basic structure almost filled out, but then the school year started and everything went into the freezer until the next summer holiday... (Oh no, now I have CLIFF RICHARD in my head!)

I agree that probably the underlying problem is not new, but it is attributed to a new origin. Where it used to be the pixies or the borrowers who made things disappear it was later the aliens and now it is your neighbours. I guess then that multiple stalking can spread more widely for it is easier to believe (not involving fairies or extra terrestrials and not featuring anything spectacular like spacecraft or anal probes). Anyone sensitive to the idea could read these stories and go: Hey, I have sand in my living room too! And there is this car parked in front of my house every night (oh wait, that's the neighbour's car... AHA, he's in on it, etc.)

I also came across a page where a lady had been filming people in her street to prove that they were stalking her. And the fact that people look at you when they notice, or are told, that you are filming them, was of course her proof that they were all part of the conspiracy. Life must indeed be hell when everyday occurrences become threatening.

The thing is that it will be very hard to make these people see things differently. As is the case with schizophrenic psychosis, their warped view of reality makes perfect sense to them, so people who want to help them (as in getting medical help) are part of the conspiracy according to the logic of their delusion. I had a schizophrenic student once who also was convinced she was threatened by unknown people (among others via the Internet). But even if the threat did not exist, her fear of it was real and led her to refuse medication, because she believed people were out to poison her.