===TRANSCRIPT START===

Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And on this episode, we're gonna make you question pretty much everything. You ever had that feeling that you're being watched, and not just the usual, someone's looking at me across the coffee shop kind of watched, but more like, the person looking at me from across the coffee shop is part of a vast conspiracy involving them, the barista, the guy walking his dog, every person on this block, and possibly the birds. There are people who live this way. Some might call them paranoid. They would call themselves targeted individuals, or victims of an impossibly large and frightening surveillance and harassment campaign that has them caught in their grip, often for completely unknown or inscrutable reasons. And what's really scary about this kind of stalking, known as Gang Stalking, is that the people who feel their targets aren't the kind of people you would think of as paranoid or delusional. They're doctors, authors, makeup artists, podcasters even.

Oh shit.

And you might be next. So pay no mind to the car following you as you're listening to this. Ignore the patterns blinking from your microwave clock. The helicopters aren't coming to take you away, at least not until we tell them to.

What are we scared?

When are we?

All the time. Join us.

Join us.

Now it is time for.

Time for. Scared All The Time. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. We're just going to do a real quick housekeeping up top here because I'm sure some of you are wondering how we're doing. We are both doing well after the fires. The danger has subsided. Everything is fairly back to normal, except the air is probably poisonous and the ground is ruined for a century. But other than that, we're alive. We're doing well. The frogs survived, which actually makes me think the air might be better than people are worried about because as we all know, frogs breathe through their skin.

So you have like two little canaries in the coal mine over there.

It's like two little canaries in the coal mine and they're doing well so far. What is that?

There's that thing in some countries where they just use like fish or a frog or something to make sure the water is good. I don't know. I'll put it in the show notes if I could find it. But there are countries that use nature to see what's up. Be like, oh, if this frog is fine, then we're good to drink this water. Or if this fish is fine, then the air is cool.

Yeah, wait. Did we talk about that in the episodes?

I don't do a lot of research on my own, so I get all my info from you.

I'm like the teleprompter and anchorman. All you know are the things that come off of me.

Exactly. So I'm just saying there's some credence to that little throwaway thought you had.

But yeah, so we're doing well, and we wanted to read just a quick five-star review or two because we got some really crazy ones. As you guys know, if you listen, we read your five-star reviews that you leave for us, so please leave them. Someday, we will have read all of them. But today is not that day. Today, I want to start with a review titled, Kiwis. This is from Empty Sirens is the username, and the review says, five stars. Why is this the only podcast where I get advertisements about kiwis? I don't eat kiwis. None of my family or friends eat kiwis. So why kiwis? I don't understand, question mark. I only get kiwi commercials. It's so strange. Otherwise, great podcast, highly recommended, especially if you enjoy kiwis, I guess. Empty Sirens, I'm so sorry. I mean, kiwis are a good fruit. I have no idea. Check your browser history. Maybe you're getting fed ads about kiwis for some internet search reasons or something. I don't know. It's odd.

Yeah, we're not involved with Big Kiwi in any way. We're not New Zealanders. So I have no idea why you're getting this.

Yeah.

But keep listening.

Yeah, please keep listening. Maybe someday you will receive different fruit advertisements.

Or maybe Kiwis is the new milk. Remember like in the 80s and 90s when milk was just everywhere? Like on my schlock bingo card, I have milk because in the 80s, like every movie they'd be like, oh, here we are having lasagna with milk. Like it's always milk at the table. Yep. And then obviously in the 90s, we had got milk ads and everything.

Yes, like the Aaron Burr commercial that-

Oh, the David Fincher one.

No, it was Michael Bay.

The guy's calling the guy milk, he's calling the radio station and he's got like peanut butter in his mouth or whatever and he can't give the answer.

Yes.

You know who edited that commercial?

Oh, Scott Philbrook.

Yeah, Scott Philbrook from Stonest and Legends. So crazy.

What a fucking champ.

Lake Champlain. Anyway, one or two more and then we have to get to the episode. People are waiting.

That's true.

We do bullshit a lot this episode too, so we're giving them a little taste of it now. Let's see here. Okay, I'm going to call to read this. So this is from January 11th, one of the new ones. It says, the, all caps, best fear-based podcast in the universe and all space and time, which is a nice, that's just the title. Then it says, the body of the review says, found this one through astonishing legends, and it's a fun sick in the head romp that I can't stop binging. Sick in the head, oh boy. Combines the dark humor of horror comedies with, well, the dark, and then parentheses, and witty, and parentheses, humor of Rick and Morty, I don't know about that, really makes the daily commute lighter and quicker, and an added benefit is that I can no longer stop saying, RIP, God bless, whenever I hear about someone who is deceased. A couple of good things to take from that. I'm sorry some people keep dying around you, pal, but I'm glad it's catching on. The term, not death. So anyway, that was from Outrageously Fun and Twisted, which is their user name.

Hell yeah.

So thanks bud.

One last one, just for fun here. How much would the bear eat? From MovingGull93, this listener writes, I've listened to Scared All The Time since the first episode, and there's been some great things covered that I'll never be able to forget. I can't walk anywhere now without expecting a sinkhole to open beneath me. Sorry. But my favorite moment so far has to be from the AMA Palooza episode, which is just last episode, when Chris said he would, quote, let a bear nibble on him for $500,000. And Ed's reaction was that 500K wasn't enough money because the bear wouldn't know when to stop. You guys are great. Yep. Ed actually saved me from letting a bear actually do that. I will always remember that he told me the bear might not know when to stop. So thank you, Ed. You saved my arm or possibly my toes.

And like a bear, we don't know when to stop making this show. So luckily, you'll have a lot more things to be afraid of soon. And I'm glad people like the AMA Palooza because we were worried that like, oh, we don't have an episode this week. We'll just put out some old premium stuff. And it sounds like people liked it. And if you like that stuff and you'll find a lot more other fun shit on premium. So yeah, go check that shit out, too, if you want.

Absolutely.

You don't have to wait for a disaster to hear premium content.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sticking with us through the fires. Remember, our Patreon is open if you'd like to subscribe to any of our three fear tiers over there. And our merch store is open for business. Ed's been busting his ass, making sure that that thing looks good, works good, works well.

Yeah. People have been posting their stuff they get. They really seem happy with it, so.

Yeah. I think everyone loves it. So head on over to the merch store at our website, scaredallthetimepodcast.com, for all of your t-shirt and bag needs. And with all that out of the way, let's get into the episode. Gang Stalking is a big, weird topic, and it's probably best to jump right in. So, Ed, have you ever heard of Gang Stalking? No. Okay. Great. Easy answer. Just flat out no.

I don't think I've ever Googled the word gang followed by stalking.

That's good. You shouldn't. It's probably better for your mental health that you don't.

I've typed a lot of things after gang, but never stalking.

Yeah. I mean, look, man, haven't we all?

When you first said it, I, for some reason, in my mind went to flash mobs listening to your intro.

Okay.

Because that would be interesting if someone thought I'm being gang stalked. I'm being gang stalked. I don't know. These people, they're always the same people at this food court and then all of a sudden it wasn't for them. It was just because these people were going to do a flash mob.

Well, gang stalking is like a flash mob that wants to kill you.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I think a lot of people are like, this flash mob is for me, but it's not, it's for TikTok or whatever.

No. Well, I mean, there might be some people who get TikTok flash mob gang stalked.

Not anymore, maybe. Well, the other thing I have to say about it is just randomly, maybe because I'm being gang stalked and now I'm being fed this information on the algorithm. There's this woman who just came up on my fucking Instagram, who was like this regular ass blonde lady who just seems like a suburban mom, or maybe not a mom, but a suburban lady. The video was essentially like how to know if the FBI is following you or something. And she's just like, I'm on day 291 of being followed by the FBI. There's a black van outside my house. The backstory was like, I dated a federal agent. And you're nodding your head. Do you know who I'm talking about?

I don't know who you're talking about, but this sounds like a targeted individual.

Yeah, so she's saying I'm targeted because of the affair she had had with a federal agent whose she told the federal agent's wife that like, oh, he's cheating on you with me. And then I guess the federal agent and his wife teamed up to like ruin her. So she had to like lose her practice, lose her business. She was like a nurse or whatever. And she's like, oh, all these people kept trying to like catch me on federal crimes, like lying about medications to a patient or doing this. And everything's entrapment and they're going through my garbage every night. And then she'll like be videoing a random looking SUV outside her house. And she's like, it's been there for two days. There's no reason for them to have tinted windows. But she had like, for real, like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers.

There's large, we're going to get into all of this, but there are large online communities of people who are extremely sympathetic to targeted individuals and their experiences of Gang Stalking. And this is actually a very interesting case that you're describing here, because this seems to have, there's many different ways that Gang Stalkings can occur or people can believe that they're occurring. This feels like a very personal way. And this feels like a very, she had an affair with somebody and believes that this is like a personal vengeance, a vendetta against her, which is not always the case.

She believes it's a vendetta, it seems like, and it seems retaliatory. And it's all about how this quote unquote federal agent is abusing their position to target her.

Yeah.

You know, to be able to, I don't know who the fuck she fucked that has the resources she's claiming, that seems like taxpayer money is just being used at the level. And she's like, talking about how it's year two, two and a half, and I'm like, there's no, I mean, look, this is a mismanagement. Everything is mismanaged, but that is an insane amount of human resources and taxpayer money to look at this, I don't know, former nurse.

Brother, it always is. That's right. That's one of the reasons that, you know, there are many different aspects to the world of Gang Stalking. One of the ways that experts will often disprove, for lack of a better word, a case of Gang Stalking is by looking at what kind of resources would be spent or used for one particular case of Gang Stalking that oftentimes doesn't even have this direct of a link to a person for any retaliatory reason. And there are cases, some of which we'll discuss in this episode, of people who have been victims of really wild, large scale harassment campaigns. That is a thing that has happened. But many of these cases, it is some combination of paranoia and delusion that leads people down these roads.

I just feel like when you hit 200,000 followers on a social media platform, it seems pretty simple at that point to just be like, hey, could someone, I'm saying as the influencer at this point, be like, hey, can I get a wellness check? Can anyone check and see if this actually is a government agency? Can anybody...

You mean if you're this woman experiencing this, you think that she should be asking one of her followers to find out? Not even one of her followers.

It's just like she's been legitimized. Claims might not be legitimate, but everything about 200,000 followers on social media would get you a blue check, back when blue check mattered depending where you are. So if 100,000 people are tuning in to the Truman Show that is This Lady's Life, is that not enough to bring to a lawyer and be like, hey, I got 200,000 people following, watching me every day. Show my case. I have documentation.

I mean, she, again, I don't know this particular case.

I'm just saying in terms of anyone who's dealing with Gang Stalking, then, I don't know, now monetized it for ads.

Well, the problem is for a woman like that, I suspect it is largely too late in the sense that she has already turned to the internet. She already believes what she believes. And at this point, she may have gone to a lawyer, she may have gone to an outside source, who may have told her, you know, I understand what you're saying, but we find no evidence that this is happening. And then that becomes part of the conspiracy. And then you can't trust the person who has said, well, we couldn't find the evidence or it's not real. Because now they must be in on it, too, because you already know what's happening to you.

Yeah, I guess it's just weird that it's, and we'll move on from it here, but the term federal agent is doing just so much heavy lifting in the story. I mean, a federal agent can be someone who works for, I don't know, Department of Water and Power or something.

Yeah.

So, I don't know, man, it's Chinatown, right?

Is it?

Well, in terms of, because you could be like, I went to the higher ups, but the higher ups know my federal agent person. He's protected by fellow federal agents who are protected by the thin blue line of some government agencies. And so I guess you feel that you have no one you can turn to because everyone who's in a position of power is going to side with the person. It's in the way that like, yeah, I wouldn't date a cop.

Well, sure. I mean, it's a weird delusion of grandeur too though, right? To believe that this mistake that you made is this important, that millions, if not a billion dollars of federal resources has been dedicated to ruining your life. I think for some people, it might be a way of, you know, processing trauma that they've experienced or the trauma that they've brought on themselves potentially, you know, it makes it more important than it may be.

Can you imagine if you would ask me this question four days ago, and I would have been like, I don't know what Gang Stalking is. Some people probably wish that was the case. We would have already been well into the episode. But the fact that this was fed to my algorithm fucking four days ago, now it kind of derailed us for 10 full minutes.

Well, look, man, the algorithm probably knows that I'm writing an episode on Gang Stalking and that we spend a lot of time close to each other. So it's feeding you what it thinks we're already talking about.

It's true, our Twitter algorithm is truly insane because we don't follow anyone. Right, and so now it's like, okay, what's someone who only follows Elon Musk gonna get? It got real weird, real fast.

We have a ton of weird shit on Facebook too that is like, oh, this is what people see when they just sign up for Facebook?

Yeah, because the Scared All The Time Facebook account has no friends or followers really, so we're presumably getting the blank experience, the welcome to Facebook day one.

It's all just AI images.

A lot of AI generated Jesus who's like arms are shrimp.

Lots of celebrity gossip. Anyway, doesn't matter. I did a terribly transition back into the planned episode. I'm going to say this probably a few times throughout the episode, but I'll say it near the top. If you have the inclination that there's something weird happening, if you're starting to notice patterns, you're starting to think that somebody might be following you, you're starting to think that there might be these cars outside your house, please start an Instagram account.

It will be bigger than Scared All The Time and really fast.

In days. No, please don't go online, because this is an extremely online phenomenon for reasons that are sort of explicable, but also just sort of the nature of the crowd of the internet. If you're experiencing anything that feels like it might be Gang Stalking, I do encourage you to please speak to a professional. We're not saying that you're crazy. We're just saying, you know, lots of people start to notice patterns, and it can be very, very difficult. Once you cling to those patterns, once you sink your teeth into them, it can be very hard to shake them. So it's always worth going to a mental health professional before you go online.

Normally, we would have had Mr. Disclaimer call in with that disclaimer, but we didn't want to remind people that we have a shadowy figure whose name we actively conceal. Constantly monitoring everything we do and say to help keep us from triggering people. Because, in this case, the anti-trigger tap we put on our own phone could ironically end up being a trigger for someone who thinks they're being gang stalked, right? I mean, who knows? But either way, you're getting all Chris all the time in the disclaimer department for this episode.

So that being said, my first encounter with Gang Stalking, I believe was a Vice documentary that came out in 2015 or 2016 called The Nightmare World of Gang Stalking. I don't know exactly how I came across it, but funny story, I was actually watching a lot of Project Runway at the time, which I love. There's a handful of reality shows I really love, and Project Runway was one of them. I haven't watched a new season forever, but what's his name? Tim Gunn was like my creative spirit animal. Have you ever seen Project Runway, Ed?

I have never watched a reality TV show.

Tim Gunn is like one of the, I forget if he's a judge, I think, but he also he shows up when they're making the clothes for the models. Like it's a fashion competition. Oh. And so he'll show up and he just has this very like blunt, but positive attitude about like, make it work. That was this thing he would always say, like they'd be running out of time and he'd be like, make it work. And when I was watching Project Runway, I was having a really hard time in the film industry. And Tim Gunn was like my safe place where I just be like, Chris, make it work. Tim Gunn would say make it work. Anyway, I was watching a lot of Project Runway. Tim Gunn would probably be one of my, if through some miracle someone knows Tim Gunn or Tim Gunn if you're listening to this show, I would love to have you on. You genuinely helped me in a dark time. Project Runway, Top Chef, 90 Day Fiance, probably the trio of incredible reality shows that you should watch. Anyway, I was watching a lot of Project Runway and this documentary caught my eye because one of the makeup artists who was on the show at the time, he wasn't a contestant, he was a judge, this guy named Billy B was one of the guys in this Gang Stalking documentary claiming that he was being Gang Stalked.

Billy being Gang Stalked?

Billy B was being Gang Stalked.

That's what I call him. That's what I know him as.

He's got tons of tattoos, he looks like a rough motherfucker. So I think I clicked.

Wait, so it's like him and Tim Gunn are co-judges?

Yeah, I mean, Tim Gunn.

So there's a guy who looks rough, a guy who's named after a weapon and this is a fashion show?

Yes, no, he was more of a temporary presence. Tim Gunn was like a core person in the show. But I think I probably clicked the link because I thought it was gonna be some stories about gangs that Billy B had encountered or something.

Who he dressed?

Well, I didn't know. I mean, there are some cool gang members out there, they look nice. Travis Barker talks about how he was all strapped up at his wedding because he crossed some gang at one point.

So like, I don't know, some Cadillac gang.

Yeah.

You can't have Cadillac logos on your body.

I mean, look, the world of fashion and rock stars and stuff, like they intersect with some bad people sometimes. So I thought that's what this was going to be.

Did he?

But no, this documentary cuts together Billy's story with a few other people who are convinced that they are being followed and harassed by what they refer to as a gang of people with nefarious intentions. Not a street gang, a government-affiliated gang that is coordinating to harass them. In Billy's case, he thinks that this is happening because he's a gay man who had just started renting a space in Hawthorne, California, and he felt that some unknown group of homophobes.

Yeah, it's SpaceX. Is that where Hawthorne, it's in Hawthorne, right?

I think so, yeah.

It's the only thing I know about Hawthorne.

This may have been almost pre-SpaceX or right around the same time.

Well, I'm sure it is.

So he talks about being harassed by 1.20 to 30 cars at the same time on the freeway, who are controlling, they've boxed him in, they're controlling the speed that he can drive, what exits he can take. He even claims that he pepper sprayed these cars in an attempt to get them to call the police, so that he could tell the police that this group of people was stalking him. So my point in telling this is both, that's how I got into learning about Gang Stalking, but also that this is not something that just affects people on the outskirts of society. It can often drive them to the outskirts of society. Like for instance, Billy B, whose YouTube went dark almost six years ago, and the last posts that he made are of these, what he calls bigots and drones, following him through Aberdeen, Mississippi, which is where he was born. He started taking all this surveillance footage basically of the people that he thought were surveilling him.

And he's been dark for the past six years. There's nothing. He doesn't exist anymore.

So I did find an interview that a makeup woman-

He's still on a highway somewhere. And never let him off the highway.

I found it-

And that is actually really scary.

But that-

Because it's like six of the Fast and Furious movies is literally about like cars surrounding you, so that you can't move your truck and they can rob you.

Is this me learning that you're afraid of the Fast and Furious movies?

Sounds like we all should be.

No, Billy B, I did find a podcast interview with him from like two years ago where he sounds like he's doing all right. He doesn't mention any of this and he's not asked about any of this, so I don't know how far off the rails his life went, but it does seem like he got caught in the throes of feeling like he was Gang Stalked. So anyway, then that obviously led me down this road of like, well, what else is there to know about this weird thing called Gang Stalking? And it's a really difficult topic to research because it is so deeply entwined with the internet. We'll get into it in a bit, but the rise of Gang Stalking reports has tracked with the rise of the internet over the last like 15 or 20 years. And I don't think that's a coincidence. There's a Gang Stalking activist in the documentary who says that one of the most important things he can do for the community is to use the internet to connect those who are experiencing Gang Stalking with others who are going through the same thing, because no one else can understand what they're experiencing. Which is a kind impulse, but also, I think, one of the worst things you could do for someone who thinks of themselves as a targeted individual.

Yeah, yeah.

So before we dive in any deeper, let's step back and ground this discussion in some definitions of what Gang Stalking is and isn't. So like we said, Gang Stalking is not being stalked by a gang the way that you would think of a traditional street gang.

Like it's not the Crips and Bloods or MS-13 or anyone else that Tim Gunn and his other guy dressed.

Correct.

It is just a gang in the sense that there are a lot of people involved.

Correct.

Got you. They're not even necessarily well, I guess they would necessarily be part of a team because they're all doing it against.

They're all working together.

Yes.

So I found an article by a journalist named Kim Whiting published in 2021, and she has some stories in there, one in particular that I think gives us some good insight into how a typical gang stalking might present itself. So she writes, Karen, unfortunate name, is a middle-aged white woman living in the Midwest, a married mother who's had a long successful career in public relations. Her case first came to my attention several years ago. She would appear to be quote, normal to anyone she passes on the street or with whom she might engage in superficial pleasantries. But Karen, also not her real name, believes the government is stalking and mentally torturing her via an array of techniques. She believes she's a small part of a much broader secret program, one that involves what she calls the US government's ongoing victimization of innocent and unknowing citizens. Karen says quote, I've been under surveillance by the NSA for at least a year and possibly longer. More frightening than that is the fact that the electricity in my apartment has been tampered with, causing me low level shocks. I'm also being burned at night by what I believe to be one of the new Directed Energy Weapons, or DEWS, dews. Karen says dews are invisible, soundless weapons such as radiation that emit highly focused energy, transferring that energy to a target to damage it. She says that one of the residents in her building is a military contractor specializing in electronics. Quote, for at least a year, he was the only person to have access to the empty unit next to mine. That's where I believe the surveillance and harassment is taking place.

I don't, that's so crazy. It's like I've never lived in a building where there's an empty apartment next to me. I can't even imagine if I felt gang stalked. I'm like, there's an empty apartment next to me, that an NSA surveillance person, NSA electric person comes and goes from?

The shocker.

Yeah. It weirdly adds credence to a story if I was like, yeah, the whole building is full, but there's one apartment just next to mine. Because the idea that there's an empty apartment next to yours, and the only person who's entering it is not a real estate agent is weird to me. Why do people come and go from an empty apartment?

I mean, I would love to know how Karen determined that this man is a military contractor.

Yes, and we're getting back to the story now. It's just, I don't know. I guess I just never thought about a building having an empty apartment in it.

We just did 15 minutes on what would happen if a building had an empty apartment in it.

Yeah, well, I mean, phenomenal. Well, we live in Los Angeles. Have you ever seen an empty apartment in your fucking life?

Yes.

Trying to find an apartment, how long did that take?

I've had empty apartments in buildings that I've lived in. I've never really, I mean, maybe this is just an incuriosity of mine, but I don't think I've ever wondered who was coming and going from them. I don't think I ever noticed anyone coming and going from them.

Well, there's that stupid shit on the internet. There's like memes about like, are we living in a simulation? Have you ever seen your neighbor bring their groceries in? And I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, just look, pay attention. We're not living in a simulation. We're all just living extremely incurious lives.

Yeah, yeah.

We're just looking at our screens all the time. So why would somebody do this to Karen? She says that her email address was included on a secret list that supposedly identified WikiLeaks' financial supporters. I think I gave a total of $150 to them, she says.

That's so much money.

My crime is that I practice what I believe for my First Amendment rights. It's terrifying knowing that I'm being targeted because of this. Karen says she's written to numerous members of Congress and civil liberties groups all to no avail. Why won't they investigate these claims? She asks. The situation is escalating. I fear for my future and my family's future. Now again, this is just one woman's story, but it hits a lot of the details that you see over and over and over again, some of which you talked about in the woman you saw in TikTok, that there's surveillance, there's neighbors who might be in on this. In this case, there's these energy weapons, which we're gonna talk a lot more about later.

Well, that's like the Truman Show of it, where it's like, at a certain point, you gotta start thinking, if it's not an empty apartment next to yours, is every one of my neighbors a plant?

That is the road that many targeted individuals go down.

Even Captain America had that cute neighbor who turns out was a fucking member of SHIELD watching him the whole time.

Well, I think that's a trope that we see a lot in movies and television. I think it probably happens a lot less in real life. But there still are thousands and thousands and thousands of stories out there, just like Karen's. My big question in getting into all this is, is any of this real? Is any of this actually happening? And it turns out the answer to that, as it always is on this goddamn show, is a long, winding road with a lot of surprising detours. And I was on this particular road for weeks. I actually reached a point where I just wanted to pull over and get out of the car and never get back in. You can only read about so many people falling into a deep paranoia before you start to get a little paranoid yourself.

Ew, gross, hate to hear it.

I was burnt out and honestly, I wasn't even sure I could finish the episode, but that wasn't an option because the fires fucked us and we don't have any more AMAs to put out for you guys. So come hell or high water, this had to get done.

Yeah, but you suckin down any of those magic minds? Because I'm always up against it with the edit and they've been a vibe for me.

Yeah, I was about to say that I've actually luckily had a little bit of help from our friends at Magic Mind.

Yeah, but you're stacking that mental wealth.

We gotta do something about this term. I can't say it without sounding like a rise and grind hustle culture YouTuber, which I will never be.

Hey, you take that back. Rising and grinding is no longer just a mental state for baristas and I don't know, people who make things out of grain.

But the basic idea of mental wealth aligns with my values and makes a lot of sense.

You're damn right it does.

Magic Mind doesn't believe in racing to fix your mental health problems when you're at the bottom of burnout or finding impossible to focus. They see the solution to these problems as something more holistic and long term. You're investing in habits today that will build your resilience for future challenges. That's where this questionable term comes from because it's like creating a mental savings account you can withdraw from when life gets tough.

Yeah, and you've been using what they sent, right?

Yeah, Magic Mind reached out a few weeks ago to see if we wanted to try their focus in sleep shots.

And they're strengthening your pillars?

Yeah, they are. Well, to explain, the five pillars that Ed's talking about are sleep, diet, exercise, stress management and exogenous compounds like coffee, melatonin, Xanax, anything you put in your body basically. And by properly calibrating these pillars, you can optimize your long term mental health.

I went from not knowing I even had pillars to them feeling much stronger pretty quick. It's easy to take, I take it all the time. It's just a small little shot with a bunch of stuff in it, which I would normally, I guess, have to travel the world looking for, but now I don't have to, which is tight.

That bunch of stuff would be the 12 active ingredients, a blend of mushrooms, vitamins and herbs that they've developed through over a decade of study. And I appreciated as the research department of this show, I love that they sent me a link to review the studies that support the claims about what each ingredient does. So with all that in mind, I started using both shots, focus in the morning, sleep at night and over about a week and a half, I gotta say, I felt fucking great. My sleep was deeper and more regular. My focus during the day was dialed in. I drank less coffee and was less jittery. So all that to say, you could thank Magic Mind for this episode ever coming together.

And if you do wanna thank them or just try their shit, you can get the 24 hour pack, which is both the focus and the sleep shots bundled together at a 45% discount if you use our show's link, which is www.magicmind.com/scaredjan. That is J-A-N as in January. So again, magicmind.com/scaredjan.

There's no better time to try it than right now.

Oh yeah, I'm doing this instead of dry January for sure.

I think 2025 should be the year you invest your mental wealth because you're gonna need it. The internet isn't gonna get any less crazy this year. We are all going to continue to live in our little digital bubbles that are influenced by forces outside of our control. No matter how much we like to think that, oh, I really have a handle on what's going on, you don't.

No, if you and I open Instagram right now, open the exact same fucking post, you're gonna get a different top comment than I'm gonna get.

Yeah, so I think that is something that has made the idea that we are being surveilled, I mean, we are being surveilled. At the end of the day, we are being surveilled every moment of the day. I think the question in a lot of these Gang Stalking cases is, again, it's a question of scale, it's a question of how much is this physically happening to you, how much are you the target of something specific and evil and cruel and insidious? And I think it's a tough subject because as far as we can tell, Gang Stalking is a pretty subjective experience. You know, unless and until a large group of stalkers gets caught harassing a victim, we kind of have to assume this is a social and psychological phenomenon as opposed to a physical one. Although, I would say, part of what makes this topic very scary to me is that that doesn't make it any less subjectively real to people who feel that this is happening to them.

No, 1000% and you have no where to turn to. I've been involved, not involved myself, I helped friends with two harassment cases to get restraining orders and I've helped with a pretty prolonged case of harassment that in the eyes of the law, the third one was like, it's a free country. Even knowing it's totally affecting your life, there are people who are perpetrating it, who are saying on camera or to neighbors or to anyone who will listen, I am in fact perpetrating this specifically to these people.

I am guilty of what I am being accused of. It just happens to be legal.

It just happens to be legal. And what's weird is for a lot of that stuff, with the exception of physical abuse that leads to restraining order, and even then it's just a piece of fucking paper. It's weird. It's not that weird. It's America. But it doesn't matter until it affects your finances. So if you're like, I'm being gang stalked, it might be like, fuck off. But it's like, I'm being gang stalked, and now I'm losing my business because I can't operate it. It will be taken more seriously than I'm just being gang stalked. But the reason I bring this up is that, yeah, it's also hard to go anywhere. Harassment is just such a stupid thing. Where like, it's hard to enforce, and it's hard to prove.

You'll remember in our episode on stalking that the phenomenon of even one-on-one stalking wasn't really legally defined until the 80s or 90s.

And it took celebrities.

And it took celebrities and high-profile cases to hit the news until people demanded that there be some kind of recourse for these cases. So the difference is in those cases, those stalkers acted almost exclusively alone with maybe a handful of exceptions. Gang stalking, on the other hand, is defined as the perceived covert and systematic harassment and intimidation of a person by a group of disparate conspirators such as online groups, government agencies or other authority figures. So, Gang Stalking is a much more conspiratorial experience than, you know, you can certainly become paranoid when you are being stalked by an individual. But it's easier to prove and prosecute generally than some of these cases where...

Online Gang Stalking, it's got to be very difficult to prove.

Well, I mean, I would even say most cases of Gang Stalking that I researched have a physical component. Very few of them seem to be...

Well, maybe it's a separate episode entirely.

Yeah, I mean...

Well, you see it pretty regularly and I don't want to be involved in it at all. You see a lot of the online stuff that's fucking insane.

Yeah, online harassment is a real thing, but yes, I would categorize that very differently from a traditional case of Gang Stalking which very much has like a real physical component.

There's guys in a car.

People breaking into your home, there's energy weapons being used, et cetera. Now, I think we mentioned this briefly before, but people who experience this activity of Gang Stalking call themselves targeted individuals or TIs or individuals of a targeted experience. Oh, wow. No, they don't call them that. Oh, okay. We'll call them TIs.

Like the rapper.

Yeah, that's yes, like the rapper who I'm curious if he knows. Maybe he's making a little wink and a nod to people who know.

I think he's older than, he's been around longer than the advent of online Gang Stalking.

TIs has been around a while. So these TIs have formed online communities to share stories and discuss theories about what might be happening to them. And this is where the phenomenon has really spun out of control because there are hundreds, if not thousands of places to find other TIs. All the major social media networks have groups and communities, and even secondary social sites like Quora are so full of TIs that I think TIs might be the bulk of their traffic.

I mean, that's the dead internet theory. It's all TIs and bots.

Basically, yeah. And these people are meeting up to talk about all kinds of different things.

Start their own gang?

They should. All of the TIs should start their own gang to start harassing the people who are harassing them. That could not go wrong.

I think that's the premise of West Side Story.

Well, there's a lot more snapping and dancing in West Side Story.

It might come back.

It might be the premise. It might be the premise. What are all these people meeting up to talk about? It depends on the person because there are dozens of varieties of what targeted individuals believe is the cause and purpose of their particular gang stalking. According to an article in Psychology Today, the who is variably attributed to neighbors, ex-boyfriends, employers, police, other law enforcement agencies, the financial elite, or less conventional sources like Freemasons and even aliens. The why is often attributed to retaliation for ending relationships or cheating like you were talking about, having an affair, acting as whistleblowers at work, political activism, having run-ins with the law, or being privy to some kind of secret information. Seemingly motive-less harassment is chalked up to being hapless victims of experimentation by government agencies testing new techniques of surveillance or mind control. If there is a common thread to the accounts of gang stalking, it's that TIs describe considerable suffering, not only as a result of on-going concerns about being harassed, but also from the experience of physical symptoms like actual physical pain and hearing voices. Not to mention the significant social stigma associated with sharing their claims with family, friends or mental health professionals who will usually dismiss them as some flavor of crazy. One of the things I find really interesting about the phenomenon of gang stalking is that by the time anyone started studying it or writing about it in the mid-2000s, there were already tens of thousands of people who claimed to be affected by it. In fact, the catalyst for the study of the phenomenon seems to be the existence of TI communities as opposed to the existence of gang stalking itself.

You're saying this is post-internet that started studying it or pre-internet?

Post-internet.

I'm saying it's not existence of TI communities in like church basements talking about it. No, no, no, no, no. Like abductees.

TI communities gathering online sort of caused this, you know, people to go, hey, what's going on over here? What's this all about? So it's not like there were all these reports of gang stalking in the 1970s that people were like, hey, what is that? We should look into that. It was like all of a sudden there's thousands of people saying they're being stalked and harassed by mysterious forces on the internet and we should look into that. And that is what the study of gang stalking grew out of.

Gotcha.

Which to me lends credence to the idea that most stories of gang stalking are a kind of delusion or psychological phenomenon. Like, if I were to say on this podcast that we need to kill Ed because he's secretly a god-like entity bent on the annihilation of humanity, but my only evidence for that claim is that lots of other people are saying we need to kill Ed because he's secretly a god-like entity bent on the annihilation of humanity. What's more likely? You know, that it's real or that a bunch of people have already convinced themselves that it's real.

Well, it's hopefully no one's convinced of this very specific fucking example. Because I don't need to be-

It's just something I've been thinking about.

You piece of shit. You piece of shit, you. I don't want that.

Of course, many targeted individuals will tell you the program is designed that way. It's constructed to make them look and act, quote, crazy in order to obfuscate what's really happening to them, which of course is a delusional belief in and of itself, and on and on it goes. The result, like I said earlier, is that Gang Stalking is hard to research, because much of the evidence has been collected by TIs as proof of their experiences, but a lot of that proof is like a phone video of a helicopter buzzing over their house.

Which we have every night in Los Angeles.

It's proof that a helicopter flew over your house, but we don't know if they were there to specifically harass the targeted individual, or if the targeted individual lives in the flight path of a helicopter. So it makes it really hard. That's part of what makes it this subjective thing of like, no matter what kind of evidence is out there, it's always somebody saying, well, this is what it means. And it's hard to necessarily prove or disprove the meaning of that.

Oh, it sucks. It sounds like it sucks.

Yeah, there's also very little in the way of a history of Gang Stalking patient zeros, which you know I love to go back to the beginning and try to find where these things started. And in this case, boy, boy, it's tough. There's not much documented by any reliable sources. To give you an idea of what you're facing when you try to start examining this world, here's what I did. I typed earliest reported Gang Stalking into Google. One of the first answers that comes back is a Quora link. If you aren't familiar, Ed, I think you know Quora.

Oh, I really, I think everyone's familiar with Quora. I feel like you can't search for anything without Quora being one of the top five links.

It's basically like Yahoo Answers. It's just a place where people can go ask questions of the community and people will respond. And you also get super targeted emails. So like I get an email every day from Quora with more Gang Stalking questions from Quora.

You got to go hop on Quora and ask it how to unsubscribe from these Quora emails.

I know. So the Quora result came back with someone who asked the question, what are the earliest recorded incidents of Gang Stalking? In particular, any incidents that were reported before the Internet era.

Someone else asked that.

Someone else asked that.

Wow.

Awesome. Exactly what I wanted to know. One answer in that question.

Go fuck yourself.

It's from a woman named Trisha whose little bio tag, because everybody gets a little like, it says their name and then there's like a little.

Like what you do?

It's like a 200 character.

Like you can put your own bio, describe yourself. Got you, got you, got you.

And she put, stocked by a rich ex-husband for 40 years.

Oh wow.

40 years, 40 years. That's longer than most people are married.

Much longer than almost everyone's married now. I think it's like 80% divorce.

Trisha, stocked by a rich ex-husband for 40 years.

Please call this her bona fides.

Has 9.2 thousand answers on this site.

Oh, so she's out there just answering.

She's answered 9.2 thousand questions.

Do you think they're all related to Gang Stalking? Or does she have to change her bio if she's in the sewing section where it's like sewed shit for my ungrateful husband for 40 years?

Based on her bio, I would imagine many of these answers are Gang Stalking related. And more disconcertingly, 21.6 million answer views. So 21.6 million people have read her 9.2 thousand answers on Quora.

She might be one of the most important people in the world.

Trisha, have you thought of running for president? You might win.

Does she know how popular she is?

According to Trisha, well, this is Trisha's answer. Again, to earliest recorded incidents of Gang Stalking, particularly before the internet era. Trisha tells us, Organized Gang Stalking was done during World War I and even before. The earliest reports were in the Roman army during the time of Christ. Since most people did not write or read back then, it is hard to know exactly what was going on, but it was organized Gang Stalking just like now. Hmm, so where can I find more information about that? Her answer continues, look it up on Facebook. There's entire groups of persons that go into great detail. I just answered this question a few days ago and went into great detail of what and why and who and how many. I couldn't find which group specifically on Facebook she was talking about.

And she didn't want to pop a link to her previous answer?

She didn't pop a link. There's dozens of them if you go on Facebook and I don't think they're all necessarily filled with the most accurate information. Another Quora user, this one named One Silver Fox, Hottie Alert.

He's like, his bio is, I Gang Stalked my ex-wife for 40 years.

His bio reads, experiencing slash researching organized stalking for the number four, approximately 18 years.

Did he run out of characters he can use? Why is it a number four?

I don't know. Maybe he's trying to signal he's like a cool, cool older hot guy.

Yeah.

He's posted a mere 217 answers to the site with a weak 1.1 million views.

This guy wishes he was Trisha.

He helpfully answered the question, other than in the Bible, what are the origins of modern day Gang Stalking? Is it satanic or cult? Right off the bat, other than the Bible, I got to say it was news to me. I didn't realize Gang Stalking was a big thing in the Bible.

Oh, you don't remember Peter's Gang Stalking of the Corinthians?

I mean, maybe Jesus had more Gellans too, I don't know. That's an episode, that's a different episode. But according to our Silver Foxy friend, the Bible doesn't use the term Gang Stalking, but it does document when Gang Stalking became a thing and who was ultimately behind it, because Jesus was the first targeted individual.

Like he was Gang Stalked by 12 guys?

I think you had 12 guys who just would not leave the fuck alone.

They wouldn't leave them alone, they were always there.

Jesus' story talks about him being Gang Stalked in every city and town. He was homeless and had to keep moving the way TIs probably should if they aren't already. Finding someplace he could call home wasn't possible as he was being stalked the same way that we are. Wherever he went, he was slandered and rumors spread. He was then either asked to leave or he was driven out of town. That really is one of the goals of Gang Stalking today. Slander you and drive you out of town, every town. Make you constantly uncomfortable and miserable and then kill you after they've tormented you for as long as you can handle it. One Silver Fox's answer continues, Jesus was followed and spied on, just like we are followed and spied on. He was despised by most people just as we are despised. There was nobody-

You don't love me in with you, pal.

There was nobody he could trust. Even his disciples would let him down, even betray him, just like our friends and family betray us. I have some news for you. Lucifer is real and he really is in charge down here. Also the angels that fell with him are real. They did not die in the flood. That was done to cleanse the earth of all the genetically tampered with plants, animals, insects, soil and people. And now we have come full circle and the fallen angels want to alter every human's DNA again through their vaccine. The real TIs are targeted because of their link to Jesus and because the mind control and demonization that is working so well on everyone else isn't sticking with us.

Okay, this is still Silver Fox.

Still Silver Fox.

Because he's taking a turn.

Yes, it is satanic. Lucifer is the god of this world and you and I do not fit in. Remember that Jesus said his kingdom was not in this world, but that he was going to prepare a mansion with many rooms. One of those rooms belongs to you, but there is a mark upon you and the demons and those that serve them know you immediately when they see you. They know who you are and they hate you.

And they Gang Stalk you.

And they Gang Stalk you, brother. And that all of this frankly sounds fucking insane.

And a lot of projection happening here by always including us and we.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, you know how it is. You know how it is for all of us people out here.

When all those people Gang Stalking you and your family won't come to Thanksgiving or Christmas because they're Gang Stalking you.

Yeah.

They don't want to talk to you.

Yeah. Nobody ever wants to talk about it, even though I know it's happening to literally everyone.

I look and I'm torn because I don't want to totally laugh at and shit on mentally ill people. But I do think and you might be listening to this going, yeah, but that's just one guy. I promise you so many Gang Stalking questions, answers, stories go down this road.

Which is weird because the beginning I was in, beginning of his little thing, I was like, OK, tell me more outside of the Bible. Let's fucking go. And then he started saying some things that maybe were relevant and then it took this turn.

Really, really starts to take a turn. And again, I think it speaks to that a lot of Gang Stalking reports ultimately are this sort of disorder, delusional thinking, it's conspiratorial thinking, it starts to connect all these dots that really don't necessarily connect. Just the number of people alone who are online talking about how Jesus was a targeted individual is crazy to me.

In your research.

In my research, yeah.

Because I've skirted by all those. I didn't see any of the things you're talking about. I only see AI Jesus made of shrimp.

It's not everyone that you click, but it's out there more than you would think. For a fairly modern phenomenon, there's a lot of connecting to the Bible, demons, numerology, genetics, vaccines, aliens, angels, all that stuff.

Which is interesting that he was, yeah, because he's going back with genetics in a way that I wasn't even picturing, that he was like, oh, the great flood was to take care of all these fucked up experiments with plants or whatever.

And the soil, which famously doesn't have DNA in it.

Yeah, well, you don't know. We never got that far.

I guess the soil could be genetic in nature. It could have the...

Every desert's a person.

Put that on a t-shirt. There's a button. Every desert's a person. So again, I think it's important to point out the best way to curb belief in Gang Stalking is to nip it in the bud, because if it's encouraged, which either person to person or by a person who is concerned about themselves being Gang Stalked going online, it can lead to incredibly dark places, kind of like what happened to a woman named Cindy James. Now, Ed, you might remember Cindy James. We covered Cindy James in our original Stalkers episode.

Oh, is she the one that was always tying herself up?

What she experienced in hindsight, I think, might be one of the earliest and most extreme stories of Gang Stalking.

I mean, I remember, if it's the person who got tied up a lot, I remember us, or at least myself, really flipping back and forth as the story went on to being like, I totally believe her, oh, this is bullshit, I totally believe her.

Yes, it's a crazy story. I encourage you, if you have not listened to our episode on Stalking, go back and listen to our episode on Stalking. The Cindy James story is probably the second half of that episode. It's a wild story. Long story short, from 1982 to 1989, this woman in Canada, Cindy James, reported being the victim of a relentless assault by unknown stalkers. She was getting phone calls and letters from these mysterious people. They were violent and threatening. Her house was set on fire a few times. She was physically beaten and tied up by her stalker. And then one day she was found dead in an abandoned lot.

Spoiler alert.

Yeah, spoiler alert. She was found dead, as she'd been found multiple times before.

She'd been found dead multiple times before?

No, she was found hogtied multiple times before. And that's when she was found dead. Her body was hogtied with a rope. She was in a fetal position. There was a black nylon stalking bound tightly around her neck. All of which sounds like somebody may have been stalking her. But as crazy as it is, there's no evidence that anyone was harassing her at all. Most of the evidence does point back to Cindy succumbing to paranoid delusions and doing all of this to herself.

She was dating a cop.

She was dating a cop.

So right there you got a person who can change police reports, have access to evidence. I'm not saying it's what's happening. I'm just saying that until this episode, I didn't think about having your own federal agent in your life as being scary.

I mean, look, again, I'm not saying that Cindy James wasn't murdered, but I think if you look at a lot of the things that she said and claimed.

I remember, I think ultimately we both maybe were like, oh, this lady made it up. But it was convincing for a long time, and it was a long time.

And I can only imagine if the Internet existed.

Oh, forget it.

Like, she would have followed...

Her Quora numbers would have been insane.

Her Quora numbers would have...

Cindy James would have displaced Trisha as the most important woman on the Internet.

Queen of Quora.

But no, she probably would have been in some targeted individual support groups, and people would have been very believing of her story. She may have convinced other people that these things were happening. Maybe other people would have felt they needed to prove that these things were happening by setting their own homes on fire. I mean, who knows? I think it's really scary that she could have spread her delusions to thousands of other people. But another difficulty in researching Gang Stalking is that while the modern online version is pretty easy to dismiss, there are programs and events throughout recent history that certainly seem like they could have been breeding grounds for something that could become Gang Stalking.

Everything is a Psyop. Every desert is a person.

Every desert is a person.

Everything is a Psyop.

We've mentioned it on here before, but I do think it's particularly relevant to bring up the CIA's MKUltra Mind Control program on this episode.

Which also came up in Stalking. The guy who might have murdered that actress.

Yeah, because that guy had the same book as the guy who shot Lenin. He had A Catcher in the Rye. Which is weird. It's really weird.

No, there's a lot in that episode. I mean, everything's a fucking sci-op, bro.

There's MK Ultra, as well as the FBI's COINTELPRO surveillance program that they had in the 50s, which was the very same program that sent Martin Luther King Jr. threatening letters in an attempt to blackmail him into killing himself. The existence of these programs makes some modern gang stalking claims seem a lot less far-fetched. I mean, how do you tell someone they're being paranoid when the CIA really did spend 20 years secretly dosing Americans with LSD just to see what would happen?

Well, it's like Randy Newman always says.

I love LA?

No, it's in that song. What is it?

You've Got A Friend In Me?

No. Actually, it's from the song he had written for the second, I believe, theme to Monk, not the original season one. It's a tongue-in-cheek song, but it's got a lyric that's like even paranoids have enemies or whatever.

So from this, we can assume that Randy Newman was also on the Gang Stalking Quora. Probably has written 6,000 answers.

Yeah, he's out there for sure, unless you're me, because I'm the biggest Randy Newman fan. His Quora answers have more views and listens than his original albums.

Probably. So MKUltra, for those who are unaware, was a classified CIA program that engaged in a lot of illegal shit, including the administration of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, to unwitting American citizens in a variety of social situations. The CIA established research facilities in universities and hospitals, and they even created front operations like brothels under Operation Midnight Climax, where subjects were secretly drugged and observed through one-way mirrors. While this was all officially justified as countermeasures to Soviet mind control techniques, the program's scope extended far beyond its stated objectives and what anybody thought that they were actually going to do.

Well, that always ends up being the case, right, where it's like black money, slush money. So it's, there's not a lot of oversight in these, and they just kind of forget, it seems like they just forget that they open these things, and then the guys in charge just end up going way beyond what they're supposed to do.

I mean, especially if you're the CIA in the 1960s, they weren't even supposed to be operating in the United States, and they were just doing whatever the fuck they wanted.

I think one of the famous, I think we're like 15 minutes from here, it's like one of the famous CIA outposts for one of these types of things.

I'm sure there was, I mean, the CIA in Hollywood in the 60s, I mean, read Chaos.

I read it, I got an accident in my car, this could do it.

I know you have, I know you have, I'm just saying, tell our readers, read Chaos.

It's a good book.

Great book, very well researched. You know, they were out here, they were active, they were keeping tabs, they're actually gonna get to a little bit more of that in a minute. The program MKUltra resulted in at least one documented death. Frank Olson, a US. Army biochemist, died in suspicious circumstances after unknowingly being administered LSD. There's a great Errol Morris documentary on him and his death called Wormwood on Netflix, which is probably a PSYOP that's worth checking out. But basically, long story short, Frank was slipped some LSD during a party that some of his CIA cronies were throwing. And over the course of like seven days or nine days or something, he kind of lost his grip on reality. And he, at the end of this period, fell from the 13th story window of his hotel.

13, interesting.

Interesting. Number 13, unlucky. Friday the 13th, scary movie.

Yeah, 13 ghosts.

13 ghosts, it's very scary. The 13th floor, everybody forgot because The Matrix came out right before it and was way better.

I remember it, and it's a piece of shit.

It is a bad movie. But the really big question in Frank Olson's case is whether or not he went out that window on his own volition or if someone within the agency got worried about him becoming a liability because he was talking all kinds of shit and threw him out the window. If it helps to give you a hint as to which is more likely, the New York District Attorney's Office reopened its file on Olson's death in 1996 and eventually changed the cause of death from suicide to unknown. So some evidence that perhaps he was thrown. Meanwhile, at McGill University, Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron conducted particularly controversial experiments involving intensive electroshock therapy, drug-induced comas and various psychological manipulation techniques. The full extent of MKUltra only came to light in 1975 through investigations by the Church Committee in Congress and the Rockefeller Commission, which led to exposure of all these illegal programs. And really the only way they even found out about it is literally because someone forgot to destroy the documentation.

Yeah, we've talked about this in other episodes, where I think I empathized with that voice, or I should have sympathized with that person, because I don't think they forgot. I think people were like, I don't get paid enough. There's so many fucking pieces of paper here. I'm leaving.

That person also may have gone out of window at some point soon after. And all of this was happening at the same time as COINTELPRO, which was the FBI's program that ran from 56 to 1971. This was less focused on psychedelic experimentation and more focused on targeting and disrupting domestic political organizations through surveillance, infiltration and harassment campaigns.

Yeah, you know that important time in American history where change actually could have came, like real change could have happened. Next thing you know, you got JFK being assassinated, MLK being assassinated, RFK being assassinated.

Malcolm X being assassinated.

All during the time period of this thing you're talking about, literally those years.

Yeah, well, and COINTELPRO focused its sights on civil rights leaders, anti-war protesters, environmental groups, anyone that they deem subversive. And in addition to trying to get MLK to kill himself, they also infiltrated groups like the Black Panthers and created conflict between members. You know, they were trying to destabilize all of these groups.

They were the original social media. Not that they were the original social media, it's that, I think we maybe talked to us in the previous episode for a second, and we're going to talk about it for one second this time, too. Social media must be so fucking exciting to any old ass person who worked on like co-intell things, worked on CIA things. You know, any old person who's like close to death, but was overseeing things in the 60s or 70s, must have been like, fuck what I could have done with social media. And so all of them have proteges, all of them have shit. Like, I can't even imagine how giddy, and that's what's interesting about social media. America monetized it in several other countries, use it as the weapon it is. And we also probably use it as a weapon, but we like making money more. So it is such a insane thing to think about.

I mean, making money is pretty cool.

Making money is very tight. We haven't experienced it yet. We hear it's good. We put an order in for money and it hasn't arrived, but.

Listen, there's a lot of delays in shipping because of the fires.

And there's blizzards, there's blizzards across the country too. So money might show up. You know, I just think about how the Internet must be so finger licking good. People who do what we're talking about, cloak and dagger shit, must be drooling at the idea of Internet.

I mean, to be fair, I don't even know if any of the Gang Stalking groups that I've been in as I've done this research are real. Maybe they're all.

They're all honey pots.

Yeah, I mean, who knows?

Yeah.

I think a lot of what Cointel Pro did.

That's a good button, by the way. We should do Cointel Inside using the old Intel Inside logo. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to put audio on the fucking button. But I'm saying like, that would be good, though.

We probably could get a little speaker.

We just established we have no money.

Or no, that's close encounters. The Intel Inside is like, bum, bum, bum, bum.

I mean, that could be Duracell. I don't remember.

Maybe that's Duracell.

Who knows?

I can't remember.

Whatever happened to the Energizer Bunny? He was such a fucking thing.

Psyop. Fucking Psyop.

Goddamn Psyops.

He went back to Russia and died in the Ukrainian war. But the FBI's campaign that they ran, they ran one campaign against a French actress, Jean Sabourg, who supported the Black Panthers. And the FBI coordinated harassment against her that I think mirrors contemporary Gang Stalking accounts. They followed her, they spread false rumors about her in the media, and they conducted overt surveillance designed to create distress in her.

To intimidate.

To intimidate. She eventually tried to commit suicide and had a number of mental health crises in her life. Another example I think worth mentioning is the FBI's operation against Puerto Rican independence activist Pedro Albitzou Campos. They coordinated with local law enforcement to maintain constant surveillance on this guy. They put vehicles near his residence and strategically positioned so that he would notice them. And they harassed him through all kinds of angles, through multiple parties, and all of that is kind of, it's a Gang Stalking tactic. Unlike modern Gang Stalking claims, there are mountains of evidence that these abuses actually occurred. We know this because of declassified documents and congressional records, court cases, testimony from former agents. We have all of it, so we know that these things were happening.

Absolutely, yeah.

And that's one of the reasons, again, that Gang Stalking is a tricky topic to navigate. These programs that existed for decades created a legacy of distrust and established precedent that your paranoia may not just be paranoia. It's kind of the difference, I think, between, well, that could never happen, and, well, it's happened before. And in a world where, like we discussed earlier, we all are being surveilled online all the time, that's a pretty uncomfortable place to be, feeling like, well, these things have happened.

Yeah, it's just difficult to navigate it morally, ethically and patriotically, I guess, too, because it's something where it's like, you need this thin line where it's like, nobody wants the Patriot Act, but also people want to feel secure and safe. And so you don't want to completely dismiss intelligence agencies because in our mind, they're still doing Jack Bauer fucking stuff that-

In our minds.

Yeah, exactly.

In reality.

But all it takes is one Jack Bauer thing to make their weight in gold. Like if one thing comes up that does help people sleep at night genuinely, then it's worth it, but then at the same time, so much of it just seems like throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks.

Look, and I'm sure- I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure many of our intelligence agencies' triumphs are hush-hush, and we don't know about them. But I'll tell you one thing that's not hush-hush is how many people from some of these guys who just perpetrated attacks on New Year's to the Boston Bombers, to the people who perpetrated 9-11 were all on the radar of FBI and law enforcement, and in some cases may have been actively encouraged to continue doing what they were doing.

Or funded in some way, or-

Or funded in some way.

I'm just saying- I started my sentence with, it's tricky. Even if those aren't the words I used, I'm just saying it is a difficult thing to navigate and to sit with.

It is. It is.

Because I don't think we should live in a world where certain things don't exist.

Certain things being law enforcement?

Yeah. Law enforcement makes it sound local on a local level.

Sure.

I'm saying on a national level, I don't know.

Hey, it's a-

It's impossible to talk about what we're talking about.

Without getting gang stalked.

Yeah. No, I'm saying it's impossible to talk about what we're talking about without accidentally or on sometimes and maybe in your case on purpose, painting, like the funding these people got were because they thought, quote unquote, they were the good guys probably in a lot of cases, the 1950s.

Yes.

In 60s.

Yes.

But then by the time the shit's declassified, you're like, you are absolutely the bad guys.

Yeah.

In every one of these like Banana Republics or any like external or international or domestic things. So it is tough, but I think a lot of it is done. I would think in the, I would hope not the fucking LSD in the 60s shit. That's just disruption in being fucking scumbags to do shit for rich people. But we shouldn't because it's not good for us. We shouldn't do an episode on intelligence agencies, but it's one of the harder things to rectify.

Yeah.

Every country in the world has intelligence agencies that are set up for the protection and well-being of the citizens of those countries.

Sure. And there is a big question as to how much good those agencies are doing versus how much those agencies are just essentially acting as organized crime operating in the interests of the country that sponsors them.

I mean, that's a great way that you can put that on a t-shirt. I think that's exactly what you just said is basically what I'm trying to say. This whole time. Yeah, well, those are the two ways to look at it. And it's so difficult to thread that needle.

It is. In any case, one of the major differences between some of these people that were targeted by Cointel Pro and a lot of the claims of modern gang stalking is, let's be real, the visibility and importance of the target.

You know, like I said, it sounds like it's not important targets that are incredibly overtly spider pod.

Yeah, I mean, not everyone targeted by these programs was necessarily a famous actress or a revolutionary, but I will also say that it seems unlikely to me that these systems were scaled up in secret over decades to the tune of trillions of dollars to target like a guy who keeps reporting his neighbors to the HOA for like parking violations, you know? Like, I don't think that just because you-

Even if that neighbor was a federal agent.

Yeah, I don't think because you annoyed your neighbor who files paperwork at the NSA by telling him to not let his dog shit on your lawn anymore, you're not gonna be the target of a five year harassment campaign. It's just not, I don't think that's how the real world works.

Yeah.

And again, I think there's an emotional and a psychological component to why you may feel that way, that you may feel like you have upset somebody to the point that they're going to do this to you in retaliation.

That fucking Russell Crowe movie where he's got road rage.

Oh, yeah. I liked that movie. I watched it during COVID, not unhinged, something like that.

I never saw it. You just told me about it.

It's a good movie. I liked it. I mean, it's a dumb movie, but I liked it.

I'll watch it tonight. I do wonder the psychology of a Gang Stalked person. And look, some of these have to be fucking really Gang Stalked, but the psychology of a Gang Stalked person who isn't really Gang Stalked, how much of that is a projection of lonely people who feel isolated and lonely and now have the ability to tell other people on the internet who are suddenly listening to them that not only am I not lonely, I'm overwhelmed with people looking at me. And it's a problem for me and maybe that's from this deep desire, this wish to actually be more noticed and more taken account of and oh, I walk through life and nobody pays me any mind. So I can see how there's like a fantasy element of a delusion of grandeur.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And we'll get into more reasons that psychologically these things might happen in a little bit. But first I wanna touch on microwave weapons. There are lots of claims from targeted individuals that they are being attacked by microwave or energy weapons. And if this sounds familiar to you, it might be because there's recently, like in the past 10 years, a rise in reports of people, mostly government employees of some persuasion or another, who have believed that they are being targeted by energy weapons. Long story short, about 10 or 15 years ago, American officials and their families living and working at the US. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, started experiencing mysterious symptoms. First they would hear a loud noise and experience intense pain in their ears and their head. Then came the headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus and vertigo. And despite a number of official investigations, the exact nature and cause of these claims has yet to be determined. All of this has come to be known as Havana Syndrome. It's probably a whole other episode entirely. There is multiple congressional investigations and people have said this is happening. No one's ever been able to pin down any sort of machine that has actually caused this. But this idea of a direct energy weapon, Karen spoke about earlier. Many targeted individuals feel these weapons have been used against them. Karen, in fact, reported exactly the following. I've started getting dizzy while sitting at my computer, she said. I've started hearing buzzing, knocking, and whistling sounds in my left ear. I never once doubted that they were coming from a source outside my head. Karen says she searched for answers on the internet and discovered information about the microwave auditory effect, something she describes as the whistling, knocking and pinging in the skull that occurs when someone is extremely close to microwave signals. She says she keeps seeing beat up old cars with out-of-state license plates parked directly in front of her apartment, and that when they're there, she says, I'm awakened by the sensation of being cooked. My bones hurt, my eyes cloud, and it didn't take long to figure out that I was being hit with some new kind of directed energy weapon.

Damn, some Jeepers Creepers fucking truck is out there slamming her with microwave beams.

I mean, what's weird is that she's not the only one who's claimed this. When 34-year-old Aaron Alexis killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast DC back in 2013.

I remember that.

He left behind documents in which he claimed the Navy had been attacking his brain using, quote, extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves.

I don't remember that. They covered that up pretty well in the news.

He says, and to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven me to this. He was then killed in a shootout with police. In November 2014, so like a year later, 31-year-old Myron May shot and wounded three students with a semi-automatic pistol inside a Florida State University library. Daring the responding Tallahassee police officers to kill him, he fired in their direction and they shot him dead. He was an attorney and a Florida State graduate, and Myron May described himself as a targeted individual on social media and told others that he believed government stalkers were harassing and using a directed energy weapon to hurt him. Shortly before his rampage, he sent an email that said, I've been getting hit with a direct energy weapon in my chest all evening. It hurts really bad right now. He also left a voicemail that said, I am currently being cooked in my chair. I devised a scheme where I was going to expose this once and for all.

The first scheme he should have tried was getting up. Changing chairs.

He also made several posts on a Facebook page for targeted individuals, including one that asked, has anyone here ever been encouraged by your handler to kill with the promise of freedom?

Oh, interesting. So he's saying that I'm getting blasted no matter what chair I'm in. Unless he's in a wheelchair, in which case I feel like an asshole, he can't change.

I don't think he was in a wheelchair.

It seems like he just wasn't, yeah.

I think he might have had a bad computer chair.

Yeah, I'm saying, so it's kind of interesting that he's like, hey, I'm getting blasted every day with these things. And so much of this is just torture. It's just torture from afar. And so it's say, I'm getting blasted with microwaves and now I have this men in black character who shows up and says, you want to stop getting hit with microwave beams? Go shoot these five people and the microwave beams will stop.

Yeah.

Which is a little bit still like son of Sam being like, my dog told me to do it.

It is, and these are the only three people again, for every one or three examples I'm mentioning in this episode, there are dozens of other people, not in this case, dozens of people who have killed people, but there are other acts of violence where people have left notes. The guys who acted on New Year's didn't necessarily leave notes about directed energy weapons, I don't think, but there was some similar language in those notes to-

Was that the Tesla guy?

The Tesla guy, the guy who drove the truck into the crowd in New Orleans.

Oh, I thought that was ISIS.

Well, he said that he was a member of ISIS, but anyone can say they're a member of ISIS.

That's true.

They both were active military guys.

Which when we read Chaos and when you talk about this, there's a lot of, I think when you sign on the dotted line, you become property of the United States government a little bit, and a lot of these guys, even if you go back to the Tuskegee Airmen and shit.

Well, again, Tuskegee Airmen is one of those examples that you can go back to and go, well, hey, it happened one. They did it to these guys, so it makes it a lot harder. The actions that the government has taken in the past against citizens of the United States has made it easier to believe and harder to dismiss the idea that they would do it again in a different form.

Yeah, everything's a Psy-Up. I mean, in that case, unfortunately, it was not a Psy-Up. They were literally injecting people, but.

But yeah, I mean, these stories of directed energy weapons have come from lots of people, or at least a handful of people, who have perpetrated violence, and not only that, there is evidence that some of these weapons have at least been experimented with. In January 2007, the Washington Post tackled the subject with an article entitled Mind Games on the Internet, a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that. In 1965, according to declassified Defense Department documents, the Pentagon, at the behest of the White House, launched Project Pandora, which was top secret research to explore the behavioral and biological effects of low-level microwaves. For approximately four years, the Pentagon conducted secret research, zapping monkeys, exposing unwitting sailors to microwave radiation, and conducting a host of other unusual experiments. So unusual that a subproject of Project Pandora was titled Project Bizarre. The results were mixed and the program was plagued by disagreements and scientific squabbles and Pandora ended in 1970. And with it, the military's research into so-called non-thermal microwave effects seemed to die out, at least in the unclassified realm. But the article continues, there are hints of ongoing research. An academic paper written for the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of a weapon that would use sound waves to send words into a person's head. The signal could theoretically warn the enemy of impending doom or encourage the enemy to surrender. In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology, the Post article says, using microwaves to send words into someone's head. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that 2002 patent, records that note that the patent was based on human experimentation that took place in October 1994 at the Air Force lab where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility.

Which back then you had to put a billion dollars in rooms of computers, even in 94, together to build a sound wave generating device that can put thoughts into people's heads. And now it's just fucking Twitter.

And now we unfortunately have to peer into the thoughts of everyone who were then, you know, yeah, I mean, you don't need a microwave weapon if you can just get people to fill their heads with this shit of their own free will. Yeah. Research appeared to continue at least through 2002, but where this work has gone is unclear. The research laboratory citing classification refused to discuss it or release any other materials. I would note that you generally don't need a working model of something to file a patent for it.

No, you don't. You definitely don't.

Just because the paperwork exists, doesn't mean that it ever got built or that it worked.

But I have 50 time machine patents right now.

And that's really how Ed makes his living, is he's selling these patents to all kinds of overseas buyers for top, top dollar.

Top dollar. Still waiting on that money, too.

But again-

I'm hoping I can use a time machine to go to the future where I've already been paid, but none of them have worked yet.

So just because this paperwork exists doesn't mean that the machines actually got built or that they worked. But again, we are in another situation where there is some degree of truth to the claims that some of these target individuals are making. Now are they making these claims because they maybe came across this research at some point in their employment by the US government and became convinced that these weapons had been turned against them? That's possible. Have these weapons been built and were they being tested on them? Again, not impossible.

I think if someone's feeling something, I absolutely believe it's their right. And honestly, I would urge them, not on this podcast for legal reasons, but I'm saying like-

We don't urge anyone to do anything on this podcast.

But I'm saying it's both your right and probably your responsibility to maybe look it up and go a couple more Quora answers deep. But if you're like, hey, every time I sit in a chair, my chest gets hot, my teeth fall out and my one eye gets big. I think, yeah, it's totally fine to go put all those things into the internet and be like, does this happen to anyone else? And see where that goes.

But also go to a doctor.

No, yeah, go to a doctor. But I'm saying is because unfortunately, 10 years down the road, too often, I'm not saying people are being gang stalked, but too often you do have a thing that's been like, oh, recent declassified information. We actually did have a gun that makes your teeth fall out and one eye get big. We weren't targeting anyone, but an intern left it on as we drove from one location to another. So like three suburban towns had eyeballs get big.

Yeah, these things can happen. So it's possible that these weapons exist, and it's possible that they've been used on everyday citizens. I can't discount it. Is it happening in conjecture with all these other forms of secretive and mysterious harassment on a regular and organized basis? That's where I started to have a lot more trouble with these claims. And to once again, return to Karen's story, this is where things start to fall apart for me. She says she hears someone crawling between the floorboards at night, and that sound is always followed by heightened electrical currents that fill her apartment. She believes that the other residents in her apartment complex are government agents and involved in the conspiracy. Other neighbors, she claims, I guess, not the person living directly next door to her, who is a government contractor or whatever.

Who's not living next door? He just has access to the apartment.

Other neighbors, she claims, are quote, just greedy slobs who want money, tickets to sporting events and household upgrades in exchange for spying and enabling the torture of me.

Oh my god.

This realization was sickening. My neighbors had become accessories to my attempted murder.

Wow, for tickets to Kinky Boots.

Karen says, the most extreme abuse happens when I'm alone. I get electrocuted with what I've come to realize. Again, she uses a lot of phrases like, I figured out.

I've come to realize. I went to Quora and now all my suspicions have been confirmed.

I'm in love with Trisha. We're getting married.

Trisha doesn't know this yet. She will not respond to my dozens of emails. Trisha's then posting on Quora. Is anyone getting too many emails from someone who says they love them?

Karen says, I get electrocuted with what I've come to realize are manipulated cable, phone and electric lines. After repeatedly hearing static noise on her telephone landline, she says a technician told her that her line was, quote, testing constantly busy and appeared to have what Karen says is, quote, a recorder on it. She disconnected both her phone and computer line as a result. But she says, they always find another way to reroute the burn. Apparently, they call it being boxed in. I learned that phrase when I went to an electrical supply store and the guy on duty told me his father worked for the CIA.

What year was this?

I mean, this article was published in 2021. I don't know exactly what year this was happening.

I mean, you got a landline, she's going to Radio Shack. Like, how old is this person?

I mean, I don't know. But this man whose father worked for the CIA told Karen, who's the last person you should have said this to, that she is being boxed in and burned by radio waves created from electromagnetic fields. Apparently, this wire in my chest acts as an amplifier to the radio waves. There's no explanation of the wire in her chest.

Okay, this just came up at this point.

This came up at this point. Remember, as she pointed out way back at the beginning of her tale, this is all over a $150 donation to WikiLeaks, which even if these secretive groups exist, and even if these groups were to view that donation as some kind of dangerous, seditious act, it seems like the response would be more of like a, we blasted you once with the energy gun. You know, kind of a thing. And not like everyone in your life has joined in on harassment and there's someone crawling through your floorboards and we're manipulating all the power lines and we're hitting you with an energy weapon and there's people surveilling you on your street for kinky boots tickets or whatever the fuck, front row seats to the Dolphins game or whatever.

I don't think Julian Assange is getting hit with any of this.

No, no, it's a lot over relatively nothing.

I mean, don't get me wrong, $150, I've never donated $150 to anything. So good on her for having disposable income.

It's true, but I would say, isn't it more likely that Karen is a woman who, as a supporter of WikiLeaks, was already primed to believe that the government hides secrets that need to be revealed and that those secrets might one day be turned against her?

Yeah, maybe.

And I'm not saying, again, not everyone who experiences Gang Stalking necessarily is a paranoid person or believes in these things, but in this particular case, you know, I think somebody who's donating a significant amount to WikiLeaks is probably, there's probably some other beliefs.

They're into that. They're into that world.

Yeah.

They've probably called AM Coast to Coast 70 times prior with, before the WikiLeaks of it all, not saying Karen, but I'm saying a Karen type, before WikiLeaks is calling AM Coast to Coast to be like, I felt a bump in my chest. I'm pretty sure I was abducted. It's either an alien tracker or a government tracker because one time I saw what was definitely a plane in the air.

Right. Honestly, I think some of the best examples of what sounds like traditional Gang Stalking come out of-

Ed's journal.

Comes out of, comes from corporations harassing and punishing people that they view as trouble.

Oh wow.

A New York Times article published in 2020 detailed the hammer, the eBay of all places, fucking eBay.

Oh, I'm not surprised at all. Every year they're ripping more fucking fees. They're raising the fees on eBay to the point where it's like, it doesn't make sense to sell, but-

Have you ever heard of a website called eCommerce Bytes?

No.

Okay, so-

I know eCommerce as a term.

Yes. Well, two eCommerce bloggers, Ina and David Steiner, ran a website called eCommerce Bytes, which is basically like, from what I understand, a trade publication for people whose business is selling things online. And they had some pretty serious critiques about eBay. And according to Wikipedia, members of eBay's executive leadership decided that this was too much and they wanted to do something about it. So in April 2019, eBay's chief communications officer, this guy Steve Weimer, sent then CEO Devin Wenig a post that these two, this couple had posted on their eCommerce Bytes, about how outsized the CEO's compensation was compared to typical employees.

Yeah, you got to fucking keep taking the fees from us to pay some piece of shit.

And the CCO, the chief communications officer, in this email said, we are going to crush this lady. And then a month later, the CEO texted Weimer, take her down.

I love it, it's all written, that's nice.

Yeah, these guys were not smart, again, not criminal geniuses.

But you know, you're rich enough, you just get away with shit, so you don't even think about having to cover your tracks, there's something else to cover it for you.

So Steve Weimer took the concerns that the CEO had, or I guess the order to take her down, to the head of eBay's Security Division, a guy named Jim Baw, whose team began harassing Ina and David Steiner at home and online. Weimer, the chief communications officer, texted Baw, the head of security, that-

Kill her tonight at four. Signed my real name.

These guys are idiots. Ina was a quote, biased troll who needs to be burned down in all caps, that he wanted to quote, see ashes, and that Baw should do whatever it takes. Okay, wow.

So what I said is almost the same.

Yeah, pretty much. Signed John real name.

Yeah.

The Steiner's were harassed and threatened both online and physically in their home by deliveries of such things as a bloody pig mask, live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, and large orders of pizza, which honestly sounds like a perk.

I mean, the- Just getting pizzas. Well, not if they're like cash on delivery or something. And then you're having to pay for all these pizzas. Now, are all these being done clandestine, like is it okay?

Porno magazines with David Steiner, the husband's name on them, were sent to a neighbor's house to make the neighbors think that David Steiner was like a porno pervert. Sure. Employees of eBay flew from California to Boston to vandalize the Steiner's home, as well as stock their personal vehicle. Plans were even made to break into the couple's garage and place a GPS tracker on their car.

I mean, I'll tell you right now, there's nobody safe. But if I caught one of these motherfuckers in my garage, I'd be in jail. Enough shit's going on in your life where you're like, this isn't just unfortunate. These people are being targeted. They would be on the TI thing. Even though they don't know it's eBay yet, I could totally see myself being like, I shot four people in my garage. I don't know. I think they're part of this bigger thing. Then it's like me going to jail.

Ed's exact words were, I hope they're part of a bigger thing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that these fucking people sent me too many pizzas.

Too many pizzas. Ultimately, seven eBay employees pled guilty to charges involving criminal conspiracy, including two senior members of eBay's corporate team. And I'm pretty sure Jim Baugh.

What's not being said here, I find is a more interesting story, is like who believed the Steiner's and then took this fight to their doorstep, to eBay's doorstep, to then get convictions.

Well, I mean, at some point, I think the Steiner's must have had some, I mean, and that's one of the major differences between this case and a traditional Gang Stalking case is that there was at some point proof, there was some kind of evidence, there was obviously in the court case where all these quotes are coming from, there were emails, there were text exchanges. So once they got lawyers involved, once they got investigators involved, obviously this was happening. Also in 2019, just as another example, which I guess was the year of corporate Gang Stalking, Amazon faced scrutiny for conducting surveillance and harassing labor organizers, including hiring literal Pinkertons, which I didn't even know existed anymore. The Pinkertons were hired to monitor workers' activities and ultimately in that case, internal documents revealed systematic efforts to track and disrupt union organizing efforts through coordinated actions by multiple agents.

I remember that like it was yesterday, because it was also during that time period where everyone who worked at Amazon was like posting pictures like in the bathroom. How like behind the bathroom stalls were like all this like union busting language and in like stoking fears of like, you'll be in trouble.

Yeah. And I think Chris Smalls was the labor organizer who was leading a lot of that. And he had, I think he had some reports of weird stuff. I mean, you know, nothing, nothing to like physically threatening, not eBay level. No, but that shit's crazy. I mean, this is unfortunately not unusual at all when it comes to labor efforts at large corporations.

Oh yeah, I'm not surprised.

They are generally fucked with. No one was prosecuted in the Amazon case, but the harassment came to light in a documentable, verifiable way. And targeted individuals might say that's because these were just corporate hijinks as opposed to true, like deep state gang stalking.

Yeah, but who do you think runs the deep state corporations?

I'd say-

Or at least they do the bidding for, I imagine.

I'd say all of this sounds like a much more measured and realistic response to an enemy. It's still way out of proportion, but it doesn't involve sci-fi weapons and turning all of your neighbors against you for untold millions of dollars. This is a much more specific retaliation to a much more immediate, definable offense. Sending bullshit through the mail makes a lot more sense than organizing 30 individual cars to drive in tandem and control which exits you're allowed to take on the highway and then follow you home and make noises in your walls and never leave a trace.

Because we also spent all this money to rent out every apartment in your building.

Yeah. So for what it's worth, I don't think anyone involved in the victim side of these corporate harassment campaigns ever believe that they were being gang stalked, at least not in the sense that we've been discussing. They never went online and found TI communities. But I know the TI community has found their stories and used them as evidence that these things actually do happen. And I know it because at least one notable TI website, targetedindividualsresources.com, says it right on their homepage. They say, quote, Every TI knows our communities are filled with fake profiles spreading disinformation. In fact, many T.I.s claim there seem to be more numerous fake profiles than genuine profiles.

Fake meaning like people who are there who obviously work for corporations or obviously work for the government that's trying to, that's perpetrating these.

Even some TI quote, leaderships, like group moderators, for instance, frequently display shady behavior. So anyone investigating the subject should not immediately take anything at face value and never trust his or her research to a single source, which might be a plant. And then the relevant part. Nevertheless, we consider there is more than enough evidence from reputable sources to indicate that many of the elements TI speculate as being part of the process or are at least plausible or likely true. And so-

Explain that to me.

What they're saying is they're not directly quoting the eBay case and the Amazon case, but they're saying, if you go look in the news, you can find stories that are saying that what you are experiencing has been experienced by others.

Sure. The difference is targeted towards journalists, targeted towards other companies, targeted targeted towards people who have skin in the game versus someone who's maybe in a TI community, who I live in Denver, Colorado and HLA issues.

Yeah, exactly.

So they're pointing to look, look, look. And it's like, well, that person's a member of the military and that person is a journalist and that person is on a board. And so it's a very they're not exactly at the same levels, maybe.

And again, even in that context, they're choosing their words very carefully. They're saying, we consider there's more than enough evidence from reputable sources to indicate that many of the elements TIs speculate as being part of the process are at least plausible or likely true.

I mean, I think if you run the most reputable TI website, you've probably dealt with litigation for, for slander and libel at some point. So yeah, you probably choose your words.

And it's that kind of cherry-picked proof of events that TIs believe are befalling them that makes dipping your toes into these communities so difficult and dangerous. I don't think they're necessarily consciously predatory, but they are absolutely tailoring reality to what fits their narrative. If you think that you are being followed or seeing patterns in the people walking outside your place or that you're getting threatening messages from anonymous sources, I am begging you, do not go on the internet and look for people to help explain what's happening to you.

Especially not the website that Chris named by its full domain.

Do not go there. I put it in the show links because I have to, so that my research is documented, but do not click that one. Because if you are starting to think these things and you go online to look for help, you will find people with lots of explanations that will start to chip away at your subjective experience of reality. So instead, I would look for any evidence that might break the pattern of concern that you have. Like, it's really easy to focus on the things that seem to be adding up and ignore all the evidence that doesn't fit the conclusion that you've already drawn, which is...

Confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias. So if you think I'm being stalked, then every car that sits a little too long outside your place is proof that you're being stalked. I actually, my writing partner, Jen, I won't tell the whole story, cause it's a super long story, but it's super interesting to me. She actually experienced something that I think is like a great example of confirmation bias. And also...

Should we have her on? For a different thing?

It's not that exciting. But also I think...

Please go on with this admittedly boring story.

No, no, no, it's not boring. It's just, I don't think it's worth having her on for. But long story short, she, through her, the college that she's an alma mater of, had organized a meeting with an executive at a large production company. So she went in and was waiting in the lobby, and the guy comes down and goes, Jen? And she's like, Hey, nice to meet you. And this guy takes her through this company and takes her into the animation wing, which we don't do any animation. And he's showing her all these artists and the characters that they're drawing and developing. And Jen was in her mind, she's like, We were supposed to be having a meeting about development and stuff, but none of this is all... I'm not an animator, but it's all interesting, so whatever. She spent like four hours with this guy, and then eventually, I forget exactly what it was, but something happened where she was like, there's something is weird here.

My name is Jen, my last name. The guy's like, Oh, I'm looking for Jen Wang. Literally, yes.

There were two Jen's at the same time, and the other Jen was late, and so this guy came down and just said, Jen? And of course, you don't know, because it got organized through her college.

You don't know the person personally.

This is the guy, and I always think of that story when I think of confirmation bias. She was also probably being a little too polite to not after like an hour be like, I don't animate. But now, does this make your Jen four hours late to her meeting? Yes.

And did the other Jen go to her meeting?

Yes. For real? That's how they figured all this out, because the person she was supposed to meet with ultimately-

Took the other Jen.

Took the other Jen, and then they figured it out very quickly because the other Jen was like, what the fuck's going on? And then that person she was supposed to be meeting with kept emailing my Jen to be like, hey, sorry, there's been some confusion, but she didn't figure that out until after she got home and checked her email and everything.

Yeah, also when you're in like a meeting situation, you don't want to like be rude and take your phone out and look at your texts.

Yeah, so it eventually got worked out. She eventually had the meeting. I have heard from people that people still talk about that story to this day at this company of the day that the Jen's switched.

Yeah, I do love too that you would figure it out real quick in a development meeting because their job doesn't mean anything. And so you pretty quickly, if you're not a writer trying to pitch something and they're not trying to give ideas to writers, you'd be like, oh, okay. So again, no thank you to the water. But like for animation, it's like, I have a lot of cool things to show you and we're creating things and there are artists who have blah, blah, blah. And it's like, that's a real department, creating things and dealing with clients and dealing with deadlines where like a creative executive meeting is so, maybe you want to do the Jenga movie.

For free?

For free.

Yeah, so anyway, all this to say, coincidence has happened, confirmation bias is real. Once you believe that you're in the situation, your brain will keep filling, you'll go, oh, okay, that must be why and that's what happened.

I mean, this isn't the same at all, but I'm sure there's overlap in the psychology, but just the idea that if you set up a line, that people will get into it. They don't know what it's for.

Yeah. Oh, I've gotten in at least one line that I didn't know what it was for. I just saw a line coming out of a store and I was like, is like, what's going on?

This happened to me at a comic convention. I had to go to the like professional badge pickup booth, which is like four or five lanes that were just for people who are picking up professional badges, which is separate than like the average person has to go and purchase tickets. And cosplayers, which people don't know, they're people who dress up like anime and comic book characters and stuff. They were doing a photo shoot and they are not part of the convention. They just are fucking people. They were doing some sort of like, oh, look at all these anime characters and fucking whatever in line. So it looks like they're kind of living out this experience, but I had just gotten in line that I didn't know was a photo shoot because I actually did need to use. And so for a while, I'm like, why is no one doing anything? I need my fucking badge. And then eventually I like asked and I was like, oh no, this is a photo shoot. So I walk by them and like eventually got my stuff. But I was like, I just wasted like eight minutes being the only guy not dressed like Sailor fucking Moon in this photograph. So I just needed to get my shit.

It's crazy because people can't see, but you're dressed like Sailor Moon right now. So I just would have assumed.

Yeah, but not that day. My Sailor Jupiter outfit was in the fucking wash, dude.

All this to say, don't fall victim to confirmation bias. Don't only look at the pieces that tell you that what you think is happening is happening. Look at the pieces that break that pattern. I think another way to analyze concerns is to look at it from the perspective of whether or not your hypothesis about what's happening to you is falsifiable. So if it's not falsifiable, for example, you find yourself saying, well, even if I tried to prove it wasn't real, the Gang Stalking is designed to make that impossible, then you may want to make like third eye blind and step back from that ledge, my friend, because you're going to a real dark, dangerous place. At the end of the day, we aren't doctors. So far be it for me to diagnose what's really going on in the minds of targeted individuals. But that Psychology Today article that we mentioned before lays out a pretty solid case. They tell us that in 2015, doctors Lorraine Sheridan and David James conducted an analysis of 128 responses to a survey about stalking that concluded that 100% of cases involving gang stalking by multiple coordinated individuals reflected paranoid delusions. In contrast, only 4% of those reporting stalking by a single individual were deemed to be delusional.

Interesting. So yeah, we kind of touched on that right in the beginning.

Yeah.

About like ex-boyfriends bothering you, whatever's bothering you, that's probably actually who is in the car outside your house.

Right.

But when you're like, there's a guy watching my house, there's a guy checking my garbage cans, there's a guy at the grocery store because he knows I get there at 2 o'clock.

Yeah.

Two of the people who were always at my gym have recently been replaced by two guys who I've never seen before who watch me lift.

Yeah.

Like that's when it's 100% delusional. Yeah.

In both of these studies, Gang Stalking claims were ultimately attributed to paranoia because they defied credulity often due to the sheer amount of resources like we've talked about or level of coordination that would be necessary to carry out what was claimed. There was no smoking gun of proof that the Gang Stalking claims were false, but through reasonable deduction, you can say there's no way that a conspiracy of this size is being leveled against you, Average Joe.

And this was not research done at the CIA department?

No, no, no.

This wasn't at like, we're not the CIA, don't worry LLC.

Right, right. No, exactly. I mean, who knows? Look, I didn't look up where these doctors went to school or who else they've worked for.

Langley, they went to school at Langley.

I'm sure you could find-

Langley, Virginia.

Yeah, I'm sure you could find questionable things in their background, but the delusions and the paranoia that they concluded were driving these claims are defined in psychiatry as fixed false beliefs, with paranoid delusions specifically representing a classic version of delusions in which one believes they're being followed, harassed or otherwise persecuted. Now, this kind of delusion can develop when various conditions, such as being a victim of actual violence, can transform what is for most people, a normal degree of vigilance into exaggerated hypervigilance.

I mean, also, I mean, there's elements of PTSD in there, too. You know, once bit, twice shy.

Yeah. At the extreme, full blown paranoia of a delusional intensity can be understood as our evolutionary warning systems gone completely awry to the point of seeing evidence and believing that threats are everywhere.

The number 23.

Exactly.

Unwatchable film.

Unwatchable film, but a real phenomenon. I mean, you can do it with any number, but if you start to believe, and I've done it myself, if you start to believe any random number is has meaning, you will start to see it everywhere.

Stephen King, 19 is that number for Stephen King in the Dark Tower series. Yeah, he also puts it, I think, in a lot of his other books. And so like my cousin Steve, comic Steve, any time we see 19, like one of the two of us will turn back 19.

Yeah. No, you'll see it everywhere. I mean, I think I was probably in like early high school when I saw the number 23. And I did start to see the number 23 everywhere, but lots of numbers are everywhere. And you will see them.

One of the all time great pieces of marketing, I was at Comic Con, it was New York Comic Con, that year that movie was coming out. And me and our friend Keto were there. And we like volunteered for this like number 23 marketing team thing, where they gave you these black trench coats to wear and polaroid cameras. And I still have the polaroid camera to this day from it. It's the working polaroid camera. And they gave you film polaroid cameras and these black coats and clothes pins. And they were like, go out into the city of Manhattan and find as many examples of the number 23 as you can. And then like take the pictures and pin them to these coats. And then come back at this time and we're gonna have average people, like other people at the con, you're all gonna stand there with your coats and people are gonna judge who like they think the best coat of 23s is. And it was one of the most fun days because we just opened our eyes to neighborhoods and things and places that we never would have looked. We never would have walked down that street. We never would have gone into this bodega or this place unless we were like on a mission to find creative 23s and, you know, we're creative people. We work in the arts. So for us, it was just like a really, really fun day. I don't think that generated in ticket sales for the number 23, but it was a fun day for us.

Yeah, I know. That's a great campaign. I love that. So I think seeing this evidence and believing that threats are everywhere makes sense in the context of people like Billy B, who we talked about at the beginning of this episode. This is a guy who grew up gay in the deep south in Aberdeen, Mississippi, and probably did experience real violence and real persecution at a young age, and probably it points throughout his life. I can't speak for him, but I certainly see how growing up even in the best version of that situation could lead to a heightened sense of caution that when combined with other underlying mental conditions could cause this sort of, or present at least, is this sort of delusional paranoia where you feel like, you know, he even says in that episode, he's being chased out by people who don't want gay men renting property in Hawthorne, California. So he's attributed it to a real life problem that he's experienced, even though the scale of what he thinks he's experiencing seems unlikely.

Sure.

In addition, the Psychology Today article tells us that, quote, despite stigmatizing stereotypes about psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, those whose paranoia is part of a delusional disorder, where non bizarre or plausible delusions are the only symptoms, they don't typically appear as bizarre or odd people. So a lot of these people are going through everyday life or posting on TikTok or whatever, saying, you know, here's the proof of this car across the street that's watching me. And sure, there's a car parking across the street, but maybe that's just your new neighbor, you know, like it's, you don't know.

Yeah.

One thing that is definitely a red flag for this kind of delusional paranoia is that in many of these cases, the persecutory experiences continue, regardless of attempts to escape or relocate, including when hospitalized in the inpatient psychiatry ward. And these delusions are often contradicted by acquaintances or family and friends living in close proximity. But again, that's where this gets really tragic because those family and friends who are saying, wait, wait a minute, you know, I get helicopters over my house all the time, then the person who's experiencing it says, oh, well, you're in on it.

Yeah.

You've been turned against me.

Yeah. It's going to end up being a high on my fear tier for that reason of the like, it's quicksand.

Yeah.

Because if it's really happening and people are all in on it, and we've talked about it in the fear tier for me in the past, in multiple episodes, how many times? Fans, find out how many. And if you get the right number, I'll have no way to verify it, but I'll send you a jelly bean. How many times have I said everybody's in on it? It's such a huge fear for me, like a wicker man or a Rosemary's baby. Like I don't like the idea that everybody's in on it. And these people are living their lives as everybody's in on it. And if they're right, then yes, of course everyone's in on it and you're fucked. And if you're wrong, you're gonna sound crazy, so you're fucked.

Right, well that's what we've talked about it probably in the Satanic Panic episode at least. Because that for me is the big fear with Satanic Panic is like, if we're wrong about Satanic Panic, then our justice system is a mess and all these people have been unfairly accused. And if it's right, the Satanists are in such control that we're all fucked. So it doesn't matter anyway. And that's similar with Gang Stalking. I would say Gang Stalking, well, we'll get to the fear tier in a second. The last thing I wanted to say, I've said this a couple of times throughout this episode, but the last thing I want the result of this episode to be is someone being like, oh, I never had a term for what was happening to me until I heard Chris and Ed talk about Gang Stalking. So if you are suspicious, if you're feeling like, and maybe I'm so guarded about this because I, Ed and I are both creative people, we both, you know, our brains put puzzles together, our brains put pieces together, we go, oh, one plus one equals two. So I feel like I'm susceptible to this kind of thinking of like, well, wait a second, that car was following me and now the lights across the street are flashing and it kind of looks like a Morse code, you know? Like if you're starting to feel that, don't go online, go get professional help because I would say, think of it this way, if the conspiracy against you is as vast as it seems, you're gonna need mental health assistance anyway. So seek that treatment, find a therapist that you trust, and if the conspiracy subsides when you get help, great, you weren't being Gang Stalked. You can rest easy knowing that your brain's pattern recognition and danger centers were just out of whack and you readjusted them and you're doing good.

Fixed your pillars.

And if you get that help and your psychiatrist or your therapist agrees that you are being stalked by an unknown presence, then you're fucked.

I don't know, just good luck, Keith, it sucks. It's not a great look.

But anyway, let's get into the fear tier of it. So Ed, you were just saying that this would place pretty high on the fear tier.

Super high, super duper high. So nobody fucking try this shit, because you also know that I will shoot people delivering pizzas at my house.

We have enough fans that they could feasibly gang stalk us.

Just gang stalk us with money. Please, yes.

Drop pallets of cash in our backyard. And if you want to be creepy about it, maybe there's like a crazy puzzle we have to solve to open the cash or something.

We'll do it as long as it doesn't involve getting hurt. Yeah, if you have the urge to do anything all as a group, just have it be send money. That said.

Or a birthday card, whatever.

A birthday card, too. I'll shake it to see if anything falls out. The super high, super fucking high. I don't like it. As you know, I have this fear of everyone being in on it. I have experienced stalking in my life, which is not Gang Stalking, because this whole episode has been a genuine eye-opener in the sense that when you were like, we're doing Gang Stalking, I thought it was West Side Story. I thought it was the urban legend of like, you flash your high beams, someone with their lights off, and now a gang's gonna kill you. I thought it was that. I had no idea it was this fucking Operation Pandora's Box type shit. And it is interesting that four days ago, I was introduced to a woman who, monetarily successful now, because of her TikTok Gang Stalking account. Yeah, so weird. I could try and find out who it is and post it, but I have no fucking idea anymore, but it was something where I went down a rabbit hole of at least three or four reels. But they all had the TikTok thing on the right, because everyone transitions their stuff to get views in two places. But yeah, I would say it's high just because I'm always suspicious of being the last one to find something out, especially if it's about being Truman Showed.

Yeah, you would be.

Also, we'll talk about it maybe in the Bad Trip episode, but there's a... Do you remember the movie Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson?

Yes.

I was way too high watching that movie one night, and the scene... Do you remember the movie at all?

I remember Patrick Stewart's The Bad Guy in it.

Yeah. Yeah, I think he is.

But I feel like it never made much sense.

No, in the movie, I wouldn't... I was fucked up, nothing made sense. But there's like a... They torture him in a scene and hold his eyes open and some splash of water, and I was not in a place to handle that when that scene happened, and I will be talking about this in a Bad Trip episode, so I'll stop there. But yeah, that's... But that movie is, yeah, same thing. It's like a guy, he's got a bunch of copies of Catch Her In The Rye. He is someone who believes he's a targeted individual. I actually might watch that tonight, just to make sure what I'm saying isn't wrong, but I wanna say, and he thinks that like, what's her name, fucking pretty woman?

Julia Roberts.

Julia Roberts can like help him, or he's obsessed with her.

Yeah, he's a taxi driver, and she gets in the taxi, and...

He's spouting conspiracy theories.

Yeah, but that, I mean, basically, maybe I just remember the trailer for this movie. Maybe I never saw this movie. I don't know.

Well, it's, I'd be, this would be the first time revisiting it since The Bad Trip of it all, so I'll check it out, but that was one of the nights I needed October Sky to bring me down, which we'll talk about in the Bad Trip episode.

Yeah.

You ever seen the movie The Game?

Yes.

An excellent movie with David Fincher. I wonder, I almost don't wanna bring it up, because if you haven't seen The Game, I don't wanna like spoil it.

Yeah.

It's so good, so I'm not gonna bring it up. The trailer will be in the show notes, although based on the movie came out, the trailer probably won't be very good. We didn't start having good trailers.

I think it's a good trailer.

Okay. Well, if you haven't seen The Game, Michael Douglas, David Fincher movie, go fucking watch it. It's relevant in some ways to this episode, but I can't talk about it. I don't wanna ruin it for anybody. So I had a great idea, guys. I had a great fucking awesome take.

We're giving you credit for that. The secret government agency that is watching us has marked down that you had a great idea.

Thank you.

So let's put a number on it.

Oh shit, yeah, nine.

Wow, okay.

Nine, if I start to slip. If I start to feel this thing's happening, that thing's happening. If I start putting the creative brain puzzle pieces together to create a narrative of things I'm seeing or like deja vus that aren't just a change in the matrix, I could see myself go into a nine real fast. Just because there's no way out, it's fucking quicksand. Once it's going, you're either right and you're fucked or you're wrong and you're put in a fucking padded room.

Yeah, I would agree. I would place it a little lower for me, maybe an eight or a seven, because I like to think that I could pump the brakes if I start to notice it. But that's the key. It's you just can't get to the point where you saying that it's not falsifiable and you can't get to the point where you are only collecting the evidence that points to the conclusion that you are afraid might be the truth or that you are convinced is the truth.

Okay. Well, in that case, I'm going to lower my new in eight as well because I famously or infamously, I'm not a social media user.

That helps.

I really, I don't doom scroll. I don't go on Twitter. I have a private Instagram account that the only people involved in that are people I know personally. I don't let any people who follow me onto my personal Instagram account. And as you know, I go on Facebook pretty infrequently and it's just for show purposes. And so I think one way you're going to ratchet it up from a six to a nine to a 10 is going to find those like-minded communities that will confirm these biases or whatever the verb of that is. I'm not ever in those places.

No, nor should you be. And I also think the Psychology Today article doesn't really get into it that much. But I also think that there is a certain level of ego or grandeur that I think has... Like, part of the reason I think I would never fall into this is because I don't... There's nothing I could do that I think would result in this level of attention.

That's really funny.

You know what I mean? Even a fairly large scale thing that I could do, I can't imagine that the apparatus of the secret government underworld would get turned to focus on me.

Little old me is the only thing keeping you alive at this point. It's just the idea that you think so little of yourself.

But anyone would go through the trouble. I'm so insignificant. There is nothing worth doing that. Save it for the other divorcés, I guess. Like, I'm fine. There's no message I can spread. There's no belief that I have that's gonna concern anybody.

That's crazy. That was actually your online dating profile description when Anna entered your life, so.

Yeah, I'm nobody. I'm nothing. I'm trash.

She was looking for that. That worked out great.

It worked out great. And I'll make sure to teach my child the same thing.

Yeah.

You are nothing.

None of those black SUVs are for you. None of these helicopters are for you.

That is Kardashians only.

Yeah.

Anyway, no, no, no. But I do think there's a level. That's gotta be a part of it. Because if you don't have that level of belief that you are important in a macro way, I think it's hard to believe that, even the woman that you saw in TikTok, it's like on some level, she believes that she's worth that level.

It's a fucking narcissist.

Yeah, it's a narcissist. That's the word I'm looking for.

You're a TikTok star.

Yeah, exactly.

You're already narcissistic.

You have to believe, well, this has to do something to do with me. If I saw the same car parked outside my place for a week, I would be like, Jesus, one of my neighbors is a fucking criminal.

I certainly wouldn't turn the camera on myself to be like, well, what did I do?

Why are they looking at me?

Yeah, so crazy.

Anyway. But yeah, so that's it for Gang Stalking. Again, if you think you're being Gang Stalked, get help. Don't go on the internet. Oh, so I said, yeah, I'm at like a seven. I'll put it at a seven. Ed, you want to put it at a?

I've downgraded to an eight.

To an eight. Okay, there we go. Seven, eight on the fear tier, Gang Stalking. That's the show, everybody. I hope you enjoyed listening this week. We're gonna be back on regularly scheduled episodes, which may now be every other week because baby's on the way, but we will keep you abreast of all of that as we move forward. Thank you for listening. Like, subscribe, go join Premium if you want. We've got Patreon options up there.

Gang Stalk the shit out of our Premium.

Gang Stalk the shit out of our Premium. And don't forget, you can go to our link to get 45% off Magic Mind's Focus and Sleep Shots bundled together at www.magicmind.com/scaredjan. Again, that's www.magicmind.com/s-c-a-r-e-d-j-a-n. Until then, I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And the show is Scared All The Time. We'll see you soon. Bye.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Fifle. Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew. And Mr. Disclaimer is ****. And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon. You can get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access and exclusive merch. So go sign up for our Patreon at scaredallthetimepodcast.com. Don't worry, all scaredy-cats welcome. No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends production. Night. We are in this together. Together. Together.

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