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Nobody believed him. His family told him to get help. But Timothy Trespas, an out-of-work recording engineer in his early 40s, was sure he was being stalked, and not by just one person, but dozens of them.

He would see the operatives, he said, disguised as ordinary people, lurking around his Midtown Manhattan neighborhood. Sometimes they bumped into him and whispered nonsense into his ear, he said.

“Now you see how it works,” they would say.

At first, Mr. Trespas wondered if it was all in his head. Then he encountered a large community of like-minded people on the internet who call themselves “targeted individuals,” or T.I.s, who described going through precisely the same thing.

The group was organized around the conviction that its members are victims of a sprawling conspiracy to harass thousands of everyday Americans with mind-control weapons and armies of so-called gang stalkers. The goal, as one gang-stalking website put it, is “to destroy every aspect of a targeted individual’s life.”


A growing tribe of troubled minds

Mental health professionals say the narrative has taken hold among a group of people experiencing psychotic symptoms that have troubled the human mind since time immemorial. Except now victims are connecting on the internet, organizing and defying medical explanations for what’s happening to them.

The community, conservatively estimated to exceed 10,000 members, has proliferated since 9/11, cradled by the internet and fed by genuine concerns over government surveillance. A large number appear to have delusional disorder or schizophrenia, psychiatrists say.

Yet, the phenomenon remains virtually unresearched.

For the few specialists who have looked closely, these individuals represent an alarming development in the history of mental illness: thousands of sick people, banded together and demanding recognition on the basis of shared paranoias.

They raise money, hold awareness campaigns, host international conferences and fight for their causes in courts and legislatures.

Perhaps their biggest victory came last year, when believers in Richmond, Calif., persuaded the City Council to pass a resolution banning space-based weapons that they believe could be used for mind control. A similar lobbying effort is underway in Tucson.

An ‘echo chamber’ of paranoia

Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, who is co-author of perhaps the only study of gang-stalking, said the community poses a danger that sets it apart from other groups promoting troubling ideas, such as anorexia or suicide. On those topics, the internet abounds with medical information and treatment options.

An internet search for “gang-stalking,” however, turns up page after page of results that regard it as fact. “What’s scary for me is that there are no counter sites that try and convince targeted individuals that they are delusional,” Dr. Sheridan said.

“They end up in a closed ideology echo chamber,” she said.

In instructional tracts online, veterans of the movement explain the ropes to rookies:

• Do not engage with the voices in your head.

• If your relatives tell you you’re imagining things, they could be in on it.

• “Do not visit a psychiatrist.”

The tribe cuts across all classes and professions, and includes lawyers, soldiers, artists and engineers. In Facebook forums and call-in support groups, they commiserate over the skepticism of their loved ones and share stories of black vans that circle the block or co-workers conscripted into the campaign.

They have self-published dozens of e-books, with titles like “Tortured in America” and “My Life Changed Forever.” In hundreds of YouTube videos they offer testimonials and try to document evidence of their stalking, even confronting unsuspecting strangers.

“They wanted to basically destroy me, and they did,” a young mother in Phoenix says in one video, choking back tears. She lost custody of her daughter and was sent to a behavioral health hospital, says the woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy. “But I am going to fight back for the rest of my life.”

She adds, “And guess what, I’m not crazy.”

Dr. Sheridan’s study, written with Dr. David James, a forensic psychiatrist, examined 128 cases of reported gang-stalking. It found all the subjects were most likely delusional.

“One has to think of the T.I. phenomenon in terms of people with paranoid symptoms who have hit upon the gang-stalking idea as an explanation of what is happening to them,” Dr. James said.


A mishmash of conspiracy theories

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the community is divided over the contours of the conspiracy. Some believe the financial elite is behind it. Others blame aliens, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.

The movement’s most prominent voices, however, tend to believe the surveillance is part of a mind-control field test done in preparation for global domination. The military establishment, the theory goes, never gave up on the ambitions of MK Ultra, the C.I.A.’s infamous program to control the mind in the 1950s and ’60s.

A leading proponent of that view is an anesthesiologist from San Antonio named John Hall.

In his 2009 book, “A New Breed: Satellite Terrorism in America,” Mr. Hall gave his own account of being targeted. Agents bleached his water, he wrote, and bombarded him with voices making murderous threats.

The book made a splash because of the messenger: a licensed member of the medical establishment who was telling those who feel targeted that psychiatrists were misleading them. A janitor knows as much about the human mind, he wrote.

Mr. Hall, 51, was invited for an interview on “Coast to Coast AM,” a conspiracy-minded radio show based in California that is said to reach millions of listeners. After that, he said, “I had probably three or 4,000 emails from people saying: ‘It’s happening to me in this state.’ ‘It’s happening to me in Florida.’ ‘It’s happening to me in California.’ ”

The similarities of the cases spoke to a wide-ranging campaign, he said. “If the psychiatrists want to say that this is schizophrenia or delusional disorder, that’s fine,” he said. “But every one of these victims have the same story.”
Dr. Hall discusses gang stalking, psychiatry and MK Ultra.

While Mr. Hall has faced scrutiny from the Texas Medical Board over his mental fitness, he retains his license. Over time, however, many others who identify as gang-stalking victims end up out of work. They are mocked by colleagues, tolerated by family. Friends and spouses fall away.


A pretext for violence

The despair that results has led some to lash out in violence.

Many in the community, for example, are convinced that Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, was a victim. Mr. Alexis, a former sailor, left behind a document accusing the Navy of attacking his brain with “extremely low frequency” electromagnetic waves. On the side of his shotgun were etched the words “my elf weapon.”

It was unclear when Myron May’s mental distress began, but by the fall of 2014, it had become too much. He quit his job as a prosecutor in New Mexico and traveled to Florida. There, he videotaped a testimonial about how gang-stalking had ruined his life.

“As you can see right now,” he says into the camera, “I am totally not crazy.”

Laying out his case, he describes an episode at a gas station where he believed somebody in dark glasses was mimicking his movements. “It was really creepy,” he said. “Everything I did, he did.”

Later in the video, he prays for forgiveness for his future sins. “Father,” he says, “right now I ask that you look down on all the targeted individuals across the globe. Help them to cope with this madness.”

On Nov. 20, 2014, Mr. May walked into a library at Florida State University, where he had graduated in 2005, and shot three people, leaving one paralyzed. He dared the police to kill him, then fired in their direction before being fatally shot, officials said. He was 31.

The vast majority of people with psychosis never resort to violence. Still, studies suggest that a small number of those experiencing psychotic episodes — especially paranoid thoughts, accompanied by voices making commands — are more likely to act on hostile urges than people without a mental illness.

Many in the T.I. community, as anyone would, have repudiated the shootings by Mr. Alexis and Mr. May. But some also harbor troubling views about their perceived oppressors. They question how people could be so cruel.

Karen Stewart of Tallahassee, Fla., believes large numbers of regular people have been brainwashed by the National Security Agency into thinking that she is a traitor or terrorist. Wherever she goes, she says — to church, to the grocery store, to the doctor’s office — they are there, watching.

It baffles her, she said. But worse, “It makes me angry to see how many people in this country are sociopaths. They are absolute groupthink drones,” she said. “I don’t even consider them human anymore.”


‘A need for meaning’

Susan Clancy, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who has researched people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, said it could be extremely difficult to dissuade patients who have latched onto beliefs that they think explain their delusions.

“I think it’s a need for meaning and a need to understand your life and the problems you’re having,” she said. “You’re not some meaningless nobody. You’re being followed by the C.I.A.”

In that way, Dr. Clancy said, the behavior shares a trait with religious belief: To abandon it would be life upending.

Paula Trespas, Mr. Trespas’s mother, said she avoided debating with him.

“It wasn’t something that he was making up,” she said. “He really felt the way he felt and experienced what he experienced. I got to the point where I was just finally saying to him: ‘I’m very, very sad that you have to go through this. I wish that there was something that I could do.’ ”

The big hope is that society will wake up to what’s happening and put a stop to it, those who feel targeted say. In some cases, they do seek psychiatric help. In others, the delusions subside. For the rest, the prognosis isn’t good, psychiatrists say. Many contemplate suicide.

Mr. Trespas, now 49, says he went so far as to prepare a rope.

Sitting at a coffee shop in Brooklyn last month, he says the stalking has thankfully quieted down. But he says his harassers have also been seeding his body with Morgellons, a painful, insectlike infestation of the skin that many doctors say is psychosomatic.

He is gaunt, with weary, sad eyes. It’s been eight years since it all began, he says. He can’t hold a job. His friends have drifted away.

The online community has been a crucial support, he says. “But we don’t know exactly what’s happening,” he says. “Maybe we’re believing the wrong thing. I don’t know. That’s why I try to keep my mind open about who and what and why and how.”

One thing he is certain of though, he says: He’s not crazy.

Source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/health/gang-stalking-targeted-individuals.html

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When it comes to Bigfoot, there are more than just believers and skeptics. The world of cryptozoology (the study for creatures whose existence is unconfirmed by science) is a highly political one, full of different factions and more than a little in-fighting. For instance, there is the no-kill vs. kill debate between hunter types out to bag a Sasquatch specimen and those who think we should let the creatures live in peace. There's also the conflict between those out to place Bigfoot in the realm of the paranormal and those who see the animal as one of our biosphere's many undiscovered species.

Melissa Hovey-Larsen, President of the American Bigfoot Society, was one of only a handful of woman researchers when she entered the field in 2005. She has since become one of its most respected voices, guiding expeditions all over the country, appearing on TV shows like MonsterQuest, and hosting her own radio show. For her part, Hovey-Larsen is decidedly in the non-kill and "flesh and blood" (not paranormal) camp in the raging Bigfoot debates.

We spoke to her about dealing with Internet trolls, maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism in all aspects of life, and why a woman may be more likely to get closer to a Bigfoot.

BROADLY: You're President of the American Bigfoot Society. How did that come about, and what does your research entail?

MELISSA HOVEY-LARSEN: I formed the group back in 2008, because at the time I was moving from Texas to Ohio, and I wanted a group that was across the whole country, so we could network more and discuss different things we were noticing from one area to the next. Before I became a Bigfoot researcher, I was a paralegal and investigator for a public defender, and, if you work in the criminal justice system, you look for patterns. As far as I know, I was the first person to go through reports from multiple databases and look for patterns. I thought if this thing was legit, there would be a pattern to when encounters are happening. Now I can look at a partial report and nail the time of year that it happened. That's what drew me in even further: when I was able to actually see that.

The witnesses I like to talk to are ones who can lose their jobs by talking about something like this, and they're not asking you to do anything but listen to them. They're few and far between, but you come across them from time to time and they make you step back and think. I've talked to people in politics, police officers, firefighters. It really spans the gamut.

Where did your interest in Bigfoot begin?

It started when I was really young. On those Scholastic Bookmobiles, I used to buy the books about scary stuff. I always thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if something like that actually existed out there?" After I moved to Texas, I heard about the Texas Bigfoot Research Center, and because of my background of talking to witnesses and victims of crimes, I thought I could be useful. It's hard for someone who doesn't have experience to weed out the truth from the made-up stuff.

How do you know someone's telling the truth about a sighting?

I use your basic tactics. You repeat the story back to them, and change up one or two things and see if they correct you. You can tell by body language. My favorite reports are from kids, because kids have a really hard time lying. They can do it, and they like to do it, but they're not good at it. You can always tell when a child is lying to you, but when you get that kid that's telling the truth, their reaction is either pure awe or complete fear.

As an investigator, it's my job to find out what people saw. I don't take anybody at face value.

What's the most compelling report you've received?

It was a report out of Texas. A boy was in a car with some friends coming home from a party, and the boy sees this white Bigfoot out in the field and jumps out of the car and starts chasing it. The Bigfoot makes it to a fence line and clears the fence with one step. The boy, on the other hand, makes it to the fence, starts to climb it, and the Bigfoot is still standing there. It turns around, grabs him by the shoulders, and tosses him back on the ground. His parents actually filed a police report. Even though the animal could have killed him in an instant, it basically put him back down and said, "No further." That one really stands out in my head as a good example of something that could've gone ugly, but didn't. If this animal's out there, there has to be a level of intelligence that we're dealing with. That also makes it equally hard to find them and prove they are there.

Do you feel like the popularity of shows like Finding Bigfoot and MonsterQuest have positively or negatively affected your work?
I think in some ways it's helped to get people to come forward. It's made it a little bit more mainstream. But it has made it even harder to distinguish the people who are telling the truth. They can give you the keywords the average researcher is looking for to try to hoax you. We put way too much information out there. That's why I don't talk about publicly about a lot of the things I've discovered over the years.

What's the closest contact you've made to Bigfoot?

I haven't seen the animal yet, but I have had very interesting things happen—one that made me wonder what the hell I was out there doing out there because it scared the living crap out of me.

It was in 2010 in Virginia. I was actually in the middle of a live radio interview, and I was down by this manmade pond. It was really dark, and I turned around to go back to base camp. I could see a fishing lure reflecting the light in a little bush, and above that were these two glowing eyes. I could not believe what I was seeing, and the skeptic in me, realizing I was in the middle of a phone interview for a radio program, didn't want to shout out, "You won't believe what I'm looking at right now," but I could stand and watch as the two eyes moved in unison. I call it the woman-in-the-dark-alley syndrome. You know when you're being looked at. When we finally figured out the measurement of what I had seen, it matched up to what the owner of the property had said, that it was a creature between seven and seven-and-a-half feet tall. I was about a hundred yards from it, so I can't really say it was a Bigfoot. I don't know, but these were some big eyes. I've never seen anything like that before or since.

Another time, my husband and I were down in Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. We were in a tent and he was recording, and all of a sudden we could hear something really heavy walk across the little road. We listened to this thing as it walked into camp, and we could hear it breathing. My first concern was [that it was] a bear. It went over to our vehicle and pulled on all four of our car door handles. The only bears in Salt Fork are black bear, and black bear do not have retractable claws, so if had been a black bear pulling on our door handle, we should've had had marks. There were no claw marks on our car. Whatever it was, it was big. It had really deep, chesty breathing. We had a bear expert listen to the audio, and even he said it was not a bear. We've gotten recordings like that now from two different locations here in Ohio. Those are the two times I thought to myself, "If this is what we think this is, we're playing with fire."

This tends to be a male-dominated field and interest. Why do you think that is? Is that changing?

It was heavily male-dominated when I first got involved back in 2005. You could count the seriously active female field researchers on two hands. As a woman, they didn't really care what you had to say, and probably in some groups they still don't. But I, along with a girlfriend of mine, were very vocal about the necessity of having more woman involved. If you look at the history of discovering and studying large primates, who has been able to get closer? Women. Look at what Jane Goodall did, and that was only because she was able to get closer to them than her boss. We have a more nurturing spirit, and I think animals—primates in particular—pick up on that.

Does being a woman in the field present any particular challenges or have any advantages?

For me personally, it really wasn't a particular challenge because I'm used to having to try to prove myself. If you're a woman, sooner or later, you'll find yourself challenged by men. I was raised on a farm and if I get it in my head to do something, I'm going to do it. If you're a woman, there's just some level of having to prove that you're capable.

Women have a lot to offer the research in general. It doesn't have to be primarily men running the show because men hunt. I get that a lot. I had one guy write a blog about me, saying that I should be out shopping and buying purses. I was like, maybe that's what makes your wife happy, but I like to challenge myself.

Have you had to deal with a lot of sexist attacks online?

I can't even keep track of them all. I have a very thick skin. I mean, if this is the way they want to talk to their wives or the women in their world, that's their business, but I don't put up with that crap. There are still those men in this community, who are online basically to start trouble. They get a kick out of the typical Neanderthal behavior. But I will tell you, I have quite a few male friends that I share information with, and they respect me, and I respect the hell out of them. They're hardworking guys who just want an answer to the mystery. Those are the people I work with, who are not involved in the politics, but simply want answers to the mystery.

What advice would you have for an amateur interested in catching a glimpse of Bigfoot?
The best advice I have is to bring a healthy dose of common sense. Don't just jump in with the first group of researchers you find on the Internet because they seem to know everything. We don't really know anything at all. We only have bits and pieces of a huge puzzle.

Source: Broadly
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/leading-bigfoot-researcher-explains-why-a-woman-is-more-likely-
to-find-sasquatch