Electronic harassment

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Electronic harassment, electromagnetic torture, or psychotronic torture are terms used by individuals holding the delusional belief that malicious actors (often government agents or crime rings) make use of electromagnetic radiation (such as the microwave auditory effect), radar, and surveillance techniques to transmit sounds and thoughts into people's heads, affect people's bodies, and harass people. [1] [2] Individuals who claim to experience this call themselves "targeted individuals" (TIs). Some claim they are victims of gang stalking and many have created or joined support and advocacy groups. [3] [4]

Contents

Multiple medical professionals have concluded that these experiences are hallucinations, the result of delusional disorders, or psychosis. [1] [2] [5] [6]

Experiences

The experiences of people who describe themselves as undergoing electronic harassment using esoteric technology, and who call themselves "targeted individuals" ("T.I."), vary, but experiences often include hearing voices in their heads calling them by name, often mocking them or others around them, as well as physical sensations like burning. [1] [2] They have also described being under physical surveillance by one or more people. [1] Many of these people act and function otherwise normally and included among them are people who are successful in their careers and lives otherwise, and who find these experiences confusing, upsetting, and sometimes shameful, but entirely real. [1] They use news stories, military journals, and declassified national security documents to support their allegations that governments have developed technology that can send voices into people's heads and cause them to feel things. [1] The New York Times estimated that there are more than 10,000 people who self-identify as targeted individuals. [7] [8]

Psychologist Lorraine Sheridan co-authored a study of gang-stalking in the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology . According to Sheridan, "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". [7] Mental health professionals say that T.I.s can experience hallucinations and their explanations of being targeted or harassed arise from delusional disorders or psychosis. [1] [6] [9] [5] [10] Yale psychiatry professor Ralph Hoffman states that people often ascribe voices in their heads to external sources such as government harassment, God, or dead relatives, and it can be difficult to persuade these individuals that their belief in an external influence is delusional. [1] Other experts compare these stories to accounts of alien abductions. [2]

Press accounts have documented individuals who apparently believed they were victims of electronic harassment, and in some cases persuaded courts to agree. In 2008, James Walbert went to court claiming that his former business associate had threatened him with "jolts of radiation" after a disagreement, and later claimed feeling symptoms such as electric shock sensations and hearing strange sounds in his ears. The court decided to issue an order banning "electronic means" to further harass Walbert. [11]

Notable crimes

Various people who describe themselves as undergoing electronic harassment have committed crimes; among those crimes are mass shootings.

Fuaed Abdo Ahmed, a 20-year-old man, held a man and two women hostage at the Tensas State Bank in St. Joseph, Louisiana on August 13, 2013, eventually killing two of the hostages and himself. A subsequent police investigation officially concluded that Ahmed had paranoid schizophrenia and was hearing voices. Ahmed had accused the family of his ex-girlfriend of implanting a "microphone device" of some kind in his head. [12]

On September 16, 2013, Aaron Alexis fatally shot twelve people and injured three others in the Washington Navy Yard using a shotgun on which he had written "my ELF weapon", before being killed by responding police officers. [13] [14] [15] The FBI concluded that Alexis had "delusional beliefs". These beliefs included that he was being "controlled or influenced by extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves." [16]

On November 20, 2014, Myron May shot and injured three people on the campus of Florida State University and was killed by responding police officers. Before the event, he had become increasingly anxious that he was under government surveillance and heard voices. [17] [18] [19]

Gavin Eugene Long, who killed three police officers and injured three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 17, 2016, was a believer in numerous anti-government movements and conspiracy theories, but he was most notably a member of a group dedicated to helping people with "remote brain experimentation, remote neural monitoring of an entire human's body." [20]

Matthew Choi, a 30-year-old South African, who claimed himself under a V2K electronic harassment and made remarks about "being brainwashed through microwave" since 2015, murdered a taxi driver in Hong Kong on October 12, 2021. The case arose mass attention in the city, and the police described him as "extremely dangerous". [21] [22]

Conspiracy theories

Mind control conspiracy advocates believe they have found references to secret weapons in government programs such as "Project Pandora," a DARPA research effort into biological and behavioral effects of microwave radiation commissioned after the Moscow Signal incident, when the U.S. embassy in Moscow was bombarded with microwaves by the Soviets beginning in 1953. It was discovered that the Soviets' intent was eavesdropping and electronic jamming rather than mind control. [1] Project Pandora studied the effects of occupational radiation exposure, and the project's scientific review committee concluded that microwave radiation could not be used for mind control. [23] Conspiracy advocates also frequently cite the 2002 Air Force Research Laboratory patent for using microwaves to send spoken words into someone's head. Although there is no evidence that mind control using microwaves exists, rumors of continued classified research fuel the worries of people who believe they are being targeted. [1]

In 1987, a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report commissioned by the Army Research Institute noted psychotronics as one of the "colorful examples" of claims of psychic warfare that first surfaced in anecdotal descriptions, newspapers, and books during the 1980s. The report cited alleged psychotronic weapons such as a "hyperspatial nuclear howitzer" and beliefs that Russian psychotronic weapons were responsible for Legionnaire's disease and the sinking of the USS Thresher among claims that "range from incredible to the outrageously incredible." The committee observed that although reports and stories as well as imagined potential uses for such weapons by military decision makers exist, "nothing approaching scientific literature supports the claims of psychotronic weaponry." [24]

Psychotronic weapons were reportedly being studied by the Russian Federation during the 1990s [25] [26] with military analyst Lieutenant Colonel Timothy L. Thomas saying in 1998 that there was a strong belief in Russia that weapons for attacking the mind of a soldier were a possibility, although no working devices were reported. [26] In Russia, a group called "Victims of Psychotronic Experimentation" attempted to recover damages from the Federal Security Service during the mid-1990s for alleged infringement of their civil liberties including "beaming rays" at them, putting chemicals in the water, and using magnets to alter their minds. These fears may have been inspired by revelations of secret research into "psychotronic" psychological warfare techniques during the early 1990s, with Vladimir Lopatkin, a State Duma committee member in 1995, surmising "something that was secret for so many years is the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories." [27]

In 2012, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin commented on plans to draft proposals for the development of psychotronic weapons. [28] NBC News Science Editor Alan Boyle dismissed notions that such weapons actually existed, saying, "there's nothing in the comments from Putin and Serdyukov to suggest that the Russians are anywhere close to having psychotronic weapons." [28]

Mike Beck, a former NSA spy, believes his Parkinson's disease was caused by electronic harassment. [29] In 2014, the NSA gave Beck's attorney Mark Zaid a statement which said the agency had received "intelligence information from 2012 associating the hostile country to which Mr. Beck traveled in the late 1990s with a high-powered microwave system weapon", but added that "The National Security Agency has no evidence that such a weapon, if it existed and if it was associated with the hostile country in the late 1990s, was or was not used against Mr. Beck". [30] [31] NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell told The Washington Post that "the agency has not found any proof that Beck or his co-worker were attacked". [29]

Support and advocacy communities

There are extensive online support networks and numerous websites maintained by people fearing mind control. Palm Springs psychiatrist Alan Drucker has identified evidence of delusional disorders on many of these websites, [5] and psychologists agree that such sites negatively reinforce mental troubles, while some say that the sharing and acceptance of a common delusion could function as a form of group cognitive therapy. [2]

According to psychologist Sheridan, the amount of content online about electronic harassment that suggests it is a fact without any debate on the subject, creates a harmful, ideological, platform for such behavior. [7]

As part of a 2006 British study by Vaughan Bell, independent psychiatrists determined "signs of psychosis are strongly present" based on evaluation of a sample of online mind-control accounts whose posters were "very likely to be schizophrenic." [6] Psychologists have identified many examples of people reporting "mind control experiences" (MCEs) on self-published web pages that are "highly likely to be influenced by delusional beliefs." Common themes include "bad guys" using "psychotronics" and "microwaves," frequent mention of the CIA's MKULTRA project and frequent citing of a scientific paper entitled "Human auditory system response to modulated electromagnetic energy." [32]

Some people who describe themselves as undergoing electronic harassment have organized and campaigned to stop the use of alleged psychotronic and other mind control weapons. [1] [2] These campaigns have received some support from public figures, including former U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who included a provision banning "psychotronic weapons" in a 2001 bill that was later dropped, [1] and former Missouri State Representative Jim Guest. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety, suspicion, or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Paranoia is distinct from phobias, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tin foil hat</span> Hat and stereotype for conspiracy theorists

A tin foil hat is a hat made from one or more sheets of tin foil or aluminium foil, or a piece of conventional headgear lined with foil, often worn in the belief or hope that it shields the brain from threats such as electromagnetic fields, mind control, and mind reading. The notion of wearing homemade headgear for such protection has become a popular stereotype and byword for paranoia, persecutory delusions, and belief in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

The microwave auditory effect, also known as the microwave hearing effect or the Frey effect, consists of the human perception of audible clicks, buzzing, hissing or knocking induced by pulsed or modulated radio frequencies. The perceived sounds are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device. The effect was first reported by persons working in the vicinity of radar transponders during World War II. In 1961, the American neuroscientist Allan H. Frey studied this phenomenon and was the first to publish information on the nature of the microwave auditory effect. The cause is thought to be thermoelastic expansion of portions of the auditory apparatus, although competing theories explain the results of holographic interferometry tests differently.

A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erotomania</span> Romantic delusional disorder

Erotomania, also known as de Clérambault's syndrome, is a relatively uncommon paranoid condition that is characterized by an individual's delusions of another person being infatuated with them. It is listed in the DSM-5 as a subtype of a delusional disorder. Commonly, the onset of erotomania is sudden, and the course is chronic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Directed-energy weapon</span> Type of weapon that fires a concentrated beam of energy at its target

A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy without a solid projectile, including lasers, microwaves, particle beams, and sound beams. Potential applications of this technology include weapons that target personnel, missiles, vehicles, and optical devices.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonic weapon</span> Weapon that uses soundwaves against people

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Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, group, or organization. It may include false accusations, defamation, slander and libel. It may also include monitoring, identity theft, threats, vandalism, solicitation for sex, doxing, or blackmail. These unwanted behaviors are perpetrated online and cause intrusion into an individual's digital life as well as negatively impact a victim's mental and emotional well-being, as well as their sense of safety and security online.

Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral reasonableness. In the legal sense, these are behaviors that appear to be disturbing, upsetting or threatening. Traditional forms evolve from discriminatory grounds, and have an effect of nullifying a person's rights or impairing a person from benefiting from their rights. When these behaviors become repetitive, it is defined as bullying. The continuity or repetitiveness and the aspect of distressing, alarming or threatening may distinguish it from insult.

Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance or contact by an individual or group toward another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them. The term stalking is used with some differing definitions in psychiatry and psychology, as well as in some legal jurisdictions as a term for a criminal offense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Persecutory delusion</span> Delusion involving perception of persecution

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Mind control, or brainwashing, is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques.

Denpa (電波), also denpa-kei (電波系) or denpa-san (電波さん), is a Japanese term for people who may feel disconnected from reality or dissociated from the people around them. Individuals with schizophrenia may experience vivid fantasies, persecutory delusions, or other intense beliefs. Their speech and actions may appear odd or confusing to those around them. This societal perspective is similar to the way Japanese culture views otaku who suffer from maladaptive daydreaming disorder, paranoia, or schizophrenia.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also referred to as a transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. The origin of an EMP can be natural or artificial, and can occur as an electromagnetic field, as an electric field, as a magnetic field, or as a conducted electric current. The electromagnetic interference caused by an EMP can disrupt communications and damage electronic equipment. An EMP such as a lightning strike can physically damage objects such as buildings and aircraft. The management of EMP effects is a branch of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Washington Navy Yard shooting</span> Mass shooting in Washington, D.C.

The Washington Navy Yard shooting occurred on September 16, 2013, when 34-year-old Aaron Alexis fatally shot 12 people and injured three others in a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) inside the Washington Navy Yard in southeast Washington, D.C. The attack took place in the Navy Yard's Building 197; it began around 8:16 a.m. EDT and ended when police killed Alexis around 9:25 a.m. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Washington, D.C. history, as well as the second deadliest mass murder on a U.S. military base, behind the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis E. Dec</span> American outsider writer (1926–1996)

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Gang stalking or group-stalking is a set of persecutory beliefs in which those affected believe they are being followed, stalked, and harassed by a large number of people. The term is associated with the "targeted individual" ("T.I.") virtual community formed by like-minded individuals who claim their lives are disrupted from being stalked by organized groups intent on causing them harm.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Weinberger, Sharon (January 14, 2007). "Mind Games". The Washington Post . Retrieved 12 January 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kershaw, Sarah (November 12, 2008). "Sharing Their Demons on the Web". The New York Times .
  3. ↑ Brian A. Sharpless (15 November 2016). Unusual and Rare Psychological Disorders: A Handbook for Clinical Practice and Research. Oxford University Press. pp. 40–. ISBN   978-0-19-024586-3.
  4. ↑ "Mind Games", The Washington Post , January 14, 2007
  5. 1 2 3 Monroe, Angela (13 November 2012), Electronic Harassment: Voices in My Mind, KMIR News, archived from the original on 2015-08-29, retrieved 2016-03-10
  6. 1 2 3 Aboujaoude, Elias. "Psychotic Websites. Does the Internet encourage psychotic thinking?". Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC, HealthProfs.com. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 McPhate, Mike (10 June 2016). "United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  8. ↑ Yan, Laura (2018-03-04). "Mind Games: The Tortured Lives of 'Targeted Individuals'". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  9. ↑ Dietrich, Elizabeth E (January 2015). Gang stalking : internet connectivity as an emerging mental health concern (Master's thesis). Smith College. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
  10. ↑ Aldax, Mike. "Space weapons resolution 'embarrassed' city and negatively impacted mentally ill, vice mayor says". Richmond Standard. Chevron Richmond. Archived from the original on 21 June 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
  11. ↑ Court to Defendant: Stop Blasting That Man's Mind! Wired magazine BY DAVID HAMBLING July 1, 2009
  12. ↑ "Jim Mustian, Man who killed hostages in north Louisiana bank had mental illness, March 12". Baton Rouge Morning Advocate . Archived from the original on March 13, 2014.
  13. ↑ Greg Botelho and Joe Sterling (September 26, 2013). FBI: Navy Yard shooter 'delusional,' said 'low frequency attacks' drove him to kill. CNN Retrieved: 26 September 2013.
  14. ↑ BBC News (September 25, 2013). "Profile: Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis". BBC News . Retrieved September 25, 2013.
  15. ↑ Tom Vanden Brook (March 18, 2014). "Report: Concerns about Navy Yard shooter never reported". USA Today . Retrieved October 19, 2014.
  16. ↑ McDonald, Ian (2013-09-26). "FBI: Navy Yard Shooter 'Delusional,' said 'Low Frequency Attacks' Drove Him to Kill". FOX40. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
  17. ↑ Holley, Peter; Larimer, Sarah (November 20, 2014). "FSU gunman was in 'state of crisis' during shooting, investigators say". The Washington Post .
  18. ↑ Southall, Ashley; Williams, Timothy (November 20, 2014). "Gunman at Florida State Spoke of Being Watched". The New York Times .
  19. ↑ Queally, James (November 21, 2014). "FSU gunman mailed 10 packages before shooting, contents not dangerous". Los Angeles Times .
  20. ↑ Berlinger, Joshua (July 18, 2016). "Gavin Long: Who is Baton Rouge cop killer?". CNN. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
  21. ↑ "Hong Kong police on the lookout for man who killed taxi driver on Tuesday morning". South China Morning Post . October 12, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
  22. ↑ "Manhunt for cabbie killer continues as police provide more info". The Standard . October 13, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
  23. ↑ Sharon Weinberger (14 March 2017). The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 195–. ISBN   978-0-385-35180-5.
  24. ↑ Kendrick Frazier (1991). The Hundredth Monkey: And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books, Publishers. pp. 153–. ISBN   978-1-61592-401-1 . Retrieved 4 May 2013.
  25. ↑ Leigh Armistead autofilled (2004). Information Operations. Potomac Books, Inc. pp. 197–. ISBN   978-1-59797-355-7 . Retrieved 30 April 2013.
  26. 1 2 The Mind Has No Firewall, Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 84-92
  27. ↑ Matthews, Owen (July 11, 1995). "Report: Soviets Used Top-Secret 'Psychotronic' Weapons". The Moscow Times. Retrieved March 5, 2014.
  28. 1 2 Boyle, Alan (April 2012). "Reality check on Russia's 'zombie ray gun' program". NBC News. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
  29. 1 2 Shapira, Ian (December 5, 2017). "Was a spy's Parkinson's disease caused by a secret microwave weapon attack?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  30. ↑ "Legal, financial fights mount as 'Havana Syndrome' goes unsolved". 22 December 2021. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  31. ↑ Broad, William J. (2018-09-01). "Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-01-06.
  32. ↑ Bell, Vaughan; Maiden, Carla; Muñoz-Solomando, Antonio; Reddy, Venu (2006). "'Mind control' experiences on the internet: implications for the psychiatric diagnosis of delusions". Psychopathology. 39 (2). Psychopathology, 39(2), 87-91: 87–91. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.99.9838 . doi:10.1159/000090598. PMID   16391510. S2CID   6362668.
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