You walk outside and get into your car, ready for another day on the job. When you pull out, you notice a white van down the street pulls out too. This van follows you on your way to work, but you don’t think much about it. You notice it again when you head home for the day.

It is there the next morning, in the same spot. You couldn’t make out much on the driver but you could tell he was wearing a red shirt.

Once again, it pulls out at the same time you do. This time, you decide to take the long way to work and turn left instead of right at the first stop light. It turns left, too. Soon, you notice the van everywhere you go. To the store, the post office, it was in your driveway once. Had they been in your house?

You decided to ask your neighbors if they had seen anything odd at your place, and every single one of them wore a red shirt. They talked weird, as if they knew something you didn’t. Like they had rehearsed this conversation already and were just waiting for you to say your lines next. Paranoia grips you, and soon you see those red shirts everywhere, and no one believes you. You are a Targeted Individual and are being gang stalked.

~

The idea of gang stalking, being targeted by a large group for harassment and intimidation, is a complex web and will require a bit of setup to fully understand. It goes well beyond a feeling of being followed. Victims of gang stalking call themselves Targeted Individuals, or TIs. They feel it as constant surveillance; while they sleep, where they work, every text and post, email and phone call is monitored.

It is the feeling that the new guy work hired already hates you because of what the stalkers have said to him, or he is one of them, and getting the job in your office was just a show of power. It is knowing that the itch or bump on your back isn’t just irritation or acne but an RFID tracking chip. All eyes are on you, and the stalkers have convinced everyone else that you’re just crazy.

That is barely the start of the tangled thoughts and thin connections drawn in gang stalking cases. TIs can move, they can confront, they can go to authorities but in the end, they feel there is no true freedom from their nightmare. They know something, saw something, and the powers that be want them to suffer.

Gang stalking comes in different forms and severity; each case is different from the next, but there are some common themes.

The TI will start to notice being followed, either by people on the street, in the store, at work, or by the same car wherever they go. Some even claim that helicopters and jets pass by overhead at regular intervals to let them know they are being watched. That is something else common among TIs; they express that their stalkers want them to know they are being targeted.
Listening devices and actors. TIs also believe that their conversations and, in some cases, even thoughts are monitored. This happens from devices planted in their homes by the maintenance man, the exterminator, their landlord, or any number of people who are, in fact, actors. They go on to say that these people will talk to them about topics they shouldn’t have knowledge of. An example would be the TI seeing an ad for ham and thinking that ham would be great for dinner. Then, a neighbor would post on social media about having ham for dinner. The TI’s thoughts on ham had been monitored and then used by the neighbor as a means of intimidation.
A deep distrust for, or downright dismissal of, a medical diagnosis. The TI community is very against gang stalking being a symptom of a larger disorder. Such as schizophrenia or a myriad of delusional disorders. The fact that a doctor may even diagnose a TI with one of these disorders only feeds the paranoia.

That last point there, the distrust of mental health professionals, has given rise to an online support group by TIs for TIs. On message boards, pages, and video confessionals they gather. Places where they can express their thoughts and feelings and be supported, not judged. It was to one of these digital echo chambers that Myron May reached out for help.

“Also, has anyone here ever been encouraged by your handler to kill with a promise of freedom?”

Myron posted this question to a gang stalking group on Facebook just days before he shot and killed three students at Florida State University on November 20, 2014. Myron’s life had been in a spiral for some time. He had started down a path of promise; he had passed the bar exam and was a practicing attorney. Then he quit his law office job and took up a private practice, then was hired on at the district attorney’s office.

Myron believed people were following him and that there were listening devices in his car. He would sleep fully clothed with his shoes on in case he had to make a run for it. Myron checked himself into a mental clinic but left as he felt the staff couldn’t be trusted. He believed that the police and government agents were using a “direct energy device,” which would cause him pain but be invisible to an outside observer. Myron would explain in a series of unhinged messages the day of the shooting that this attack made him feel as if he were being cooked.

After he killed those students, Myron approached the police and was shot over 20 times.

Directed energy weapons are another common belief among TIs. Patents for psychotronic devices do exist and are held by companies such as Lockheed Martin, Sony, and the US government. These range from focused microwaves that can cause nerve damage, to a device that causes the target, and only the target, to hear auditory hallucinations. Add to that a shocking number of advanced surveillance technologies, and it isn’t hard to see how some people can think that everyone is out to get them.

Why do the TIs believe they were targeted? It could be because of a job they once had or still have that gave them access to privileged information. It could be because of what they know, who they know, or something they said against the government or a corporation.

Could it be that these TIs are suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness? This is a possibility as well; delusion disorders can be triggered by substance abuse, mental and physical trauma, or any number of negative events. Many accounts by TIs come across as a schizophrenic break, nearly one-to-one.

Or is it really like they say? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

Sources

[NBC News- “FSUShooter Myron May Left Message: ‘I do Not Want To Die In Vain’”; Youtube: DrGrande;Various anonymous sources]

All Eyes On You: Gang Stalking and the Targeted Individual

Human Monsters: Gen and Hiroko, the Dog Lover Murders

They Come From Below