A Horror Movie Come to Life
June 23rd, 2007Most “targeted individuals” are schizophrenics who suffer from persecutory delusions. A couple of them have written to me over the years, and, having an open mind, I suggested some simple techniques that they could use to get to the bottom of whatever it was that was happening to them, if, of course, it was being caused by third parties and not a mental illness. In the hellish world of “targeted individuals,” nobody else (besides the sufferers) can observe the harassment and taunting, etc. This is all Psychology 101 stuff on schizophrenia.
The fact that the U.S. government has actually developed several mind control technologies over the last few decades confirms to many schizophrenics that their delusional constructs and systems are valid. (Walter Bowart’s Operation Mind Control still stands as one of the most astonishing of all texts on this subject. The book is long out of print and unbelievably rare. I bought an authorized photocopy from Tom Davis Books in Aptos, CA in the early 1990s.)
Obviously, this makes things difficult for researchers. Conveniently for the government, actual victims of this research will sound just like schizophrenics.
But what are schizophrenics unable to do?
They can’t show third parties tangible evidence of the harassment.
Now, what we have below is exactly the type of thing described by “targeted individuals,” but with a few BIG exceptions: There are recordings, observable anomalies and the phenomena are affecting multiple people who know each other.
Could it be some elaborate hoax? Of course. But the similarities to the hundreds of accounts of “targeted individuals” caught my attention.
The weirdest thing of all might be the compulsion of everyone involved to continue using the mobile phones!
Via: The News Tribune:
Maybe it’s just a long-running prank, but the reign of terror endured by three Fircrest families buries the needle on the creepy meter.
For four months, the Kuykendalls, the Prices and the McKays say, they’ve been harassed and threatened by mysterious cell phone stalkers who track their every move and occasionally lurk by their homes late at night, screaming and banging on walls.
Police can’t seem to stop them. The late-night visitors vanish before officers arrive. The families say investigators have a hard time believing the stalkers can control cell phones without touching them and suspect an elaborate hoax. Complaints to their phone companies do no good—the families say they’ve been told what the stalkers are doing is impossible.
It doesn’t feel impossible to Heather Kuykendall and her sister, Darci Price, who’ve saved and recorded scores of threatening voice mails, uttered in throaty, juvenile rasps stolen from bad horror films.
Price and Kuykendall have given the callers a name: “Restricted.” That’s the word that shows up on their caller ID windows: on the land lines at home, and on every one of their cell phones.
Their messages, left at all hours, threaten death to the families, their children and their pets.
“They tell us that they see us,” Kuykendall said Tuesday. “They tell us that they know everything we’re doing.”
It’s gotten so bad the sisters’ parents have offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who identifies the culprits.
The stalkers know what the family is eating, when adults leave the house, when they go to baseball games. They know the color of shirt Courtney Kuykendall, 16, is wearing. When Heather Kuykendall recently installed a new lock on the door of the house, she got a voice mail. During an interview with The News Tribune on Tuesday, she played the recording.
The stalkers taunted her, telling her they knew the code. In another message, they threatened shootings at the schools Kuykendall’s children attend.
“I’m warning you,” one guttural message says. “Don’t send them to school. If you do, say goodbye.”
Somehow, the callers have gained control of the family cell phones, Price and Kuykendall say. Messages received by the sisters include snatches of conversation overheard on cell-phone mikes, replayed and transmitted via voice mail. Phone records show many of the messages coming from Courtney’s phone, even when she’s not using it, even when it’s turned off.
Price and Kuykendall say the stalkers knew when they visited Fircrest police and sent a voice-mail message that included a portion of their conversation with a detective.
The harassment seems to center on Courtney, but it extends to her parents, her aunt Darcy and Courtney’s friends, including Taylor McKay, who lives across the street in Fircrest. Her mother, Andrea McKay, has received messages similar to those left at the Kuykendall household and cell phone bills approaching $1,000 for one month. She described one recent call: She was slicing limes in the kitchen. The stalkers left a message, saying they preferred lemons.
“Taylor and Courtney seem to be the hub of the harassment, and different people have branched off from there,” Andrea McKay said. “I don’t know how they’re doing it. They were able to get Taylor’s phone number through Courtney’s phone, and every contact was exposed.”
McKay, a teacher in the Peninsula School District, said she and Taylor recently explained the threats to the principal at Gig Harbor High School, which Taylor attends. A Gig Harbor police officer sat in on the conversation, she said.
While the four people talked, Taylor’s and Andrea’s phones, which were switched off, sat on a table. While mother and daughter spoke, Taylor’s phone switched on and sent a text message to her mother’s phone, Andrea said.
The Kuykendalls and Prices report similar experiences. Richard Price, Darcy’s husband, is a 26-year military officer, assigned to McChord Air Force Base. On a recent trip to the base, the stalkers sent him a message.
“McChord needs us,” the voice said.
Mari Manley, 16, one of Courtney’s close friends, is another victim of the harassment. She tried to avoid the calls by ignoring her phone. Late one night, she heard the phone making an unfamiliar noise. Her ringtone had changed.
“Answer your phone,” a guttural voice said. Manley saved the ringtone, and played it during an interview Tuesday.
The families and their friends have adopted a new routine: They block the cameras on their phones with tape. They take out the batteries to stop the calls. The Prices and Kuykendalls returned all their corrupted phones to their wireless company and replaced them with new ones. The threatening messages kept coming.
Fircrest Police Chief John Cheesman is familiar with the case and knows the families. His department is working the case with the Tacoma Police Department and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, he said. The agencies filed a search warrant for the phone records, but they didn’t reveal much. Many of the calls and text messages trace back to Courtney’s phone, which the family believes has been electronically hijacked.
Cell phone technology allows remote monitoring of calls, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Known as a “roving bug,” it works whether a phone is on or off. FBI agents tracking organized crime have used it to monitor meetings among mobsters. Global positioning systems, installed in many cell phones, also make it possible to pinpoint a phone’s location within a few feet.
According to James M. Atkinson, a Massachusetts-based expert in counterintelligence who has advised the U.S. Congress on security issues, it’s not that hard to take remote control of a wireless phone. “You do not have to have a strong technical background for someone to do this,” he said Tuesday. “They probably have a technically gifted kid who probably is in their neighborhood.”
Courtney Kuykendall says she has no idea who the stalkers are, though she knows police are suspicious. She believes someone followed her at school — a man in a hooded sweatshirt with a beard.
“They’re accusing my daughter of threatening her own family,” Heather Kuykendall said.
“Why would I do that?” Courtney said. “Why would I do that to people I care about? Why would I harass my own family?
Related: Mind Games: Everything Is Under Control (Must read if you’re not familiar with the whole TI thing.)
Related: FBI Taps Cell Phone Mic as Eavesdropping Tool
It’s amazing that people assume that they MUST have a blasted cel-phone in order to live.
I don’t have ANY phone, and I’m getting by just dandy, thanks.
I imagine that they believe that if they chuck away their phones, “The Terrorists Will Have Won.”
Sigh.
You might be interested in the article I first found at Signs-of-the-Times enitled “Mobile devices ripe targets for spies” at
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070623/1/49err.html
Hi!
This story sounds like a real nightmare. A quick google reveals that it may be entirely possible for someone to do what the story suggests.
On the stab at schiophrenia: this is an incredibly complex constellation of pathology and one really not to be ridiculed. For those trapped within it, it can be a living hell. For those lucky enough to dig their way out (e.g., John Nash), they can only look back in anguish at those who have not or cannot find that path.
For some, even the best medications and therapies are not sufficient. The disease is a combination of genetic and environmental problems and not one easily shaken by a “get over it” attitude. A little research into the subject might open everyone’s eyes to the incredible complexity of humankind’s most common disability.
Love your site.
MAD
(my initials)
Randall’s book on SRA has an excellent question in it. While there have been truly rebutted SRA cases, there are many that are neither refuted nor talked about much, and believing that all of them are false requires the belief that the accusers are either both crazy and wrong (because after all, it’s entirely possible for a crazy person to tell the truth, in fact, this is the norm in abuse: who is perfectly sane after they have a train run on them by a frat house?) or shameless opportunists. The real victims of SRA are invariably marginal, poor, vulnerable people who live their whole lives in fear and pain — there never was any money to be made in accusation. Another part of what reversed our opinion of SRA was the highly regimented pitiless scorn of the “false memory syndrome” people, with their carefully repeated messages adhering closely to party line, their paedophilia accusations settled out of court (these are folks dedicated to stoppping a supposed plague of false accusations but they settle molestation charges with cash!), their government connections, and their absolute lack of mercy for people they call mentally ill. The astute propaganda scholar will see in the FMS crowd no analysis, no real research, but constant adolescent attitude, constant invitation to laugh at the stupid crazy bitch who should learn some respect for her pimp. Nobody but a racist fruitcake would say that Jerzy Kosinski’s completely inhuman lying about the Holocaust — making millions defaming the people who saved him — means nobody is telling the truth about it. Similarly, there are cases that, strange as they sound, are worth attention. The mood of such cases, the eagerness of the respectable, mature, moneyed establishment to just stop all questions, the need for investigators to think everything over, is familiar atmosphere for consptheor people.
Really what we’d have started out on if we weren’t crazy was mentioning the Delphi Technique, which, like the Illuminati and ZOG, is such an accurate and useful conceptual tool it hardly matters whether it exists in broad daylight in a perfect 100% literal sense. The Delphi technique in a nutshell is forget about logic and argument, let’s make our opponent look crazy, immature or unreasonable. It is seen in a small way in the MSM reporting of every single leftist protest they mention: the protesters always go too far, they’re always more enthusiastic than articulate, they’re always naive or ideologically blinded, they always drown out their own message with its clumsy medium. Funny how leftist protesters always get it so wrong every single time.
I’m surprised more people aren’t up in arms about the fact that pretty much all cell phones can be used to remotely eavesdrop… even when they’re turned off. But then again, I was surprised more people weren’t up in arms over the same thing when that previous story about the FBI doing it came out a while back.
This sounds like a new variation on phreaking, using the built-in spyware on every modern cell phone.
It also sounds terrifying, but the fact that the primary target is a high school girl and that her friends have been targeted as well makes it a pretty typical Spurned Geek Gets Revenge story. The banging on the outside walls of the house suggests the same thing — this sounds like a particularly awful variation of TP’ing a house in the neighborhood.
Surely on some little alley of the Web (or the Shadow Internet, most likely) hackers are trading tips on hijacking these phones. My guess is that without the phone company’s cooperation — the way the FBI spies on mafia or, perhaps, you and me — you would need close contact with the phone.
I assume these are common Bluetooth-enabled phones, in which case you would only need be in range of the victims’ phones (in the school cafeteria, standing outside the victims’ half-inch stucco/chicken wire suburban home walls, etc.) to infect them with malware/spyware.
Just the other day I was laughing at some stupid thing on the Internet a friend had sent me, and then I did a variation on the dumb thing to send back, and was actually laughing to the point of tears. I finally got it together, sent off the stupid picture, and wondered what people would think if they were watching me alone in my home office. And then I remembered I’ve got a MacBook with a nice camera built in at the top of the screen, as well as a built-in mic. Sure, a blue light turns on when you turn on the camera, but how easy would it be to disable that? Jesus, the workaround is probably built in. New rule: There’s a post-it over that little camera unless we’re talking to the grandparents on iChat.
Dermots’ point proven: my sister recently got a call from the local P.D. A friend of hers lived in a neighborhood with some break ins, and the police said that my sister made a call to the neighborhood at 2 a.m. and they wanted to ask why. When she asked how they knew, the detective said that under the provisions of the Patriot Act they can “pull” a group of records from a crime “scene” (ie: entire neighborhood) to screen.
She was horrified at how much the government can get in our lives, and I had to tell her that they are limited a lot if you chuck the cell and the internet – as much tech as you can. They are limited, not stopped.
Yet another reason why I don’t own a cellphone. (Yes, I know it’s perfectly possible to do this to landlines.) I’m curious as to who is doing this though, it doesn’t exactly sound like psyops stuff, as the people aren’t dissidents or anything…
If you just ‘must have’ a cell phone, older analog cell phones are available via secondary markets (Ebay, etc) dirt cheap, and allow a much greater level of personal privacy/security.
Just wait until the ‘terrorists’ get a hold of this technology http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/21/future_terror/