Paranoid Delusional Schizophrenia And "The Story"

If you've been on ATS long enough, you've heard the typical paranoid delusional stories. Sometimes it's "gang stalking" but other times it's a bit more unique. Before I read so many of them here and elsewhere, I never realized how well they all corroborate. Why are they all so similar?

I try to picture it as an illness and then try to imagine that illness in a time before there were far-reaching governments and super-duper-secret experimental programs to wash our brains. What did people say then? Did they think the king of the land had royal spies in their closets after implanting a demon into them in the dungeons? If a stone-age man were to become paranoid delusional, what was he paranoid of? There weren't any government spies to track them with crazy brain-tech. Were they all similar then, as well?

I would think that's possible but the stories I hear now days all seem so close to one another, especially the gang-stalking ones. I doubt they look up the other stories and then decide "hey, that's how I want to ruin my life!". And I truly believe this is their reality and there are no doubts in their minds or that it's fabricated.

If we had several witnesses testify to something bizarre and they were of sound mind, we would investigate it without bias. But schizophrenics (and other paranoid delusional people) don't get the benefit of the doubt, no matter how many of them relay stories that are pretty darned similar and specific.

Is it weird that I would like their claims to be objectively researched? What would happen if we took them seriously and dug at least a little?

a reply to: Cuervo

What would happen if we took them seriously and dug at least a little?

I am a tree that climbed up a pickle and dropped a bear on to an acorn and than got shot by a squirrel with a crossbow.

Can you take me seriously??
Can you decipher what I just said??

Thats what would happen.

Sometimes the ranting and raving of people like that is like trying to decipher a genial mind from an insane one.

a reply to: Cuervo

Who are you calling crazy and why are you looking at me like that? I know what you did!!!



Perhaps its a cultural crosshatched type of Jungian collective unconscious.

a reply to: DrumsRfun

Can I take you seriously, yes, if you are a poet, like Jack Kerouac.

In any case, does anyone here actually have a definition from the DRM manual of Paranoid Delusional Schizophrenia, or are we simply "winging it", playing armchair psychologist? Without actual education or training in psychology or counseling I would rather leave the diagnosis to professionals.

Now, if you are simply giving an opinion, then that's fine, but it's just that an opinion.

In any case, gangstalking can appear to be a psychological malady, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The East German STASI used such gangstalking techniques against dissidents (just watch the movie "The Lives of Others"), so gangstalking DOES exist. The question then becomes does gangstalking exist in the U.S. and if so is it being used against a certain person or group of people?

Personally, I do take these people very seriously and I believe 'gang-stalking' as it is called does indeed occur to certain individuals to an extent.

Granted 90% of the reported cases are probably nonsense, trolling, or mental illness as you said. However I find it sad that many of these cases reported to ATS - the OP is immediately labeled schizophrenic and mentally ill even though the OP never makes that admission themselves. Who are the other posters to immediately diagnose them with something? They are not doctors - simply biased folks on the internet.

Also, if gang stalking does indeed occur. Certainly it would make even the sanest of individuals lose their mind a bit so to speak.

For the record - I am not mentally ill and I do not claim to be a victim of such things.

I would love for these cases to be objectively examined and studied. Here on ATS there are always ridiculed into oblivion and it really just sucks. In this day and age anything is possible. Voice to skull, all that other jazz, you name it - it exists. There is research out there to prove it. They have been able to 'inject thoughts and voices' and the like into minds for decades now. By they I mean various organizations and black budget projects of the government.

IMO - MANY of these cases are TOO specific too be coincidence. The only explanantion to me is these things are happening to people, OR it is simply the case of somebody reading on post on the internet and pretty much copying all the aspects of it to act like it is happening to them for whatever reason. Mental illness cannot explain why many of the cases are so similar.


ETA: Just to throw this in - I once came across a website which had 7 different documented cases. In each of these cases the victim claimed to be a victim of this 'gang-stalking' or what have you. According to this website, these individuals actually convinced medical doctors to do a probe into their body for implants. Implants were found in these people. The website included pictures of each implant, the name of the doctor, the year found, and the name of the victim. I know pictures prove nothing to anybody anymore - but these were old photographs, they did not look like the fancy photo shop crap we see today but who am I to say?

Anyways there was an excerpt from a doctor basically saying the implants were no doubt mechanical and foreign in nature however they were designed in a way to appear very organic in nature as an attempt to trick the body's immune system from attacking and to hide them from scans. I am paraphrasing of course.

I know I know - source please. I know for a fact I found this website at a link buried deep within a thread right here on ATS somewhere. I do not think I saved the link, but I will attempt to track it or the thread down. It was a thread dealing with this same stuff.

Sorry for the rant - this gang stalking thing is a very big favorite of mine as I feel it is one of the most ignored conspiracies out there.

originally posted by: DrumsRfun
a reply to: Cuervo

What would happen if we took them seriously and dug at least a little?

I am a tree that climbed up a pickle and dropped a bear on to an acorn and than got shot by a squirrel with a crossbow.

Can you take me seriously??
Can you decipher what I just said??

Thats what would happen.

Sometimes the ranting and raving of people like that is like trying to decipher a genial mind from an insane one.

First of all, I'm not talking about stories like that. I'm talking about the ones that follow the familiar "government took me, did stuff to me, now I get these voices, they are spying on me, etc"

None of this was peculiar to me until I kept hearing the same markers (especially with gang stalking) where there are specific things many of them have in common.

Of course the stories sound crazy and that's probably because the minds they are what most people call "insane" but... why are they so similar? What if these things that they think happened to them are what caused their mental state to begin with?

I'm not saying I believe these things are really happening but I am saying the stories have enough in common to perhaps look a bit closer at them.

a reply to: lightedhype

Many people around the world have reported incidents of "gangstalking" some people have reported gangstalking going back as far as the 70s. Now, I will admit, some of the cases may simply be the byproduct of a psychological malady, I'm not a qualified, competent psychologist, so I am simply stating an opinion, but some appear to be actual gangstalking, here is a link to youtube videos regarding gangstalking:

Gangstalking Videos

I myself try to help targeted individuals as much as I can.

a reply to: lightedhype

To an extent? So do you think that this happens only to a certain degree or if it sounds to out of this world it can't be happening?
Between the military, police, and security firms there is enough information going around to cripple any individual they deem worthy of it.

and that's not a joke!!!

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

a reply to: Cuervo

A possible reason they sound so similar is because, if it is indeed gangstalking, is that the gangstalkers use many of the same methods. For example monitoring your phone calls, texts, computer data, what you say in private, and then they use very personal information and leak it out to their network of "actors". For example if you were talking (in the privacy of your own residence) about washing your dog, then when you go to the store a total stranger in line may also mention, how their dog smells or something.

Now if the occurs just at random, then it wouldn't be a signal, BUT when you see it happening over and over, people start to notice. For example let's say you are discussing the quality of tap water, on Sunday in the privacy of your residence, then on Monday someone mentions at work or in line that the water tastes funny. Let's say on Tuesday you mention how you did at "world of warcraft", in the privacy of your own residence, then on Wednesday a person may wear a "world of warcraft" shirt.

Or let's say you text your friends about Jelly Roll Morton or Jack Kerouac then the day after, a person may mention or somehow view on a computer screen something about Jazz or some poetry. This is how it usually works.

a reply to: Cuervo

Cuervo,

Schizophrenia as we know it and with that element that you are describing that involves "agencies" and "technologies that seem just without the reach of our understanding" came in to being shortly after the Industrial Revolution.

You can read quite a bit about it in a thread that I put up here:

Air Loom: The Curious Case of James Tilly Matthews

Special attention should also be given to the work of Viktor Tausk and his Influencing Machine which is mentioned at the end-ish of the thread by member Kilgore Trout.

I take some of them seriously. I am not sure about gang stalking, but that is neither here nor there for this post. A lot of us here have experienced things or believe in things that are not so common place. So what makes ones ghost story any more believable than a schizophrenics story about hearing voices they know is not just crazy talk? If we want to be logical about it... absolutely nothing. One is just more socially acceptable than the other, so that dictates what most people buy and what most people laugh at.

I absolutely believe that a lot of schizophrenics are not as psycho as most of the public perceive them to be. Maybe they are just more attuned to what is going on around them. Maybe they are more open. I have no clue, but a lot of them are highly intelligent and function normally otherwise. The same people that believe in psychics are the same ones that will laugh at the idea that schizophrenics may have a mainline to something else we don't. Again... why does that make sense?? One is hearing something, while another claims to be seeing/feeling something. Neither can be validated by anyone but the one experiencing it. And I'm not talking about one psychic out of millions that get lucky with a one off prediction. Yet, one class of folks is more believed than another.

There are things that go on in this world that we do not grasp yet IMO. Putting a diagnosis on one group of folks has successfully made an entire society discount everything they say and do. That's likely not a very smart thing to do (again only IMO of course). Whose to say that they aren't the only ones among us who are not delusional. Maybe it's the rest of us?

It something to think on. I like to try and keep an open mind as long as it isn't so far out of the ballpark that it's just impossible.

What did people say then?

a reply to: Cuervo

Pretty much the same thing.

Matthews, who signed himself “James, Absolute, Sole, Supreme, Sacred, Omni-Imperious, Arch-Grand, Arch-Sovereign … Arch-Emperor,” thought French agents had placed a magnet in his brain and were manipulating his mind, and those of other important figures, with waves of animal magnetism emitted from an Influencing Machine, which he termed an “air-loom.” From their hideout in London Wall, he claimed the “gang of seven” controlled him from a distance, using their sinister machine to carry out a horrible litany of tortures: “foot-curving, lethargy-making, spark-exploding, knee-nailing, burning out, eye-screwing, sight-stopping, roof-stringing, vital-tearing, fibre-ripping, etc.” In his sleep he was plagued by “dream-workings,” as the gang acted out gruesome performances with “puppets” which were projected straight onto the retina of his mind. 


That's from around 1816
The Influencing Machine
Seems to be the nature of the disease

I see Bybyots beat me to it,

originally posted by: Bybyots
a reply to: Cuervo

Cuervo,

Schizophrenia as we know it and with that element that you are describing that involves "agencies" and "technologies that seem just without the reach of our understanding" came in to being shortly after the Industrial Revolution.

You can read quite a bit about it in a thread that I put up here:

Air Loom: The Curious Case of James Tilly Matthews

Special attention should also be given to the work of Viktor Tausk and his Influencing Machine which is mentioned at the end-ish of the thread by member Kilgore Trout.

I have NO idea how I never noticed that thread when you wrote it (I must have been on vacation or something). I haven't finished it but it's an awesome story I've never heard and totally relevant. Thank you.

a reply to: deloprator20000


I am not a poet and admit that gangstalking does happen.

a reply to: Cuervo

I'm not saying I believe these things are really happening but I am saying the stories have enough in common to perhaps look a bit closer at them.

I admit...fine line between genius and insanity.
Just going from your line in the OP

a reply to: Cuervo

You're welcome. I see that you have also come to appreciate that ATS attracts some of the best, most articulate and mostly-fun folks from those strange spaces.

a reply to: Cuervo

i have had a few friends with paranoid schizophrenia, on more then one occasion I and our other close friends were subject to their accusations of spying for goverment or secret cabal's etc etc, these were friends i had known for years, never having an issue, the paranoia just comes like an unstoppable force, and after it wanes away they realize the foolishness of their claims, but that doesnt stop the claims from resurfacing when the next wave of paranoia hits.


so thats one reason i know it is indeed delusion, i think i would know if i myself were apart of such a conspiracy.

Reply to: Cuervo

Why are they all so similar?

While the nature of mental illness is the same the world over, its manifestations are always culturally mediated. I have a friend, a psychologist, who did his Ph.D on something called 'loss of semen syndrome', a psychosexual dysfunction experienced only by Japanese men. Some men living in Malaysia are prone to the delusion that their penes are disappearing into their groins. It affects Malays more often than Chinese though both can be sufferers.

Reply to: Bybyots

That's a fascinating story, though the claim that paranoid schizophrenia is a condition of recent provenance requires, I think, a great deal more support than that. In fact, it is untenable; the condition has always been with us, although it has been differently viewed and recognized in different cultures. The symptomatology, as I say, varies from culture to culture and has also varied through history. The OP says

OP I try to picture it as an illness and then try to imagine that illness in a time before there were far-reaching governments and super-duper-secret experimental programs to wash our brains. What did people say then? Did they think the king of the land had royal spies in their closets after implanting a demon into them in the dungeons?

I'm sure there were some who thought precisely that. However, a much more common template for paranoid fantasizing was the supernatural: witches who spied on people using demons and familiar spirits in the form of animals, put curses on them and made them do things they did not want to; evil sorcerers, prowling demons who took possession of the schizophrenic and provoked bizarre and inappropriate behaviour, and so on.

Besides 'super-secret government programmes', another common present-day focus of paranoid imaginings are, of course, the narratives of 'aliens among us' and alien abduction.

The entire range of paranoid confabulation in modern Western culture is on display right here on Above Top Secret. Somebody should do a study on us, and get somebody like Tom Stafford to blog about it.

originally posted by: Cuervo

What did people say then? Did they think the king of the land had royal spies in their closets after implanting a demon into them in the dungeons? If a stone-age man were to become paranoid delusional, what was he paranoid of? There weren't any government spies to track them with crazy brain-tech. Were they all similar then, as well?

Is it weird that I would like their claims to be objectively researched? What would happen if we took them seriously and dug at least a little?

Yes. What they said was a LOT like the things they say now, only with less HAARP.

But nevertheless, the general features are identical. Pursued by organized evil, including machinery that controls their thoughts, gangstalking, being tortured through the walls of their homes by a sort of pseudo-CIA (only for one guy, it was bar-magnet wielding dwarves...a definite improvement IMHO). Down to implants in their brains. Only of magnets instead of 'chips'.

Peoples' minds tend to fail in common ways, because they are built along the same bauplan, and they have similar 'weak spots' in the design. For paranoid schizophrenics, whatever it is that goes wrong in the wetware seems to cause a source identification malfunction, as well as a loss of internal self-checking. So while you and I can identify a particular line of patter in our heads as being the recall of a memory, or a song we once heard, or an input from a sub-persona that you normally might not notice at all, or if you do you might call it "conscience" or what have you, a paranoid schizophrenic might think it's a "voice from outside". And then they fail to identify it as a memory, or an earworm, or any internal source at all, and begin trying to establish some sort of logical explanation (except, generally, 'I'm imagining things'). Since they're hearing voices that sound like their thoughts, a 'logical' conclusion is that it's being inserted into their minds. And down the slope you go.

a reply to: Cuervo
Jesse Ventura on his conspiracy show put voices in his head using technology, alien technology. Ask him about it.