Oct 30 2008
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Am I Being Watched?
Nick and I and a lot of UFO and conspiracy writers are often asked if we are afraid for our privacy (or worse) because of what we read and write. Well, I was–for awhile.
For about a year in the mid 1990s, I lived in mortal fear that someone was watching me. The garden-variety paranoid assumes this as a fact of life, but I didn’t consider myself the model for Mel Gibson’s character in Conspiracy Theory.
The evidence was everywhere I turned. Letters to my P.O. box were opened, tampered with, and/or destroyed, although I noticed that only those from UFO researcher Karla Turner and cattle mutilation researcher Peter Jordan were affected. One night, I thought that the apartment manager upstairs was watching me because for about 10 minutes one evening he seemed to be walking into the same rooms (in the upper unit of course) as I was at the same time. It got so bad that I even imagined government agents in an unmarked van out on the street reading what was on my computer screen. Parapsychologist Dean Radin once told me, “You can make someone paranoid in a few minutes.”
Part of this period of fear was described in a post I wrote on August 20 of last year. The man in question was doing his best to befriend, then frighten, then reassure me with supposed “insider” info about UFOs. It almost worked, or did for awhile. At one point, I hid tapes of our “official” 4 hour interview in an oatmeal tin in the cupboard. I even covered them with oatmeal.
A few years later, while having lunch with countercultural icon (and personal hero) Paul Krassner, I asked him how he had come through his own periods of strange paranoia, triggered by his interest and writing about the JFK assassination and on another occasion, the Manson family. He said, “I just got tired of it.” When I smiled and answered “Me too,” he laughed and replied, “It gets old, doesn’t it?” The fact that Krassner sees the world in a strange and humorous way probably had a lot to do with it as well.
For myself, living every waking moment in fear really started to wear on me until a decision was made to simply stop, and it worked pretty well. Healthy doses of humor (in Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus!, for example) also helped to put the situation into soft focus.
Paranoids are easy to create and feed if you know how to flatter their egos: “He picked me. I must be on to something.” The basic level of fear created is helpful, since most of us like a scare, and if it seems to be real, the funhouse (or spookhouse) illusion is complete. All that is needed when this is accomplished is to keep the frightening “insider” info coming in small doses. At this point, your target is basically a puppet and mouthpiece, ready to infect others with carefully crafted disinfo, which of course is mostly true, but injected with a small amount of ear-tickling lies.
Of course, this worked on me to some extent. However, the first (and only) time I printed something that the Intel insider had given me, it was published with a warning caveat. This angered my contact, and I received a stern warning. After that, nothing he gave or said to me was put in my magazine, but my thinking was forever changed. In a way, I suppose that he did accomplish at least part of his mission.
Nothing like this has happened since, so I must assume that I’m not writing about anything important anymore, or that events have moved on in a way that makes blogs like this irrelevant to national security.
…although if I remember correctly we have had occasional visits to this site originating from intel agency servers. Hmm.
P.S. Happy Halloween!
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October 31st, 2008 at 4:13 am
You’re too unbiased for their purposes, Greg!
October 31st, 2008 at 4:15 am
PS: Feliz DÃa de Muertos!!
October 31st, 2008 at 10:29 am
It’s good to have you back Mr. Bishop and congrats on the nuptials. I wish the best for you both.
If could, please elaborate for a moment on your correspondence with Karla and why -you- suspect it might have been of interest to others. Did it continue throughout your interaction with her?
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Jonah,
Thanks for the good wishes.
The letters I got from Karla seemed ot be fine at first, then appeared to be progressively more “messed with.” The fact that it’s very easy to open letters and reseal them without detection made me think that someone wanted to let us know that they were opened. Maybe the correspondence was looked at for awhile, and when whoever it was realized that there was really nothing important in them, they just decided to let us know that we were at least of interest.
This was not in my imagination. The letters were opened and tampered with. I haven’t had that problem with any other mail before or since. I really don’t know why any of the authorities would be interested in letters between UFO writers. Perhaps they were confused by the abduction phenomenon and hoped to find something out from private correspondence.
When Karla started sealing the envelopes with tape and writing “sealed by sender” on them, the activity stopped (or appeared to.) She said that she had this problem with a few other people with whom she corresponded as well. There is a picture of one of the sealed envelopes in the Excluded Middle book (Wake Up Down There) of you are interested.