On being mobbed

[Note 09/19/19: This blog entry came up in the stats today. This blog was written early in the mobbing, when I was more inclined to believe the mobbers—the neighbors to my north and south—had eyes into my house. As I’ve explained in later blogs, this is the power of address: When someone speaks to us, we tend to assume they can see us. This, in and of itself, is one of the most powerful hoaxes used by crooks and criminals who harass people out of their homes by using unfamiliar forms of sound including ultrasonic, infrasonic, and directional sound. This is part of the scam these crooks count on to creep out their victims and scare them out of their homes. It’s not much different from what those using cellphone harassment—also referred to as mobbing—do when they remain hidden over a telephonic connection while harassing, or when they camfect or use other forms of lurking to stalk their victims. In cases like mine where mobbers or the members of a hate group are actually working from next door with shortened attack vectors that reduce their risk, it is possible that they use occasionally use digital methods like camfecting or even radar depending on the extent they’re willing to go to. But when mobbing criminals work for people who don’t want to get caught, they need to do their dirty work without leaving any “artifacts” (forensic evidence) on your hardware. Their ability to harass you in your home in a manner that you don’t know how to prove also contributes to the success of the scam because it guarantees that you will appear to be delusional if you try to report to local police forces or authorities who are behind the curve on digital crime. I would bet that in cases like mine, the mobbers may try to make you uncomfortable before they begin mobbing by sitting in front of windows that face yours—they did me. But once they begin mobbing, you may be convinced that you are being watched but you probably won’t see them watching. This is the hoax and the con that support the scam that real estate mobbing is. In my case and probably in others, they also use infrasound-like sound or directional sound to tell you they do actually have cameras in your home or they quickly try to reinforce any suspicions you might have about how it is that they’re spying on you. In at least one more early entry, I talk about their threats of “potty-cams” and “shower-cams.” You can see how a mobbing victim quickly comes to believe that the neighbors have eyes on her in this early post where I talk about putting up window film, and when I respond to harassment while I’m cooking by demonstrating how to prepare a crepe. At any rate, they might be listening, but they’re probably not watching.]

I didn’t realize it at the time, but in the days, weeks and months before the “mobbing” began, at least, before the events that make me realize that what was happening was more than malicious gossip or the nastiness of a neighborhood that combines unfriendliness with money, those who would be involved in mobbing me were preparing.

At least a year before, those living around me had begun to actively work in concert, if not to make my life so unpleasant that I would leave before the mobbing, to curb my expression of basic rights in a manner that allowed me to best hear the mobbing harassment and that would protect their access to me.

The summer before the mobbing started, the same people would begin to yell whenever I would open a door or a window. This consisted of the three houses closest to me, two of them so close that they would provide access to my every room for monitoring and harassment in the coming months; the third belonging to someone in the local neighborhood watch who had constantly complained about me and made bizarre accusations about me to my landlords and, presumably, to others. They would yell to each other that a window was open, they would yell that they would call the police even though it was not quiet hours. They would come outside and throw their trash cans around or turn on outside music so that there would be a price to having my door open in the summertime heat.

At the time, I thought it was just another attempt to suppress my civil rights, to try to stop me from exercising the same rights to open my doors and windows on hot nights that they exercised–these people seemed to leave all their windows open and they were putting in fans and ventilation systems too. On one side, the neighbor even had a worker painstakingly recut the siding of his house to change the position of a venting fan that was directly opposite my side door. The vent was raised up to the height of the window in my door. I didn’t know it at the time, but those things had meaning for me.

During this period of time, I became aware that the neighbors on one side were watching me through my windows, at least, I could hear them commenting on what I did in the kitchen. It would start whenever I was at my kitchen sink, which was near the side door and directly under the windows of the third story of their house. One day when I was making buckwheat crepes, the girlfriend of the owner and one of her friends appeared to be openly watching me from their own windows and commenting on everything I did.

It was bizarre. I grew up in a liberal area where people have a live and let live attitude and suddenly I was being spied on in my kitchen, apparently by my neighbors.

I parried.

I showed them how to make crepes. Step-by-step, I beat the eggs into the batter, I heated the skillet and added the oil, I waited until the edges of the crepe bubbled and browned and turned it over, and I plated the crepes with a dollop of blackberry jam. With each step I carried the batter, the skillet, or the plate to the sink, displaying it under the window with a flourish. The response, still audible, was somewhat confused.

Within a few months, the spying on me, the watching, was clearly happening from the houses on both sides of me. I did not know it then, but I was being “monitored” and I began to realize that the “monitoring” had likely been silent and ongoing for some time. I use the word “monitoring” not only because the mobbers used the term, probably to make sure I realized what they were doing and would leave my home, but because “monitoring” is a legally defined word for a type of stalking.

I complained to the Seattle Police that my neighbors were openly watching me. The officer who came told me that it was legal, and civil, to watch people in their homes, at least to some extent. But I’m pretty sure we were already way past that.

One day I put window film up on my windows, the ones that the neighbors seemed to be looking into. The kind of film that allows you to see out but does not allow them to see in. The was an immediate outcry from one of the neighboring houses and a voice I thought to be one of the neighbors said, “How are we going to get her out if we can’t see her?” ▪