On being mobbed

The search string “prosecuting infrasound harassment” came up in the On being mobbed stats recently. That’s on my mind as well. I haven’t written in the last months, but it’s not because I’ve given up. At least in part, it’s because I have some information that I’d like to verify before sharing.

In this type of situation where corrupt neighborhood watches and hate groups, real estate speculators and those of significant means use technology to obscure felony crimes, where they hide behind privilege, and where they defame and threaten their victims, it’s important that a blog like this one strive for a bit of credibility. In an organized crime like real estate mobbing in this northeast Seattle neighborhood where those involved have systematically shielded themselves by devising a crime that the Seattle Police Department and the City of Seattle appear not to understand or recognize, the choices of victims like me are limited. We can acquiesce to the demands of criminals, we could easily perish or be otherwise destroyed fighting a novel crime in isolation, or we can try to illuminate the situation. As a writer with strong beliefs in human and civil rights, I chose to write about it. As an historian with a strong sense of ethics, I chose to resist it. As an intelligent being, I have tried to learn about the crime as it victimizes me.

I remember that in some early blog entry in which I tried to mock the mobbers, I came up with a few “rules of mobbing.” One of those was “Don’t mob a writer.” Because writers write.

I continue to believe that the pen is mightier than the parametric [speaker]. Real estate mobbing, with its components of directional sound, cyber-harassment, and perhaps even infrasound, relies on brutal harassment that is delivered to the victim in a clandestine manner. But if we’re not easily frightened into running, and if we’re not intimidated into silence, the days of neighbor crimes perpetrated by militaristic watch groups are numbered, the months of brutal punishments deployed from behind white picket fences can be forgotten, and the years of imprisonment in the suburban gulag will be behind us.

All that said, over the months and years of being mobbed within and without my home in northeast Seattle, a crime that is in my case pretty obviously tied to real estate speculation and a neighborhood watch gone rogue, I have avoided applying the term “infrasound” to the harassing sound that does not overlay broadcast radio, streams or television. Instead, I’ve referred to the sound that turns my unbroken window panes into sheets of harassment as “acoustic leakage” harassment or “surface harassment.” Likewise, the harassing sound that is conducted through my bones to my inner ear when my cheek rests against the pillow is usually indirectly described here as the result of bone conduction.

Even after coming across an online post from a woman who complained about sound that was “picked up” by any motor and said she could not turn on a fan or hair dryer without hearing harassing sound, I avoided writing about the fact that I was having the same experiences in my home. Perhaps it was because they seemed somehow nebulous or because the disturbances were transient and the tortures they exert somehow smaller than the systematic deprivations of sleep and quiet. But my reluctance to use the term “infrasound” in reference to my own situation also came out of caution. I lack knowledge about how to verify the use of infrasound without measurement or analysis. I have no training in acoustics and did not want to overreach. And it’s not something you can easily research. You won’t find much about criminal harassment on the web, at least, not much that helps a victim to get help or to help herself when those who should help her find it easier to conclude she is delusional than to admit ignorance.

So there’s not a lot on this blog that is expressly about infrasound, even though by far the entry that gets the most hits, is the blog about the Florida woman whose neighbor subjected her to infrasonic sound harassment by virtue of a series of daisy-chained speakers held to the floor and operated by a smart phone (“A case of neighbor harassment using infrasonic sound,” https://onbeingmobbed.com/2016/12/10/a-case-of-neighbor-harassing-using-infrasonic-sound/).

It’s like the attorney I retained thinking that it should be obvious to him that I was sane and unlikely to be delusional, that attorney who requested that I provide a detailed description of the harassing sound in writing. When I created a well organized table of information with notes on how the sound changed from environment to environment depending on factors like wireless infrastructure, device use and the weather, he said it was “too much” and went on to challenge my competency in court.

This “too much,” the excess of criminal harassment with forms of sound that overwhelm while remaining hidden, becomes the reason to reject the truthful story of the mobbing victim in favor of the mobbers’ tall tales, their obstructions and lies. Constant harassment by sound is a torture, and like other tortures, it is a sensory excess that is incomprehensible.

Also for these reasons, I do not dwell in my writings on aspects of what I have so far survived in this rarefied Seattle enclave that might regarded as sensational, degrading or lurid. Even the attempt to make an objective and truthful report of the mechanics of tech-enabled crime is enough to convince people that a mobbing victim, a victim of stalking or the victim of an IoT crime, is delusional. Telling the truth in this situation is enough to cause attorneys you pay to represent you, to motion in court to discredit your testimony. Telling the truth about a novel crime is enough to get you held for a psychological evaluation with a psychologist who applies the rubrics of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as though her practice was based on the title Diagnostics for Dummies. Mobbing with directional sound is like that philosophical question: If a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody around to hear, does it make a sound?  The psychologist’s answer would be no, unless of course, it’s audible to her. When it comes to mobbing, primacy is given to the lesser experience, to the subject whose experience is more limited than the victim’s.

Sadly, as I strive to write in a manner that makes this blog credible, I must also guard against malicious attempts at social engineering from readers who may not be who they say they are, and I have to take care not to post comments I receive that might be written to discredit this blog or to give me the appearance of being a conspiracy theorist. This is exactly what people who try to harass others out of their homes using obscure forms of sound would want.

So I apologize to those who do not see their comments posted here. I have taken great care and spent a significant amount of time trying to describe the condition of being criminally harassed as accurately and compellingly as possible. And I have done so while living in a state of near-constant harassment while the City of Seattle has acted in a manner that has compounded not only the damage to my health and my life, but the difficulty of bringing to light a serious organized crime of which I’m certain I am not the only victim. This is not an easy existence for me and I have had to make choices to protect myself as best I can in these circumstances.

It’s not over yet. But as I mentioned, I have information now that I think may begin to change things. At least, it might change things for those who are being harassed in the same ways that I am. In writing about my experiences I have tried to share useful information, but the information I’ve shared is only partially correct. Now that I have the chance, I want to verify the information I have before putting it out there. Bear with me.

But back to infrasound. The “acoustic harassment,” the “surface harassment”, the harassment by bone conduction—call it what you will. I haven’t been calling it infrasound because I’m not sure. If I can, I’ll try to finish off a post that talks more about infrasound in the next week or two. And, whatever kind of sound it is, I’ll have a few countermeasures that might help others who are suffering it.

Is it or isn’t it infrasound? Perhaps only your mobbers know for sure. Stay tuned.