Stuff You Should Know - The Insidious Abuse of Stalking

Episode Date: February 5, 2019

Stalking has only recently been recognized for what it is – a profound form of psychological abuse where the victim’s life is “infected” by the stalker, as one survivor put it. Stalking can go on for years, and in some cases may be the prelude to murder.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

Jerry creepily in the background. Right, she just has stopped working and is staring at us right now. That's right, which is not at all funny. No, it's not. It's like we can get around about this stuff, but nothing about it is funny. No, it's really like...

But we just try to make light of things that are uncomfortable, that's what we do. Yeah, we did one on comas once, remember? That's right, that one was hysterical quite frankly. It was a laugh, right? It was like Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley coming out from platoon and naked gun, you remember? Oh yeah.

Just laughing. Right. I watched naked gun two and a half the other day. Oh yeah? So hold up? Holds up and then some. Yeah. Especially once you've met the director personally.

Oh right, that's right, man, we met him 1,000 years ago. Maybe 5,000 years ago, it was a while. So Chuck, we have a good 150 pages on stalking here. That's a lot. And you say like, no, it's not funny? Absolutely, it's not funny. And it's really tough to put yourself in the situation of a person who's being stalked.

Yeah. But there's a lot of quotes from people who compare it to what's a form of abuse. It might not be physical, although it frequently can turn into something physical or violent. Yeah, there's a lot of blurred lines here. But even if it never gets physical at all, it is a form of abuse.

It's a form of psychological abuse, protracted torment, wherein you, the victim, feel like your life has been infected. It affects every part of your life and you're constantly, you feel like you're constantly being watched. And as one victim put it like, not in any sort of flattering way.

Yeah, I had the most minimal form of stalking happen to me in college. And I cannot imagine what like a serious stalking situation might feel like considering how that made me feel. Really? Yeah. Wow. And not, you know, very minimal.

Trust me, I'm not saying like, I know how it feels, man. But like, you know, a girl that I was dating in college and didn't date anymore. Couldn't get enough Chuck. I mean, a few times like banging on my bedroom window in the middle of the night kind of thing, like come out here and talk to me. Right.

That kind of thing. Well, I mean, that is stalking, especially if it happens repeatedly, especially if she had like escalated over time. Yeah, this didn't really escalate and it was only a couple of times. I think then that would probably qualify as what's called harassment.

Yeah, harassment, but I will say this, I moved to New Jersey just a few months after that because that was the end of college and that's what I did. And I didn't go because of that, but it was definitely like, well, there's also the benefit of moving to New Jersey. And one week into being in New Jersey, we lived out in the woods.

I had a dream that a bear came out of the woods and pounded on my windows and like pounded on my door until it fell down and the bear came in. It was one of those where I woke up and was like, well, I know what that means. Where's the bear like, come out and talk to me. Yeah, the bear, her name is not Blair, by the way. That wasn't a Freudian slip.

Right. The bear definitely resembled her in some way. Her name wasn't Blair, but she looked exactly like Blair from Facts of Life. Oh, wish. I wouldn't have broken up with her. She was a little... Now, to be fair also, I was young and immature

and probably wasn't the best breaker up her. Not to say I deserved it, but... Well, I really think that that's a good point. You've made like 17 good points in there, okay? So number one, men get stalked too. Sure, it happens. And depending on where you live, it can happen pretty close to an equal frequency

as women being stalked, although I don't think anywhere it's equal. I think almost across the board, if not totally across the board, women are stalked more frequently than men are. Right. But men can be stalked pretty much evenly by women and other men.

Correct. Not just in the realm of like ex-lovers, whether you're a hetero or straight, but also like you might be stalked. And if you're a woman, you might be stalked by another woman too, for someone who's jealous, or angry, or resentful of you, or maybe a rival or something like that.

Like single white female. Right, exactly. Somebody who's just kind of become obsessed with you. So that was one thing, men can be stalked and that's very important. But also, you said like that you weren't the best breaker up her. And there's a lot of perceptions,

like misconceptions and misperceptions about what stalking is, what the victims of stalking do or don't deserve, what they did or didn't do wrong. And from everything that's kind of emerging over study of this for the last few decades, if you're a stalking victim, you basically did nothing wrong, but everybody assumed you did something wrong.

Like you didn't break up with them properly, or you're still sending out mixed signals, or maybe you flirted, or you were too nice, or whatever. Or maybe you're making a big deal out of all this, when really it's not, the guy just likes you, or something like that. Yeah, maybe you're just seeking attention. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe you got it in your head from watching Sally Jesse Raphael or something like that. We're not saying these things are true, by the way. No, this is like a lot of the misconceptions that people who are victims of stalking run into, even from law enforcement. Luckily, it's changed dramatically. And the laws and law enforcement are taking it far more

seriously than they did before, but it's definitely still not automatically like, oh, you're being stalked, great. Let me, here's how I help you. Well, and especially I think of a certain age group, like your grandparents may think it's romantic. There's this great Hampton Yacht joke. Yeah.

Remember him? He was at her. Okay, so Hampton Yacht was saying, he was like, our grandparents' generation were nuts. It was like my granddad said, you know, for 380 days in a row, I went to your grandmother's work, and I asked her to marry me.

And finally on day three, she said yes. It's funny, like, yeah. I mean, stalking is a, and we'll go ahead and tell you straight up, it's a new term that's only been around for a few decades. But it's an old behavior. It's an old behavior, of course. Yes, it's just we're finally waking up

to the impact that it has on people, right? Yeah. Thanks, granddad. So let's talk about kind of the history of the understanding of stalking. It was actually not until the late 80s that the world really started to kind of wake up to this whole thing after a couple of high profile killings.

Yeah, celebrity, obviously, if you want to get something, sadly, in the news, if you want to get something in the news, it's having a celebrity undergo that, or be a victim to that, is the best way. Right, exactly. And that did happen a few times. Well, first of all, there've been a lot of movies

over the years. Like, a lot. And Robert De Niro was in a lot of them. Yeah. Cape Fear, the fan? Victim and... Taxi driver? No, wait, in the fan...

He was also a stalker. Oh, he was the stalker in there. I think it was Wesley Snipes was like the baseball player. He was a fan. I was thinking was he the baseball player, but that was bang the drum slowly. Oh, yeah, he was a baseball player in that? Yeah, he played Ketcher Thurman Munson

of the Yankees who died young. But yeah, taxi driver, stalker. Cape Fear stalker. What was the other one with the fan? Not a very good movie. No. But I remember... The other two were good.

I remember reading he hung out with knife salesmen to understand his character better. Fatal attraction, of course. Of course. The crush, single white female, one hour photo. Do you see that, Robin Williams? Yeah, but I forgot all about it. What was it about?

That was sort of family obsessed. Like they have the perfect family. I want to be that husband. So what'd he do? Well, I'm not gonna ruin it. Was he like scary Robin Williams in it? Yeah, he was a photo processor, like a photo booth guy. And so he would look at these pictures

of the family and... Super unnerving in that picture. Yeah, it's always portrayed the same way. The king of comedy, classic. These are just a few of my favorites. Was it DeNiro in that? He was. Was he the stalker or the victim?

He was the stalker. That's what I'm saying. I think he likes these roles. Boy, I never thought about that. And then there was one I want to shout out from a few years ago called The Gift that was really good, Jason Bateman. Oh, I didn't see that one.

It's good. I saw that it was good. Unnerving as well. I thought you were talking about the one that Billy Bob Thornton directed with Kate Blanchett as a psychic in this film. Oh, no, that was good too though. It was. He was just, I don't think he directed that though.

Yes, he did. Did he? I thought that was Sam Raimi, no? I thought it was positive. Did he write it then? No, I don't know. He did something for it. Well, it's interesting though to look at these movies.

I like so many of them. And there are a lot of them considering that stalking hasn't been around that long. Well, I also saw like, there's also comedies too. There's something about Mary stalking through and through. Oh yeah. Say anything, standing outside with the boom box. Oh, that's romantic.

Stalk, right. That's what I'm saying. All right, grandpa. Okay. I just wonder what this, it's interesting though, the obsession with entertainment about stalking. Like people are into these movies. Right.

And dozens and dozens of them. We knew it was creepy and weird to stalk before we even called it stalking though, as I mean based on this body of movies. Yeah, and I think not actually a lot of these are post like 1989. But not all of them. But not all of them.

You're right. The Grabster wrote this though and he points out, Peter Lawford from The Rat Pack was, he talked about it in his book without, there wasn't a name for it though. That shows just how new it is. Cause this was in 1990. And he said, they're crazies who become so obsessed

with celebrity that their fantasies are lived as though they're a reality. They can walk your streets, follow you everywhere, telephone you, send you letters, generally harass you. They can threaten you, discuss of CNX. They're planning to perform on your body, can do almost anything they wish. But as long as they do not physically hurt you,

the police have limited power and elaborate rules to follow. Yeah, because that's a confounding factor. It was 1990. For years was that, you know, you've got like First Amendment protection. You can say weird things and you can be in public places. I know. But after the death of, well, actually the first taste

of stalking in real life that America at least had was with an actress named Teresa Saldana who was in Raging Bull with De Niro. Yeah, played Pesci's wife. And she was very publicly stabbed in front of her apartment, like I think 10 times, very violently. Like the knife bent even, it was really horrific. Fortunately, she survived and she actually became

a victim's advocate for stalkers for the rest of her life. But that was like kind of a big, whoa, whoa, what was that? Like the guy was a drifter had become obsessed with her. Yeah, he was mentally ill and we'll talk a lot about mental illness throughout this show, but he eventually was extradited to the UK on another murder charge and they found him not guilty. I guess whatever they call reasons of insanity

has different wording over there, but he was committed and died in a hospital in 2004. But she went on to, you know, I think she made a TV movie about it. It was scary stuff. Yeah, it was. But Rebecca Schaefer was the one seven years later that really hit the news.

My sister, Sam, that was, I mean, these are all equally horrifying and sad, but this, she was stalked for three years by this man who. Again, an obsessed fan. Yeah, who did the same thing to other famous women. Like she wasn't the only one, but he is, she's the one who he killed and Marcia Clark actually tried that case,

little known fact. Oh, really? Yep. The one, I guess, right? Yeah, yeah, he's still in prison actually. And he was shanked in prison like 10 years ago. Really? 11 times.

Wow, they survived. Oh, he survived. Yeah, so he's still in jail. So they actually, the guy who stalked Rebecca Schaefer took a lot of his cues from the playbook of the guy who stalked Teresa Saldana actually. Used things like something called pretexting, which is a really pretty common way

that stalkers will get information about their victims, pretending they're somebody they're not, and then get info from unsuspecting like family members or whatever, hiring a private detective to get info. Used to be a lot easier to do that. Way easier. Like you could go to the DMV and be like, hey, where does this person live?

Right. And they might tell you. Up until 1994, it wasn't, your information wasn't federally protected at the DMV. Yeah. And then there was actually a website, one of the early websites in I think the 90s, helped you stalk people easily.

Like, I cannot remember the name of the site, but they would basically socially engineer a chance meeting with whoever you wanted. And they would give you all this information on them and teach you how to strike up a conversation and talk about all the stuff that you knew they already knew they liked. And it was a website that was dedicated to helping stalking.

It almost sounds like a dating app. It's social media. Kind of, right? And then Letterman also really shined a light on this with his stalker who was a woman who used to break into his house pretty frequently. Yeah, that was a very sad case. And we'll get into where she fits in the modern definitions,

but she was afflicted with schizophrenia and he was, he often didn't press charges and he was pretty like, cool about it. He joked about it here and there on the show, I think. Yeah, she made his top 10 lists a lot. Yeah, just to try and make light of it, I guess, but she went on to stalk an astronaut as well. Yeah, story must crave.

Yeah, and they both expressed just sort of a general condolence and sadness when she took her own life. Like I think Letterman knew. And she would wake up with her on her property. She stole his car one time, like serious stuff, but as we'll learn later, she falls into a category that generally

is not physically dangerous to her victim, but still like it's just unnerving. So all these celebrities being stalked kind of shine a light on stalking in general, although not necessarily the most, the correct light initially, but they definitely brought it to everyone's attention. And that kind of brought it

under the jurisdiction of the law. The law got much more involved after that. And let's take a break and then we'll get into that. You want to? Yeah. Okay, we'll be right back. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

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Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, so America said, wait a minute. Letterman's being stalked. Rebecca Schaffer's killed Teresa Saldana went through this.

Let's do something about this finally. Yeah, and it's tough to get good statistics because it depends on what stage you're in, what the definition of stalking is, whether or not a crime, and this is one of the big problems is the actual crimes committed. Like now stalking is a crime.

But before that, it was, it's like, it's not necessarily crime, like you said, to be waiting for someone in a parking lot. It's creepy, but a law isn't broken, or if laws are broken, they're little misdemeanors usually. Like trespassing. Yeah, so it was always a sort of legal gray area until, you know, like you said, the high-profile incidents happened.

And that's when the DOJ, DOG? The DOG. That's when Snoop Dogg, the DOJ got serious, and they created a legal definition of engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety, or the safety of others,

or suffer substantial emotional distress. And that definition is really important because it says, cause a reasonable person to fear. And while that's open to interpretation, it's not a, it doesn't say like, there has to be a literal vocalized threat to count. You know, like they don't have to say like, I'm gonna get you in, you know,

wear you for a raincoat. Like you can just feel that threat if you're a reasonable person. Yeah. And that counts, thank God, because that really opens it up, you know? Right. And it doesn't even have to be,

the threat doesn't even have to be a physical threat either. It could be like, I'm going to make up lies about you on the internet, or I'm going to go tell your parents, you know, all the stuff we did together, like we did drugs together. Like there's all sorts of different ways you can threaten somebody beyond physical violence. I'm going to trample your flower bed.

Exactly. There's a lot of like ways you can threaten and intimidate somebody. And all of these things, each of these acts is considered harassment. I was looking up to try to figure out what is the distinction between harassment and stalking. And it's really tough to find an obvious distinction.

But from what I could get, harassment are the individual acts that people do when they're stalking. And stalking is a pattern of harassment that very frequently escalates over time. Yeah, and it also obviously blurs lines with domestic violence. Like it is, and I think you can even say

it is a form of domestic violence. Yeah, definitely. Depending on the type. Yeah, no, the person at all. Right. And then it doesn't count. Yeah, there's a lot of categories of stalking. We'll get into them in a second,

but domestic violence is definitely one of the cradles that stalking is born from. Yeah, and one of the really sad things about it is there's a lot of times it just, there's no possible good result. Like oftentimes a stalker might stop, but then start back up. Like too often the end result is like someone's death

or a physical attack. It can be, or there's just no closure or resolution, right? Like even if the stalker stops, that doesn't mean that the victim is like, oh, good, I can have my life back. I don't have to worry about that guy anymore. Like the trust, the security, all of those things that most of us just take for granted

on a daily basis have been lost and they're not just immediately regained. Because it's like you said, with stalkers, the behavior can be discontinued and then it can start back up again out of the blue. And so you never know when they're going to pop back by or it probably freaks you out even more when they stop communicating.

Cause what are they doing? Right. What are they up to? Yeah, and even if they get, even if your stalker gets thrown in prison or it gets hit by a bus, like there can be irreparable psychological damage done to you, you may never be able to trust another man or woman again and have a hard time finding a love

relationship that you can trust, you know? And this happens so much more to women. And it's not, I think these statistics, you can kind of just flush down the john. Because so much of it goes unreported. And so much of it is stuff that women have just dealt with since, you know, the beginning of time, like the guy who's a little too handsy

or a little too creepy or a little too forward or doesn't take Noah on a, you know, ask me out for a date, like grandpa showed up every day. You know, it's just sad. I mean, I think things are starting to change, but as far as stats go, it's hard to even take those seriously sometimes. And before these incidences in the early 90s,

it was hard to even get cops sometimes to investigate or like either they didn't have power or they didn't take it seriously. In 1994, the Violence Against Women Act really broadened, well, like training, advocacy, counseling, but really like law enforcement, giving them broader powers to investigate and arrest was a big deal.

And then Joe Biden was actually one of the champions and big supporters of drafting that. The Violence Against Women Act. Yeah, so part of our national shame from the shutdown is that that law was allowed to expire in the Stalking Awareness Month, which is January. Yeah, everything about that sucked. Yeah, but it has been signed immediately

like after like that was one of the first things that happened was they re-upped that act as soon as the government went back to work. Which, I mean, it is a big deal that there is, I mean, it's a larger umbrella act, but it does include all sorts of funding for stalking support and resources. And as we'll see, if you're being stalked,

there's a lot of places for you to turn, but those places need to get federal funding because they're usually pretty small nonprofits that can't float themselves. Yeah, 2018, you wanna talk about another feel-good act, the PAWS Act, which had a, you know, it wasn't just about this, but under that umbrella act, it included threats to your pets.

Because that's a big one. People, a lot of times, part of the pattern of stalking is, you know, you come home and you find your animal dead, fatal attraction, that bunny got boiled. And not only protecting the pets, but grants and funding for shelters to allow you to bring your pet because that's, some people, rightfully,

won't leave their pets behind even if they're threatened. Yeah, I mean, that's a decision you shouldn't have to make. But you're like, I can't go to that home that can protect me because they won't take my dog. Right, and it's not just with people who are being stalked, homeless shelters have the same problems too. There's very few homeless shelters

that have accommodations for pets as well. For sure. So, one of the other big laws came in 1996 that Clinton signed in, which basically made stalking a federal crime. It extended protection, like restraining orders, basically. They enjoyed nationwide protection, like no matter where you were,

if you had a restraining order, it was good across the United States. If you went to stalk somebody across state lines, it was now a federal crime and the FBI was on you. If you used the mail to stalk somebody, to sending letters, it was now a federal crime. So, it became a big deal. And we're talking like seriously, 1990, Rebecca Schaefer.

That's kind of when it really started. By 1994, California had the first law, 96, the feds had a law. And I believe within a couple of years after that, every state in the union had a law. So, no, I'm sorry. California had a law that same year in 1990. And by 1994, every state in America had anti-stalking law.

It happened like that fast. Yeah, and in 1990, the LAPD actually started the threat management unit, which was a big deal, because now you have an actual unit of dedicated officers that will study behavior and try and determine risk and things like that. Whereas before it was just like, yeah, we'll get to it.

Yeah, we'll send a couple of our heavy hitter cops over to tell them to leave you alone. Send over Russell Crowe, I like confidential. Yeah, oh yeah. That was a great character. So, now that I advocate for vendettas and extrajudicial, I think, beating down. You said it's a great character.

It was pretty great in that movie when he would stick up for the abused women and go beat down those jerks. Yeah, that was a good character, I agree. So Chuck, we kind of kind of defined stalking here and there, but let's talk about what some of the behaviors that stalkers have. Like there are some set things

that just about any stalker will engage in. It's basically a pattern of stalking behavior, which is really surprising because when we talk about stalker psychology in a little bit, you'll see there's a lot of different people and a lot of different personality types that engage in stalking, but they all kind of tend to do the same stuff.

And one of the first things that they'll do is just show up where you are. Yeah, showing up. Now, obviously, calling and texting is a big one and social media harassment and stuff like that. But I mean, that falls, I guess, under cyberstalking. It does. Cyberstalking kind of deserves its own episode,

but so it's its own thing where you might just be targeted by someone you've never met before and just found you on the internet and they're using the internet exclusively to stalk you and harass you and maybe even extort you. That's cyberstalking, but also using email or location tracking or spyware to stalk under the traditional definition

that's also technically cyberstalking. It's like two things. Yeah, it's scary though with all the personal things that people have online now. It's certainly not like the old days. People can see so much about your life. Even if you think you've protected yourself in that way. Yeah, we'll do a whole episode on cyberstalking, okay?

So there's showing up, there's non-consensual communication you kind of hit on, emails, texts, letters, it can be. And apparently a lot of stalkers will communicate in ways that they think is totally obvious to their victim, that their victim has no idea what they're saying. Like some examples I saw in real life were like fingernail clippings,

a stack of Texas monthly magazines, a rat, a dead rat wrapped in cellophane. What did that stack of magazines, I had no idea what that meant. It was like a message. No one knows what it meant except for the stalker, is the only person that made sense to. But the stalker felt like they were communicating

in their own special way. So they sent someone a stack of magazines? Yeah, or left them outside of their house. Gotcha, gotcha. Obviously you don't even have to like, like if you, there could be a coworker that you see every day in the office and they can stalk you at work

even though they're also supposed to be in the same office as you. Right. Like the line is very fine. They can, someone can stop by your desk too much and pay you too many compliments. Again, that overlaps with harassment too. But like if you go to your bosses and you're like,

hey, I want to be in a different part of the building because this guy's really giving me the creeps. Right. Then he starts showing up over there every day. Like that's stalking. Right. Absolutely. You know?

Yep. There's also threatening family members, friends, anybody that the person cares about. Pets. Making threats, whether explicit or otherwise. And all of these combined, they can be separate, they can be repeating the same one over and over again. They can be a random assortment.

There's also very frequently like trespassing, breaking into your house, breaking into your car, just basically getting into your stuff. And then sometimes making it so like you can't tell how they got in there, but you just know they were there. Like I read one account of a woman who was being stalked and like she went and unlocked her car and there was a rose on the seat, like the passenger seat.

And she's like, how did this even get in here? She had no idea how the guy got in there, but he got in there. So just knowing that this person is watching you could show up wherever you are and can get to you is all of these things that combine that makes stalking so insidious. Yeah.

And like the effect goes beyond just psychological harm of which that's obviously the worst part of it. But like financially, you can have missed work and lost wages and you might have to move. Like people have picked up and moved house at great loss. Change jobs. Change jobs, you know, salary loss. Like it has like a real financial impact as well.

Yeah. And you were saying like how technology enables people to stalk so much more easily now. Yeah. That's a big one. Like if you, especially if you were already, if you had a relationship with your stalker previously and they had access to your computer or your phone, most stalking advocate groups say,

if you can afford it, get a new computer, get a new phone because those are compromised. And that's too expensive for a lot of people. So there's some tricks and stuff you can deal with or work with if you can't replace it, which we'll get to. It's hard to research this without feeling a sense of unease. For sure, you know. And just the injustice of it.

Yeah. Like consider you just were nothing but passingly friendly to a stranger and all of a sudden they're doing all of this to you and disrupting your life like this and robbing you of your security and you have no idea what they're going to do next. Yeah. That's about as unfair as it gets.

Yeah. And I think we'll probably take a break now and come back and talk about the different types. But you know, one of the types specifically is like the photo mat guy or you know, the casual acquaintance, the bank teller or you're the bank customer and the bank teller is the victim. Like these short little communications that someone who has mental illness may be

and is prone to this, you get too nice of a, have a great day and a smile. Oh, I know what she was trying to say. Yeah. And that sends them down the road. Scary man. Cause you don't want to like stop being friendly to people. No. Or should we all? I think we should.

It's the only way to protect ourselves. All right. We're going to take a break and we're going to talk more specifically about the different types of stalkers right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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Oh, so you should know. So Chuck, remember we said like California was like the first state to really take this seriously? Yeah. Well, LA was the first city to take it seriously because at first people thought, oh my God, celebrities are in trouble. And now that we've done more research,

we know like actually celebrities are the least stocked group and they're actually probably the safest of all the stocked groups. Yeah. But initially, LA really went whole hog on studying stocking. And that's where we got some of our earliest data and understanding of the stocking mentality. They created the threat management unit

with some forensic psychiatrists and some security guys. And they came up with basically some early stalker profiles. And one of the first things they figured out is you can roughly categorize stalkers into three different pigeonholes, basically. All right, is the first one Erotomania? Yes. Right, which is if you just sound that word out,

you probably have a pretty good idea of what that means. And that is someone who feels like those are the ones who feel like they're in love with the person. Those are the ones who feel like they're in love, but also that the other person loves them. Right, like Letterman's stalker was an Erotomaniac, a person with Erotomania. Right.

But she also was someone with schizophrenia. Right, yeah. So all these are comorbid, I guess. There's a lot of overlap with mental illness. But from what I've seen, depending on the type of stalking you're engaged in, when an actual diagnosable mental illness comes into play, the stalking kind of takes a back seat

to that diagnosable mental illness. It's a byproduct of it, or a symptom of the mental illness, rather than the stalking being the main part, you know what I mean? Yeah, like if she didn't have schizophrenia, she probably wouldn't have been stalking Letterman. Exactly. But it's characterized by a deep, profound delusion

that the stalker and the celebrity victim who has no idea the stalker exists, at least at first, are basically bound souls, that they have their soulmates. Yeah, it's rarely sexual. Very rarely sexual. It's sometimes, it's not even necessarily romantic, but it's so hyper-romantic, it transcends romance.

It's just complete and utter delusional obsession. That's Erotomania. Yeah, and this is the one that I mentioned early on, which I think very interestingly has an inverse proportion of danger. So the more distant or unattainable the relationship, like this woman and David Letterman, or really any of the celebrity cases,

the less likely they are to actually injure the victim. And the less likely they are to ever even meet them face to face. It's usually, like in Letterman's case, I don't think he ever met her face to face in an incident. No, but I mean, I'm sure she would have liked to have met him face to face. But his, in her case, is very much an outlier.

Although because of the medium, because it's celebrities, we think that's very common. That is extremely rare. First of all, in Erotomania's stalking situation with the celebrity, but one where the person actually tries to physically get in touch with the victim, that's pretty rare. So Erotomania is one that's also the smallest group

from what I understand. But the most probably press-grabby. Yeah, and movie-maky. Yeah, movie-maky. Like De Niro's got it cornered. Love Obsessionals, that's another one. And that is one that I was talking about with like, could be a fleeting acquaintance, could be a coworker.

Yeah, those are like two types. Yeah, it's either someone you work with every day, or it could be the bank teller. Right. Or again, you could be the bank. I saw that the healthcare worker is very frequently the victim of love obsessional stalking, because the experience of being in the hospital

or whatever and having somebody, some stranger take care of you. Yeah, it's intimate. It is. They're healing you. So they're very frequently a target of that. But it can be something like a grocery store clerk or a bank teller or something like that, anybody.

Just the most fleeting casual acquaintance ship can turn into a full-blown stalk. And in that case, the person who is doing the stalking is aware that the other person isn't in love with them yet. But it's seen basically too many rom-coms and believes that if they diligently pursue this person and show up at their work and send them all these unwanted gifts, that the person will eventually,

their heart will melt as they see how wonderful they are. And they will be together forever. The problem is, first of all, it's obnoxious and annoying. Well, it's also a real narcissistic personality disorder. Totally. But it can also, once you reach, people have a breaking point. And if you become obsessed with somebody

and it finally becomes clear to you that they're not gonna reciprocate, you already feel like you're entitled to their attention to their love. And now they're withholding it from you. So that might turn into rage, which is extremely dangerous in a stalking situation. And that's almost every movie the way it goes down.

Yeah. Wasn't there one with like Marky Marker, Donnie? Yeah, fear. Yeah, fear, fear with Reese Witherspoon. Marky Marker, Donnie Mark. You know, the Marks. Did you know Reese Witherspoon listens to stuff you should know?

Did I know that? I don't know. Does she? I read it somewhere, yeah. Hi, Reese. Yeah. I can't remember. I was in the car, she said, in some magazine article.

Oh, wow. Well, we think you're great. Yes. Come on, movie crush. Yeah. And come on into the world. You could work her in there somehow. I think her son also,

she said her son makes like music or whatever. He should make like jingles for stuff you should know. Oh, yeah. Totally play this. For sure. So, oh, the other interesting thing I thought about the love obsession is that it says oftentimes they are affluent and well-educated

and they are high-strung professionals who have no personal life except for this obsession. Right. Basically, Patrick Bateman types who are interested in a relationship. Yep. But who are just like, yeah, this is, and this article, that was kind of old,

but they were basically saying like, I could tell when it said, they're usually like the next door type, like Olivia Newton-John, not like Joan Collins. Right. And I was like, what year is this from? I read a victim's handbook that was written clearly by a victim

who like wrote a book on what to do if you're being stalked. Oh, wow. And it was from, I think, 1999. And she had advice on what to do if like they were blowing up your pager. I was like, this is dated information. She's not a Joan Collins type. But they made a really good point

and it's still going on today that the distinction between work and social life is so blurred because everybody works so much that it's like- Right. Yeah, I mean, the people you spend all your time with are the people at work. So if you are already, as they put it, high-strung neurotic narcissist types,

you may feel entitled to this person's affection or attention. And so that becomes the coworker stalking situation of love obsession. Yeah, in the movie version, that's the, well, let's just work late and like order some Chinese in the office. And then they have this like kind of funny exchange.

Candles? And that's an act one. And then act two is all the, hey, this is getting out of hand. And then act three is she rejects him and then it gets violent and angry. I would think she'd reject him in act two. And then act three is all the,

oh God, and then the resolution. Yeah, I think the end of the first, the first plot point that the end of act one is probably the rejection, you're right. Okay. And then that would set up the act two action. The building of the tension and then act three is the- Yeah, but something always kicks off act three.

Like, and I guess in Cape Fear, it was a, I think the kick off to act three might've been them getting out of town and going to Cape Fear. Gotcha. That would be my guess. It's so funny movies. You can almost, you check your watch next time you're watching a movie and everything happens

in 30 minute increments almost, it's funny. Then the last one, I think of the three that we were talking about is, is this one simple, obsessional? And this is, this is the worst. I mean, they're all bad, but- Most typically violent? Yeah, this is like the someone who you generally

had an intimate relationship at some point. Right. And you don't want to be with them anymore and they harass you and stalk you. And it seems like almost always it ends in violence. Well, no, that's not necessarily true, but it's at the highest risk of all of the types. Like if there's some dude who comes into your bank

every day and has a crush on you, he's far less likely to become violent than an ex. But that's not a former intimate, is it? No, that's what I'm saying. That's a different category. The former intimate is more likely to- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Perpetrate violence, but that doesn't mean

that every time it's going to result in violence. That granted though, one of the first tips I've seen for stalking like advocacy groups, like their lists of stuff you should be doing. One of the first ones is take yourself seriously. Trust your gut and your instincts. Very frequently, family and friends will just kind of blow off all these signs.

If you feel insecure and nervous about it, go with that. That is that you should take this seriously because it can turn into something dangerous for you and you should treat it that way and take it seriously. Yeah, because I'll say this, if let's say you- Me? No, you. Let's say one quote unquote overreacts, fine.

That's okay. Sure. Overreact, do it because if this person is not a stalker, it would be just like- Don't flatter yourself. I'm really sorry. Things obviously got out of hand and you'll never hear from me again.

Yes. The only person that would really get super ragey about that is probably a stalker. Yeah, no, it's true, it's a good rule of thumb. So err on the side of caution because I mean, a restraining order is one thing. I wrote in here, they are worthless. They're not worthless.

They're worthless in that it doesn't stop anyone from doing anything. But I think the main juice of a restraining order is so you officially have legal precedent that this person has done something. Yeah, you're documenting it. Although I did see, I read a Guardian article about a woman who was stalked by like an ex-boyfriend

from high school or college or something and he stalked her for nine years. And I think he broke 56 restraining orders over that time. Right. So it's like, yeah, that's- It feels too close. And then he finally got two years in prison at the end of this nine years-

For the restraining order? At the breaking 56 restraining order. I'm not sure exactly what he finally did that landed him in prison. But the idea that you can break 56 restraining orders and still not go to prison or jail is it's gotta be extremely discouraging for the victims of stalking.

Yeah, here's the saddest stat of this whole podcast to me is that 76% of women who are murdered by an intimate partner were also stalked by that partner. And half of them have been reported as stalkers. So- Half of the murdered women were reported that they were being stalked before they were murdered. Yep.

Yeah. So yes, you should take it seriously. And cops, and that's with cops taking it seriously, supposedly. Right. Still 50%. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So there's a, so we were saying like the, what's it called the significant, not significant other stalker, the- Simple obsessional? Yeah, the simple obsessional one where like you've had a relationship with this person and they didn't basically take the breakup very well. You belong to them.

Very frequently, if you are a victim of domestic abuse, that will turn into that, but that doesn't necessarily jibe with that. It can be, it can also kind of just come out of what you would call a bad breakup. Right. But it's still like the same, roughly the same, but I think if the abuser was already a domestic abuser,

the chances of violence are much greater. That's the group that is the greatest, at the greatest risk of violence are domestic abusers turn stalkers. Yeah, it says 30% of women who were murdered, were murdered by boyfriends and husbands. Right. Geez.

Yeah, that's why they always look at the husband and the boyfriend first. I'm surprised 30%, that seems low even, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's a 1992 stat, so it's super old, but I bet it's somewhere in that wheelhouse now, you know? Yeah. I doubt it's too different.

Just real quick, this is not just an American issue. There are countries around the world that have stalking laws, anti-stalking laws. I should say it's much easier to list ones that don't have it than the ones that do, because just in the last couple decades, countries have really started to take this seriously, which is heartening because it says,

oh, okay, good, we value women, the women in our society, and we want them to feel protected. There's some that just absolutely don't, like Cyprus, Greece, Namibia, Spain, they don't have anti-stalking laws, but for the most part, most countries do, and very frequently they follow a high-profile murder at the hands of a stalker.

Japan started to take it very seriously since I think like 2000 or 2001. Great Britain's really well aware of its stalking problem, and they have a really high incidence of men being stalked, too. And then I read an article that France, Sweden, and Luxembourg have the highest rates of stalking, and I was like, that seems a little weird,

and then the article pointed out, well, these are also probably countries where women feel empowered to report stalking, whereas some of these other countries that have very artificially low rates of stalking in the EU are probably countries that are a little more macho, and where women feel like the cops

are gonna just tell them to feel flattered for the attention, which happens, actually, sadly enough. Yeah, still. So like you said, originally, the data and the stats on stalking are really hard to come by, but it's basically a universal thing. Well, and it's hard to come by, too, because not everyone can agree on what behaviors

even qualify as stalking. There's this one interesting thing that I put in here about incompetence. Did you see that? Yeah, yeah. Not incompetence with a C-E, but... N-T. Yeah, E-N-T-S.

This is a category of stalker, and this is someone who is so awkward and unaware of social cues and norms that their clumsy attempts at initiating relationships feel like stalking. Right, they might have some sort of cognitive disability or something like that. Sure, or just may not pick up on social cues

and not realize that you don't stop by and compliment the lady's dress every day. Right. Like, don't do it. Right. And the guy's like, what? I'm just being nice. Sure.

Or it might be like a, you know... Or he may be a legit stalker. Sure. But I think in that case, he wouldn't be an incompetent, he would be a stalker. Well, right, but that's what I'm saying. The guy who's an incompetent is just like, oh, and then he never speaks to her again.

But that seems to be another whole other class of stalker. There's the incompetent, there's the erotomaniac, there's a love obsessional. And then there's even like subtypes to those larger types, like there's the scorned lover, there's the guy who is experiencing rage because he's not getting his affection reciprocated. There's all these different little subtypes

and all of them to one degree or another have some sort of mental illness associated with them. But it's not necessarily like diagnosable mental illness. And that's what makes stalking so weird is that a lot of stalkers are otherwise utterly sane. Yeah, like sociopathy. Sure. Or narcissism or something like that.

But you can diagnose that. And yes, maybe we'll study them enough in the future that we'll be like, oh, well, when you put this degree of narcissism with this degree of sociopathy together and mix in a little bit of an overly critical mother, you've got a stalker situation, right? But socially speaking, especially coworker love obsessionals and the simple obsessional ones,

those very frequently seem to be people who've become obsessed with somebody and have become so obsessed with that person, they've lost their marbles basically in that respect. In every other respect, they can kind of keep their life together until the obsession leads them down the path to where they're full-time stalking

and they like will lose their job or whatever or something. So we should probably give a few tips before we go in case you are being stalked. First and foremost that I've seen is number one, take it seriously. But number two, if you believe you're being stalked or you feel like you're being stalked, like go find a local stalking advocacy group.

They have them all over the place and they are experts at what you need to do. Things like if you are being stalked by a former intimate, you should assume that your computer and your phone are spying on you. You wanna change the passwords to your accounts. Don't use your computer, don't use your phone. Go use a computer at a church or a library

and then change your passcodes and then don't log in on your phone or your computer until you can get a new one. Yeah, you should, from the get go, you should log all activity just so you can, when you go to the cops, they're not like, oh, well, this guy just came by your house once. Like let's just see where this heads.

You can hand over a piece of paper that says that these 17 things happened in the past four days. So you just have a good log of activity. You also wanna engage in what's called safety planning where you don't just think about what the stalker just did. You have to think about what your stalker's going to do. And that really kinda gets to the heart of how, again, unfair this is.

Well, yeah, cause then all of a sudden you're obsessed with trying to figure out something that's gonna happen in the future or may not happen in the future. That's like how they ruin your life. Right, exactly. You're constantly thinking about them and where they're gonna show up or whatever.

But you want to tell people at your school, at work, at home, like here's a picture of this person. If they show up, call the police. Do not give out personal information to anybody because again, they might be pre-texting. There's all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't normally think of to where if you're being stalked, go find a group that helps people like this.

They would probably say, get off social media now. Yeah, I think that's another one. But also I think it has an effect where like, not only do you get off social media, you like stop going out because you're afraid they're gonna show up. You stop, so you lose contact with friends. You lose your life, you know?

So the group that I found that I thought was pretty great is called Spark SPARC, Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center. They have a lot of good like starter tips, but they'll tell you just like I did, go find a local group to help you like, come up with a safety plan to be safe. Yeah, cause the one thing that won't happen there

is they won't disregard your fears and not take you seriously. And sometimes, especially in those early moments, that's exactly what you need is some support and someone to say like, you're not crazy. This might actually be happening to you. And then to end on kind of a hopeful note, as distasteful as it sounds,

there is a growing awareness that stalkers need that they're in a weird way victims too and that they need to be treated. That they need to be pulled out of this life that they've built for themselves. And basically over the course of some very intense therapy Rehabilitation. Be brought back to reality.

And to have pointed out to them what they're doing and just how off their views of this other person are. Because very frequently stalkers are found to be giving their victims tons of power that the victim doesn't even know they have. And when they're reminded like, no, this person isn't doing this to you. No, they're not getting what you're saying

or anything like that. It's starting to look like stalking can be treated and that that's part and parcel with saving a victim is treating the stalker too. Because then the victim can have resolution at some point without the stalker having to die or spend the rest of their life in prison. You know?

So that's kind of a growing thing is treating stalkers as well. Yeah, I could see it being something that could be rehabilitated. You would hope. And then hopefully you just don't bum it to one another two years later. Yeah, they'd be like awkward for everyone.

I swear I'm feeling better. Usually don't shop here. This is just, I'm gonna just go. In which case the victim would what? I don't know, back slowly out of the grocery store. Sure. Yes. And never shop there again.

So that's it for stalking. If you're being stalked, hang in there and get in touch with us. Let us know how it's going. Since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey guys, love the show. Just started listening into my surprise. One of the first episodes I listened to

was about the biggest misconception in my industry, thread count. The softness of bedding, this is from a short stuff. The softness of bedding comes down to the quality of the material that's being used, not necessarily how many threads, which I think we said that, right? This person's just restating everything we said.

Long staple cotton only makes up 3% of the global cotton production, yet it's the best option for bedding. The longer threads provide a smooth surface for sleepers to enjoy. It's also more durable. Short staple cotton threads, this is what we said, isn't it?

The more popular and cheaper option are rougher and scratchier because the shorter threads are tied together throughout the weave of the bedding. In order to get the softest, best performing sheet, a long staple cotton, preferably one that is responsibly sourced as necessary. Anyway, I just wanted to say

what you guys already said. Thanks for being what you are. Congratulations on the billion downloads, guys. Oh, nice, there you go. Here's to another billion. That's how you get your email read. And that's from Ed. Thanks, Ed.

We're glad you joined us. Welcome to the family. That was a baptism by fire. That's right. If you want to be like Ed and get baptized by Reverend Josh and Reverend Chuck and Cardinal Jerry, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at HowStuffWorks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say.

Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.