Les Jones

Johnia Berry > Man the Internet is a Weird Place

So an anonymous commentor on Johniaberry.org writes:

someone said something about Michael Lowe, well if you look at the initials on the CD its says ML.. which would be a good indicator of a guy named Michael Lowe.

That was the first I recall hearing of Michael Lowe. I couldn't find his name in a search of the site. If anyone knows anything about him, I'd appreciate it if you let me know. (LATER: Guy corrected himself and said it was Michael Howell he was thinking of.)

So I Google for "michael lowe" tennessee and one of the pages I get is this one at Mindcontrolforums.com. It's from someone named Ted Jackson describing his neighbor Michael Lowe (don't know if it's the same guy - there were lots of matches for Michael Lowe) who he thinks was controlling his freakin' mind. You can read the whole thing, but this paragraph gives you the rich, nutty flavor:

3) My upstairs neighbor, a man named Michael Lowe (Apt. A - dark green Accura Legend (license plate #839LEC) with an Emory bumper sticker), who introduced himself as a respiratory therapist, began creaking the floor of his immediate upstairs apartment and making other percussive sounds coincident with lines of dialog and lyrics from television and radio broadcasts in such a way that he could communicate deniable messages to me through them. He did so loudly at first, apparently to get my attention, and then more softly such that he could do so while being unlikely to be heard by others. In that way he would convey all sorts of messages, including death threats (i.e. softly creaking a floorboard coincident with lines of dialog containing words such as 'gonna get you' or 'kill you' and such). To this day I can think of no way to successfully prove the fact of it. He then continued doing so at any (and sometimes all) hours of the day. The content of his communications also made it clear that he was able to observe me within my home, including the content of my computer screen. I tried to ignore it at first, though it was inevitable that I would begin to answer, which I did. I would argue/communicate back to him simply by typing on my keyboard into Windows notepad.

Boy, can I sympathize with that. Turns out I lost years of blogging because I was typing my posts into Windows Notepad instead of entering them into, you know, blogging software.

Yeah, I know. It's not exactly news that there are unmedicated nutcases on the Internet, just like it's not news that it hurts when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Yet somehow it's always a surprise when you re-discover the most basic facts of life.