The oddities of the Internet

I’ve never talked openly about the horrible episode a few years ago where I had a stalker. I’m going to share this story with you all today in the hopes that it’ll help someone understand how dangerous the internet can be.

Let’s go back a few years. Before I was published. Before I had a pen name. I had discovered the wonderful world of romance books. I didn’t always read romance. I read thrillers and suspense mostly, sometimes mysteries. Romance never interested me. Until I picked up a book by Madeline Baker. She turned me onto a world of love, desire, and even adventure. I hadn’t realized what I’d been missing. I frequented the used bookstores in an attempt to get caught up. There were so many great authors! It wasn’t long before I was checking out their websites and joining their yahoo loops in an effort to hear about the latest releases and maybe get a sneak peak into the author’s life. It was on one such group that I met Jan (renaming her here, just in case). Her and I hit it off right away. I felt like I’d found my long lost sister or something. We had a lot of the same interests, the same favorite authors, the same insecurities, etc. Our relationship moved from the groups and boards, to private emails and instant messaging. Soon, we were exchanging phone numbers. She sent me pictures of herself and her boyfriend. She’d tell me about her life. How she grew up. I’d talk to her about my kids and husband. It was really neat meeting someone I could so easily relate to.

Then things changed. She started to get possessive. If I talked to another girl on one of the groups, she’d email asking why. As if I were somehow stepping out on her. At first I chalked it up to her need for friendship. We all have our issues, after all. But pretty soon she was joining all the groups I was on. Going to the writerspace chat room when I was there to monopolize my time. It started to feel very suffocating to me. I liked this girl, we were friends, but it got to be too much. When I brought it up to her she sort of apologized and backed off some. I thought that would be the end of it. I was SO wrong. Things got even more bizarre. I found out that she’d been going to writerspace and logging in as me, chatting with people there as if she were me. She’d post to the boards as me. Don’t ask me how she got my password info. but she did. I IM’d her and asked her to stop, ‘I know what you’re doing’, I said. She called me, screaming and crying. She went on and on about how I never have time for her, that all I do is spend time with my husband and kids. I tried to sooth her, but that only made things worse. I explained that we needed to call it quits for awhile. She disagreed. Big time. I got more phone calls from her. Threatening my kids. Telling me she would cut them into pieces if I didn’t answer her emails. She’d call and taunt me about how close she lived to me and how easy it be for her to show up in the middle of the night and kill us in our sleep.

My husband and I were freaked. As you can imagine. For one, I never dreamed I’d end up with a female stalker. Two, I never thought Jan capable of the things she talked about doing to me and my girls. We discussed going to the police, but we realized pretty quick that it could possibly make her even more angry with me and I wasn’t really sure she’d given me her real name anyway. Still, we knew we needed to do something. We changed our phone number right away. I deleted all my online accounts. Took myself off all the yahoo loops and message boards. Got rid of IM and went off the internet entirely. And I do mean entirely. Doors stayed locked during the day and if I went anywhere with the girls I let my husband know where I was going and how long I'd be gone. I didn’t sleep comfortably for probably a good year. Every single time a car went by our house I worried it was her following through on her threat. Should we have gone to the police? Probably, but to be honest we'd never had to deal with somethingl like this. We didn't know what, if anything, the police could do. After all, she hadn't done anything, other than make threats. Nevertheless, when we finally decided it was safe to go back online, I just happened to come across a woman who also knew Jan. She told me that Jan got fired from her job as a nanny. A nanny? This was the first I’d heard of her being a nanny. I was shocked to learn that while Jan was IM’ing me and chatting on the phone and using the internet, it was at her employer’s house. When she was supposed to be babysitting, she was playing around on their computer. This mutual friend also told me that Jan had since moved out of town and no one had heard from her.

I never heard from Jan again after that. Thank God.

I tend to be very careful while online these days and I value my privacy very much. If I share personal info. with someone I expect it to stay private. I publish under a pseudonym in part because of Jan. I only give out my phone number to people I’ve onlined with for a very long time. I’m careful who sees my kids pictures and I’m extra cautious not to visit the places she used to hang out. My passwords are ultra complicated and I’m constantly changing them.

I think the biggest lesson I learned in all this is that stalkers aren’t just men and they don’t come with a label attached. Jan was a sweet, easygoing gal who loved to tell jokes and read romance novels. Who knew she led such a phony life? There was no way I could have predicted how crazy she would get. I’ve often wondered if I somehow caused her to go over the edge. And not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself, why me? What made Jan so possessive and needy with me? I don’t think she was like this all the time. So, why me? I’ll never know the answers to those questions. All I can do is look forward and hope it never happens again.

So, have you ever had a similar episode, whether online or in ‘real’ life? If so, what did you do?