It was the fall of 1993. While in a neighborhood store, I ran into James Olson. James was around forty-five and a skinny stoner type. I didn't put much thought into what he would say, but maybe I should have. While talking he said, "You owe Acme Machine Company thirty grand."

I said, "What are you talking about? For what?"

He said, "For Acme."

I pressed a little more, and he said something like, "That's what I hear."

I asked, "From who?"

"From Acme."

I responded, "That doesn't make any sense," and then blew it off.

That would turn out to be the first of many cryptic statements, odd occurrences, unwanted attention, social isolation, and at times open hostility.

I had worked with James at Acme in 1989. We worked the second shift, where almost everyone on the shift drank and/or smoked pot. Thinking about it now, it seems odd that I would run into him occasionally in that neighborhood of that large city in a Great Lake state.

Nineteen ninety-three was a pretty good year. Two years earlier, I had started dating the woman I would eventually have two children with. There wasn't much money, as we were both working part time, and I was attending a highly regarded local trade school, studying HVAC and power plant operation. Throughout the year, we had a fair amount of social activity with people we knew from the neighborhood and people from school and work, as many from school were close to my age — in our early twenties. I had never lacked social skills or been socially awkward. I've always been able to fit in.

What a difference a year would make.

School ended in December of 1993, and I began interviewing for jobs that the school set up. I interviewed with two men, Ben and Tom, who worked for a large real estate company owned by a man that owned a professional sports team. I was interviewing for the building engineer position (HVAC/power plant operation) at a fifty-story office tower with an attached galleria-type shopping complex.

The interview went well, and I had another interview with Tom and the head property manager, Phil. During the interview, Phil asked a very strange question: "Is there any sort of problem or gossip that would interfere with your ability to do this job?"

I responded, "I don't think so," following the school administrator's advice to focus on the positive. I would later understand there was something out of the ordinary going on. Since I was coming out of school and to a location where I didn't know anyone, I wondered how gossip could be a problem. It didn't make any sense at the time. Also, this being a job interview, I didn't want to ask, as I was beginning a new career, so getting that first job was very important.

I got the job.

In February 1994, I was excited to start my new job and began with a positive attitude and open mind, but it soon became clear that something was very different from my life just a few months earlier at school and in the part-time job. Many of my coworkers were very standoffish. At first, my thought was that they just needed some time to warm up to the new guy. Beside my coworkers, I had contact with many other people who worked in the office complex or mall, and many of them acted the same way. At times I felt like I had leprosy.

This would be very different from my previous life — like night and day. With so many people, why I was unable to make any connections or friends or even acquaintances? This was all new and confusing.

During that time, I began to notice some strange coincidences. They began with a phrase or greeting like "how's it going?" or "have a good one."

Imagine leaving your house and a neighbor asks, "How's it going?" You go to a local store, and the cashier asks the same. You arrive at work, and the security people ask it, and then a coworker uses the same greeting. Then strangers around you do the same. All of this happens enough that you notice it, and it happens in a short amount of time and at multiple locations. A little strange, right?

It's just a phrase or greeting, you might think. It is possible that different people from different locations would all use the same greeting all at the same time. A little odd, but possible, right?

I would later learn that what I just described is a process referred to as sensitizing or conditioning, in which a person's attention is somehow hooked, usually through repetition involving a particular object, behavior, person, etc. In this case, it was normally ordinary words and phrases. Once a person's attention has been hooked to coincidences, it becomes easier to expand and repeat the process.

Around this time, I began to sense that at times I was being followed, and I encountered people who seemed to know more about me than they should have. There was nothing concrete — just a sense. Some of what I just described are stalking behaviors contained in a study by the US Department of Justice along with many other stalking behaviors as well as symptoms of being stalked.

Again, everything up to that point was really just about some odd occurrences or coincidences and how things felt. I had always had friendships with coworkers outside of work and been able to socialize in typical ways. Not anymore.

Along with these strange coincidences and with a sense of being followed, I was beginning to feel like some people that I considered friends were pulling away or trying to avoid me or minimize contact with me. I asked my girlfriend to put a tape recorder in her pocket and walk around and ask questions about me at the mall, which was attached to the office tower I worked at. It was an ill-conceived plan — even laughable — and it produced nothing, as nobody was willing to talk about me. But she did try. That is a hell of a thing to ask someone to do.

I stayed at that job for a year, since it didn't seem like a situation for long-term success. I probably wouldn't have left that job if it had been a normal situation.

I should also point out that a coworker named Nancy used to say pretty regularly, "Cole, know what time it is?" I never heard her ask anyone else that — or say that about any other subject or topic, for that matter. And it was clear she wasn't asking the time. As I look back at this, it's clear to me that she was implying that I knew what was going on. The fact is, other than noticing some odd coincidences and strange occurrences and encounters, I didn't yet know "what time it is.

Early in 1995, I found another job with a small HVAC company owned by two guys a little older than me, named Andy and Sam. I saw the ad in the paper, called, and talked to Andy. I met with him at their office, and we talked for about half hour. I was told what tools I would need and to call him Sunday night for instructions on where to go.

This was refreshing. No "how's it going?" or "have a good one." No standoffish interactions. I thought maybe a fresh start at a new location was what I needed. But the fresh start would turn out to be short-lived, and I found this very disappointing. The realization set in that somehow I was going to be treated differently and that different is almost never equal and is always somehow lesser. But with a baby on the way, I needed to work.

With this smaller HVAC company, I was working new construction in the suburbs east of the city, and it wasn't long before I began hearing "how's it going?" and "have a good one" frequently at job sites and stores and restaurants. It was becoming clear that people were using specific words and phrases because they were talking to me. How is that even possible? What would motivate this behavior?

This sounds highly unlikely and maybe even insignificant, but I began to realize that if it was true, I was being followed, my activities were being monitored, information was being collected and passed along, and my reputation was being affected. That was not so insignificant.

The guys I worked for were mostly okay, but there were strange comments occasionally about pissing off the wrong people and being careful about what papers I signed. When I questioned these comments, I got an answer about something that went bad between them and a builder that they used to work for. It seemed like a bullshit answer, but I needed to work.

Again, these guys were mostly okay, but Sam at times overused the word obviously. This would go on to be overused at times, like the phrases "how's it going?" and "have a good one," which had been overused in the previous year or so. Also around this time, I began to hear the overuse of the phrase "take care."

My son was born in the summer of 1995, and that provided joy and just something positive in my life — and a distraction from the negative. Fatherhood produces a wide range of feelings. At times, I felt like everything was right in the world, but I'd quickly remember that everything was not right in my life. I felt like I was falling behind and that I wouldn't be able to provide for or protect my family adequately.

Not long after my son was born, we went to visit family in another state. A vacation sounded like a good idea. It would be nice to feel anonymous again and to see family members I hadn't seen in a while. But again, at stores and restaurants, I immediately heard "how's it going?" and "have a good one" and "take care." This was in a different state, and it's the exact same overused phrases that I'd been hearing near where I lived. Now we're talking about locations close to home, work areas thirty miles from home, and in another state. Unbelievable! Too many coincidences to be a coincidence.

The thought that this was somehow deliberate and coordinated defies logic and reason so much that it's barely believable. I began to realize during that time that I was at the center of something highly unusual. It was seemingly impossible, but not impossible, because I was witnessing it. Who would be that obsessed? Who would spend money to perpetrate something so petty?

It was some kind of sick psychological harassment intended to produce anxiety, fear, and even dread, although I wouldn't come to terms with that until years later. Needless to say, I was very confused, and at times I did ask questions like "Why do you ask me that all the time or say that to me all the time and not to other people?" That seems a legitimate question, yes? Throughout this time, I had some confrontations with people.

Back at home and back at work, I found it increasingly difficult to maintain a positive attitude. At times, I dealt with a new feeling of anxiety and began to experience depression. I had used few drugs and alcohol during the previous two to three years, but that would change as I found myself unable to cope with the feelings of isolation, confusion, anxiety, and depression.

For a while, the self-medicating seemed to help, as I cared a little less about what was going on around me. I still had a few friends and acquaintances that I could escape with into a dive bar outside the neighborhood, where nobody knew me. Or I'd escape into the ghetto and get that anonymous feeling, where people were willing to talk and interact the way it used to be — the way it used to feel.

The construction trade was booming during this time, and I was able to find another job with better pay and benefits doing the exact same thing, but now I was working in the suburbs far west of the city. It didn't take long before I had the exact same feeling. To be fair, during this time, there was very little open hostility, but now the only friends and acquaintances I had were guys from the neighborhood who didn't have their lives together. If anything, they were going the wrong way.

With my lack of coping skills and escalating drug and alcohol abuse, I found myself unemployed. Yet I was beginning to feel that things were closer to normal than they had been in a couple of years. It was almost immediately after I got laid off that everything felt different. There was no more constant "how's it going?" or "have a good one" or "take care." No more feelings of being followed. Also, some neighborhood friends had started to come back around, as if appearing out of nowhere.

It took about a year to land in a couple of twelve-step programs. This went great for a while. I was attending meetings, and I quickly found work for an HVAC company about half an hour northeast of the city. I stayed busy with family, work, and meetings, and for a brief time things felt normal. I was doing well at work, feeling like I was fitting in and not feeling ostracized. I wasn't hearing the overuse of "how's it going" or "have a good one," or I was hearing them very rarely and never at the new job or at customers' homes.

This felt like the years before I got the job at the large office complex. It was like night and day. But it wouldn't last. I was called into the office, was told there wasn't enough work to keep me on, and was laid off. This company was swamped with work, so it's my belief that I was let go because the owner didn't want his company associated with what was going to be going on around me. So two jobs had been directly impacted by this stalking campaign.

I was able to get another job right away, but things were beginning to feel different. At the new job, at meetings, in local stores, and from neighbors, I began to hear "how you doing?" a lot. Around the same time, I began hearing the old sayings "how's it going?" "have a good one," and "take care." At meetings, people talked about making amends, and quite often I heard people talk about owing others money.

At work, I began to feel how I'd felt at the office complex; I felt very different than I had just a few months earlier. Both at work and at twelve-step meetings, it seemed like many people wanted very little or nothing to do with me. Some people at meetings were kind and friendly, but there were a lot that seemed to get caught up in repeating the words and phrases that seemed to follow me. Quite often, these same people talked about owing someone money.

During this time, I had two common thoughts: (1) there are no dark, disturbing secrets about me that would turn people away like this; and (2) logic and reasoning bring an impossible conclusion — or a highly improbable one anyway: someone or some people were deliberately influencing my environment, and that would take serious money.

It was the fall of 1997, and I had stayed sober only about six months. I didn't realize at the time that people are born with an instinctive need for love and acceptance (except for the psychopaths among us), and what I was experiencing was the opposite. This time would include periods of severe depression followed by two and three days of drug and alcohol binges. I had been laid off from my job and had no interest in finding another one.

Around the end of October 1997, I was out drinking with an old friend, and wherever we went, there was a lot of extra traffic. My friend pointed out what appeared to be an endless line of traffic containing almost all white cars. Sounds bizarre, but it's true. This was on a late Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We were in an area that's been losing population for decades, and the traffic was about as bad as I've ever seen. The point is, it was like a parade, so I knew it had been coordinated. We'll come back to this later.

In the winter of 1998, my daughter was born, and it became clear immediately that I was her favorite person. Her mother went back to work soon after she was born, and I wasn't working. I can't describe the impact this had on my life. Severe depression, thoughts of suicide, and an inability to stay sober were replaced by hope and a renewed determination to get things right.

In the spring, I returned to meetings and found a job working for a large religious institution. This job felt different from any other job. Most people there were reasonably friendly and not so standoffish. Although I heard "how you doing?" a lot, it was a better situation than the office complex or the jobs I'd had after I worked at the complex. So what if nearly every outside contractor or vendor asked, "How you doing?" as did many other people who worked there? It's a normal greeting, after all. One of my coworkers was a guy from South America named Anthony. He was one of the last real friends I would have.

I think it's important to make it clear that I understand how these phrases are normal greetings and are a part of everyday language, but that doesn't tell the whole truth. And it's one of the reasons stalking can be very difficult to prove. We're talking about noncriminal acts used collectively and repetitively that can cause or create patterns of unwanted attention. The intent was clear, and it wasn't to enhance the quality of life of the person receiving the unwanted attention — in this case, me.

The next year and a half was uneventful, other than the word actually getting thrown into the mix of overused words and phrases. And I was still hearing "how's it going?" and "have a good one" and "take care" quite often, but hardly ever at work. While the feelings of disdain I had felt directed my way had lessened most of the time, things still didn't feel completely right. During this time, I also began having problems with the mother of my children.