Stalking

In a short story WIP, the main character(a con artist) is being stalked by a former target. I am working on describing the escalation of her stalking and it's effects on him. What would you find as the most terrifying things a stalker could do(short of physical violence/assault)? Why are these terrifying?

I am starting with him not sure if he is imagining things, to the slow development of paranoia to final break down.

 

- Invading your home and moving something to a different place when you aren't home. A photograph moved from the desk to the windowsill.
Done enough and with enough items over time will perhaps make you question your own sanity.

-Paying people to mimic your clothes and outfits in a subtle way, and to smile at you or otherwise engage in eye contact with you.
Done enough and over time may also rub the sanity of the stalked.

-Bugging your home and paying people on the street to talk about subjects you have previously engaged with.

-Pay up for commercial boards and show your computer desktop on said board while you commute to work.

-Pay strangers to sit beside you on the train with a laptop chatting with people named after your friends and family, saying horrible things.


I know these things because I think some of them happened to me...

 

Is the guy supposed to be aware he's being stalked? I probably wouldn't notice if someone stalked me UNLESS they made it really, really obvious. Why would anyone want to stalk me.....? I'm a boring, boring person!

The suggestions above about moving or taking things from the subject's home, these seem more designed to drive your character crazy. If this is what you want, no problem. I do think you need more than one person for this to be effective - one person to keep eyes on the target and the other to do the stuff to make him think he's crazy.

 

I love the ideas others have suggested above. Objects that go missing, then turn up in a place he's sure he's already looked for them. This would be even more unsettling if he wakes up in the morning to find things in his bedroom have moved around while he was sleeping.

What if the "stalkee" keeps finding his front door unlocked... he's sure he locked it the night before, but every time he checks that door, it's unlocked again.

Maybe he starts hearing from his friends or family that they received strange phone calls from his home phone, if caller-ID is compatible with your setting.

Another thought: If the stalker is upset about a con that happened in the past, maybe the stalking recalls some aspect of the con that makes it clear who she is and why she's upset.

 

I think the anticipation or fear of something happening is much worse
technically speaking. The imagination is typically far more terrifying than
what the average maniac could cook up. Even if nothing ever actually
happens, the fact that it may/can be implied is more than enough (even
if it is all speculation by the stalkee). It would create a sense of dread
in them, even if their stalker really just wants to meet them for coffee
or something.

 

His pet rabbit boiling on the stove when he gets home (alla Fatal Attraction). In fact, that's a good movie in general for what a female stalker/crazy bitch can do to a man's life if she's determined enough.

He might have to keep close tabs on discarded condoms lest she get ahold of one and impregnate herself with it.

If her goal is to destroy his life, the biggest psycho female weapon in that arsenal is public shaming. Telling all his secrets to everyone he knows, including quite likely a lot of lies designed to destroy all his relationships and friendships and demolish his social standing. Often this will end up being things the woman herself has done, projecting them onto him.

Complaining to his boss to try to get him fired.

Telling everyone she's pregnant with his child and/or gave him a venereal disease or something highly infectious.

False rape allegations, and she got herself beat up with the pictures now in the police files.

Obviously I'm concentrating on the endgame part, the high end of the escalation.

 

This is someone he conned in the past, who has gone off the deep-end into erotomania and is convinced they are star-crossed lovers. I am starting with him coming home to the lights on when he thought he left them off, to smelling traces of her perfume, to having the pictures in his picture frames changed, then furniture to things he had bought for her when conning her, to finding food set out on the table(still hot). He's a conman, so doesn't have a boss or friends/family for her to harass, but it also means that he is entirely unused to the roll reversal. He is used to hunting vulnerable woman, not being hunted so it throws his world upside down.

 

The worst part for someone being stalked isn't the dead pets or the horse's head in the bed, or any of that.

It's the stalker *being* there. Wherever you look, there they are. You're out shopping and they "happen" to be in the same shop as you. You're out at a restaurant and they come in shortly after you've sat down. You get on the bus to go to work and there they are. You go to meet a friend, and when you show up, that friend is talking to a "friendly" stranger. Notes coming through your doorway, friendly at first then escalating and piling on emotional blackmail.

It's the feeling that you're being watched everywhere you go. The phone rings and you jump, expecting it to be them.

You know the person wants something from you, but you don't know how far they'll go to get it.

 

Relevant question—is he married or does he have a girlfriend? If so, the stalkers job consists partly of getting rid of her first. Also, if she convinces all the people in his life that he's either a total asshole or infectious, or that he got her pregnant or whatever, they'll all hate him, leaving him nowhere to go but to her (in her mind anyway). Plus she promises if she gets her way she'll let off the pressure—tell everyone none of it was true. I've known a few crazy bitches, and this is how they tend to think. I'll never forget the one night I was walking toward the bar from the parking lot behind the building when a female voice suddenly emerged from the bushes beside the back door. It was my friend's ex girlfriend, waiting for him to show up and meet the new girl he was seeing. She tried to recruit me to do some spying for her and wanted to me to say certain things to him, but when he showed up I told him she was out there.

I'll also never forget the time the same ex girlfriend sat on the ground behind his car with a leg on each side of the rear tire so he couldn't back out. We had to both pick her up and drag her away from the car, and as soon as we let go, she ran right back. Of course she was screaming bloody murder the entire time, trying to bring the whole neighborhood to her aid.