Reminds me of the family of my highschool girlfriend. They were constantly in danger from magical and spiritual attacks coordinated by agents of satan.
When her eldest brother got his girlfriend pregnant, her mother learned from a vision that the girl was a witch, and had used mind control to force him into sex in an effort to infiltrate their christian stronghold. There were stories about how the youngest brother had once, foolishly, brought a piece of fantasy art (a picture of a dragon) home. And sure enough, in the middle of the night, the dragon came out of the picture and tried to slither into the boy's bed. His cries woke his parents, who investigated, and sure enough there was an evil aura coming from the picture. They burned it while praying, and then had a preacher come bless their house ASAP the next day. There were several other stories, equally silly but not as entertaining.
One difference is, it seems that Stan from this article worked mostly alone, but my girlfriend's family was part of a large church community who ate all this shit up and asked for seconds. When I visited their church, it seemed like everyone had their own stories to tell about personally witnessing supernatural assaults. The community all fed off of each other, and they got so excited at having a new person to share their stories with.
I guess that's why the DSM, when describing delusional disorder, specifies that "The belief is, at the least, unlikely, and out of keeping with the patient's social, cultural, and religious background." Don't want it to seem like they're starting a holy war.
The funny thing is, when I was telling my mother about the things I heard at my girlfriend's house, I literally described it as a "whole weird world".
My mom has paranoid schizophrenia and growing up it was always fearing that the FBI is listening in or poisoning the water. I remember the first CD I ever bought (a Smash Mouth album) was taken by her and broken multiple times. She considered any shiny surface to be a potential camera/microphone. This story is so close to home I wonder if there might be some schizophrenics in it.
Both of my paternal uncles had paranoid schizophrenia. In the 50s, the police were called and confiscated their rifles, after they went on a (bloodless) rampage around the neighborhood.
One was convinced that the other had control of cosmic rays, and was bombarding him with them. Sadly, he was so out of touch with reality that even when he did have actual problems, nobody believed him.
These days, my father's showing many of the paranoias they had - mostly fueled by external sources, such as Trump's incoherent rantings and the utter bull from Infowars.
A note to anybody who takes exception to this: I don't care. I'm not interested in a political debate. I'm much more concerned about my father's ranting about gangsters ('banksters') behind the scenes orchestrating a move to a one world government, conspiracies to hide alien governmental contacts (including the recent bout of pneumonia that Buzz Aldrin contracted while visiting the aliens in Antarctica, the same ones he'd met when he landed on the Moon), the secret Muslim army that's building up in Australia to wrest control of the nation, and how someone showed on YouTube that he'd managed to build a perpetual motion machine that the evil "oil companies" had bought and were keeping secret so that they could deny free energy from the people of the planet. Also, global warming is a conspiracy by the evil socialist liberal neo-socialist left commie neo-commie elites who control the universities, the media, and weather forecasting groups and the only ones who can set us free from this conspiracy are the oil companies and Trump, who are the only good guys left.
Ditto. My brother uses some of our stories in his stand-up act sometimes:
Mom: “Unplug the phone! The government is listening to our conversations!”
Brother: “Mom... of course they’re listening, but I don’t care.”
When her eldest brother got his girlfriend pregnant, her mother learned from a vision that the girl was a witch, and had used mind control to force him into sex in an effort to infiltrate their christian stronghold. There were stories about how the youngest brother had once, foolishly, brought a piece of fantasy art (a picture of a dragon) home. And sure enough, in the middle of the night, the dragon came out of the picture and tried to slither into the boy's bed. His cries woke his parents, who investigated, and sure enough there was an evil aura coming from the picture. They burned it while praying, and then had a preacher come bless their house ASAP the next day. There were several other stories, equally silly but not as entertaining.
One difference is, it seems that Stan from this article worked mostly alone, but my girlfriend's family was part of a large church community who ate all this shit up and asked for seconds. When I visited their church, it seemed like everyone had their own stories to tell about personally witnessing supernatural assaults. The community all fed off of each other, and they got so excited at having a new person to share their stories with.
I guess that's why the DSM, when describing delusional disorder, specifies that "The belief is, at the least, unlikely, and out of keeping with the patient's social, cultural, and religious background." Don't want it to seem like they're starting a holy war.
The funny thing is, when I was telling my mother about the things I heard at my girlfriend's house, I literally described it as a "whole weird world".