Podcast Episode 4: That Time I Befriended A Modern Day Shaman

Jen had the evidence. The footage. The eyewitness accounts. The background reports. The professional confirmation. She had done everything right — and still, the picture wasn't complete. The why kept slipping through her fingers.

This episode is about the conversation that changed the direction of everything. From a COVID-era speakeasy hidden behind an alley in Mid-City, to a support group phone call she never expected to be on, Jen follows the thread from what she knows to what she's finally ready to name. And somewhere between a casting notice taped to an art deco door and a term she had never heard before, someone she trusts completely sees exactly what she sees.

 Some people have a name for what you've been experiencing. This is the episode where Jen finds it.

Talk Nerdy To Me® - Episode 4 Transcript

You're Not Using Your Greatest Asset … what’s that? …. YOU!

Welcome to Talk Nerdy To Me. This is the unbelievably true life story of Jen Friel. And a warning to those listening, once you hear it, you may never experience your own life in the same way.

How often do you actually listen to your gut? The quiet, certain signal that lives somewhere deeper, the one that fires before logic has a chance to catch up, the one most of us have been trained to second-guess, explain away, or apologize for.

What if that instinct wasn't a flaw? What if it was the most sophisticated tool you had and you just didn't know it yet?

This is the episode where Jen stops defending what she knows and starts using it.

Armed with surveillance footage, three eyewitness accounts, background reports on individual suspects, and the professional opinion of a security expert confirming that, yes, I was being followed, I found myself somewhere between further than where I started and quietly contemplating the idea that it'll only cost $5,000 to take care of my problem.

Just kidding. I never seriously considered it. And I'm fairly certain that what wasn't included in that man-to-man conversation was the fine print. Because the terms and conditions almost certainly came with a burner flip phone that would in some way be tethered to my life indefinitely. You know the kind, the ones that you hear about in movies where you hold onto it because one day you might get a call.

Jen knew she needed to recalibrate. She knew what she was seeing and had the evidence in front of her, but none of it still made sense to her mentally. She couldn't process why it was happening, and yet the more pressing question had quietly shifted. It was no longer just what was going on around her, it was how she had been able to see it so clearly and so fast.

Once the police saw the footage, they stopped questioning her ability to read body language. But their only suggestion, once again, was to hire a private investigator. The background report on one of the suspects revealed a history of nefarious behavior, but it still didn't prove what she had been telling them.

She turned to someone she trusted the most, someone who helped her not only in dating, but continuously throughout the decade after. He was the modern-day shaman.

The Modern-Day Shaman

I met the modern-day shaman in September of 2011, September 24th to be exact, not long after I had gone out on over 103 dates in nine months. And to be clear, I never set out to do that. It was simply my reality.

Having a blog and checking in through location-based social media meant I could actually count them. I had organically gone out on over 98 dates in eight months before I realized it was becoming a thing. It got a lot of attention, and afterwards I would remind anyone who tried to replicate it that you can't plan to date that many people. The moment you do, it becomes inauthentic. My honesty is what made it work.

But either way, after 103 dates, 11 second dates, 6 guys I slept with and 4 that I genuinely wanted more from, all of whom were emotionally unavailable, I was confused about what to do next and very vocal about that frustration on my blog.

I then got a message from Reality Adjacent. And when a shaman reaches out to you offering help, you take it. He offered his services, and while I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, I was hankering for an adventure, so I took him up on it.

Later that week, Jen met him at his office in Mid-City inside an art deco building with a casting notice taped to the door. "Hollywood and Hammer auditions," it read. Unsure whether that meant Hammer as in the MC or the army kind, she laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of what she was already walking into.

Only in Los Angeles would there be a casting notice taped to my hopeful path to enlightenment.

She then walked up the stairs and found a door open with a massage table placed in the center of the room. Its proximity to the audition notice did not help her nerves. She was either about to be in a lot of trouble or she was about to meet a modern-day shaman. Clearly, it was the latter.

He did a quick consultation before beginning Reiki. Having never experienced it before, it was quite the trip. Energetically, I felt completely different, like I had just left the dentist after a solid round of laughing gas. To say he helped me would be an understatement.

I still to this day credit him for clearing me out, so to speak, so I could shortly thereafter meet my training wheels boyfriend, who then prepared me to meet my big bike boyfriend, who ultimately became my husband.

"You're Not Using Your Greatest Asset"

Jen then reached out to the modern-day shaman. She pressed that it was urgent and confidential. He suggested meeting up in his part of town, as he knew everyone. They grabbed drinks, and around the time their order landed on the table, she got straight to the point.

"I'm being stalked, and you're one of the smartest and sharpest people I know, both in the physical realm and energetically."

"Wait, who's stalking you?"

"It's stalking done by other people. They're these proxies that get sent out in this, like, dispatch style manner. There's actually one here now. Please, don't look right away, but when you have a moment, point at something in the direction behind me and see if you notice it, too."

Keep in mind, this was the summer of 2021, and COVID lockdowns were very much still a reality in all of Los Angeles. They had a rolling effect, tightening and loosening without much warning. This particular meetup fell in between stay-at-home orders, but even so, the handful of restaurants open in his area were mostly empty. Simply being this close to another person in this part of the city had become something of a rarity.

"Of course I notice that guy. You can tell something is off about him."

"I know, right? You must see the body language, too."

The shaman then went as close to inside as possible as he asked for to-go cups and closed out their tab.

"Don't say anything," he said to Jen. "Just follow me."

They walked down the block and around an alley to a back entrance to one of his friend's places. He signaled to the person working there that he needed to be let in, which they happily obliged, despite government orders saying otherwise. They were then escorted to a private speakeasy.

The shaman then asked Jen to turn off her phone and put it on the other side of the room. He pressed that this was a safe space.

"My friends are the owners, and no one is allowed back here because of COVID, so even if someone tries to get in, they'll be kicked out. What is going on? This is not okay. How long has this been going on for?"

"For over four years. I first noticed it in 2017."

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"I, I don't know. I thought it would stop, and then it didn't, and I'm just so confused, but now have this evidence and these reports and the surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts."

"There's a term for this type of stalking."

"You've heard of this before?"

"It's called gang stalking."

Gang Stalking

Jen then further explained to him the crews, hiring a private investigator, getting the surveillance footage, the eyewitness reports, and the confusion she felt in all of it, but also the pride in having the video that she could show him, and her speed at recognizing what was happening.

I barely finished my sentence before he stopped me.

"You're not using your greatest asset."

"What's that?"

"You. You need to go public with your story. Guarantee you, people will not only help, but tell you more than you already know. Use the fact that multiple people are involved to your benefit and not your detriment."

"I don't wanna sound insane. I know how all of this sounds, but the stalkers, they're like cartoons, the creepy villain kind. They seem like they're performing the role of a person rather than actually being one, going through the motions, hitting their marks, but completely devoid of any real intelligence or life form behind them."

"You're not insane, but also, when has that ever bothered you? You fearlessly live your life and have invited the internet to witness it for over a decade. You've built a very loyal following of people who have proved they will see you through anything. Use them. Also, not to state the obvious, and I know you're not at your startup anymore, but you do see the parallels between what you helped build and what you're experiencing, right?"

"Oh, I assure you, that is not lost on me. The CEO was just arrested in Thailand for attempted murder, extortion, and kidnapping. The investigator found this on his first night of his Google search."

"Wait, what?"

"I'll send you the links when I get home. He was also arrested for illegal assembly."

"Meaning his actions were coordinated with other people?"

"Exactly."

"It's definitely a coincidence. Whether or not it has any merit is TBD based on what the investigator finds."

"When will you find out?"

"I'm not sure. This whole hiring a private investigator is a new life experience for me. He did offer to take care of my problem for $5,000. Clearly, I'm not taking him up on it. But what is gang stalking exactly?"

Understanding Gang Stalking

The shaman explained that gang stalking is when someone believes they are being followed, monitored, or harassed, not by one person, but by a coordinated group. Multiple individuals take turns watching or intimidating a target so that no single person is ever obviously the stalker. Because the watchers keep rotating, the target often comes across as paranoid when they try to explain it.

Imagine noticing the same strangers showing up wherever you go: the coffee shop, the grocery store, the gym. No one person is there every time, but the pattern keeps repeating, and it starts to feel like too much to be coincidence.

"I don't have to imagine it. That's literally what I've been experiencing."

The term, though, is controversial. Mental health professionals note that the belief in gang stalking can sometimes be linked to certain psychological conditions where the brain detects patterns and threats that aren't there. But documented cases do exist involving law enforcement programs, corporate espionage, and organized crime where coordinated surveillance of a single individual actually occurred.

At one end, there are genuine cases of coordinated harassment or surveillance. At the other end, there are cases where the perception of being followed is a symptom of something happening internally rather than externally. The difficult part, and what makes it such a charged topic, is that those two ends of the spectrum can look almost identical from the outside.

"Wow. You put what I've been experiencing so succinctly. I feel so seen right now."

"And for the record, back in 2007 when I did 5150 myself, the doctor told me I wasn't, quote unquote, 'crazy,' just extremely intelligent and creative, which can lead to a brick wall if I'm not careful. Of course, he also wrongfully diagnosed me as being bipolar, so I'm not entirely sure how much weight to give to his professional opinion."

"The stalking, the patterns, I can relate to all of that, but I don't have enemies in law enforcement, government, or organized crime. Then again, after what the private investigator just found, I might. Who knows?"

"Read into it, but don't read into it. Don't let it overwhelm you, as your experience sounds very similar in nature, but different. It's still a form of psychological torture, though, so the fact that you've been able to connect the dots on all of this and make it this far speaks volumes. My gut on it is that you know the person."

"I have to. The only thing that makes sense is that it's unrequited love. It's funny that I went on that many dates, and while some definitely didn't end well, none of it escalated to something like this. The personality profile is very specific, which I can argue that that'll make it easier to figure out who's behind it."

"Exactly. Now you're thinking. Use your big brain and get to writing. If nothing else, you'll feel better getting all of this off your chest."

Going Public

I then gave the shaman the biggest hug before stepping out of our little safety bubble and back into my so-called reality. In the Uber on the way back, I immediately Googled gang stalking. And again, whilst the act itself is absolutely what I was experiencing, I still trusted my gut that this was someone I knew. At least now though, I had a direction, a label, a word.

So when I got home, I started calling support groups specifically for people experiencing gang stalking. After more than an hour on the phone with the first organizer, I was genuinely surprised by how much she trusted me. Technically, I could have been gathering information on her or the organization. "Don't start thinking like them," I reminded myself.

Jen began to question her own identity. Her life had never been more publicly documented, despite the fact that she had spent most of her career being the one doing the documenting. She decided to listen to the shaman's advice, as she had enough information to go public. As uncomfortable as it made her, grounding herself back into her own narrative felt like the most logical next step.

On July 19th, 2021, I published the surveillance footage video along with a post and screenshots of the officers I spoke to, their notes, screenshots of the headlines the investigator found, and as much information as I could legally disclose. I also sent out a mass email to my neighbors to give them a heads-up that this was happening in their home as well.

Minutes later, my phone blew up.

The Neighbors Respond

"Wait, what night was this? Mickey and I were cleaning outside of the garage, and a guy just approached us asking if we knew a lady named Jen. I think that was for you."

"After reading your email, I just remembered my boyfriend Walter mentioning to me someone asking about Jen and saying they were friends. I just remember because I didn't know anyone at that point and thought it was weird. This was a long time ago. I don't know if it's relevant, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I'll keep my eyes and ears open, and let me know if I can do anything for you to help you feel safer."

"Love you, Jen, and a tall sisterhood surrounds you. I'm glad you're honest with what's going on and all the emotions with it. That makes healthy humans. You're a wise woman. I'm always here."

I Have Their Faces

Jen then added those statements to the group of statements she had from other witnesses as she wrote out the second part of her post, and thanking those who had already reached out. She then got more emails and more comments, both publicly and privately. But as she was reviewing her blog posts for errors, she realized she had yet another card she could play.

And then it hit me. I have their faces. I have my own documentation.

Facial recognition technology, while still in its infancy in 2021, but it was still a thing. The cruise was pre-COVID, so masks weren't part of the equation, which worked in my favor. But even afterwards, they never wore them. In the surveillance footage, my husband and I wear masks 'cause we weren't taking any chances. The stalker wasn't.

They never wear them, which honestly is one of the stranger details in all of this. If I knew I was assisting in a crime, if I was being deliberately nefarious, the single easiest thing to do would be to wear a mask. And yet, there they are, clear as day.

What Comes Next

Just as the shaman had predicted, Jen continued connecting the dots, both in the world around her and within herself. She had long been concerned about the privacy implications of facial recognition technology, but a new thought was taking shape. Since these individuals were the ones doing the harassing, perhaps the legalities could work in her favor, for once.

In the next episode, Jen does what she has always done. She trusts her instincts and the technology she made her life's work. With the roles now reversed, she begins to see opportunity where she once saw only obstacles.

A human lie detector enters the picture and invites Jen into his military-grade training program. But just before she steps through that door, she discovers the truth beneath his own lies, and it turns out to be far darker than anything she was prepared to detect.

For the first time, Jen isn't the one being watched. She's the one who sees.