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Queen Victoria’s Chimney Stalker and Other Creepy Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2019 33 min

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex - Buckingham Palace — Queen Victoria's most famous stalker was a begrimed urchin. Iluminasi

33. The Stasi Drove People Insane

Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? You just can’t figure out why you are so scatterbrained, nothing seems to be where you remember placing it, and just about everything seems to go wrong and off-kilter. Nothing major, but just a steady and persistent accumulation of minor mishaps and frustrations, that drive you to the edge of snapping?

What if it was not just some random bad luck, but somebody – a powerful somebody with far reach – deliberately messing with you, to try and drive you insane? No, we are not talking about something out of The Twilight Zone, but a tactic used by East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, in a bid to not only mess around with dissidents and subversives but to drive them insane.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.