The idea that we can avoid mind-controlling rays from government or outer space has a long history, discovers Jen Ogilvie
By Jen Ogilvie November 2006
In February 2005, a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) conducted rigorous scientific tests on the mind-ray blocking powers of the tinfoil hat. Using a sophisticated network analyser to measure the strength of the radio signal penetrating three different models of aluminium head gear – the Classical, the Fez and the Centurion – they found that, while the hats mostly had a modest attenuating effect, they in fact amplified signals on certain frequencies, namely 1.2 – 1.4 Ghz – the range allocated to the US government. This led to their conclusion, in a paper entitled “On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study” that “the curr ent helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC [Federal Communications Commission]”.
Obviously, this report could be a clever government double bluff, a new tactic to outwit those who’ve seen the truth of their dastardly mind-control programme. Even if not, it seems unlikely that the paranoid community are going to bin their hats on the say-so of a few satirical students from the hardly antiestablishment MIT. Frank Zappa used to tell of a guy he knew called “Crazy Jerry”, an electricity addict and speed freak (and housemate, incidentally, of “Wild Bill the Mannequin [censored]”): Crazy Jerry, one suspects, wouldn’t have taken kindly to a bunch of white-coated nerds telling him that the colander hat Zappa described wouldn’t protect him from mind-readers.
Online, many dispute the MIT’s findings. The author 1 of the World Peace Radio Blog http: //999prologic999.blog2blog. ni/ reports: “When I have been exposed to radiation, being in the radiation-free environment [wearing a tinfoil hat] stops the nasty frequency/ringing in the brain and stops the pulsating of my brain, the throbbing of the temples of my forehead”, and goes on to point out the obvious fl aw in the MIT experiment, namely that “the brains of the MIT researchers would be totally controlled via [the micro waves used by the military and police to monitor every person on the planet] if what is written on mind control forums is THE TRUTH”. 2 While this blogger’s persecutors are humans using voice pitchers to make themselves sound like aliens inside his head, other people are tormented by voices of extraterrestrial origin. Take Michael Menkin, for instance, of Stop Alien Abduction. His website,
www.stopabductions.com, has personal testimonies attesting to the efficacy of his 3M Velostat thought screen helmet; since January 2000, it seems, not one person has been abducted by aliens while wearing one of these helmets (unfortunately, aliens are cunning little buggers and on at least one occasion, noticing that an abductee had taken off her helmet, telepathically told her not to put it back on and while she was thus disabled stole it).
The tinfoil hat is not uncommon in psychiatric literature, generally appearing as a corollary of paranoid schizophrenia. The progression from James Tilly Matthews’s “influencing machine” causing “brainsayings” [FT170:40–42; 176:59] to mind-controlling electromagnetic rays is in many ways an obvious one: as scientific understanding advanced, the pernicious influences used to insert voices into the paranoiac’s head changed, from demons through the magnetic fluids of mesmerism to electro magnetic radiation. The tinfoil hat, then, is an updated amulet, a seemingly logical defence based on an imperfect understanding of electro magnetism and, more precisely, the Faraday cage. There is a revealing case study in American psychiatry researcher Ronald Siegel’s book Whispers: the Voices of Paranoia. 3 Lifelong Tesla fan Dr Edwin Tolman, an expert in electro magnetic radiation and director of a secret research unit for a Californian aero space company, became convinced that he was being followed by a satell ite that beamed images into his brain, and took to wearing tinfoil pants, covering his bed with copper screening, and placing jugs of copper and lead sulphite solution at the foot of his bed to deflect the ELF frequencies.
Tolman’s work in the field makes his a particularly interesting case. While his satell ite was the product of an imagination beginn ing to succumb to psychosis, much of the science behind his fears was reasonably sound. FT has reported previously on Dr Ross Adey’s use of electro magnetic forces to alter people’s emotional states, Dr Alan Frey’s investigation into “how voices can be beamed directly into an individual’s head”, Dr Michael Persinger’s work on the effects of EM fields on the human body, and research into electrical sensitivity and the “microwave harassment” of the “Wavies”. We have also speculated on the secret development of mind-influencing weapons [FT95:35–39, 113:34–39]. Putting a new twist on this research, last year Sony patented a technique for aiming ultrasonic pulses at precise areas of the brain to suggest smells, sounds and pictures. Obviously, although it is easy to see how a confused awareness of the above could feed the tinfoil hat phenomenon, that doesn’t mean wrapping yourself up in discarded sandwich wrappers is a good idea. While it could have a placebo effect in the case of schizophrenia (Tolman, for example, was fi ne when he believed he was in a cage that shielded all electro magnetic radiation; when told, falsely, that it had been lifted, the dwarfs attacked), if the American government chooses to use sophisticated EM weaponry to turn you from terrorist to flag-humping patriot it’ll take more than a few strips of BacoFoil to save you.
It doesn’t have to be just a hat, of course. There are many who, while not believing that pernicious forces are controlling their minds, exactly, are worried about the effects of electromagnetic radiation. Adam and Nicola Wright, scared by the mobile phone stations swamping their village – Essington in Staffordshire – replaced their wallpaper with tinfoil to protect themselves from what they fear are cancer-causing waves; the D’Souza family, in Sacramento, have lined the exterior of the house (and the inside of the house and the beds) with aluminium as a shield against a radio wave attack by their neighbours which was giving them everything from headaches to lupus. 4 Retailers are playing on such fears: Handy-Fashions, for instance, a Norwegian-based group, manufacture a “Mobile Cap” with ear flaps and a layer of woven silver to protect wearers from microwaves while using mobiles; New York company Less EMF sells a range of protective gear including mattresses which soak up stray ions, under garm ents to shield you from “power line and computer electric fields, and microwave, radar and TV radiation”, and a cap which can “provide your brain a quiet place without interference to your mental processes from RF radiation. [sic] ”
But it is the obvious ineffectiveness and absurdity of the tinfoil hat that has given it its symbolic value. Shorthand for “paranoid conspiracy theorist”, it is a common motif in Internet forums and blogs, has spawned spoof websites such as Zapato Productions Intradimensional (zapatopi.net) (and the spin-off book, Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie: Practical Mind Control Protection for Paranoids, Paladin Press, 2003), and has been sported by a range of pop culture characters, including a drugged-up Bart Simpson, a homeless woman in Friends, and a paranoid centaur in Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books. Paranoids might have a valid point to make about technological advances or Orwell ian approaches to crowd control, but their association with the ineffective and unstylish headgear gives them a serious image problem.
With thanks to Emperor and all who posted on this subject on the Fortean Times forum.
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/misc/437/tinfoil_helmets.html
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