Are They Watching… or Is It in Your Head? Inside Cases of Clients Who Hear & See Things

Some clients are convinced they’re being watched. Others say they hear voices, see people outside their home, or believe someone is inside their devices.

In this episode of The Hidden Threads Podcast, Macky and Jus talk about one of the most difficult types of cases investigators face—when a client believes something is happening, but the evidence doesn’t line up.

This isn’t about making fun of anyone. It’s about the reality of the job.

We break down how investigators approach these situations, how to separate real threats from misinterpretation, and what tools are actually used to check for surveillance, hacking, or intrusion. We also discuss the limits of what can be proven, how to communicate with clients who are convinced something is wrong, and how to stay ethical when the facts don’t support the belief.

These cases test patience, professionalism, and judgment more than anything else in investigative work.

If you’ve ever wondered how investigators handle claims that don’t match the evidence—or where the line is between possibility and proof—this episode pulls back the curtain.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Relaxed. Hey Juice, are you relaxed? No, I'm never relaxed. Really? No. You're always on it. I'm leaning back in my chair. That's why we were talking about it. I see that. You're looking cool. Looking cool. Yeah. Got my new shirt on. My gray shirt. My snap. So you like that juice? Yeah. That's a wrangler. That's cute.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

It's a wrangler. You should you should have your bells and beads on there. What is that? Your dual cool. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I thought you were talking about like pace count beads.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

No, we don't we ain't putting them on.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

I try to look at it as least military as possible.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I don't wear combat boots and not me. I try and still look like I'm in the military also. I don't have on, you know.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I blouse my boots and Kyo Haji shirts and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

So I people have no clue I was in the military. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Now we've got some we talked about this a little bit, but you got it finished, right? Did you get all the stumps ground down at your house?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

How much was that? It was like uh a thousand bucks. How many stumps we talking?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

There was like 27, 29 stumps.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

He's supposed to be coming here. We got two big ones, and then we got some small ones on to get done.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah. The guy that came in. Can we plug somebody on here?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, whatever you want to do, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah. Michael's Tree Service, man. Ding. Dude, let me tell you, that guy came in and slayed 27 trees in four hours. Now, what was the name of it? Michael's Tree Service. Ding. Yeah. So he needs to and hauled everything off. Yeah. In four hours, man. His day, those guys came in, they slayed those trees like they were nothing.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Right. How many people do he have?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

There's maybe six six people. Okay. They came in. But they hammered it, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So the back of your house now you can see out through there to the other woods, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Just yeah, just about. You know where the fence line was, all those pines and stuff that surrounded it. They got rid of all that.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

So you got a lot more sun back there, though. Oh yeah. I'm thinking about putting a garden back there. Put a pool in. Putting a pool in. Think about putting a garden in back there.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Some tomatoes, corn.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Well, that's one of the gardens. I gotta go pick up fruit trees and a bunch of other stuff to put in there now that I got the fence moved over and all that.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

But yeah, it that guy, Michael's Tree Service. Ding. Phenomenal guy. Phenomenal crew.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Right. All right. So Michael's Tree Service. Ding. They did good. All right. I can't remember the guy we used here. There's a different creep. He did good too, though. You know, we had some real close to the house, and I was like, how are they going to get those down without crashing the house? And they tie them up with cranes and junk. You know what I mean? Yeah. Bucket trucks and all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, I'm not doing that job because I'll drop the, you know, like a California redwood on your house.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

I'd be buying a house so I have to pay for a house I can't live in. Yeah. But all right. So today we're getting into speaking of redwoods falling into houses. Uh-oh. Getting into paranoia versus reality.

unknown 2:47

Doo doo doo doo.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

And what we're get talking about is we get some clients that they think that they're being followed by drones.

unknown 2:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Police spies are out to get them. There's some psychosis there. And sometimes, you know, a lot of times, I'd say about 50% of it's true that somebody has stolen their identity, right? You ever seen that before?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah. Yeah. There's there's a few that we've run into, like money's missing.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

They've some things. Now, sometimes I've found that they are actually criminals and they are being followed. Right. By the popo. There's drug dealers typically.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

And their own dope and it makes them paranoid. Yeah. That makes them act weird.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

They they have a lot of psychosis with that dope.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Drug-induced psychosis, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

If it's good stuff, it's going to induce something.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

No, it's not really good. I mean, it's acetone and you know, household lie and I mean if it's mixed good, it's going to give you some psychosis, right? Oh, it's going to give you something.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

But yeah, we've seen it and we've had people say, I've got electrodes implanted in my body. Yeah. Not one. I've had multiple people say that. Yeah. And I try to tell them it's going to be very invasive when they do that. You're going to know when somebody injects something in your body.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Now they've watched some of these shows like Hunger Games where they do a little shot, like a in their arm.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah, like they're putting a GPS tracker on you, like they do canines.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Right. Yeah, the canines feel that. Oh, yeah, they do. And they have to get a stitch. Yeah. Lion's got one. My boy. They put a little stitch in there, you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, because it's invasive. It's not. They're not going through muscle, but they have to make a hole. Yeah. And it bleeds and gets infected. It's not surreptitious.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Oh no. It doesn't just poof, it just soaks into your skin.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

And I've asked them before. I'm like, are you a former Russian spy, former Chinese spy, where they'd want to be tracking you? I'm like, no. I said, Do you have government secrets that you're hiding? And no. They just want to get us. Yeah, okay. Some Q Non stuff or whatever. Yeah. Whatever you call that. You ever met people in the streets like that that said that kind of stuff to you?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yeah, it well, yeah. I mean, it's weird. We had one right here in town, not far from here, that she had called several times when I was policing, and the last time she had called was because neighborhood kids who were really spies trying to get her out of the neighborhood so they could take her house over and have their spy shop there. They took a bird and put a piece of yarn around its neck and hung it in a tree as a sign for her to leave.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Okay. Was the bird there?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, there was a bird there. It picked up a piece of yarn to I assume. Build his nest. Yeah. And he got tangled up in it in the trees and he died. It it suffocated. It couldn't go anywhere. It was wrapped up. But yeah, birds die. Yeah. This this she was adamant that they were trying to push her out of her home so they could buy it, so they can put their little gang network hub base right there.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Right. Now we've had them before where they said drones are following me. I say, can you hear, can you hear them? Because they're loud if they're low enough to be video. No. That's impossible. They're silent drones. Especially helicopter style. They're loud as I'll get out. Yeah. They say, Well, it's a predator drone. I'm like, okay. Show me. And they show you a star in the sky.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

No. It's a little cray. It's cray cray. It is. They need some help. And I mean, I'm not making fun of them, but they need some help. Now, I've found where people, family members, have taken advantage of these people and taken their money. Yep. And that's sad. Use their identity and open up accounts, forged stuff to take over property. I've seen that before on a person that was having psychosis. Instead of helping them get them to the doctor, they took advantage and took money and property and assets. They get mad at me because I don't say yes, you have Chinese spies under your home because there's not. But they want it, they don't, they're not good. It's not good enough that they were taken advantage of and had their identity stolen. They want their stuff to be validated.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah, exactly. They want that validation.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Now back to the lady with the bird. Did they ever take their house? The gang?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

No, they never took the house. And although I did request crime scene to come out from Huntsville and process the scene for the bird.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Oh, because you know what's her name over there.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So yeah, that that was denied.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Quit being mean juice. Yeah, well. Well, I know who the crime scene people are, so yeah. Anyway. But yeah, the there is typically the psychosis, there probably typically is a crime against them. Stolen identity, forgery, you name it.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah, and it's usually a family member doing it.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Take it advantage, which is really sad. It's Jimmy, you know, cousin Jimmy, brother. I've seen brothers and do it to sisters.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Just to get some money. I've seen husband do it to wives, and vice versa, to get some money or move money around so they can't see it. All that stuff. And it's it's shameful that they don't help their wife, brother, sister out. Hey, let's go to the doctor and get this looked into.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

No. Because, well, I got a sister like that. She'd rather cut my head off than anything to get as much from me as she could. You're so rich, Juice. Yeah, my vast empire. Well, you can you can afford to get trees cut. Well, well, there's that. You know. It's not cheap. I didn't work for it. It's not cheap.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, yeah. You had to show up every day to get that money, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when you're policing, and even you probably saw it more in the jail. Did you ever see you saw some drug-induced psychosis as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, but there's also there's there's a few I remember, I'm not gonna say their names, right here in Jackson County when they come in, nicest people in the world when they're on their medicine, but when they come off their medicine, they have issues. Right. And they're mean, they say things, and you can't take a personal, but they're not themselves. But you can see if you look at their eyes, you know they're they're not, they're there, but it's not them. And it's sad because you call family members and stuff and try and help them reach out because you know they need that help.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Try to get a medical history, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

And the the family members are like, I don't want to have nothing to do with them. I don't want to have nothing to do with them. Right. Okay, well, you he's this is a medical problem here. We need to we're trying to get them help.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Now, do they get psychotic meds in jail if it's been prescribed? Yeah, if they're prescribed, yeah. Okay. They need their lithium, their whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Yeah, if they if they have a legit prescription, they're gonna get it. Now, if you show up with, you know, you remember show Welcome Back Carter. Yeah. Okay, so if you show up with Epstein's mother's note that says give Juan, you know, methamphetamine every day, twice a day, come on. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Methamphetamine.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah, you're you're not gonna give them the meth. But if if it's something that's prescribed, it's if it's illegal med, if it's a legal medication that's prescribed by a doctor, they're gonna get it.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Right. Now we've had one, it may still be going on a little bit, but they think that there's a they were on a cruise ship, they think somebody took a video of them naked in their room and it's being published online.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

It's possible.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

I was like, we've done all the things. We put the client's face through Google Lens, through PIMEs, then you name the software, all the things, and it doesn't come up with anything. All right, because it uses the AI with the facial structure and all that.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Facial recognition.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah. And I'm like, there's nothing out there. You know, we've gone through all the nasty websites and everything, looking, you know, seeing if we see it, and there's nothing there. And they're like, Well, you're lying. Okay. You're part, they tell me I'm part of the scam now.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Oh, you're Illuminati.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

I'm like, Whoa, yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

That's because you're not validating her claim.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Right. I can't validate, I just report what's out there, man.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, you can't make it up. It's either there or it's not.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

And the contract's real clear. It says we do not re we only report what's there. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

It's a very thorough contract.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah, we cannot, we can't, we don't, we're not here to validate. No, there's no guarantee.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

It's a report of nothing but facts.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

And you would think, hey, we've used all these forensic tools, professional forensic tools. There's nothing out there with your face on it. You'd be happy, but they're like, nope, missed out there. I know it is. Yeah. I'm like, okay. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

I'm sorry we didn't find it.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah. Anything else on this, Juice? We're getting ready to get off of here.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

No, no, not really.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

You going to bed?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

No. I got stuff to do with the house.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

You can go watch Chuck Norris stuff?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah. Uncle Chuck. Oh, Chucky. Can't believe he left this world.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Right. All right. All right, we're out of here, Juice. We'll talk to you next door round. How about that?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

We'll say bye, you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Bye, Juice.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Bye, Mackie.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Bye.