Jennifer Wilbanks Disappearance

Copyright 2003 -  Revision July 25, 2003

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In the aftermath, two years later, there are video interviews available on NBC.

This page is due a rewrite and simplification. It began as an account of the event following news reports.

I held up the edit while attempting to get an interview with Mason or Wilbanks.

With all the Psycho-Babble in news reports not one reporter mentioned the probable cause of this episode, Dissociative Fugue. Why is it important?

Disappearances like this are still happening. There is an ongoing problem of missing college students. Brian Shaffer and Maura Murray are examples. Occasionally a student returns with psychiatric symptoms like Ahmad Arain, UCLA.

The current belief about the cause of Dissociative Fugue is that stress above the victim's ability to cope is the cause. Running away from self is the usual explanation. Wilbanks is alive and able to tell us what she did in the weeks just before the episode. If she did have exposure to the phenomenon and conflict of physiology the national exposure will eventually bring this problem into public scrutiny.

Any person like Wilbanks, capable of graduating a nursing course, is not lightly given to running away from things like marriage. At 0326 hours Saturday MSNBC was reporting she had been found, released by her abductors.  By 1200 hours Saturday the story had changed.

Information that she did not take a change of clothes and did not eat reinforce the belief that this was Dissociative Fugue.

Family spokespersons are citing "issues" she has. That may mean she has vague psychiatric symptoms. The phrase "running away from self," indicates she has seen a therapist. That is the current belief among professionals for the cause of these events.

MSNBC is reporting she has entered a treatment program. (Noon Tuesday, May 10, 05)

Tonight, Wednesday May 11 Atlanta TV stations are releasing a transcript of her statements to police in New Mexico. While she had a vivid account of sexual assault the small details didn't add up.

That's called confabulation.

It's common in cases of dissociation and mental events.

She now says she saw someone matching the description of the abductors and followed them.

Today Jennifer Wilbanks accepted a plea and agreed  to pay damages.

The only way to determine what did happen is to examine her workplace and behaviors at work. Then examine the design and location of any computer workstation in the home.

June 21 ... Tonight's interview  of the couple did not add much. The fact that she took only $140.00 and no change of clothes just repeats the early information. Again this demonstrates less than competent thinking. As a plan to run away it just doesn't make sense.

She did reveal thoughts of suicide though. If you have read this site you are aware that I think this same phenomenon is causing sudden unexplained suicides of college students.   (College Suicides)

What causes these events?

The conflict of human physiology that causes this  problem was discovered in the 1950/60's when it caused dissociative mental breaks in Knowledge workers. They were using the first, newly designed, close-spaced office workstations.

The most likely cause of Jennifer's incident is accidental exposure to the conflict of physiology at work or from her computer workstations at home.

If you have ever been startled or caught something out of the corner of your eye, that is the brain system that causes this problem.

What the engineers and psychologists learned back in the 1960's  is that while we can all ignore  Peripheral Vision Reflexes we can't "stop seeing" the movement that triggers them.

That's the conflict of our physiology.

A small slice of your vision field operates as Subliminal Sight to detect that movement.

When you ignore the reflex to be able to continue concentrating, the subliminal detection system prevents you being aware your brain is still detecting the movement and attempting to force a reflex.

Psychology text and lectures say that a conflict arises in the mind and then builds to a mental break.

Office furniture companies now use Systems Furniture, Cubicles to prevent this happening.

   Small businesses, such as doctor's offices, do not provide Cubicle Level Protection. The Modern Cubicle page on this site is about that story.

In addition computer users can accidentally install a home computer in a place with repeating detectable movement to cause the same design problem.

Laptops are a potential problem since you can use them in inappropriate places.

This often happens to college students. Missing Students page is devoted to some of those cases.

  Mary Shotwell Little arranged for help to disappear. She staged an abduction-murder scene including blood in her abandoned car. In that same time period the Atlanta Police Department had trouble with this phenomenon and switched to Cubicles. They never connected their problem with the Little disappearance case until I talked with the cold case officer.

Ron Tammen walked away from Miami of Ohio in 1953. This is an important case because of all the information available. Other students had disappeared, recovered and returned. The psychology department called it a "Case of Amnesia."

Mark Barton believed he was having a mental breakdown, Atlanta Day Trader Shooting, 1999.

As strange as this will sound to you the phenomenon is also the source of Alien Abduction cases.  Barney Hill was a postal worker and could not have had Cubicle Level Protection in 1961. The Post Office still does not provide it today.

Around the world are mysterious, exotic, psychiatric episodes called Culture Bound Syndromes. Some of those can easily be explained by this phenomenon, Windigo Psychosis, Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome, Latah, Going Postal, Anorexia.

See additional examples below.

______________________________________

Is Jennifer Wilbanks another Dissociative Fugue victim???

This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

Text of Jennifer's statement. TEXT, your 'back' key will return you here.

(1)

What is needed to investigate this possibility?

A sketch of where she worked in the doctors office. In particular did she read or write files while standing in a hallway where other staff and patients could walk by while she worked?

Two sketches of any computer she used heavily in the last few weeks. (At home or work)

The first sketch should show the computer as you walk up to it. The location of anything that had a blinking light must be included. Was there a second computer nearby that had a screensaver? Draw the desk or table from the front then sketch all elements of the computer. If the CPU was on top of the desk show the position of any blinking lights. Estimate the distance between the vertical centerline of the monitor and that blinking light. Include any other blinking lights with the same estimation of position.

The second sketch should show a overhead view of the room with doors and traffic patterns beside the computer. (It should look like a blueprint of a house plan.) If that sketch is of the business office at a workplace it should show any printers or copiers in the room. An estimate of how many people used those while she sat at the computer would be helpful. You should include anything everyone in the office uses or shares so that there is constant traffic to it.

This problem involves subliminal detection of threat movement in far peripheral vision. The area behind a worker is a safe zone. Areas to either side just past ninety degrees right and left are the areas of subliminal sight and high risk.. Because you turn your head slightly as you read and write text,  the area will cover slightly more than one-hundred-eighty degrees from side to side.

In cubicles computers that are used constantly are located in a corner. The user's  back is always to the entrance of the cubicle. The Modern Cubicle

Why is this case important?

One of the local Atlanta schools systems is negotiating a purchase laptop computers for all students. A laptop can be used in inappropriate locations where there is repeating detectable movement. This would provide additional exposure to the problem explained on this site.

This phenomenon causes mental events around the world. Culture Bound Syndromes  Whether or not someone accidentally creates the situation to cause this mental break is strictly random chance. If they do create it they will have psychiatric symptoms.  School shooters in prison exhibit serious psychiatric symptoms that argue they had a mental event to cause the mass shooting. Red Lake Shooting

This is too important not to investigate.

The beginning story, as it developed.

Jennifer is  being reported as a medical assistant who went for a normal jog in a downtown area of Duluth Georgia and just did not return.

The first thought is that someone abducted her. But the area where she ran would ague against that. There are no risk factors for family disputes or someone who had a grudge against her.

Police learned there had been previous failed weddings and halted searches early.

A brief story on local news and repeated overnight on cable news stories is that hair has been found about a mile from where she would have been running. I now appears she cut her own hair to attempt a disguise.

There are other cases like this that appear from time to time in the news. In those cases too Police are at a loss to explain the disappearance.

Other incidents where this has happened.

About two years ago a bridegroom went to his car from a wedding practice. He disappeared and was found wandering around an abandoned motel a few days later. He was scratched and cut indicating he had been wandering in the woods. He had no memory of who he was. He had been a musician and DJ but according to a news reporter had "lost the meaning of music." The couple married and he began relearning to read and write. Weeks later he reported every thing flooded back as he stepped from the shower. (North Carolina was possibly the location for this story.)

In August of last year Ahmad Arain, a full scholarship student at UCLA got on a bus and started to a counseling meeting at UCLA. He never got there. Investigations later determined he got off the bus in Watts. Security camera pictures from the bus showed him standing with "flat aspect" facial expression. Six weeks later he recovered enough to remember his email address and sent a message home. A family in Mexico found him wandering and took him in.

Aubrey Seiler, University of Wisconsin student, was reported abducted. She was discovered hiding in a campsite in a near by park. She believed she could not leave the campsite but had been observed shopping for things she used there. Eventually she was evaluated for psychiatric problems. It was reported that she had a laptop computer and roommate.

This MSNBC article is still online.    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4630360/

A motel owner in the Midwest suddenly disappeared and his damaged van was found in the airport parking lot. Efforts to find him failed. But weeks later he began to have memories he could not explain. He went to a minister at the homeless shelter where he then lived. They found his picture on the Internet and  located his family. Although he now knows who he is, at the last reporting he still lived in the homeless shelter.

Maura Murray, a nursing student at Univ Mass Amherst, had a mental event in front of witnesses, wrecked two cars in two days, disabling the second one. She walked away from that second accident and has not been seen since. Extensive ground searches both while snow would have revealed tracks leaving the road and helicopter searches after snow melt did not find any evidence of her. Searchers walked the roads with no results. This story and links are on the Missing Students page.

Ron Tammen disappeared from Miami of Ohio in 1953. This story is linked from the Mysterious Disappearance page and Missing Students page. He had a normal day including playing string base at a dance, drove back to his dorm room, began studying psychology, swapped sheets for his bed at 8pm, and by 10 pm was gone. Later it was discovered he had appeared at a house to ask directions to a nonexistent bus stop. He was in a confused state and did not know his name. Wearing only a light blanket jacket he was not dressed for the cold that night. There was snow on the ground. He has been missing fifty-one years. The story is posted by the Library at Miami of Ohio.

Mary Shotwell Little disappeared from Lenox Square Atlanta in 1965. Recent reporting from the Atlanta Journal Constitution revealed that two women who used the same  desk in a bank office had disappeared, not one. Both began to do and say strange things before each disappeared two years apart. Dianne Shields was found murdered, stuffed in the trunk of her car. Little has been missing for about forty-four years. If she too is still alive she would be sixty-five.

When I spoke with the cold case officer about the Little case  he remembered the Atlanta Police Department had problems with this conflict of physiology and had to switch to cubicles. You can see the old style office design any night on repeats of LAW and ORDER, NYPD BLUE, or BARNEY MILLER. Look at the desk arrangements in the detectives set on those shows. The desks are open, unprotected, and when there is traffic beside them a concentrating worker at the desk is exposed to stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision. Modern Cubicle

Is Jennifer Wilbanks another Victim of Dissociative Fugue??

It is not possible to absolutely determine that given the limited information available. Even with that information the phenomenon explored on this site cannot be proved. It can only be eliminated.

An examination of her job duties for the last few weeks might reveal that she had exposure to Stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

Two computers were removed from the home but there would have been no investigation of the workstation where those computers were used.

Were there blinking lights on the CPU cases?

Were the CPU cases on top of the desk or correctly placed under it?

Was there a traffic aisle beside the computer?

Did anything near the computer move or blink?

Was a laptop used?

What to look for.

There must be something that blinks or moves within a few feet of the person as they use a computer in unprotected workspace or work at a desk in unprotected workspace  to engage this conflict of physiology. As the person tries to concentrate they must ignore the repeating movement to maintain concentration. We all  do this automatically.

Computer use is a common feature of these disappearances but the problem was discovered in the 1960's long before computers existed.

Movement such as  the room mate walking  by can also supply this stimulation.

Other things can be as simple as shadows of ceiling fan blades, oscillating fans/heaters, reflections of light from moving objects.

On the Everquest Connection page it was a large fish just feet away from Tommy Stein as he played Everquest in his room.

When all possibility of family or acquaintance involvement has been eliminated a search of shelters, and morgues across the country should be instigated.

Joseph Morse disappeared from Georgia Tech the morning of May 6, 2000. Four years later it was discovered he died in Miami Florida the next day. He had been photographed removing money from an ATM in Lenox Square the morning he disappeared.

Dissociative Fugue happens around the world. In other countries it is called "Running."

October 10,2006

News reports say that Jennifer has sued her former boyfriend for $500,000 alleging he sold their story and invested that income in a house.

This page was thrown together in about thirty minutes by altering the Peripheral Vision page. That text is below.

What is Peripheral Vision ?

There are many definitions for peripheral vision in psychology. Non-Macular vision, non-foveal vision, and ambient vision are all peripheral vision.

The area of peripheral vision discussed on this site is just past the periphery of conscious vision on either side of the head. You may consider this as a thin cone wrapping around the normal cone of conscious vision.

This area of vision operates subliminally. No one is aware of the subliminal operation until movement is detected and a peripheral vision reflex happens.

You may be familiar with the phrase, 'catching something out of the corner of your eye.' When that happens you have experienced a peripheral vision reflex. Both the human vision startle reflex as well as weaker reflexes are derived through peripheral vision. Only vement is detected so stationary objects in this area of peripheral vision are invisible.

Peripheral Vision is monocular, each eye sees a different field rather than the overlapping fields of conscious sight.

The speed of approach for moving objects must be determined by increasing size or by the speed at which the image crosses the retina.

Proximity is also determined by increasing size and by the amount of space, number of rods, covered by the moving image. This monocular system to evaluate movement can make mistakes of perception so that peripheral vision reflexes are created when the situation would not warrant it.

An area of the retina made up of mostly rods supplies the signal to the brain, therefore, Peripheral Vision is black and white vision. 

There are experiments now on-line, which demonstrate some color vision in peripheral vision but they made no reference to Subliminal Peripheral Vision. In earlier searches I found experiments done by college students  which demonstrated that there was a high error rate when colored cards were slipped into peripheral vision from behind. (If there sites are still up I will cite the URL.)

 Although sound is sensory adaptable, vision is not. Micro movements of the eye constantly refresh sensor cells on rods and cones. This prevents chemical depletion of sensor cells.

 Although you can ignore objects or movement in your vision field you cannot stop seeing them This is because it is possible to  attach different levels of attention or 'notice' to objects in your vision field. 

Humans can 'habituate to extinction notice taken of moving objects in peripheral vision.' This means you can see something in peripheral vision and not have it recorded by your conscious mind. Weak peripheral vision reflexes can be overridden. Habituation causes the stimulus to fade from attention.

Conscious sight has depth perception and persistence of vision. Peripheral vision does not, except for the ‘apparent size' illusion  and/or the rate of movement the illusion may create. The flicker fusion rate is the point at which flicker is no longer detectable. This varies from person to person. These two Wikipedia articles discuss this. They are incomplete and have no citation references.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold

This has implications for early computer games that were played using a Television as the viewing monitor. The scan rate for Television is determined by the sixty cycle power line frequency. Alternating  frame lines are scanned  every sixtieth of a second. A full frame is drawn every thirtieth of a second. This interlacing smoothes the "page flipping" effect. I still do not have a definitive article on this but I believe it means that flicker from a TV can be detected in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

If two persons play these TV monitor games, dual controller,  the "off player" can be exposed to stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision if they turn their head while not controlling play. As the head is turned back toward the TV the flicker appears to approach from behind providing stimulus to create a Peripheral Vision Reflex.  The psychology involved is explained on the Everquest Connection page.

There is some information that the preteen suicide rate began to rise about the time of the introduction of the cartridge computer games, Atari, Commodore, Sega, and others. 

There is no long term memory normally associated with peripheral vision. There are news releases of experiments posted on the Internet which indirectly reveal this.

Peripheral vision reflexes are created at a level in the brain below thought, reason, and consciousness. For this reason when you choose to ignore movement that is distracting to you and that is positioned in your Subliminal Peripheral Vision you lose track of it.

Conflict of Physiology

The conflict of our physiology explored  on this site is that although you can ignore  peripheral vision reflexes, you cannot stop seeing the movement that causes them. You cannot tell your brain to stop subliminally detecting that movement and attempting to force  the reflex.

Peripheral Vision Reflexes

Peripheral vision reflexes are an evolutionarily developed, retained, warning system. For early man or pre-humans to survive they needed a system to warn  them of predators approaching from behind. To function it must work all the time no matter what  you are doing. If you had the ability to turn the brain system off at will, it could not warn you in critical situations.

The act of concentrating on something at arm's length, in your hand for instance, causes physiological changes in the eye.

When you focus on a close object your eye accommodates by changing the shape of the lens.  This shape-change expands the area covered by Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

Plitz's reflex, or Attention Reflex, changes the size of  your pupil. This floods the retina with ambient light desensitizing the rods so that only a large movement close by will trigger a reflex.

Links

Nightwalking

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material.    http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

 University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center --  Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

Kimball's Biology Pages 

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

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