My sister and I were raised here in Fair Haven and have spent most of our 60+ years in this very house. This house is not under any known flight path. This house is approximately 20 miles from the Southern Vermont Regional Airport (SVRA) and 70 miles from the Burlington Air National Guard Base. Under no circumstances should we hear planes thundering over our roof nor feel the walls shake to such an extent framed photo collages have been known to fall to the floor. Pamela has a certain degree of aviation-based knowledge. I also have a certain degree of aviation-based knowledge. I understand flight paths, air corridors, the use of RNAV navigational systems, and so on.
We only need one person to believe us. We only need one person to accept that a campaign of harassment has been perpetuated against us by the likes of the FAA, the United States Air Force, the Vermont State Police, and a number of private citizens. How to convince you? Pamela says just look at the satellite photos. I admit I myself can’t quite interpret the satellite photos as well as Pamela, but Pamela says just look at the satellite photos taken of Fair Haven from 2009 to the present. You’ll see the irregular flight patterns of these crafts, the exceedingly low altitudes at which they fly. This is unacceptable. This is un-American.
In early 2009 when I first called SVRA to ask if air traffic control could please keep pilots from practicing stall maneuvers over our house, I was told no such maneuvers were being conducted in the area. I was told no such maneuvers had ever been conducted in the area. Further noise complaints were dismissed outright by Mr. Barry G. Gillis himself, FAA-certified Traffic Management Coordinator. I was told to stop calling altogether, all aircraft flying in and out of the airport complied with FAA noise-mitigation standards, he was not above alerting the authorities should my complaints continue, etc.
The very next day a single-engine prop plane was seen just above our house engaged in a series of figure-eights. Pamela was the first to spot it. I spotted it also. I was able to discern the identification number on its fuselage, search the FAA database, identify it as being registered to Mr. Alan Kowalski of Killington, a man who remains unknown to us outside the cockpit of his Cirrus SR20. Why he might have affiliated himself with this campaign of harassment I cannot say, though I record the ID here–N345BS–should any of the guilty parties ever be held accountable. I included this information in the email sent to SVRA as well. I tried to refrain from using the phone–heeding Pamela’s warnings of possible wiretapping–though after many weeks without reply what choice did I have but to call Mr. Barry G. Gillis once more? Mr. Barry G. Gillis told me emails of the sort I sent aren’t read by ATC employees, all emails are routed directly to an external computer file anyway, no record of my email even existed, I was the one engaged in a campaign of harassment, and so on. No one sane and sober does this to anyone for any reason.
Let me be clear: We are the victims. Pamela and I are the victims here. The number of figure-eights, inverted spins, snap rolls, dives, climbs, and ear-splitting flybys of our house only increased. I contacted the Vermont State Police (VSP.) After many hours Lt. Richard Binning of the Shaftsbury Barracks was finally dispatched. For once the skies over our home were free of any malicious aircraft. Lt. Richard Binning refused to take our report and furthermore instructed us never to call VSP again. This is America? No excuses.
The very next evening a twin-engine helicopter appeared, though I might’ve had difficulty distinguishing its gray hull from the darkening sky if it weren’t for the concentrated whipping of its four-bladed rotor. Pamela had already gone to bed–exhausted by our trip to the UVM Dialysis Center earlier that day–but was soon awoken and came out to the living room where I stood at the sliding glass doors. Pamela suffers from late-stage kidney disease. Pamela also suffers from fibromyalgia, though said nothing of the muscle spasms or neck pain I knew was likely afflicting her at that moment. No, she simply studied the helicopter. An MH-60G Pave Hawk she soon determined. A part of the Air National Guard’s fleet, though its services were often lent to the VSP for search and rescue missions, counter-narcotics operations, and now apparently aerial harassment. It remained hovering over our house for so long we eventually became accustomed to its whippings and it was a while before either of us had noticed its departure.
The next night I awoke in a terror so severe I found myself instinctively scrambling out of bed to the floor in an attempt to search for safety. What sounded like the very splitting of the heavens above could be heard. The walls shook like never before. Photo collages were already strewn about, glass shattered, frames snapped. I considered whether the apocalypse had arrived. Have you ever considered the apocalypse?
Once I finally got my wits about me, I found Pamela at the glass doors, a grim look on her face, back stooped by pain and a sort of resignation also. It seemed, somehow, she’d expected this. An F-16 Falcon had passed over our house she explained; a jet designated to the 158th Fighter Wing of the Burlington Air National Guard Base. Not only is it downright bizarre for a jet of this sort to fly so low over a residential area so far from its station, but it’s also illegal. Pamela says just look at the satellite photos. Look at the satellite photos. Illegal is illegal.
Hardly a day has passed in the ensuing years where a craft of one sort or another hasn’t circumnavigated our house in a display of aeronautical cruelty and / or subjugation. We are denied any attempt at peace during daytime, deliberately prevented from sleep at night. Any and all efforts to even briefly escape are sabotaged. Mr. Alan Kowalski’s SR20 often trails us on our drive along Route 4 to the UVM Dialysis Center and will still be there, many hours later, flitting over the building in an increasingly sinister series of figure-eights. Our trip in 2013 to the Rare Gem & Mineral Show in Bennington was overseen by a UH-72 Lakota, hovering above Memorial Park for the majority of our visit. The canvas of the vendors’ tents flapped incessantly in the turbulence of the copter’s blades. At one point an entire awning was made to collapse, metal poles folding in upon themselves, display case driven to the ground, pamphlets sucked forth from amid the wreckage to go fluttering skyward, etc. When Aunt Debbie passed in 2017 an F-22 Raptor shot out of the sky above Evergreen Cemetery. Its sharp, silvery body looked as if it’d been forged at that very instant, the screech of its velocity essentially like that of some newly-birthed demon.
Earlier this year the use of drones began. Pamela spotted the first one buzzing past the sliding glass doors, an unmanned device approximately five feet in width with four propellers and a three-axis stabilized camera attached to its chassis. We’re now being recorded 24/7 Pamela says. Pamela says the footage is likely being routed directly to the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade along with our phone records, the content of emails, our internet search history, and so on. If I close the curtains, I can still detect the hum of propellers outside. Often, I’ll hear the sound of black metallic bodies clinking against windows. When I take out the recycling it’s not uncommon for one of these things to come buzzing at me like some oversized alien insect set on demonstrating that we no longer belong in this world. We’ve been buzzed during the short walks Dr. Jacobson instructed Pamela to take in order to maintain healthy blood circulation. We’ve been buzzed out on the deck. We’ve been buzzed in the jacuzzi purchased specifically for hydrotherapeutic purposes. Yes, we’ve been buzzed in the jacuzzi.
I’ve tried contacting Daniel Elwell, acting Administrator of the FAA. He has yet to reply. Colonel David A. Smith, commander of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing? No reply. Lt. General L. Scott Rice, director of the Air National Guard’s entire federal reserve? No reply. Governor Phil Scott? Attorney General T.J. Donovan? Secretary of State Jim Condos? Not a single one of these men has even bothered to acknowledge my complaints much less respond to them. I must emphasize again that these men are men. They are almost without exception all men.
Pamela isn’t much surprised by this fact. Neither is she surprised by the many internet forums and blog posts I’ve come across reporting on harassment like that perpetuated against us. A group of eight elderly women in Mission Viejo, California–The Green Grannies–have publicly condemned the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing stationed at Camp Pendleton for spraying toxins over their houses on a near-daily basis. A woman claiming much the same thing in Florida was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor following a sudden onset of inexplicable seizures. Days later a neighbor of hers jumped to her death from the roof of a five-story condo.
Yes, all the victims have been woman. No, it doesn’t much surprise Pamela. It doesn’t much surprise me either. Why should it? More and more women are coming forward every day with increasingly dreadful accounts of exploitation at the hands of politicians, Hollywood executives, musicians, online game developers, etc. What’s happening to us really isn’t so different. Powerful, inscrutable men are attempting to oppress us, control us, hold sway over us from above. The details are not as salacious as recent accounts of sexual misconduct–one reason I assume my letters to the newspaper have yet to be published–but a campaign of harassment is a campaign of harassment nonetheless. All we need is for one person to look at the satellite photos. All we need is for one person to believe us.
Please say Vermont Teens Against Bullying won’t fail us as so many others have done. Please say Vermont Teens Against Bullying will stand up for us and for what’s right and for what’s just. I understand my request falls outside the purview of your commitment to ensure kindness and inclusion in local schools, but I must underscore once more that it’s illegal to spy on, stalk or harass anyone anywhere. These men have made it very clear that they are more than willing to act above the law. In fact, they have been granted permission to do so. These men understand advanced psychological torture tactics. These men understand a sustained and immoral campaign of harassment is necessary to destroy lives they have decided for one reason or another must not be allowed to continue.
Neither myself nor Pamela have been permitted a full night’s sleep in nearly a decade. My sister is driven to nausea from sheer stress and exhaustion nearly every day. I often also am nauseous. As for the fibromyalgia, Pamela’s condition has worsened to the point where her cognitive abilities have become impaired and her feet are numb almost all the time. Her kidneys aren’t doing much better and just last week a malignant tumor was discovered by Dr. Jacobson in Pamela’s thyroid. I suspect I might also have a tumorous thyroid.
Do you or anyone else at Vermont Teens Against Bullying doubt that this is all related to our aerial abuse? Some may try to convince you hell is beneath the earth. I can tell you it is in fact just overhead. People commit suicide every day from harassment far less egregious than that perpetuated against us. Lately, Pamela has been speaking of wanting to die. I want to die also. Thank you.
Stephen Langlois is the recipient of a NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship from The Center for Fiction as well as a writing residency from the Blue Mountain Center. Their work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Joyland, Lit Hub, Hobart, Maudlin House, Monkeybicycle, Entropy, 3AM Magazine, Barrelhouse, and Split Lip Magazine, among others.
Photo courtesy Stocksnap
