Hi all,

I have heard from several of my PP's that they are getting strange mail.People asking them to do strange stuff..(i like to remain innocent on these things lol!, so i don't ask for details).
Also they can receive threatening mail and hate mail.I find that pretty sad that people feel the need to do that, OR to send strange mail to people who are having a hard enough time anyway.
All i can imagine is how I would feel if i got a letter and was really excited only to discover it was someone weird asking for intimate or personal letters etc in return. Just wondered if it is a regular occurance?
Thanks for reading,
S x

It happens from time to time, I assume. Probably it depends on the crime they committed and if the medias made it big.
It seems there are a lot of very strange people in this world, and I'm not only speaking about prison groupies. I agree with you, it is sad that people feel the need to do something like this. I guess they try to make themselves bigger by treatening others this way. But to me it only shows a very low ceiling.

__________________

Have confidence in other people, because this is a sign of a good heart which is the greatest gift of all. And at some point this gift will be a great support for someone.

I think i would prefer those kinds of letters, meaning strange but honest and upfront requests to ones where they simply feed you FALSE information and lead you to believe they are someone they are not; just playing mind games, which does happen to many inside the walls from all i know. Or have females writing you declaring their love and in reality have several guys they write selling the EXACT same spiel for various reasons. Often we think or are lead to believe we are the only one's getting scammed or strange mail as you say, when in reality it is BOTH sides of the fence sadly.

__________________
The last of all freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.
G. W. Allport.

Inmates do from time to time receive mail that asks for unusual things. Many receive mail designed to torture their minds as well. Like mail that contains reminders of the crimes that they have committed. Is this cruel to do ? I suppose it depends on your own point of view. I will agree that it could be rather depressing to receive mail, thinking that it contains something good only to find something threatening or just downright hateful inside. For everyone that gets one of those, there is one or more persons getting some form of satisfaction from it at the same time.

Thank you everyone for your views.Smiley..is that a common occurance as well? People writing declaring love and stuff to several different people???
I am probably a bit naive; sorry about that. I do write to several men and women, but i am purely a friend/sister to them. I would never promise anything i cannot back up or do not mean 100%. I don't see what anyone would gain from playing games , mind games or making promises...I am really sorry that it happens.

Yes it happens Sam from what i have been told and understand, more times than some would like to admit, mostly due to the embarrassment of being what they perceive as scammed/conned. That is why some will not even attempt to put ads up, while others happily take the chance, but then it also happens every where, even here on the forum. You may think you know a person a little after sharing thoughts for many months, even years, but really they misrepresent who they are, be them male or female. People in my opinion really do not gain anything if at all in the long run. The one's who misrepresent themselves, have you liking them for who they are not any way, when maybe if they had enough faith in who they are you would come to find you like them no matter their sex, where or if they work, what car they drive if any, how fat they are or how dark their skin is etc.

You see some prisoners, male and female putting pictures up that do not belong to them, one of my friends was really honest and said he had even thought about it himself for a few minutes, not necessarily to deceive but just because he believed no one would want to write to him based on his looks in the first instance. He was going to put his best friends pic up knowing how he....in my words..... "always pulls the girls in." But decided against it. Some are just insecure, others start out with BS and then find it too hard to fess up not really meaning to take things so far, but one lie becomes another to cover the first and it is a vicious cycle.

I know one friend told me he told the guys inside i was his "girlfriend" because he said they could not understand a simple friendship like ours and we have people we know in common as well, but personally i think he was the one that liked the idea. We talked about that a while.......

There are girls/women that get involved with several men, they feed on the attention and letters. Sometimes the men find out through the prison "grape vine" or when they also receive letters meant for another, just like some outside the walls have. Just because they live in prison it does not protect or isolate them from what many have experienced out here, people misleading you, playing games and misrepresenting who they truly are for self gain, be it emotional, financial etc .

__________________
The last of all freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.
G. W. Allport.

Thank you for filling me in. I can understand your friend liking people to think he has a g/f writing him, he probably felt better about his status for saying that ?
I couldn't be doing with the game playing.I had a guy i wrote to and i just knew straight away he wasn't sincere, so i told him i wished him well, but could no longer correspond. he was fine about it..i didn't say why.
I get so much from just being friends with the people on this forum and the people i write to ...i really feel it is a shame that some people have to play mind and emotional games.Like you said , start with a lie and it gets worse....in most cases you will be liked for just being you ; well i have found that anyway .
Thanks again Smiley, you really helped me understand things a bit better x