Ethan Kross stood in the dark in his living room gripping a child’s baseball bat so hard his knuckles were white. He stared out of the window into a night where he feared a madman was preparing to attack him, his wife and his baby daughter.
Ethan is a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and this unusual episode of paranoia was triggered by a threatening letter he had received that day about his work. He and colleagues had just published a paper showing that the brain registered physical and emotional pain in similar ways.
It was not clear why the letter writer objected to their study, but the disturbing messages and drawings he sent alarmed Ethan and over the next couple of days the inner voice in the professor’s head became increasingly frenzied. “Should I call the alarm company? Should I get a gun? Should we move?” he asked himself. He sat at his computer and searched for bodyguards who specialised in protecting academics.
There was
