True crime has a hidden ecosystem of ghosts.
They aren’t victims, they aren’t killers, they’re not even genuine witnesses. They are proximity seekers—people who look at someone else’s worst nightmare, walk into the frame decades later, and rewrite the script to put themselves in the line of fire.
They are well-known by many other names to crime writers and investigators: trauma hijackers, vicarious victims, or memory colonizers. Or just liars.
The reason this behavior is so incredibly common in true-crime cases comes down to a fundamental quirk of human psychology: the human brain craves significance, and a high-profile tragedy provides an instant, low-effort shortcut to achieving it. For a person struggling with an underdeveloped identity, a major crime offers a powerful social currency. When a tragedy becomes a kind of historical monument, these misguided souls want their names carved into the base of it.
They colonize the “Almost Zone.” This is the ultimate psychological safe haven for a liar. They rarely claim to be the primary victim or the killer because those roles demand strict forensic evidence—wounds, DNA, a police alibi. Instead, they claim a near-miss. “I was supposed to go on that errand with them.” “I lived right next door.” “I left that alleyway just five minutes before the shots rang out.”
It is a brilliant, pathologically lazy calculation. A near-miss requires zero physical proof, yet it reaps 100% of the unearned social capital. It allows a person to trade their mundane invisibility for immediate historical significance.
Faking proximity doesn’t merely gain social clout; it is highly profitable. Individuals who claim a connection to a high-profile case can quickly pivot their sudden viral attention into media appearances, podcast interviews, or TikTok Creator Fund payouts. In modern true crime, being a “near-victim” or a “friend of the family” can be successfully leveraged into a lucrative digital brand, turning a psychological defense mechanism into a viable business model.
As a crime writer and a journalist, I have spent a career sifting through lies to find the truth. It is a grueling, sacred task to document the worst moments of human history with accuracy and respect. Yet, the most offensive lies I encounter do not come from the perpetrators trying to avoid responsibility, but from spectators desperately trying to crawl into the picture.
Lately, they are everywhere. They are the voices filling my inbox regarding unrelated cases, and they are the voices printed in recent newspapers, claiming a piece of tragedies they never experienced. In the 20 years since my classic true-crime The Darkest Night was published, no fewer than 10 women have identified themselves as the “best friend” of the two young female victims, even though their names never came up in my investigation. More swear they were supposed to be with the victims that fateful night (although it was an ordinary school night).
Examples of this fibbery abound.
Tania Head claimed she was on the 78th floor of the South Tower during the 9/11 attacks, crawled through smoke, was saved by the famous “man in the red bandana,” and lost her fiancé in the North Tower. She embedded herself into the community so deeply that she became the president of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network. She led official tours of Ground Zero for politicians like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Then in 2007, the New York Times uncovered that she was not even in the United States on 9/11. She was actually in Barcelona, Spain. Her entire identity, her fiancé, and her trauma were completely fabricated to gain proximity to the tragedy.
After the tragic 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Jaddon “Jay” Abdel-Baki gained millions of views on TikTok and YouTube by filming emotional videos detailing his experience as a “survivor” who was nearly killed. Real Parkland survivors didn’t know who he was. He had never attended the school. He was a digital trauma hijacker who used crowdsourced details to build a fake narrative for algorithm-driven internet clout.
The phenomenon of women claiming to have escaped Ted Bundy is so widely recognized in true-crime circles that it has its own dedicated literature. True-crime icon Ann Rule famously noted that throughout her career, she was approached by hundreds of women claiming to have narrowly escaped Bundy. In reality, Bundy had only a tiny handful of confirmed, legally verified survivors.
To put it plainly, this behavior angers me.
This is not a victimless crime, and that is why it is so deeply offensive. When proximity seekers force their way into the public spotlight, they don’t just lie; they erase. They crowd out the agonizing reality of families left behind. They distort the historical record, turning a profound human tragedy into a cheap stage for their own vanity.
As a journalist, I find it an affront to the very concept of objective reality. As an author, it offends my sense of justice. When a horrific crime shatters a community, it creates an intense, sudden explosion of human connection. Grieving communities unite, strangers weep together, and deep, protective love is mobilized. To a certain kind of hollow, fragile observer, that outpouring of raw emotion is an irresistible oasis. They look at the profound community empathy reserved for survivors and they want it, but they lack the psychological currency to earn it through a well-lived life. So, they steal it.
Today, this behavioral issue is reaching an epidemic scale. The internet and true-crime communities have democratized The Lie. In the old days, a proximity seeker had to look a local detective or a grieving mother in the eye, risking immediate exposure by witnesses who knew the real story. Now, the digital landscape provides camouflage. Online spaces crowdsource the details, inadvertently writing the scripts for these frauds. Algorithms actively reward first-person trauma, creating a lucrative dopamine loop of clicks, sympathy, and clout.
When I see a stranger in the press rewriting a tragedy I know intimately, I am reminded of the heavy burden of the nonfiction writer. Our job is to defend the boundaries of memory against those who wish to treat someone else’s worst nightmare as a tourist destination. History belongs to the lost and to those who genuinely carried the scars.
It does not belong to the lying ghosts who merely wish they’d bled.
Cover photo by Noe Fornells; inset photo by David Valentine