The irresistible urge to put pen to paper has spawned some of the greatest literary giants of the nineteenth and twentieth century, including Edgar Allan Poe, a master of the Gothic macabre who had a penchant for cryptography, along with Fyodor Dostoevsky, a prolific novelist and keeper of diaries, who was often plagued by epileptic seizures and impending doom and depression, occasionally manifesting itself as periodic outbursts of rage.
Both these novelists, as well as Stephen King, Lewis Carroll, Isaac Asimov, poet Sylvia Plath, along with post impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh all have one thing in common, hypergraphia- the compulsion to express themselves through writing. This affliction can have underlying causes such as temporal lobe brain injury, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, dementia and epilepsy, routinely affecting the subject's normal pattern of behavior.
In one form, this results in the subject authoring text that means everything to the writer, but very little to the observer, as has been found in many of the letters and cards mailed by the Zodiac Killer over a five year period, between 1969 and 1974.
Mirrored writing can also result from brain injury, a trait not uncommon to certain forms of dyslexia. Communication can also be expressed as rebus, where pictures or images are substituted as a representation for words, seen in some of the works of Lewis Carroll.
Bi-polar disorder is significantly more prevalent in writers than non-writers, whose compunction to put pen to paper can be increased during manic periods of the illness, and this can often manifest itself as illegible nonsense to the routine observer.
Donald Lee Bujok, promulgated as a prime suspect for the Zodiac murders by Kevin Robert Brooks, suffered from bi-polar disorder. This will be discussed in his upcoming book 'Zodiac The Montana Connection'. Donald Lee Bujok contributed many articles to the Billings Gazette over several years, and if indeed he was the killer in the Bay Area, the Zodiac letters, cards and ciphers would have been further testimony to his insatiable desire for literary expressionism. To view a 15 minute video detailing the formative years of Donald Lee Bujok and more, visit here,
Lawrence Kane received a frontal lobe brain injury, sustained in an automobile accident in 1962. A comprehensive analysis of this subject, along with a detailed description of his medical condition can be better explained by Alex Lewis, at his website
http://welshchappie.wordpress.com.
Richard Gaikowski, thrust into the spotlight by Tom Voigt of zodiackiller.com, also suffered from a mental illness and was treated at the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. It was during this period that all Zodiac communication ceased for approximately three years.
There is, as far as one can ascertain, no evidence to support that any of the high profile suspects in the Zodiac case have ever been afflicted with hypergraphia, even in its milder form. However, the Zodiac Killer's literary contribution to newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, coupled with his perceived manic ramblings and the paraphrasing of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado in the 'Little List' letter mailed on July 26th 1970, may have just been the tip of one giant dripping pen, that we regret he ever had to write.
Both these novelists, as well as Stephen King, Lewis Carroll, Isaac Asimov, poet Sylvia Plath, along with post impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh all have one thing in common, hypergraphia- the compulsion to express themselves through writing. This affliction can have underlying causes such as temporal lobe brain injury, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, dementia and epilepsy, routinely affecting the subject's normal pattern of behavior.
In one form, this results in the subject authoring text that means everything to the writer, but very little to the observer, as has been found in many of the letters and cards mailed by the Zodiac Killer over a five year period, between 1969 and 1974.
Mirrored writing can also result from brain injury, a trait not uncommon to certain forms of dyslexia. Communication can also be expressed as rebus, where pictures or images are substituted as a representation for words, seen in some of the works of Lewis Carroll.
Bi-polar disorder is significantly more prevalent in writers than non-writers, whose compunction to put pen to paper can be increased during manic periods of the illness, and this can often manifest itself as illegible nonsense to the routine observer.
Donald Lee Bujok, promulgated as a prime suspect for the Zodiac murders by Kevin Robert Brooks, suffered from bi-polar disorder. This will be discussed in his upcoming book 'Zodiac The Montana Connection'. Donald Lee Bujok contributed many articles to the Billings Gazette over several years, and if indeed he was the killer in the Bay Area, the Zodiac letters, cards and ciphers would have been further testimony to his insatiable desire for literary expressionism. To view a 15 minute video detailing the formative years of Donald Lee Bujok and more, visit here,
Lawrence Kane received a frontal lobe brain injury, sustained in an automobile accident in 1962. A comprehensive analysis of this subject, along with a detailed description of his medical condition can be better explained by Alex Lewis, at his website
http://welshchappie.wordpress.com.
Richard Gaikowski, thrust into the spotlight by Tom Voigt of zodiackiller.com, also suffered from a mental illness and was treated at the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. It was during this period that all Zodiac communication ceased for approximately three years.
There is, as far as one can ascertain, no evidence to support that any of the high profile suspects in the Zodiac case have ever been afflicted with hypergraphia, even in its milder form. However, the Zodiac Killer's literary contribution to newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, coupled with his perceived manic ramblings and the paraphrasing of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado in the 'Little List' letter mailed on July 26th 1970, may have just been the tip of one giant dripping pen, that we regret he ever had to write.
