Shadow People: What do they do?

a reply to: Guyfriday

Back when my kids lived with me, they would mention seeing a dark shadow near or in their room (Only at night). Apparently, this wasn't an everyday occurrence. Never the less, it happened often enough for it to be dismissed as imagination or pareidolia.

Out of all of them, my daughter experienced the most significant incidents. Many times, she would wake and see a dark translucent human silhouette, peeking-in from the hallway and through the open door. Other times, it would be standing in the middle of the doorway seemingly looking at her but never stepping in.

My son's experience was different. The shadow he saw was! Inside his room. However, unlike my daughter, he was never able to view it directly. It was always a rushing blur whenever he glanced in its direction.

From what I recall, they described the incidents as frightening, yet they never felt as if they were in imminent danger.

Eventually the occurrences seemed to subside. That is, until it happened to me.

I woke up in the early hours of the morning around 2-3am. As my eyes sluggishly adjusted into focus, the image of the bedroom ceiling slowly started to appear. Most of the room was still in darkness with only a faint glow emanating from behind the curtains. I recall thinking "darn it’s still early".

Seconds later, I began to feel uneasy. I turned to look at the curtains and a rush of panic immediately overtook me. Standing right next to my bed, was this tall dark shadow. It had no defining features other than its outline. It looked wide as if wearing a trench coat and as ridiculous as this may sound, it looked as if it was wearing a wide hat.

Much more ridiculous was my instinct reaction. I threw a punch at it! Of course, I hit nothing and it instantly disappeared. Once my heart settled down, I calmly spent the next 15 min thinking, “Did I just imagine this?”

To be honest, I still have a hard time believing what I think I saw. Everything happened so quickly. Could I have imagined that? It’s very possible. After all, I had just awaken from sleep.

Several years have passed since that incident. One day while my daughter came to visit, I asked if she had any recollection of the figure she had seen during her teenage years. She nodded yes. I proceeded to describe what I saw. The expression on her face told me everything. Never the less, she exclaimed “Oh my god dad… All this time I thought I was imagining this thing, and now you have just described it exactly as I remember!”

a reply to: Beowolfs


Thank you for sharing this amount of information, and data on your experience (as well as your family's)


Your punch at it while hitting nothing, reminds me of looking at "Vantablack". While seeing this on YouTube is one thing, when I had the chance to see it in person I was blown away, and a little reminiscent about a Shadow Event I had. While looking at Vantablack you can't see anything other than the outlines of an object, but if you look at an untreated part of the same object, you get to see tons of detail. I almost wonder if these Shadow People can cloak themselves in a Vantablack type of masking. In a dark room or area, the lack of features would make determining distance very hard (especially if a person was awoken by it) I have further research to do about if this type of camouflage could be preformed by an animal (my example is usually the cuttlefish or Indonesian Mimic Octopus) theoretically of course.

Ok so a little update. Not so much as a data update, but rather a couple that had asked me to investigate a Shadow person event finally said that I can go public about the event.

Date of event: 16 Jun 2012
Location of Event: Seattle Science Center, Seattle WA.


During the Egyptian history exhibit a Shadow Person was reported in the gold room by a married couple from Marysville WA. This event was witnessed by a few other people. Only one other person at the event was able to be contacted for a description of what they had seen. A member of the Set-up team had made a statement that they also spotted a Shadowy figure during the setup of the event. This eye witness didn't witness the event in the gold exhibit room, so I will not include this testimony for this event.

The claim of the couple that did the reporting on this Shadow Person event stated that the shadowy figure seemed to be standing guard over some of the exhibited pieces. This claim was repeated by the other eye witness to this event.

Added notes:
None of the people interviewed about this event claimed any feelings of malice or anger. Both the couple that did the reporting and the other contacted eye witness both stated that the Shadow Person in question seemed to be standing guard but would fade out when looked at directly.

The member of the exhibit set up team had stated that there was a shadowy figure that would be reported as, "being seen out of the corner of your eye, but when looked at directly would simple vanish." This set up team member also added that the shadowy figure would stand out of the way but would seem to be keeping an eye on the people handling the pieces of the exhibit.

After seeing the pictures included, and interviewing the other eye witnesses, I will have to conclude that this event has enough merit to place this event as a possible Shadow Person event.


Pictures:
This picture was taken first, but a second picture was taken in an attempt to get a better image.

In this second picture a picture of the Shadow Person can be seen in the lower left hand corner.


In conclusion, I'm hoping to post more of these reports as I'm allowed to. The biggest block that I run into about openly talking about these cases is how fearful the people that have had the events are about them. Not fearful as in the events were fearful, but rather in how they fear others will judge them for having these experiences. While I have left out any indicator as to who the people are that were interviewed for the report, it is still very hard to get people to come forward about these events.

I guess a better question here should be;

"Should I update this thread when I'm able to bring forward evidence, or should I just start a new thread for each occasion and let this thread die out?"

a reply to: Guyfriday

I'll let this ride out a little longer, but it looks like
when I get permission to release a report of Shadow People, I'll just create a new thread about it, and just link back to this one. Either that or just leave off any picture evidence that may accompany the report since as my wife would say, "those shadow guy's are really creepy".

a reply to: Guyfriday

After many years of not researching, not having encounters of, shadows, I'm slowly re-reading and catching up with this thread. I was going through old files and found a document of my experiences with shadow people from 2013, and there was a link to this thread. I intended on posting those experiences here, but did not, for whatever reason.

For now, I want to relay an observation about my experiences, the last of which was about 8 or more years ago:
there seems to be a distinction, at least for me, between experiences of shadow people in dreams, during sleep paralysis, and while being awake. Sleep paralysis and dream experiences have been most frightening, but conscious experiences have always been benign, the shadows are just watching/doing their own thing. I never thought about this distinction before.

I wonder if the dream and sleep paralysis experiences might just be imagination? Having said that, I can think of two instances where I have woken and seen them for a second before they faded, maybe hallucination? If they can directly influence dreams, I would have to say the ones I've dealt with are far from friendly.


I do hope that this thread bump might encourage you to post more reports and findings/'facts' about this phenomenon.

a reply to: Jimjolnir

That was my findings on this. Dreams and semi-dreams (ie Lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis events) of shadow people are more psychological fears that a person might have about a real situation in their lives that they either know and don't wan to address, or are issues that they might understand but refuse to address.

Shadow People on the other hand seem to have a variety of interactions with people, and the personalities of the Shadow People are are varied as regular people.

What makes this finding of mine controversial is that I don't think anything "Demonic" about the Shadow People phenomena. Many people just assign that term to things they don't understand or take the time to understand.

As to posting more about my reports I have accumulated over the past few decades, well when I can get permission to I will create new threads about those, and just up-date this thread with a link to those.

Since we all have to do a wacky reset, I'm not really bumping this thread per-say. Rather I'm bringing it to everyone's attention since during this time of the year (not Halloween, but agricultural harvesting time) the Shadow People become easier to see by most people.

If you're going to see a Shadow person walking along a road or in a yard, it's between now and the first weeks of December.

originally posted by: Guyfriday
a reply to: Guyfriday

I'll let this ride out a little longer, but it looks like
when I get permission to release a report of Shadow People, I'll just create a new thread about it, and just link back to this one. Either that or just leave off any picture evidence that may accompany the report since as my wife would say, "those shadow guy's are really creepy".

I am now following your threads about shadow people because I just found out a family member is suffering from the same visitations.

Will your report have an index so we can pinpoint specific encounters or experiences?

a reply to: quintessentone2

the reports I'm talking about are like incident reports. In my area of the country a lot of Shadow People (or Shadow Society) sightings happen during this time of the year, but also in the early part of spring as well. People will sometimes tell me about the sightings, or happenings, and I'll go do an interview to see if I can learn more.

Weirdly over the decades I have treated these as more an anthropology study than as paranormal research. If you have any questions about my thoughts on a particular sighting or incident, let me know and I'll see if I have other files or reports on similar events. While each case in unique, there have always been similar details between them.

If I can get a family or persons to ok going public about their incident, then I can post about what I have in my files about the case, like the Egyptian shadow person above.