The Lurking Shadow People

Jack the Ripper's night by bolandrotor via http://www.flickr.com/photos/bolandrotor/2194170567/

“This scares me and I don’t know what it is. I have been seeing them since I was a little girl. Always outta the corner of my eye a tall black shadow. I always feel like something or someone is by me. Last night I went down to my bedroom. There it was. Standing next to my dresser. I ran upstairs crying to my mom. She went down and looked saying it was only ’cause I was overtired. But I KNOW what I saw. It was so scary. I don’t know what it is. I need all the help I can get!” – Jessica’s cry for help, 10, January 2010.

Tales of walking Shadows come from across the world. Some of these Shadow People wander through the periphery of our lives; others stay for years. People can rarely make out features of these darker-than-night, human shaped entities other than an occasional set of blazing red eyes. Shadow People often appear dressed as a Medieval monk, wearing a fedora, or bald and sexless. These entities may simply trek through our bedroom at night never to be seen again, while others may lurk in doorways, just watching, day after day. Still others attack with energy-draining fear.

What are they?

I’ve studied the Shadow People phenomena for the past decade, and have come to the conclusion the term “Shadow People” is a catchall for entities that exhibit certain characteristics – but their origins can be wildly different. Through research and personal experience, I’ve categorized these creatures by behavior.

Benign Shadows: Shadow People that seem to travel briefly through a person’s life. I saw these entities as a child. They appeared to walk with purpose through my room, never acknowledging me, and never straying from their path. I never felt an unholy fear, just the fear of watching a dark human-shaped trespasser walk past my bed.

Negative Shadows: Although these Shadow People tend to simply lurk, they are associated with a feeling of unnatural terror.

Red-Eyed Shadows: These entities are always negative, but stare at experiencers with blazing red eyes. Victims often say they feel this creature feed from their fear.

Hooded Shadows: Dressed as an ancient monk, people who encounter these Shadow People feel a deep rage bubbling behind the black cowl.

The Hat Man: This entity is the most curious. Dressed in a fedora, and sometimes appearing to wear an old-time business suit, the Hat Man appears to people in cultures across the planet.

Shadow People may be demonic entities, ghosts, inter-dimensional travelers, or other denizens of the dark realm we call the Unknown. Regardless of their label, Shadow People could very well be more than just one type of being. Brad Steiger, author of “Shadow World,” has studied the paranormal for more than 50 years and agrees – there are many possible explanations for Shadow People. “I would say that experiencers are seeing all of the above and giving them/it the name of Shadow People.”

Whatever these entities are, they’re shocking to those who see them.

A gray sheet of clouds stretched across the sky as 12-year-old Doug ran to the corner store. “It was overcast but not raining, and in the middle of the afternoon,” Doug said. The day was shadowless, and decades later he still doesn’t know what he saw on his way home from the store, arms laden with food. At first, he thought it was a friend. “As I approached the corner to turn onto my street, I saw something black sticking beyond the bushes in the front of my house,” Doug said. “I yelled, ‘Andre,’ and started running toward my driveway where the bushes are.”

The dark figure wasn’t his friend Andre. A black, man-shaped Shadow grew from behind the bushes in this quiet afternoon and began running toward Doug’s house. “After a few steps I saw the Shadow running down my driveway toward the back yard,” he said. “I ran up the driveway to the gate that leads to my back yard. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Doug stood at the gate as the black Shadow in the shape of a man ran across his yard and disappeared through a fence. “I was shocked,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. This thing; what could it be? Why was it black when most stereotypical stories said that ghosts were white? Could this be demonic? Could it be like me, just a person?”

What did Doug see? A ghost? A demon? A dimensional traveler? Or was it all in his mind?

Science

“I’ve been visited by what I presume to be the same Shadow three times in my life, and the memories have haunted me ever since. When I was six, I saw it at my dad’s new house, towering over my bed. I couldn’t move, and I don’t remember what happened next. All I remember is trying to scream, but there was this horrible weight on my chest.” – Luke Purdy

Most of the Shadow People encounters I’ve collected over the years are readily explainable. The experiencer wakes to find a black, human figure standing in the doorway of their bedroom, or leaning over their bed, just watching. A tightness grips their chest like the weight of a person is upon them. They can’t breathe. Suddenly the choking eases, and the Shadow being is gone. This type of encounter is common, and psychology has a name for it – sleep paralysis.

April Haberyan, a psychology professor at Northwest Missouri State University, said most Shadow People encounters are probably the product of dreams. When people sleep and enter the REM phase, “it’s very common for them to see things,” Haberyan said. The fear, the paralysis, and the entities are normal. “There are hormones in REM sleep that paralyze the major muscle groups and it’s called paradoxical sleep,” she said. “(Although) this happens during REM, these people don’t stay asleep and the hormones are still in their bodies. It can last up to eight minutes and they feel pressure on their chest and can see people.” When the experiencer becomes fully awake, the Shadow Person encounter is over – all that’s left is the fear.

Other Shadow People encounters – as well as those of ghosts/UFOs/Bigfoot for that matter – can be attributed to the same trick of light and shadow that allows us to see faces in clouds and carpets. These sightings can also be from electrical stimulation to certain parts of the brain, or drugs. Chemist Rick Toomey said anything that throws off the chemical balance of the brain causes all sorts of problems. “All sensation is in the nervous system and it’s all chemistry,” he said. “If every neurotransmitter is chemistry, you can wreak havoc with that.”

However, many encounter Shadow People in full consciousness and full daylight, removing the logical, scientific answers, and leaving something terrible.

The Religious World

“My best friend, when he was a boy he was laying on his bed with the lights on. A shadowy figure emerged from his closet and moved towards his bedside. The Shadow being reached out a finger and touched my buddy’s leg. He screamed and the figure vanished, and his folks were there in moments. My friend’s father noticed that the closet door was open, and his parents knew he NEVER slept without it closed. The black spot on his leg remained visible for several years, but the Shadow being never returned. To this day my friend has no idea what happened, but he does know one thing – it was real.” – Paul Sycros

Although most reported Shadow People encounters involve an entity simply appearing and disappearing, many aren’t that innocent. Negative Shadows, Red-Eyed Shadows, and Hooded Shadows, all bring a feeling of horror when they step into someone’s life. These creatures are known by different names, demons, jinn, dark shadows, sgili, but their nature is the same.

Bishop James Long, pastor of St. Christopher Old Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, has studied demonology for years and knows Shadow People well – to him they are something evil. “Shadow People must be taken seriously and they can be quite dangerous,” he said. “When a human spirit tries to manifest itself, its form is black, or otherwise known as Shadow. It is energy trying to manifest itself so that it can appear to have the physical characteristics it had when living on earth.” These entities can move, communicate, and attack, drawing energy from their human victim. “Certainly Shadows that attack are demonic in nature and should be avoided at all times,” Long said. “I would strongly encourage anyone who witnesses a dark Shadow to be careful.”

Cody Lilly’s family has encountered this type of Shadow for years, a black, human-shaped figure, featureless except for a wide-brimmed hat. “We called him the Cowboy because he kind of looked like the Marlboro man,” Lilly said. The Cowboy stepped into Lilly’s life his sophomore year of high school in Clarinda, Iowa, and visited almost nightly for two years, pacing about his room, waiting for something. The entity, with fiery red eyes, never spoke, and never approached him, but Lilly knew why it was there – it hungered. “It was feeding,” Lilly said, convinced the Cowboy was absorbing energy from his terror. “The first time I saw it I was completely incapacitated by how scared I was of it.”

Lilly soon went to college thirty miles south and the visits stopped until after graduation in 2011 when he moved to Nebraska. “My girlfriend that is now my fiancée is in Kansas City and I’m in Omaha. I was crashing with friends here,” he said. “My car started acting up, I’m in the process of looking for a job, finding an apartment, buying an engagement ring. I had a lot of stuff on my plate, which might have brought on what happened.” What happened was the Cowboy. “I’m sitting in my car on the phone with my mom. I don’t know much about cars, but my mom does.”

As Lilly described the car’s behavior to his mother, he noticed a movement in the corner of his right eye. Lilly turned toward the passenger side window and saw it – the Shadow Man that once tormented him in the night. The Cowboy. “It was full on. A Shadow Person in an old fedora,” Lilly said. “It was standing there. It leaned over like it’s bending to look at me.”

As Lilly stared in horror at this red-eyed Shadow Man in full daylight, the Cowboy reached out it’s arm and knocked on the car window. “It knocked two times,” Lilly said. “After it knocked it dissolved in my vision. It just showed up, knocked on my window and was gone.” Lilly wonders if the Cowboy wanted to let him know it was still around. “It’s been quite some time that I saw him,” he said. “I’m just kind of thinking he just showed up. I was feeling stressed out and I think he showed up just to feed on that.”

In Islam, the supernatural Jinn can be a companion, or a dark, Shadowy predator. “Jinns are invisible entities believed in by most all Muslims and Middle Eastern folklore,” said religion expert, Dashti Namaste. “Jinns get in and out of human spheres regularly, and it is believed that any human is able to make contact with a Jinn.” Although Jinn can be benevolent, some Jinn are wicked, appearing as dark figures that lurk in ruins and cemeteries, waiting for an unsuspecting human soul to stumble by. The wicked Jinn, much like the demons of Christianity, are deceivers and may present themselves as the ghost of a loved one to insert themselves into a human’s life.

Wahde, a Cherokee, said the nature of Shadow beings in the American Indian tradition are just as dark. “They’re humanoid shaped, but not proportionate to a normal person,” Wahde said. “Their appearance is more monstrous in nature.” These Shadow beings are the product of medicine men that have strayed from the path of healing. “There seem to be a classification of spiritual beings that are Shadow for the most part. These things can be manipulated by bad medicine or bad magic,” Wahde said. “They either take that form to attack other people, or they use some other spiritual being as a spiritual attack.” In the Cherokee language, these dark medicine people are sgili, or witch. “They’re still alive to some degree, but they’re not necessarily considered human.”

Ghosts

“I have a young boy shadow/spirit in my home. He appears as a solid black cutout-like figure. He is a prankster, too, but he’s NOT mean, or evil. He let’s us know he’s here at times by playing with the animals. Kittens, dogs, puppies, etc. PLAY, not mean. The dogs and puppies are wagging their tails. He moves my Barbies if he really wants my attention. And the other day he didn’t want the door to his room closed, so he opened it. He’s a good kid.” – Kim Tamsor

A family sees a black figure come down the stairs at the same time at night, turn into the kitchen and disappear. A dark man in an out-of-date suit walks through a child’s bedroom and down the hallway. Some Shadow People encounters – benign ones like these – could very well be disembodied spirits wandering the earth. D.H. Parsons, president of The Bliss-Parsons Institute of Metaphysics in Columbia, Missouri, has encountered many Shadow People while investigating a haunting. Although many fellow investigators consider Shadow People demonic, Parsons doesn’t necessarily agree. “My feeling is that a Shadow Person is another representation of a residual memory of a person who had such a strong personality in life, that a bit of their energy remained here in this dimension after their spirit crossed over,” Parsons said. “Most of the time the spirit beings are either friendly to us, or confused by us, or curious as to why we are there. But they have never done us any harm, not even the Shadows.”

Not so for eighteen-year-old Dave Stanfield. Stanfield didn’t expect something to be waiting for him in his room when he woke. Something was – something dark. A strange feeling pulled Stanfield from a deep sleep. As he lay in the gray room, staring at his bedroom wall, he saw it. “I woke for no reason, had no weird dreams, and I wasn’t groggy or half asleep,” he said. “My room was dark other than some stray beams coming through the blinds, and I could see a man, darker than the night like a void.”

The figure stood at the end of the bed. “I could only make out the silhouette of his head and shoulders. The rest of him just went straight to the floor,” Stanfield said. “There were no legs or feet. No red eyes, no facial features whatsoever.” Terrified, Stanfield slid low in bed, pulling the covers slowly over his face, watching the black, man-shaped figure standing over him until his blankets hid the horror from his view and Stanfield fell back to sleep.

Stanfield is now 29, and although he doesn’t know what this Shadow Being was, he knows he saw it – and it haunts him still. “Only in the past couple of years have I been able to find anything on the subject matter,” Stanfield said. “It’s almost like re-victimization when reading stories from other people that describe experiences like mine. I never knew it could be so widespread and am still dealing with the shock.”

But, as with Parsons’ encounters, this being didn’t harm Stanfield. At least not physically.

Interdimensional travelers

“Harmless. Just a watcher is all.” – Don Hall

Most Shadow People encounters are benign, a dark figure lingering in the corners of your life, watching. Could these entities simply be watching us from a realm barely removed from our own? Marie Jones, author of books exploring science and the paranormal, thinks other dimensions could be homes of Shadow People. “In my research into quantum and theoretical physics, I came across … concepts that really opened up the possibilities to me that entities from somewhere else could be coming here” Jones said.

One of these concepts is wrapped around different dimensions. “Theoretically, if these infinite other universes exist, we really should not physically be able to access them,” Jones said. “Yet even theoretical physicists entertain the thought that perhaps the laws of physics on the other side allow for some crossover.”

Clark Kent’s* grandfather died in 1977 and his grandmother moved to a small apartment leaving her old house empty. Shortly after, ten-year-old Kent’s family moved in. “My first friend in the new neighborhood was my next-door neighbor, Jim,” Kent said. “We are good friends to this day.” On a day in 1979, Kent invited Jim to his house to play Ping Pong – and it’s haunted him since.

That day after school, Kent and Jim had about two hours before Kent’s parents came home from work, which meant Ping Pong in the basement between peeks at the forbidden stash of Playboys in a dusty alcove. It was there Kent saw something he didn’t expect. “During our game, I was facing the alcove,” Kent said. “At a certain point, something caught my attention.” Standing in the alcove was the shadow of a man wearing a fedora.
“It was creepy, and I had to pause,” Kent said. “I could not figure out how any combination of the boxes could cast such a shadow. Then it moved.”

Kent stood at the Ping Pong table, staring at dark figure watching him from the alcove. He then quickly looked at Jim who was looking at him. “He realized I had seem something,” Kent said. “I was struck by the realization that no man was casting a shadow on the wall, the Shadow was solid and was not attached to any object. I turned and scrambled up the stairs with Jim right behind me.” At the top of the stairs, their breath coming fast and heavy, Kent slammed and latched the basement door, then “looked at Jim with wide eyes.”

Jim denied seeing the Shadow man that day and for nearly thirty years after. As the two met for a long needed reunion, Kent mentioned the Shadow Man in his basement. “Jim sunk into his chair and spoke in a whisper, ‘I’ll never forget that hat.’ I was stunned,” Kent said. Then he asked the same question he’d asked three decades ago, did you see it? “Yes, I did,” Jim told him. “I was scared.”

But did this entity, this watcher, step into Kent’s life from a parallel universe?

Although some physicists entertain the idea of these multiple universes, physicist David Richardson isn’t eager to join them. “I hate to bring this up in this context, but if there were extra dimensions … (Shadow People) might actually be people,” he said. “I’m skeptical of that, but it’s possible. We’re just starting to figure out that sort of stuff.”

Ghost? Demon? Jinn? Sgili? Traveler? Regardless of the nature of these entities, regardless of their intentions, the advice for each encounter is the same – proceed with caution.

*Yes, this person’s name is actually Clark Kent. Although bearing the name of Superman’s alter ego may be a burden to some, Kent said his name has netted him many free bottles of beer from strangers at taverns. Who doesn’t want to buy a drink for the Last Son of Krypton?

Follow Jason on Twitter @TheJasonOffutt

The images used in this post are for illustration purposes only.

TAGS: Demons, Jinn, shadow people

anonge0

the tall pale black eyed people dressed in all black, have followed me in my dreams since I was a child.. never a pleasant feeling, especially since I have always only had lucid dreams. through years of meditation the visits have become less and less. :/
Me

My lil sis is seeing these things and its freaking her the eff out. She’s seeing the future (of chickpeas. there were chickpeas in a pot in the fridge that she saw hours before the can was open) we’re all hearing scratching on the basement door (too high up to be most animals) and it’s… I don’t know what to do to help her. Shadow feet stand outside her door when she tries to sleep. She wont sleep with the lights off. Things fly across the room. And it all centers around her. Once a voice called ‘come here girls’ when our parents weren’t home. Can anyone offer any helpful suggestions, not just anecdotes of their own experiences?
worriedbigsis

Still if something scares the living s*** out of you, it is for a reason… I believe our instincts do exist to protect and warn us. A little fear is normal for big creepy shadow things. But not a disproportionate amount, such as most of these people report.
NeedingAnswersKayKay

About two weeks ago I was spending the night at my friends house(yes I’m still a kid) and we were playing hide and seek with all of the lights off with her younger siblings. When it was my turn to count and look for everyone I walked around the upstairs and kept feeling someone behind me, but when I turned all I saw were the outlines of people and when I reached out to see who it was my hand would pass straight through them. After a while I made everyone come out of hiding and asked them if they saw anything but they all said no. I’ve also seen them ever since I can remember, at my house in New York, then when I moved out of state. I usually see them in my bedroom. standing near the door or wall but when i move my head to look they’re always gone. What I’m wondering is can shadow people follow you? and why dont they ever make contact?
Rigby

There’s an area in my house in which my sister and I have encountered the Hat Man, from when we moved in until the present day. The staircase leading to our second floor is the problem; it passes over our then-bedroom-current-computer-room and leads up to our bathroom and two more bedrooms, and had been a renovation project of my dad’s for the first few years we lived in the house. When we moved in, my little sister was one and I was four.

I hadn’t been a stranger to weird things myself; when we lived in the trailer, I played with a black dog that would occasionally appear in some of our rooms and thought nothing of it, so when my sister (at age two) started talking about seeing this guy with a hat in the corner of her eye lurking around those stairs, I didn’t really think anything of that, either, at first. Until one night, I was about five or six, I woke up to a dark thing (weirdly discolored and faintly highlighted in a sickly green) at the foot of my bed – and my sister woke up too, and after a tiny ‘moooom, are you making shadow puppets?’ she then SCREAMED. The thing disappeared and our parents rushed in and held us immediately.

When she was seven or eight, she reported that the hat man left; just decided to nod once at her and walk away, and she just ‘felt’ it was done. She didn’t see it since, but then I started to, once we moved up into our new room. It would only be for a moment or two, never face-to-face, never more than passing uneasy feelings of being watched.

Until a few years ago.

I hadn’t seen it for years, hadn’t thought about it at all. There’s a night-light over my bed shaped like an angel, and I often read by it late at night when I can’t sleep; I was doing that now, with some issue of Fables.

It was three in the morning and I kept reading when my sister started moaning in her sleep. And that normally wouldn’t have been anything unusual if my mom in the room across from ours hadn’t ALSO started moaning at the exact same moment. In time, and both started to crescendo. The moans gradually turned to full-out SHOUTING just as I feel this horrible feeling growing in the doorway. And when I say ‘horrible,’ it’s a horrific understatement – it’s full-on approaching DREAD, soaking to the bone, twisting the guts. I felt watched, and got this urge to not look up, not look at the doorway. So, naturally, I did.

And there, in the doorway, blocking the nightlight in the bathroom across the hall and somehow darker than the rest of the house was this tall, vaguely man-shaped shadow, just standing there. And I say ‘mostly’ man-shaped – it was over six feet, and the only clearly defined parts were the hat, head and shoulders, trailing into amorphous dark down below. And as I looked at it, the shouting became SCREAMS, and the dread was a twisting sucker-punch. I THREW the book aside, dove and cocooned into my covers, and just prayed and prayed. I went through the Rosary, did the ‘now I lay me down to sleep,’ just anything I could think of.

And the weirdest part was – I couldn’t see the guy, and he made no noise, but I could FEEL where he was. I knew where he was, I knew when he was slowly leaning into the room (a bizarre bend from the gut, too)…and then as I prayed, I knew he was leaving. And as he left, both my sister’s and my mother’s screams died down to whimpers, before both were completely silent, and I felt the ‘all-clear.’ I didn’t come back out of the covers-cocoon though, until morning.

Since then, the area has still been fairly active – a shadowy head-and-shoulders loves to appear in glass and computer screen reflections, strong feelings of being watched come and go, occasionally an unseen presence will get all snuggly/spoon-y when people sleep on the floor (this I have not personally been a part of – possibly thankfully? Hah) – and while those can be startling, none are threatening.

That one encounter with the hat man, though…I can’t even explain how wrong that felt. But beyond any shadow of a doubt, I believe that thing was evil.
DareMaster

I have a similar story, but far less extreme than some of the incidents listed below. My dad died when I was incredibly young – too young to remember. As I got a bit older (12 years old), I became more curious about who he was. My mom told me that if I want to talk to him, then I can pray to God and talk to my dad through him. So I did. I told my dad a few important details about my life, and said I wanted to see him. A month later, on father’s day, I started seeing weird black orbs darting from the corner of my eye. My mom said my mind was just playing tricks on me, so I ignored it. They began happening in places where it was impossible for a shadow to appear – like my bathroom with no windows. A few days later, I was sitting on my bed, and in the corner of my eye, I could see a black figure sitting at the other corner of my bed. As I was turning my head to check it out, it looked like it leaped off my bed and disappeared, and even slightly shook my bed as if a small amount of weight was lifted off of it.

Another incident during this week of seeing the black orbs – I was sitting at the computer playing games, and there was a big floor lamp beside the computer. For some reason, I felt the need to look at the lamp… It looked as though there was a heat wave in front of it, and I could feel it come towards me, and then go past me in another direction. It was very strange.. I did not see a figure, just waves of air as if there was a gas leak, or as if it was extremely hot.

This stopped happening once I had a breakdown and asked whatever it was to leave. It left, and I never saw these things again.

These occurrences have seriously freaked me out ever since, and after telling a new friend about my experience, he had mentioned the possibility of a Shadow Person being present in my room. The figure on the bed makes sense, if Shadow People truly do exist, but I don’t understand the smaller black orbs or the weird energy I felt at the computer desk.
Em

I would suggest purchasing a sage smudge and using it as incense to cleanse the house. Try to focus on turning the fear into defiance. Think screaming might also be helpful. Imagine yourself screaming in your head, as high-pitched and loudly as possible. Imagine that scream literally exploding out of you and blowing away all the negative entities that are bothering you.
sscf

hello when i was 6 i lived on the 12th floor of an apartment building i was cleaning my room and saw the shadow of a man with a top hat walk across the wall and dissaper when he reached the door i dont remember being scared i was just standing there wondering what i had seen and if it was real but i didnt tell anyone. after that a started seeing him more either walking across a wall or just standing there. i stoped seeing him when i was about 13. i told my aunt about it a couple of days ago and she said that when i was little i would wander off and play and have full conversations with someone but she would check up on me and nothing would be there. she says it started what i was aroumd 2 years old
Melanie

You are the first person I have come across who has a similar shadow men experience as me! No other person talks about getting stabbed by shadow men like I was. So I am feeling so not alone at this moment. My shadow men encounter was frightening though…so that part is different then yours. In 2010 TWO shadow men came through my bedroom wall and both had knives raised above their heads. Both were blacker than the darkness of the night as were the knives. Both moved very creeeeepy and faster than any speed we can imagine. Both stabbed me in the chest after lunging out of the wall, over the foot of my bed…then immediately swoooooshed back into the wall as soon as I sat up. I felt overwhelming panic and fright . The shadow men then repeated this action 3 times in a row after I would become paralyzed again !…..and each time after stabbing me retreating back into the wall at lightening speed. The dread and fear during this triple attack –by these two Shadowy figures was terrifying and I will NEVER forget how it made me feel. EACH time they lunged out and stabbed me..and retreated back in the WALL—- I felt the HEAVIEST feeling of being WATCHED by EVIL. I said to myself while I lay there in the dark… “oh my god, they ARE REAL and they wait for that moment.” This is what I thought and I don’t know why I thought it….but after each stabbing and retreating of the beings I said the same thing to myself (not out loud). As of last year I have had a real validation of these experiences I have had….because two of my grown daughters (who did NOT KNOW of my TWO shadow men experience) came to me at the beginning of 2012 and told me that they have also seen TWO shadow men…..one has seen them in the house I grew up in and the other daughter saw them WHERE my-Stabbing- shadow men experience happened. ….. So…I am officially freaked out as of now…..EVEN though I always knew what happened to be was real and those things were REAL…..knowing that my daughters have seen TWO of these things too now….brings it to a whole new level of creepiness !
http://www.facebook.com/realignbaby999 Melanie West

You are the first person I have come across who has a similar shadow men
experience as me! My shadow
men encounter was frightening though…so that part is different then
yours. I have experienced sleep paralysis since I was young and have had “visuals” of other unexplained “entities” in my room while they occur. The most frightening visual happened in 2010. TWO shadow men came through my bedroom wall immediately after I felt a tingly sensation and humming noise and then slipped into sleep paralysis. Both Shadow Men had
knives raised above their heads. Both were blacker than the darkness of
the night- as were their knives. Both moved very creeeeepy and faster than
any speed we can imagine. Both stabbed me in the chest after lunging
out of the wall, directly over the foot of my bed…and both immediately swoooooshed
back into the wall as soon as I sat up. I felt overwhelming panic and
fright after the knives plunged into me . The shadow men then repeated this action 3 times in a row. After each stabbing….I would sit up in panic…..then
I would become paralyzed again !…..and each time after stabbing me they
retreated back into the wall at lightening speed. The dread and fear
during this triple attack –by these two Shadowy figures was terrifying
and I will NEVER forget how it made me feel. EACH time they lunged out
and stabbed me..and retreated back in the WALL—- I felt the HEAVIEST
feeling of being WATCHED by EVIL. I said to myself while I lay there in
the dark… “oh my god, they ARE REAL and they wait for that moment.”
This is what I thought and I don’t know why I thought it….but after each stabbing and retreating of the beings I said the same thing to myself
(not out loud). As of last year I have had a real validation of these
experiences I have had….because two of my grown daughters (who did NOT
KNOW of my TWO shadow men experience) came to me at the beginning of 2012 and told me that they have also seen TWO shadow men…..one
has seen them in the house I grew up in and the other daughter saw them
WHERE my-Stabbing- shadow men experience happened. ….. So…I am
officially freaked out as of now. And EVEN though I always knew what
happened to be was real and that those things were REAL…..knowing that my
daughters have seen TWO shadow men too as taken this to a whole new level. (I have also experienced paranormal activity in the house I grew up in…etc..with our pet dogs reacting to the activity as well……)
http://twitter.com/kellikaustic Kelli Cabana

I see the red eyed one, and it’s not when I’m asleep so I know it’s not sleep paralysis. It comes when things are bad or about to be bad and it lurks and it’s attached to my best friend too. Why has it picked me? Why does it want me to be unhappy? It pushes people away from me and I’m tired of it!
Al

Hi. Just thought I’d add something to this ’cause I’ve been looking up some paranormal stuff. I’ve never thought anything of it before, but now I can safely say that I have at least once encountered a ‘Shadow Person’. I must have been about 6 or 7 (I’m 19 now – and not a naive teen a’thankyou) when I lived on the British airbase RAF Cosford. The house I lived at was 57 Lancaster Close (Just adding this as i’ve noticed Kaz has mentioned a military base, too). My Dad was reading to me at the time, and the room was dimly lit by my bedside lamp. There was an old maroon horsehair sofa against the opposite wall below the window, and it was behind the left arm of this chair that I witnessed the entity. It was a lucky glance, all of a second, but i can recall it perfectly now that it’s resurfaced. As I looked, the ‘Person’ appeared to dive behind the sofa… Which was odd because it was on the wall – a shadow. I remember actually seeing an arm, with the hand open; fingers splayed, which was attached to the body, the head was already partially obscured as I looked. I asked my dad if there was someone hiding behind the sofa, which was absurd because it was right up against the wall. I’d also like to add that during my time there until mid 2000 I experienced horrifically subtle recurring nightmares. Which is strange considering I was younger than 9 at the time. Since then my Dad was reposted to Linton in Yorkshire, and we’re no longer on a base… I have however experienced some odd stuff here as well, only when i’ve been on my own – something fell over loudly in the loft directly above my head while I was in bed ill and everyone was out. I’ll sometimes be sitting in the Kitchen facing the door and watching TV, and i’ll notice a vague dark shape pass by the door – IN THE LIT HALLWAY. (Sorry, caps is good for highlighting main points…) and the most recent was actually directed at me. I was at my desk in my room facing into the corner. The main light was on. I turned around in my chair, and as I did so, a shadow appeared to throw itself at me in the most remarkable visual illusion. It was as though a pulse of shadow had travelled from one point on one wall and grown incredibly rapidly as though it was flying at me. It was all around me and then gone. Had I blinked, I most certainly would have missed it. It was a momentary experience, but I was certainly impressed. I’m kind of doing some hobbyish research into these inexplicable phenomena, and would really appreciate some feedback… I would be very grateful. Many thanks, Al.
royalnash

how can i talk to it when soon as i turned around i just got a 1 second glimpse of its head then it disappeared either it didnt want to talk to me or i can only channel it through meditation once i broke out of my trance it was gone
royalnash

i didnt see red eyes but its eyes was bulgy and its face was white and it looked similar to a white man. i dont remember seeing any hair on its head. it was crazy since then i stopped practicing meditation not because of the incident but i started to hang out with my new found friends and partied a lot.
a little help from me

What I know is those are demons, and if you believe in God they will be afraid of you, because they are afraid of God, if you have holy water, so wash you house with it, and pray and read the bible and believe in God and I promise you it will leave you alone just a little help
http://www.facebook.com/corey.martinez.969 Corey Martinez

I wish to know about these shadow ppl and if you could harm them or kill them as while
http://twitter.com/jennydevildoll Jenny DevilDoll

I might have seen the one you describe as “Hat Man”, though I felt very at ease around him, and he was with a dog, which isn’t mentioned here. Maybe it’s different. Anyway, I made a sketch and some brief notes what had been happening at the time:

http://jennydevildoll.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/another-2-a-m-hallucination/

Honestly I’ve dealt with hallucinations much of my life so didn’t think much of it, till today I saw a link regarding descriptions of the same things by other people.
Cory Tullier

In the house I grew up in we had one that lurked in the hallway.It had no eyes and was more like a floating mass of blackness.It was disturbing and even with all lights on it was still there though not as opaque. I think it used to wander into our rooms at night.I had the worst night terrors when I lived there.
http://twitter.com/CTWesting C.T. Westing

No offense, but it sounds like BS to me. The army doesn’t carry the M16 in Iraq (and any soldier who was in Iraq would know that), a sentry wouldn’t likely empty a full magazine at night on someone (or something) without identifying the target and/or notifying others on watch, and a corpsman isn’t going to test blood. And if he did, he wouldn’t have the ability to say that said blood is of no known species of animal. Sorry, your story doesn’t add up.
somewhatkool

I was about 6-7 years old, it was middle of the night/early morning, I was awake absolutely certain. I could feel something, in my bedroom, first I was struck with fear but I overcame this fear got up and opened my bedroom door. There standing about 10 feet away was a perfect darker than black silhouette perfectly formed small human shape about my height just staring at me, no eyes or face or anything, pure black. I screamed and closed my bedroom door, my father immediately came to my bedroom and the figure was gone. Thank god not seen any since. Sorry but in my book anything that instills fear is not a good thing.
http://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.cupit.1 Elizabeth Cupit

One night when me my lil bro were playin in his room I saw what I thought was my mom peakin round the corner but when I looked up she was gone the same thing happened two more times.Later when I went to bed I saw a shadow in my doorway and though it was see through it was black as night then the figure walked into my room and I felt icy cold grip my body and hands on my neck choking me I started praying and it got tighter then it stopped I ran crying up to my mom and I haven’t slept the same since…my best friends also encountered this shadow(she looked like she was wearing a long black dress and she had curly brown hair but no face)both my friends were terrified because the “woman”tried to kill us…that was when we were in 6th grade which was a yr ago…now she’s back and is attacking one of my friends.I’ve been seeing ghosts since I moved into my stepdads condo….I never did get a good feeling about the place either
indy

If you don’t want to see these entities, adopt a cat, or several. That usually works.
http://twitter.com/SteffieMcGrath Stephenie McGrath

After my experiences with the hat man i have been obsessed on finding out what these things are. If anyone is interested in having there experience published in my book you can contact me at http://pioneerpreppers.com
disqus_gNnGBU3ZMa

my ex had a seizure that happened cause of a dream she had of a shadow that was tormenting her. she said in email from the hospital that it took the shape of her and was tormenting her with words and tearing her body with ropes. her cloths were also ripped up in the morning so this freaked the hell outta me and then i had the same dream that she had tonight but im not really scared of shadows ghosts and nightmares so i woke up just nervous. my best friend also has this dream but the shadow is cutting her and she wakes up every morning with cuts all over her body. da fuqs all this about?
Chris

I….my grandma and i had lived together for a long time and we both saw these figures. either of us hadn’t known much about them after she went into the hospital, i hadn’t seen them as often as i did with her….a year had gone by and i hardly saw them ever again but my grandma pat away last week and now out of the blue im starting to feel a strong presents and am seeing them increasingly….i…i dunno if i want to continue researching them. even know while i type i feel as if someone is watching me. ive been warned before not to delv into the paranormal, but i cant help myself i must know who they are and what they want, is my grandma somehow connected? or is it something else….?
chrish912

Yesterday morning around 5:30am I was laying down to go to sleep, my girlfriend was in the bathroom, I was laying on my side facing the doorway waiting for her to come to bed. I was in that state of sleep, not entirely asleep, but not awake. In my doorway appeared a tall dark shadow-figure. It stood there facing me, I could not make out any features or eyes, but could sense it was focusing on me. I was terrified, I was telling myself to wake up, but couldn’t. I was almost paralized with fear. I’m not sure how long this experience lasted. Eventually I was woken up by my girlfriend. I was very scared, and explained to her what happened. I than tried not to sleep, in fear of seeing this again. Eventually I fell asleep without seeing it again. Any thoughts? Similar experiences?
Shadow

I only see them in my dreams…i fight them. Most timesi lose
Annie Duggan

For as long as I can remember I’ve always seen a dark figure in the shape of a human wearing a hat, the hat is the most visible thing. But I can only see the shadow from the corner of my eye bar a few occasions. When I turn my head to look it disappears. Like I said, a few rare times it didn’t go away straight away. As a child it was always there, everywhere I went, I never saw it move, he just stood there, arms folded or in his pockets, watching me. Sometimes I’d get the impression that he was smiling. Whenever I told my parents, they put it up to an overactive imagination and my curly hair.

25 years old now and I still see him. It stopped for a few years and I forgot about him mostly. But again now he’s back, not as much, but enough. I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels different now. As a child I was scared because I couldn’t explain what was going on, but never of the actual figure. Now though, whenever he appears, I get this sense that something is meant to happen and it doesn’t feel good. It’s like a sense of panic goes through me and won’t leave until he does. It also stands much close than it did when I was a child. And now when I see him at night, I get an almost sexual vibe from him. I can’t explain it!
Khaos

Shadow people do exist! I know this seems really farfetched but i can see them. Grouping in rooms around my house. Its not just a flash in the corner of my eye anymore. They sit right in front of me. They make strange noises and laugh quite a lot. This scared me at first but now i e kind of warmed to them. Still havent had a conversatio. With one but still trying. I cant tell anyone cos they will call me crazy so im putting it on here. They are so amazing.
Isis Cree

I have seen a “shadow man” for a while before I moved out of that apartment building. the first time I saw him I was walking up the stairs with my friends (I lived on the 3rd floor) I glanced up and saw a black figure, couldn’t and never saw his eyes, all I saw was a black cowboy hat, black clothes and long black trench coat, as I looked to my friends & asked if they could see him, we all looked up but he was gone. After that I started seeing him every time I walked up the stairs, he was leaning over the railing, looking down, no one else ever saw him, even when I was with other people and could see him, no one else could, I never understood that. I am religious, my apartment has been blessed
by a couple of priests, i did not & still do not do drugs, so wasn’t
hallucinating. I saw him for a few years, it got to the point where i could
sense his presence, but he only ever stayed in that one place, never moved, he
was not transparent/ see through. Two very creepy events lead to me moving out of that building, one night after getting home & locking the door, I heard
a knock at the door, looked through the peeping hole, thinking it was one of
the neighbours, but it was dark so I didn’t open the door, I asked who’s there
then the door handle started turning and the door shook, I screamed & it
stopped, my friend run out from the bedroom, she said she heard when i came in, and when I asked who’s there & then me screaming, but she didn’t hear the
door shaking and someone trying to get it…it kind of freaked us out a bit,
she knew I’d seen the shadow man for a while, but this was the first time he
moved from the railing & the first time he made any type of
“contact” . second one was worse, I was getting ready to go to bed,
as I sat in bed I felt him, then I felt as though a cold wind was passing
through me, I looked up (all lights were on in the apartment as I was scared
since the door incident) and I saw him standing in the living area looking
down, couldn’t see his face, but saw him, I tried to move to scream to my roommate to wake up, but I was completely frozen, no not sleep paralysis, I have had that too, this was completely different, and I was wide awake, hadn’t gone to sleep yet…I looked at him feeling terrified, he suddenly disappeared into
thin air, but I could still sense his presence, then I heard footsteps coming
from the living area towards my bedroom and it stopped at the end of my bed, I
have no idea how much time had passed, but just as suddenly as I froze I
unfroze and couldn’t sense him anymore. I woke up my roommate, she asked me to draw what I saw, him in our apartment, I did, but as I was drawing him, I felt that cold scary feeling again, so after she saw it I tried burning the picture
but it wouldn’t burn, my roommate didn’t believe that a piece of paper couldn’t
burn, so she tried to several times and then she started freaking out as it
wouldn’t burn, I ripped it into as many little pieces as possible and put it
away. I moved out of the building shortly after & haven’t seen him since,
but still can’t understand why I was the only person to be able to see him
Nico Kroes

How would you find these shadow people?
Isis Cree

I think they find us, but that’s my opinion only…in my case I was the only person to see him, no other tenants or visitors could..
Isis Cree

What happened to you sounds like what is classified as sleep paralysis, but I’m not saying you didn’t see a “shadow man”, I get sleep paralysis quite a bit, but when I saw the “shadow man” it was while I was awake, both day & night time. He used to lurk near the railing of the staircase, but none of the other tenants or visitors ever saw him…
Rick Abreu

get a blessed Saint Benedict’s medal
Stickled Pink

We came home from a quick trip to the store and when my daughter got out of the car she said to me very calmy…”Mom, I think I see a vampire”. She said that she saw a man standing on our lawn with a bald head and a cape. Like a vampire. I am kind of freaked out by this. I looked and didn’t see anything. I asked if it was a bad man and she said, “I guess…a little”. Then like nothing happened, she says…”I must be seeing things”. Then she went into the house like nothing happened. I have been weirded out ever since and started to search on the computer for a man that looks like a bald vampire. I have had some strange things happen in my life…when I was younger, I was sleeping in a room adjacent to my father. I woke to a man walking past me in a hat and an old timey looking suit. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t say anything. He was just there. He went towards my father and I wanted to scream, but nothing would come out. I have never known if this was a dream, but it was so real. I have thought of that instance many times in my life since, felt that same kind of like, having to catch my breath. Now my daughter is saying she saw a man. Are we in danger? She didn’t seem scared…but I am. I recently lost my father…and years ago, my brother. Both times I had lost them, I knew ahead of time they were going to pass on. Both were unexpected, but I had just had a feeling in days prior. I’m scared and I don’t know why. Does anyone know what this could all mean? Thanks.
jennifer huff

My boyfriend is seeing them just recently mostly in a bad dream but this last couple days he has seen em while awake he can’t figure it out why but what else can you tell me about em” shadow people”
Kelphet

So if you saw one, what would you do?
http://www.facebook.com/RykerJade Jade Burnett

Just because you don’t see another dimension, does not mean it’s not there. Jessica you are clairvoyant. The average person has their illusion and perception of reality set to what they have been conditioned to see. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes sound familiar? Your on a visionary level which is the most common of people with clairvoyant gifts. Your seeing a demon, it’s always going to be a shadow bc it cannot cross into the light. It also cannot cross thresholds of doorways. Email me if you want and ill tell you what do. Seven.Archetypes@gmail.com
jake

i have seen shadow people a few times. i never saw them actually moving but it would be in one place then i turn and its in another. idk if they are still around but dont want me 2 see them or if its something else now but i dont feel alone. i can feel it right now,someone watching me but if i wer to turn my head like i do most times i would either see a brief blur going into the other room or nothing at all. the shadow people dont really bother me. just seems to observe for a while then go back where it came from. but 2 be honest. this feels more ominous.
Han Lecter

My wife and I were tending a garden in our back yard when our cat suddenly darted over the fence making a weird noise, like when they go after a fly. When I looked over the fence there were like 8 or 9 cats converging on an area. When I looked through the slats of our fence I could see a distinct shadow shape, it looked like the outline of a man pulling a small wagon. The shadow was underneath a giant tree in front of our house.

All these cats in our neighborhood were following this thing and meowing really strangely. That is something I have not read about anywhere. Yeah shadow people and all that, but nothing comes up with the cat’s following the shadow like that.

It moved slowly out from under the tree until we couldnt get an angle on it through the slats. As I said you couldn’t see it if you looked directly at it by looking over the 6ft fence. Only through the slits between the wood.

I live in a neighborhood right by an old military base that is now a small airport “Arlington airport, Arlington, Wa”. We see blackhawk helecoptors and even the big shnook’s from time to time, but have never seen them land . Very odd. We get sudden, unnatural thick fog coming from the airport sometimes at night and low heavy rumbling like a giant ship slowly taking off can be both heard and felt from time to time. We also have a fighter jet that flies around every few days.

If you walk on the trail that goes around the airport you’ll see a huge parking lot with two giant warehouses on it. There are 100′s of cars parked there on any given day. But never any people and no other buildings. So I have some theories about what my wife and I saw that day, but who knows for sure.

One year we had a small kiddy pool out front filled with water, the next day, all the water was gone. This would happen every night. But, would stay filled all day long with no drop in height in the pool at all. So whatever these things are, I think they are after water.

Funny thing about this is, last year there was an mailer that offered “Free rain barrels” if you come to learn how to collect water for gardening. We signed up and got our barrel. Two weeks later the lady who ran the class came to our house to take pictures of the set up. She asked if we could put the barrel in the front yard instead (which would be ugly, and work to cut my rain gutter in half, so I said no. Then very oddly she just stood there staring at me as if to demand it. For like 15 minutes she wouldnt leave, just kind of stood there looking at me, then at the front corner where she wanted me to put this rain barrel. I finally just said goodbye and locked the door.

Either there is an area 51 type place near that airport and there are aliens walking around our neighborhood for god knows what reason. Or they have something like a predator suit experimental military gear I’ve read about, bending light at the molecular level… and maybe it was malfunctioning that day as they tested it.

I have to say, it looked more inter dimensional than like a man in a molecule light bending suit. Since it cast a shadow on the ground in a shaded area, it was as if it was from another time where the tree was gone and the sun was shining down on the ground. It was as if I was seeing a bit of space from a different time. But only the space he occupied by his outline though, and the shadow it cast.

I’ve not really had any other encounters with something like that before or since. But I swear to god may my soul go to hell if I am lieing that we DID see this exactly as I have told you.
Tyler Wagner

Not sure if anyone can help me figure this out, When I was 12 years old me and my friend were playing in the back yard, we heard a dog going crazy, it yelped and we heard nothing; we ran up the road to find out what it was but nothing it was gone.. we then heard tree branches (rather large ones) falling but they fell so fast over the course of a block, and this loud horrible screech like that of a pterodactyl everyone at this point was outside looking for what ever made this noise, the cops did show up nothing happened, but me and my friend were still in the back yard and we heard the loudest thump you can imagine, we slowly raised our flashlight about eight feet off the ground we saw it… eyes they were white, pure white just starring… we ran inside shortly after. But that’s not where this ends… sadly i have had nothing but issues with this thing always following me, a few notable issues where at the 2 year mark from that day me and another friend were outside playing, we smelt sulfur and played it off as the well where the water is, but then we heard the noise i heard two years ago and i told him to get inside, the noises freezes you like a bad nightmare… as soon as we made it indoors the power went out, everything died, then the thumping of its steps came, we didn’t look outside we just hid…. then coincidentally enough 2 years after that i was walking through the trails with a buddy and we felt like we were being followed and no sooner did i mention it we saw this massive black nothingness sweep across the trail in-front of us…. we got out quickly we knew it wasn’t an animal, as soon as we left the trail, just down over the hill we saw this thing walking it looked like a human walking like a dog with legs bending backwards and its head swaying really fast its head was bald and no facial features, it entered the street light and disappeared only to reappear on the other side, a car passed it but did not notice it… the way it walked was horrifying…. and 2years after that situation it made another appearance, standing in front of me down the same trail, looked like a tall old man with a huge hat on, but it was black and foggy/blurry but he was there,i was on my own and started feeling sick to my stomach….. I then felt rage and anger towards it, i don’t know why but i pulled away from it and ran the other way, i came down with a severe flu that day and was hospitalized…. I’m 23 now, and the thing hasn’t made its two year appearance since i was 18, but i know its there i feel it, my girlfriend feels it, my friends feel it, and every night i hear large tree branches snapping and falling or i hear noises… not the original loud screech just disturbing noises….

The reason I am telling you all this is i have told only a select few close to me but no one else, if anyone has an answer please let me know i need to know if i should be worried… its getting stronger… i feel it… I am not joking around… please any help would be much appreciated.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005477881316 Nick Smith

You are psychic and need to say prayers of protection everyday.

Mysterious Universe