While messing around on Wikipedia earlier I found this article on a paranormal phenomena involving ‘shadow people’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_people

Now, I'm not exactly what you'd call crazy, but I've had multiple run-ins with these seemingly nonexistent creatures in the past. Every time I got terrified and convinced myself it was just a hair crossing my eye or my bad vision. The description of them fits what I'd seen throughout my life to a friggin' T.

It really doesn't help that I am excessively paranoid by nature, clear up to the point that I carry a knife with me and sleep with one right by my bed. And to top it off, I've ALWAYS been afraid of the dark. And this finally explains much of the reason I've been so paranoid and terrified of the dark my entire life.

To start, when I was around 10 years old, I lived in a VERY old house. I would almost CONSTANTLY see disturbing things at night, some of which included movement, and transparent featureless beings. This was creepy enough as it is, but it only got worse when I saw something EXTREMELY close up (Think less than 12 inches) that fits these shadow people's definition PERFECTLY! Featureless, blacker than black, and glowing red eyes. I was pretty much put to the point that I STILL have a sever phobia of the dark.

Now, this was bad enough as it is, but eventually I moved out of that house. I was still paranoid, but not AS bad. There may or may not have been any incidents during this bit of time, but my memory of the time between the house previously mentioned and when I moved into my Grandparents' house is very fractured.

Fast forward to last year. I was living at my grandparents' house at this point, and everything was seemingly well. Except for one night, I had decided to make a nice midnight drink run. Everything is nice and cool and then I get to the bottom of the steps and I see this 5-6 foot tall featureless humanoid figure and it begins moving towards me. I get spooked, haul ass up to my room, and STAY there. For the next few months, I WOULD NOT leave that room on my own at night without a lot of lights being on.

Seriously, these things are friggin' scary as hell! If you've seen them, you'd know what I'm talking about. You get this overwhelming sense of terror that just swarms you to the point you have to struggle to maintain control. That's not to say that they are evil, but they give off a feeling of fear unlike anything else anyone has ever felt.

Certainly I'm not the only DDer to experience this phenomenon. Please tell me I'm not crazy and that one of you has experienced this too.

(Also on a fun side note, I had actually developed a character based off the thing I'd seen when I was really young. Expect to see him someday when I quit being lazy and update.)

Sounds to me like you have a mild form of paranoid schizophrenia… or maybe some slight mental or even ocular irregularities. :)

I like the wiki shadow people explanation of “Pareidolia”, that explains why I'm always seeing cats from the corner of my eye.

I will admit, my vision is utter garbage. Without my glasses, the entirety of my vision is a blurry mess, and even with them, my peripheral vision is completely useless, but I seriously doubt I have any mental illnesses. All that my previous shrink could find wrong with me was a slight case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from some pretty heavy abuse I took as a child. Not once did they find any reason to label me schizophrenic.

I believe they're real, though I've never seen them. My aunt has had all kinds of weird experiences with ghosts though, and she's a perfectly normal, sane person. After reading the Wiki article and seeing the photos, I'm totally creeped out now. Thanks.

Thanks Rich
For keeping me up an hour later.
I went from Shadow People, to Mothman, to Spring heeled jack, to Jack the ripper.

Great.

As for shadow people, I laughed throught out the entire article.
The picture is scary however.

Sssssssorry Richy Rich…
Asss a sshadow perssson myssself, I wassss jussst trying to throw you off our trail…

Rich
All that my previous shrink could find wrong with me was a slight case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from some pretty heavy abuse I took as a child.

Well, that's enough to justify this experience you have had, you know. Even a slight case is taxing on the individual.

I saw a living shadow once, but it was small and had yellow eyes, I was playing Kingdom Hearts at the time. Oh, and I saw some shadow lizards when I was watching Alone in the Dark. =P

But, seriously, I don't think I've ever seen anything supernatural in my life. The only thing I've gotten close to this is when I got obsessed with pokemon when I was 8… I swear I saw a horsea in my pool, a gengar in the garden, and that green cocoon thing that turns into Butterfree in the holy bush… I've been generally skepticle about anything wierd I've seen since then.

And I have 20x20 vision, so clearly I must have been more pokemon obsessed than even my parents thought at the time. But I'm over that now…

Now the Sorrow visits me in my sleep. =P

i see slightly different things. i see shadows thrown off by objects in ways that couldnt possibly happen, like a truck driving down the freeway will have a shadow above and behind it. stationary buildings can have the same sort.

but ive never seen a shadow person.

Corvin

ozone knock it off man, this guys been through some serious stuff -_-



I have had a close encouter with shadow people before, I lived in this light blue colored house some where near the coastline, when i was like 3 or four i saw some shadow people in the kitchen, but i igored them thinking it was just the shadow of a spatula and the shelf combining into one or somthing like that, and this went on for years, i kept telling my mom and she didnt believe me, she took me to a psychiotrist and he said i was fine, he couldnt find out what was wrong with me, then i went to a doctor where they put these little suction cup things with wax on them and placed them on random parts of my head, i was diagnosed fine. I kept having encounters with these things.

I then was 10, feeling so proud of myself since the shadow people hadnt shown around in a while i thought i was the best thing in the house (since i was the only MALE living in the house), i finally came to a conclusion that i was crazy, that i had seen nothing but figimints of sheer stress induced immaginations.But the shadow people stuck once again, i was playing in the living room and i felt somthing psuh me on my back, i fell over and turned around, it couldnt have been my sister because she was in her room, and heh my mom was in her room asleep. but when i looked at the wall I saw a shadow, i blinked and it took off.

Then finally one night my mom had a close encounter with whatever this thing was, It was standing by her bed, see throughish and white, She thought she was having a night terror but she could move her arm, immediently she let out a loud scream and the thing smiled then dissapiered.(underlined it because thats just what HER side of the story was)

We moved away from that house when i was 12 and we havent had anything bad happen to us ever since.

All I can say is: beware of probing!
They're aliens!!!!!!!
…but maybe you like probing?

Anyway, it's the light people who're really scary o_O

ozoneocean
All I can say is: beware of probing!
They're aliens!!!!!!!
…but maybe you like probing?

Anyway, it's the light people who're really scary o_O

The probe thing made me laugh alittle but now with the light people, now its just pissing me off/ Bringing back repressed childhood memorys.

Really? Because I didn't find that probe stuff funny at all, I'm embarrssed for even having written it… But that ghost pic I drew is starting to give me the creeps! Jeeez… if I'd taken the time to give it a scary body as well as a scary head I wouldn't even be able to look at the bloody thing.

I like ghost stories and things and I'm not really sure if I think that those sort of stories are real or not… but I DO remember reading an article somewhere about how all of the ‘traditional’ ghost story things (hearing voices and noises, seeing shadows and lights, waking up with a feeling of weight on your chest, the whole list, etc) are all things that can also be caused by exposure to carbon monoxide… haha.

Marco'D

arrrrgh, that things gonna give me nightmares now man!

lefarce
Marco'D

OMG! I SAW THAT THING BY MY BED THE OTHER DAY! It was all “RAWR GIV M3 HUG NOW N00B!!11!!!” and I was all “OMG!!111!! LITE M0NST3R!!11!!” And then it offered me tea and I screamed.

That's when I woke up.

Oh, yeah, I just took a picture of one:
http://img1.putfile.com/main/11/32911034693.jpg

I don't see people I see dogs, with varying degrees of definition. But In the past I have either put this down to bad eyes, paranoia (I am immensley paranoid), Pareidolia or the possibility that there are alot of nocturnal feral dogs where I live.

man, I scare easily…and that stupid wikipedia page description creeped the hell out of me. THANKS.

Oh, and you ever watch the japanese version of pulse? they had these really creepy, slow moving shadowy people that jumped from place to place. that wikipedia article reminded me of them.

Pssh. That's all I have to say.

However I do believe in the Mothman. In fact here's a picture of him with Elvis Costello.

Funny you should mention this–I was doing research for my next independent book the other day and came across the Shadow Man phenomenon for the first time I can recall (they bear certain similarities to a number of other paranormal/cryptozoological creatures, but I'd never heard the classification before.)

Anyway, bouncing around the 'net checking the thing out, I came across these photos:
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Shadow_Person.html

Of course, in this digital age we can't really believe photographic evidence anymore (assuming we ever could), but they still managed to creep the bejeezus out of me.

And then, a few minutes ago, trying to locate the darn things, I came across this site, which also has a pretty decent creep factor for me: http://www.angelsghosts.com/moundsville_penitentiary_shadow_man_ghost_picture_investigation.html

Personally, my only encounter with the weird has been watching a UFO out my bedroom window in the middle of the day maneuvering in the air above Calgary for a minute or so. But I make it a policy to believe everything is real, especially the strange stuff, because the world's a more interesting place if it is.

A

would make a good movie

Andrew:


I believe anything is possible… But I also believe that most things are unlikely.
-So I have a distinct prejudice for “realistic”, boring explanations.

The Fortean times IS a cracking read though :)

I believe Rich, without a doubt. And im not joking. For an entire year every nightmare i had involved a dark figure with red eyes, and until a couple years ago i thought they were just dreams.

One night i couldn't get to sleep. There was just something in the air that was scaring the piss out of me. At one point i opened my eyes and at the end of my bed was a black figure with red eyes, and i can say I've never been more scared in my life nor have i ever jumped farther. In one solid motion i leaped over my bed and ran to my parent's. They of course did not believe me, that was about 5 years ago.

To this day, i still have trouble getting to sleep when i think about the thing at the end of my bed, and the fact that i wasn't the only one who has experienced such a thing makes me curious. I kind of think my house is haunted.

A lot of people have had an experience with shadow people. Such as the guitarist from Black Sabbath (curious…Black Sabbath just came onto the radio…)…Anyway…the guitarist was into witchcraft, so when Ozzy one day stumbled across a REALLY old witch book he gave it to the guitarist. The night he started to read the book was the same night of one of the biggest storms in the history of England. In the middle of the night the guitarist woke up and saw staring at him was a formless black figure with bright red eyes. When he told Ozzy about it, Ozzy wrote the lyrics to the song “Black Sabbath”, which launched their career and later became the band name.

I was actually thinking about drawing a comic involving shadow people, but i decided against it for lack of good plot

hmmm a comic involving shadow people, i could help ya work out the plot if your still up for it.

I've had moments in my life where, out of the corner of my eye, I'll see something. Maybe I think there's a dog on the porch, or someone entering a door only to find the room empty. I remember one night waking up to see a black figure with red eyes staring at me. Then I turned on the light, and once my eyes adjusted to the light, realized that I was half-asleep and happened to get a blurry shot of my digital clock (with red numbers) next to a jacket layed across a chair.

I'm not really one to deny the possibility of the paranormal; lord knows i've had one or two experiences, but I think it's important to look at these things with a critical eye. I know we all like to feel special in one way or another, and what's more powerful than realizing that you're the only one with the power to see this phenomenon (even if it does scare the bejeezus out of you). All I can say is, next time you catch a mysterious figure in the corner of your eye, take some time to see what could have caused it.

Inkmonkey
All I can say is, next time you catch a mysterious figure in the corner of your eye, take some time to see what could have caused it.

Every time I see something odd I do try to mull over it in a scientific manner to figure out what MIGHT have caused it. Unfortunately, we as human being can't always find a logical answer.

Glarg
hmmm a comic involving shadow people, i could help ya work out the plot if your still up for it.

Shadow people have always been set to be one of Equinox's main races. Writing for things that scares the shit out of me is the only way I can cope with fear.

PhatScurl
To this day, i still have trouble getting to sleep when i think about the thing at the end of my bed, and the fact that i wasn't the only one who has experienced such a thing makes me curious. I kind of think my house is haunted.

And the disturbing thing is that reports of seeing these things are increasing drastically. Apparently more and more people are finding these shadow people. And it's nice to know that other rational people have seen them. It shows me that I'm not crazy.

Rich
And the disturbing thing is that reports of seeing these things are increasing drastically. Apparently more and more people are finding these shadow people. And it's nice to know that other rational people have seen them. It shows me that I'm not crazy.

That is because the population is growing

Increased Population + Death = More Shadow People.

Does anyone get this sort of thing with sound as well as sight? I hear sounds like voices played backwards.