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As Above So Below
Mysterious Shadow People Lurking in the Bedroom
One of the weirdest phenomena of the paranormal world is that of what are called Shadow People. The term Shadow People covers a wide range of ghostly phenomena involving mysterious vague specters that seem to lurk just on the periphery of our perceptions for reasons that are unknown, often just appearing to watch or observe. Although descriptions vary, they are typically said to be very tall and thin, all black like a humanoid shadow, generally male in shape and with indistinct features, and often appearing almost 2 dimensional in nature, as if projections that lack any real substance. I
t’s not uncommon for them to be described as wearing thick cloaks or capes of old fashioned designs, and tall, brimmed hats are often reported as well. Although no facial features are typically noted, some accounts mention glowing eyes. Generally, they are only fleetingly glimpsed, often out of the corner of the eye, seeming to fade or vanish when directly observed, but not always. Although they usually look like a shadowy silhouette of a man, they can also be more amorphous masses, mists, or blobs, sometimes shifting shapes right before a witness’ eyes.
Shadow People are most commonly seen as merely observing, rarely if ever interacting with people or the world around them, and although they don’t seem to do anything to any negative effect they are almost always reported as possessing a malevolent or sinister air about them, emanating a sense of foreboding and dread. They are also known to vanish or flee when detected, and as scary as they are, Shadow People are mostly seen as rather shy and harmless in the grand scheme of things. Yet some encounters can be very intense and terrifying, and among some of the most frightening of these are accounts when these entities appear in homes, often looming over the bed of a sleeping person, who usually wakes to see the demonic looking figure standing there, and finds themselves paralyzed with fear or held in place by some unknown force.
Such weird reports are rather numerous, and share some similarities and common traits in that the witness is faced with a mysterious black figure standing in their room and overcome with a sensation of overwhelming dread, terror, and of being helpless or unable to move. One Reddit account is a good example of this type of report, and comes from a witness who wasn’t even asleep when the paranormal came for him. He says that he had just taken a shower and was settling into bed when things took a turn for the bizarre, which he describes as follows:
Another tale typical of bedroom Shadow People encounters is told by another witness who says that in the days leading up to her experience she had been plagued by feelings of being watched at night as she lay in her bed, of scarcely glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye, and that there was an anomalous feeling of negativity and coldness emanating from her closet and mirror. She tried to put this out of her mind, thinking that she was just tired and that it was her imagination playing tricks on her, but then one night it would apparently turn out to be anything but. She says:
Interestingly, whatever this entity was seems to have followed her when she moved away and began living with three roommates. At first there were no further incidents, and she began to feel as though she may have left the strange occurrences behind, but she would soon see that she was wrong. Not only was it back, but it seemed to be becoming more ominous and threatening. The witness goes on to say of this:
It is all quite horrific and full of existential dread, and the incident had such an impact on him that Matt has done a great deal of research into the phenomenon. In some instances, more than one Shadow Person are witnessed, such as in the frightening case relayed by a witness and self-proclaimed medium on The Ghost Diaries, who says he began waking up at night to see faces peering at him from the dark, usually two or three of them. This went on for several years, but he claims that he learned to control it with his abilities of mediumship. The witness explains:
One such report comes from a Reddit poster who says his experience happened to him as a child as he was staying at his uncle’s house. This house apparently had a shadowy black figure that was sometimes said to stare out of the closet of the bedroom, something which his friends had seen and which had disturbed them to the point that they refused to stay over. The witness tells of the series of strange events that followed:
There is also the idea that these frightening figures and sensations experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis could be not just a misfiring of the brain or hyper realistic dreans, but rather have a more paranormal origin. Matt Cardin, who as we have seen has had his own encounters with these nighttime intruders, speaks about this at length in a great article called Shadow Visitors: Sleep paralysis and Discarnate Dark Ones, which delves deep into sleep paralysis and the paranormal, and includes an interesting part from a book by Louis Proud titled Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences, of which Cardin says:
As to what they might want, it is impossible to tell, but their generally observing nature suggests that they may be just watchers studying us for inscrutable purposes or even bystanders somehow caught up in the phenomenon themselves, every bit as startled and perplexed as we are. Are these shadow beings lurking out there on the periphery of our reality, peering in at us even as we peer out at them, or the other way around? Or is this really all just the result of hallucinations caused by sleep disorders, trauma, psychological conditions, or sleeplessness? It seems that wherever the answer might lie, it is certainly not something one wants to see looming over you as you sleep.
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One of the weirdest phenomena of the paranormal world is that of what are called Shadow People. The term Shadow People covers a wide range of ghostly phenomena involving mysterious vague specters that seem to lurk just on the periphery of our perceptions for reasons that are unknown, often just appearing to watch or observe. Although descriptions vary, they are typically said to be very tall and thin, all black like a humanoid shadow, generally male in shape and with indistinct features, and often appearing almost 2 dimensional in nature, as if projections that lack any real substance. I
t’s not uncommon for them to be described as wearing thick cloaks or capes of old fashioned designs, and tall, brimmed hats are often reported as well. Although no facial features are typically noted, some accounts mention glowing eyes. Generally, they are only fleetingly glimpsed, often out of the corner of the eye, seeming to fade or vanish when directly observed, but not always. Although they usually look like a shadowy silhouette of a man, they can also be more amorphous masses, mists, or blobs, sometimes shifting shapes right before a witness’ eyes.
Shadow People are most commonly seen as merely observing, rarely if ever interacting with people or the world around them, and although they don’t seem to do anything to any negative effect they are almost always reported as possessing a malevolent or sinister air about them, emanating a sense of foreboding and dread. They are also known to vanish or flee when detected, and as scary as they are, Shadow People are mostly seen as rather shy and harmless in the grand scheme of things. Yet some encounters can be very intense and terrifying, and among some of the most frightening of these are accounts when these entities appear in homes, often looming over the bed of a sleeping person, who usually wakes to see the demonic looking figure standing there, and finds themselves paralyzed with fear or held in place by some unknown force.
Such weird reports are rather numerous, and share some similarities and common traits in that the witness is faced with a mysterious black figure standing in their room and overcome with a sensation of overwhelming dread, terror, and of being helpless or unable to move. One Reddit account is a good example of this type of report, and comes from a witness who wasn’t even asleep when the paranormal came for him. He says that he had just taken a shower and was settling into bed when things took a turn for the bizarre, which he describes as follows:
It is interesting to note that this encounter happened when the witness was totally awake, making it unlikely that it was all just the result of a bad dream. A similar experience of a witness who would see this phenomenon while awake was reported on Yahoo Answers by an Adam Norton, who relays the strange incidents experienced by his brother-in-law, Victor, of which he says:
Another tale typical of bedroom Shadow People encounters is told by another witness who says that in the days leading up to her experience she had been plagued by feelings of being watched at night as she lay in her bed, of scarcely glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye, and that there was an anomalous feeling of negativity and coldness emanating from her closet and mirror. She tried to put this out of her mind, thinking that she was just tired and that it was her imagination playing tricks on her, but then one night it would apparently turn out to be anything but. She says:
There is also the experience of a witness from Ireland who gives her experience on Your Ghost Stories. She claims that she had been haunted by these occurrences for about 4 years, and that they had started rather suddenly, for no discernible reason. It began rather innocuously enough, with the feeling of eyes upon her or of someone being in the room when no one was around, and there was also the odd fact that this bedroom was always noticeably colder than the rest of the house, but it would rapidly escalate from there, and she says of the unfolding bizarreness:
Interestingly, whatever this entity was seems to have followed her when she moved away and began living with three roommates. At first there were no further incidents, and she began to feel as though she may have left the strange occurrences behind, but she would soon see that she was wrong. Not only was it back, but it seemed to be becoming more ominous and threatening. The witness goes on to say of this:
Some of these experiences can be quite disturbing and very sinister, with a distinct, hovering sense that these entities mean us harm, despite not actually doing anything to that effect. A very scary account was given by a witness named Matt Cardin on the site Teeming Brain. The experience allegedly happened in 1993, and was so distressful and terrifying that it has stayed with him ever since. He says:
It is all quite horrific and full of existential dread, and the incident had such an impact on him that Matt has done a great deal of research into the phenomenon. In some instances, more than one Shadow Person are witnessed, such as in the frightening case relayed by a witness and self-proclaimed medium on The Ghost Diaries, who says he began waking up at night to see faces peering at him from the dark, usually two or three of them. This went on for several years, but he claims that he learned to control it with his abilities of mediumship. The witness explains:
It would perhaps be easy to explain such accounts away by saying that this is all the result of a phenomenon called “sleep paralysis,” wherein a person wakes to feel as if they cannot move, often infused with terror, and usually sensing something inhuman in the room with them. It could also be indicative of a state called hypnogajah, which is a realm between sleep and wakefulness during which “waking dreams” can occur, or some other sleeping disorder. This is all mostly written off as having a neurological basis, and that it is more or less all in the head of the one experiencing it, but this does little to explain cases in which the witness was awake at the time, and certainly cannot explain accounts in which more than one person have seen the same entity, of which there are a few.
One such report comes from a Reddit poster who says his experience happened to him as a child as he was staying at his uncle’s house. This house apparently had a shadowy black figure that was sometimes said to stare out of the closet of the bedroom, something which his friends had seen and which had disturbed them to the point that they refused to stay over. The witness tells of the series of strange events that followed:
There is also the idea that these frightening figures and sensations experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis could be not just a misfiring of the brain or hyper realistic dreans, but rather have a more paranormal origin. Matt Cardin, who as we have seen has had his own encounters with these nighttime intruders, speaks about this at length in a great article called Shadow Visitors: Sleep paralysis and Discarnate Dark Ones, which delves deep into sleep paralysis and the paranormal, and includes an interesting part from a book by Louis Proud titled Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences, of which Cardin says:
The whole article is rather fascinating and I recommend you read it, but for our purposes here the idea is that these entities are perhaps very real, and are coming between some veil that separates us through the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. It is a pretty weird concept, and it invites speculation on whether they actually cause the sleep paralysis or merely use it as a gateway, as well as the matter of, if these things are real, then what exactly are they and what do they want? If they exist, then some of the theories as to their nature are that they are ghosts or demons, as well as the idea already stated that they are things from some other parallel reality, a different dimension.
As to what they might want, it is impossible to tell, but their generally observing nature suggests that they may be just watchers studying us for inscrutable purposes or even bystanders somehow caught up in the phenomenon themselves, every bit as startled and perplexed as we are. Are these shadow beings lurking out there on the periphery of our reality, peering in at us even as we peer out at them, or the other way around? Or is this really all just the result of hallucinations caused by sleep disorders, trauma, psychological conditions, or sleeplessness? It seems that wherever the answer might lie, it is certainly not something one wants to see looming over you as you sleep.
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