Awesome Or Off-Putting: Shadow People

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Every week in this feature we bring you weird stories about the types of things you see in the paragraph above. We’ve talked about bigfoot, aliens. ghosts and a ton of other other-worldly oddities. The only one that really spooks us is today’s topic - shadow people.

Shadow people are just what they sound like - a dark outline of a person seen walking across a wall, a door, or even through trees. The one individually recognised around the world is the Hat-man, so named because he always seems to be wearing a bowler. Perhaps the reason it spooks us so bad is because we know a lot of people who have seen them.

Today we bring you a few stories of these things, along with a video of people describing their encounters. So, you know, curl up in your jammies and enjoy.

Shadow people, according to Wikipedia, are:

“…supernatural shadow-like creatures of both modern folklore and traditional native American beliefs. According to folklore, they appear as dark forms in the peripheries of people’s vision and disintegrate, or move between walls, when noticed.

“Reports of shadow people occupy a similar position in the popular consciousness to ghost sightings, but differ in that shadow people are not reported as having human features, wearing modern/period clothing, or attempting to communicate. Witnesses also do not report the same feelings of being in the presence of something that ‘was once human’. Some individuals have described being menaced, chased, or in some rare instances, attacked by shadow people. There have also been reports of shadow people appearing in front of witnesses, of which they stay there or lingering for several seconds before disappearing. Witnesses report that encounters are typically accompanied by a feeling of dread.”

They’re usually described as being seen out of the corner of your eye. It’s only a second that they’re there, but witnesses can’t deny it. Here are a few encounter-samples from the Shadow People Archives. (All quotes [sic])

Sample #1:

“[My] first unmistakable encounter with a “shadow being” was sometime in late 1987. My door would mysteriously come ajar during the middle of the night. And I would have to get up and close it. This happened dozens of times. Then one night when I went to get up to close it I saw a tall shadow with a fedora hat standing on the other side of the door. It was blacker than the darkness around it, featureless and was staring right at me. Terrified, and feeling I had no place to run, I picked up a screw driver and lunged at the figure. As I did this it slipped into the wall to the right of me within a split second! It made no sound and went through a solid wall. I was so frightened I thought I was going to die.”

Sample #2:

“One nite when I was about 16 yrs old, I lay in bed trying to fall asleep. I heard a faint sweeping sound, as if someone was slowly sweeping a floor. As I look around, see nothing so I lay back down. The sound stops and I finally go to sleep, but abruptly awoken by something covering my mouth and nose. I could not breathe. As I look at what is there, I see a 7 foot tall jet-black shadowy figure standing over me, pushing on my chest. I remember not being able to get up; it was very strong. I started seeing sliver and red and everything went black. When I came to, it was gone, but I hear that sweeping sound again. I lay there afraid to move, afraid to breathe. The sound faded away. And I get brave enough to run to my mother’s room. When I tell her what had happened she told me it was bad dream.

“Now when I turn about 25, I start seeing black shadowy human figures out my side view. When I look right straight at them, they disappear. I tell my mother about them and she tells me that she has seen them too. She did not want to scare me by telling me that the night I awoke, she awoke also but felt being choked instead of feeling pressure on her chest. She sees them a lot.”

Sample #3:

“…This one time though, I actually had a physical encounter with one of the creatures. I was about twelve at the time and was starting to see them more frequently (I assume they somehow knew we were moving soon). One night, I saw one of them appear on the wall farthest away from my bed (I’m still not sure if there was only one or many that “visited” me, I always just saw one at a time). This one started making it’s way across my wall towards my dresser, it was moving faster than any of the ones I had saw before. Once it got to my dresser, it kind of casted itself on to my dresser and continued moving toward me in the same fashion. I felt paralyzed and couldn’t move even though I knew it was coming towards me. Once it got to my bed I stood up and jumped to the corner (my bed was up against two walls).

“I remember trying to find a way off my bed so I could run out of my room, but once it casted itself onto my bed it’s “legs” spread all the way to the end so that I couldn’t get off without stepping on it. I saw it’s arm move up the wall beside me and touch my shoulder. I could feel it’s hand. It was a terrible sensation, at first it felt cold and numb, but then it started to feel like it was squeezing my shoulder without actually causing an indention. I can’t really explain what it felt like in full detail, it was something in a class of it’s own.

“I had my eyes closed and waited for in too go away. After about two minutes I opened them again and saw that the image had gotten much more darker than it was before. I panicked, tore away from it and ran to the basement. I slept in the basement with the lights on that night, but kept fearing that the shadow person would follow me. I slept in my room the next night and didn’t see anymore images until the night before we moved, but thankfully none of them came near me.”

There you have it. Three particularly spooky encounters to make you feel warm and cozy when you turn the lights out at the end of the day. As if that wasn’t enough, here’s a video to keep you feeling especially cozy.

You were gonna be up at night anyway, right?