Shadow person

For other things named Shadowman, see Shadowman (disambiguation).

Shadow person

Shadow people (also known as shadow men, shadow folk, or shadow beings) are supernatural shadow-like creatures of both modern folklore and paranormal popular culture that believers claim appear as dark forms seen mostly in peripheral vision. Anecdotal reports of shadow people occupy a similar role in popular culture to ghost sightings.

Paranormal popular culture

Authors such as Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Heidi Hollis have helped popularize the concept through books, articles and appearances on radio talk shows devoted to paranormal subjects such as Coast to Coast AM where listeners are invited to call in to relate stories and "sightings". Shadow people are typically described as black humanoid silhouettes with no discernible mouths, noses, or facial expressions, child-sized humanoids, or shapeless masses that sometimes change to human like form and featuring eyes that are either glowing or not discernable. Movement is said to be quick and disjointed, and some stories describe the visible outline of a cloak, or a 1930s style fedora hat.

Various authors and paranormal-themed web sites have drawn beliefs and speculation regarding shadow people from religion, parapsychology, metaphysics, cryptozoology, demonology, and the occult, proposing that shadow people represent a Thoughtform (egregore), ghost or demon that was created by events in which extreme physical/emotional stress/trauma has taken place, have been purposefully summoned through black magic or other occult practices, or are creatures who exist on a separate plane of existence that occasionally overlaps with ours. Others believe shadow people are two-dimensional beings, are related to Grey aliens, or to the Reptilian humanoids found in conspiracy beliefs such as those promoted by David Icke.

Scientific explanations

Several principles based in science can be used to explain reports of shadow people, including optical illusions or hallucinations brought on by physiological/psychological circumstances, drug use, and the interaction of external agents on the human body.

Images seen in peripheral areas of vision can be caused by pareidolia, a condition in which the brain incorrectly interprets random patterns of light/shadow or texture as being familiar patterns such as faces and human forms. The same condition can also be observed in macular vision in low light conditions, or when viewing a complex but random image. A common example would be perceiving a shadow, thrown by an item of furniture in a darkened room, as being a person.

Hypnagogia, also known as "waking-sleep", a physiological condition in which a person is part-way between sleeping and waking, can also account for such perceptions. During hypnagogia, a person can be conscious and aware of their environment, but also in a dream-like state where they can perceive images from their subconscious. People experiencing waking-sleep commonly report the sensation of lights or shadows moving around them, as well as other visual hallucinations. A feeling of dread is also a sensation that occurs when experiencing hypnagogia. Hypnagogia is sometimes known as 'the faces in the dark phenomenon' because those who experience this state commonly report seeing faces while experiencing waking-sleep. Similar hypotheses have been put forward linking this condition to a number of other apparent paranormal experiences, including alien abductions, paranormal nocturnal visitations, and religious experiences such as contact with angels or demons.

Popular culture

• Keith Parker's Shadow People, an independent suspense/horror feature from Tornspace Films features shadow people as the villain.
• "The Shadow People" was the title of a 1953 episode of Hall of Fantasy, an American horror old time radio program that dealt with beings very similar to modern shadow people.
• Wes Craven's They explores the concept of shadow people; first as a psychological phenomenon, then as a paranormal event.
• Charles Bryan's Shadow Beings explores the concept of shadow beings as a phenomenon of beings trapped in-between the parallel worlds that make up our multiverse. They cannot exist in our world physically, thus they appear as shadows.
• In the novel Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, the protagonist of the same name sees malevolent, insubstantial shadowy entities that feed on the suffering of the dead and dying.
• In the 2001 Japanese film Kairo, and the subsequent American remake Pulse, majority of the "ghosts" that infiltrate the human realm appear as distorted shadows.
• In the movie, The Eye with Jessica Alba, the "escorts" resemble Shadow People. They would escort the ghosts of the dead and were shadowy in nature with a horrible feel to them.
• In the 2007 film The Deaths of Ian Stone, the "Harvesters" appear as shadowy beings, unseen by the public.
• The movie Ghost depicts these things as agents of Hell who take evil souls to Hell.
• In David Wong's novel John Dies at the End, malevolent extra-dimensional "shadow people" are slowly taking over the planet and re-shaping it to fit their own purposes.
• Peter Hammond's "Sapphire and Steel" TV series uses regular appearances of shadow-people interchangeably as either an extra-dimensional crossing of a character into or out of our dimension, also using 'darkness' as a focal point - a sinister gestalt malevolence.
• The book Convergence: When the Living Clash with the Dead features a man who says he encountered numerous shadow people accompanied by a bizarre sound near an abandoned slaughterhouse in Marlboro, New Jersey.

The pre-scientific Ancient Egyptian Civilization accepted shadows as having consciousness. Of the nine parts of the Egyptian personality, two were about the shadow. The Khaibit (the shadow of the physical body) which never leaves the carcass, and The Ka (the doppelganger) the shadow of the soul that moves freely about the Earth and the stars are interpreted as phenomena such as lucid dreaming or the out-of-the-body-experience in terms of human perception.

stephen hawking:

Hawking and his colleagues are toying with yet another mind-boggling concept to try to explain what is meant by these hidden dimensions of space. They call it a "brane" world, which takes it name from the membranes of biology.

Since about 1994, the concept of curling up the extra dimensions of space into branes has grown in importance. If particles can be viewed as occupying points in space, and strings are seen as lines, then branes are two dimensional, or even higher-dimensional, entities.

In this concept, a 2-brane entity is like a two-dimensional membrane. Hawking and his colleagues believe that the universe may be like such a brane - and it is expanding like the surface of an inflated balloon.

"The idea is that matter and light would be confined to the brane so we cannot travel through or see through the extra dimensions," said Hawking.

One implication is that there are aspects of the universe that we cannot see - which is indeed the case because 95 per cent of the material of the universe is invisible, which is why it is called dark matter. "There could be shadow galaxies, shadow stars and even shadow people," Hawking said.

See also

• Hypnagogia
• Shade (mythology)
• Wraith

In Fiction

• Heidi Hollis (2001), "The Secret War: The Heavens Speak of the Battle," Writers Club Press, ISBN 0-595-20331-0

External links

• "The Shadows" at UFO2U.com
• Book: "Who (or what) are the Shadow Beings?" Melissa Brume
• Paranormal Phenomena: Shadow People About.com October 2006
• Ghoststudy: encounters & experiences, (October 2006)
• "Superspectrum Blues: The trans-electromagnetic nature of elements of the Fortean continuum...", by Mizrach Steve (October 2006)