The Elusive Shadow People

The idea that someone, or something, has invaded the sanctity of your house or bedroom is probably the epitome of nightmare fuel. Thankfully I’ve never had this kind of experience. Coincidentally (or maybe not) many denizens of the paranormal have a penchant for visiting people within their bedrooms. Today however I wish to focus your attention today to The Shadow People. Tracking down the origins of these entities is almost as elusive as sightings of them are. The first time I heard them mentioned was on one of a number of Ghost Hunting websites I used to frequent back in the mid to late 90’s, the URLs to which I’ve long since misplaced. At the time they were often described as a kind of haunting that people would experience. And many seemed to be described as emanating evil, if not outright evil in action or deed.

Accounts from Legend

It should come as no surprise that some cultures around the world have reported the same, or similar, creatures within their myths or worldviews. Just one example is of the Choctaw People, a Native American tribe which was originally located in the states of Mississippi, ALabama, and Louisiana, had a few different shadow-like creatures. Nalusa Falaya, which translates roughly to long black being, is a man shaped being which would frighten hunters and prefered to slither on it’s stomach like a snake in some accounts. Additionally, Choctaw believed that every person had both a shilombish (outside shadow) and a shilup (the inside shadow). Upon death, the shilup is said to go to the land of the ghosts. The shilombish,  is believed to hang around the earth after the passing of the deceased person. This particular figure seems to be more closely related to our modern concept of The Shadow People.

Examples of Encounters

Here are just a few of the more standard accounts of persons who have claimed to have had encounters with The Shadow People. The following stories come from Shadowpeople.org:

Melissa - I was asleep only to immediately wake up and look to the corner of my bedroom, there I saw the figure of a tall man standing and looking at me, I was scared beyond belief, to make things worse I knew he wasn’t human as not only could I make out his shadowy figure in the dark, but I could also see through him, I threw the covers over my head and screamed out in horror until my father ran in, I cried for him to turn on the lights.

Jonas - one night I woke up late and was just staring at the ceiling of the apartment when I began to feel that something just didn't feel right, or like I was being watched. I scanned the room and to my utter shock there stood a Shadow Hat Man at the end of my bed on the left hand side. I have never been so terrified in my entire life. I seriously thought I was going to die of fear. This black mass was a man and he was wearing a wide brim hat and what looked like a cloak of some sort. I couldn't move or speak because I was totally numb with fear.

unnamed person - Not being able to fall asleep, I opened my eyes and looked towards my open bedroom door. There stood a dark figure, about six feet tall with the build of an average sized man. The shadow seemed to be wearing a pea coat or a trench coat. The silhouette was completely featureless in all other respects. It did not move. It just stood there in the doorway, completely silent. I assumed my eyes were playing tricks on me so I felt rather silly when I called out, "Who's there?" and "Hello?" When I got no response, my confusion turned into the most intense and unexplainable fear that I have ever experienced.

The above encounters are only a few of the dozens you can easily find all over the internet. A great place to read similar encounters is Jason Offutt’s blog, From The Shadows.

Variety of Types

One of the interesting aspects of The Shadow People is the variety of types, shapes, and forms with which they are reported. In his 2009 book Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us, author and journalist Jason Offutt details roughly eight different kinds of Shadow People that had been reported to him by various experiencers. Here are just a few of them:

The Hat Man

Maybe one of the creepier shadow people, at least in my opinion. Why in the world is it wearing a hat?

Hooded Figure

Somehow a figure in a hood just doesn’t instil the same fear or creepy-factor in me as one with a hat does. Maybe I’m just desensitized by years of horror movies?

Black Smoke/Mist

Shadow People which are seen in this variety appear to be comprised of their namesake; black smoke or mist. To be fair, I doubt the veracity of the above photo but Google Image search was not kind to my query for "Black Mist Shadow People"

Science has the “answer”!

Modern science has weighed in on the Shadow People and seems to offer a compelling explanation for many, though not all, of the encounters which people have had. It is believed that Sleep Paralysis, accompanied by hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations may account for some of these bedroom visitors. The idea is that during REM sleep, or the state of sleep in which dreams can occur, the body undergoes muscle atonia or a weakening of the muscles. This is so that the body doesn’t act out what is happening in your dreams. In the sleep paralysis state, the REM cycle has been disturbed or interrupted, so that a person is awake but their body is still paralyzed. During this state has been suggested that individuals might experience hypnagogic hallucinations in which they would then see “Shadow People” and really any other kind of nighttime visitor (such as Greys).

The Paranormal Community has an “answer” too! (well, a bunch of them)

Not to be outdone by scientists, the paranormal community has an opinion on what The Shadow People are. However like everything else in this field, if you ask 10 people for their opinion on The Shadow People, you’re going to get 10 different explanations. The usual suspects show up as you might imagine. For more religious-minded folk the Shadow People are clearly demons; they are literally black, usually described as devoid of light, give off “evil vibes”, and show up late at night. For those who spend their time looking up for all the answers, The Shadow People represent a race of ETs who are scoping out the situation and trying to figure us humans out. Ghost hunters see them as kinds of ghosts. Some think they may be time travelers. The list goes on. As with most paranormal things, your phenomenology or “reality tunnel” clearly colors your perceptions of this phenomenon.

Conclusion?

Given that many of the experiences involving The Shadow People  do seem to occur in the bedroom, usually after a person has been woken up from sleep, it’s not hard to see why this explanation is so attractive to scientists or anyone else who wishes to ignore “Damned” data. I could certainly see how some of the encounters with The Shadow People might fall under this explanation, I can’t see it accounting for all of the varied experiences. On the other hand, the paranormal explanations for The Shadow People are as varied as the field is. Aliens, Ghosts, Demons, Time Travelers, you name it, likely someone thinks that what The Shadow People are. Personally I don’t know what to make of these experiences. Regardless of their origin, they are certainly “real” to the people who undergo them. Maybe that’s the only important takeaway from all of this. Until I learn anything differently, I’m going to keep an open mind on The Shadow People. And hope I never encounter one myself, especially The Hat Man! Yeesh.

Working on a 'secret' project tonight

Sorry folks no new post tonight, I am busy working on a Super Secret project with the people over at WhoForted? Speaking of which check out their site. Just to give you an idea of their shenanigans, here is a youtube video of their work.

Words can't even describe

Credit to Disinfo for the find

Trip down memory lane (with Pictures!)

As I have been blogging over the last month or so, it has been made fairly obvious by now that I am not a fan of the ETH. At this point in my journey into all things Fortean I have come to realize that I have no real working theory about UFOs. Sure I like Mac Tonnies' Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis or Jacques Vallee Psychosocial Theory of UFOs. Both excellent theories and I like to entertain both of them, or many others. (Hell I even like Richard Shaver's Deros and Teros[slightly kidding]). It wasn't always like this though. Come with me as we take a little stroll down memory lane.

Along time ago in a galaxy far away, hmm wrong story. Back in my middle school days (which may  surprise you to know were in the late 90's) I was just starting to get interested in the whole UFO/Alien thing. My first entrance into the 'field' was a potential minefield in the form of this book.

That is, in case you can't make it out, Cosmic Voyage by Courtney Brown. This book is a rollicking ride through the authors use of Remote Viewing. Through the course he remote views a number of things such as; Jesus, The Buddha, Ancient Martians, Martians Currently living underground on Earth, and the Galactic Federation. Definitely nothing in that book that screams 'True Believer' (sarcasm). Because of this book I was convinced at the time that Martians had fled to our planet after a natural disaster (which I actually still entertain) and that the Grey aliens were here on behalf of the Galactic Federation in order to save mankind from a nuclear disaster. The book is basically a catch all of every crazy thing that most members of the First Church of Ufology believe in or likely agree with. One of the more out there things that is related in the book was that ascended spirits were influencing the writers of Star Trek in order to prepare humanity for the reality of the ET presence.

It's safe to say that at this point I was a 'True Believer' in the sense that I was convinced our planet was being infiltrated by all manner of ETs. After Cosmic Voyage I tried to find all of the books on UFOs that I could. The next book that I happened upon in a used bookstore was this little gem.

This book was Faces of the Visitors by Kevin Randle and Russ Estes. On the same day that I picked up Faces of the Visitors, I also got this book.

Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs. Both of these books are interesting reads. Alien Agenda was great for a neophyte like I was at the time. It has a little bit of everything in the Ufological arena. MJ-12, Roswell, Area 51, Biblical UFOs, Underground bases, conspiracy theories and just about anything else that you can think of. As for Faces of the Visitors, I don't think I understood at the time the implications of this book. Basically Randle and Estes list a lot of classic UFO/Alien encounters along with an artist's rendition of what the creatures looked like. I guess when I first read it, I must have assumed that all of the entities that are in the book represented the ambassadors of Brown's Galactic Federation. As I have gotten older I think that the variety of shapes and sizes of the Visitor's may more accurately represent the phenomenas fluid, dare I say it almost 'shape-shifting', nature?

Around this same time I happened upon some really interesting figurines that I still have to this day. While other kids may have been playing video games or sports, I was inside reading books on aliens and playing with these action figures.

The top figure had actual come with a spherical silver marble which I apparently lost sometime ago. They were made by Shadowbox, a company that is apparently no longer around. Damn these things are actually worth a pretty decent amount of money. (Hmmm which do I value more nostalgia or cold hard cash? Decisions, decisions). So contrary to how my posts may paint me, I too was once a 'True Believer'. But much like the toys that I have now put away on my shelf to look at fondly as memories of my past, so too have I done away with the ETH.

These days I read voraciously all the books that come out in this field, whether I agree with them or not necessarily. I do this because, not entirely unlike the 'True Believer's', I too am searching for the Truth that is out there. The difference is, I don't think I already have the answer. Instead I am ready to be surprised by whatever it may turn out to be.

Well this concludes our little trip down memory lane, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. If you are missing any items, lost and found can be located on the 2nd floor room 204, also gifts and merchandise are available in the Gift Shop on the 1st floor. Be sure to recommend the 'Tony Morrill Memory Lane' experience to friends and family. Until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean Philosopher Tony saying goodnight and good luck.

They're coming to take me away!

A husband and wife are leaving a party late at night, ahead of them is a simple 45 minute drive home. As they get of the highway on a side road (in order to take a shortcut [likely the husbands idea right ladies?]) the wife suddenly spots an extremely bright light that seems to be trailing the car. The couple goes silent as they listen out for a helicopter or perhaps an airplane. What seems like the next moment the couple is getting out of their car in the driveway to their home. Their clothes appear to be disheveled and turned inside out. Slightly groggy and disoriented the husband looks at his watch and sees that it is now 3 hours later than when the left the party, which is well over 2 hours longer that it should have taken them to get home. Not thinking much about it that night the couple goes to bed. Over the next few days, one or both of them begin to have bizarre nightmares that involve them being strapped onto examination tables with shadowy figures hovering over them. Eventually they may seek some kind of professional assistance in order to determine what has happened them.

The scenario that I have just described to you is likely very familiar to anyone with even a peripheral interest in the subject of Ufology. What is detailed above is a fairly typical 'alien' abduction account. Granted there are variations with each individual version of the story, but thats a good generic retelling of how they usually go down. The 'alien' abduction phenomena is by far one of the more bizarre parts of Ufology. As a matter of fact in the early days of the modern (read post 1947 Kenneth Arnold Sighting but after the Air Force officially “left” the UFO field) UFO enigma, many of the civilian UFO research groups (such as NICAP or APRO) wouldn't even touch these accounts. They were trying to establish a level of credibility for the field to be taken seriously by scientific minds (sound familiar?). At the time it was considered pretty radical just for there to be alien spaceships flitting about the skies of the Earth. But to have an interaction with the occupants, especially of the sometimes overtly sexual connotation, was probably way beyond what they could handle. One of what was certainly the first modern abduction account (more on that in just a moment) that we are aware of from the literature, happened to a Brazilian farmer by the name of Antonio Villas-Boas.

His story, which you can read here in full, involved what would become fairly staple events in the modern abduction phenomena. Being taken aboard a craft, a somewhat sexual encounter, often times a tour of the craft, before finally being let back out. One strange thing about this case that is unlike many others of the modern era, at least that I am aware of, is that at no time did Villas-Boas loose consciousness.  The modern era however is almost entirely made up of people that have, apparently, had their memories altered by the occupants in order to cast some kind of doubt on the validity of the interaction. Likely because of the extremely sexual nature of Villas-Boas' account, it wasn't fully made known to the American public until about 1965 although the events themselves took place in 1957. Sometime in the late 60's and early 70's Ufology began to, perhaps begrudgingly, accept that the abduction phenomena should be looked into further. The phenomena reached an absolute pandemic level during the 80's and 90's, but seems to have somewhat tapered off now.

So what exactly are we dealing with here? Did the aliens get tired of just flying around and buzzing plans in the 50's and decided that they should come and get a piece of the action so to speak? Well that depends on who you ask. If we temporarily take a stroll down ancient folklore lane to the tales of the Fairies, we will find almost an identical scenario being played out. As the stories would go men or women would accidentally enter fairy rings (crop circles?) and find themselves in the realm of the fairies were time often passed quite differently than it did in the mortal realm. In addition to this the old Fairy stories have something even more eerily similar to the modern abduction mythos, that is the concept of the 'Half-ling' or in modern vernacular the Hybrid. You see the Fairy folk were a dying race that needed to interbreed with humanity in order to save their species. Deja Vu?

This has lead some to speculate that the 'aliens' have been here for a really long time. At the same time this has lead others to wonder if perhaps what ever is interacting with us is not 'alien' in the sense that it comes from outside of our planet. Either way the phenomenon is certainly not nearly as straight forward as we may have assumed in the past. Take for instance the compelling research done by Dr. Rick Strassman on DMT, the so called 'Spirit Molecule'. Working under the hypothesis that DMT (dimethyltryptamine) is natural occurring substance located in the pineal gland of human beings, Dr. Strassman was allowed to do the first clinical work on entheogens (psychedelics) in the United States after a 20 year ban on the substances. For more on what all this entailed, please check out his book on the topic. The reason I bring all this up is that during the clinical trials, Dr. Strassman found that some of his patients were reported what would arguably in another circumstance be considered 'alien' abductions. They had all of the same ingredients; the medical examination, the telepathic communication with the others, some sexual aspect to it,  all of it.

With all of this in mind what is the solution to the abduction riddle? Is it simply alien scientists doing 'animal' studies on humanity? Is it the fairies continuing their interbreeding project with us? Or could it simply be some kind of natural chemical in our bodies that are leading to the creation of these accounts? Unfortunately I don't have the answer. I can give my opinion of course, and that is that perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle of all of the above options. Just something to keep in mind the next time you hear someone talking about the alien abduction phenomena. That's all for tonight, until next time this is Tony your friendly neighborhood Fortean Philosopher saying, “Watch the skies.”

P.S. I realized after I finished this post that I had left out the concept of the MILAB or military abduction. This is the theory that most, if not all, supposed alien abductions are in fact staged military psychological operations. I didn't leave this theory out on purpose actually I forgot to include it. This theory has been proposed as the explanation for one of the more famous abduction accounts, namely that of Betty and Barney Hill. Personally given the context of their story, a MILAB actually would make a lot of sense. Of course that doesn't rule out that they were actually taken by ET's or CT's, but its definitely the theory that I am personally leaning towards as a probable explanation. OK, for real this time that's all. Have a great night.