It’s the middle of the night.
You’re sound asleep when suddenly - your eyes pop open.
You’re not sure why - you didn’t hear a noise - but you feel… something.
Is it in the air?
Your room does feel colder than usual.
You look around your room.
Nothing.
Relief washes over you and you start to close your eyes when - there is something there!
A shadow in the corner.
Something that wasn’t there before.
You can’t quite make it out, but it looks human.
It’s so dark you can’t tell.
You pull the blankets up just below your eyes.
It must just be a weird shadow, right?
Or your brain playing tricks on you?
You close your eyes and count to three, you know when you open them it will be gone.
One, two, three.
Phew, it’s gone.
NO!
It’s in the other corner now and it’s coming towards you!
It’s eyes open, glowing red in the dark and staring right at you.
You’re so scared you can’t scream.
You can barely move.
It’s getting closer and closer you reach out and just in time you hit the switch on
your lamp and see…
Your coat rack.
You laugh to yourself.
It does look a little like a person in the dark.
And maybe the eyes you saw were just lights reflecting in from the street outside.
You do a quiet search, just to make sure there’s nothing in your room, but you can’t shake
the feeling that a few minutes ago, you weren’t alone.
It’s not going to be easy to fall asleep again, but you assume you’re safe.
The strange shadow person at the corner of your room begins to fade from your mind.
But you can’t help but feel like that it’s not the last you’ve seen of it...
It’s a week later when you’re on the bus home.
It’s been a long day, and you’re very tired, trying to keep awake but you keep dozing
off when then, out of the corner of your eye, there it is.
On the side of the road you see the same shadowy figure that was in your room, glowing eyes
looking right into yours.
The bus is moving fast, and you only have a second to glimpse its before it disappears,
but your heart is pounding.
You try to put it out of your mind but there it is again on the side of the road!
Is it following you?
Or is there more than one of these shadowy things chasing you?
You don’t want to keep looking, afraid of what you’ll find, so you close your eyes
and wait for your stop.
As you get off, you don’t see anything around you, but you’re not taking any chances as
you run to your home.
Who are these shadow people?
Or more accurately, what are they?
Are you just hallucinating and seeing them when you’re tired, or is something more
sinister going on?
You’re definitely not going to sleep any time soon, so you turn all the lights on and
get on the internet to research.
You google “Shadow People” and start clicking through the results.
You’re not sure what you’re hoping to find, but you learn that you’re definitely
not alone, lots of people report seeing these things, which is good, since it means you’re
not losing your mind.
And the reports aren’t new either.
You feel your chest get tight as you see that people have been talking about shadow people
for hundreds of years, with these mysterious creatures appearing in countless religions,
legends, and belief systems.
There’s lots of different theories, but whatever they are, people have been scared
of them for a very long time.
You’re starting to feel a little better actually, knowing that you aren’t alone
in having seen them, when you click on a website and your heart nearly stops.
There staring back at you, is a picture of the shadow person from your room.
So what are the Shadow People?
Not many mainstream media outlets have talked about them or the possibility that they are
real, usually dismissing them as urban legends, but there’s no shortage of information on
alternative radio devoted to cryptozoology and the supernatural.
The Shadow People first broke into the sort of mainstream in 2001 on the conspiracy theory-centered
radio show Coast to Coast AM, when Art Bell introduced the concept with Native American
elder Harley “SwiftDeer” Reagan.
Bell decided to spice up the show by inviting listeners to submit their own shadow people
stories - and was stunned when hundreds of people wrote in, sending drawings of the supernatural
shadow beings they had supposedly encountered.
Drawings eerily similar to the being you yourself encountered multiple times.
The Shadow People gained a new investigator only a few months later, when paranormal investigator
Heidi Hollis published her first book on Shadow People.
Hollis went further than Bell and Reagan, who normally portrayed the Shadow People as
neutral entities.
Hollis argued that they were hostile alien entities that were stalking us, and claimed
they could flicker in and out of peripheral vision, getting close enough to jump on people’s
chests and choke them..
Many people say they feel a strong hostile energy from these beings, and believe them
to be angry spirits from beyond the grave, stalking the living, while others think they
might be the psychic remnants of inhabitants from another dimension - and that they are
either trying to make first contact with us, or trying to warn us about something.
A theory advanced by the late paranormal writer and researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley is that
they’re something else entirely - a supernatural being known as a Djinn.
These creatures frequently appear in Middle Eastern mythology and are more commonly known
as genies - yes, the kind that grants wishes.
But Djinns aren’t bound to a lamp or a bottle and are filled with magical energy.
These shape-shifting beings can take any form they want, and many believe the shadow people
are remnants of Djinns from ancient times.
Whether they’re a genie spirit or from another dimension on a spirited journey, the abundance
of evidence from shadow people is quite disturbing.
The internet is full of stories of people recounting their experiences with shadow people.
Paranormal investigator Chad Stambaugh even claims to have captured video footage of shadow
people, but the footage is blurry and inconclusive.
A still photograph of a basement in the supposedly haunted Gaslight Inn in Indianapolis shows
a creeping black mass in an otherwise brightly lit room.
[ANIMATION NOTE: USE IMAGE:
]
The most disturbing story of the shadow people comes from the sleep study GR16 which was
supposedly conducted in 1971 at Camden College.
A brief clip claiming to be from the study shows a group of people who said they were
haunted by shadow people in their dreams.
The experiment aimed to track their brain patterns, but, according to the story, something
went horribly wrong, and the shadow people killed the subjects.
But no records of this study exist beyond some unsubstantiated video clips.
The more you look into the Shadow People, the more you’re left with questions and
no answers.
One of the strangest elements of shadow people is how closely one person's description matches
that of others.
They’re almost all the same - a shadowy, vaguely human-like figure lurking just far
enough away from the person that it can’t be made out clearly.
Many people report glowing red or yellow eyes staring at them.
Some of the shadows look more like an amorphous blob, as in the case of the famous phantom
at the Gaslight Inn, which resembled a creeping mass slowly expanding over the basement.
But many others report a clearer, more disturbing figure which has come to be known as the Hat
Man.
This is a distinctly humanoid figure, dressed in a black three-piece suit, wearing a black
hat.
His eyes glow red, and he holds a pocket watch that he occasionally checks - as if he’s
waiting for something... or someone.
He’s very tall, at least six feet, but he’s also been described as being up to ten feet
tall.
Many people believe the Hat Man could be linked to the popular urban legend Slender Man, another
abnormally tall, sharp-dressed monster with ties to supernatural terror.
Most people thankfully only encounter the shadow people for brief moments, seeing them
out of the corner of their eye or in the dark corners of rooms, only for them to disappear
when the light falls on them.
But some people have had longer and far more terrifying experiences that suggest there
may be some truth to these encounters.
Author Daniel Pinchbeck, a paranormal expert reported that he began seeing other-dimensional
beings that resembled the shadow people.
Pinchbeck believes that he was able to see into another dimension, and that somehow these
creatures came back with him - haunting him for weeks before they stopped and he was able
to return to his normal life.
But not everyone believes that the shadow people are a supernatural entity.
Scientists who have analyzed the sightings propose a much more down-to-earth explanation
- that these shadow beings are a product of our mind playing tricks on us.
The most common times for people to see shadow people are when they’re under intense emotion,
isolated, or very tired.
The mind is experiencing heightened stress at this point, so mundane things, like a coat
rack or a shadow, become a potential threat.
Sleep paralysis, which is where the body’s motor functions take longer to wake up than
the mind, also causes hallucinations that can take the form of shadowy, demonic figures
and may be the origin of the mysterious figures.
Two more factors that might be influencing shadow people sightings include sleep deprivation
and addiction.
Dr. Jack Potts has studied those addicted to substances that keep them in a heightened
state of awareness and keep them from falling asleep, and he observed that they became paranoid
and conspiratorial.
They kept reporting hallucinations of people following them, and believed them to be supernatural
beings that posed a danger to them.
While descriptions of these beings varied, many of them matched up with the descriptions
we see over and over for shadow people.
Potts believes the shadow people are our body’s natural reaction to stress, albeit a terrifying
one, rather than a true supernatural phenomenon.
But if that was the case, why have so many people, even those who have no substance abuse
issues or bouts of sleep paralysis, seemingly spotted them out of nowhere?
One thing’s for sure, the Shadow People have captured the attention of everyone who
loves ghost stories and paranormal phenomena.
These mysterious creatures have shown up in countless movies and TV shows, with perhaps
the most famous appearance being in an episode of the rebooted The Twilight Zone in 1985.
In the episode, titled “The Shadow Man”, the Shadow Person lived under the bed of a
teenage boy and was a danger to everyone besides him - until the twist ending.
The 2013 film Shadow People spun out of the legendary GR16 sleep study, dramatizing it
with terrifying results.
And plenty of popular video games have you encounter the shadow people as enemies, giving
gamers a brief taste of these terrifying beings without letting them get too close - we hope.
Sightings go back decades, and hundreds of people are giving very similar reports of
encounters just like the ones you experienced.
But as you give up on your internet investigation for the evening, what still hasn’t been
answered for you is whether this is something mundane, or truly a supernatural encounter.
Was your mind playing tricks on you, or are there actually otherworldly beings stalking
you?
It’s late, and you have an early start tomorrow so you turn off the lights and get into bed.
Your eyes are heavy and you can feel yourself drifting off to sleep when your eyes fall
on the corner of the room again.
Is that your coat rack, or something else?
“No” you tell yourself “it’s just the coatrack… or is it?”
Is it a shadow person, or just your mind playing tricks on you?
You pull the covers over your head and decide it’s best not knowing.
“Well” you think, “maybe just a peak.”
You slowly lower the covers and open your eyes.
You will yourself to roll over and look at the coatrack in the corner.
As you turn your head you see it.
Two glowing red eyes, inches away from your face.
Looking for more videos on unexplained phenomena?
Check out “New Video Evidence that Proves Ghosts Are Real”.
Or check out “Horrifying Unsolved Internet Mysteries” for more on the darkest secrets
of the web.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time!