“When you are in the light, everything will follow you. But when you enter dark, even your own shadow will not follow you.”
Is that so?
Now, let your imagination run riot for a second. Focus as you read this. You enter your apartment after a day’s work, drained and famished. You run into your room and collapse straight into your bed. There’s nothing you want to do apart from fiddling with your beeping phone, and there’s not another person in the house to nag you to get up, take your shower, or eat. You are alone in the house, and that’s how you like it.
Suddenly, you see a shadowy mist emerging from the corner of your eye. You look rightwards to find nothing and shake your head in sheer disbelief, obviously. You are back to the bustle of social networking. Then, again you feel something hovering behind your back. You find there’s nothing again.
Only this time, it actually makes you feel a little scared. You clutch on to your online friends for the sake of a virtual company to defy this fear set in your loneliness. Time passes by, and again, you feel that “something's” moving around you in a form your eyes can’t see, but your body can ardently feel.
You feel too scared even to take a step forward; maybe you are not entirely alone in the house. And then, suddenly, it emerges before you- a walking shadow, a patch of jet-black darkness, a humanoid form, literally nothing but a shadow, sans body. What could you do in the confrontation of a shadow-person?
Shadow People
Shadow people; a great paranormal case-study and a psychological and purely physical horror for too many people worldwide.
Who Are They?
As several authorities on paranormal studies state, there’s no definition to circumscribe who or what a shadow-person is. Some common characteristics, however, can be pointed out-
As the name suggests, they are a mass of pure mist of jet-black.
They keep recurring in popular culture as a shadowy-figure in the hat, or wrapped in cloth; sometimes also without legs.
They remain as elusive as the shadow they embody.
At first, they seemed to me a too-good-to-be-true-case, robed and hatted, tailor-made for comic books. Yet there are thousands of publications and more than lakhs of real people attesting to genuine encounters with these mysterious creatures!
Is There Some Science Behind the Shadow-People?
Authors like Jason Duffut explain the science behind it in his popular book, 'Darkness Walks.' Scientists believe it could be an extra-terrestrial body, belonging to another territory and dimension, composed of a matter not visible to the human eye. Belonging to a different frequency, which our human vision escapes, they emerge before us like shadows. While we cannot trace X-rays or gamma rays, it’s a fact they exist.
These facts continue to be heavily argued in several journals on parapsychology. Expert Rosemary Guilley makes the classifier, “Ultraterrestrial,” which suggests they could be from a parallel dimension belonging to the Earth itself. She classifies this shadow-people as forms of another smokey, shape-shifting being haunting the Arabian folklore, the Djinn. While she points out they are not ghosts; she defines them as, “One of the most common, most mysterious and most scary of all paranormal experiences.”
Yet on the other side of the spectrum, are other possible theories to explain this inexplicable phenomenon-
Hallucination, under the effect of medication or neurological conditions.
Pareidolia, where the brain interprets the light received from our peripheral vision, incorrectly and attributes certain familiar characteristics like shadows or human faces.
Hypnagogia, wherein the dream-like state, our awareness of our surroundings fused with subconscious images creates such horrifying imagery. All of this connotes to one factor, our fear of the unknown and our tendency to label “demonic” images to them.
While it is impossible to reach the truth, here are some stories, first-hand accounts that insist upon their existence:
Michigan’s Other Side
The Felt Mansion in Michigan was built in the 1920s by inventor Dorr E. Felt for his wife Agnes, who died soon without basking in its lavish interiors. Years later, restoration projects were undertaken, and the mansion became the hub of “ghost tours” after paranormal activities were reported, possibly of the dead Mrs. Felt.
On one such tour, a visitor recalls how he had seen a certain Tom Maat standing next to a fountain beside a strange-looking someone and being very friendly. Upon being asked, the latter announced he was standing all alone and saw none! But, this only confirmed his yesternight feeling that someone was around him.
The Intruder
Tom’s first encounter with these entities happened at his parent’s house. He was lying on his bed at night when suddenly, a huge figure of shadow walked in through the door. He felt like it was a dream until the figure came close and leaned over him and then straightened up and back and forth. This went for a minute. Tom felt paralyzed, unable even to utter a sound. In no time, by gathering all the force he contained, he kicked right through the figure with a loud scream!
His parents ran to his room to find no one. He, too, never had to encounter another episode of haunting and therefore thought it was a simple illusion until he had come to stay back in that room again which happened, post his college life.
Silenced
Tauni was lying on her bed, trying to sleep while her parents were in the next room. They had been complaining of her increased reports of nightmares and strange activities, that they believed were after-effects of too much television and often laughed off.
That night as she woke up to the sound of her window blinds shutting back and forth, she saw on the opposite wall, the shadow of a mysterious dark human-shaped entity at the window. His eyes were so red that it glowed on the wall. Tauni was stiff as a rock, and finally, with a pounding heart and dripping cold sweat, she screamed at her highest pitch.
Her parents came rushing in and without hearing a word consoled her that it was a nightmare. She kept on insisting it was real. All that she saw and felt were shut up time and again until she stopped communicating her fears and episodes of being haunted.
Check out this video to know more about such experiences:
Do shadow people exist? Why would the sufferers lie? Do the paranormal entities have no relation to science, and they have their presence on the Earth? The puzzle is just getting tough and tougher. What's your take on this?
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