The real evidence of the paranormal: 2013

Shadow People: Attacks On Humans Increasing
Legendary radio host Art Bell's intrigued by them, neurologists dismiss them, psychologists laugh about them. But now grim researchers are investigating startling cases of the mysterious, faceless entities called Shadow People that are relentlessly attacking unwary humans.

Horror-stricken Australian Anne Williams claims a shadow person attempted to rape her.

Photo of alleged Shadow People next to a tree

The appalling incident started years ago with glimpses of something dark hiding behind trees, darting around corners, or fleeing a room as she entered.

The sightings escalated gradually until they became a daily event and her brief glimpses transformed into full views of nightmarish things.

Then her paranormal experiences began to escalate until they reached a crescendo of screaming fear.

The night the shadow attacked

Imagine cowering helpless in your bed, paralyzed with fear, fully awake, helplessly watching something dark and silent creeping inexorably towards you. That's what Williams claims she encountered.Some have dismissed her nocturnal attack as nothing but sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming, but she insists the bizarre attack left her bruised, scratched and emotionally shaken. She swears she didn't imagine the sinister thing fondling her, tearing back the bed covers, and roughly groping her.Even as it happened she knew she was being sexually molested and while the experience terrorized her then, it completely sickens her now.

Shadow People often appear when least expected

According to researcher Jason Offutt Williams testifies that “One early morning I felt so strongly that there was a presence standing next to my left as my bed was right in the corner of the wall. I felt as though I was blocked, like something was standing over me or wanted to scare me.”

This is a classic encounter with an entity that appears in the middle of the night.

“As I opened my eyes to see what the hell it was, there stood on my left side of the bed a black cloaked hooded figure."

The ghastly thing leaned over her, pinned her to the bed and grabbed her neck when she attempted to scream. When she tried to push it away it savagely pinned her to the bed and then began groping her and hurting her.

“I felt that it shoved its arm down [on] my neck and was choking me as nothing came out of my mouth,” she explained. “Like no noise. I could not even hear myself scream, but I was.”

Finally, after what seemed an interminable struggle, the being left. After the attack, Williams felt enraged, soiled, and frightened. Upon learning the details of the incident, Williams' mother speculated that the entity may have been the evil ghost of a dead rapist.

But the being Anne Williams encountered in her bedroom was no ghostly entity; it was a shadow person.

Photo of a shadow person standing in doorway

Other witnesses encountering Shadow People also describe physical attacks leaving them with scratches, bruises, even burns.

Attacks by Shadow People on human victims can range from being stalked and chased to being attacked with weapons.

On rare occasions Shadow People stalking a victim have been witnessed by friends and family.

Not all Shadow People are the same

Paranormal researcher, Rosemary Ellen Guiley says of the phenomenon, "There are different types of Shadow People. The core, dominant experience is the nighttime bedroom visitor: a tall silhouette of a man, often dressed in a coat or cape, and a brimmed hat. The figure is blacker than black and 3D, obstructing light and blocking the view of objects. There are no facial features or eyes (sometimes red eyes are reported), but the experiencer knows he is being observed with great intensity. The figures do not communicate, but often radiate a malevolent, trickster, or evil intent."

What are Shadow People?

The perception of Shadow People differs depending on the researchers and their specialties.

Some experts believe that the sightings have little to do with reality, but are simply people's minds playing tricks. Others think seeing a shadow person is evidence of a neurological anomaly in the region of the brain that governs sight.

Imagination may play a role in some Shadow People experiences, argue other experts, while those with strong religious beliefs assert that the appearance of these things are nothing less than manifestations from the dimension called Hell: demonic creatures sent by Satan to torment and terrorize humans.

Victims often report that calling on God or Jesus to help them wards off an attack.

Although experts disagree over exactly what Shadow People are, where they come from, and how they manifest themselves, strangely witnesses from every culture and throughout history tend to describe something similar. Certain traits repeat themselves.

The most ubiquitous feature present in many of the reports of Shadow People encounters describe a tall, mannish-looking entity that, curiously, wears a wide-brimmed hat.

A faceless entity that wears a hat is high strangeness indeed.

Famed paranormal researcher Heidi Hollis says she created the name "Hatman" to differentiate sightings of dark, featureless entities seen wearing hats. She says those beings are often described as wearing long dusters or trenchcoats and 1940s style, or Hispanic gaucho type hats.

If the beings actually exist, and witnesses swear they do, then the likely source of their origin is a nearby universe or parallel dimension.

The Lurking Shadow People

“This scares me and I don’t know what it is. I have been seeing them since I was a little girl. Always outta the corner of my eye a tall black shadow. I always feel like something or someone is by me. Last night I went down to my bedroom. There it was. Standing next to my dresser. I ran upstairs crying to my mom. She went down and looked saying it was only ’cause I was overtired. But I KNOW what I saw. It was so scary. I don’t know what it is. I need all the help I can get!” – Jessica’s cry for help, 10, January 2010.
Tales of walking Shadows come from across the world. Some of these Shadow People wander through the periphery of our lives; others stay for years. People can rarely make out features of these darker-than-night, human shaped entities other than an occasional set of blazing red eyes. Shadow People often appear dressed as a Medieval monk, wearing a fedora, or bald and sexless. These entities may simply trek through our bedroom at night never to be seen again, while others may lurk in doorways, just watching, day after day. Still others attack with energy-draining fear.
What are they?
I’ve studied the Shadow People phenomena for the past decade, and have come to the conclusion the term “Shadow People” is a catchall for entities that exhibit certain characteristics – but their origins can be wildly different. Through research and personal experience, I’ve categorized these creatures by behavior.

Benign Shadows: Shadow People that seem to travel briefly through a person’s life. I saw these entities as a child. They appeared to walk with purpose through my room, never acknowledging me, and never straying from their path. I never felt an unholy fear, just the fear of watching a dark human-shaped trespasser walk past my bed.

Negative Shadows: Although these Shadow People tend to simply lurk, they are associated with a feeling of unnatural terror.

Red-Eyed Shadows: These entities are always negative, but stare at experiencers with blazing red eyes. Victims often say they feel this creature feed from their fear.

Hooded Shadows: Dressed as an ancient monk, people who encounter these Shadow People feel a deep rage bubbling behind the black cowl.

The Hat Man: This entity is the most curious. Dressed in a fedora, and sometimes appearing to wear an old-time business suit, the Hat Man appears to people in cultures across the planet.

Shadow People may be demonic entities, ghosts, inter-dimensional travelers, or other denizens of the dark realm we call the Unknown. Regardless of their label, Shadow People could very well be more than just one type of being. Brad Steiger, author of “Shadow World,” has studied the paranormal for more than 50 years and agrees – there are many possible explanations for Shadow People. “I would say that experiencers are seeing all of the above and giving them/it the name of Shadow People.”

Whatever these entities are, they’re shocking to those who see them.
A gray sheet of clouds stretched across the sky as 12-year-old Doug ran to the corner store. “It was overcast but not raining, and in the middle of the afternoon,” Doug said. The day was shadowless, and decades later he still doesn’t know what he saw on his way home from the store, arms laden with food. At first, he thought it was a friend. “As I approached the corner to turn onto my street, I saw something black sticking beyond the bushes in the front of my house,” Doug said. “I yelled, ‘Andre,’ and started running toward my driveway where the bushes are.”
The dark figure wasn’t his friend Andre. A black, man-shaped Shadow grew from behind the bushes in this quiet afternoon and began running toward Doug’s house. “After a few steps I saw the Shadow running down my driveway toward the back yard,” he said. “I ran up the driveway to the gate that leads to my back yard. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Doug stood at the gate as the black Shadow in the shape of a man ran across his yard and disappeared through a fence. “I was shocked,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. This thing; what could it be? Why was it black when most stereotypical stories said that ghosts were white? Could this be demonic? Could it be like me, just a person?”
What did Doug see? A ghost? A demon? A dimensional traveler? Or was it all in his mind?
Science
“I’ve been visited by what I presume to be the same Shadow three times in my life, and the memories have haunted me ever since. When I was six, I saw it at my dad’s new house, towering over my bed. I couldn’t move, and I don’t remember what happened next. All I remember is trying to scream, but there was this horrible weight on my chest.” – Luke Purdy
Most of the Shadow People encounters I’ve collected over the years are readily explainable. The experiencer wakes to find a black, human figure standing in the doorway of their bedroom, or leaning over their bed, just watching. A tightness grips their chest like the weight of a person is upon them. They can’t breathe. Suddenly the choking eases, and the Shadow being is gone. This type of encounter is common, and psychology has a name for it – sleep paralysis

April Haberyan, a psychology professor at Northwest Missouri State University, said most Shadow People encounters are probably the product of dreams. When people sleep and enter the REM phase, “it’s very common for them to see things,” Haberyan said. The fear, the paralysis, and the entities are normal. “There are hormones in REM sleep that paralyze the major muscle groups and it’s called paradoxical sleep,” she said. “(Although) this happens during REM, these people don’t stay asleep and the hormones are still in their bodies. It can last up to eight minutes and they feel pressure on their chest and can see people.” When the experiencer becomes fully awake, the Shadow Person encounter is over – all that’s left is the fear.

Other Shadow People encounters – as well as those of ghosts/UFOs/Bigfoot for that matter – can be attributed to the same trick of light and shadow that allows us to see faces in clouds and carpets. These sightings can also be from electrical stimulation to certain parts of the brain, or drugs. Chemist Rick Toomey said anything that throws off the chemical balance of the brain causes all sorts of problems. “All sensation is in the nervous system and it’s all chemistry,” he said. “If every neurotransmitter is chemistry, you can wreak havoc with that.”
However, many encounter Shadow People in full consciousness and full daylight, removing the logical, scientific answers, and leaving something terrible.

The Religious World
“My best friend, when he was a boy he was laying on his bed with the lights on. A shadowy figure emerged from his closet and moved towards his bedside. The Shadow being reached out a finger and touched my buddy’s leg. He screamed and the figure vanished, and his folks were there in moments. My friend’s father noticed that the closet door was open, and his parents knew he NEVER slept without it closed. The black spot on his leg remained visible for several years, but the Shadow being never returned. To this day my friend has no idea what happened, but he does know one thing – it was real.” – Paul Sycros
Although most reported Shadow People encounters involve an entity simply appearing and disappearing, many aren’t that innocent. Negative Shadows, Red-Eyed Shadows, and Hooded Shadows, all bring a feeling of horror when they step into someone’s life. These creatures are known by different names, demons, jinn, dark shadows, sgili, but their nature is the same.

Bishop James Long, pastor of St. Christopher Old Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, has studied demonology for years and knows Shadow People well – to him they are something evil. “Shadow People must be taken seriously and they can be quite dangerous,” he said. “When a human spirit tries to manifest itself, its form is black, or otherwise known as Shadow. It is energy trying to manifest itself so that it can appear to have the physical characteristics it had when living on earth.” These entities can move, communicate, and attack, drawing energy from their human victim. “Certainly Shadows that attack are demonic in nature and should be avoided at all times,” Long said. “I would strongly encourage anyone who witnesses a dark Shadow to be careful.”

Cody Lilly’s family has encountered this type of Shadow for years, a black, human-shaped figure, featureless except for a wide-brimmed hat. “We called him the Cowboy because he kind of looked like the Marlboro man,” Lilly said. The Cowboy stepped into Lilly’s life his sophomore year of high school in Clarinda, Iowa, and visited almost nightly for two years, pacing about his room, waiting for something. The entity, with fiery red eyes, never spoke, and never approached him, but Lilly knew why it was there – it hungered. “It was feeding,” Lilly said, convinced the Cowboy was absorbing energy from his terror. “The first time I saw it I was completely incapacitated by how scared I was of it.”
Lilly soon went to college thirty miles south and the visits stopped until after graduation in 2011 when he moved to Nebraska. “My girlfriend that is now my fiancée is in Kansas City and I’m in Omaha. I was crashing with friends here,” he said. “My car started acting up, I’m in the process of looking for a job, finding an apartment, buying an engagement ring. I had a lot of stuff on my plate, which might have brought on what happened.” What happened was the Cowboy. “I’m sitting in my car on the phone with my mom. I don’t know much about cars, but my mom does.”

As Lilly described the car’s behavior to his mother, he noticed a movement in the corner of his right eye. Lilly turned toward the passenger side window and saw it – the Shadow Man that once tormented him in the night. The Cowboy. “It was full on. A Shadow Person in an old fedora,” Lilly said. “It was standing there. It leaned over like it’s bending to look at me.”
As Lilly stared in horror at this red-eyed Shadow Man in full daylight, the Cowboy reached out it’s arm and knocked on the car window. “It knocked two times,” Lilly said. “After it knocked it dissolved in my vision. It just showed up, knocked on my window and was gone.” Lilly wonders if the Cowboy wanted to let him know it was still around. “It’s been quite some time that I saw him,” he said. “I’m just kind of thinking he just showed up. I was feeling stressed out and I think he showed up just to feed on that.”
In Islam, the supernatural Jinn can be a companion, or a dark, Shadowy predator. “Jinns are invisible entities believed in by most all Muslims and Middle Eastern folklore,” said religion expert, Dashti Namaste. “Jinns get in and out of human spheres regularly, and it is believed that any human is able to make contact with a Jinn.” Although Jinn can be benevolent, some Jinn are wicked, appearing as dark figures that lurk in ruins and cemeteries, waiting for an unsuspecting human soul to stumble by. The wicked Jinn, much like the demons of Christianity, are deceivers and may present themselves as the ghost of a loved one to insert themselves into a human’s life.
Wahde, a Cherokee, said the nature of Shadow beings in the American Indian tradition are just as dark. “They’re humanoid shaped, but not proportionate to a normal person,” Wahde said. “Their appearance is more monstrous in nature.” These Shadow beings are the product of medicine men that have strayed from the path of healing. “There seem to be a classification of spiritual beings that are Shadow for the most part. These things can be manipulated by bad medicine or bad magic,” Wahde said. “They either take that form to attack other people, or they use some other spiritual being as a spiritual attack.” In the Cherokee language, these dark medicine people are sgili, or witch. “They’re still alive to some degree, but they’re not necessarily considered human.”

Ghosts
“I have a young boy shadow/spirit in my home. He appears as a solid black cutout-like figure. He is a prankster, too, but he’s NOT mean, or evil. He let’s us know he’s here at times by playing with the animals. Kittens, dogs, puppies, etc. PLAY, not mean. The dogs and puppies are wagging their tails. He moves my Barbies if he really wants my attention. And the other day he didn’t want the door to his room closed, so he opened it. He’s a good kid.” – Kim Tamsor

A family sees a black figure come down the stairs at the same time at night, turn into the kitchen and disappear. A dark man in an out-of-date suit walks through a child’s bedroom and down the hallway. Some Shadow People encounters – benign ones like these – could very well be disembodied spirits wandering the earth. D.H. Parsons, president of The Bliss-Parsons Institute of Metaphysics in Columbia, Missouri, has encountered many Shadow People while investigating a haunting. Although many fellow investigators consider Shadow People demonic, Parsons doesn’t necessarily agree. “My feeling is that a Shadow Person is another representation of a residual memory of a person who had such a strong personality in life, that a bit of their energy remained here in this dimension after their spirit crossed over,” Parsons said. “Most of the time the spirit beings are either friendly to us, or confused by us, or curious as to why we are there. But they have never done us any harm, not even the Shadows.”
Not so for eighteen-year-old Dave Stanfield. Stanfield didn’t expect something to be waiting for him in his room when he woke. Something was – something dark. A strange feeling pulled Stanfield from a deep sleep. As he lay in the gray room, staring at his bedroom wall, he saw it. “I woke for no reason, had no weird dreams, and I wasn’t groggy or half asleep,” he said. “My room was dark other than some stray beams coming through the blinds, and I could see a man, darker than the night like a void.”
The figure stood at the end of the bed. “I could only make out the silhouette of his head and shoulders. The rest of him just went straight to the floor,” Stanfield said. “There were no legs or feet. No red eyes, no facial features whatsoever.” Terrified, Stanfield slid low in bed, pulling the covers slowly over his face, watching the black, man-shaped figure standing over him until his blankets hid the horror from his view and Stanfield fell back to sleep.
Stanfield is now 29, and although he doesn’t know what this Shadow Being was, he knows he saw it – and it haunts him still. “Only in the past couple of years have I been able to find anything on the subject matter,” Stanfield said. “It’s almost like re-victimization when reading stories from other people that describe experiences like mine. I never knew it could be so widespread and am still dealing with the shock.”
But, as with Parsons’ encounters, this being didn’t harm Stanfield. At least not physically.

From: "billy sanderson

I have always bumped into shadows ever since we've lived here. Everyone laughed at me until one Thanksgiving when my daughter took a picture of her boyfriend. When she showed me the picture, she said, "What is that?" In the photograph, she was referring to a tall, black, perfect shadow of a man with smoke coming out of his head that was swirling and went up to the ceiling. So scary looking. I said,"That's the shadow man that I've been seeing". Now, they all believe me and now he is almost constantly around in my bedroom.

It is the same story as everyone else that's written in: darker than dark, fear of someone watching even if you don't see him and they are outside also.

Too much to write about. I just wanted people to know they're really out there. If anyone wants more info or can help me get rid of them, please let me know.

1.	shadow people

shadow like "apparitions" that are seen slithering, sneaking or lurking in one's peripheral vision; typically due to sleep deprivation as result of amphetamine use.

2.	shadow people

Here are the 3 types of Shadow people.
Types:
Category 1
This category falls into drugs use, seizures, and other mental issues. This category covers a very vast description and is known to have descriptions that may or may not match what others describe in category 2 and 3. Category 1 actually may not be considered shadow people at all due to the non consistancy in the descriptions.

Category 2
This category falls more into the ghost and spirit category. The descriptions in this category are as follows: non human shaped shadows or masses of human shaped shadow people in one place, insect shadows, animal shadow people, and women shadow people. These are mostly see thru shadows. Category 2 shadow people tend to be drawn more to a location than a person. It is common for this category to actually try and not become seen. Light may affect this group.

Category 3
This category does not fall into the ghost or Spirit category. This category has only 2 types of shadow people, One tall shadow man and several small hooded "twin" style shadow people. These are usually seen non see thru however they may be see thru. This category is more drawn to a person rather than a place, this category may actually be drawn to a certain spirit or ghost as well as humans. This category tends to not care about being seen. Light has no effect on this group.

Types:
Category 1
This category falls into drugs use, seizures, and other mental issues. This category covers a very vast description and is known to have descriptions that may or may not match what others describe in category 2 and 3. Category 1 actually may not be considered shadow people at all due to the non consistancy in the descriptions.

Category 2
This category falls more into the ghost and spirit category. The descriptions in this category are as follows: non human shaped shadows or masses of human shaped shadow people in one place, insect shadows, animal shadow people, and women shadow people. These are mostly see thru shadows. Category 2 shadow people tend to be drawn more to a location than a person. It is common for this category to actually try and not become seen. Light may affect this group.

Category 3
This category does not fall into the ghost or Spirit category. This category has only 2 types of shadow people, One tall shadow man and several small hooded "twin" style shadow people. These are usually seen non see thru however they may be see thru. This category is more drawn to a person rather than a place, this category may actually be drawn to a certain spirit or ghost as well as humans. This category tends to not care about being seen. Light has no effect on this group.