A theory about Shadow People
My theory about Shadow People:
My interest in Parapsychology and Paracrytozoology is not new. Many Cryptozoologists “call dibs” on the notion of Shadow People even though (assuming they are real) their corporeal status is dubious at best and they may fit better under the subject of Parapsychology. Starting in my early teens I had incidents of “Sleep Paralysis” where I would “Dream” that there were Shadow People (Or a shadow person) near my bed or coming toward me and I would be unable to move or cry out. And I had the impression that I was being told, without vocal words, that if I could just will myself to move they would go away.
Something that I believe movies and TV get wrong about telepathy- and I suppose they don’t really have any other way to convey it- is that it’s not an auditory ”voice” in your head though words or something very much like words can be conveyed.
I feel certain when I tell you that I believe Shadow People to be telepathic and by extension extremely empathic. Not in that they feel empathy in a compassionate sense of the term but that they can sense the emotions of their prey. Yes, prey. I think they feed on us or more precisely on our sense of fear- the energy from the psychological and emotional expression of fear.
Just as I think The Black Eyed Children may feed on despair, I strongly suspect that Shadow People feed upon fear.
Many Cryptozoologists hypothesize that Shadow People are extradimeninal entities, posssibly visiting us in a space between dimensions (Interdimensionally). I believe they are correct but I think many Cryptozoologists miss a particular detail that I think many people experience in Shadow Person encounters.
I believe that Shadow People are Phobophages (as Jim Butcher would call such an entity) or Phobovores. Both terms are correct but somehow I think phobovore feels less bias. And it feels the terminology we already use for conventional zoology. Herbivore, Carnivore, Omnivore, and in this case phobovore. I believe Shadow People may feed on fear.
Any time I encountered / dreamt of Shadow People something very particular happens. I start feeling a fear that I do not believe is native to my own emotions. I think it is falsely amplified, like they are using some sort of psychic magnifying glass to amplify the emotion of fear where you can tell you should not be that afraid, like someone is somehow inducing the emotion to unnaturally exaggerate. I think that when they come to a sleep paralyzed target they are deliberately psychically amplifying and exaggerating the emotion of fear in that intended target.
I think they may lose interest in an intended target if there is enough psychic pushback against the encounter. After I left Long Island (where I had many Shadow Person encounters when sleeping) the encounters diminished drastically.
In the fifteen-years I lived with my Grandfather, I had only one Shadow Person encounter. In that “dream” a Shadow person (the main one that I was familiar with) was coming toward me. And it was the old notion that if I could move or speak he would go away. In previous encounters if I could manage to move my hand slightly and utter “Go away” they will go away and the dream ends. Sometimes it felt like I was being tested because I almost felt the notion “Tell me to go away and I wlll.” and He obviously knows that not only am I feeling an exaggerated and amplified fear, but I am physically unable to move, or limited in movement.
Somehow, in that “Dream” I managed to roll out of the bed while trying to resist the presence of The Shadow Person. And somehow falling out of the bed- the mot physical movement I ever accomplished while in a semi-paralyzed sleep state- earned a conveyanceof a notion like an exasperated “Okay, fine.” from The Shadow Person. And the next thing I knew I was back in the bed like nothing had happened and I did not have a Shadow Person encounter again within the entire time I lived with my Grandfather. I felt safe there. I felt happy. I felt loved. It was the only place that ever truly felt like home.
I think Shadow Person encounters were a contributing factor to my insomnia and preference for sleeping by day. Shadow people almost never come by daylight.
The popular non-believing, dismissive, opinion on Shadow People is that they are a manifestation caused from being caught between in the REM sleep state and The Waking World. The idea is that they are a “Sleep Paralysis demon(s)” manifestation created from the misfiring of the half-awake subconscious. In other worlds, you are just dreaming them.
But if they are a common hallucination caused by a half-conscious sleep paralysis Why do Shadow People all look and act so similar to each supposed encounter? And this is true, no mater what part of the world you are from? (See the Shadow People page in the book “The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits.”
Unlike The Black Eyed Children, who are heavily associated with apparently willfully induced misfortune and negative entropy (the induction of probabilities favoring disaster), I don’t think Shadow People do much in the way of willful physical harm but the encounters are extremely unpleasant and this may be deliberate.
