From: Dominic
To: shadowpeopleorg@comcast.net
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2016 4:30:32 AM
Subject: Shadow man

It was approximately 33 years ago, I was playing hide and seek with 8 of the neighborhood kids in the city of La Mirada, California. We were all around 12 years old.

I was hiding in my neighbors front yard next to the passenger side front fender of his car that was parked in the street. My house was right next door with a street light in front of it; that is what we had to touch to be safe.

We were playing in teams so I was watching and waiting for some of the kids to walk down the street away from me. They got a safe distance from me and I was about to run to the light pole when, all of a sudden, from the opposite fender, no more than 5 feet from me, was a long, tall and extremely thin shadow, approximately 8 feet tall stretched straight up in front of me. Then in an instant, the shadow shrunk down to approximately 5 and a half to 6 feet tall and had the silhouette of a man wearing a large brimmed gangster hat and a trench coat.

I instantly started sidestepping towards my house and the street light calling out and repeating to the others, “LOOK! LOOK!” I wasn't yelling it loud but more with a sense of urgency and I don't remember ever feeling threatened. As I sidestepped towards my front yard, I started to circle to the middle of the street to the curb across the street which is approximately 20 to 25 feet from curb to curb. As sudden as the shadow appeared, it started to walk down the street in a hurry and away from me and my friends who were coming up the street behind me in a hurry. It started to walk faster and faster and it was walking with a very bad limp but still moving really quickly and with a purpose. My friends and I were now in pursuit; a few of them were following behind it approximately 30 feet and me and the others were across the street running through the neighbors’ yards staying about 15 to 20 feet in front of it. I remember as we were chasing it, we gained courage and were yelling to each other what is it and saying who are you almost with a heckling tone. Not once did this thing ever acknowledge us or look at us it just seemed to be walking as fast as possibly could trying to get away from us. We followed it about 9 houses down the street then all of the sudden the thing walked from the street onto the curb and about 15 feet into the a neighbors yard and straight into a thick hedge that was approximately 15 feet tall and ran the length of the property line between the two houses. I remember waiting to see the thing come out the other side of the hedge but it never did.

A couple of the kids went to get flashlights while the rest of us kept our eyes fixed on the hedge from both sides. When they returned with the flashlights we gradually got closer and closer to the hedge and then finally right up to it moving around the branches. As quickly as it appeared it was gone it vanished. The hedge was approximately 3 and a half feet thick with branches and needles that made it impossible to walk through.

When I first saw this thing it appeared to me like a shadow but as we pursued it was no longer a shadow it seemed to have mass like a physical being. My street is lit very well with plenty of street lights but as close as we were to it, I never saw any facial features or contours on the clothes it was just black. I was never scared after that only because the thing appeared to be hurt the way it walked with that bad limp and the way it didn't want anything to do with a bunch of 12 year-olds from La Mirada. The next day I noticed that there was a manhole right where it first appeared so I always imagined it was some kind of portal. Anything is possible.