From: anonymous
To: The Official Shadow People Archives
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 5:47:57 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Shadow People Story

You are welcome to use this story on your site.

The first time I saw a shadow person, I was quite young, around 8 or 9, living in a new neighborhood. I was on a walk with my father and stepmother, it was near dusk but still very light. We approached a large hill and, for some reason, I had decided to go around the hill and meet them on the other side (the road split). As I was walking, I noticed somehow I had gotten lost, (which was nearly impossible I later discovered), I turned down a road that I believed the direction of our house was. I began to get a very uneasy feeling and started walking faster. I soon realized how quiet it had become; all I could hear was my foot steps. It felt like no one was around, the houses even seemed empty. Then suddenly I saw a towering dark figure in the middle of the road, nearly a block away, not only was it tall but wide, all I could make out was a silhouette, this struck me as odd but I blew it off as light tricks as the sun was starting to set. We continued to approach each other, him walking very slowing, almost too smoothly, nearly gliding.

As I got closer I could tell he was wearing some kind of large coat and a hat with a short brim and appeared to be carrying something small in his right hand. At this point almost all I could feel was terror and dismay, some sort of brooding doom. Walking ever faster, determined to pass this man as quickly as possible, I came within 10-20 feet of him, that’s when I realized the darkness was no trick of the light, it was as if someone had cut a man from the world with a pair of scissors and there was only a dark void left and around the edges there seemed to be some sort of distortion. I was frozen mid-stride, all I could move were my eyes. It was not as if I was being held down but as if something had come up from the ground, through my body, and had rooted me to the spot. All I wanted was to be as far away from this thing as possible but he stopped too, and seemed to stare. All I could feel was dread, but I remember feeling as though, the dread wasn't coming from him, but it was as though all other feelings had been stripped away, maybe sucked into his void of darkness.

I have no idea how much time passed, it might have been 1-5 minutes or an hour; time had gone all funny. Finally, the distortion around him started to grow and I felt I could move a little again. I took my chance and turned, and ran and ran and ran, never looking back, not even knowing where I was going. Soon I ran into my dad in his car. He said they had finished their walk and he'd been looking for me for awhile. I said nothing to him about the experience. I just went home and laid down feeling exhausted. Now the weirdest part of this whole thing was that, in the 5 years I lived in that neighborhood after that event, I never did find the road that I met this shadow man on again.

Ever since that day I developed I deep hatred of being unable to move or being restricted, it drives me insane, which leads me to the next experience several years later around age 14-15.

I was sound asleep when I suddenly woke up, very alert, not in the usual half asleep still state as I usually am. I immediately felt a presence near the door and saw something in the corner of my eye, but when I went to turn and look, I discovered I could not move anything except my eyes. Panic struck through me remembering the past, and anger and frustration from not being able to move built up at the same time. With every ounce of my strength and will, I forced my head to turn to and look at this thing. (It physically hurt my neck to do this, my muscles were strained very hard) There standing almost perfectly in the doorway was a shadow person, (when I say perfectly in the door way, I mean he fit the dimensions almost exactly), over 7 feet tall; he appeared skinny even though his body structure was so large. The most distinctive traits were a very large eerie grin (no teeth or mouth were actually visible, only some sort of change in the darkness resembling a grin), and he appeared to be wearing a very short hood. I think the anger kept me from being afraid, I could feel my body trembling under the force holding me down, trying to get free. Suddenly, the force was gone and I burst from my bed, almost a leap, it caught me off guard and I almost fell to the floor. As I gathered myself and looked up toward the door, ready to drive this thing out somehow, (Idk why I thought I could do anything to this shadow or even scare it away, but at the time I just knew I could), he slowly backed through the closed door and I heard in my head "Be cool" in a very deep voice. Calming down, scared as hell, I got back into bed, put the covers over my head and went to sleep.

These were my only two, I guess you could say, full encounters with the shadow people, but I’ve seen many of them through the years out of the corners of my eye, only to be gone when I turned to look. I was amazed when I started researching these shadow people on the internet and found so many people with the same experience and that in fact they were also calling them ‘shadow people’, a name that I thought I had came up with. This site is great, and has been very informative. My only advice to people who are being tormented by these things regularly, I suggest you try to be strong, challenge them they seem to respond to it.