From: name with held by request
To: The Official Shadow People Archives
Subject: Talking to a shadow man
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 13:18:59

Hi

I'd like to say how relieved I am to finally find some reference to Shadow People.

I have been searching the net for a couple of years now trying to find someone that's had a similar experience with black figures but until now, I was never able to find anything remotely similar. The only thing I could find was about the old hag but that just didn't fit. It's almost comforting to find out that the appearance of shadowy figures is pretty common. The following is my memory of the event. I know it could probably be shortened up a little but this is the way I remember it so this is the way I tell it.

First, I need to explain that as a child, I use to sleep walk on a pretty regular basis. I say this now to explain the reaction of my brother, which we'll get to in a moment. I also want to state that when I slept walked as a child, I could pretty much remember doing it. I was in a dream like state of confusion but nevertheless, I could remember things that I had done while sleep walking. The last time I can remember sleep walking was when I was around 12 and I was about 16 when this event happened. Now let's get on with the story.

It was about 1981 when my family purchased this house in Greenville, South Carolina, and I lived in the house with my father, mother, older and younger brothers and my aunt. Right away after moving in, both my aunt and I began to have strange feelings about the house but no one else seemed to share our feelings. Something just didn't seem right; it felt as if someone was always watching you. It wasn't long before my Aunt started complaining about things being moved around in her room while she was gone and I had a couple of scary experiences while alone in the house in which I heard footsteps.

The big event I'm about to describe happened in the bedroom that I shared with my older brother who is 4 years older than me.

I remember that night I was awakened by my brother. I could hear him telling me to get back in bed; that I was sleep walking. Here's where it differs from what I said before. When I use to sleep walk, I could remember things but now it was almost like I was coming to after passing out. When I heard his voice, as far as I knew I was still in bed and here's the weird thing: I could hear myself talking. I can't recall what I was saying but like I said, I could hear myself quietly talking. As my brother kept telling me to get back in bed, I finally became awake and discovered that I was standing at the foot of my bed and about 1 or 2 feet in front of me, was a pitch black figure. I didn't understand what I was looking at so I looked over at my brother who was still in bed and he was still telling me to get back into bed. I look back at the figure and could see no detailed features, but could see arms and legs and tell that it was the shape of a man. I know some people have said they could smell an odor but there was no odor that I can remember. I remember thinking that I must be dreaming. I climbed back into bed and looked back down at the foot of my bed and 'it' was still there. I told myself again that I must be dreaming and I went to sleep.

The next morning I didn't think much about it. I remembered it but thought that it had all been a dream. I wasn't even going to mention it to anyone but while at the breakfast table, my brother asked me if I remembered anything from the night before. I told him that I did remember him telling me to get back in bed and that I could have sworn that I'd seen a black figure standing in front of me. Well my brother pretty much turned about two shades paler than usual as he revealed that he too had seen the black figure. The funny thing is that even after my brother said he had seen it too, I was never scared and in fact didn't even think about the incident again for several years. Now I think about it a lot and the thing that bothers me the most is that I was apparently talking to it when my brother woke me up. I have no idea why I would have been speaking to it and why it would have wanted to speak to me. If my brother had not woke me up, I would have had this whole conversation with this thing while unconscious and may not have ever known that it happened. In fact, whose to say that it didn't happen other times that I'm not aware of? This really bothers me. I need to know what I was saying to it and what it wanted from me.

Like I said before I'm sorry for the length of this. I'm sure if I worked at it I could probably make my description of the event shorter, but this is just the way I remember it.