From: Liz
To: The Official Shadow People Archives
Sent: Thursday, November 4, 2010 5:18:08 PM
Subject: shadow man in the parlor
I never had a good feeling when my husband and I visited my mother-in-law's house. It was a detached red-brick, three-story home built in the latter part of the 19th century in the London, England suburb of Bromley. My husband knew his mother's house made me feel uneasy, and he and his sister would often tease me that the top floor of the home was occupied by the ghost of a child. After being married for a number of years, however, and staying at my mother-in-law's for holidays and summer vacation, the home grew on me and my uneasiness wore off.
A few weeks before my husband and I moved to America, we stayed at his mother's home after selling our flat. Often I would have to get up in the night to use the restroom, although I would often turn the lights on down the hall. One of the last nights we stayed in the home together, I got up in the night to use the restroom and left off the lights in the hallway. We were staying on the top floor and there were no 'loos' except on the second floor. I walked down the small staircase and used the restroom.
When I exited the loo, my eyes followed the staircase to the ground floor and into the old parlor room where yellow light was streaming into the bay window from the streetlamp outside and across the road. I noticed nothing unusual, until I saw something move. My eyes focused on the movement and my adrenalin response awakened me to full faculty as the movement was the distinct shape of a male figure from mid-chest up. I determined it was a male from the width of the chest and the shape of the head that seemed not to have hair. From my vantage point, he was upside down, as if he were standing outside the window looking in, casting the shadow into the parlor room from the bay window.
My thoughts were, 'Is it a burglar trying to see what goods he could steal?', but the movement of his head was most unusual. His body did not move for the thirty or forty seconds I could stand to stare with my eyes wide open. His head seemed to move to the side and down, as if he were looking at something on the ground. I could see hands reach up over his brow to cup his eyes in order to block the glare off the window so he could look inside the property properly.
At this point, whatever it was, I did not have the courage to face. The feeling that accompanied this shadow man was one of deepest darkest fear, fear I had not felt before (and I had already been burgled at night while home alone in my bed). I silently, silently walked back up the stairs and pulled the duvet over my head and pulled my body in tight against my husband's. I told him in a very frightened voice that I saw the shadow of a man in the bay window of the parlor room. My husband sleeps very heavily, but he awoke at the time, but did not seem alarmed. He told me to go back to bed.
The next day I awoke knowing full well that I had actually seen that shadow man, and fully understanding that I had not dreamed it, my memory of it was distinct. I told my husband about it again and he said he never remembered me telling him about the shadow man during the night. I was determined to understand where the man would have had to have been standing in order to cast that particular shadow in the bay window of the parlor room.
That night I asked my husband to exit the house and stand outside the window so that the street-lamp was the only light behind him. I turned off all of the lights and stood where his head would have had to have been in order for him to cast that shadow mid-way through the room. There was absolutely no way such a distinct shadow could have been cast in that room where I saw the shadow-man's head move. My husband had to come inside the house and stand in the bay area of the window where the couch was located in order for him to cast the shadow where the shadow man cast his.
I could not explain this any other way except there was a lot of sadness in that home for many years, like something had been casting their dark, evil shadow over that home for just as long. Thankfully, my mother-in-law has moved and I will never have to visit that house again.
