It’s the middle of the night. You’re sound asleep when suddenly - your
eyes pop open. You’re not sure why - you didn’t hear
a noise - but you feel… something. Is it in the air? Your room does feel colder than usual. You look around your room. Nothing. Relief washes over you and you start to close
your eyes when - there is something there! A shadow in the corner. Something that wasn’t there before. You can’t quite make it out, but it looks
human. It’s so dark you can’t tell. You pull the blankets up just below your eyes. It must just be a weird shadow, right? Or your brain playing tricks on you? You close your eyes and count to three, you
know when you open them it will be gone. One, two, three. Phew, it’s gone. NO! It’s in the other corner now and it’s
coming towards you! It’s eyes open, glowing red in the dark
and staring right at you. You’re so scared you can’t scream. You can barely move. It’s getting closer and closer you reach
out and just in time you hit the switch on your lamp and see… Your coat rack. You laugh to yourself. It does look a little like a person in the
dark. And maybe the eyes you saw were just lights
reflecting in from the street outside. You do a quiet search, just to make sure there’s
nothing in your room, but you can’t shake the feeling that a few minutes ago, you weren’t
alone. It’s not going to be easy to fall asleep
again, but you assume you’re safe. The strange shadow person at the corner of
your room begins to fade from your mind. But you can’t help but feel like that it’s
not the last you’ve seen of it... It’s a week later when you’re on the bus
home. It’s been a long day, and you’re very
tired, trying to keep awake but you keep dozing off when then, out of the corner of your eye,
there it is. On the side of the road you see the same shadowy
figure that was in your room, glowing eyes looking right into yours. The bus is moving fast, and you only have
a second to glimpse its before it disappears, but your heart is pounding. You try to put it out of your mind but there
it is again on the side of the road! Is it following you? Or is there more than one of these shadowy
things chasing you? You don’t want to keep looking, afraid of
what you’ll find, so you close your eyes and wait for your stop. As you get off, you don’t see anything around
you, but you’re not taking any chances as you run to your home. Who are these shadow people? Or more accurately, what are they? Are you just hallucinating and seeing them
when you’re tired, or is something more sinister going on? You’re definitely not going to sleep any
time soon, so you turn all the lights on and get on the internet to research. You google “Shadow People” and start clicking
through the results. You’re not sure what you’re hoping to
find, but you learn that you’re definitely not alone, lots of people report seeing these
things, which is good, since it means you’re not losing your mind. And the reports aren’t new either. You feel your chest get tight as you see that
people have been talking about shadow people for hundreds of years, with these mysterious
creatures appearing in countless religions, legends, and belief systems. There’s lots of different theories, but
whatever they are, people have been scared of them for a very long time. You’re starting to feel a little better
actually, knowing that you aren’t alone in having seen them, when you click on a website
and your heart nearly stops. There staring back at you, is a picture of
the shadow person from your room. So what are the Shadow People? Not many mainstream media outlets have talked
about them or the possibility that they are real, usually dismissing them as urban legends,
but there’s no shortage of information on alternative radio devoted to cryptozoology
and the supernatural. The Shadow People first broke into the sort
of mainstream in 2001 on the conspiracy theory-centered radio show Coast to Coast AM, when Art Bell
introduced the concept with Native American elder Harley “SwiftDeer” Reagan. Bell decided to spice up the show by inviting
listeners to submit their own shadow people stories - and was stunned when hundreds of
people wrote in, sending drawings of the supernatural shadow beings they had supposedly encountered. Drawings eerily similar to the being you yourself
encountered multiple times. The Shadow People gained a new investigator
only a few months later, when paranormal investigator Heidi Hollis published her first book on Shadow
People. Hollis went further than Bell and Reagan,
who normally portrayed the Shadow People as neutral entities. Hollis argued that they were hostile alien
entities that were stalking us, and claimed they could flicker in and out of peripheral
vision, getting close enough to jump on people’s chests and choke them.. Many people say they feel a strong hostile
energy from these beings, and believe them to be angry spirits from beyond the grave,
stalking the living, while others think they might be the psychic remnants of inhabitants
from another dimension - and that they are either trying to make first contact with us,
or trying to warn us about something. A theory advanced by the late paranormal writer
and researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley is that they’re something else entirely - a supernatural
being known as a Djinn. These creatures frequently appear in Middle
Eastern mythology and are more commonly known as genies - yes, the kind that grants wishes. But Djinns aren’t bound to a lamp or a bottle
and are filled with magical energy. These shape-shifting beings can take any form
they want, and many believe the shadow people are remnants of Djinns from ancient times. Whether they’re a genie spirit or from another
dimension on a spirited journey, the abundance of evidence from shadow people is quite disturbing. The internet is full of stories of people
recounting their experiences with shadow people. Paranormal investigator Chad Stambaugh even
claims to have captured video footage of shadow people, but the footage is blurry and inconclusive. A still photograph of a basement in the supposedly
haunted Gaslight Inn in Indianapolis shows a creeping black mass in an otherwise brightly
lit room. [ANIMATION NOTE: USE IMAGE: ] The most disturbing story of the shadow people
comes from the sleep study GR16 which was supposedly conducted in 1971 at Camden College. A brief clip claiming to be from the study
shows a group of people who said they were haunted by shadow people in their dreams. The experiment aimed to track their brain
patterns, but, according to the story, something went horribly wrong, and the shadow people
killed the subjects. But no records of this study exist beyond
some unsubstantiated video clips. The more you look into the Shadow People,
the more you’re left with questions and no answers. One of the strangest elements of shadow people
is how closely one person's description matches that of others. They’re almost all the same - a shadowy,
vaguely human-like figure lurking just far enough away from the person that it can’t
be made out clearly. Many people report glowing red or yellow eyes
staring at them. Some of the shadows look more like an amorphous
blob, as in the case of the famous phantom at the Gaslight Inn, which resembled a creeping
mass slowly expanding over the basement. But many others report a clearer, more disturbing
figure which has come to be known as the Hat Man. This is a distinctly humanoid figure, dressed
in a black three-piece suit, wearing a black hat. His eyes glow red, and he holds a pocket watch
that he occasionally checks - as if he’s waiting for something... or someone. He’s very tall, at least six feet, but he’s
also been described as being up to ten feet tall. Many people believe the Hat Man could be linked
to the popular urban legend Slender Man, another abnormally tall, sharp-dressed monster with
ties to supernatural terror. Most people thankfully only encounter the
shadow people for brief moments, seeing them out of the corner of their eye or in the dark
corners of rooms, only for them to disappear when the light falls on them. But some people have had longer and far more
terrifying experiences that suggest there may be some truth to these encounters. Author Daniel Pinchbeck, a paranormal expert
reported that he began seeing other-dimensional beings that resembled the shadow people. Pinchbeck believes that he was able to see
into another dimension, and that somehow these creatures came back with him - haunting him
for weeks before they stopped and he was able to return to his normal life. But not everyone believes that the shadow
people are a supernatural entity. Scientists who have analyzed the sightings
propose a much more down-to-earth explanation - that these shadow beings are a product of
our mind playing tricks on us. The most common times for people to see shadow
people are when they’re under intense emotion, isolated, or very tired. The mind is experiencing heightened stress
at this point, so mundane things, like a coat rack or a shadow, become a potential threat. Sleep paralysis, which is where the body’s
motor functions take longer to wake up than the mind, also causes hallucinations that
can take the form of shadowy, demonic figures and may be the origin of the mysterious figures. Two more factors that might be influencing
shadow people sightings include sleep deprivation and addiction. Dr. Jack Potts has studied those addicted
to substances that keep them in a heightened state of awareness and keep them from falling
asleep, and he observed that they became paranoid and conspiratorial. They kept reporting hallucinations of people
following them, and believed them to be supernatural beings that posed a danger to them. While descriptions of these beings varied,
many of them matched up with the descriptions we see over and over for shadow people. Potts believes the shadow people are our body’s
natural reaction to stress, albeit a terrifying one, rather than a true supernatural phenomenon. But if that was the case, why have so many
people, even those who have no substance abuse issues or bouts of sleep paralysis, seemingly
spotted them out of nowhere? One thing’s for sure, the Shadow People
have captured the attention of everyone who loves ghost stories and paranormal phenomena. These mysterious creatures have shown up in
countless movies and TV shows, with perhaps the most famous appearance being in an episode
of the rebooted The Twilight Zone in 1985. In the episode, titled “The Shadow Man”,
the Shadow Person lived under the bed of a teenage boy and was a danger to everyone besides
him - until the twist ending. The 2013 film Shadow People spun out of the
legendary GR16 sleep study, dramatizing it with terrifying results. And plenty of popular video games have you
encounter the shadow people as enemies, giving gamers a brief taste of these terrifying beings
without letting them get too close - we hope. Sightings go back decades, and hundreds of
people are giving very similar reports of encounters just like the ones you experienced. But as you give up on your internet investigation
for the evening, what still hasn’t been answered for you is whether this is something
mundane, or truly a supernatural encounter. Was your mind playing tricks on you, or are
there actually otherworldly beings stalking you? It’s late, and you have an early start tomorrow
so you turn off the lights and get into bed. Your eyes are heavy and you can feel yourself
drifting off to sleep when your eyes fall on the corner of the room again. Is that your coat rack, or something else? “No” you tell yourself “it’s just
the coatrack… or is it?” Is it a shadow person, or just your mind playing
tricks on you? You pull the covers over your head and decide
it’s best not knowing. “Well” you think, “maybe just a peak.” You slowly lower the covers and open your
eyes. You will yourself to roll over and look at
the coatrack in the corner. As you turn your head you see it. Two glowing red eyes, inches away from your
face. Looking for more videos on unexplained phenomena? Check out “New Video Evidence that Proves
Ghosts Are Real”. Or check out “Horrifying Unsolved Internet
Mysteries” for more on the darkest secrets of the web. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next
time!
