Out of the corner of your eye you catch a fleeting glimpse of something moving. You turn to get a better look…but nothing is there. Chalking it up as just your imagination is the usual first response. Tired eyes. Time for a break. The dark playing tricks on you.
You go back to whatever it is you were doing without another thought. But then it happens again. This time, the shadow lingers for a few seconds longer. Your brain registers a human shape before the entity disappears through a doorway. Now, you start to worry.
Thinking it’s an intruder, you cautiously follow the shadow into the next room. Check the closet, behind the door, under the bed. Again, nothing is there. At this point, you start to question your sanity. You think that maybe it’s stress. Perhaps you’ve been working too hard. Perhaps…but what if what you saw was real?
Documented sightings of shadow people or shadow beings have become more common in recent years. What once was an occasional ghost story told around a summer campfire, has now become a frequent, frightening phenomenon in the world.
Of course there are many scientific explanations for shadow people sightings, including optical illusions, hallucinations, and medication side effects. The human brain is designed to interpret the stimuli coming into it. Sometimes the information is incomplete, especially when it is seen out of the corner of one’s eye. When this happens, the brain automatically fills in the gaps with familiar data, thus making the distorted shadow of a lamp into the figure of a human, for example.
Yet, there are many that believe that shadow people are real beings. Most proponents of this theory think that shadow beings are ghosts. In the 1999 thriller, The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osmert sent chills through movie-goers with the famous line, “I see dead people.” But there are a growing number of people who theorize that shadow people are not human spirits trapped on earth, but are earthly visitors from another dimension. Some even believe that shadow folk are time travelers from our future. A few are of the thought that shadow figures are astral bodies projected while the physical self sleeps. And then there are those who blame it on aliens.
From my young adult fantasy novel, Island of Tory, due to be released in March 2012: “The fog still swirled around me, but something was taking shape behind the gloom. I stopped crying and watched as a human form materialized. Nothing more than a shadow…”
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