Shadow Man

Among the creatures found in the stories of eyewitnesses, one can distinguish such a kind of ghosts as shadow people. They are described as "shadow-like figures", most often in the form of a person, but not only (in our practice, there were, for example, jellyfish-like creatures, as well as a creature similar to a horse). As a rule, they are seen on the periphery of vision. Usually they don't do anything wrong, but the observer has a clear sense of someone else's presence. Rarely, the presence of a shadow-like creature is accompanied by an attack of suffocation, which resembles the idea of a brownie or an evil sorceress who comes at night to take energy from a person.

It is worth noting that shadow people most often appear at night, but this, again, is not necessary: much less often, but still there are descriptions of similar cases that occurred during daylight hours.

How do eyewitnesses describe it:

You're reading a newspaper like this, when suddenly out of the corner of your eye you notice that someone is standing in the corner. you shift your gaze, and there's no one there!

I woke up at night somehow. I had a nightmare. Suddenly I see: somewhere not far from the bed there is a dark translucent man. No sooner had I started looking at him than he disappeared.

Somehow I slept lightly. Through a dream I feel like someone is watching me. I open my eyes, and he's standing there. I can't see his face, but I know he's looking. And disappeared.

I stood in the kitchen and waited for the kettle to boil. I caught myself thinking that someone dark was moving at the far wall. I shifted my gaze, and there was no one there. Although I could see the shadow quite clearly.

We have given the most typical descriptions of this phenomenon, which are found in almost all corners of the world.

The shadow itself is quite common in myths. In the mythology of many peoples, the shadow is a part of a person, his soul. Hence the ancient belief that if you hit a witch or an unclean in the body, they will not feel pain: to harm them, you need to hit the shadow. In some countries, it was believed that if an enemy stepped on a shadow and uttered a curse, the person would die.

Therefore, a shadow separated from a person most often represents a ghost or the spirit of the deceased, but this is not the only option. For example, in the beliefs of the Serbs, there are ideas that a shadow can leave its owner and wander around the world by itself.

What are shadow people like?

From the point of view of esotericism and parapsychology, it can be the soul of a person, his astral double, energy essence, a guest from a parallel world and even an alien from space or another time.

From the point of view of science , there are the following hypotheses:

1. An illusion. The human brain perceives the heterogeneity of light and shadow on surrounding objects as separate entities.
2. Shadow people are real shadows whose appearance is provoked by the reflection of a car's headlights, a flash of light or something similar.
3. Hypnagogy is a physical state in which a person's consciousness is between sleep and wakefulness. In this state, a person is conscious, but his brain can "lift" images from the subconscious, as it happens in a dream.
4. Destruction of the vitreous body is a change in the reticular structure of the vitreous body of the eye due to the fact that individual fibers thicken and lose transparency.

Separately, mental or physical diseases can be distinguished. Of the latter, Charles Bonnet syndrome, which occurs in mentally healthy people with serious visual system disorders, can be cited as an example. It manifests itself as hallucinations of different levels of complexity: from geometric shapes to silhouettes and faces.

Supernatural shadow silhouettes have gained popularity in urban folklore and modern culture. They are found in books, TV series, movies and games as main or secondary characters.