Shadow people are dark entities that have reportedly been spotted in dim rooms and abandoned buildings around the world, but there are several scientific explanations for their existence.
u/Dejected Soul on RedditSome claim that shadow people are extra-dimensional beings, but science points to them being hallucinations or delusions.
Most people have, at some point, seen something vaguely person-shaped lurking in the dark. Perhaps it’s just a shirt hung on the back of a door or a stuffed animal propped up in the corner. Most of the time, that’s all it amounts to: a harmless, inanimate object — but not always.
Those who have experienced sleep paralysis, for instance, might see something more sinister. In some cases, it is a strange creature sitting on their chest, holding them down. Other times, it’s the Hat Man, a featureless shadow figure sporting a wide-brimmed hat.
Science has linked this phenomenon to various sleep and psychiatric disorders, as well as the abuse of drugs like Benadryl, but paranormal enthusiasts and several world religions have another name for entities like the Hat Man: shadow people.
There is no singular lore or history that defines shadow people. Some have linked them to the Islamic jinn, some to the Choctaw Nalusa Chito, and others claim they are extra-dimensional beings from another universe entirely. No one is quite sure what the shadow beings want. They have been described as both malicious and helpful, but most often, they appear to be neutral observers, making their presence all the more mysterious.
So, what are the shadow people? Are they really lurking on the edges of human perception, or is there a more plausible explanation for the widespread encounters people claim to have had with them?
Experiences With Shadow People Reported Online
Poke around long enough, and you’ll find hundreds upon hundreds of people sharing their alleged encounters with shadow people on the internet. One recent Reddit thread in r/paranormal alone has hundreds of replies discussing the nature of these mysterious beings.
“I asked some spirits that I work with and they said [shadow people] are almost always harmless but that they feed on fear,” one user who goes by pondwisp wrote. “They don’t attempt to cause the fear but their presence when seen does have that effect on most people.”
Users debated whether the shadow people were indeed trying to be harmful or if they could even be helpful beings. Theories in the thread ranged from “other dimensional beings” to jinn, invisible spirits mentioned in Islamic and pre-Islamic mythology.
Wellcome ImagesA scene from the Shahnameh, a 10th-century Persian epic in which Faramarz slays the king of demons, also referred to as jinn.
Similar accounts and debates can be found all across the web. A woman named Sarah Bethany, for instance, shared her experience on a HubPages post:
“Growing up in my Michigan home, I began seeing shadow people at a young age. I didn’t know the term ‘shadow people’ back then, but I knew that I was seeing something spooky. I would often be sitting in our living room and see someone standing at the top of our staircase, but when I would look, there was no one there. I always had a feeling of being watched, especially upstairs.”
Additional users commented here as well, recounting similar experiences. Some wrote about the Hat Man, others said they saw shadow people while astral projecting — an esoteric term used to describe an intentional out-of-body experience in the astral plane — and some even claimed to have been attacked by shadow people with some regularity. One common theory is that shadow people are, in fact, the astral forms of those projecting their consciousness.
Real or not, it’s clear that seeing shadow people is not uncommon.
In fact, the experience is widespread enough that it has attracted attention from prominent figures in the fields of the paranormal and science alike. However, these two camps have offered wildly contrasting interpretations of the phenomenon, which makes it difficult to reach a conclusive answer on what shadow people are.
Paranormal Theories About What Shadow People Could Be
Modern belief in shadow people was largely popularized by the late-night talk show Coast to Coast AM, hosted by Art Bell. Bell first breached the topic in a 2001 interview with Harley “SwiftDeer” Reagan, a.k.a. Thunder Strikes, a man claiming to be a Native American elder (despite later being denounced by the Cherokee Nation for his claims).
Shadow people were once again thrust into the spotlight later that same year when author Heidi Hollis published her book The Secret War. Hollis delved further into shadow beings and likewise began to make regular appearances on Coast to Coast to speak about the subject. She theorized that shadow people were actually negative aliens who attacked humans and that they could be repelled by “invoking the Name of Jesus.”
Heidi Hollis/FacebookAuthor and frequent Coast to Coast guest Heidi Hollis.
Around the same time, the subject of shadow people caught the attention of leading paranormal expert Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Guiley, who had published more than 50 books on the paranormal since she began researching the topic in 1983, also spoke in-depth about shadow people in an interview with Psychology Today shortly after releasing her book about jinn in 2013.
“There were two major avenues, both involving Shadow People, dark and menacing humanoids I had been researching since 2004,” she said when asked why she chose to focus on jinn for the book. “I already knew a bit about the Djinn from earlier research in demonology. I noticed that many cases of persistent negative hauntings involved Shadow People, so I began probing for their true identity.”
In her research, Guiley said she soon found that many people who reported seeing shadow people also claimed to have had some sort of experience with extraterrestrials. This led her to conclude that shadow people “are a shape-shifted form taken by Djinn.”
Rosemary Ellen Guiley/FacebookParanormal expert Rosemary Ellen Guiley.
Jinn, in the old lore, were known to be shapeshifters, though they always had difficulty emulating human features with 100 percent accuracy. Often, they retained animal-like legs and feet or misshapen heads. Some have even speculated that this could be the reason that the Hat Man is always seen wearing a hat. Guiley was convinced that the jinn she had been researching and shadow people were one and the same.
“The Djinn have a long-standing, deeply embedded and hidden presence among us, far greater than I anticipated in the early stages of my research,” Guiley said. “We only see the tip of the iceberg. Also, their interference in human affairs is extensive as well. We are influenced and manipulated, some more than others.”
But scientists had already provided their own explanation for shadow people seven years before Guiley published her book — and they found their answer by total accident.
Scientific Explanations For These Mysterious Beings
XZippy/Villains WikiSeeing shadow people is a common experience among methamphetamine users.
A 2006 study from neurologist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues at the Brain Mind Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland, incidentally stumbled upon what could be one of the most plausible explanations for shadow people.
While attempting to identify the source of a 23-year-old woman’s epileptic seizures, they surgically implanted electrodes into various regions of her brain and applied a mild current. This stimulated part of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and the woman suddenly said that she could feel the presence of someone behind her. She described the shadow as a man who was imitating her body posture and actions. At one point, she said the shadow man tried to take a test card from her.
It was certainly an unexpected side effect, but the researchers noted at the time that it was similar to delusions observed in people with schizophrenia, who can often mistake their own bodies for someone else’s. Like the woman involved here, schizophrenics also frequently have illusions that they are being followed, controlled, or manipulated by aliens.
That’s not to say everyone who has seen a shadow person is schizophrenic, though. As this study showed, there are other stimuli that can evoke the same feelings and sensations, including an electric current. In particular, the research suggested that anything that disrupted the function of the TPJ, which helps the brain understand sensory information, could result in these same sorts of illusions.
Similarly, visions of shadow people — and the Hat Man in particular — have been linked to incidents of sleep paralysis, which typically occurs while the brain is in the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of the sleep cycle.
u/DejectedSoul on RedditThe Hat Man is also linked to Benadryl abuse.
REM also happens to be the stage in which people experience vivid dreams and atonia, a temporary form of paralysis that prevents dreamers from flailing about in their sleep. In the case of the Hat Man, it’s likely that his presence is effectively a glitch in which the brain, still in REM, conjures the vision despite the dreamer now being half-awake.
It can’t be ignored, either, that many reports of shadow people come from methamphetamine users, particularly after prolonged periods of sleep deprivation. In fact, this connection was known back in 1997, when the Phoenix New Times ran a story focusing on two women who were addicted to meth and kept their window blinds closed so that “the shadow people can’t see inside” during the day.
“You don’t see shadow dogs or shadow birds or shadow cars,” one interviewee said. “You see shadow people. Standing in doorways, walking behind you, coming at you on the sidewalk. It’s freaky, scary… because it doesn’t feel like you’re hallucinating.”
While these studies could offer plausible explanations for shadow people, there are still those who maintain that shadow beings are paranormal entities — and if they are, then their true nature remains a mystery.
After reading about the mysterious phenomenon known as shadow people, go inside nine shocking accounts of third man syndrome, the curious phenomenon in which people in danger experience a “guiding presence.” Then, learn all about the Bermuda Triangle and its long, paranormal history.
