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WHO–OR WHAT–
ARE THE SHADOW PEOPLE?
HAVE YOU SEEN THEM TOO?
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DARKNESS
WALKS
The
Shadow People Among Us
by
Jason Offutt
Anomalist
Books
Trade Paperback,
$14.95
ISBN: 1933665378
204 pages
Order from AMAZON here:
or
from
Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore |
They
lurk in obscurity. Looming human
figures, blacker than darkness. Millions across the globe see them. The
unfortunate feel their touch. And some awake in horror to their red,
unblinking stare. Join Jason Offutt, who has interviewed dozens of
eyewitnesses, as he shines some light on the world of the Shadow
People, viewing these beings through the lens of science, religion, and
metaphysics. Are they ghosts, demons, hallucinations, or something else
entirely?
From
the Foreword by Brad Steiger: “Jason Offutt’s excellent
study of the phenomenon presents us with the most
thorough and complete work yet written regarding the mysterious beings
that we have come to call collectively, the Shadow People…Jason may not
have any ultimate answers, but no one has
done a better job of defining who or what these shades might be.”
Contents
Foreword by Brad Steiger 9
Introduction 11
1. The Mystery of Shadow People 13
2. The Science of Shadow People 23
3. The Metaphysics of Shadow People 35
4. Benign Shadows 49
5. Negative Shadows 65
6. Red Eyed Shadows 77
7. Buzzing Shadows 87
8. Angry, Hooded Shadows 93
9. Shadows that Attack 105
10. When Children See Shadows 117
11. Cats And Other Shadow Animals 127
12. The Hat Man 139
13. Ouija Boards and Other Invitations to Shadows 151
14. Other Explanations 163
15. Kaci’s Cry for Help 177
16. Getting Rid of Shadows 183
Afterword 197
Sources 201
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About
the author...
JASON OFFUTT is
a writer and college journalism instructor. At various times in his
career, he has also been a newspaper editor, general assignment
reporter, photographer, newspaper consultant, bartender, farm hand, and
the mayor of a small Midwestern town. His books include Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly
Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots, and a
collection of parenting humor entitled On Being Dad.
(He has been named humor writer of the year multiple times by the
Missouri Press Association.) He lives with his wife and children in
Maryville, Missouri.
Follow Offutt's blog: From the Shadows
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Excerpt from Darkness Walks:
In
the gray world of our homes after the sun goes down, we sometimes
glimpse the black shapes of people – or animals – moving through our
bedrooms, our hallways, our waking nightmares. They walk, they stare,
and sometimes … they talk. They are the Shadow People, and I’ve found
stories about them from across North America, England, Portugal, South
Africa, Australia, and other parts of our planet.
Out of these stories have emerged eight general categories of Shadow
People:
• Benign Shadows
• Shadows of Terror
• Red-Eyed Shadows,
• Noisy Shadows
• Angry Hooded Shadows
• Shadows that Attack
• Shadow Cats
• and The Hat Man.
These
categories often overlap. Some terrifying Shadow People have red eyes,
some don’t. Some Hat Men are ominous, some are not. Some Angry Hooded
Shadows seem to paralyze you and sometimes attack, others simply seem
to acknowledge your presence before they make their way through your
house and disappear through a wall. But what they are is a mystery. Are
these Shadow People ghosts? Demons? Reflections from a parallel
dimension? Space aliens? Or, as with Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghosts, maybe
“an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a
fragment of underdone potato.”
Although experts in the
paranormal – and science – offer numerous explanations for these Shadow
People, all, or none, may be valid. Whatever these entities are, the
uncountable number of geographically separated people who have
encountered these dark beings know they are real because they have
reported seeing, hearing, feeling, and fearing these walking Shadows –
like Margot Davies of Seattle. Davies moved into a house just east of
Seattle in 2002 and, from early on she knew something wasn’t quite
right about the house.
“The third night in the house, some
relatives came to stay the night,” she said. “Later the next morning my
aunt took me aside and said she sensed something in the house the
previous night.”
Nothing bothered her until she began modeling
in 2005 and started seeing a dark figure in her home. “Quite often I
began to see a dark shape of person near the door of the den out of the
corner of my eye,” she said. At first she dismissed these sightings as
a trick of mind until she was sitting in her hot tub one night in
November 2007. “I glanced in the living room window and there was a
dark Shadow in front of the lamp staring at me,” she said. “At first I
thought someone was in the house, but then how could they be dark in
front of a bright lamp?”
As soon as this man-shaped Shadow
realized she was looking at it, it quickly moved from the window
through the living room wall, remerged in the kitchen then disappeared
towards the den.
“I ran inside dripping wet, checked the house and no one was inside,”
she said. “I never said anything to anyone.” |
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