Getting a glimpse of a shadowy figure when you’re in a dark room is the stuff horror movies are made of. The thought of that happening actually seems so creepy that it’s easy to assume it only occurs in scary movies. Unfortunately, this is something that really does happen to people. If you ever see dark figures out of the corner of your eye, there’s a reason why… and it’s pretty spooky.
It’s easy to assume that the dark figure you just spotted in your peripheral vision was the light playing tricks on you, or just your imagination. While that might be the case in some situations, it isn’t always. It’s known as seeing “shadow people,” a term that might immediately freak you out.
Many people all around the world have spoken up about seeing them, and some accounts are a little too detailed to be false.
The term “shadow people” comes to us from author Heidi Hollis, who writes about paranormal phenomena. In an interview with radio show Coast to Coast AM, Hollis said, “Shadow people have been around since the beginning of time and are a dark influence upon society.” Apparently, most people who see shadow people aren’t able to see detailed features. Instead, they notice just a human-like form. Bustle reports that in Hollis’ book about shadow people, The Secret War, she describes them as “dark silhouettes with human shapes and profiles that flicker in and out of peripheral vision.” Hollis has also pointed out that she believes some of them could be aliens.
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On her website, psychic Ellie Crystal wrote that when you see a shadow person, it’s “about consciousness momentarily moving between the grids that create our reality.” She describes shadow people as “creatures of supernatural origin that appear as dark forms in the peripheries of people’s vision and disintegrate, or move between walls, when noticed.” Crystal also says they’re similar to ghost sightings, adding that some people feel chased by them and some feel a sense of dread when they notice them.
While that sounds terrifying, some do believe that not all shadow people are bad. Pyschic medium Natalia Kuna has said that while many shadow people are bad, some have neutral auras and has described them as “guardian-like.” Still, Kuna believes that shadow people who have red or green glowing eyes are “extremely evil humans,” which is not exactly comforting!
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If this all sounds a little too fictional for you, there are a few other theories for why some see shadow people.
Some believe it happens because of sleep paralysis, which essentially means that, for a moment, your body is unable to move, even though you’re alert. Jan Dirk Blom, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Netherlands’ University of Groningen, says that people who experience sleep paralysis often report seeing shadow people because they feel trapped in their own bodies and become instantly hyper-vigilant about their surroundings.
Blom explained that our brains make us “over-detect” types of dangers, which is a good thing. But it becomes a problem “when the brain attempts to make sense of its surroundings while it experiences a threat that in reality does not stem from the outside world, but from its own reaction to sleep paralysis.”
It could also be caused by a heightened emotional state or even just sleep deprivation.
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As Bustle points out, “There’s always the explanation that your peripheral vision is basically guaranteed to play tricks on you — because it’s designed to detect motion and movement, not detail, it’s likely that you could make mountains out of molehills (or in this case, shadow people out of shadows) if you were in the right mindset.”
So, there are lots of possible explanations, but we will ever really know? Doubtful. One thing is for sure: we’re definitely more in the Halloween mood now!
