The Open-Minded Skeptic

It's quite funny really. I started this blog during a, thankfully, brief period of unemployment whilst thinking about how I could make a popular blog about a subject I found interesting. I didn't realise how successful that'd be. I've not made as much money as from other blogs I've made (but £20 isn't anything to sniff at!) but this blog has proven to have a life of it's own. Even when my posts became sporadic and robotic, the visitor numbers have not faltered. It's the most popular and most subscribed to blog I've ever started.

So firstly, thank you to all of you who continue to subscribe (optimistic of you given my posting track record!). You are stars!

And for any newbies, let me set out my stall:

I'm a skeptic. I don't believe in sky fairies or an afterlife. I don't believe 99% of stories about cryptozoological creatures or UFO visitors or ghosts. So you might think I'm the worst person to write about the weird and unusual but in fact I bloody love the paranormal. I enjoy the stories, and I believe it's a skeptics job not to scoff at such reports but to look at them further to find out the truth behind them. Even if the truth is that people made them up, that's still a fascinating insight into the human psyche isn't it?

And I have a history. Like any good character in a horror movie, I have a dark secret from my past. And that keeps me open-minded.

Bigfoot in a garden? Or a blackbird in flight? 

This year I will return to blogging here, on various subjects but mainly on one that continues to enthral me: the mystery apes of North America (or the bigfoot or sasquatch to most people). I'm going to try and find answers to questions that have always aggravated me, such as why have we found no bigfoot remains? (I've already found interesting statistics on just how few other KNOWN great apes corpses and fossils are found). It's going to be a fun journey, and I hope you come along for the ride...

If you feel benevolent and particularly generous, this writer always appreciates things bought for him from his wishlist

Shadow People: The Final Word

As I'm sure you know, Dear Constant Reader, I have an obsession with Shadow People. I thought it was time to merge my experiences with the best information available and close the door on this chapter of the blog so we can move forward on to new subjects for the future.

When I was a child I saw these things, these Shadow People, and those memories have stayed with me as I've grown, and they still help keep my sceptical mind open. The main experience sticks particularly out in my mind as, thanks to my beloved Auntie Melly, some confirmation that part of the events really did happen.

I was only 4 or 5 years old, living in my Nan's house in Snodland with her, my Mum, Auntie Melly and my Uncle Graham. On the night I want to talk about everyone had gone out, except for Melly who was babysitting me with her boyfriend, Mick. Now the house, number 9 Sharnall Lane, sat opposite a graveyard, and on 2 sides of it was a spooky (for my over imaginative imagination anyway!) disused road leading to a large house that had been abandoned... it was partially obscured by trees and my young mind always pictured it as some old colonial style house with a porch etc (in Snodland? Yeah... right). And to knock it off the rumour among the children of the street was that it was built over an old plague pit. So I'll admit... I was always in the state of mind to expect the unexpected.

That night she put me to bed, leaving the door open on to the hallway. The stairs ran at right angles to the hallway down the side of my room. It wasn't more than five minutes later, as I stared lazily out the door into a hallway lit only with the light from downstairs, that it strode into view as if it'd walked down the hall from my Nan's room, not up the stairs. It nearly filled the doorway. It was pitch black, man shaped shadow, and beyond its outline and its rather large size (I'd guess 6'8" and built big, so pretty much like me now!) there was nothing discernible... no facial features or clothes... except that is for his bright red eyes. Now like any young child seeing that I SCREAMED!!!! Melly came crashing up the stairs and the Shadow strode of out of view down the hall. I told her what I'd seen and she seemed worried. She rushed out and called for Mick and together they checked the other rooms. She came back and calmed me down as best she could and they both wandered downstairs relieved. It was just a child's nightmare...

And as they got comfy on the sofa again, he strode back into the doorway just as before and now this time I know I was awake and he stared at me. The level of malevolence in that stare is not really describable, as if he was a shadow superman firing beams of pure hate out of his eyes. I know this sounds silly but this time I was too scared to scream. It was the barks of my Nan's toy poodle Lucy that scared him away this time. She came charging up the stairs and down the hallway after him. I called for Melly and she came and I told her what happened. Lucy was now sitting in the hallway growling (this wasn't unusual... she was a mean tempered little creature who would growl all day long just for fun). Melly told me not to be silly, it had been Mick all along, trying to scare me.

I was so relieved, not quite believing her but wanting to believe her, and I fell asleep quickly after that. The door was closed this time.

He never came back any other night, but it was a long, long time before I started sleeping with the door even slightly ajar. It wasn't unusual for me to close every door in the house if I was ever left alone in it until well into my early twenties.

A year or so before Melly died I was talking with her about something and the subject of that night came up. I laughingly joked to her about how silly it had been for me to think Mick was a demon! She then said something that made me feel rather ill

"Jay" (for that is how I was known back in the day!) "it wasn't Mick, I just wanted you to go to sleep so said it was. You and Lucy really freaked me and him out!!!"

But at during this same period I also encountered, very often, another form of Shadow Person. Often I would see two small figures wearing hooded cloaks. They were always outside and whenever I saw them they would run away at impossibly fast speeds. Sometimes I'd just spot the tops of their hoods out the window as if they were sneaking past the house. Other times I'd catch a glimpse of them running down the footpath opposite. At the time, as a child, I thought they were witches and as I grew older and moved away I put them down to my childish imagination. In fact I almost completely forgot about them until I began researching Shadow People online. I came across a fundie site about Shadow People and almost fainted when I saw this page. My imaginary witches were not just things I'd been dreaming up alone. Worse came when I found this video which features a brief clip of one of the Hooded Shadows.

This is where I face my conundrum. On the one side I am a sceptical atheist who scorns the weirdo beliefs of woomeisters worldwide. On the other hand I have this set of experiences in one house as a child which are almost certainly not figments of my imagination (although that does not suggest they are absolutely "paranormal") . It's something I find hard to fit into my nice neat little world view and something I struggle with every day. But it's time to stop. The Shadow People are no longer part of my life and I shall put them to one side for now, a mere blip in my worldview and not something to worry about. Time for me to start leaving my bedroom door open again...

This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his wishlist

What The Shadow Man Means For My World View

See, I'm going to say something I haven't said since the day I gave up the last bit of my previous pagan faith and became a good little sceptic; I'm a believer.

I believe in the Shadow People. I believe I've seen them. And I believe they are not a projection of my mind or a figment of my imagination. I believe they are some sort of independent entity or object.

Now that is troublesome, because I have no idea what a Shadow Person is, or whether one has any sort of agenda. And that means I have absolutely no idea about how they fit into my world view. Maybe they are some sort of weird lifeform native to Earth, or interdimensional travelers or extraterrestrials. If that was the case my world view isn't at risk. Those things can fit in quite nicely.

But what if they are Cormons, or Tricksters, or ghosts, or demons? Well that sort of messes me up doesn't it? I suppose I must give up my ardent atheism and move into "agnosticism". I hold up my hands and say "I don't know!". Scepticism is a useful tool but can no longer be a way of life. But don't expect me to suddenly become a UFO believer. That, I'm afraid, will take a lot more!!

This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his wishlist

Shadow People Again

The Shadow Man is the only Fortean thing I've ever had any personal experience of. So it's hardly surprising it's a subject that I will return to, time and again. I'm nearly a total sceptic, I know it's weird that I thus write a blog about the unexplained but I'm a sympathetic sceptic. And the reason for that is simply part of me will never accept that the Shadow Man was a figment of my imagination or a construct of my unconscious mind. How would the dog know he was there? Why did I see him then and not have similar experiences later on? And how come I've [Jae Note - Following link to my personal journal has shirtless man on it. Forewarned is forearmed!) seen other shadow phenomenon in that same property but never anywhere else? These are real questions, and I need answers. I might never get them, but I need them!

So... firstly listened to Beyond the Edge Radio today and they had Jason Offutt on discussing Shadow People. His blog, From The Shadows, has been in my blogroll since I started this blog and it's well worth a read. Obviously, once I heard that, I gave up on the house work and headed straight to my computer to look for Shadow People videos. I know, it always upsets me greatly but I'm like a dog with a bone once I'm on to something...

And I found this video which has some interesting pictures and footage. Most interesting was the last video, showing what I believe is the top of a cape of a shadow person. Why do I believe this? Because (as I've said in my NSFW link above) I used to see two of these doing the same thing at the living room window quite often. Always on the move. When I saw that video, it completely blew my mind. Imagine seeing something that makes you feel full of warm nostalgia and fearful terror all at once. That's how it was for me.

Then there are personal testimonies here and here. Both of these stories are interesting, but also bring home to me the differences in different sightings. The shadow man, and the hooded shadows, I saw as a child were not "shadows" as we know them. Them were 3D beings, composed of some black material. A lot of shadow people sightings have them as 2D shadows often on walls. I'm not saying that those people are lying just stressing there are major differences in sighting report.

Another difference is a lot of people (including my old work colleague who reported her second encounter of a shadow involved it moving extremely fast) report the shadows moving with uncommon speed. In my case, and this is possibly the aspect that scares me most, the shadow man moved with a terrifying lack of speed and moved from the hall to my doorway at a leisurely pace. Although I admit the hooded shadows I saw at others times always moved with the sort of speed reserved for the Flash.

Everytime I look I find something more that confirms my beliefs that what I saw was not a figment of my imagination, but something else (whatever that may be!). The first time I looked I found the Shadow People were a fairly common phenomenon which shook me up. The second time I looked I discovered the two entities I'd always thought of as strange witch like creatures who were often seen outside my old house were actually ALSO common entities linked to the shadow people. And now I've seen a video of one of those two entities and can confirm I have seen that thing myself. That scares me. It scares me because:

1) anything that makes the Shadow Man out to be anything other than a figment of my imagination means I might one day encounter him again and that is not something I wish to consider. I simply don't know what I'd do if he walked back into my life.
2) it would totally threaten my lovely, safe world view. My world is a world free of religion, spirits and filled with science and flesh and blood beings (even if some of them might not be recognised by science just yet!). If the Shadow Man were to be "real" then I'd be wrong somewhere along the line. And I don't like that one bit. But at least I'm willing (unlike scary fundamentalists) to accept that possibility!!

Oh well... until more evidence appears I'm going to just keep my doors closed and hope to a God who I hope doesn't exist that I never have to see those bloody red eyes again.

Further Reading

Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us - Jason Offutt (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his wishlist

Red Eyed Beasts

I'll never forget my encounter with the Shadow Man. I will admit that I can now, rarely, sleep with the door open which is a vast improvement on the past and owes much to the gentle coxing of my ever patient other half, but most nights I just stare into the darkness around my closed bedroom door and wonder what might be behind it. My major issue has always been those red eyes. And I'm disturbed by how often these red eyed monsters appear in the world of the paranormal.

Bigfoot for instance. Here are just a few reports:

Red Eyes At The Window

8 Foot Tall And More Red Eyes

More Red Eyes At The Window (I have a phobia of exposed windows at night as well as open doors and yes... that is a proper phobia not a "oh that slightly worries me" sort of fear so maybe I should stop right now...)

The British Man Monkey is even more consistently described with red eyes.

Our old friends, the Ghostly Black Dogs, are regularly described as having red eyes. And our new friends the Alien Big Cats... RED EYES

More information and analysis can be found here with mentions of other cryptids with red eyes and some rather wonderful theories to explain this phenomenon (including science... ooo...)

So there we have a theme. A rather worrying and concerning theme, especially for someone like me who deeply dislikes 1) glowing red eyes and 2) silly non-scientific theories to explain things. I can reason away bigfoot sightings as being of an unknown great ape, I can explain Alien Big Cats as an introduced species. But how can we explain away all these red eyes? I still think Three Men Seeking Monsters by Nick Redfern puts forward the most interesting theory. Could it be all these creatures are one and the same entity? Or at least entities. The Cormons, a group of monsters from another dimension who feed off our emotional reaction to them and take many forms to encourage different emotions... angels, fairies, monsters, aliens, UFOs. Could all our favourite fortean creatures simply be disguises for emotional vampires, and are we, by way of simply talking about them, perpetuating a never ending feeding cycle?? Makes my head hurt, especially at this time of night.

Rabbits: Not As Cute As You Thought!

But I thought I'd just point out... red eyes are everywhere. And they might be watching you!! Night night, sleep well ;)

This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his wishlist

Shadows

The Shadow Man is the only thing that holds me back from falling completely into scepticism and losing the last vestiges of my imaginative youth. Maybe I should thank him for that, although I have no doubt if he ever presented himself to me again I'd be beating a hasty retreat for the nearest exit.

For many years he was a secret between me and my Auntie Melly. But one day when I was about sixteen I was at a BBQ with my Mum and lots of her arty friends (she was into that stuff that year, no doubt prompted by her Salvador Dali obsessed artist boyfriend) I happened to tell a group of people the story. One woman stared at me open mouthed and told me her own story. In her house she and her family often found a shadow man crouched in the corner of her landing. Whenever they spotted him he'd get up and run away but not before they'd catch a glimpse of his bright red eyes. It chilled me then to think that we had both encountered/imagined something so similar.



I put it out my mind until a few years ago when I was busy writing up my Shadow Man story for a Halloween blog post. I decided to do a little search on the net and was truly horrified to discover... the shadow people are something many people have encountered. Be it an illusion of the human mind or a group of entities, there is something in it worthy of further investigation.

After I wrote my blog post on the shadow man many Halloweens ago, one of my workmates read it and got freaked out by it. She told her entire department about it and later that day one quiet member of the marketing team sidled up to my desk and asked to talk to me. Jo told me about how she'd woken up one day to find the shadow man in her bedroom... and he didn't just stand and watch her but "freaked out" and attempted to attack her before she fled the room screaming with terror. Again I felt a chill run down my spine... she told me she had never told anyone before because she was afraid they'd laugh at her and she'd never heard anyone else talk about them but my description matched hers exactly. And it scared her quite a bit. How many others around us have met a shadow and keep it to themselves because they are afraid of ridicule?

As I said in one of my first posts on this subject on this blog, the Shadows is a particularly good website. Yes it's a fundie site. But it has some good info hidden in there too. The Shadow Gallery is the most useful part for me and page 3 especially interesting; it was here I discovered something even more disturbing.

The pair of Hooded Shadows haunted me at Sharnall Lane (where I saw the Shadow Man). I'd often see them hiding behind things outside, staring through windows and even running off down alleyways if I caught a glimpse of them. I know, it sounds insane, but even though I'm referring to them as "beings" I am more than open to the probability they are but figments of my imagination, and others imaginations too. But still the question that interests me the most is why do so many people reports the exact same things? Are our brains wired up to see shadows? Possibly. Pareidolia is the condition that causes our minds to interpret some images from our eyes as human faces or forms like the Face of Mars, and Hypnagogia is a form of waking dread that causes hallucinations, feelings of dread and the feeling of paralysis. Plus there are multiple other explanations... but still whilst my rational mind nods with approval my other mind, my now tiny irrational brain, that has slowly given up territory on religion and supernatural phenomena to my rational side, clings with desperation to this one last thing. I just can't shake the feeling that there's something more to shadow men. And if there is something more to shadow men, then the entire rational world I've bought into these last few years will go up in smoke and I'll have to reevaluate my entire way of thinking. That is why this topic will return again and again.

Focus On: Shadow People Part One

I decided to ask a question about the shadow people over at Yahoo Answers to see what experiences people would express. Sadly there was a lot of polarisation between those who believed wholeheartedly that shadow people were real creatures and those who thought they were figments of peoples over active imaginations. Sadly this represents a lack of scientific curiousity in many people. Just to dismiss this phenomenon so easily when so many factors could be at work is ludicrous.

There's some good summaries of the various theories over at Wikipedia's Shadow People article.

We all know my shadow man story. It shows signs of being a case of waking sleep (I was drifting off when I first saw him) but also has the fact I was most definitely awake when I next saw him. I'm not suggesting it was not an hallucination, but am suggesting that waking sleep can only be part of the answer, if it is the answer at all.

Many describe ominous feelings associated with a visit by the Shadow People. Check out the Shadows website for some stories about this, although I feel that website attributes too much malevolence to the phenomenon and brings in too much religion which only clouds the further study of what is going on.

I prefer the The Official Shadowpeople Archives where a greater variety of stories exist allowing a better and more thorough study of shadow people.

The shadow people are a particular interest of mine and I shall be returning to this topic in more detail repeatedly over the course of this blog.

The Shadow Man

I was only 4 or 5 years old, living in my Nan's house in Snodland with her, my Mum, Auntie Melly and my Uncle Graham. The night it happened everyone had gone out, except for Melly who was babysitting me with her boyfriend, Mick. Now 9 Sharnall Lane sat opposite a graveyard, and along the side of it was a spooky (for my over imaginative imagination anyway!) disused driveway leading to a large house that had been abandoned... it was partially obscured by trees and my young mind always pictured it as some old colonial style house with a porch etc (in Snodland? Yeah... right). And to knock it off the rumour was (is!) that the street was built over an old plague pit. So I'll admit... I was always in the state of mind to expect the unexpected... 

That night she put me to bed, leaving the door open on to the hallway (the stairs ran at a right angle to the hallway down the side of my room). It wasn't more than five minutes later, as I stared lazily out the door into a hallway lit only with the light from downstairs, when he strode into view as if he'd walked down the hall from my Nan's room, not up the stairs. He nearly filled the doorway. He was a pitch black shadow, beyond his out line there was nothing discernible, no facial features or clothes, except that is for his bright red eyes. Now like any young child seeing that I SCREAMED!!!! Melly came crashing up the stairs and he strode of out of view back the way he had come. I told her what I'd seen and she seemed worried. She rushed out and called for Mick and together they checked the other rooms. She came back and calmed me down (she was only 15 and from what she told me later, she was quite scared herself) and they both wandered downstairs relieved. It was just a child's nightmare.

And as they got comfy on the sofa downstairs, he strode back again. Now this time I know I was awake, this was no dream, and he stared at me, and it wasn't a disinterested stare. It was a hateful look that still chills me to this day. I know this sounds silly but this time I was too scared to scream. It was the barks of my Nan's toy poodle Lucy that scared him away this time. She came charging up the stairs and down the hallway after him. I called for Melly and she came and I told her what happened. Lucy was now sitting in the hallway growling (this wasn't unusual, she was a mean tempered little creature who would growl all day long just for fun). She told me not to be silly. It had been Mick all along, trying to scare me.

I was so relieved, not quite believing her but wanting to believe her and I fell asleep quickly after that. The door was closed this time.

He never came back any other night, but it was a long, long time before I started sleeping with the door even slightly ajar. If I'm alone at anytime I often make sure all the doors in a house are closed before I can settle. Sad but all too true.

A year or so before Melly died I was talking with her about something and the subject of that night came up. I laughingly joked to her about how silly it had been for me to think Mick was a demon! She then said something that made me feel rather sick. 

"Jay, it wasn't Mick, I just wanted you to go to sleep so said it was. You and Lucy really freaked me and him out!!!"

Whether you believe it was a demon or just my overactive imagination I've actually spoken to a couple of people who've seen the same apparition  but in their own homes. Maybe you should sleep with that door closed tonight huh?