David Weatherly, paranormal investigator with 35 years of experience, joins Art Bell to discuss shadow people after Bell’s terrifying encounter in his ham radio room—semi-solid entities vanishing with a "flush" effect. Callers share eerie accounts: a black-bodysuit figure near a water heater, a grinning Victorian man linked to lightning strikes, and pale, black-eyed children in old-fashioned clothes. Some report physical attacks during sleep paralysis, like Philip’s tall dark intruder or Akaya’s pastor’s choking encounter leaving a doorframe nick. Others describe intangible beings reacting to fear or prayer. Weatherly dismisses tech-based theories, citing pre-internet reports and quantum science’s "thinning veils" between dimensions, while Bell questions if these could be misinterpreted as ghosts or even alien abduction screen memories—suggesting shadow phenomena may blur the line between paranormal and unexplained reality. [Automatically generated summary]
David Weatherly is coming up, and I'll tell you all about him.
But before I get him on, I'm going to tell you why he's here.
Because I had a terror.
And that's the only decent word for the only word that fits.
I had a terror.
I've been a talk show host.
I've been talking about this kind of stuff all my adult life.
But it never happens to me, save an experience with a couple of unidentified flying objects, one very serious one.
None of this other stuff.
I've never met these creatures, these animals, these things that we talk about and wonder about on the air.
Until.
And I'm telling this mostly for David's benefit because I doubt he's ever heard it.
Until about two weeks or three weeks, two or three weeks before the show, I was staying up late, getting in training.
You have no idea the hours I keep.
It's awful, actually.
I rarely get to sleep anymore before about five to six in the morning, usually about six.
At any rate, I was in training for that later hour.
Turned out I needed more training, by the way.
And I was in my ham chat, my ham radio room.
You've seen pictures.
In fact, there's a picture of that on my profile picture on Facebook.
And working on the computer.
I've got a, you know, a full desktop computer and a monitor in there.
And I was beginning to catch up on the world of the paranormal because that's about what I was about to plunge into again.
Working very late into the morning, concentrating very hard.
And so what I'm going to tell you is the dead flat truth, and it is terrifying.
It may not sound terrifying to you because it hasn't happened to you yet.
Or maybe it has.
You know how we've talked in earlier programs about how you can sense when somebody's watching you or you're being watched or something?
I had that sense.
And oh, God, I turned to my right, and here is this human form.
It was not completely solid.
I could see something behind it, but it did have enough solidity, so I knew what I was looking at.
This wasn't, you know, a trick of the eye.
This wasn't a floater in the eye or anything like that.
A lot of people, I guess, have that kind of problem.
I don't see how you could mistake it for what I saw, because what I saw was a being.
It was a being.
It looked like a human.
Now, it had legs.
It had a torso.
It had a head.
The arms, I guess, were at the side and kind of mixed in with it.
But other than that, that's what it looked like.
And as I mentioned, I could see through it.
Now, this doesn't, I'm describing this to you, but it doesn't describe the instant of terror.
This was to my right as I sat on the desk.
I looked over and I saw this being, and I just kind of jumped, and I guess I was a little bit of shock or a lot of shock.
I don't know.
Anyway, it vanished.
It was gone.
And I looked behind me.
You know, I just swiveled.
I've got a swivel chair.
All my chairs are made for a bad back, right?
I've got a swivel chair.
I swiveled around, looked behind me, and there it was.
It was behind me, up against the back wall.
And I could again see a little bit behind it, but it was pretty solid, still looking just the same way, no real change, the same way.
And I was scared out of my wits.
I came back around and, oh my God, it was on my left.
It was on my left, up against the wall.
And when it disappeared, it just went like that.
It was just gone.
And then suddenly it was to my left up against the wall.
I don't know any other words to describe it except shadow person or shadow being or entity, whatever in the hell it was.
It scared me so badly at that point that I ran out of the room.
You know, I've got a wife.
I've got a daughter in a room next to me, next to my hamjack.
I ran to the back of the house to the closet.
I guess I really shouldn't be talking about all of this.
Anyway, I went to where I keep a weapon and got it.
Probably a poor choice, but I'll tell you, the terror was such that I was convinced that we had an intruder in the house, that we had that something awful was there, whatever in the hell it was.
It was awful.
And so I went everywhere.
I went everywhere in the house.
I went in every room.
I went out in the garage.
I went all over the place.
Surprised I didn't wake my wife and found nothing.
But when I tell you what I experienced was terror, I mean real terror.
No idea what I saw to this very day, no idea.
I remember doing a show many, many years ago on shadow people.
People sent in pictures of, you know, shadow beings in hats and stuff like that.
But, you know, to me, at that point, it's something that we talk about.
It's something for a night's subject.
And it kind of snuck up on me slowly.
I had never heard of it before and certainly never experienced it until recently.
So there you have my kind of embarrassing description of what happened.
Now comes David Weatherly, thank goodness, a paranormal investigator, an author, adventurer, explorer.
For over 35 years, he has delved into the world of the strange, investigating cases around the country and around the world.
He has written and Lectured on a diverse range of topics, including cryptozoology, ufology, hauntings, and ancient mysteries.
David has also studied shamanic and magical traditions with elders from numerous cultures, including Europe, Tibet, Native American, and Africa.
He has been a guest on a wide range of TV and radio programs, including Dreamland over there with Whitley, featured in Watchers Volume 5.
He is the author of Black-Eyed Children.
Oh, that's another good one that has only come up recently.
And I tell you, over the years, I have sat down with so many people and heard countless variations of that same type of account.
And often when I interview these people, it's like interviewing someone who's just went through a trauma or a very frightening experience.
And they just radiate.
I find that a lot of these people, even recounting their experiences to me, if it's been a year or several years sometimes, when they go back to that moment, they start becoming fearful again.
And I'll tell you, I've heard some that were so frightening and over the top that you really sort of wonder how some of these people even maintain their sanity long enough to push beyond this.
Because there are some of these encounters that become physical.
And that takes the fear factor up many more levels.
And, you know, as I said, I've spoken to so many people who were really in the same position that you are.
You know, they weren't interested necessarily in anything paranormal or strange, and these weren't common topics for them to sit and discuss.
But suddenly, something like this happens.
And in a heartbeat, it takes someone from being a skeptic to suddenly realizing, my God, I have experienced something that there is no rational explanation for.
And that alone, you know, really transforms someone emotionally and mentally and Every other way, but moving beyond the fear of the experience is often what proves to be the most difficult thing for people who have these encounters because it is a physical reality.
And just like you pointed out, there's plenty of people who will jump up and down and say, No, no, this is you know, this is a result of exhaustion or stress or it's a trick of the mind and all these various things.
It seems to me that if you sit in front of a monitor for enough hours, and I had been there for a long time, that your brain begins to be affected by the refresh rate of that monitor, whatever that is.
And I've always kind of wondered, would that allow you to see something that you would otherwise not see?
That's the best I can do because I was sitting in front of the computer for a long time before this.
And one of the things that we can sort of connect that to is that, you know, through the ages, tribal cultures use things to alter their consciousness.
And I'm not talking about hallucinogens or drugs or anything like that, but they use things that are repetitive, such as drumming, trance dancing, things like this, according to tribal beliefs, raise the awareness and alter the consciousness, which allows you to see things that exist at a different vibratory level.
That's the easiest way I can explain it in sort of simple terms.
And, you know, a lot of people, again, will doubt things like this, but when we look at modern science, quantum science is now saying, hey, we've figured out that there are 12 other dimensions of it, of 12 other dimensions.
We don't know how to get there or what's there, but we know they're there.
Well, this was a grand announcement a few years ago by a group of quantum scientists, and I had to kind of chuckle when I read it because I thought, you know, shaman around the world have been talking about this for ages and saying the same thing.
You know, it's just that it's framed within their spiritual, magical traditions, but they say the same thing.
They say, hey, there are other levels of existence, other levels of reality that exist around ours and intermingle with ours.
We just don't have the level of awareness to understand what's there and possibly interacting with us.
It just sort of blended in with my interest in a wide range of strange topics.
And shadow people just run consistently through almost everything.
I mean, all right, a few years ago, they did a poll about paranormal and supernatural topics, and they found that shadow people are one of the most widely reported phenomena worldwide, worldwide.
And you find these things in conjunction with haunted sites.
Okay, this comes from something entitled, When Shadow People Attack.
The first thought that crossed Stephen Painter's five-year-old mind was that someone had broken into the house in Bury, Great Manchester, England, around 1986.
My mom took me to the local estate to her friend's house, Painter said.
I believe that she had been burgled because her kitchen, her entire kitchen, was covered, and I mean covered in black handprints, almost animal-like.
He didn't say anything about the obvious black handprints, not until later.
I mentioned the incident to my mother, what I saw.
She looked at me and said, nothing on the wall, Stephen.
We didn't know how that Could be.
The prints were there.
His mother's friend said she saw shadows and the image of dark faces on the walls.
His mother was immune.
There was nothing on the wall from her point of view.
From that point, dark images have followed Painter.
The animal-like prints he saw when he was five have turned into entities.
I've seen a big black mass with red eyes, good lord, always at the door, he said.
The hat man, always in the background.
And typical shadow people, just like our shadows on a sunny day.
And you know what?
They are like shadows on a sunny day, but of more substance.
I only relate to you what I saw of more substance than that.
Welcome back, David.
A little story there.
When shadow people attack.
So that's like the next thing I want to get to.
I always thought that they were just sort of, what's the right word?
I don't know, beings, if you will, or whatever they are, that they didn't physically attack people.
And I tell you, Art, you know, all the years of interviewing people and so forth, one of the weirdest and most frightening accounts I've heard was from a gentleman who had a physical encounter with a shadow being.
And this fellow, his name was John.
He considered himself a religious person, but he had stopped going to church.
He was very focused on his career.
He started to notice some strange things in his home.
He lived alone.
He started seeing fleeting movement out of his peripheral vision.
Odd things started to happen, like a fork would go flying off the table.
Little things around the home.
And he continued to try to dismiss it until he started seeing these shadow beings directly.
I mean, he was directly looking at them just like your experience.
Well, John managed to, you know, he somehow fought through the fear enough to focus.
I mean, he was in panic mode.
Don't get me wrong.
All he could think about was getting loose from this thing because he told me, all right, he said that he knew if this thing drug him under the bed, that he would just be gone.
And he told me, he said, David, I don't know what would have happened to me, where I would have been, you know, if anyone would have found anything, but he's just convinced that he just would not be here anymore.
And in his moment of terror and crisis, he says that he started praying.
You know, he reverted back to his upbringing of going to church every week, and that's what he resorted to.
And he just started screaming prayers at this thing, all the while kicking and trying to get loose.
And it was, you know, it's such a frightening encounter when you listen to this man pouring his Heart out and reliving this terror, recounting this experience of this thing attempting to drag him into some kind of void.
And, you know, he ended up letting go of the radiator and grabbing the nightstand next to the bed, yanking out his Bible and continuing to pray and started reading passages from the Bible while fighting this thing.
And somehow he got loose from it.
And, you know, he says that he jumped up, he went across the room, he's turning lights on, he's screaming at his bed, you know, screaming at this thing that he believes is still under there.
And then, you know, his fear started to turn to anger because of being victimized.
And he ended up, you know, kicking against the bed and finally just shoving the bed aside.
But I'm just telling you that effect, if you can imagine that effect on a kind of a minuscule level, that one on my left, when it left, it headed, would have been the direction of the house, going into the house, from the back of the house where my hamjack is.
And there was that little tiny effect, not a big effect, a little one.
That's the only movement that I could even imagine to describe.
And, you know, a mirror in a dark room, it kind of adds to the eeriness of some of these encounters.
You know, some cultures around the world have a lot of things connected with mirrors and believe that those are sometimes can be used as portals or gateways into other realities, essentially.
You know, I think there's a number of things that contribute to that.
The paranormal in general, and I use that term very broadly.
You know, I'm old school.
I started this stuff in the 70s.
And back then, paranormal meant anything outside the norm.
So, you know, I think that it's become such a part of pop culture now with all the reality shows and movies and everything else that people have become, one, more open to discussing their experiences.
And two, there are more people looking.
I mean, we have more, you know, ghost hunting teams and ufologists and cryptozoologists now than we've ever had in history.
You know, it's a worldwide interest.
So more and more people looking, then, yeah, more and more things are going to be found and more reports are going to be registered.
But it seems to me that looking for a ghost, taking like a camera crew out and hunting for a ghost has a very small chance of success unless you're going to a place that has had lots of really recent encounters and, you know, is really a hot zone or something.
But, hey, I'm 70 years old now, David.
This was my first experience with anything like this.
Well, you know, I mean, as another answer to your question, we could sort of go down the rabbit hole and examine it in different ways because, you know, spiritual people, shaman, would tell you that the planet's in a very different phase right now.
So the spiritual worlds are starting to come more in contact with our level of reality.
And, you know, alongside of that, we could also say, well, what's the human element in terms of our Mental focus and our energy doing to possibly co-create some of these.
Lots of craziness, and everybody was proclaiming, oh, it's that, you know, the world's going to end and blah, blah, blah.
Well, they tagged a lot of this onto Mayan spiritual elders claiming this because the calendar was ending.
But in reality, that's not what those guys were saying.
I've met with some of those elders.
And really, what they were saying and what a lot of native elders around the world are saying is that the world is going through a transformation because culturally and spiritually and politically and everything else, we're at a lot of crisis points.
And it's all kind of coalescing into a forced transformation.
I mean, face it, you look at the nightly news and you know that there are a lot of breaking points that are going to start showing up.
The world's going to start changing.
And when you coincide that with our personal viewpoint and experience of the world around us, then that's bringing some different things to light.
So, you know, if we go back to this idea that quantum science is talking about the, quote, discovery of other dimensions of existence, we can sort of correlate that with ancient spiritual teachings that believe that we come to certain points in the evolution of the world where it's easier for those levels of existence to sort of cross over with each other.
The veil gets thinner, so to speak.
And when that happens, there's more interaction with whatever dwells in those other levels of reality.
And, you know, you go back through history and you look at a lot of these cultures, and there's so many legends of other beings that used to live here with us.
And at some point in the tribe's history, these other beings leave.
They go through a shimmering doorway or, you know, a hole in the mountain.
There's various ways it's described.
And if we try to put that in scientific terms and look at quantum science, we can say, well, it sounds like whatever these things were, they used to live here, they used to be here, and they left through some kind of portal.
So we're coming back around to points, according to a lot of shaman, where it's easier for these things to come back through and come over here again.
It doesn't seem like, you know, if you say the word portal, it seems like door or little passageway, but it doesn't seem that way.
It just seems like these things drift in and out.
Now, there is a lot of conjecture now about multiple universes, and I can see something coming and going from the universe, sort of drifting in and out.
Thank you, David.
We got a break here.
Kind of drifting in and out, right?
That I can kind of put together in my brain.
Terrifying stuff.
You don't want to see one of these things.
unidentified
Music by Ben Thede But I'm living still.
Coming to you at the speed of light in the darkness.
You know, these are things that people have been looking for answers for for a very long time.
And it's just that unfortunately, you know, for someone who's had a frightening experience like you have, there's not anything that is really going to, I hate to say this, but really completely set you at ease with it.
Because what I find from interviewing people who've had these experiences, there's always this nagging fear in the back of their minds that the thing is going to show up again.
Of the stories that you're aware of and the people you have talked to, is there an effective, I don't know if defense is the right word, a way to have these things be gone?
Now, some people get so terrified that they resort to sleeping with the lights on and so forth because they have their experience in a completely darkened room.
What's interesting is that what often seems to be effective for people is using music in the background.
In the room in which I had this experience, I have a fan, you know, a ceiling fan, and attached to that fan are four 60-watt bulbs going to each corner of the room.
So this is a well-lit room.
Maybe that helps everybody out there understand what the conditions were like.
But, you know, four 60-watt bulbs, that produces plenty of light.
And, you know, as I started to say, there are a handful of things.
You know, a lot of people tend to resort to their spiritual roots.
And, you know, they will do things, if they were raised Catholic, they'll start saying the rosary again, things like this.
And a lot of people find that that works for them.
People who don't necessarily have that kind of spiritual foundation try to find other ways to essentially disrupt whatever possibly allows these things to come in.
They're very common around locations that have a history of hauntings, particularly older locations.
There's something called the stone theory that relates to hauntings.
And we find that a lot of times shadow people tend to show up around those locations too.
It's essentially an idea that things like limestone, areas with a lot of heavy ports in the foundation and so forth, can either attract entities or make it easier for things like this to come through.
And as a result, a lot of locations, you know, you go to Europe and a lot of these older castles and so forth that are very haunted.
There'll be shadow people reports a lot of the times.
Another factor that comes in, Art, and let me interrupt you and throw this in, is that places that have heavy amounts of heavy history of negative things, you know, like old asylums, prisons, things like that, it's very common to find shadow people reports around those types of locations.
You know, a lot of emotional trauma and so forth seems to make it easier for these things to come in.
And, you know, even on a small personal scale, I find that a lot of the people that I've interviewed who, you know, they don't live in a haunted location, they don't, you know, none of the other parameters fit.
But what is often found is that things are going on in their lives that create high levels of stress or trauma or, you know, emotional turmoil.
Those all seem to be elements that help create these negative experiences.
And, you know, it's really a good point because shadow people, shadow person has sort of become this catch-all phrase over the last 10 years or so.
And what is most likely is that there are a lot of different things that are being thrown into those categories because there are variations.
You know, some of them appear to be very malevolent, like the account that I related earlier with John.
You know, this thing, whatever it was, was really out to get him.
But there are plenty of other accounts of these things that there is no physical contact.
And while it's creepy and scary, these things almost appear to just be observing.
You know, people will report these things manifesting in their room and they'll suddenly be leaning over the bed as if they're trying to get a good look at the person.
And then they vanish.
So it seems that we have a lot of different manifestations all thrown into one category.
And honestly, we could go down a lot of different roads to say, hey, this is what they probably are.
Well, Ari, you think the shadow people are creepy?
These black-eyed kid accounts are very unsettling.
And, you know, here's a typical scenario to sort of set the stage for you.
You know, imagine you've just come home from work, you know, the sun is just going down, and, you know, you're maybe in the kitchen fixing yourself a drink or something.
And suddenly there's a knock at the door.
It's not a quick rap.
It's a long, continuous, monotonous knocking that doesn't stop.
Like anybody, you know, things are going to run through your mind.
Wow, why didn't they use the doorbell?
Who's coming by?
What's going on?
As you're Heading for the door.
You open the door.
Here are a pair of kids standing on your porch.
They're kind of looking down at their shoes.
They're wearing sort of just drab, mundane clothing.
And when you open the door, in a very monotone voice, one of the kids says, hey, we just thought we'd come in for a bit.
Now, you've never seen these children.
You know, you don't have any kids of your own.
All these things are running through your mind.
And your response is, I think you guys have the wrong house.
You know, classical source says that a vampire cannot cross the threshold unless it's invited.
But the same is Trufmans.
You know, classical demonology says that a demonic entity or force has to have some type of invitation before it can come inside.
These accounts, they are so creepy art, and they really hit the internet in the late 90s.
There was a journalist out of Texas that had an encounter with these kids, and he's the one that sort of really started the modern wave, so to speak, of these accounts.
You know, initially, when I heard these, like you're saying, I thought, wow, this is probably, this is very curious, but it may be some internet phenomena.
It may just be some urban legend.
But then I started meeting people who had encountered these things, and I decided to really examine the phenomena, to go back in history and see what I could find that predated the internet and even television.
Because we have to remember that things like the classic X-Files in the 90s, they used this black eye phenomena, you know, with that oil alien that came in and gave a person solid black eyes.
So it was interesting, and I thought, okay, well, we've got to see where this goes.
It sounds like something that could have been generated on the internet, but you know, after what I've experienced, I could just about believe anything.
unidentified
Thank you.
Coming to you at the speed of light in the darkness, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
Yes, what happens is I let too much time go by, and then I've got a little tiny area between my breaks because I get so wrapped up in what I'm listening to.
My guest is David Weatherly.
He's written two books, The Black Eyed Children and Strange Intruders.
And in fact, if people are seeing the image of the cover of that probably on your website, they'll see that there is a shadow being on the cover of that amongst some other very disturbing entities.
Not necessarily, because I think that a lot of reports of ghost are simply residual energy, sort of like a recording.
I think that there are times that, for instance, there's such a powerful or traumatic event that takes place that a recording, if you will, of that is inlaid into the very landscape or the location and that certain things can trigger that, sort of like a hologram.
And I believe that that's why in a lot of reports of hauntings, you know, you'll hear about these incidents where, oh, the haunting is that this woman walks the corridor, you know, every October on the 12th, and she walks down and she vanishes through a wall.
Well, a lot of times when you go back to the historical record, you'll find these specific events that tie into things that seem to repeat themselves somehow.
Okay, well, my guest last night, Lloyd Arbach, said the same thing, the exact same thing, that it could be some sort of recording or endless tape loop, however you want to think of it, and it just is there sometimes, and it's always the same thing going on again and again and again and again.
And that these things could even be attached to material things like rooms or homes or places.
And I think that's why, you know, when you find a location that has so much history and so much turmoil, you know, like the famous Tower of London, for instance, in England, you know, there are reported ghosts in there.
And, of course, there are famous historical events that took place, you know, people that were beheaded and so forth.
And there are reports of these apparitions showing up, you know, on the anniversaries of those executions and so forth.
And I think we really get into an area where it's something that it's not a technology, but it's something that we don't understand in scientific terms that's occurring, that's interacting with us.
And it is like a recording, whether it's in this stone tape theory like I was talking about earlier.
There's an idea that some types of stone, heavy and crystal and so forth, can hold a recording of something.
And that's not too far a leap when we consider a lot of our modern technology relies on crystals.
He's here talking about these strange things in the night.
Of the night, whatever it is they are.
I'm finding it's a very difficult interview for me because I'm not objective about this.
Having just gone through this thing, usually, as an interviewer, you know, you're objective and you can ask objective questions.
I'm asking more questions about self-defense and what I can do about it than I am learning stuff.
So what I'm going to do is open the phone lines and let you ask, as soon as we talk about the grinning man, another one I probably, in some ways, don't want to hear about, but I'm about to.
So I want to open the phone lines for all of you.
Our major national number is 1-952-225-5278.
maybe that's why when many of you call up and talk to a guest about something like this that you have seen you have a very hard time getting into it.
I mean, the fear really does come back.
We were talking about that earlier.
And as you describe something, it really, it's almost like it happens again.
Not quite, not that bad, but it's close.
And of course, you can call us on Skype as well.
In North America, MITD51.
M-I-T-D 5-1.
Out in the rest of the world, MITD55.
That covers a lot of the world.
Somebody said it's Doug in Michigan.
Thanks for this, Doug.
Art, you've got more stones than me.
You talking about this thing just might bring it back again.
Well, my personal account relating to the grinning man, or it happened in the 1980s.
This was in a rural area of North Carolina.
And, you know, there's a whole theory that sometimes certain combinations of people can create unusual experiences.
And at the time, I had a friend who was named with Tom, and it seemed like anytime we sort of went off exploring things, that unusual things would happen.
And this particular incident was that we were driving on this, literally on a country road, very few houses, you know, they were miles apart.
And it was late summer.
We're driving along at a leisurely pace.
And we're coming to this sort of long curve in the road.
And I see on the right-hand side, I was in the passenger seat, Tom was driving.
I see on the right-hand side of the road a figure standing in the weeds.
And this is very unusual.
You never saw anyone walking around in this part of the country.
And as we approach this figure, I'm kind of zeroing in on it and thinking this looks very strange.
As I said, it was late summer.
I realized this gentleman is wearing a long coat.
It's sort of Victorian in style.
He has on a formal hat that's sort of like a top hat.
His right hand is under his chin, and he's sort of rubbing his thumb and his fingers together.
His other arm is not visible.
It's just hanging down at the side.
And beneath this coat is this very wide silver, shiny belt.
Almost like something you see on a science fiction show or something that's that wide.
But the creepiest thing was he had this grin that it made me think of the Joker from the Batman comics.
It was an impossibly large grin that no one could physically smile like this.
As we approached this figure, it seemed as if time sort of slowed down for a few seconds, as if we were moving past him very, very slowly.
Now, Tom has no memory of letting his foot off the gas or anything.
It's just that something very strange happened when we were passing this figure, and I locked eyes with him.
He was glaring right through the window, looking at us.
And the moment we were beyond him, you know, past him, I spun my head around to look out the rear window.
And this figure is now standing in the very center of the road watching our car.
Wow.
It's physically impossible that he could have moved that quickly.
So, you know, we continue to go forward, and Tom is almost in a panic, and I'm sort of badgering him to stop the car and to turn around because I want to see what this is.
And, you know, we argue for a few seconds, and he's insistent that this guy is probably some, you know, psycho killer or something.
Well, you know, I finally, you know, Tom is convinced.
This is the 1980s.
This is the era of Friday the 13th and all that crazy stuff.
And Tom thinks it's just some nutty guy.
So I finally convinced him to, look, just do a U-turn.
We'll go part way back and see if he's still there, which Tom finally does.
He does a U-turn.
He goes almost all the way back, and he stops the car.
And I jumped out because I wanted to go see if I could find this thing.
And I went to the area where he was standing.
There was evidence of, you know, someone had physically had been standing in these weeds because the weeds were mashed down.
But, you know, the woods in this area, very thick, and no one wearing that kind of attire could have quickly gotten through those trees to disappear.
And, you know, he wasn't running down the road or anything like that.
And as the rest of the evening unfolded, some other odd things occurred.
The house next door to Tom's was struck by lightning and a fire started.
And several people in the same area reported UFO sightings.
And, you know, I didn't know at the time whether, you know, do you tie all these things together or not?
Well, it's certainly a strange series of, you know, encounters that all happen around the same time.
Well, I ended up discussing this with John Keel, who, you know, he was kind of an influence on me.
I met him a number of times, and he did a lot of interesting research, and he had researched what he called the grinning man.
And that is what he dubbed these types of encounters with these weird figures with a hideously large grin.
Now, all right, I know you've got a lot of loyal fans.
I was able to jump onto the forum where people are listening for just a few moments, and I see that a lot of people are very interested in clowns.
And it turns out that a lot of these grinning man encounters almost seem like bizarre clown-type figures.
Keel investigated a case in Point Pleasant, West Virginia of a family who, this young woman swears that suddenly at the foot of her bed was standing a man with a hideously large grin and a checkered shirt.
And he sort of leaned over her bed and looked at her very closely.
And, of course, she was screaming for her mother and hid beneath the covers.
Well, a lot of people were saying they were afraid of clowns.
So, you know, some of these figures, it's very curious how a lot of these things seem to hit on primal fears that people have, you know, just like the shadow people.
Things that are slightly off or intangible or just invoke some type of, you know, almost a childlike fear.
Yeah, you know, Art, ever since I was really young, I was just very compelled by this, you know, all these weird things.
I idea of reading Fate magazine and watching, you know, In Search of and all of these things just really, it's sort of my passion to pursue these things.
And, you know, someone asked me recently if I'd ever been really frightened in these situations.
And to tell you the truth, I just don't really think about it.
I go into these situations because I want answers.
Hey, I just wanted to say you're right on the money about these shadow people because I've only seen one in my life, but it was in this new house that we moved into about 10 years ago.
And I still live in the house.
But my dog and I, we saw this figure that looked exactly like a human wearing a black bodysuit over its face.
And it moved so quickly, it went into my son's room.
And you know, one of the many theories to explain what these shadow beings are are that they are just the souls of people that have passed away and are sort of in some kind of in-between space before they've fully crossed over.
So, you know, who knows?
She did bring up an interesting point in her account, too, that her dog noticed.
And that's something that's very interesting because you find a lot of these Sada People accounts that people who have pets, their animals very often notice these things before the human does.
And I just wanted to tell a short story that I had with a shadow person.
It used to freak me out when I was 15 listening to your show about shadow people.
And then I actually had an experience with one when I was still in the U.S. At university.
I was sleeping in the dorm room and kind of in and out of sleep, you know, in the middle of the night, I actually saw the door open.
And I thought that it was the person that I was sharing the dorm room with, but it wasn't.
I turned.
I had a little bit of sleep paralysis going at the same time.
I turned and I saw a very tall, dark figure.
I mean, it was the size of the, I guess, the door, you know, coming in.
And it jumped on the bed on top of me.
And I actually felt the pressure.
I mean, I'm getting goosebumps just telling you the story.
I felt the pressure of this figure on top of me and pushing down on me.
I couldn't move.
I was trying to vocalize something, kind of scream out, and I couldn't.
And from that day on, it was almost as if I was possessed.
Like things in my life, just bad things started happening.
So I don't know if you could ask your guest if there's any connection with shadow people actually attacking people and actually having the full exposure of this.
I don't know what they are.
I just, after that happened, I got very freaked out about them.
Thanks for calling in, Philip, all the way from Brazil.
You know, the account that he's describing sort of broaches Over into another phenomena, and that's the night hag.
And these often sound very similar to shadow people encounters, but what's inevitable with these experiences is that the person will see sometimes just a shadowy mass or figure, sometimes it's described as a hideous, almost deformed old woman, hence the night hag term.
But these shadowy beings inevitably will climb on the person's chest when they are sleeping and apply this overwhelming pressure.
Now, modern science attributes a lot of this to sleep paralysis.
But some of the accounts are very difficult to dismiss in those simple scientific terms because people have these lasting effects from what they feel is 100% a physical encounter with these things.
And yes, there are occasions where people continue to need a recovery period where they have strange things in the aftermath of these experiences.
At times, you know, there's a lot of people who suffer through sleep paralysis.
And as I said, modern science tends to say that these, quote, night hag attacks are a result of that sleep paralysis.
Essentially, that, you know, the person is generating so much fear because they are paralyzed and can't physically move that the mind is creating other effects to go with the experience.
And, you know, the sense that they're trying to rationalize what's happened, right?
I mean, suddenly, you know, just imagine suddenly, you know, you're laying in bed and you can't move a muscle.
You know, your entire body is suddenly not within your control.
So the brain is trying to rationalize exactly what's going on.
The thing is, that's like what I said to myself, like at the time, what I saw was I saw a shadow of, it wasn't like a shadow, like a shadow person like you saw, like a person standing in the room.
It was the shadow, it was a shadow on the ground, as if I was the actual person, but I was invisible, say, walking out of my parents' room.
And just my shadow was on the floor.
It was going and it was walking right into my room.
It was a shadow of a little boy about my age walking from their room into my room.
Now, the thing about that is I found out a couple years later, maybe like eight or so, like maybe like ten years later, something like that, that in the same house, my mom also had like two miscarriages, like right before me.
I mean, I thought at first he was talking about literally a doppelganger, you know, which is I suppose a duplicate of a person, but this sounds more like some type of ghostly manifestation, for lack of a better word.
Really difficult to say whether his mother's miscarriages played into that or not.
I mean, obviously, that is a very traumatic experience.
Do you know of some technology that actually produces the kind of thing that I saw, and why would they bother with me?
unidentified
Well, yes, I do.
And the reason they would bother with you is the same reason they would bother with, well, I suppose anybody.
A lot of times, these suits that they wear, or in other words, there is actually a person in your house.
And so that may be more discomforting than the opposite, but that's what it boils down to.
And so they have the ability to walk around now and not be seen.
So people are actually seeing folks.
And of course, they're associated with UFO activity because this breakaway civilization that we have thinks that it's fine if they do these kinds of things and that we don't have privacy.
You know, in a handful of these accounts, yeah, there are some situations where there are UFO sightings in the area and so forth.
But I really appreciate the call.
I have a hard time with that as an explanation because you also have to add in the fact that these things seem to be intangible.
You know, more often than not, people say that they can see through them partially or that people will throw something and it'll just go through these beings.
So like you, Art, I'm certainly not aware of any kind of technology that is anywhere close to these two types of phenomena yet at this point.
You're not real strong, so you're going to have to speak up good and loud.
unidentified
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, I tend to be a quiet hawker.
All right.
So I just want to say or share my story with you guys.
I had many different shadow person experiences over the years, and I guess what I noticed about all my experiences is that they tend to be drawn to that fear reaction.
But when I don't give that fear reaction back, either they don't respond or they immediately go away.
You know, this sort of relates back to John's account from earlier in the show.
I think that in his encounter, he was able to conquer his fear by resorting to his spirituality.
And in a lot of cases, I find that people are sort of able to zero in their focus on one particular thing.
In his case, it was prayer.
And that sort of eliminates everything else going on in the, you know, in the mind and any emotional reactions and allows him to just focus on that one thing.
Obviously, it's motivated by the fear, but I think that ability to sort of center themselves in is a big component in what allows them to conquer these things or, you know, eliminate them from their presence.
I was going to tell you my experience, and that's that I was going to ask a question, but my experience was around this time last year, I actually believe I encountered what you call a black-eyed child as I was going to work.
I was driving to work, and I mean, I was in my car, and as I was approaching a stoplight, a girl come out of the side of the road, and she had her hands up, but when I saw her face, all I saw was black eyes.
So obviously, you know, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I kept going.
But my question is, my first person I called was my wife, who's from the Philippines, and she's very superstitious.
And she related that to a, what they call over there, an Oswatch, I guess.
A vampire type.
Oswald, yes, sir.
And she said, and of course she kind of got worried about me, but I was going to, and she said it's like a vampire type being.
And I thought, is that what the similarity is, is that what a black-eyed child is related to, is like a vampire-type thing?
Well, you know, there are similarities with the whole lore of vampires when we look at these black-eyed children.
Of course, this idea that they have to be invited in, whether it's in your home or in your vehicle.
And depending on the cultural viewpoint, you know, people will identify these things that way.
And, you know, the similarities are not just there.
There's also the pale skin and the fact that they seem to, you know, some people say these things feel like predators.
People will report being in the presence of these black-eyed children that they feel like they're being, you know, eyed as a meal or, you know, just really looked over.
And it causes this incredible level of fear within the people who encounter them.
You know, because look, anytime you put something paranormal or, you know, well outside the norm and mix it with children, the creepy level really goes off the scales.
And it also becomes very unsettling because as adults, we're sort of predisposed to help children.
You know, if a child shows up at your door and says, Mr., I need a drink of water or I'm lost, you know, your automatic reaction is going to be to help that child.
But when a child shows up and is acting really creepy, there's a psychological battle that goes on with a lot of these people I interview.
They talk about how confused they are because here's a child asking to come inside, yet all the alarm bells are going off.
You know, something is wrong here.
It appears to be a child.
And it appears that they need, you know, they want something.
They want some kind of help.
And, you know, there's a struggle to do I help this child or do I slam the door because I feel like I'm being stalked.
And, you know, let's say right up front, before we get people really worked up, I'm sure we're both well aware Slender Man was created on the Internet.
However, the weirdness of this, what has become a phenomenon, is really creeping into contemporary society.
And last year, there was an attempted murder.
Two 12-year-old girls lured a classmate off into the woods and attempted to murder her by stabbing her some outrageous number of times.
Fortunately, this little girl survived the brutal attack.
But in the aftermath of this crime, it was revealed that these two 12-year-old girls attempted to, quote, sacrifice their friend so that Slender Man would come and take them away to live with him in his mansion in the forest.
Now, I didn't see the law and order that you're referencing, so I don't know how closely it followed, but this was a year ago, and this past March, the first round of this, whatever it was, the pretrial or whatnot, came up.
And the court has determined that these two young girls who have just turned 13 will be tried as adults.
Are they claiming in their defense, or do you know if they're going to claim in their defense, that this was purely Internet-born, almost like Internet-porn, Internet-born, or that there was some claim of paranormal activity beyond and away from the computer?
You know, I've been trying to follow this very closely, Art.
And of course, as you would expect, given their age, there's been very little information from the case, even at this point, you know, a year and a half later.
So we really don't know what's going to happen when it goes to trial.
There just hasn't been much mention.
But the story was repeated numerous times that these two little girls believed in the existence of this Slender Man.
And, you know, tragically enough, the people who created this during the contest, that was the whole goal.
They wanted to create something.
They wanted to fabricate a paranormal-themed something, entity, you know, cryptid, whatever, and make it go viral on the internet and make people believe in its existence.
So, you know, you can go back.
This forum, as far as I know, it still exists.
It's called Something Awful.
And it certainly turned out to be Something Awful.
And there are, you know, thousands of entries about this thing.
And when it started off, the contest, all kinds of people were contributing different ideas.
And then this very creepy, really rather subtle thing at first showed up.
And it was this tall figure without a face with these extra appendages that sort of lurped in the background of photographs and so forth and began to be attached to different tragedies.
Eventually, he started to be called the Slender Man, morphed into one word Slender Man.
And more and more people have jumped in on this thing through the years.
There have been video series, there are games, there are all kinds of things.
And there's a large percentage of people who absolutely believe in the existence of an entity called the Slender Man.
You know what's a really terrifying thought that springs from that?
There is this rumor going around right now on the internet.
On the internet, David, that the end of the world be coming, that an asteroid is going to slam Earth into little pieces that we're all doomed, that it's the end of the world.
Well, if enough people start buying into it.
And I'll just leave it right there.
On Skype, Jeremy, hi, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hi, Art.
This is Jeremy from Omaha, and I want to give a shout out to the DM Top crowd before I start.
Okay.
But I've got a shadow person story for you.
When I was about five or six years old, I was having this problem with seeing shadow people a couple times a week for about two weeks.
I had this similar instance where the guy would come out of the wall, a shadow person would come out of my wall and walk through.
What I had for a nightlight was one of those cheesy fiber optic night lights back in the 80s.
And he would walk through that.
And every time he would walk through that, the night light would go completely dim.
And then as soon as he got through it, it would come back on again.
And this happened to me at least four or five times in two weeks.
And, you know, that's another theme that shows up in some of these accounts, that people will have a nightlight or sometimes there's light reflected in the mirror, and these things seem to be able to block them out or partially block them out sometimes.
It does indeed, and I really appreciate you sharing that with us, Cal.
You know, one of the themes she mentioned in that encounter art were these unusual clothing, and that's something that we find in a lot of these encounters with black eyed children.
People will say that the kids are wearing old-fashioned clothing or clothing that seems ill-fitting.
You know, it's just there's something not quite right about it.
Some people think that the clothing is handmade.
You know, I've heard more than once people say, ah, they look like Amish kids, you know, like they had handmade their clothing, but it didn't quite fit right.
So it's just another bizarre component of these very disturbing encounters.
And to give you a bit of pre-story, before I went to sleep, I actually had some newspapers at the end of my bed on the floor, just looking through them and whatnot.
And anyway, went to bed and woke up quite late in the night and I heard some rustling and I couldn't think of what it was.
And then I sort of started thinking about it, and then it's like, sounds like paper.
And I look to where the sound was, which was just at the end of my bed, and I see this hooded figure.
And it kind of looked like Darth Moll, you know, that guy from Star Wars, just all black and clearly stood out from everything else in the room.
And I just froze, like literally, like as if someone dumped you in a bath that's just full of ice and you've got like lemons in your mouth.
Look, the most interesting part out of all of it, what I found was that even though I could clearly hear the sound of newspaper, like when you hear someone walking on the floor across paper, it's clear.
I've heard people say it's just sleep paralysis, but I don't think it is personally because my pastor woke up one night and there was something, a black figure on his chest, and it was choking him.
But across the board, when we look at these shadow people encounters, they're not really clustered around particular age groups or race or ethnic background or anything else.
Really across the board, it's a wide, wide variety of people of all ages and backgrounds that are experiencing these things.
So my question for you is, so first up, Rob's all to you.
And my dad got me interested in your show back in the late 90s in Peoria, Illinois.
I'm glad you're back on.
But my question is, I grew up having like a haunting thing going on at my house.
My room was always like 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house.
And there was one night in particular where a demonic voice said, listen to me, follow me.
And I looked up at my drapes in my bedroom.
And this is back in like 1978.
I was eight years old.
And there was like a red glow on the drapes.
But when you open the drape up, you could just see the front yard out in front of you.
And ever since then, I've had weird things happening where like you're seeing, pardon what I'm going to call it, but like black sperm like two feet above the floor, just always in the shadows, just like flipping around.
And I'm wondering if that's like a precursor to like a shadow person or what does that mean?
You know what I mean?
The best way I can describe that is like a seeing and ghost.
Yeah, you know, like you're saying, Art, there are just so many factors to these individual experiences.
It's really tough to say much about that.
I mean, he's seen this red glow, which people have reported seeing these things having glowing red eyes and sometimes, you know, standing behind the curtains or something, and then the eyes are visible through the curtains and then they manifest out from behind that.
You know, that's about the only thing I can say about it.
You know, it sounds like he's having elements of these shadow people, certainly in those situations.
Well, again, something there's a lot of theories about, but, you know, it's almost the reverse of if you think about a small room and you put a lot of people in that room, the temperature is going to go up.
So if we sort of reverse that and think about whatever these things are, they seem to have the opposite effect.
When they come in a room, they make the temperature go down.
So I don't have an explanation for it.
I think it's important data.
It's one of the questions I always ask people, actually, when they have these shadow people encounters, if they noticed any shift in the temperature or any signs, you know, with their own bodies, you know, the hair standing up or feeling a chill and things like that.
And very, very often that is the case, that they feel things like that happen.