I first heard this term a month ago, after talking to some friends about my odd experiences after waking up from dreams in a paralyzed state (this is known as Sleep paralysis). Over time the experiences have got more real and more intense. Here are my experiences:
1) When I was about 22, I stayed at a house where I felt very unconformable. I woke up in a paralyzed state, feeling the presence of two figures all over me. I felt they are abusing me.
2) When I was about 26 and 27 (when I started to get into inducing lucid dreams, and as a consequence started having many lucid dreams). I woke up in a paralyzed state about 5 different times over a year period, to see a tall humanoid dark figure standing at a door way (sometimes it was my bed room door, other times it was a doorway that was not really there). I knew I was awake and in bed and couldn’t help my self from yelling at this figure. However I didn’t feel threated. My girlfriend also woke up to my yelling, some of these nights.
3) When I was 29 I had my most threating and scary experience (I’ve never felt so scared). That night I was dreaming about M-theory (string theory). In this dream I got the feeling I was on to something big (maybe the answer to universe/multi-verse?). Anyway, during the dream I was showing a friend these invisible strings. We were following these invisible strings (I could see them, as it bent the light), when the invisible strings started to wrap around me and constrict me (like a snake). It was then I woke up to a short (about 1 meter tall) humanoid figure right next to my bed (only half a meter from my face), it appear to be wearing a hood and was looking right at me (and I was looking straight back at it). My heart was racing and my breathing was extremely heavy (I’ve never been so scared or felt so threated). The figure then started to move towards me, and I saw, what appeared to be an arm/hand moving in a stabbing motion at my chest. I was trying to yell at it but was too scared, I know I was also trying to wake up my girlfriend (via yelling). When I snapped out of my paralyzed state, I woke up my girlfriend to tell her about the dream and the figure (which I now know to be a “Shadow Person”). While I was telling her the story, I could still feel/see a moving shadow (no clear figure) back and forth in the corner of my ceiling, and was asking her if she could see that – she couldn’t see anything. Another odd thing, was as I was telling the story, my father was in the spare room and woke up and started walking about the house. When I told him in the morning about what happened, I asked “why did you get up?”. He said he didn’t feel right and just felt he needed to get up and walk around. How bloody strange!
Experience (3), was so strange and scary it made me re-think my experimenting with lucid dreams. I don’t know what I’m dealing with, and that small shadow person made me feel like I was tapping into something I shouldn’t. Who knows, but the last thing I would want, is to learn something my human mind can’t handle, and as a consequence, my mind crashes (like a computer, like “Snow Crash”).
So this begs the questions: “What are Shadow People?”, “If they are real, why do they exist? why during sleep paralysis? why a humanoid figure?”, “Can I be hurt?”. Since learning the name of these phenomena, and realizing they have been witness by other people, and recorded for centuries.
I’m not religious, but I’m very opened minded. And through my research of robots, the human mind and the universe/multi-verse. I know there is more to this multi-verse, than meets the eye. Hopefully one day science will understand more on this phenomena, but until then I have the following theories:
1) A very good mind trick (from a dream like state appearing in my awaken state, aka Hypnagogic hallucination).
2) A being from another dimension (or parallel universe), and when they cross into our dimension (or universe), they appear as dark shadow’s. Steven Hawking has talked about this and its connection to dark matter – watch the youtube video.
While theory (1) is well documented, the feeling I got and how it happened, makes me think there is more to this than “hallucination”. It felt so real, not like a figure in my dreams at all. So: Why did I feel threated? Why was it looking at me? Why did it come at me? Why did it happen during a dream about M-theory?, and why did my father wake up?
Anyway, I may never know why these figures exist or not. But I do know it was the most strangest experience I’ve never had. The mind and the multi-verse is one amazing place and the more I practice and learn about lucid dreaming and our multi-verse, the more I feel connected to the reasons why this world exists, and what we maybe required to understand, in order to develop a human-like robot/brain.
