From: Heather
To: The Official Shadow People Archives
Sent: August 16, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Subject: RE: Jumping Shadows
I didn't know that other people called them "Shadow People" ; I thought that I had made that up when I was four or five. When I was very young, I shared a bedroom with my teen-aged sister, who was perpetually stoned. The joke that my sister made was: that I was just being a 4 year old, with an imagination and a perpetual contact-high.
It didn't change the fact that I was terrified of them and that they were clearly harassing me. My shadow people are small, something like Imps or Goblins. They hid in the corners and floorboards and under the bed. At first, I only saw them here and there. I was mildly frightened and was happy enough to be allowed in my sister's bed (even though I had to pay her a quarter). I think it made them mad, or perhaps they thought it funny that they could get to me so easily. They began to make jumps for me.
They jumped for my hands and feet that hung over the bed. If I stood up in the room they would jump at my knees. But what I remember now, looking back, is that they couldn't touch me. They were shadows. They never did actually grab me. I was just terrified that they would.
The last straw was when I cried out to my teenage sister in the middle of the night. Because there seemed to be several on the floor, under the bed, and even around my sister's bed, I couldn't move. So I cried to my sister to help me out of my bed. She told me to come get in her bed and I told her that I could not move or they would get me. She angrily stomped out of bed to get me and I practically crawled up to her shoulders like a cat. They were jumping up and down around her legs, trying to grab me. I screamed to be taken to my parent’s room.
When we hit the hallway and turned on the lights, they retreated back to the bedroom. I climbed off my sister and knocked at my parent’s door and cried. The door was locked, and they either couldn't hear me, or were deliberately ignoring me. So I left the hall light on and curled up in front of my parent’s door. I was pretty well hysterical.
From that point on, I was allowed to sleep with the lights on in the living room and sleep on the sofa, until such time that I could be removed from my sister's room. They stopped bothering me after that.
Anyone can explain this away in any way they want to. All I know is, that it is in my mind as a ‘real memory’…as real as playing with pets or toys, as real as my first day of school, or as real as a family vacation. It really happened; it was not a dream. If it was a dream, my sister wouldn't remember carrying me to the hall, because those things were trying to grab me. My parents wouldn't remember me waking up in the hall in front of their door. And I know in my heart that I wasn't making it up for attention-I remember it clearly.
Heather
