Jon Solo Sebastian 10/03/2025:

When you were a child, did you ever think there were monsters in your closet, or under the bed? I feel like this is a universal thing that the majority of young children deal with. I know I certainly had some “encounters” at a young age. I had an instance with monsters in the dark that happened when I was five or six years old; being in my 40’s, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact age, but we moved to a different house when I was eight, so I know this happened before that. I had a recurring dream—or nightmare having to do with Batman and the Joker. It went on for a few days. I know what you’re thinking—this has nothing to do with shadow people. I’m getting there, though!

So here I was, getting freaked out about this dream every night. All I remember about it was the Joker was more like Freddy Krueger with that creepy smile the Joker has. He had just murdered Batman, and was coming after me for witnessing the murder. The third night of this nightmare, I decided to do what most children do. I went into my parent’s bedroom and squeezed in between them. I figured I’d be safe there. That’s when I started seeing strange shadows moving around their bedroom.

I can still see them in my head, today. It was almost like they were slowly dancing or doing some kind of ritual. Some of them climbed the walls, some went into their closet, and some were crawling on the ceiling. Then, all at once, they all stopped moving. Their eyes started to glow, and in unison, they surrounded the bed and started climbing onto the bed. I thought for sure they were going to kill me, or take me to hell. My dad, a smoker, started coughing in his sleep and woke up. As he rose out of bed, the shadows disappeared. I don’t think I imagined this. I don’t believe this was a dream within a dream or anything like that. It felt far too real, and even now, it feels too damn real to me. Are these shadow people the same as the ones that are discussed in paranormal circles? Could shadow people be what people see when they say aliens visit them?

The first thing in my research that caught my attention was an episode of Coast to Coast AM from February of 2024. George Noory had a guest on named Heidi Hollis. Heidi is a paranormal researcher and an author that penned the term “shadow people.” Heidi goes on to talk about the hat man who is sort of the puppet master for the shadow people. She mentions the hat man has a smile like the Joker… this legit floored me. So I had this recurring dream as a kid that the Joker was coming after me, and then I was being taunted by shadow people while seeking shelter in my parent’s room. Could the hat man have been trying to come after me as a child? There is definitely something to this.

George asks her what materializes a shadow person, and what he means by that, is what does someone do or what causes him or them to appear? Heidi says that sometimes people think they had done something wrong and this is sort of a reap what you sow type of scenario, and while she says that might sometimes be the case, there are other reasons that she says are more likely. She goes on to say, “But I’m telling you, most of the time people didn’t do anything wrong. They are absolutely gifted in a way that gets him to pay attention. And I mean gifted, like maybe they pay attention more to their sixth sense, you know, maybe they’re an artist and they pay attention to details and nature more. It seems like people who have this extra sensory or pay attention to their sensory, if he really hones in on that and why that is, it is because mankind is evolving. We have different abilities, and there are some of us that are a little bit more keen to our abilities, and he does not want to see mankind evolve. There’s something along those lines where he wants to stomp out your potential to grow into who you could really be, and what mankind could really turn out to be.”

So the hat man and the shadow people sound, in my opinion, like agents of the devil. I won’t go all religious on you, but that’s the simplest way to put it. If mankind grows and evolves into what it’s supposed to be, then evil might never win, right?

So why did this clip from that episode grab my attention aside from it being interesting, and aside from the wild connections to that event in my childhood? I would never consider myself as being gifted, but I am an artist and I am tapped into things some people either cannot understand, or are unable to understand. I’m also mildly clairvoyant—it runs in my mother’s side of the family. So for those few reasons, I could see why the shadow people were coming at me when I was a kid. This is, of course, if it was totally real. I believe it was, but we really can’t be one hundred percent certain on this.

What are Shadow People?

Heidi Hollis believes they have been around since the beginning of time, but what does that make them? Other researchers and experts of the paranormal suggest they could be demons, time travelers or interdimensional beings. The majority of witnesses, including myself, will tell you these beings give off a waffle of negative energy. That could be accurate, but also keep in mind that when you’re afraid of something, you’re likely going to feel the sense of dread even if what you fear gives you no real reason to fear it. That said, if you go by Heidi Hollis’s description of the hat man and his shadow people, I could totally agree with them being demons. A theory about them being time travelers is certainly a fun idea. “Another theory is that people from the future could have found the means to travel to the past—our time. However they are able to accomplish this incredible feat, perhaps in that state, they appear to us merely as passing shadows as they observe the events of our timeline.” Could they be interdimensional beings? Sure, why not? This theory makes me think of the television series: Fringe. While they didn’t see shadow people watching them from the other earth, it could be how shadow people in the real world could be looking into our dimension. We would only see outlines and movements, and depending on what the beings of that dimension look like, it could explain their strange movements. They could also be aliens, right?

As we can see, there is no concrete explanation of what or who the shadow people are. One thing for sure is the presence of these beings is unsettling. Skeptics will tell you it’s a form of sleep paralysis or just your mind or eyes playing tricks on you. I disagree with the skeptics. I know far too many people that have dealt with sleep paralysis and none of them have ever mentioned shadow people—a couple of them have said they’ve seen the old hag, though. But that’s a story for another time.

I know this was more of me sharing an experience of mine, than it was breaking down the who and what of it all, but I hope you got something out of this article. Maybe you’ve encountered the shadow people and have something to share? Let me know, or comment below!

As always, thank you for visiting and reading!