SHADOWS OF BLACK
By Christina M. Schumacher

     My daughter began working at an assisted living place this last month as a CNA. Though she currently works in the Alzheimer's unit, she often confers with the other third shift worker who is in charge of the main floor consisting of eight or nine individuals who require very little assistance. Since her arrival at this job, many odd things have taken place that the other worker, who has been there six months, has never noticed.
     The subject of note in this article concerns an older woman whom I shall call Janet. Janet has been in the closer care unit for several years and requires no medication. She is quite self-sufficient and, except for one time when she fell and broke her wrist, has never called for any type of assistance in the middle of the night.
     On December 14, 2009, the third shift worker in the closer care unit (we'll call her Lisa) heard her pager go off. She looked at my daughter and said, "It's Janet" then proceeded to say how strange it was to be receiving a page from her. When Lisa went to check it out, she found Janet standing in the hallway shaking violently, sweating and pale and talking fast about there being men in her room.
     Shaken at seeing this normally calm, articulate woman in this state, Lisa suggested they go back into Janet's room to see what might be there. Janet agreed, but when they stepped inside, Janet immediately shut off the light.
     "I want to show you," she said. "Do you see them?" Janet was stabbing her finger around the room as though seeing the men moving.
     Though Lisa peered hard into the darkness, she was unable to see anyone and said so.
     "How can you not see them?" Janet said incredulously. "There are five black men with wires hanging from them. They are pushing shopping carts, running around my room and taking my stuff. Some of it they are putting in their mouths!"
     Lisa apologized to Janet for not being able to see the men and talked her into going back to bed with the lights on. Janet agreed as long as Lisa agreed to check back in on her. Lisa waited about an hour and went back in as promised to check on Janet and found her sleeping peacefully.
     Around 5:55 a.m., Janet paged again. Lisa brought her to the nurse's station and, again, she was shaking violently, sweating and pale. My daughter stated that Janet seemed to have aged from her 70 years to nearly 120. She was talking again about the black shadow men in her room and it took a full half hour before she was calm.
     It was time for my daughter to end her shift and go home. On her way out, she took a moment to open Janet's door to make sure the lights were still on. They were, but within seconds of opening the door, she said something very angry seemed to be up in her face. She felt hot breath on her face and felt thick air. She slammed the door shut and hurried out of the building.
     Change of location now to my own home the following night. My youngest daughter and her boyfriend were in the house getting ready to watch a movie in the living room. Suddenly, they both heard a strange sighing and grunting at the end of the hallway. My daughter was standing up facing the couch and her boyfriend was sitting down on the couch. From her vantage point at the couch, my daughter could see down the hallway to the bathroom. When they heard the sound, she turned to look in that direction and saw a very large, black shadow cross from her old room, in front of the bathroom door, and go into the bedroom where The Night Watchman and I sleep. She was able to see it quite well as the bathroom light always stays on.
     At this point, my daughter, tailed by her boyfriend, grabbed a steak knife off the end table and went down the hall to our bedroom. Her boyfriend turned on the hall light as they went. They did not see anything in the bedroom, however, being who she is, my daughter grabbed the IR thermometer to check out the temperature between the hallway and our bedroom. The hallway was 72 degrees and our bedroom read 52 degrees. They left the room and called me at my shop immediately to tell me what had happened.
     When I came home, I had them tell me (and show me) everything that had happened. I even had my youngest daughter draw me a picture of what she had seen. I would love to share this drawing with you, but we do not have a monitor that is working on our desktop computer so I cannot set up our scanner to scan the picture to put it in. I will describe it here as well as I can from the picture she drew.
     The shadow person wore a long dark robe with a hood and appeared to have its hands in either pockets or folds within the robe. The figure, gauging from a particular spot at the end of the hall appeared to be about 6 foot 5 inches tall to 7 foot. She did not see a face within the hood of the robe that she could see.
     My daughter and her girlfriend left to go to church cantata practice and I was in the house with only the dog and three cats. Nothing unusual took place. I felt nothing out of the ordinary and the animals were acting normally.
     That evening when The Night Watchman returned home from teaching guitar, I told him what our daughter had seen. He raised his eyebrows a bit and we went to watching a couple of our favorite shows on the laptop.
     The next morning, I got out of bed at 6:30 a.m. as usual, took my shower and prepared for my work day at the shop. About 7:30 a.m., I went into the bedroom to wake The Night Watchman. He turned over and said, "Something hit me in the head." I kind of chuckled, then realized he was serious. He said he'd been sleeping sound and something hit him in the forehead quite hard - kind of like when someone uses their own palm against their forehead in what is termed "a duh moment". It was not done gently and, apparently, had the desired effect of waking him up.
     The following morning, somewhere around 3 a.m. or so, it happened again, waking The Night Watchman out of a dead sleep. It has not happened again since then.
     I've done my share of reading over the years about shadow people. There have been multitudes of reports from logical, normal people - some who are extremely skeptical and have never had anything out of the ordinary happen to them until their shadow people encounter. There is a lot of hype and many, many different opinions on what or whom these shadow people are. Some say they are demonic in nature and others say they are just visitors from another dimension. There are many opinions in between as well.
     Years ago, I had my own experience with shadows. These shadows seemed to enjoy jumping in front of my car and making me slam on my brakes. They were clear enough in the headlights of the car, but within a blink of an eye, they were gone making me think that I had imagined them. Thankfully, living in a small town, I didn't have to worry about anyone rear ending me. Their appearance always took place when there was no one behind me.
     After awhile, they began showing up in my home, stopping right in front of me to make me come to a quick halt - pretty much just like the car. In other words, I slammed on my brakes (with my feet) to avoid running into them or perhaps going through them. I remember making some comment to them that "at least you aren't jumping in front of my car anymore". After that, I have not had an encounter with them - not once.
     I never had any fear of them, though having something jump in front of the car is startling. I guess what I mean is that I never "felt" I had any need to fear them and this included being alone in my home after my youngest daughter said she had seen the shadow figure go into our bedroom. These kinds of things have never created fear in me - just curiosity. Perhaps this is the difference in my experiences with different entities in comparison to others who react immediately with fear and panic.
     More than once I have been accused of "always being grounded" or "always having my feet firmly on the ground". I could think of worse things actually. At any rate, this "grounding" seems to keep me calm in the face of many different scenarios (including ghost hunting). Don't get me wrong, I know there are many strange things out there that we cannot understand and not all of it is of God, but I am firmly convinced that fear can create much more havoc than would normally happen. Staying calm in the face of the unusual seems to come naturally to me and I'm quite glad of that.
     This is one of the reasons I don't like watching some of the ghost hunting shows on television. I won't name them, but I find it absolutely ridiculous when I see "seasoned" ghost hunters go screaming out of a location because they heard a strange sound or see a shadow from the corner of their eye. Of course, much of the hype is for television viewing, but I know that I could not play a role like that and not feel as though I was cheating my audience.
     Whatever the shadows are, I think a person's experience with them is what they make of it. If these shadows are greeted with fear, perhaps they give more fear as it makes them feel powerful or they just have a weird sense of humor. Maybe if they are greeted without fear, they observe, try their antics, then if they get no response, they just move on. My theory, no matter what the entity, is to acknowledge them verbally. I have found, more times than not, this is really all they want... to be noticed.

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