Mike W. has a close encounter -- contact -- with an entity we've come to know as a shadow person
Most encounters with shadow people - those smoky, person-shaped entities that move around in the dark - are fleeting glimpses. They are seen out of the corner of one's eye, swiftly passing across a wall or ducking around a corner. As the most common type of alleged shadow person sightings, to be open-minded and rational we have to wonder if these quick glimpses are nothing more than imagined or just ordinary shadows of some kind. Maybe they're real, maybe they're not.
Another kind of shadow person encounter - a close encounter of the second kind, to borrow J. Allen Hynek's UFO classification system - is rarer and more compelling: the witness sees the shadow entity for an extended period, not merely a passing glance. It could be for a half minute, a few minutes or even more. The witness can often also detect human-like movement: the raising of an arm, the turn of a head, or walking. In other words, the witness gets a pretty good look at the thing and is able to describe it in some detail. Very often, these detailed descriptions compel the witness to ascribe an intelligence to the spectre; it's not just a shadow, it seems to be an entity that moves and even reacts with purpose.
A shadow person encounter of the third kind is rarer still: contact. In this case, the witness actually is touched or is otherwise affected physically by the entity. This is the case with Michael W., who had his remarkable close encounter in the fall of 1998. This is Michael's story....
IT WAS LATE SEPTEMBER of 1998 and a close friend of mine had just purchased his first home. It was just outside the city of Mansfield, Ohio. Being that we were both single guys in our early twenties and needing a place to live, we decided that I would move in and help with the house payment. A young family had previously occupied the home, and we had to do some painting to make it a suitable dwelling for two young bachelors.
We hadn't quite moved in when my first encounter with a shadow person occurred. After a long night of painting by a couple of friends and myself, I decided that I would just spend the night and sleep in a bean-bag chair I had brought along because we didn't have furniture yet. My friends said goodnight, and after cleaning up the mess from painting I turned off the living room light and relaxed in the bean-bag chair.
"SOMEONE WAS WATHCING ME"
I almost instantly fell asleep. I awoke sometime in the middle of the night feeling extremely thirsty. I stood up in the new and unfamiliar surroundings and tried to get my bearings because it was extremely dark. I walked to the next room, which was the kitchen, and stumbled through empty cardboard boxes to the sink. There was a small window above the sink that provided a very small amount of natural light. I poured a large glass of the odd-tasting "well-water" and gulped it down hungrily. I felt absolutely parched and I wondered to myself it was because of the fresh paint fumes.
I put the empty glass on the sink... and that's when I got the distinct feeling that someone was watching me. This feeling caused my senses to heighten and I quickly shook off my sleepiness. I instantly had the impulse to turn on the kitchen light and turned my head to the left so my eyes could find the switch in the dark.
There at the top of the basement stairs and in front of the light switch I could distinctly make out the figure of what I automatically assumed was my good friend Larry. I was now awake, and my mind tried to rationalize what he was still doing here in the middle of the night, in an empty house, staring at me in the dark.
Next page: No, it wasn't Larry
