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Tessa B. Dick

Preliminary Report:
Shadow People
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They are out there . . .

or Are They?
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Introduction
First Encounters with the Shadow People

Childhood

Ever since I was a small child, monsters have lurked in the shadowy corners
of my room. These formless masses seemed to flirt around the corners of my
vision, crouching down and hiding, waiting for an opportunity to pounce on
me and latch onto my body, as if they lacked physicality and wished to rob me
of mine. I tried to imagine what they really looked like, since I couldn’t get a
clear look at them. Whenever I turned my head to look at one of these shadow
people straight on, it disappeared as if it had simply winked out of existence.
. . . . . . . .
Sometimes I pictured them as alien robots from Mars, and other times I saw
them as Frankenstein’s monster or the creature from the black lagoon. The
. .
most frightening possibility of all was the wasp woman from an old horror
movie starring “Mommie Dearest” Joan Crawford.

In July 1963, I had just returned from summer camp with the Girl Scouts. Ten
days at Camp Aventura had given me a break from Mom as much as it had
given her a break from me. My baby sister would be born in about a week. I
was nine years old. One night I dreamed—or maybe it really happened—that
two men stood at the side of my bed and told me that they were my guardian
angels, and they had come to protect me from the shadow people. They
showed me an image of small, thin creatures with green skin and pointy ears,
long, thin fingers with red claws, and red eyes and sharp fangs. They could
have been examples of the Chupacabra, but I had never heard of the
Chupacabra back then. These creatures were trying to control me and the
other members of my family through fear. The men told me never to let fear
overpower me.

As the years went on, I saw more and more of the shadow people. Some of
the seemed good, as if they were looking in on me to make sure that I was
okay. Others seemed sinister, as if they were seeking an opportunity to injure
me—or worse. My upbringing was not particularly religious, but it seemed
perfectly natural to me that disembodied creatures should walk in and out of
our house, sometimes hiding from us and sometimes making their presence
known. However, I knew not to discuss these things with other people
because my two older brothers ridiculed me for having such a wild
imagination.
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.. As I entered my teens, I came to believe that I was
totally insane. Regarding these visitations as
hallucinations, I ignored them, denied them, and
tried to make them go away.
I became an agnostic, studying the writings of the Founding Fathers,
especially Thomas Jefferson. The ideas of the Deists, who believe that God
created the universe and then stepped aside and let it run on its own, appealed
to me at that time. I studied science, especially physical science, looking for
rational explanations of the way things work in the real world.

Unfortunately, nuclear physics turned out to be just as mystical as any

religion, with mathematical equations requiring the existence of impossible
particles, and with formerly non-existent particles appearing in the tracks of
cloud chambers as soon as the scientists theorized their existence.

Later Encounters and Research

I found myself inescapably attracted to my husband from the moment I met

him, even though I knew almost nothing about him. We had been living
together for several months before I learned that he was having his own
experience with the shadow people, quite independently and without any
knowledge of my experiences. We began researching the phenomenon and
discussing it into the wee hours of the night.

1. My husband, Phil, wrote science fiction novels, so people often

assumed that he was simply the victim of a wild imagination.

2. Phil had a largely undeserved reputation for using drugs in the

1960s, so many people discarded his ideas as the ravings of a
lunatic. To create a document, choose File New and choose the
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3. Phil thought that he was in contact with the ancient Greek

physician and musician, Asklepios, who was thought to be the
half-human son of the god Apollo.

RESEARCH
We read a lot about psychology and religion, we discussed these ideas with
many people from all walks of life, and we listened to interviews on the radio
and the television. We read the works of many experts in both UFOlogy and
mysticism, some reputable and some not so reputable.

Psychology The works of Sigmund Freud suggest that all the naughty, anti-
social, and downright evil aspects of a personality are pushed into the

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subconscious mind, where they remain buried until they gain enough power to
burst forth and wreak havoc in a person’s life, as well as in the lives of all the
people who know that person. The works of Carl Jung, on the other hand,
posit a collective unconscious, which holds just about everything, both good
and bad. Furthermore, Jung intimates that we can access that vast reservoir of
knowledge which belongs not only to all of the people living today, but also to
all of the people who ever have lived, and quite possibly to all of the people
who ever will live.

Jung’s Shadow
Carl Jung describes a number of archetypes, or personalities, which inhabit
the unconscious mind of every individual person. For example, every man
has an unconscious anima, which is the feminine side of his personality.
Conversely, every woman has an unconscious animus, which is the masculine
side of her personality. Each man and each woman also has a shadow, a figure
that embodies all of the qualities that we deny in ourselves, whether they are
positive, negative or neutral. Any of the archetypes may appear in our
dreams, when the conscious mind’s censor is temporarily disabled. The
archetypes also tend to appear in the hallucinations of people who suffer from
schizophrenia.

These archetypes represent mythic figures, and the ancient people saw them as
gods and demigods. The shadow is particularly interesting because it recalls
the idea of the ancient Greeks that we become shadows when we die.

The Shades in Hades

Most English translations of Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey,
use the word “shade” to mean “shadow”. For one thing, it is easier to fund a
rhyming word for shade, and for another, the word shade seems to sound more
poetic than shadow. In one scene of the Iliad, several of the Greek heroes of
the Trojan War visit Achilles in Hades, where they speak to his shade. This
shadow, or dead soul, complains that he would rather be the lowliest farmer
and alive on Earth, than to be a king in Hades. Achilles does not suffer any
punishment in the land of the dead, but he is bored. He cannot enjoy any
Earthly pleasures, since he has no body. He is, quite literally, “a shadow of his
former self.

Demons in Hell
The demons in hell find themselves in a similar situation to that of Achilles in
Hades. They are mere shadows, without bodies, and they long to take on a
physical form. That is why they seek to possess the bodies of humans here on
Earth. The possession of a body allows them to escape, at least temporarily,
the tortures that they suffer in the fiery pit where the angel of God, Michael,
threw them after they rose up in rebellion against the Lord. In one biblical
story, Jesus casts the demons out of the madman of the Gadarenes. The
demons beg Jesus not to cast them back into the pit before their time, but to let

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them.. inhabit a herd of pigs. Jesus gives his assent, but the pigs immediately
run off a cliff and kill themselves, rather than allow the demons to inhabit
their bodies.

UFO Connection
I am not completely convinced that I ever met any aliens from outer space,
even though I remember some people telling me that they were aliens from
outer space. Why should I believe anything that they told me, after they took
me somewhere against my will? Furthermore, even if they are aliens from
outer space, why should I believe anything else that they told me? I have no
memories of little gray men with big eyes, or of medical exams, rapes or
torture. On the other hand, when I was 16 years old, they told me that they
had taken all of my eggs except one, and that I would have only one child. He
would be a boy, and he would be very special. They were right on that
account. I have only one child, a boy, and he is very special to me. I still do
not believe that they were aliens from outer space, and I still do not believe
that I ever went on a space ship into the outer solar system, even though they
told me that they were aliens, and they showed me a screen with a view of the
Earth behind us. I believed that they were humans. I know that they sent me
to some kind of special school when I was a child. I also know that the school
was filled with shadow people, and that those shadow people followed me
home. As an adult, I began to see them as creatures like the alien in the
movie Predator, before that movie was made. When I saw the movie, it
frightened me more than I can tell you.

Seeking Protection
The more I learned about these creatures of the shadows, and the more
experience I had with them, the more strongly I felt the need for protection.
Since I was already getting marriage counseling, I went through a series of
psychological and physical tests to determine whether I had a condition that
could be relieved with medication. In fact, I insisted to my therapist that I was
crazy, and I demanded every kind of test that she could possible recommend.
All that came of it was a recommendation that I quit smoking cigarettes.

By this time, the shadows had begun jumping onto me when I was just
drifting off into sleep. Sometimes they dug their claws into my flesh, causing
intense pain and leaving actual bruises on my body. One shadow in particular
used to lift me up out of my bed and drop me, making a loud “thud” and
knocking the breath out of my lungs. Sometimes it felt as if every bone in my
back had been broken. Again, these encounters left visible bruises that took
several days to heal.

All of the above efforts having failed to resolve the problem, I decided to get
baptized. After all, a little water couldn’t hurt. Interestingly, although
baptism today is considered a confirmation ritual that solidifies your
membership in a church, but originally it was an exorcism ritual. I got

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baptized, and it did seem to help, but the shadow people did not leave me
completely alone. In fact, they continued to harass me, and they still harass
me today. However, I have gained skill at detecting them, and strength for
repelling them.

Shadow Boxing

One reason why I can see the shadow people is that one of my eyes has no
central vision. Since it has only peripheral vision, and the shadow people
appear around the edges of vision, this gives me an advantage in detecting
them. I have also discovered my own “shadow body”, which I can employ to
fight them off. According to some streams of religious thought, we have three
bodies, just as God has three parts. God is the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. We are body, soul and spirit. I believe that the soul is not some
mystical spirit without any substance at all; rather, it is an energy body that
lacks solid physicality, but which is nonetheless very real and corporeal. This
energy body is held together by electromagnetic forces, and it can do many
things which our physical bodies cannot accomplish. The soul, if you will,
can walk through solid walls, fly into the air, travel across the universe faster
than light, and do battle against the shadow people without actually moving
the physical body at all.

I am lying in bed, the lights are dimmed, the dog is snoring and the cat is
making her nest in the blankets between my feet. Not quite asleep, I am not
completely awake, either. Then some shadow person jumps out of the wall
opposite my bed and jumps onto my back. This one does not have claws, at
lest, but it is squeezing me in a painful bear hug.

I open my eyes. With a great mental effort, I command my arms to move, and
I beat off this creature with my fists. I can see my physical body lying in the
bed, totally motionless, yet I can also see my shadow arms flailing at the dark
form that begins to back off under the rain of blows that I shower onto it. I
can feel the puffy, marshmallow-like softness as my fists sink into its
membrane, pushing its energy into itself, like a black hole collapsing into
another universe. This one is not terribly powerful, and I am winning, but it
does not go completely away until I invoke the name of Jesus Christ.

I don’t care whether it really is the power of Christ that banishes the evil
shadows, as long as it works. As an American, I hold to the values of
pragmatism: If it works, why fix it? Deep down, however, I must admit that I
am trying to believe in Christ. I want to be a Christian, but I am still
struggling to find my faith.

I have no doubt that the shadow people are real, and whenever I see them, I
tell them to go away. Some of them might be benign, but why take chances
with a phenomenon like this?