Shadow person or demon?

I had a strange experience six or seven years ago that I'd like to share. My husband and I had moved into an upstairs apartment in a run-of-the-mill suburban setting just outside of Houston. It was a small one-bdrm, with a security light located outside the bedroom window. Even with curtains and mini-blinds there was still alot of ambient light in the room after dark, so I would sleep with a small washcloth draped over my eyes.

At the time my husband would leave for work around 4:30am, and I usually didn't get up until 7am. One morning shortly after he left, I had a disturbing dream of a sexual/bondage nature. Now, I normally dream in color and they tend to have a cinematic quality to them. But this dream was much different. It was in black/white, and had a grainy, scratchy quality to it (like an old, damaged home movie), and there was no sound.

As far as the subject matter, I knew very little about bondage -- the only thing that pops to mind are the comical scenes from the movie "9 to 5". Anyway, I didn't get very far along in the dream because I was disturbed and bewildered. I opened my eyes, and from beneath the washcloth over my eyes, I saw a man straddled across my waist. He was wearing grayish, light-colored sweatpants with drawstring, and a white short-sleeved t-shirt that was tucked in. However, I could only see him from mid-chest down and did not see his head or arms.

I was laying frozen in bed. My mind was still trying to make sense as to what was happening. Between the disturbing dream and the man straddling me, I was pretty confused. I remember thinking that I was about to be raped and/or killed. I guess the man/thing sensed I was awake, and he moved off of me to the side of the bed. The bed did not move, and I didn't hear anything. I was waiting to be attacked. After a short time, (minutes, seconds... I really don't know), I took the washcloth off my eyes and looked around the room. There was no one there. I looked at the alarm clock and it was about 6:30am.

For months afterwards, I always stayed up after my husband left for work, and I kept all of the lights in the apartment on. I've never experienced anything else like this since.

Does anyone have any idea about what I experienced? Is this one of the shadow people I've been reading about or some sort of demon? Do shadow people or demons wear clothes? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

YIKES!
I wouldn't go back to bed alone again

Did you notice anything else, any sounds or smells?
Did you feel any weight on top of you?
Any possibility you were half asleep/half dreaming and startled yourself out of a dream?

Well, that's the thing. There was no sound or any smells, and I didn't feel any weight at all. When this thing got off of me, the bed didn't even move. And due to the disturbing nature of the dream, I was startled out of it.

I believe that this man/thing actually projected the dream to me? Is this possible? Has anyone experienced a form of dream projection?

This sounds more like a dream. Most of the time when people are attacked by shadow creatures and such they experience paralisys. I've never heard of a case either where the attacker was clothed.

Bad dream definately!

i agree with 'noise' .. it does seem like a dream.. well in this case a bad nightmare!! Sometimes dreams do seem very realistic almost as you feel 'it'(whatever the action that is taking place in the dream)and when you wake-up you wonder if it was real or not..that has happened to me a number of times.
But 'maria_stardust' since you are the one who experienced it.. it wont be just right if i concluded for you it was a dream.. just telling you what it seems to me like (having had lots of realistic dreams). But ofcourse i could very well be wrong.
So do tell me .. do you believe there is a possibilty that it was a dream or are you sure that you were wide awake? And also after that incident did you feel any after effects and have any sort of bodily pain..etc.. ensuring you that it did really happen?
Thanks

And an incident not quite like this but something related to the subject-matter has been always talked about in mom's family which happened a really long time ago.. thats the only incident id put close to or relate to so far in a case like your incident..other than that never heard of such a case!
But its spooky!

I've had fairly realistic dreams before, such as going through my morning routine of getting ready for work -- showering, brushing my teeth, makup, etc. -- only to discover I'm still in bed. I believe most of us experience these kinds of dreams from time to time.

However, it's the nature of the dream, not just the subject matter that is bothering me. I've never had a dream that was black/white, grainy, scratchy and slightly out of focus before. I've never had a dream that didn't have any sound. It was akin to watching a badly shot, underground movie that didn't have a soundtrack.

As far as the dream portion itself being a nightmare, it wasn't scary to me at the time, just disturbing. I didn't even have time to panic when I awoke with the man straddled across my waist. My mind was still trying to decipher what the heck was going on. It was only after I realized that I was indeed alone did I begin to freak out.

So while the experience as a whole could be deemed "nightmarish," I did not -- and still do not -- consider it a nightmare. Which brings me back to one of my questions, can dreams be projected from one being to another?

im no expert on that field but from an induced state a mesmer/hypnotist can make suggestions to you while your unconscious and it can play out in your mind. going on that, then i would say yes, a dream or a specific scene can be projected to you. it's a science that im not to knowledgeable in (as if im knowledgeable in many fields :lol but from the little that i know i do believe it's more then possible and i would be as pre-cautious as can be even if it wasn't a projected dream and just an extremely rare nightmare.

read up on mesmers, exorcists and hypnotist. they are been capable of inducing such mind states through various means. as far as the shadow people, i got no real take on them.

hope that gives you some kind of insight/direction.

How familiar are you with out of body experiences? This sounds to me like you were distracted from your usual out-of-body/astral routine by an entity of some sort.

>had moved into an upstairs apartment

How recently had you moved into the place when this happened? Was it just a few weeks? It's possible, for instance, that the "who or what" you encountered was a regular visitor of the previous occupant. I have personally experienced very out of place visitations when sleeping in someone else's bed, for instance. I recall in particlar once sleeping as a guest in a house...the couples ten year old daughter was away with her biological father, and I slept in her bedroom while she was away. I had a bizarre dream involving attempts to lure me into someplace that was obviously supposed to be scary (but wasn't) with bright green ice cream. It was very odd, and very out of place, and when I woke up I had a similar, brief awareness of a vaguely humanoid shadowy form. It seemed very much like it was a regular night time visitor, and almost hadn't noticed that I wasn't its usual host. I think this may well be essentially what you experienced.

>It was in black/white, and had a grainy, scratchy quality
>to itand there was no sound.

I think it was somebody else's dream. Or supposed to be.

>As far as the subject matter, I knew very little about bondage

But I'm guessing that didn't stop you from experiencing things you didn't know about, and probably wouldn't have thought up on your own?

>I opened my eyes, and from beneath the washcloth over my eyes

I notice the way you phrase this. You were seeing through it. Seeing through objects is totally standard OBE phenomenon. Out of curiosity...at this point did things become "in color?" Sounds to me like you transitioned from the dream, but during the transition to being awake, there was something in the room with you, so you actually remembered the brief "consciousness focused not-in-physical-body, but observing from where the body is" point.

>However, I could only see him from mid-chest down
>and did not see his head or arms.

Several possibilities. Could be that the parts you weren't seeing were "so terrible and horrifying" that your subconscious filtered it out. On the other hand though, it might very well have been something totally innocuous, like it simply wasn't an important part of the the other-persons-experience you were experiencing, and so that part was never well defined by the other people involved...or maybe part of their fantasy was being taken by a faceless stranger.

>I was laying frozen in bed.

Physical paralysis. Totally standard OBE. If it had occurred to you probably could have moved out of your body and floated around the room.

>I guess the man/thing sensed I was awake,
>and he moved off of me to the side of the bed.

You disturbed his pattern. Whatever exactly he/it was, he was probably simply going about his usual routine, and may have been just as surprised as you. I don't think you were fully "awake" yet at this point though. Not exactly. My guess is that you were in the half-awake half-asleep state, focused on your energy body, hence the physical paralysis. Had you been completely awake, you probably wouldn't have been aware of him moving off of you. "Awake" and "asleep" aren't really the best words to use to describe this though.

>I took the washcloth off my eyes and looked around the room.

I'm unclear about the washcloth. You sleep with it over your face?

>Is this one of the shadow people I've been reading about or
>some sort of demon? Do shadow people or demons wear clothes?

I wouldn't worry about giving it a label. Call it a ghost. Call it an astral entity. Could have been a greater-than-human superntural creature merely mimicking the human form. Or, it could have been simply a thought form left by a previous tenant who created it by a lot of intense sexual fantasizing. Hard to say.

Since it hasn't ever come back though...my guess is that he wasn't expecting to find you, and when it realized that you weren't the girl he was looking for, and weren't very interested in playing along, he moved on.

Scary perhaps, disturbing definitely...but I don't think you were in any tremendous danger. Also...keep in mind that while the obvious interpretation is of this "guest" as a marauder or rapist...and while that is possible...it's also entirely possible that his visitations were entirely welcomed by whomever it was he was actually looking for, and expected you to be. When you didn't play along he left and hasn't come back in "six or seven years."

It took you a little while of dreaming to notice something was odd...it may similarly have taken a little bit of being in your dream to realize that you weren't the girl he expected to find.

I think this sort of thing happens more often than people realize. The unusal thing isn't that it happened...but that you noticed.



[edit on 30-8-2005 by LordBucket]

ritual astral activity!

Could have even been a group, you wouldn't know about the rest though, maybe its a 'taking turns' thing.

Definitely agree that it was probably to do with the previous inhabitant. Would only keep happening if you 'did as expected'.

Hell, how many people have visitors in their dream, and don't think twice to mention it?

I must admit, I'm not familiar with astral or OOBE phenomenon. I'll have to research these areas.

If it only happened once, and nothing else odd has happened, I'd chalk it up to hynopompic hallucination. It's a state between awake and asleep, and is part of the process of waking up.

Look into the common "Old Hag" phenomenon. It's interesting that it was a man in sweats and also that you didn't sense any pressure on your body.

Strange that after the weird bondage dream you noticed him. You were probally not fully awake yet and the man was maybe an incubus as the dream was a sexual dream might of attracted it. You could only sense it because you were half asleep when he noticed that you could see it maybe it left to wait until your asleep again not trying to scare you but maybe its a normal occurance that you just dont notice as your not in the right frame of mind.

I hadn't considered the "old Hag" theory, although I've heard about it before. I've also been reading up on the OOBE and astral threads in this forum. But I've got a question: Can can a person visiually manifest themselves in an astral state?

It's probably a dream, I kinda experienced that, though it wasn't a sense of rape or being attack....just fear

I think you were in a state of sleep paralysis - I have those once in a while - but anyways, I had a dream similar to that except it was two hooded figure standing by my bedside, and as they got closer to me, I freaked out for some reason, and my heart was pounding like crazy, AND one had their finger out and was about to touch my chest (heart area), that freaked the heck out of me.

It was strange cuz I was aware I was asleep, I woke up, and was sweating like crazy......and yea thats about it

Astral erotics gone bad. mmm astral sex

I think that you had a "dream". Thing is, when you sleep your body leaves your body and goes to your personal Astral location. That is where your soul and guides create the dream world and symbolic messages for you. This is a time to relax and be creative. When you learn to dream lucid and gain full control and awareness of your dreams you made the first step into astral projecting.

In your case you had the dream and this entity came in and started to say things to your body. Your body hears it, your mind sends it through your life line towards you and you interpet it and form a new dream state. All this happening unknowingly and very similar to how hypnotists work.

However it's not sure that the entity was actually there. It could still have been a dream created by yourself/guides for some odd reason. Since you woke up suddenly your body didn't have time to get rid of the chemicals produced. So it could've been that you were still half in the dream and half awake and that the man was just an imagination.

If the man was there, then what was it? I can say it's not a demon nor shadow person. Yes I've seen Demons with clothes and as a human, but they were always way way taller then a mere man. Shadow person are shadowy and don't wear clothes nor take on a form of a man. They barely have a form that can be described as a human. Yah ok they got a shape of a head, legs and arms and that is it.

It could've been a ghost from a previous owner/visitor or it could've been another individual astral projecting for some sexual pleasure.

An individual can not manifest themselves in order to be recorded by a camera. However they can manifest themselves in such a way that an individual, who has their 3rd eye openend, to be able to see the astral projected individual.

well that's just my input

hmmm...I can think of a few possible explanations :

1) Incubus: an astral entity, masculine, that derives it's power from it's victim's fear/terror, during an astral attack of a sexual nature. The victims of incubi are female, while men are terrorized by sucubi, an astral entity of feminine energy. They can appear in many guises, appear human or not,
and attacks can be anything from groping to violent rape.
Sucubi and incubi are probably the origin of the vampire, siren, and lamia myths among others. The victims usually experience total body paralysis, the feeling of a weight pressing down on their chest, trouble breathing, and sometimes the attack manifests in such a way that they feel as if the attack is actually physically happening.

2) Memory of Place: in your dream you might have been seeing/reliving
the imprint of a violent attack. When traumatic events occur, if the fear pain and rage felt are strong enough, the memory of that event could become imprinted into the energy of the room.

3) Night Terror: this occurs when you are in a twilight state of sleep: when you're not quite completely asleep, but not quite awake either.
It is the state between fading conscious wakefulness and the beginning of R.E.M. sleep. Night Terrors are characterized by a feeling of total body paralysis increased heart rate and, perhaps a feeling of pressure on the chest, causing trouble breathing, sometimes while the eyes are fully open, seeing and/or feeling frightening images/impressions.



The difference between these three is that: 1) an incubus attaches itself to a person/victim; 2) memory of place isn't aimed at anyone in particular, but makes itself known to anyone who is sensitive enough to preceive it;
and 3) night terrors, according to medical science, is caused by increased brain activity. Though I find it very interesting that night terrors and sucubi/incubi attacks share a great many of the same characteristics.

There are medical treatments for chronic night terror sufferers. And as for the other two, there are a few general spiritual, non-religious rituals you could try. Make sure all windows are closed and locked before doing this:
a) burn or smudge with sage, sweetgrass, frankincense, myrrh, or dragons' blood incense to cleanse and protect. (entire apartment, including kitchen, bathroom, and all closets)
b) meditate on a lit white candle-flame while envisioning an egg- shaped or spherical white bubble surrounding you for protection from harm and anointing yourself with rose water (again for protection).
c) and sprinkle sea-salt around the perimeter of the space (entire apartment, including kitchen, bathroom, and all closets), across the width of all doorways and windowsills, while envisioning all the negative energy being sucked into the salt and trapped there, if you feel the need to say a few words about rejecting the negative energy and commanding it to leave and never come back, then by all means do so. Leave the apartment for a couple of hours with all windows closed and don't think about it at all, if possible. When you come back, vacuum up ALL of the salt into a fresh bag, then open all windows to allow fresh air to enter.
Take the bag out immediately and bury the salt, but not the bag. Cover the hole. Throw the bag awayas far form home as possible. If you have access to an incinerator, just throw the whole thing, salt and all in. If burying, the Earths' energy will cleanse the salt and purify the energy of all negativity. If burning, the fire will do the same.

Good Luck


[edit on 9/8/05 by isisraven]

This is an interesting thread. How about seeing a dark shadow being before even falling asleep?

Quick snippet of my experience:

My brother and I were traveling across the states. We found a hotel in a very small town to stay for an evening. We turned out the lights to settle down for the evening. The only light in the room was from a street light, shining very lightly from behind the dark drapes. I was almost asleep and heard my brother walking around. I just figured he was headed to the bathroom. I covered my head with the blanket so I wouldn't be bothered by the bathroom light. After a long pause, I uncovered my head to see what was taking him so long. The bathroom light never came on, and I could sense he was standing at the foot of my bed.

I thought it was strange that he was just standing there, staring at me from the foot of the bed. I figured he may have been sleep walking, so I called his name, hoping to wake him up.

I about had a heart attack when he answered from the bed on the other side of the room! I quickly turned on the lamp and yelled, "who the hell was that!"

My brother was just as freaked out as I was. Apparently, he thought it was me the whole time! He watched the figure standing at the end of my bed and thought it may have been me!

We've told everyone in our family about it and nobody seems to really care. It's so hard to explain the whole 'erie' feeling and situation. This figure was dark, all black. Like a dark shadow.

My brother watched this 'being' walk from the end of his bed to mine, and I saw it standing at the end of my bed. I stared at this thing, in the dark, for a while before yelling my brother's name. I honestly thought it was him and didn't want to wake him suddenly, if he were sleep walking.

Any ideas?

[edit on 8-9-2005 by SourGrapes]

Could be a shadow person Sourgrapes. Many of them are just curious and they don't understand the concept of staring at someone while they are trying to sleep is rude. If you never had to sleep wouldn't you be curious when you saw someone going to sleep?

-Aza

Wow,
i have been using this site now for a couple of days, totally fascinated with the stories and thoughts, never really thinking that I would have anything to say. Then I came across this thread and it nearly knocked me for six.
I remember when I was twelve years old I was having a very hard time at home and had thoughts of suicide. I remember a tuesday night I was in bed, asleep, I heard my name being called out and I woke. I then heard, felt or sensed someone come running into my room and when they got to me they tried to pick me up and I could feel what I thought of then as my soul lifting but then part of me seemed to be stuck so it dropped me and left. I was so scared i got out of bed, went to the lounge room turned on the tv with the sound down just to give me some light but not wake my parents, i looked at the vcr and the time was 0330.
I swore to myself never to sleep in my bed again but as I was just a kid and i didnt want to tell my parents i did.

It was one week later on a tuesday night i was in bed sleeping, i woke up by myself ( I didnt hear my name or anything) and at the end of my bed was a figure, it was ghost like in appearance in that it seemed to be all white and glowing, again i froze, it stayed at the end of my bed for a few minutes then walked out into my brothers room through a door that joined our rooms but was closed. I got up and again went to the lounge room and turned on the tv, looked at the vcr and again it was 0330. I was so freaked.

All the time growing up i came to believe that it was maybe my birth mother who died in a car accident when I was six. Now I'm not too sure.

I haven't had any sightings since then, I am now 33 but every now and then just as I am falling asleep I hear my name being yelled out which wakes me up. I have never told anyone about this before, I have a hard enough time telling myself I'm not crazy and couldnt bear hearing someone else tell me that I am.

Reading this thread just made me want to share my story. thankyou all for sharing and giving me stuff to think about.