DARKNESS WALKS: The Shadow People Among Us

by Jason Offutt

The Shadow They lurk in obscurity. Looming human figures, blacker than darkness. Millions across the globe see them. The unfortunate feel their touch. And some awake in horror to their red, unblinking stare. Join Jason Offutt, who has interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses, as he shines some light on the world of the Shadow People, viewing these beings through the lens of science, religion, and metaphysics. Are they ghosts, demons, hallucinations, or something else entirely? Who, or what, are the Shadow People? Have you seen them too?

From the Foreword by Brad “Jason Offutt’s excellent study of the phenomenon presents us with the most thorough and complete work yet written regarding the mysterious beings that we have come to call collectively, the Shadow People…Jason may not have any ultimate answers, but no one has done a better job of defining who or what these shades might be.”

JASON OFFUTT is a writer and college journalism instructor. At various times in his career, he has also been a newspaper editor, general assignment reporter, photographer, newspaper consultant, bartender, farm hand, and the mayor of a small Midwestern town. His books include "Haunted A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots," and a collection of parenting humor entitled "On Being Dad." He lives with his wife and children in Maryville, Missouri.

Genres: Paranormal, Nonfiction, Occult

202 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2009

Reviews

[Owlseyes]

I want to read it.

I would counsel every adult the reading of this book. It’s in the bibliography of the movie “Shadow people”.For any adult mind.




Anyone would be puzzled by this movie. Anyone would seek for answers,I guess.

As a psychologist, it surely opened in my mind some avenues of questioning. One reason is that I was not aware of several of the facts approached in the movie.

The movie first. You can see by the end that it was dedicated to the “victims of sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome” (SUNDS)”.

Though knowing it was based on a “true story”, I got convinced for a while it was more of the fiction (including horror-like scenes) domain, than a reality-based narrative. But the movie follows part of the life of radio-host Charlie Crowe Camfield (born August 6, 1961; died December 13, 2010). So, it’s about re-enacting what (maybe) really... happened sometime ago.

The movie starts in Cambodia, back in 1979. A child dies while sleeping; his mother had told him that the stories he heard from the elders were “only stories”. But something shadowy was responsible for his unexplained death. Images suggest.

Then action switches to the USA. Charlie, a compulsive-smoker, works at a radio station, in Easter-Kentucky, in 2008. He’s been through a difficult time, as regards to his own family.



Even the radio job wasn’t that much popular, according to ratings. Basically, people had a time to speak up their minds… Charlie was a good listener. He also had the voice.

Things get weird when a 17 year old man speaks “on air” of his terrors (he’s apparently locked in his room): “how do you stop thinking about something?”, …which is causing you terrors?. Jeff, the guy who sees “ghosts”, speaks of “a fear to close eyes and never wake up again”. That something refers to the Shadow People.
A Shadow creature later on will be deemed responsible for Jeff’s death.



Jeff’s death gets under the investigation of the center for disease control (CDC). The CDC finds no biological agent as cause for Jeff’s death,...as well for the Vietnamese people that died from SUNDS.

Jeff sent a mail package to Charlie with material on the subject. Charlie makes research on a library and ends up with the studies of doctor Aleister Ravenscroft [the Camden studies, whose subjects had died]. This draws Charlie into a real maze; he himself gets into a similar situation: isolated…fearing shadows, emptying his own house of (almost) all furniture. Quite sleepy, he conducts his radio shows, now with high ratings. The problem is that he got access to films left by doctor Ravenscroft. Charlie says there’s evidence in the films: of the Shadow creatures. But the investigator of the CDC disagrees. Charlie wants to make it public; not so with the investigator-officer.

Somehow, the CDC officer persuades Charlie not to divulge the films, based on the strong argument of the “placebo effect”. Those who died were “believers”; “when you sleep you cannot control what you think”; so if Charlie shows on TV the evidence, that would represent a “public health risk”.

Charlie resigns from the radio job. His son, however, uploads on Youtube the Camden Sleep studies films…
--
Back to my musings: it’s a good start watching this movie. Hypotheses abound: is it a disease? …a lack of Oxygen in the brain?...It’s all about hysteria?... Were the Camden studies films a hoax?... Is it a matter of belief? …evil spirits??

Anyway, it’s well recorded, by the ancients, stories about nocturnal appearances. Horace, in the 1st century BC, wrote about “a nocturnal fury”. Middle-age texts speak about “horned beasts attacking women”.

I watched recently a tape on the Shadow people and the Hat man... and got interested on the report of Jamie Jackson, a 32 years old woman, from Houston, Texas. She recalls, since the age of 5, she saw (others couldn't see): a “couple”…an old, short woman, who sat on Jamie’s chest ….and the Shadow-man, very “violent” towards Jamie,… arms around her throat. Jamie would go into “paralysis” while these attacks occurred.

An important book on the subject (Hmong Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome: A Cultural Study )
by Bruce Thowpaou Bliatout, reports on those over-the-sleep deaths this way: “Autopsy findings were of acute cardiac failure without underlying disease. No signs of toxins or drugs have been found,nor any evidence of suicide”.

The illustrious physicist Stephen Hawking spoke some time ago that “other dimensions” may be science-fact, not fiction; and the possibility of “dark-matter” be felt, though not seen.



In the Philippines they call it bangungot.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best paranormal books that I have read. Some of my family and I have had some run-in's with Shadow People and I know there are some resources out there but they really didn't fill my hunger for wanting to know more about this subject and one of the many podcasts I listen to was interviewing Jason Offutt and he had said that this book was out. So I went out and got the book and I could not put it down. I loved every page of it and when I finished it I could not believe it because it was such a great book. It was so great I am rereading it and you should read it also.

[Anita Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, lord help me, I love books like this. I love reading people’s accounts of the bizarre and how they filter their experiences through their own beliefs and fears. This book satisfied several book urges of mine at once. Paranormal tales, people telling their own stories, high pathos and low humor. Despite the fact that I had to create a category for this book called “Paranormal Squick,” that is not the fault of the author. Offutt structures this book in a manner wherein he categorizes the stories people have to tell. This book is not an advocacy – it is mostly Offutt’s attempts to sort and label people’s experiences. At no point does Jason Offutt attempt to say that he had a line on an explanation of Shadow People and since he does not have a specific advocacy, the at times horribleness that can come from books about paranormal were not his fault – but more on why I got a definite squick from a few of these stories, squick that could be avoided with a judicious application of science and reason. Read my entire review here.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would you enjoy reading it again:
No. This book read like a poorly written textbook. The shadow people stories are mundane stories, and are more-so ghost stories than shadow people stories (and yes, there is a difference). The book failed to document genuine shadow people stories - 1

Did you enjoy the plot:
It was bad but I kept reading through it and it was good enough to keep me reading. Since it is like a textbook, there was no plot. Of all the shadow people stories/ theories/ concepts, there was only a few that were interesting (but this would be one sentence for every fifty pages)- 2

Did you enjoy the writing style:
No. I disliked how the author constantly switched between first person and third person; I wish he just stuck to one or the other. - 1

Good ending?
Very predictable and boring. Since it was a textbook, there was technically no real ending - but it ended on the concept of how to get rid of shadow people. I think the book failed to do any real sort of evidence on the solution, and this was likely because the book failed to gain a concrete understanding of what shadow people are. - 2

Format: e-book
Average rating: 1.5 stars. Round up: 2 stars

[Emm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description on the back cover embellishes the contents a bit too far from the reality. Darkness Walks is essentially a large collection of very short ghost stories with tiny nuggets of “potentially” useful information (should you encounter a shadow person, that is) mixed throughout. After a while, I found myself just skimming.

[Kayako · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish there was a one-star option. This "book" was a collection of stories from people, possibly collected from a forum. The scientific evidence is just disregarded and the lack of evidence for Shadow People is just ignored.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting account of the Shadow People Phenomenon. The stories told here reflect a high degree of similarity which suggests that there is a reality behind this phenomenon but whether is spiritual or psychological remains to be determined. Worth reading.

[Dan Zarfati · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author compiles a whole range of cases, what is very useful, to bad he is not prepared to go into a deeper analyses, and quote a larger amount of alien abduction cases that are very similar to these situations.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written book on these supernatural entities.

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book is just ok. There is this quote inside the book: “In the field of the paranormal, there are no experts. We’re all learning".

[Ziasavv]

A person made of shadow watches me and my girlfriend sleep this creature punched me in the back of the head today I looked up it ran towards the locked window and disappeared

[Kerri Peek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've studied the Paranormal for 40 years and this book was not educational. To the contrary it was anecdotal at best.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stories an speculation. I think some of the accounts can be dismissed as dreams, sleep paralysis and mental illness. (The explanation of mental illness with hallucinations was not dealt with in the book, though just about every other conceivable possibility was) It's always interesting reading stories like this. In light of my own strange experience, which I believe there is most likely a reasonable explanation for though I have never been able to find one, I do entertain the possibility that some of these accounts may be true in the sense that the people really did experience something strange and difficult to explain, perhaps even (though its hard for a logical person like me to make the leap) paranormal. Or at least governed by forces not yet known to science. I liked that the author included interviews with paranormal "experts" of many different stripes from new age practitioners to witches to ghost hunters to priests to fundamentalist Pastors. He never comes to any real conclusions, but allows for many different interpretations and possibilities to be true.

[Ragnell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deeply disappointing. the vast majority of this book, which had been reviewed as scary ghost stories, turned out to be New Age and religious speculation on the nature of shadow people. The stories were way too light on atmosphere. A bit of showmanship could have created some true tales of terror, but what we got were mere anecdotes attributed to people on the internet.

I don't even want to resell this book, I'd feel like I was ripping someone off.

[Ben Wand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written book that laces personal accounts into thematic chapters. I also liked how the author presented several ideas on what/who the Shadow People are, what their motivations could be, and how to deal with them. It was especially interesting reading about the Cherokee evil medicine man angle. There were plenty of times I had to stop reading this at night, though.

[Mark Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questions answered

Like the above, questions answered. For a long time I had so many questions and got the answers I was looking for. Great read and a great resource book. Thank you Jason.

[Heather Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

Well worth the time and money, as I thoroughly enjoyed it. Didn't really answer any questions about shadow people but gave many theories. Filled with a plethora of personal experiences that were quite interesting.

[Fadi]

Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us

[Mahmoud Awad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Attracted to an ebook of this after an unnerving "encounter" early last night. Not worth skimming.

[fadi fathi rashid · Rating 5 out of 5]

iwant to read abook and send to my email fadyhmwdh11@gmail.com