Shadow People

I see floaters…

When I was around seven years old I started to see floaters. Normally when I was looking out of the window at a clear sky. Transparent balls and rods, connected up into what looked like atomic structures, and always falling, falling, from the top of my vision to the bottom, resisting any attempt to focus on them.

The adults in my life pooh-poohed the notion, being unaware of basic ocular medicine, and I eventually stopped passing comment and accepted these floaters as something only I could see (at this stage still thinking they were external to me). It would be decades before I would find out that they were a real thing (though quite normal and benign).

Perhaps for this reason, I didn’t dismiss my twelve-year-old daughter out of hand when she started talking about shadow people.

— I’ve seen five of them in the house, and another few at school. Sometimes they move about, but a lot of the time they just stand there

— I haven’t noticed them. Have you tried taking a picture?

— Of course, but nothing comes out. You know what’s weird? They can be standing right beside me and if I look in a mirror I can’t see them

— Like vampires?

— You’re making fun of me

— No. Like I said, I just haven’t seen them yet. Give me a shout when they appear and I’ll come and have a look

I didn’t need to wait too long. While finishing up some emails in the study that same night, I noticed a smudge in the air in front of the white door. I took off my glasses and cleaned them thoroughly, but it made no difference. I could now make out even more clearly that there was a blur in the air halfway between me and the exit, which I could see had the height of a person, taller than my daughter and shorter than me.

It wasn’t a scary presence, just a presence, and I walked over to check that I could wave my arm through it while feeling no resistance, no cold patch, nothing that would scream either physical being or ghost.

I tried talking to it, I tried listening to it, but there seemed to be no effective way of interacting. Had my daughter not been asleep by this time, I would have brought her down to take a look. I would have spared…

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