Growing up, my cousin and I always liked when my dad told us scary stories. He told us about ghosts, vampires, monsters that live in the sewer, etc. Very thrilling and realistic stories. As we got older, we demanded that he tell us TRUE scary stories. My dad would say that he had a true and scary story, but he couldn't tell us until we were old enough. Not until we were 18. We bugged him throughout our teenage years to tell us the true story, but he waited and waited. When we were 16 and 17, we kind of forgot about it. But when my cousin turned 18 (he was a little younger than me), he suddenly confronted my dad: "We're both 18 now. You have to tell us the story." My dad was a little surprised that he had remembered and, always one to keep his word, he said, "Next weekend, I'll take you guys for a drive and I'll tell you a story. But you have to promise not to tell your siblings/cousins. They aren't old enough to understand." The following weekend, we went for a drive into the country. As we left the city, storm clouds started rolling in. We pulled into an old Catholic cemetery where priests and nuns were buried. Some of the graves were so old that the crosses were made of either wood or piled up rocks mixed with concrete.
The rain, thunder, and lightning took over just as he started telling us about The Shadow People... 1/2
2/2 Here is what he told us when we were eighteen: "There are entities in the world that are not-quite-human. They appear human and generally behave like humans, but they are missing something. Whereas a man will have a body and a mind - muscles, flesh, skin, emotions, passions, relationships, and values - the shadow people just *look* like people. They have the physical things, like flesh and muscles, but they lack the things that make us human. They have contempt for non-shadow people and treat them like livestock. They try to trick and control you into behaving differently. They insist that you waste time and money on 'shadowy things' instead of meaningful things." My cousin and I were a little creeped out with the storm and the idea of shadow people, but we reminded my dad that he had promised to tell a TRUE story. He insisted shadow people were real. "Whenever there is a community of people who get along and share values, shadow people start to appear. Then certain members of the group start believing that we should listen to the shadows, instead of ourselves. If you don't stand your ground, your group will fall apart." We asked him if he's ever met a shadow person. He said he has, and he played nice, but he will never do business with them and will never listen to their opinion on values, morals, traditions, or family. "The shadow people exist where there is no light," he continued, "and where there is no light, reality is distorted. So beware the shadow people. They don't want you to see the light. They want reality distorted. Everything that happens when the shadow people control a society *blocks* the light rather than spreads the light." My cousin and I didn't quite understand what a shadow person was. But in the ten years since my dad told that story, I've recognized shadow people in all areas of society: government, media, entertainment, finance, military, and history. The shadow people stand out. They're easy to spot now. And they're terrifying.
