Shadow Person Sighting

[SensitiveAbility]

TL/DR: I witnessed a phenomenon which I expect is what people refer to as shadow people, if you do not wish to read my long account I would still appreciate your input as it relates to such.

I'm going to preface this with stating that prior to this curious event I have never in my life at all ever experienced a single thing paranormal at all. I have no proof or evidence for this event, but nonetheless I am not lying or embellishing anything. I sleep reasonably well regularly, don't do any drugs or have medications, don't drink, don't experiment with electromagnetic fields of any kind, I'm not religious, and my vision is slightly imbalanced like many people but is still nearly 20/20. I have more than a few hobbies which mostly center around general engineering, the outdoors, and philosophy. Effectively I am a more outdoor-oriented rendition of the archetypical nerd, and most people find me unbearably antiseptic to whimsical fantasy. The only time in my life I knowingly hallucinated was when I was younger and had stayed up for a long time, I saw a rabbit jump into an open dresser drawer. I'm 100% certain that was a hallucination due to lack of sleep. My following account which I cannot explain was not made up for your entertainment, it was not a hallucination, and I hereby promise to present it objectively to the best of my ability. I write somewhat redundantly to be accurate and not to entertain or fascinate anyone with my words. I am posting this simply because I am curious as to what I saw and wonder if others here may have good input or speculations.

A few weeks ago I went on a regular walk with my dog who I live with alone. Walking my dog is how I clear my head and reapproach important or complicated concepts to get a handle on things. It's a good way to decompress when overwhelmed with information. I have to watch my dog carefully because he likes to chase deer/turkeys/rabbits/squirrels/racoons/coyotes/foxes and kill them. I am always watching the perimeter of my yard carefully, I know where each animal sleeps at night, I know where they eat, I know how many young they have and where they take them. The hawks know what time I scare the squirrels out of the attic, the rabbits and squirrels know when I will feed the birdfeeders and spill seeds on the ground, the deer know when I will cut the grass and splash clippings into their bed areas, and everybody knows when I walk my dog. Any animal that I don't appreciate gets run off every year, it's not really a species specific rule and every year some babe of the wild ends up being told off by my dog. It's a basic but constant chore to keep small and large wildlife out of my canine's mouth.

As my dog walked around I kept scanning the yard, specifically the pockets where the deer with fawns sleep along an overgrown fenceline bordering a cow field. My entire property is surrounded by fences like this, in the middle of an area of massive cow fields. It's very easy to spot anything not hiding along the fences. Outside of a few very thin thickets in the fields, it's a sort of forest island or corridor for a lot of animals, and so as I implied before we see a lot of wildlife. I sat down on the edge of my porch being satisfied there was nothing which would suicidally leap out of the brush to run from my dog, and I began to think for about twenty minutes while he basked in the sun or shade here and there. It was a bright clear day and late afternoon with an occasional breeze, most people would call it the perfect weather. Having sorted my thoughts a bit more I called the dog to go in and stood up at edge of the porch so he could mostly ignore me in slumber. I again began looking at the closest spot in the woodline/fenceline where the thicket breaks, to make sure again that no animal had missed seeing or smelling my sleeping dog for the last twenty minutes. At that time I witnessed a very strange shadow in the 4x4' area of that pocket in the thicket for the period of approximately three or four seconds from a distance of about 25 feet and as I closed to about 15-20 feet. My only true conclusion is that I do not know what it was.

I assumed it was an animal at first, it was about as dark as a turkey in that shade and I noticed a slope sort of like a turkey's back or shoulders. At first glance it's profile shape was essentially that of a 4' tall turkey with no neck if seen squarely from the front. I have never seen a turkey with so large of a body, but anything is possible. I did not see any feet or legs, the pocket in the thicket has a bit of shin tall grass in front of it which blocked any view that low. I partially still believe it was a deer or other animal's shadow because that is the most logical operative theory, but that explanation is hard to reconcile. It was not a turkey in any case, I'm reasonably certain of that. The sunlight was at an angle that directly lit from the opposite side of the fence, and was casting shadows generally in my viewing direction on the inside area of the fence where the pocket in the thicket is. I assumed the shadow of a deer's back was being cast from the other side of the fence from some feet away, and the resulting combined shadow was essentially a humanoid looking lump with shoulders in the brush.

I saw it and instantly stepped off the porch toward my dog where I could get between it and him just in case. I never broke eye contact during the time from when I first observed it to when it moved out of my line of sight perpendicular to me and into more thicket at my left. I doubt I even blinked, though not because I was aware of anything odd at that exact point. My dog has learned to be aware of what I stare at, it's a non-verbal hunting tool he's picked up, kind of like he can sense buck fever. I don't hunt from a stand, I mostly stalk around looking for game activity with my dog. The entire time he was completely oblivious and mostly asleep, I started walking towards him briskly with this obvious intent because when he "woke up" from dozing then he would be less likely to become confused/startled if within two or three seconds he realizes that I'm monofixated on something. I had no genuine initial curiosity to observe this shadow astutely, and in full honesty, I otherwise would likely never have noticed the overt oddity of it. I was not scared or stressed in the slightest at the time. I felt nothing remarkable at all other than a basic curiosity during the event, I basically looked at it and started hunting it.

As my first foot hit the grass when I stepped away from the porch toward it, the shape seemed to alert and then casually turn. As it moved I fully realized that the shadow was not in fact shaped like a deer at all, it was shaped like a small person with a large head, it bobbed twice like a crouched walking man would as it moved out of view, and it seemed to be three dimensional. It was like a dark shadow cast on something that wasn't there. It resembled most the profile of a small hooded or cloaked figure crouched down, but the complete outline only. The patterns of shadows from the brush and fence that I saw through it clearly moved beneath it— there was parallax between my movements, this dark shadow mass, and the shadows behind it that I noticed as I moved towards it and it moved off to the side into the brush to my left. The shadow mass was not cast from the direction of the sunlight and the other shadows behind it, it was as if it was being cast from where I walked/stood looking on. This shadow had depth to it and was noticeably darker than all the other shadows, it was essentially night. When I say it had depth I don't mean it had definition to it, I could only see the profile and uniform mass of it. I mean it looked almost like a faint 2D screen or filter set in front of the 3D background, but it moved and in that way I could sense it was not a flat faced object. There was no definition to it other than the profile outline. It reminded me of someone wearing completely black clothing in the dead of night, how they almost stick out because they are so much darker than their surroundings, but this shadow was still partially transparent and seemed to be cast on surfaces which were facing toward me and away from the direct light source. As it moved I also thought it could be a person on the other side of the fence, poaching, simply because of how it seemed to step away. It made no sound, as an animal or person would if they were moving through the thicket itself or in the tall grass on the other side. I distinctly remember hearing and seeing nothing else move from that exact area as it travelled, which is almost impossible. I would have been about 10 to 15 feet away from it as it moved through much thicker foliage, and you cannot get out of that pocket or move on the other side of it without making a noise or disturbing other objects casting shadows into that area. By all intents and purposes, it is flat out not possible, it's barely sparse enough for the deer to even get in save that one pocket. That's why they enter from the mowed yard and sleep there. At some point before it was fully out of view I think I stopped and just stared, but I don't remember exactly.

There was a herd of deer in a field behind the thicket, which could easily explain something, except they almost make things more interesting. They were all aware of me and had moved from about 75 yards away to about 100 yards away in the field behind this pocket in the thicket during the time I had sat on the porch. About six to eight seconds after I initially arrived at the pocket in the thicket, had peered inside to see nothing and began to poke my head over the fence to take a further look, the entire herd bolted perpendicular and to my right for no apparent reason. I saw no other deer or animals which could explain the shadow or the herd being startled at all. I suspected whatever I had seen in the thicket had startled them as it moved directly away from me after having travelled down the fence about 10 yards and then in their general direction another 20 or 30, but I don't know of anything which could cover the ground so quickly silently and which they would notice but I would miss. There were no tracks in the thicket pocket that indicated anything had been there since the morning and nothing on the other side of the fence. At that point, I failed to explain most of what I had observed.

What I saw with my eyes was legitimately confusing, though it is highly unlikely to be an optical illusion which otherwise would be a viable explanation. I could not explain what could have caused an optical illusion at all, both the source, darkness, cast direction, or the movement and nature of the shadow. I am nearly certain that whatever it was did not want to interact with me and moved away in response to me noticing it, like pretty much any wild animal, but it moved casually with little urgency very unlike any riled wild animal. It seemed to sneak away, which deer and small game don't tend to do. There is no poaching problem common around here because it's all cow fields save the two acres I live on, alternately the farmers all drive loud trucks and four-wheelers to hunt miles away. With such explanations ruled as highly unlikely, I have to disregard some traditional logic which is hard to indulge. I then would explain it as a shadow with its own dimensions which had been observing me and/or my dog for an unknown time as I sat on the porch. This is the only explanation, as fantastical and as it is, which attempts to explain the entire event in an accurate way simply to another person. I know how stupid, arbitrary, and self-centered it all sounds. Perhaps I would put it this way, if it were provable scientifically tomorrow I would be the exact opposite of surprised. I've been eyeing that pocket in the thicket specifically for over four years and I have no explanation for what I saw.

I'm very interested in what anyone else thinks of this. It hardly bothered me at the time but I just can't seem to let it go, and I don't really know where to look for information about it. I'm not really the smartest person in the world, but I'll try to wrap my head around whatever anyone could explain or could point me in the direction of explaining.

Hello,
Thanks for sharing. Shadow ppl are dangerous if they are true ones. There are spirits of dead humans that portray themselves as them . But real shadow men have never been alive, they can be extremely dangerous. I am a sensitive i ran into many in my lifetime. Been dealing with the paranormal for 35 yrs. Don't know were they really come from. Yes some ppl have sleep paralysis, but what alot of ppl don't know nor understand, is dreams are not dreams they are really happening in a different realm.
My ability came forth at age 12