Shadow People (Shadow People)

Shadow People
Biological type:	Ghostly humanoid
Appearance:	Shadow People [+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"]

You may wish to consult Shadow People (disambiguation) for other, similarly-named pages.

The Shadow People were highly mysterious ghost-like beings who sometimes manifested within humans' fields of vision, and were known to cluster around areas where unusual phenomena unrelated to their presence were already occurring or had recently done so.

Nature

The Shadow People could appear and disappear at will. Though they had broadly humanoid features, they were solid black and completely featureless, remaining so even if a light was directed right at them. Although P.R.O.B.E. were once lured to a location where they had clustered by a racket of screams and violent noises, this din stopped as soon as they entered the building and saw the Shadow People themselves, leaving the way these intangible and ever-silent beings had produced it exceedingly unclear.

There were no substantial records of the Shadow People in the files of any of Earth's various agencies dealing with supernatural or extraterrestrial threats in the 21st century. The Shadow People's origins and agenda were thus wholly unknown. Giles noted many similarities between the Shadow People and ordinary ghosts, but did not appear to consider the former to be a type of ghosts as such, remaining puzzled as to their true nature. Maxie Masters speculated that they were residents of another dimension, "peeking through" out of simple curiosity; thus, although "stalker"-like, they were essentially harmless. Agamya Akhtar, on the other hand, came to wonder if they might be malevolent djinns, harbingers of disease and misfortune. (WC: Shadow People ^[+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])

History

Giles had a traumatic childhood memory of seeing a silent, haunting shadowy figure watching him from the end of his bed. He linked this memory to the Shadow People. (WC: Shadow People ^[+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])

When Liz and her fiancée passed leadership of P.R.O.B.E. onto Giles in 2014, the Shadow People were among the first mysteries he was slated to investigate. (HOMEVID: First Entry ^[+]Loading...["First Entry (home video)"])

Shadow People swarm at St Thomas's Chapel. (WC: Shadow People ^[+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])

In April 2019, an adult Giles's P.R.O.B.E. team, Maxie excepted, were lured to St Thomas's Chapel where they were faced with a huge, looming, but ultimately harmless crowd of Shadow People, eventually being forced to leave without answers or a solution after wasting time and energy chasing the insubstantial beings. On 9 May, the full team investigated reports of a ghost at the London Palladium, which turned out to have been temporal visions transmitted by an Artari Time Projector. However, the case saw several more sightings of the Shadow People, with one watching as Maxie packed up the Projector and another being glimpsed by Agamya at the back of the car as they left.

Over the next few days, Giles became increasingly concerned about the Shadow People, which had dredged up his unpleasant childhood memory; he tried to contact other agencies for information, without much success, and had Agamya search the P.R.O.B.E. Archive for any records Liz might have left of the Shadow People, again to no avail. While Maxie believed them to be harmless observers from another dimension, Agamya ended up sharing her theory that the Shadow People were malevolent djinns, harbingers of disease and misfortune, which greatly disturbed Giles. Ultimately, however, he decided to try and come to terms with the ongoing mystery and stop sinking time and resources into researching the beings, as he believed his emotional reaction to the Shadow People shouldn't cause P.R.O.B.E. to redirect resources better spent on tangibly dangerous threats.

The last clip of Giles himself in his video diary on this topic was followed, unbeknownst to him, by a different clip filmed in a different location and depicting one of the Shadow People phasing incrementally from the end of a corridor towards the camera, before abruptly lunging at the screen, at which point the footage cut out. (WC: Shadow People ^[+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])

When reviewing Giles's case files to date, Sir Andrew Williams later cited the one on the Shadow People as one of the more professional, usable ones. (HOMEVID: A Message From Sir Andrew ^[+]Loading...["A Message From Sir Andrew (home video)"])

Behind the scenes

"Shadow people", often capitalised as "Shadow People", are an archetype of folklore and urban legends, based on a visual hallucination commonly experienced as a result of sleep deprivation, sleep paralysis, and other conditions boosting the natural human tendency towards pareidolia. Before being revived in modern times as an urban horror trope unto itself, shadow people are thought to have influenced several folkloric figures including some depictions of ghosts (tellingly known as "shades" in some sources) as well as the djinns of islamic folklore, matching two of the comparisons made in the P.R.O.B.E. short. Alongside demons and aliens, "interdimensional beings" had become "a pretty popular explanation too" by the early 2010s.