Do You Feel Like You Are Being Followed?
I happened across a story this morning about "shadow people". The article talks about the brain's ability to identify "self" vs. "others" and how this part of the brain may cause feelings of "others" within close proximity to us even when no one else may be present.
The paper, published in the British journal Nature, describes the case of a 22-year-old woman with no history of psychiatric problems who was being evaluated for treatment of epilepsy. When a region of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction was electrically stimulated, the woman described encounters with a ‘shadow person’ who mimicked her bodily movements.
“Electrical stimulation repeatedly produced a feeling of the presence of another person in her extra-personal space,” said Olaf Blanke, co-author of the study conducted by a team of researchers from University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland.
When the patient was lying down, stimulation of this brain region caused her to feel that someone was behind her. She described the person as young, of indeterminate sex, “a shadow who did not speak or move, and whose position beneath her back was identical to her own”, according to the researchers.
I think this is fascinating stuff but disappointed also. It isn't flattering to know that people may be scaring the crap out of ourselves. But why am I disappointed? I will never be able to build my army of shadow people to take over the world - that is, if shadow people don't exist.
I have always wondered about the existence of shadow individuals. I was once addicted to Art Bell's radio program - and, yes, that is not such a good idea because one starts to believe in a whole lot of things without a whole lot of scientific elaboration (...they become susceptible to, suggestion). Art Bell's program spoke of shadow people on several occasions.
According to Wikipedia:
Shadow people (also known as shadow men or shadow beings) are a supernatural phenomenon reported by some individuals. Most accounts of shadow people describe them as black humanoid silhouettes, lacking mouths or eyes, although they are sometimes reported to have red or yellow eyes. They are generally described as lacking mass, although their specific nature varies from two-dimensional (like a shadow) to vaporous or distorted. Their movement is often reported as being very quick and disjointed, or "jiggly", in the sense that they first may move slowly like a fluid (similar to jello rather than water), then rapidly "hop" to another part of a witness' surroundings. Some witnesses describe this movement as though the shadow entities they have seen "danced" from one wall to the next.
Which shadow people do you think are more fun to believe in? The concept of how our brains determine ourselves and who other people are - or - the world dominating shadow force?
Tags: shadow people, brain, perception, art bell, coast to coast am
