S1 Ep42: A Gathering of Shadows

Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care is always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. Astonishing Legends Network. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, A Gathering of Shadows. You know, shadow people are a more frequent topic than we were expecting to encounter when we started our shows over a decade ago, but it became clear when we covered them on the Astonishing Legends main show that a lot more people were curious about them than we first thought. Uh, yeah, you know, that episode has been listened to over three quarters of a million times since we posted it in 2015. Wow, was it that far ago? That long ago, 2015? That was our first Halloween-themed episode, I think. Yeah, it would have been, right, because we started... That's right. Was it October 10th, 2014? Yeah, roughly in that area. Yeah, that's when our first show was, yeah. But the fact is, it's still being listened to a dozen times daily, 10 years later, and now I think of, you know, as a kid and watching the McDonald's sign, over one million sold. Yeah. I don't know if that dates you, but just like, wow, that's a lot. That's over a billion. Yeah, yeah, they don't put that anymore, because it became unattractive to be that mass production. Yeah, I think so, right. I think until they stopped doing that. Right. But it's safe to say that the shadow people topic definitely struck a chord out there. When you hear about it, I guess you're not that informed or curious about this kind of subject matter. You just assume it's a ghost of some kind, you know, or just like, I didn't know it's a thing, you know, it's its own category. And that's the episode, I think, that got Carrie Byron from Mythbusters to follow us on Twitter way back when. Yep, that's right. She emailed us too, and we actually exchanged a couple emails there, and DMs on Twitter. By the way, folks, she and Tori Bellici from Mythbusters now have their own amazing podcast called the Mythfits Podcast. That's M-Y-T-H-F-I-T-S. So definitely check that out if you were a fan of that show, or those two who were great entertainment to watch and amazing at their jobs. So Mythfits Podcast, it's an amazing show, so check it out. But it's time tonight to dive into listener Jerry K's dead letter. And while this is another shadow person story, there's something pretty unusual about it, and we'll talk about it on the other side. Hi guys, long-time listener and lurker, first-time emailer. This story started in the late 90s when I was five years old and lived with my mom in a little house in England. It was a small house, just us two, but it suited us just fine. I don't remember these events, but when my mom recounted it to me, it chilled me to the bone. I've never stopped thinking about it since then, and I've spent a few nights over the years sleeping with the light on. One morning, my mom was sitting up in bed, reading a book. It was around 10 a.m., and I was downstairs watching cartoons on the TV. As she was reading, something caught her eye. I remember this house vividly, and through her open bedroom doorway, you could see the top of the stairs and hallway, which my bedroom door was next to. As she was looking into the hallway, perhaps expecting to see me emerging from the darkened staircase, she saw something that made her blood run cold. A shadow of a person, but not on the wall. More like a person that was completely jet black with no features. She said it looked exactly like a shadow of a man, but it was three-dimensional. She watched the figure round the top of the stairs and walk into my open bedroom. As she sat there, frozen to the spot, staring at the place in which she'd seen it, it happened again. The same thing as before. She saw another figure come up to the top of the staircase and then walk into my bedroom. She said she had such a strange feeling of calm, but shock. She almost didn't believe what she saw, yet she didn't feel any innate fear. Not yet, anyway. Her senses came back to her, and she went into immediate mama bear mode. My mom was always very aware that it was just us two living alone, and she was very fearless and protective at that time. The first thing she did was go straight into my bedroom and look everywhere. Under the bed, in the wardrobe, behind the bookshelf. Everywhere. Nothing. She didn't see or feel anything. Still feeling a little shocked at what she'd just experienced, she decided to go downstairs. Firstly, to check that I was okay, and secondly, to check for anything else strange. She asked me how I was, and it was easy to tell that I wasn't distressed in any way. I was still happily watching my TV show. She, of course, didn't mention anything to me and went on with checking the rest of the house. The doors were all locked. It's worth mentioning that the bottom of the stairs were actually in the living room, and I would have for sure seen someone walk upstairs if a real person had entered the house. I think at this point, that odd phenomenon of calmness came over her, as happens to many that have paranormal experiences. She went about the rest of her day as normal, until that night. It was around 10 p.m. I was in bed fast asleep, and now it was my mom's turn to watch the TV. She muted the TV when the ads came on, and as she was sitting there, she heard a small noise. Standing at the foot of the stairs and listening intently, she could hear me gently sobbing. As many with children know, it's not an uncommon occurrence for your child to wake up and cry or have bad dreams. So when my mom came into my room that night, she wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary. You're not my mommy, I said. Yes, I am. It's okay. I'm here. You've just had a bad dream. No, get away from me. You're not my mom, I said. She couldn't wake me. It wasn't quite sleep talking, but I wasn't awake either. Look at all the lights, I said, and pointed all around the dark room. Look at all the lights. My mom didn't know what to do. She picked me up and put me downstairs on the couch where I was still in my half-asleep state, muttering and murmuring. This is when the panic set in, and she couldn't stop thinking about the black shadow figures she'd seen that morning. Had they come to me whilst I was sleeping? She ended up calling her brother to come over because she just didn't know what to do or what was wrong with me. Neither of them could wake me still, and eventually I went back to sleep. My uncle said, kids can see things we can't, you know? I'm sure that was a super comforting and helpful thought at the time. So I woke up the next morning and all was well. I don't remember anything, and I didn't even have any creepy kid things to say. The only lingering after effect was that for two weeks after that night, there was a smell in my bedroom that would not budge. It was a putrid, rotting smell. My poor mom looked everywhere for food or rats or dirty laundry, and there was nothing. After a while, it went away, and neither me or my mom ever experienced anything like that again. My mom did some research on our house at the time. It wasn't that old, and did find out that a man had had a heart attack and died on the front doorstep. I'm not sure if it's related at all, but just an additional interesting bit of info. The paranormal surrounds us, and we'll dive back in shortly. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. And now, back to the show. Well, I'm kind of glad she didn't remember anything. That might have been very traumatic for the rest of your life. And I'm sure for a parent, too, to witness something like that, and there's nothing you can do to protect your child. Yeah, absolutely. I think the fact that, you know, she couldn't quite get fully awake is interesting to me. You know, the lights part of it, it's like, you're like, what column are we putting this in? Is this a ghost story, a shadow person story, or is this an alien UFO type story? You know? That's an interesting spin on this, but you're absolutely right. I think it could be something related. That's the other thing, as we've done this show, and you start to hear people's accounts from those you put some credibility in, or credence with, you realize that there's different forms to these strange intruders, as David Weatherly might call them, that come into our spaces. And it's like, you know, I think it's natural we all try to define these things or figure out, like, what's going on, as she called her uncle, as her mom called her brother her uncle, and wanted to know, like, what is this? What do we do? And I like that he had the wherewithal to know and express that kids can see things that we can't. And it was kind of funny. I'm sure that was super comforting and helpful thought at the time. But, I mean, what else are you going to say? It's like, there's either two things. One, it's like, I think you're seeing things, and we need to go to the doctor. Yeah. Which is not that comforting either, because you're the caretaker for your child, and you can't be down for the count. Or two, that there really was something there, and now you're going to have to all move. Right. Or, you know, there was some kind of threat there. And so, yeah, I mean, what do you say? I think at least offering that was helpful. And that brings me to my other point I'm going to ask you about. Well, one, you wanted to mention here, I think, in the notes that, again, a lot of people think this all takes place at night. We just discussed that in a previous Dead Letter episode that everybody said, well, it's always at night, you're going to sleep, and this and that. And sleep is a major factor for a lot of these experiences, because I think, yeah, you're in that connection to the subconscious and that world and all previous knowledge of the Spiritus Mundi and the Tashic records and all that kind of stuff, perhaps. And you're just a little more vulnerable and open. But this is 10 a.m. where some of this takes place. And talking about kids being able to see things, what do you think the kids saw in the mother? Well, one, they weren't fully awake, keeping that in mind. So what do you think that they saw? Why did they say that? You're not my mom. Get away from me. It's hard to say. And the fact, too, that she saw the shadow people in the daytime. I mean, the sleeping part was night, but the shadow people she saw in the daytime. And that's the part that's why. The other part that's interesting was like two of them going in. And so then the next question becomes, and you start thinking about the broader implications with shadow people and all of that is, is it just a mask? Is it a screen memory? Is it some kind of the most they can do? They can't disappear completely. You're going to see something, but they can prevent you from seeing them as they truly would appear to a creature with our set of senses. Like maybe they have the option over the optical appearance, but not other things or whatever, you know, whether that's a mental affectation, you know, if you believe any of this at all. But the fact that also that she saw two do the same thing, it's a little bit of a matrix moment, a glitch in the matrix moment, because she saw the one shadow person go into the room and then the exact same thing happened again. And at that point, her daughter wasn't up there. So then the two shadow people are up there. They go into the room. She goes up there. There's nobody. Then later that night, she has these weird dreams and look at all the lights and you're not my mommy. It's like, who is she talking to there? I mean, for me, when I think about the abduction stories we've heard and Terry Lovelace of it all and the other alien stories, and you go back to Pascagoula and this implication that some of us are, you know, maybe been interbred. And like the, you're not my mommy, maybe that wasn't directed at her. Maybe that was directed at some other worldly creature that was trying to say, you know, I'm your mom or whatever it was. Or maybe it was a ghost saying the same thing. And she wasn't really talking to her mom or she thought she was talking to something else besides her mom. You know? I don't know. Well, I like that the story has usually more detail or interaction than a lot that we receive and some possible clues to it. But I think it feels more supernatural. But to your point earlier, it's like, yeah, now there's a big blending and melding of the supernatural and the definitions and terms. And if you look at, well, what is an alien encounter? Well, if they do exist, and I believe they do, are we the only ones in the universe kind of thing, then perhaps it's more paranormal in that it's involving some kind of technology or science or they are, look, they're just, you know, they think we're paranormal. We're just beings, you know, sacks of meat and bone existing somewhere on a rock. And they are in some way their own real beings. You know, it's like they would, they're as real to themselves as we are to us, right? So human beings to each other are just human beings. There's nothing, that's just normal. And so when we see them as paranormal, is that just part of the natural world? It's just not our world or our world is overlapped on that or colliding with that world. And so paranormal being something unusual out of our realm of normal experience and reality that has perhaps a, on some level, rational explanation for it, right? It's just science that we haven't figured out yet. Yet in that old adage, it looks like magic to us. Yeah. But it could be just technological, how they pass through and form and materialize and like a buckaroo bonsai pass through the space between atoms and electrons and nuclei. And that can be explained. Whereas supernatural, going to that definition, is that they're more, there's something that's beyond science that is, in a sense, more magical to it. And that's because of that angle that involves spirits, the soul, afterlife, consciousness in a way, a supreme force or being, God. Whatever's going on that you want to believe, there's something that is going to be on technology with that. So when you look at this story, yeah, what's going on here? Well, it doesn't sound like one of the other abduction screen memory types of things. And my reasoning for that is that, one, you have the smell, right? So again, we just talked about that on the, the aquarium dead letter office about a, the lingering smell and a ball or orb of old lady perfume. So another, another sense going around. Much preferred to putrid smells. That was the point I was making in that last episode, is that this is a much more unpleasant. It's not the one you want to smell because it's often associated with something evil. And again, it's like, these are at some point very basic. I don't know why we're looking for deeper meanings in these things. You can also kind of take these experiences as, what's the meaning of this? Well, if something smells good, that's usually good. If something's beautiful, we take that as being a good thing and looking upon beauty. Although some things are unpleasant, there is beauty in all things. If something is grotesque, ugly, repulsive, disgusting, smells like putrid flesh, rotting flesh, like the chunk that flew off the Sherman's dire wolf encounter at Skinwalker Ranch, all these instances where somebody describes something as like, folks don't know, as Terry Sherman shot the massive, it was a four foot tall, five foot tall at the shoulder wolf, and it finally let go of his calf's snout and walked away. The bullets had some effect. It blew a chunk. You know, if you believe the Sherman story, it blew a chunk off the wolf. It didn't have phase it at all. It just walked sauntered off. But they said that chunk of flesh smelled rotten, not fresh meat. And so that kind of gives you an idea of that. If you believe that angle of the story, that there is something supernatural about it, not paranormal in that more paranormal would be like, somehow there's a prehistoric wolf that's roaming around. It's not been detected. And it's just a wolf, but it shouldn't exist. That's strange, but it's just roaming around. And it seems to be, it doesn't even flinch when getting shot with a .357 Magnum and then later a .30-06. Yeah. It's just like, okay, I've had enough of this. I'm not that hungry. So the smells, yeah, often it's demonic. We're associated with that. And then of course, a lot of our folks that we know would bag on us or scoff or roll their eyes. It's like, it's not always demonic. Stop saying that. You know, don't always go there. Well, we don't say that. By the way, in our defense, we don't go to demons very often. Well, no, I look, I just, there's got to be some definitions of it. If you believe in, you know, yes, okay, some elemental, something not good, I'll say, and it's telling you so. You know, nice things don't smell like that. So it's telling you what it is. So that's an interesting indicator. Again, I don't know what sauntered through the, into the bedroom there or if they're connected. And I like how Jerry Kaye here, you know, is not putting a label on this. Like they don't remember, they don't know. They're going by mom's account of this. But that smell lasted for two weeks and then just went away as quickly as it showed up. And of course it started, you know what I'm saying? It's an odd coincidence that suddenly now there's a dead rat that's been cooking somewhere behind a baseboard. And then just now after this encounter, the next day starts reeking. And so we'll associate that bad smell with this encounter. And does that, you know, tie in with the person dying in the house? And does it have to, does it ever have to? Everybody asks it like, well, nobody's died in the house. I don't think that matters all the time. Right. And I don't think that everybody that, you know, there was somebody died in the house. Do you have a ghost now? So it's very loose, but getting back to what was described, I don't know if that's the loop of the same shadow entity or two. Right. I do believe there's some accounts we've, we also, also, we just talked about this where there could be three or four as some experiencers have sworn that, you know, one was male, one was female. Yeah. Uh, that there's differentiations between them. It's not all the same shadow guy. So there's, there's these other shadow people. And, um, but most of those stories that we come across, there isn't this supernatural, let's say like a bad spirit kind of thing associated with it, you know? Cause now this makes me think more like, uh, I don't know what's going on at a 30 Pontefract, but there's a shadow being the black monk of Pontefract. Yeah. Another series from us, main show folks. You know, there was a photograph of a spooky one of a shadow being on the stairs. And there's another one that came into the room and it has the red, kind of the red glowing eyes. And it's kind of almost like, it looks like it's double exposed. It was that similar, but just more soft around the edges. This seems to be more defined, but kind of making that connection there. I mean, it's interesting is that she had that feeling of shock, but calm. And that you're not in immediate danger, but you're not picking up anything. You're just seeing something that you should not be seeing as outside of your realm of experience and most people. So now you're seeing this, but what do they want in the child's bedroom? But also the child was not there. Remember she's downstairs watching cartoons. They go into the bedroom. Is that a portal entryway of some kind, just the bedroom? And what do they want? If that is connected, if these two experiences are connected, then the next time when she is asleep later that night, does one of them appear and try to convince the child that it's the mother? And does it take that form? And does the child in their sleep innately know that's not mom? That's what I was kind of saying. Yeah, and we've come across quite a few stories by this point that I've talked about a few of my favorites, but it's been years. So just to mention them again, one that appears in the documentary, The Nightmare, that came out a long time ago. Well, actually by this point, yeah. So 2016, 2017, maybe. Really good documentary because it just features people's accounts and they range on different things. And I believe this encounter shows up there and I thought it was fascinating. And then over the years following, viewing that, we've heard other stories from people about kind of the doppelganger phenomenon where even if you don't see them, because one that stuck with me is the woman whose mother recently passed. I mean, she was awake again since that night and she wasn't asleep yet, as she claimed, but something gets into the bed with her. She could feel the weight of somebody getting into the bed, the mattress compressing down, somebody right, you know, spooning her nearly right next to her. And she was so shocked and frightened. She didn't turn around. Here's, I think what the fascinating part is. She got the impression, the intuition that whatever this was, was trying to be her mother who just passed and was trying to comfort her, but she knew it wasn't her mother. Yeah, and that goes back to something I said on our AMA, which, you know, was at a Patreon exclusive AMA we did the other day about not trusting. One of the big things, I guess it's come of me, how have I changed since we started the show aside from, oh, the Sally House and whatever else. It's just going from wondering whether or not to believe in ghosts to believing in them, but not trusting them. Well, I think, yeah, that's a, I mean, that's a great question. You know, how do you trust what you're seeing or what you're encountering? And, and, uh, the only thing I can think of is that a lot of it is, uh, your intuition. You don't go by what they claim to be or what you say, or, you know, like I said, also speaking through a Ouija board or some kind of a ITC device, you don't know who you're speaking with or what their motivations are. And maybe they don't know either, you know, like they were like Joe Fisher's Siren Call of the Hungry Ghost. It's like, maybe they were trying to be helpful and supportive and kind. And they're just incompetent. Yeah. They just didn't know. Right. It's different on their side as well. Same thing with a vertical plane. Like, what are you dealing with? This thing seems pretty arrogant, but it's trying to help. I don't know. It's, so you have to go by your gut, I think, cause that's all you got. Can you trust your lying eyes or what you hear or feel? But if it smells bad and it feels bad, it probably is bad. So, so in that case, it's like the child knows instinctively, this is not my mom, get away from me. And so that's a first inkling that's interesting because then the question is, does she fully know that real mom is standing here trying to comfort her and she knows it's real mom. And I don't know if the eyes were open, if she was like looking at the mom and saying this or still kind of like eyes closed asleep. I don't think that was featured in any of the details of the story, but it's curious to think that the child could somehow sense that, like I said, it's curious, are the child's eyes still closed, but they know it's mom because she's speaking or that's who they expect or the eyes open and she can see real mom, but is still remembering some kind of dream encounter where fake mom was trying to interact with her. And she was like, no, you're not my real mom. Get away. You know what I'm saying? Because then the other question is like, is real mom something else? Is she real mom, not real mom? You know, is, uh, is there something going on there where somehow she can now intuit or sense that real mom is, is a fake. I don't think that's the case here, but logically you could say, well, the child is sensing that and you believe in this stuff, then, um, she can sense that because every other doppelganger story we've heard, there's something off the people know. It's like, that's not the real sister, brother, sibling, friend, or me. I'm not duplicating myself. You know what I'm saying? That's the gut part you trust is that there's something wrong about it. The haircut's wrong. Those clothes, they don't have anymore, or it's just something's off about it or you just don't feel it's right. So it's close, but no, uh, no cigar. So in this case, yeah, I think it's real mom. Again, there's, again, there's tons of stories. One that I think is in one of the, oh, I think it was relayed to by, uh, our buddies at, uh, graveyard tales were relaying a story from the missing 411 where young child says he was wandered off or, or encountered these beings and one was kind of like a, I think he said it was like a robot, but it was fashioned to his sense, appear as his grandmother. Yes. And it's like, I am your grandmother. He's like, no, you're not. Get away from me. And the curious thing, whatever this thing was, this robotic Android grandma, uh, wanted the boy to, uh, well, strange encounters and strange, uh, takings and leavings. It wanted him to, uh, to poop on a special mat. And the kids, I'm not doing that. Real grandma wouldn't ask me of that. And I thought like, okay, that sounds silly in a way out there, but is it just collecting a stool sample? Yeah. And then I think the cave that they were coming out of or whatever, there were other robot type things in there, mechanical beings, I think he described. So that's a fascinating encounter. Even if it's not true, I like the story. But yeah, so that's, you know, kids, especially it's like they have a sense of, uh, what they should be seeing here. And so in this dream state, I think she's still dreaming about the encounter in the bedroom and that these things were not being themselves, but in trying to impersonate mom for some nefarious reason. Yeah. And again, all the, look at all the lights. It's such a great quote. It's like a, that's like something you would hear Spielberg dialogue in a movie of something happening, you know, look at all the lights. Well, Hey, this is something, this is a Scott idea. Are those points of light she was seeing the actual beings, is that what they look like in some other form that's not masked yet? Yeah. Yeah. Well, then thinking about, was it poltergeist, you know, when she's seeing the souls come across and they're like points of light coming through a tunnel, is that some kind of natural form or what the kid is seeing. And then when they materialize or what an adult sees them or child, they take on a, a shadowy human form, but really they're like a, like a soul energy of some kind as a point of light and look at all the lights. Oh, here's another thing. Uh, they just reminded me of hopefully one of these days we'll talk to a hospice nurse who has collected a lot of great stories about people visioning when they're in the act of dying stage and they're surprisingly lucid. And she, one that I was just watching a YouTube video of, thank you to Madam Miranda Merrick for, uh, passing this along to us, but it's Julie, the hospice nurse, but she's collected a lot of great stories. And one, I think I was reading in the YouTube comment section from another nurse. It is very common amongst hospice workers and nurses. She has, uh, had sat in with this woman while the, uh, the regular night shift nurse was away and the woman, she was kind of really out of it, but then kind of sat up and said, Hey, do you see, she was talking to somebody and she see, she says, do you see this tunnel? She realized, I mean, she, it's like she introduced this invisible person to the, uh, the hospice or nurse intern sitting with her. And she goes, well, I, no, I can't, you know, I want to be honest. I can't see them. And the woman who was dying said, oh, okay. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I know you can't see them, but this is what it looks like. And she said, it's kind of like a tunnel and there's this person here and they're very, you know, they're here to kind of lead me on like the psychopomp to take me, uh, on the next journey here. But look at all the beautiful light. It's like sparkles coming down this tunnel or hallway with a light at the end. And she says, can you see, it's just so beautiful. Can you, you know, I know you can't see them. I wish you could. And then she commented something about the sparkles were kind of disappearing and either the light was getting brighter or, or fading, but it was a, it was a process, but it was just filled with beautiful twinkles of light. And what are those, uh, relatives, souls coming to greet her, other comforting angels, who knows? But, uh, she said she was very lucid and, uh, I think passed that night. So, uh, a lot of great stories, but like, is that kind of connected to seeing stuff from the other side that are entities in other forms? Boy, that was a long trip to get there, but sorry. No, no, no. I liked it though. And, you know, and I'm, I'm working up a new theory, by the way, I don't think I've mentioned this to you. I'm flushing out a new theory of how the soul works and what I think is happening on this planet. So I'm keeping it to myself until I get it more formed, but light is a part of it. And vibrational energy, frequency, and photons are light. Yeah. It's all, it all comes back. It's all, it's all connected. Everything is connected. Well, every, I mean, here's the thing, if you, whether you believe it or not, every UFO sighting and encounter, what does it often involve? Lights, colored lights, pretty lights, uh, laser beam kinds of lights. So it's a medium that the higher realms of technology and a super advanced level are able to control and manipulate far beyond what, uh, you know, what we're using it for. Which by the way, goes back to our guest, John Kruth, who was the director of the Ryan Institute and the research that he was doing as a scientific assessment of light being emitted from people who are trying to affect other folks' health and, uh, and spiritual wellness. I'm looking at a headline right now. So this is a, from science alert, uh, written by Mike McRae titled, we emit a visible light that vanishes when we die. Says surprising new study, but it has to do with, uh, the university of Calgary physicist, uh, Vahid Salari and his team. They've claimed to observe just that an ultra weak photon emission, a UPE produced by several living animals in strong contrast with their non-living bodies, as well as in a handful of plant leaves. So there you go. It's a thing light. It's all part of it. And then, uh, folks who have a bad NDE or near to the experience sometimes describe a crushing darkness or just an all consuming darkness. So now we're back to, um, not all good. Again, like the point we were making there earlier about, uh, pretty things, good, ugly things, bad light is often more attributed to that of the good and the darkness, not as good, but, you know, look, we, we live in a world where there's light. And then darkness, but there are creatures of the light and there are creatures of the dark. And, um, that's a very basic way to, uh, divide them up and maybe classify them as something good or bad. But what's your impression of this was a positive or negative type of entity experience? What do you think? Honestly, it's hard to say with this one. It's hard to say if it was a masked sort of negative experience. I thought it was interesting that her mom felt a sense of calm when she saw these shadow people in the daytime and, you know, broad daylight, but was not scared, but was that a manipulation or was that? Paranormal apathy perhaps? Yeah, it could have been, or maybe it was, no, whatever's going on here, it's okay. Maybe that's what that was. And maybe coming in at night when she was sleeping and she says, look at all the lights and you're not my mommy. Maybe that was a misinterpreted positive event that was happening. Could be. Yeah. We don't know. It's hard to say. It is hard to say. Yeah. I, you know, the only two things that make it seem more negative than positive to me are one, the something, you know, obviously the kids shook up, traumatized a bit. I mean, I, as a child and I, like, I remember being a kid, imagine anything maybe more frightening than something impersonating or trying to take you away. Uh, you know, one was when I was a kid, you know, getting lost somewhere. That was a recurring dream as a kid and you can't, uh, you, you know, your parents are pulling away down the street in the car and they, they can't hear you. And, uh, now you're lost and you have to find your way back. You know, that's a common thing up there with, uh, having to, uh, deliver a speech in school with your, uh, in your underwear. Uh, it's an anxiety dream, but here we have something that's fearful. If you talk about a dream, it's like, it's pretty frightening for that kid. So something, even if it was just a nightmare, it's pretty frightening one. Something is trying to impersonate mom and trying to do something with you and you don't want to go. And the fact that they know that it's not mom and, you know, get away from me. So that's a bit of terror there. And then the other thing for me is the smell. Again, usually that's a, that's a red flag that, uh, something is not right here. Something is not a big bouquet of, uh, ghost roses. So I, you know, I'm glad they're fine now. It seems like, and, and, uh, you know, I don't know if it's that house, if there's something about that, but lots of stories from England, cause it's an old place. A lot of people have been living there a long, long time. Well, Jerry Kay, this is such a fascinating story, especially the daylight part of it, but also the gathering of more than one shadow person. That's not something we hear about a lot. Uh, we're glad this didn't amount to more prolonged and serious issues. More than one shadow person is already one too many. We need to come up with some kind of spiritual door lock. I think at least make them knock, whatever the case, thank you so much for sending your letter into the astonishing dead letter office. And folks, if you have a story of your own, please send it to dead letter office at astonishing legends.com. The astonishing dead letter office is hosted by Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess and is executive produced by Tess Feifel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. The theme is based on the astonishing legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Caricia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more dead letters. So if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletteroffice at astonishinglegends.com. Please include how you would like to be credited. First name only? First name last initial? Anonymous? A pseudonym? Let us know. Due to the number of emails coming in, we often cannot respond, but we do read them all. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright, Astonishing Legends Productions. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org.