The next time I could recall seeing a shadow person... You know what, I'm just remembering from my youth in playing Dungeons and Dragons that there were shadow people in the game but they were called Shades. Humanoid characters that had entered the Shadow Realm. I think I'm going to use that term to describe these things from now on. It sounds better than just "Shadow People."
So as I was saying, the next time I saw a Shade was after we had moved to Riverside. The house mom and dad had bought was a few steps up from a shack. Yes, it was four walls and a roof, 3-bedrooms, front and back yards, the whole shebang. But there was no insulation and it was raised on short pillars. Which meant heat waves and cold breezes ran under the floors, which in turn made summers unbearably hot and the winters, bitterly cold. The one gas heater in the hallway did nothing to warm the house in the winter. And the only AC in the summer were two window units that had been installed into the walls at opposite ends of the house. That first summer we moved in, my brother and I would spend most of the day laying on the floor in the living room under that AC unit. And THAT house had a number of unexplained events occur in the years we lived there.
Within the first few weeks of us moving in, everyone in the house had dreams of dogs or wolves surrounding the house. In Mexican culture, pre-Columbian era, dogs are considered to be guides for the departed, leading and protecting our spirits on our journey to the afterlife. It's no coincidence that Dante was Miguel's spirit guide in the Pixar film, Coco. The Xoloitzcuintli breed has a long, deep history in the Aztec religion. Also, I LOVE that Dante is the dog's name. Overt reference to Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy. A story where he, the author, is taken on a tour of the afterlife. Granted, teenage me didn't know about the dogs as spirit guides at the time but I do recall it was an unusual thing to be hearing family members all talking about seeing dogs in our dreams shortly after we moved in.
But it was during our second, possibly third summer living there when we saw it. And by we, I mean it was both my sister and I at the same time. We were sitting in the living room watching whatever it was on TV. It was summer break so it was either Price is Right or a Soap Opera. I blame our brother for getting us into One Life To Live for a while there. The room setup was: the couch was a giant L-shape and coffee table, all facing the console TV. My sister was sitting on the side that was resting against the wall. I was sitting opposite side with my back to the dining room table behind me.
I'm not entirely sure why I looked, could have been that feeling you get when you just know, can sense, someone else in the room. But I turned to look to my right, behind me towards the dining room table. And that's when I saw the Shade. Just a dark shadowy figure, I couldn't make out any features other than it was an adult-sized figure, not even dressed in black, literally just a shadow but it was a very defined shape. It stood there for a brief moment before it suddenly reacted, like someone who got caught looking, and dropped behind the couch out of sight. I immediately jumped up off the couch and ran around the arm rest to the dining room. No one there. From the dining room it was a clear, straight walk to the kitchen dining area, no more than 20 feet or so from where I stood to the sliding glass doors, which were closed. I quickly crossed that distance and looked around the kitchen as well.
Mind you, the house was pretty sparse with its furnishings. There wasn't anywhere for anyone or anything to hide. But there was no one there. I slowly walked back to the living room and looked at my sister and just asked, "Did you see that?"
"The man standing there looking at us?" I nodded, "and then he hid behind the couch."
It's one thing for a person to claim to have seen a Shade when they're alone in the middle of the night. Could easily be dismissed as a pile of clothes sitting in a chair and you couldn't make out what you were looking at in the dark. And even my previous encounter with a Shade that again, someone could dismiss as a shadow from outside being projected in. But there's no reasonable, logical explanation for two people, to see the exact same shadowy figure, in the middle of the day, in the middle of summer and behaving as it did. Reacting to our presence with conscious effort.
I had another Shade sighting in that house before we moved out. Although, that one was a little more nerve wracking/unpleasant and I've never talked about it before.
But for the most part, the unexplained phenomena in that particular house was more playful. Keys missing from where you left them until you returned and they were right there the whole time. The toilet flushing at odd hours, lights being left on when you know you turned everything off before you left. Little things like that. We even started to call them Fred and Wilma. I don't know which of us kids started using those names for them but pretty soon we all just accepted Fred and Wilma were going to be part of our lives while we lived there. But it was once the baby was born, my oldest nephew, that Fred and Wilma really became more active and took on a protective role in the house.
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