Talk:Shadow person/Archive 3

I reorganized the article a bit, but the content mostly remains unchanged.

I broke the article up into sections, slightly reworded a sentence or two, moved some paragraphs around, and added the ubiquitous "in popular culture" and "see also" sections. None of this really changes the article much -- it just reorganizes things and makes it look a bit better. Unfortunately, when you break up that wall of text into smaller sections, the article starts looking more like a stub. I was a bit reluctant to add an "in popular culture" (which I called "In Fiction") category, but I think this article really does need some help in describing the popular conception of this phenomena. Please don't go crazy adding numerous pop culture references; it's not encyclopedic, and it doesn't help anyone understand the concept any better than just having a few, brief examples listed. In particular, I'm thinking of offhand references from The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc. If you can come up with novels, movies, or other forms of fiction that are primarily about shadow people, that might be helpful, though.

I love this sort of Forteana, but I'm not a believer. In fact, I'm quite a skeptic. I'm afraid that my own biases would color anything I write on the topic, so I've tried to keep my changes to a minimum, so as not to taint the article with my skepticism. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 13:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Good work, although you're right that there really isn't much to go on here. Are shadow people really depicted in They and Vanishing on 7th Street (to the point where characters or press interviews explicitly refer to "shadow people"), or do the movies just contain shadow-like monsters? And is it really fair to say that shadow people have had an "explosion in popularity"? --McGeddon (talk) 13:58, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The article lead establishes the topic as something that some people believe in. But when Wikipedia describes shadow people as if they are real and gives both fringe and non fringe concepts as equally "possible explanations", it has gone sadly astray. Since the only reliable sources we have frame "shadow people" as a pop culture myth and legend (and a minor one at that) we should not be adopting an in-universe point of view. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Did some copyediting to frame the topic as a belief (rather than a competing view of reality) seated in myth, legend, pop culture, and fringe circles. Beliefs require no comparison to the mainstream view, so dropped the scientific explanation section. - LuckyLouie (talk) 02:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I object. Scientific explanations of why people might be experiencing certain phenomena are entirely appropriate, and deleting validly sourced encyclopedic content dilutes the informative value of this article. It's fine to frame the topic as a belief, but valid references on the nature and reasons for that belief should still be included. ~Amatulić (talk) 02:22, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

OK I'll drop it back in, and discussion can continue. - LuckyLouie (talk) 02:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The "Physiological conditions" section tastes a little synthetic; the Adler source only talks about sleep paralysis sufferers perceiving a "shadowy or indistinct shape approaching", and the Oakley source mentions "seeing a shadow as an attacker" as a form of hallucination. It requires a leap of original research to connect these vague phenomena to the "supernatural shadow-like humanoid figures" which are the subject of this article.

The Covey source specifically mentions methamphetamine addicts perceiving what Holthouse and Rubin describe as "shadow people", but again, is this anything to do with the article subject? There's nothing to suggest that when Holthouse and Rubin say "shadow people" they necessarily mean "flickery supernatural humanoid figures on the walls and ceiling".

It's probably a good idea to be moving this article towards the perspective of a vague, catch-all "human-shaped shadows which appear to be alive" subject (rather than describing them from the starting point of "jerky supernatural creatures wearing hats"), although I don't know how far we can usefully take that if there's no specific literature on the subject. --McGeddon (talk) 09:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep, sometimes I get the impression people want the article to focus on the USA-centric Heidi Hollis' "Coast 2 Coast" shadow people because that's what they've heard of in the pop culture, so they assume the sources exist to cover it. But it's near impossible to find reliable sources that have taken that stuff seriously enough to even mention let alone review it. Usually in the case when something is not notable enough for its own article we create a section for it in a target article, such as Coast to Coast AM. But (according to the last AfD) people insist we have a stand alone article. So the article will stay in stub-land. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:13, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Like I said earlier, I'm a skeptic. I don't believe in any of this. That said, I miss the part about extradimensional mimes in hats. That was one of the highlights of the article, in my opinion, and now it's gone, because the insane source was judged to be unreliable. Yes, of course, you'd have to be crazy to believe in that sort of nonsense, but I think LuckyLouie is taking this a bit too seriously. Shadow people are not a fact, and I don't like them being described as if they are a fact. However, that people have described them as "extradimensional mimes in hats" is a fact, no matter how absurd that statement is. And now we have even less information on this intriguing phenomenon, leaving us curious as to what it is that people actually believe. Previous versions of the article were certainly credulous and indulgent, but I'd like to see more detail on documenting beliefs, even if they do come from sources that are written by crazy people. In general, I agree with LuckyLouie. Unless we start citing the ravings of madmen, we're going to have some trouble with sources. I'm willing to cite a few madmen, however, which is where he and I seem to diverge. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

OK. The problem with using unreliable sources because we want our favorite description to get into the article somehow is that the unreliable sources don't even agree on how to describe the "phenomenon". For example Heidi Hollis, arguable the pop culture front runner on this subject, believes they are part of a war between God and Satan and advocates prayer as a solution to defeating them. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I totally understand, and I agree with you. A fair analogue would be the Men in Black, who have been problematic to define, as well. Nobody can decide if they're government agents, aliens, or demons. So, Wikipedia presents a wide range of beliefs, with wonky citations for each. Of course, there's also the practical explanation offered of the whole thing just being one big hoax, which eventually spiraled into a mass delusion. Can't we do something similar here? If not, that's fine, too. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:09, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe. Although Men in Black has a major motion picture series to establish the concept as widely notable. And that article does a lot of synthesis and original research by analyzing primary sources.- LuckyLouie (talk) 02:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same issues with that article. I think it needs to be rewritten, possibly from scratch. Still, it informs us of one possible way to approach this issue. Gnomes are another. Gnomes are an ambiguously defined mythological creature, ranging from spirits to faeries to beardless dwarves to technological elves. Modern fantasy literature has generally settled down on a definition, but older sources are quite contradictory. I've found some interesting shadow people sources online, but they would all fail even cursory examination of WP:RS. The best I can see is about.com, which I'm not sure is much better than some blogger's fevered writings. Still, it's about as reliable as we're ever going to get, until some academic writes a history of shadow people in modern folklore. How do you feel about quoting about.com? On one page , a paranormal researcher, who has written a book on shadow people, identifies several theories and differentiates them from ghosts. We could use that are a starting point, to narrow down what exactly the mythology is supposed to be about. I have to admit, if we're down to quoting Coast to Coast AM and about.com, maybe it's time to just give up. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 16:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. That didn't work so well. Anyways, the link is at http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghosthuntinggeninfo/a/shadow-ppl-what.htm . Sorry for the mangled markup. I've never liked Wikipedia's idiosyncratic markup. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 16:18, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

On Talk pages, all you need to do is bracket a link, et voila: [1]. I would be very, very sad if this article was based on the George Noory radio show, about.com, examiner.com, etc. I think we can agree this topic has not gotten much, if any notability in reliable sources, but we'd really like a big article full of cool stuff on it anyway. I'm not willing to skirt Wikipedia policy to do it, though. LuckyLouie (talk) 16:38, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, it looks like there aren't many options left. In that case, maybe we should tag it with template:refimprove and/or template:notability. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

It was bothering me that the "physiological and psychological conditions can account for reported experiences of shadow people" bit still wasn't talking specifically about scary-hat-monsters, so I've gone ahead and rewritten the article from the perspective of shadow people being a common hallucination, with the Heidi Hollis paranormal theory as a subsection. Thoughts? --McGeddon (talk) 09:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Wow, it looks like an improvement to me! By the way, I never understood excluding medical or scientific references to 'shadowy figures' seen by people who are are schizophrenic, fatigued, sleep paralyzed, on drugs, etc. because the text does not refer to them specifically as paranormal-scary-hat-men-ghosts. - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd say it was WP:SYNTHESIS to join the dots of "Heidi Hollis believes in specific, evil hat-wearing shadow figures, and medical literature talks about shadow-related hallucinations, therefore evil hat-wearing shadow figures might be hallucinations" if no reliable source had ever made that connection. Joining them up the other way is still problematic, really - we should try to find a source that mentions and compares them both. --McGeddon (talk) 14:08, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess I see it differently. We have sources that say schizophrenia, drug use, sleep paralysis, etc. can cause shadowy figures that makes people scared and we also have fringe sources that say paranormal-scary-hat-men-ghosts can cause shadowy figures that makes people scared, so in my opinion there's no synthesis to having both mentioned in the same article but giving less credibility to the fringe view. However since you've found a very good solution to a very problematic article, the discussion is moot. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Not certain if this an appropriate to add this comment.. so move or delete if irrelevant. I actually came across this topic as this past week I was trying to describe what I've always called the 'shadowy figure(s)'. I'm currently 44yo and I've been seeing these shadow things since I was 5 or 6yo, but until looking today I didn't know this was an internet topic. Maybe it is my religious upbringing, but I've always accepted that the 'shadow people' are actually the 'Watchers' from biblical reference. Perhaps another perspective which could broaden the subject is to consider that both (fill in your own higher/lower power) God and Satan employ their own Watchers 'shadow people' to serve their needs to keep watch over mankind. Personal experience has been that although unnerving at times, these entities are not permitted to interact physically with mankind. I personally rather not expand this wiki or dwell on topic as I try to ignore these shadowy things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.25.95.46 (talk) 00:40, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, whoever got rid of the picture that was obviously the shadow of the photographer from that ghost hunting show. 162.40.172.185 (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

References

Old/Dead References?

The link for reference number six in this article seems to be broken or unavailable. Can anyone else corroborate this? – Quixotic Cleaner (talk) 00:12, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Yep, I get "Page cannot be crawled or displayed due to robots.txt.". Though, looking at the website's "About us" page, I'm not really sure that it meets Wikipedia's qualifications for a reliable source. It looks like a paranormal blog with no fact checking or editorial oversight. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 00:22, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Not much information here...

The lack of information on this page makes it so useless. There's like two paragraphs on obvious reference, and that's it. Delete this page since it's just taking up space, and have no real informative value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.106.7 (talk) 02:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

What exactly were you expecting to find here? Fraggle81 (talk) 02:53, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I was expecting more history, myths and legends (lore), scientific explanations, and relations to other paranormal phenomenon. Information like what they supposedly look like, and where they popped into existence as a culture. Can't write without inspiration or information, might as well exist as a sub-topic of the Ghost page, despite not being all that similar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.106.7 (talk) 18:57, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

It's difficult to find reliable sources. Shadow people aren't really as notable as Men in black, Grey aliens, and Little green men. I'll try to dig up more sources, but I'm not sure that I'll have any better luck than last time. Anyone have any suggestions? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:55, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I see what you guys are talking about but as much experience as I have had in my life, it's really one of those things that you have to talk to others in person to learn more about. Anything that is metaphysical is going to be rather, impossible to verify at this point in time. I can vouch that Shadow People are darker than darkness, and that white shadow people are of an indistinguishable color (to me) but it doesn't mean I can be of a legitimate source, in fact there's no person that can be guaranteed as a legitimate source for this topic. The only thing this topic can cover (I think?) is the history and the variations of Shadow people that people may have encountered but even then I think it's not something that wikipedia really should be talking about due to facts being rather, impossible to present. Does that make sense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.194.242.189 (talk) 15:59, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Not really. Wikipedia isn't trying to catch a shadow person in a jar and prove that it exists, it's just reporting on what existing sources have had to say about shadow people over the years. Which perhaps isn't much at the moment. Compare this to another article like Bigfoot, which has plenty of sources even though there's nothing concrete to say beyond "people tell stories, here's why they might tell them". --McGeddon (talk) 12:49, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

See shadows on the edge of vision if take too much SSDI Rx. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.129.169.251 (talk) 17:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)