The Shadow People

having us. This is uh one of the shows that I listened to. Oh, longtime fans, first time co host, Well, thank you. Well, you know this is uh, this is weird for me because Julie's had guests on here when I'm I've been out that this is the first time that I've been here without Julie, so uh, you know, she's she's kind of the rock of of the show, you know, I mean, she's she's she's holding it together and now it's it's just me and hopefully you guys

helping to uh to keep everything from falling apart. So man, oh yeah, well, possibly it's not just uh. The four of us, Robert, They're very well, could be some shadow people's right, what seriously? Yeah, yeah, yeah, guys, Okay, I'll roll with it. There are various takes on the on the idea of just even a shadow, right, I mean because obviously, um, the shadow has to do with the

with the optics around us. So there's this you know, dark person shaped figure that is always a siwhere in our midst that the light is just right, and that has led to various uh, supernatural interpretations over the ages. Sometimes the shadow is a separate entity. Sometimes it is. It's kind of a representation of the immaterial soul. But what when I say shadow people to you guys who are steeped in conspiracy thinking and and uh and paranoid delusions.

Not that yourselves are paranoid, but but this is your meat here, what comes to your when I say shadow people? Well, uh, if I'll take this one first man book. So uh. One thing that's funny is that we receive quite a few emails or contact via Facebook and YouTube from people who say, uh, please do an episode on shadow people. We've never actually had the chance. First things that we think about, first things I think about at least are things that audience members have reported to us, which might

sound typically have something like this. Somewhere in their house or at a friend's house. They're asleep or they're dozing on a couch and all of a sudden, uh, something is out of the corner of their eye. And it's sort of like you know, when you have a floater in your eye and you're looking at the sun, and you you move your eye attempting to catch this strange and distinguishable thing, and it always lingers just on the

corner of your vision. And and you know, as you said, one thing that's fascinating about this is that it's a very very old idea, you know, and and it it sort of cuts across cultures. So what I the first thing I think of are always going to be the strange stories that audience members have told us, either saying I believe it's a demon or can you tell me

what's going on? You know. Yeah, it makes me think about all the things that are just on the outside of our periphery, and that can be the actual physical periphery or uh you know, uh deeper metaphysical periphery, something that we really believe is there but we can't ever quite catch it. We can't ever quite see it or grasp it fully. Yeah, I mean, because we're hardwired to pick up on that stuff. I mean, that's just part

of our survival instinct. If there's something that we can't quite see, that's kind of hanging out just at the edge of our vision, of course, that's going to elect some some some shock or fear, or at least it's gonna you're you're gonna start asking questions in your head. Now, these individuals who write in about shadow people, it tends to be a negative interpretation or a fearful interpretation generally. Yeah, I haven't seen a positive man hanging out with my

shadow people. Last weekend it was pretty great. We played cards. Who knows, maybe we'll get that letter via stuff to blow your minds after this. Maybe we're giving shadow people a bad name, but but yeah, in general, we we have the people who do report that kind of stuff or ask us about it, want to follow up to figure out some explanation because they are fearful of it,

because it's not a positive experience. Now, one version of the the shadow person that I found when I was poking around in some folklore books was the idea of Mr Nobody. Mr Nobody is an English nursery spirit, never visible,

but can be glimpsed as this diminutive, transient shadow. And so when something goes wrong in the house, something's broken, something's out of place, somebody didn't put their underwear back in the drawer, more than you blame Mr Nobody, which is you know what, it's a it's a you know, nur free book. So it's it's it's it's silly. Nobody's particularly taking Mr Nobody seriously, but it does have tinges of that, that idea of the of the shadow lurking

at the edge of your perception. And then what is it up to? Probably nothing good. At least now we know where South Park got the underwear gnomes idea from Mr Nobody. Yeah, we've I'm glad we figured that out. I'm glad we we did that today. Another one I found that I was really excited to talk to you guys about um a tulpa from Tibetan mysticism. Pretty much

just a thought form right created by pure will. Uh, this idea amongst people who have a belief for a conspiratorial belief, I mean or paranormal belief in shadow people. The idea of a tulpa frequently pops up for Stephen King fans in the audience. In the novel It, the primary villain is heavily applied to be something like a

talpa um. So the way that atalpa works is that ultimately it is the product of the person observing it right, which has all sorts of interesting correlations in the in an age where we have access to more modern interpretations, a better understanding of psychology and physics and biology. But it's it's fascinating to think that this belief in some kind of boogeyman that we create due to our thoughts could could dovetail so nicely that's the best thing I

can find. Yeah, I remember correctly with the tulpa. It's it's really it's deeped in this idea that that if we believe in something, and we believe in it hard enough, we can actually bring this manifestation, this entity, out of the thought world, out of the dream world, into the real world um, which has some interesting connotations with some

stuff we're going to discuss later. But I can definitely see where if if there are sort of shats to perceive in the corners of our perception, and if you are trying to drag something out of the immaterial, out of the world of dream and thought that you might easily pick up on those things because you're not only susceptible to these shadows, but you're you're seeking them out right.

I'm glad you said that, because in our experience, one thing that is very, very different is that typically people who believe that share the shadow people phenomenon is paranormal also think it's different to a ghostly phenomenon. It's somehow a non human entity called forth froom somewhere often, whereas you know a ghost would be in in this context, the ghost would be different. Um, but perhaps the same

phenomenon produced them. I don't know, is a ghost that told That's interesting you say that, man, because I was. I was trolling through the above top secret forums trying to find store reads of people who claimed to have seen shadow people, and I did notice that most of them were ascribing it to some other type of being. A lot of it was an angel or a demon usually um, but yet I also got aliens, like people

really thought they might be aliens or time travelers. Yeah, well it's I mean It's interesting you mentioned angels and aliens as well, because it does seem like one of the things that really separates a ghost from from those other entities is that to it with a ghost, we apply it personhood, even like specific personhood, like that is Grandpa Rosenberg, or that's that's just the dude who might have lived in this house a few generations ago. But an alien is just I mean, they're all alien stuff.

We don't really know these these guys and gals. Likewise, angels, yes, you do have specific angels in in your religion and mythologies, but for the most part, we don't really we don't get to know them. They're unknowable beings and the shadow of people, the shades or whatever we want to call them, that that we worry about in the edge of our perception. They too, don't have a face, they don't have a they don't have a persona. They're just something dark and

mysterious that has some sort of human esque shape to it. Right. Yeah. One thing to add to the idea of angels and demons also would be the idea of gin in Islam. So ah, yeah, they were and I remember correctly the gin our creations of fire, whereas humans are creations of dust I believe, yeah, and I think angels are light and general smokeless fire. Um. But this this concept when one thing that's really interesting here is that what we're

finding is a million interpretations. I'm being hyperbolic, but a bunch of interpretations at the very least of uh, something that could be could be the same thing, or at least has a quite a few similarities. Right. We have all these different scripts we can turn who to try and understand what the what these shadows are. And today we have even more scripts to turn to because we have a lot of a lot of shadows and shadow people in our in our pop culture, in our fiction.

I mean, Game of Thrones just started up, and of course I'm not gonna give any spoilers for people catching up, but a shadow entity plays into a very important plot point in one of the previous seasons. Uh. You see shadow creatures all over Dungeons and Dragons. I think that was probably my first exposure to this, uh, and I was trying to look him up again. It seems like the the original shadow has kind of changed into various other shadowy monsters in the Dungeons and dragons. What is

that they phased it out of the monster manual. Man. Yeah, like I was finding I think at night Stalker or something that effect kept showing up. Um, how about some dementors. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but the I guess the image of a dementer from J. K. Rowlings World reminding me of these guys. And I'll tell you another pop culture reference that I had completely forgotten about.

A little movie called Ghost Most Most Mostly we remember this for it's awesome pottery scenes, but there was a whole plot element to where these shadow creatures would come and drag ghosts away into the nether darkness. Yeah, I completely forgotten it. There was anything um, quote unquote cool going on in Ghosts, you know. Yeah, everybody only remembers

that pottery scene. Uh, Robert, I don't know what else is going to happen in this show, but I want to personally thank you for making Redeeming Ghost for me. Well you're welcome. All right, Well we're gonna take a quick breaking when we come back. We're going to get into the science of shadow people. Yes, the science of what is actually going on when you perceive some sort of shadowy monstrosity creeping out at the edge of your reality. All right, we're back now. You guys deal with paranormal

experience a lot on your show. Now for for for new listeners, for people who maybe aren't it's familiar with uh stuff they don't want you to know. Um. Where do you guys stand when it comes to skepticism when it comes to scientific explanations of perceived paranormal events and the the magic and mystery of paranormal events? Okay? For me,

it's all about the want to believe. Uh. I currently don't believe in much of it personally, However, I have a deep desire to not only understand, but to explore those outer reaches. Like we're talking about earlier, UM, for paranormal experience, if we're talking about shadow people, I think as we will find very shortly that we can explain

much of the phenomena. UM. If we go a little deeper towards alien abductions and some of that stuff, I tend to lean a little bit more towards the possibilities of it being true. Um, but I would say two out of ten. Okay, that's fair. Yes, So Matt and

I often have similar conversations like this. When it comes to the paranormal specifically, it's very important, I think, to remember that human understanding is a in a continual state of progress, and many of the things that once upon a time were miracles or curses later became, um, something that we could understand through our current framework of science.

I don't think that makes any of those things any less terrifying or any more amazing, because um, you know, it's it's all kind of uh, it's it's all kind of like a magic trick, or or learning the the behind the scenes of someone writing your face rich story. Is Is it possible that we will run into phenomena that can just never be explained. It's possible. I hope

it doesn't happen. But when we when we look at things that are on the fringes of mainstream science or orthodox understanding, we do find things that have no no physical or quantifiable proof. And those things would be experiences or anecdotes about ghosts, or you know, the the idea of alien visitation, which is um mathematically staggering just given

the scale of time and space. But then we also find things that I think are magical regardless of it, and I don't mean magical in a sweet Disney way. I mean freaky man like. The idea of of quantum entanglement, uh should make everyone really, really really weirded out. No matter what you're doing. If you're eating a sandwich right now, think about how that sandwich might be entangled with something

later in the universe, carefully consider your condiments. You know, there was there was a guy in New York that for a while, maybe still doing it, who was offering quantum entanglement marriage ceremonies. Well, and I forget the exact way the specifics of how this worked, but you know, two people would would enter and he would somehow quantumly entangle the two of you so that, you know, no matter where you go in this universe, there would there

would be that bond between you, a quantum bond. Do you think it has any effect on there are other multiplicities of them that exist in the other multiverses. You know. I don't know how it affects quantum divorce rights either. Yeah, I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can pay extra

right for service there. But but yeah, so that's that's that's the point is that typically I think there's often a false dichotomy um in in some realms of the conspiracy world, between a conspiracy theorists and a skeptic, because really, what we should only be talking about this critical thinking.

And the fact of the matter is, with the vast majority of paranormal phenomenon, the stuff that the stuff that has been closely examined has often been explained, just not in a way that is perhaps as exciting or as sexy as some people would want it to be. But I don't think that makes it any less amazing, and I don't think that means that we should stop investigating. Yes, indeed,

and uh. And one of the things too, that I think is important to point out about paranormal experience is that you know, we can we can sit around all day and say, all right, well, you know, mathematically, alien abductions are not occurring, or the likelihood of a ghost existing an angel existing theories existing, though you know, we and we can call that hogwash all day. But but

but ultimately, a paranormal experience is real. People do experience something that they cannot explain, and in lieu of an actual explanation, they end up applying other explanations to it. They draw from existing scripts of folklore, existing scripts of of religion, existing scripts of science fiction pop culture. Those end up being, uh, the buckets we turn to to try and explain things that happened to us that do not match up with our normal procept perception of reality,

or are our normal experience of life. Yeah. That you know, when you say that, that makes me anything one of the one of the perfect, and I don't want to derail us here, but one of the perfect. Examples of that would be some of the hallucinations that people take on spiritual journeys, especially given that that is such a

a long standing tradition across so many cultures. Uh. One thing that we have always found, we being the human race entire, is that those experiences, UM, regardless of how somebody might examine neurochemistry or attempt to you know, quote unquote debunk the nature of whatever that spirit journey is. Uh,

these people do have legitimate and valid experiences. And I really appreciate UM you pointing that out, because Matt and I go out of our way to um be as respectful to people who genuinely have had an experience as we can. You know, we don't we don't want to ever, you know, purposefully irritate or ever. Uh, I guess, denigrate somebody for telling us honestly about something that they experienced. We might not agree on the causes, but also we

weren't there. So yeah, anecdotal evidences, it's it is easily discounted. Um, But like you said, it's it's real or something happened. Now, one example of certainly paranormal experience, I mean right here in the room. Uh no, our normal producer is is that on vacation as well, or something like vacation. I'm not sure. I'm not getting into his business, but in his place, candlers here and and Candler's just telling us

about paranormal experiences that he has encountered. And by this, I mean he does see shadow people when he's sleep deprived, and he has experienced, um, sleep paralysis. Um. So just to refresh a sleep paralysis is all about what does what does our body do when we're dreaming. Ultimately, the idea is that when the when the body shuts down for sleep, it's got the muscles are going on kind

of a lockdown. Because in your dream you may be having a karate battle with a dragon, but you don't need your limbs to be having that same battle, because you know, you may have the dogs or cats or humans laying around you sleeping. You may have lamps that you don't want destroyed and windows you don't want to plunge through. So sleep paralysis is just the locking down

of the muscles. Is there to keep things from getting crazy. However, sometimes things get out of sync a bit and uh, and in sleep proalysis, what happens is that the is that you wake up. The conscious mind is waking up from from slumber and from dream, but the body is not unlocked yet, So you're waking up into a locked body, and you're you're not completely awake either as well. We'll

discussing a bit. These phases of moving into and out of sleep are the perfect zones to see things that are not there, or apply non rational explanations for things that are there. Exactly, You've you've been having some pretty crazy hallucinations for the past few hours. If you're experiencing sleep paralysis, you're in a completely another world. You're, like you said, perhaps let's let's use the dragons example. So

you've been fighting a dragon. You wake up, you're in your bed, but you can't move it all, and you're still seeing like at least a shadow of this dragon form that is still trying to attack you while your body is not functioning. If you if you don't know what sleep paralysis is, this is the most terrifying moment

in your entire life. And it just made me think about all of the people that experienced this before we had the the tool of science and had to be able to look at this and figure out exactly what it is. And there were several something that you had written about before in your Monsters of the Week. Were several The first one was nightmares about this? Uh, can you explain that just slightly? Oh? Yeah, I mean the

nightmare the night mara. It's an idea that you just see in culture after culture after culture, and it's the idea that you're waking up and there's some oppressive force pressing down on you that you know, just either setting on your chest or just just an oppressive force that's keeping you from moving and uh, and and you just see it again in culture after culture after culture, different different explanations, slightly different different shades of what exactly the

the entity is, but it's it's everywhere and a lot of people who experience sleep paralysis. Fine, see this thing, it's been called the intruder um, it's been called a succubus or an incubus, but they have very specific things that they do. If if it's going to be named

incubus or succubus. But you wrote in your one of your articles or the blog post about how these creatures are mimics, and uh, it made me think about what we're about to go into the science at least from this one study that we looked at about how these things are almost a a mimic of ourselves or a version of ourselves. Yes, not mimicry, Robert, mimicry I Okay,

So clearly Matt and I are big fans of the show. Uh. One of the one of the things that we find fascinating about human experience in general, or the way human beings participate in the outside world, is that the our entire species has this compulsion to to classify, to anthropomorphize, to make um, to make a coherent picture from the

raw shack blot, you know. So it's it's strange to me when we hear when we hear stories of people saying you know, I saw this mysterious figure, and it's always, you know, humanoid, or at the very least it's always in some cultures it's a it's a specific shade of an animal or something, but it's always a common animal too. Um And I think it's interesting because it says a lot about the way our brains deliver this sort of sensory information to us. Now, just a touch base again

on on sleep paralysis. Researchers are not sure why exactly normal paralysis happens during conscience for victims of sleep proalysis, but the studies have confirmed that the attacks are particularly likely to occur the person enters r e M sleep quickly after hitting the pillow, bypassing the stages of non

rim sleep that usually happen first. So some of the factors that are often involved here are drifting off while lying on your back, if you're feeling stressed, if you're experiencing a disruption in your normal sleep patterns, such as you like a weird work schedule, jet lag, you're having a little bit too much caffeine, a little bit too

much alcohol. But at the end of the day of the normal adult population has experienced sleep paralysis at least once, and around five percent of the population has experienced one or more of other disturbing symptoms associated with the disorder.

And in this we're talking about getting into hallucinations, shadows and light, human animal figures, auditory hallucinations, hearing voices or footsteps, and and even that strong sense of a presence something menacing, or even an esthetic sensation such as the feeling of being dragged out of bed or vibrating, flying, falling, which again, all of these things can easily play into a fantastic interpretation involving of you know, demons soaring through the air

and taking you off to some sabbath on the other side of the hill, or aliens taking you up and

probing you. And on the probe note, it's also worth noting that a lot of these sleep browses encounters do end up having a kind of sexual overtone to them, because, I mean, sleep itself, the dream world often has shades obviously of sexual desire in there, and seen as the human brain in the state of sleep is still relatively mysterious in some fronts, um it makes sense that we don't we don't completely understand what triggers this arrhythmic cycle

or synchronous zation between the conscious mind and the human body. But we also know that the human mind is not dichotomous when it comes to waking and sleeping. Right, there's sort of a spectrum and we all kind of slide along it on our way to sleep and then our way to hitting the snooze button again. And there's this really weird sort of twilight zone sweet spot if you will, where in you can have dreams or hallucinations that are more vivid even then. You know, any high school comedy

you've seen where someone accidentally takes acid. Yeah, you when you're drifting into sleep or coming out of it, you kind of have a leg in both worlds. Now, in my own experience that, like, the two examples that I come back to on this are pretty much any night that I'm I'm sleeping, I'm I'm drifting off the sweep, but I'm still reading. I don't know if you guys

encount of this. If you reach that point where you're still reading, but you're not reading the book like you're somehow reading a made up book off the very real pages that you're looking at, and and generally that's the point where you where I'm just kind of think, oh, well, I'm not reading the real book anymore. Time to go

to sleep. But when you stop and you look back and you really you know, you end up doing a double tick on that, Like that is that is a cue that there is this very weird twilight zone that you're trouncing through on your way to slumber. Have you guys evergotten the I don't know a better way to explain it besides the the blue falling hallucination of it's just kind of blue light that falls in front of

your eyes. Did do either of you guys wear contacts? Yes? Yes? Okay, So when I sleep without my contacts, and I've got extremely close um near sightedness, and sometimes when I wake up and everything is very blurry, I'm still in somewhat of a dream state, and I'm just trying to decide whether or not I want to actually get up or not I will if I close one eye, I can

see this kind of blue falling light. Um, I guess in the eye that I have clothes, but it's by doing so it ends up being transferred onto my left eye that is open in this case, and I've been trying to figure out exactly what that is, and and it has something to do with the this type of hallucination, hallucination what is it called? These types of hallucinations? All right, there to two different states, two different hallucinations we're talking

about here. One is the hypnopompic state. Now, this is a state of consciousness leading out of sleep, and in the opposite, the state leading into sleep is the hypnogogic state. And in theory, the hypnogogic state, again, you're going to sleep, and so the rational waking mind is trying to make sense of nonlinear dream images and association. Uh so again you're you're seeing pages that aren't there, and you're trying to figure out why am I seeing pages that aren't there?

You know that kind of thing. Meanwhile, the hypnopompic state is the emotional and naive dreaming mind trying to make sense of real world sights and sounds. So this is where we get this, this waking dream. So there might be some sort of weird shadow in the room, the light is strange on the ceiling, we hear the sound of the cat scratching on something, and we still have that crazy open dream mind that's trying to make sense of it, the same mind that totally buys into whatever fantastic,

crazy dream you're having. Of course, I'm fighting a dragon, this is what I do. That mind is suddenly trying to figure out what the cat is doing under the bed. So maybe it's a dragon, right, Yeah, And then that's that's perfect because we can make we can make a few examples here that will be clearly understandable to anyone who has missed their alarm clock a couple of times.

You guys, So if you're listening, you've probably had this moment where you're in a dream and then there's a fire alarm somewhere in the distance, or a car alarm, or if you use a ring tone on your cell phone, all of a sudden, your strange dream with uh, your old high school buddy and I don't know, Vladimir Putin, what something topical? All of a sudden this ring tone you love comes on and you and your high school chum and Vladimir Putin are dancing to every day I'm hustling.

And then you wake up, which I assume is someone's ring tone, And then you wake up and you realize, oh, it was all. It was all a dream that these things happening in the outside world went through this this internal script that I had that might have been influenced

by historical older scripts, religious scripts, folkloric stuff. And to me that's fascinating because when I fall asleep with a ray Deo on or something like that, Um, you know, Robert, I recently got a dog and the dog makes noises that my sleeping mind is not used to write because you're you're a new dog owner, right, the cat person up upol Now, yeah, yeah, and uh, I've had a lot.

It turns out the dog snores, So I've had I've actually had a couple of sleeping dragon dreams and waking up and finding out that thank god, it's just a puppy and not smell. You know, I have a very clear memory from when I was like a young kid, definitely in an age where every toys are everything, you know, action figures are everything, and and you know, you end up do you see these pictures in like the serious catalog and you just you obsessed about it, like I

would love to have that Transformer one day. And I distinctly remember waking up from a dream of having some sort of fancy Transformer former toy and seeing it next to me in the bed for were you know, for this very small amount of time, but enough time to make an impact on me as a child. Now, Grant it's a memory. And we've on this podcast, we've talked plenty of times about how uh, how how many opportunities we have to mess up a dream, especially every time

we drag it out of the box. But but it but it had an impact on me because I saw how there was this possibility for something in a dream to sort of follow you out of the dream for a little bit before it scampers back to the the subconscious. Uh. That is a beautiful and terrifying thought. Yeah, well that's the thing. It is that beautiful and terrifying, just like

all these various interpretations of the paranormal. Yeah, and when we're talking about shadow people, it's it's fairly apparent that you know, this this falling into waking and sleeping and and the weird twilight zone between those two points. It's fairly apparent that this is a very old thing, and that what we call shadow people today in the age of the Internet, have been called many other things and

often behaving in some of the same ways. But we have an advantage, um, an advantage that was one through bloody centuries of experimentation and breaking ethics, we know a little bit more about the human brain. Right, and you sent us some some fascinating information regarding uh kind of a look behind the curtain explaining that feeling of a presence, right, yeah, yeah, it's it's a really fascinating study came out in two thousand six, Uh, Swiss study public in the journal Nature.

And uh no, it was not a study that was specifically targeting the shadow people, because I guess you tend to have trouble getting funding for that kind of thing. But the thing is, this sort of apparition, this kind of shadow figure, does play into the experiences of psychiatric

and neurological patients. So the researchers made this discovery while evaluating a perfectly norm twenty two year old woman for surgical treatment of epilepsy, and when they electronically stimulated her brains left temper operato junction, or t PJ, they repeatedly gave her the sensation of a lurking shadow man in her presence. Uh. She perceived the shadow person is just behind her. She perceived the figure as interfering with her attempts to read a book, like trying to snatch it

out of her hands. And when the researchers stimulated her in a seated position, this is the best part for me. She perceived herself to be seated in the entity's lap and he had he she had its arms around her, and she described this as being an unpleasant feeling. That's that's really interesting, just the idea of she basically was having an out of almost this strange out of body experience in a way where she was I guess her her feeling of this is hard for me to explain.

I can't explain this. Maybe you guys will be better at this, but just that I've had feeling before, but not because my brain was being electrocuted. Well, it's kind of like some some part of her sensory interpretation got was hijacked. You know. By this, by this simulation, we know that in terms of evolution, it's been necessary and advantageous for people to have that feeling of you know, a sixth sense or shining or whatever. In short, it's

it's really good for the human race at large. If a lot of us are paranoid in uh, in strange situations, but also finding the finding the neurological button or one of the neurological buttons that can trigger this reminds me of some some earlier stuff that you guys have done on this show about finding a specific part of the brain that is responsible for, you know, experiencing the presence

of God for instance. Right. Um. The the thing about this is that, um, Matt and I are pretty into self experimentation, so I would love to figure out a way. I don't know if you should shock your brain. Do you have a tDCS or some form of electrical brain show working on all kinds of stuff? What are you making it yourself? I would not you like off the plans off the internet, or you're buying one at a

at a punch shot. Look, Robert, the FDA are trying to trying to stop the progress of my experimentation, and uh, you know I've I've tried several different methods. It is true that there are now finally some commercially available t DCS devices that do not require you to be a doctor in charge of a clinical study, But those devices, uh leave a lot to be desired, and if you want something done right, you often need to do it yourself before you go shocking your left temporo parato junction

of t VJ. UH. Let's let's just take it apart for a second for the listeners here and go through what the the t PJ does. The TPJ concerns self processing, UH,

self other distinction and multisensory body integration info UH. The the electrical stimulation in this case of this again UH perfectly normal otherwise patient, it's thought to have caused her to attribute her own actions to this alien entity, to her to her shadow, to something just a few degrees left of her actual location or a little bit behind

her um and uh. And so the researchers proposed that electrical stimulation to this area in the patient disturbed again multisensory but also um sensor motor integration of the information with respect to her body, leading to the appearance of a of what what is otherwise the first rank symptom of schizophrenia in this a person with no psychiatric history.

Along those lines, um, so we're getting we're getting down to the perception of not only reality, but the perception of self in reality, which which we often take for Granted, you know, we think that we know who we are because we're looking out of this body and we're seeing the world, and and then a lot of it's based

on site. But clearly it's more complex than that, right, And we see here the line between our same perceptions of reality and self and the insane or the magical being just uh, a far slimmer line than the most of us assume unders the daily basis. It makes me wonder if one day we will ascribe a sixth sense as our sense of just that overall sense of self that we're describing here, of where we are in reality. It's not necessarily touched, not necessarily site or any of that.

It's just your own, your brain's own understanding of where it is in spacetime. Yeah, it's almost like if you're watching a movie and the film quality blurs, or the or the boom mic is suddenly in shot, like to a certain extent, seeing shadow people or experiencing and out of body experience. That which we'll get into a second here, is kind of like the boom mic getting in the shot. But it's like if you saw the film though, and

you didn't say, hey, there's a boom mic. You might think there is a demon on the ceiling in this room. What are our characters going to do to survive it? Like, we don't have the processing, you know, like the brain you can get in that area with the brain cannot stand outside of itself and perceive itself. What were you gonna say about astral travel or out of bodies well, you know, out of body experiences or O b ees And apparently somebody calls them um the you know these happen.

People do experience these is It's not just unsolved mystery stuff. They most commonly happen to people with neurological disorders such as the chronic migraine strokes, epilepsy, brain tumors. UH. Some also estimated five of perfectly healthy people also have the

sensation at some point UH. And we can actually a connect out of body experiences again to that TPJ researchers have used transparano magnetic stimulation on the t p J to impair mental transformations of the body in healthy volunteers, so essentially able to UH to stimulate that part of the brain to reduce a kind of out of body experience without the aid of you know, near death experience. Or astral projection or strain or whatever they did in flatliners.

The funny side note for that, uh, the United States government actually poured quite a bit of money into ob research. You there's a there's a film loosely based on that called The Menu Steric Goats. Uh. They have, but they they have people who were professional astral travelers, the most famous of which was a guy named Dingo Swan. I should go ahead and say, in the interests of fairness, that this program was, to our knowledge, canceled because it

was not as cost effective as you know they had hoped. Yeah. Well, and there was remote viewing. I guess that would be a form of astral travel. Yeah, there are a lot of interesting things. It was that Project stargates, Project Stargate fascinating. Well, I mean, if you look at it, I guess from the government's point of view, if perceivably there might be a window open there, you don't want to just be there one day when the Soviets come crawling through that window.

You want to explore that window and make sure that it is indeed closed or at least maybe I'm I'm hopeful that that is the mindset that's precisely actually, that's exactly the reasoning that we That's the closest thing we could arrive at. So So, Robert, have we found the

explanation behind shadow people? I think so. I think it's if it's not again you get into shadow people, this seems to be varying um degrees of it, Like, this is definitely a case where someone is perceiving a very near um entity, something that is basically living just a few degrees away from their own body. Uh. And I think that we can definitely see with with these experiments

with the t PJ. Now when you get into some of the other scenarios where someone's viewing a shadow on the other side of the room, I think maybe we need to turn more towards that that realm of sleep paralysis and those waking or plunging into slumber hallucinations. But but I think we have some strong ammo here to to explain some of the cases and and throw a

lot of rational thinking at other cases. I don't know, guys, I'm gonna hold out judgment until Game of Thrones concludes in like, oh man, if he ever finishes those books, it's get it's the races early on to see what's going to happen, not in terms of the storyline just that one, but t V versus versus the novels which finished first. Well, I would just like to say it feels like we're concluding here. I would just like to say, Robert, thank you again for having us on. It's been a pleasure.

Oh well, thank you guys for joining me. Yeah, we we just have a few minutes here before the shadowy entities creep in and drag us away. But uh, we should probably go ahead and just chill absolutely everything. So first of all, of you guys have been doing this awesome video series for a while and your efforts have

just recently expanded. Uh, please share with with our listeners everything you're working on right now, not the top secret stuff or the illegal stuff involving brain stimulation, but all the on the board stuff area. But okay, sure, well if okay, if you want to learn more about our show, you can go to the longest r L in history called stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com, or you can find us on YouTube. We are conspiracy stuff on there. Um. We make shows three shows a week.

There might be more, sometimes it might be less. Who knows. Who knows. We also make an audio show No True Yeah, where we reference stuff to blow your mind as well, and let's see. Oh, we're also on Twitter. Uh, but I'd like to spend some time, uh talking about some stuff to blow your mind, things that I think everybody should check out. If you're listening to this and you haven't visited Stuff to Blew your Mind dot com, to check out the amazing blog our our mutual favorite met

is always monster related right. Oh, yes, and there's something very special coming up. I don't know if have you been talking about this yet. Yeah, I've been mentioning a little bit and it should be out at for anyone listening to h the show right now. But yeah, I do this Monster of the Week blog series where I take a take something in the monster's realm, be at you know, pop culture or movies, X files or something more chloora myth based and then try and get at

the science of it. For instance, with the Shadow People, it is a direct study that linked it. Other times I'm kind of taking something that that that that isn't about that monster. But if you start bringing the two together, then you can see, uh, you can see the connections Basically, the idea is that whatever we attribute to the fantastic in a made up monster, if you look close enough

in the natural world, you'll find something just as fantastic. Uh. And and that's ultimately the connection I try and get out there. And so now we have a video series based on this. Uh. They we running six episodes off called Monster Science, where with Dr Anton Jessup who is a disgraced curator of monster Sciences at the university, and we were able to get him to do this a series for us right there in his basement. It's yeah, well hopefully so and you know, and and if it's

a success, will do more of them. If not, then the Dr Jessup may may may vanish for a while and your mysterious circumstances I hope not cool. All right, well, hey, you know, check it out. You can find it on our YouTube channel, Mind Stuff Show. It's also all over stuffable your mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where

all of the podcasts episode live. That's where the videos are, that's where the blog posts are, and that's where you also find links out to these various social media accounts like Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, etcetera. Um. Also, I mentioned this on the Facebook some of you you had asked me about this, But I also personally have a collection of

short stories out called eight Black Offerings. So if anyone out there is interested in h some rather bleak, gruesome horror tales that I wrote previously and had been published previously, Uh, that book is available. Can search for it on Amazon. And it's only for grown ups. Oh yeah, live testimonial. I picked up a copy of this book, and I don't know if we talked about it, but I really enjoyed it personally, and the only thing I was gonna

say is that it's probably only for adults. Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's some grooms up that It's not the kind of stuff I would even write today. But anyway, I bring it out because because I know some of your listeners had asked about it. H And in the future, I'm hopefully gonna have some stuff out that is uh, it's it's more for a general eye Getting dark with Robert Lamb. Yeah yeah, that's the next and the next

video series. So anyway, Hey, you guys have an email address, right If people want to reach you on email, where do they send those uh, those those queries about shadow people. You can send all of your complaints to conspiracy at Discovery dot com. Wait wait, you can. You can send any questions about shadow people to conspiracy at Discovery dot com. If you have complaints, please do forward them to our official complaint department, Jonathan Stricklands over back stuff. So that's

Jonathan Strickland at Discovery dot com. Cool and as always, our email address is blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topic is it how stuff Works dot com m