A quiet night shattered by moments of terror

Shadow People have followed Daniel Pestana of Portugal for years. Blacker-than-night, human-shaped shadows visit Daniel often ... and stare. Some wear hats, some a monk’s cowl.

“They are never hostile to me. They seem to be mere observers,” Pestana said. “I used to see them in the hallway of my house, in the reflections of mirrors and sometimes floating quickly from door to door.”

He became used to these frequent visits until the night he encountered something different. Something he feels is evil.

“I just saw it once,” he said.

Pestana was walking his now-ex-girlfriend home when they stopped in a small park in the center of a quarter.

“When we were saying goodbye to each other we heard a noise coming from a tree (next to) a house nearby,” he said. “I looked and I noticed that the top of the tree fanned itself with violence.”

Violent rustling and the snap of breaking branches bit through the night.

“Then I heard a muffled sound of something crashing into the ground,” Pestana said. “A strange feeling arose inside me that I still can’t explain.”

Pestana and his girlfriend watched silently as two hands grasped the top of a wall that surrounded the house’s yard.

“They didn’t seem (like human) hands,” he said. “They were dark, as if it was burned paper.”

As the two stood frozen, a head as dark as the hands pulled itself up from behind the wall.

“Two brilliant and red eyes stared directly at us,” Pestana said. “The creature loosened a roar of some kind and it jumped upward (onto) the wall. We saw it perfectly.”

The figure was human-like and “pitch-black from head to toes.” Neither Pestana nor his girlfriend could make out features, only the fiery red eyes.

“I grabbed my girlfriend’s hand, and we ran through the streets without looking back,” Pestana said. “It was the only time that I felt truly threatened by those creatures.”

Shadow People are seen worldwide. Some seem oblivious to the people who see them, some curiously watch, and some seem to be mischievous. But the ones with red, glowing eyes have one common trait – they elicit terror.

A student of the paranormal, Bishop James Long, of St. Christopher Old Catholic Church in Louisville, Ky., says these red-eyed entities are demons.

“I have found that through my research and field experience, Shadow Figures that contain red, or very dark orange color, eyes tend to be negative in nature,” Long said. “The entity is clearly demonic. It is ... fear that it preys on.”

Pestana is fortunate to have run.