In classical literature and folklore, a shade is a spirit or ghost of a dead person, living in the underworld. Homer wrote of shades in The Odyssey, and they are spooky indeed. Some such spirits of the deceased appear to reside in and around a home on appropriately-named Shady Lane, which is between Pennington and Rooker Roads a few miles southeast of Mooresville, Indiana.
Satellite View of Shady Lane
This case was investigated by paranormal researchers Karl C. B. Muilliwey and Lianed Tilloe (both pseudonyms), who, like the property owners, desire that their privacy be respected. The incidents were reported as occurring between 2001-2003.
The first paranormal incident involved a teenage boy living at the house in question. On several occasions, he clearly saw in his desktop computer monitor the reflection of a strangely-dressed man standing behind and to the teen's left. The monitor was turned off each time, and the reflection appeared on the dark glass, much like old television screens when turned off. No one else was in the teen's bedroom, and, on each occasion, he turned immediately to see whose reflection it was, but nobody was there. The reflected personage appeared dressed in what the teen characterized as 19th century "Amish" clothing, although the details suggested Quaker clothes. The teen insisted that he had been totally awake and aware of his surroundings--he had, in fact, been finishing homework for school.
This could, of course, be nothing more than a visual hallucination, although the teen witness has never experienced such "mirages" at any other time. A reasonable explanation would be that the teen saw something reflected that he mistook for a person, but his careful observation of the details of the reflections' clothing suggests it was not a cursory misapprehension of a stationary, inert object. The observer was insistent that it was a male individual dressed like a 19th century settler.
The father of the household had a more startling story. One night he "awoke" to find himself lying in bed, cataleptic, with his eyes closed (he could feel the eyelids covering his eyes) but able to see his bedroom all around. The room appeared lit in an electric blue glow, and the witness could feel the weight of his body lying senseless in bed while he slowly "looked" around the room without using his ordinary eyesight. He could clearly see objects around the room--furniture in its correct locations, including items he had placed upon a dresser top and, surprisingly, items his wife had placed upon a table that he had not previously seen there. When his "bluesight" reached the bedroom door, he was startled to "see" a man standing inside the doorway, looking directly at the father. At first, the "doorway man" was looking toward another side of the room but suddenly turned to look directly at the father, as if he (the doorway man) had just realized that the father had seen him. The doorway man was dressed in 19th century apparel typical of Quakers or Methodists. He appeared curious but was not apparently hostile-looking. The father, through an extreme exercise of determination, regained movement of his body, as he thrashed about in bed in an attempt to arise. This movement awoke him--he became fully conscious and found the room completely dark, with only his wife asleep in bed next to him, and, of course, no ghost-man in the doorway. Everything was placed in the room as it had appeared during the father's "blue vision."
What are we to make of these descriptions? The father could easily have dreamt, or at least imagined, the entire episode. This was, however, a unique experience--he has never had another, before or since--although he has had "lucid dreams" in which he seemed to have been visited by discarnate family members. Neither the father nor his teen son are particularly imaginative fellows; nor is either prone to daydreaming or fantasizing. They are down-to-earth types who trust in scientific explanations of the world. Regardless, both described these experiences as feeling completely real--"as real as anything I've encountered in conscious, daily life," said the father--and both searched the house following their incidents, finding nothing untoward and no unaccounted people present. When asked what their explanations of these events were, both admitted that they could offer no rational answers. "It was strange and unsettling," said the teen son. "If it's my imagination, I'd rather imagine something else." The father was more insistent: "It was real, whatever it was. It happened, I'm convinced of that."
Paranormal literature is filled with sightings of discarnate entities residing in "haunted" houses or other places. Reflections of such phantoms are often seen out of the corner of one's eye, often reflected in a shining surface, a mirror, a crystal, television screen, etc. Apparently physical spirits are commonly observed in haunted environments. Whether they are actual disembodied beings cannot be proven from witness testimonies, no matter how sincere and carefully made. However, we should not rudely dismiss witness statements on the a priori notion that there is no such thing as ghosts, so the observations must be wrong. Eighteenth-century scientists said there was no such thing as meteorites, because rocks could not fall out of the sky by themselves (rocks, after all, were always seen to sit firmly on the ground unless someone threw them into the air). Lots of "impossible" things happen in our daily lives. To a medieval citizen, it would be impossible to speak to someone on the other side of the planet using some "magical" device; however, 21st century citizens routinely do this through their telephones or computers. Space travel was utter fiction as recently as the 1940s. Major organ transplanting could not have been accomplished before the middle of the 20th century. Who is to say that it is impossible that deceased people survive as spirits, that they therefore cannot be observed, and that communication between incarnate and discarnate humans cannot be achieved? Careful investigation is more sound than mere dismissal.
If you're interested in similar paranormal encounters, your local public library should have books on the subject. For those using the Dewey Decimal System, look under the call numbers 133, 398.2, and 398.47. For libraries using topical classification systems, look under these subject headings: ghosts; hauntings; haunted places; haunted houses; poltergeists; spiritualism; supernatural; out-of-body experiences; astral projection; spirit communication; seances; spirit photography; clairvoyance; psychic mediums; future life; near-death experiences; deathbed visions; telepathy; ESP; and parapsychology.
