Shadow House

"Shadow people" are, in the paranormal community's dictionary, entities that were never human. They are humanoid shapes with no mouth, nose, eyes (though, amusingly, there is a common shape called the "Hat Man" which sports a fedora) which, like traditional ghosts, tend to drop through floors and slide through walls. They are quiet, made of "black smoke" or "black mist," and incite feelings of dread in witnesses.

They often stare at the floor.



I have been unable to find reference to shadow people dated earlier than 1932.

251 Cedarpoint Avenue is, as far as I can tell, the location of the first ever "shadow people" sighting. John Fraser, his wife Marie, and three daughters 11 to 16 moved out of the house in June of 1934. Though no public mention was made of it at the time, Marie's diary was bought at a garage sale in 1988, wherein was made extensive documentation of her and the family's sightings of the shadow people. This diary indicated that it was in fact the shadow people which caused them to leave the house into which they had moved a mere 19 months previously.

"I do not know what they are," Marie Fraser wrote on October 10, 1935, "only that they are not of this earth, they do not think as such, and they wish us harm." She went on in that entry and later ones to hypothesize that these things could not actually cause them this harm. They could not act at all, in addition to being unable to "think as such." But they did, indeed, vehemently wish the Frasers ill. Apparently this was enough for Marie. Her last entry from inside 251 Cedarpoint Avenue ended with: "Perhaps it was only my own black projections, but either way - I know that as of tomorrow, I will be free of them. I do not care whether they stay or go in this house. I do not care to whom they will belong next. I care only that we are free" (Hartfried, 1992).

An interesting turn of phrase - "to whom they will belong next" - and one which has popped up in conjunction with the house more than once. Its next residents, the single female roommates Anna Marshall and Carolyn Lee Miller, lived in the house together for over three decades (complaining of rats and other vermin, as well as intruders, with conspicuous frequency for their first two or three years in residence, until they all got used to one another). After Carolyn died in 1979, Anna, who had mortgaged the house to meet medical payments for her friend, could not meet the payments. She refused to leave, however, claiming that she had to stay because "they're mine" (Hartfried, 1992). She was forcibly removed in 1980 and died, perhaps of suicide, in a state-run nursing home 38 days later.

By this time, of course, reports of "shadow people" had spread throughout America and the world. They are widely cited by organizations such as the North American Center for Paranormal Study as one of the "three major" types of haunting activity (though none of these organizations even cited 251 Cedarpoint Ave as a site of activity, much less the origin - or nexis).

Since the early 1980s, 251 Cedarpoint has passed through four different owners. The third of those four, Esther Hartfried (who claimed to be a descendant of Maggie and Katy Fox, though why she believed that claiming to be related to spiritualist hoaxters would be a boon, one must wonder) attempted to set the house up as a "haunted" tourist attraction. She was later found suffocated on the living room floor. The current owner, Kyle McNoen, who is renovating the building in order to rent it, would not comment for this article.