Talk:Shadow Person

The Stockrooms

The Stockrooms are a strange borderland on the edge of reality, which has been known to be inhabited by Shadow People.

The location of the Stockrooms is uncertain, but some speculation by experienced mystics and other investigators suggest that they are located on the Astral Plane similar to the Dreamlands, in an unusually "real" region of those worlds which can be physically entered and explored by material beings; if so, they would appear to have been Dreamed into reality by an unusually powerful Dreamer from Earth or some other, alien world.

The Stockrooms take the form of a labyrinth of bland, seemingly random partial rooms and corridors, covered in damp, molding yellow carpeting, yellowing walls covered in stained beige wallpaper of generic design, and steel doors painted in old, flaking cream paint, perpetually lit to varying degrees from overhead by humming and flickering light panels of strange design (similar to fluorescent lights, but powered by unknown methods) set into damp-stained cork ceiling tiles.

This place is usually eerily quiet, and is located just beyond the boundaries of the natural world, accessible through hidden doors at the "thin spots" between that world and this; the doors are difficult to find, and entrances in the natural world are often hidden behind wall paneling, deep within neglected closets or forgotten rooms, or in other disused or unexpected places; the doorways and the Stockrooms beyond them are extra-dimensional, and would be impossible actually fit into a normal space - for example, a door to the Stockrooms may be located behind an unlikely wall of a disused attic, discovered only by hearing the hum of the lights behind a false wall, and the door will open upon miles of twisting corridors and cubicles that could not possibly fit in the attic space.

Explorers of the Stockrooms frequently disappear while inside this borderland, the doors to the Stockrooms vanishing with them, leaving behind little or no trace of their doom more substantial than, for example, the occasional diary entry describing the strange discovery, filled with confusing, contradictory, and impossible maps of the labyrinth the explorer discovered. Missing explorers may have simply gotten lost forever in the Stockrooms, though other, more sinister possibilities have been theorized by mystics and other investigators familiar with this land.

Inside the Stockrooms, exits are difficult to locate; when doors are encountered, they lead to more of the same, bland corridors, or sometimes stairwells to other, darker, stranger levels, storage rooms with mysterious contents, and sometimes dimly-lit rooms containing Shadow People or other, even stranger beings. Shadow People often seem to be "stuck" in the rooms, until accidentally or deliberately freed by explorers, for example by leaving the door open, or sometimes by inviting the Shadow People to leave, or summoning them from the rooms, or other means - the rules for binding and releasing these Shadow People seem to be arbitrary and inconsistent, and it is uncertain whether the Shadow People are truly bound to their rooms, and if the rituals for freeing them actually work, or if the Shadow People choose to leave on their own, mysterious motives when some subjective criteria is met to catch their attention and motivate them to leave. Once "freed", the Shadow People may pursue human investigators, or follow them out of the Stockrooms out of curiosity, or simply wander free, leading the investigator deeper into the Stockrooms for mysterious purposes of their own. It may be that investigators lost to the Stockrooms have been taken by pursuing Shadow People, though no one has ever seen a lost investigator again to prove this or any other theory.

Because Shadow People are the most frequently-reported inhabitants of the Stockrooms, explorers of the realm speculate that Shadow People may originate from the Stockrooms, though there is little definite proof of this. Other types of beings have been encountered in the Stockrooms besides Shadow People, including Dimensional Shamblers, Hounds of Tindalos, Zoogs, and other, stranger beings.

Explorers who have reported discovering stairwells into deeper (or sometimes higher) levels typically report more of the same sorts of corridors, usually increasingly more dimly-lit, and sometimes described with larger rooms and chambers of potentially cavernous scale and size. Some explorers have reported descending into the "Furnace Rooms", dark, damp areas apparently of utility purpose multiple levels below the entrance level, which are assumed to be the areas which circulate damply-conditioned air into the levels above, power for the mysterious lighting panels, or other, less easily-identified utilities; enclosed storage rooms are more likely to be found in the Furnace Rooms, usually containing puzzling contents such as boxes of folders full of papers printed in unknown languages, disassembled mannequins of human or sometimes inhuman form, miscellaneous debris, odd furniture, heaps of moldering clothing in random outdated fashions, equipment of unknown purpose, tools and instruments, large tanks of stagnant water with dispensers of paper cups bolted to the side, machinery and vehicles ranging from bicycle-like devices to large engines of unknown types, and other, less easily-identified objects and debris, often apparently stolen from the natural world by the Stockrooms' inhabitants and left there for storage for unknown reasons.

Explorers have on a few occasions reported finding traces of previous expeditions into the Stockrooms, including messages scrawled onto the walls, diaries, notes, and maps, and sometimes makeshift occult or scientific laboratories or shrines and temples. Occasionally, search parties have reported finding the remains of previous explorers, apparently lost or trapped in the Stockrooms, where they eventually died of thirst or starvation, or other, less identifiable causes of death likely due to exposure,or even suicide. There are occasional unconfirmed rumors of identifiable remains being found, or even of people being found in the Stockrooms, but some investigators of the Stockrooms have come to believe that remains discovered in the Stockrooms do not necessarily belong to former inhabitants of the natural world, and speculate that the Stockrooms may be connected to alien worlds or other dimensions through hidden and undiscovered doors deeper in the labyrinth, and explorers sometimes report finding strange exits hidden in the Stockrooms which they claim or believe might lead to other worlds; there are even unconfirmed rumors of travelers from other worlds finding their way to Earth after losing their way and discovering the door into the natural world. The mystic, The Great Garibaldi, has suggested that the Stockrooms might thus act as a sort of "shortcut" for traveling between worlds, for those who can find a reliable, consistent path between doors, though if any such path has ever been found, that revelation has thus far been a well-kept secret....

There are persistent but unconfirmed rumors within metaphysical circles of a large expedition (simply called "The Stockroom Expedition") to explore the Stockrooms in the late 1970s, when as many as two dozen students of an unidentified midwestern US college were supposed to have accompanied two of their professors (usually specified as a physics professor and philosophy professor), through a door in their school's basement service tunnels into the Stockrooms, armed with movie cameras, rope and paint for marking their way through the rooms and corridors, a sledgehammer, pick, and other tools, surveying equipment, compasses, wireless radios, backpacks with food, water, and other supplies, stacks of notepads and graphing paper for taking notes and mapping the area, and more. Supposedly, a record describing the expedition's proposed methods described how the expedition would leave four students at the door to "anchor" the expedition to its exit - two students camped on each side of the door to be relieved in regular shifts by other students returning from deeper inside the Stockrooms. According to this legend, the entire expedition - including the students on the natural side of the door, vanished without a trace, and none of the group's remains or their equipment or pathfinder marks have ever been discovered; the school was according to the legend supposed to have covered up all evidence of The Stockroom Expedition, with the missing students and professors improbably unreported to newspapers by authorities. Some versions of The Stockroom Expedition legend refer to the door to this alternate world being located in the basement of a local department store, rather than the college basement, with the supposed assumed purpose of these rooms for the building being taken from this version of the legend: two of the students, working part-time at the department store to make ends meet, were supposed to have regularly taken breaks "in the stockrooms" to use illicit drugs, before realizing just how unnaturally large the area was, and then organizing short parties and tours of The Stockrooms to other students until the professors got involved. By some accounts, no evidence of the expedition can be found in this world, because it was launched from another, parallel world connected to the Stockrooms, with sketchy details related by a handful of survivors who were able to escape to this world. There are good reasons to doubt all versions of the legend, but the story's link to the legend, with its mix of weirdly consistent and wildly inconsistent details marks it as a notable curiosity relating to this strange borderland.