The group of us who went to Boston consisted of Jimmy R., Jane S., and another Jim B. we called “Butch” as in the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie.  Jim B. saw the film a few times, lost his mind and became “Butch Cassidy”.  He was mellow about it so we let him be whoever he wanted to be.  Being rather nomadic at that time, I decided to join Jimmy on his journey just for the hell of it. Jane went along because she was the girlfriend.  Butch went along because Jimmy was his Sundance Kid.  I think in his mellow mind we were the hole in the wall gang and this was a great adventure. 

Our trip to Boston was rather uneventful with the exception of two events.  The first one happened to me and me alone and it happened while we were in Chicago.  It was the first of what I would call the Shadow Man experiences. 

We got into Chicago about dusk.  When we arrived we stopped at the first phone booth and called Christy B. who was Jimmy's ex-girlfriend from high school. She at that time lived with her sister and her husband in Chicago. We called Christy to see if the invitation to put us up for the night was still open.  Christy was a brilliant platinum blonde of the Meryl Streep type.  How someone as classy as Christy had been Jimmy's girlfriend was beyond me.  But they had broke up and here was Jimmy with his new girlfriend.  Anyway,  we made our way to Christy's to spend the night after a long continuance drive from Laramie. 

Butch and I were put in a guest bedroom all to ourselves.  I don't remember if the apartment was all that big but we did get our own room.  We were both exhausted.  After hours of driving we looked forward to a nice warm bed.  While Butch sat in an armchair and started unlacing his boots I laid down on the bed and put my face deep into the pillow letting out a sigh of exhaustion.  As I pulled my head out of the pillow and opened my eyes.  I was no longer in that room. 

When I looked up, I was sitting in the back seat of a white 1962 Chevy hardtop with a red interior.  It was my car.  The car I left behind in Laramie with my folks until my return home.  I was sitting in the back seat on the passenger side and saw the car was moving.  I looked to see who was driving.  Jimmy was driving.  I was silent and in a state of shock.  I started to look around.  Everything was in darkness.  The only light was the light from the headlights of the car.  As I looked around I noticed the lush growth of bushes, trees, and long grass.  Growing up in Wyoming I had never seen such lush growth next to the highway. (I would later see terrain like this in Pennsylvania and further east.)  While I was looking at the foliage I noticed some sort of movement in the underbrush.  Something was pacing the car.  Then I could see it. 

A Panther!  A big black Panther.  It was huge.  As large as the biggest tiger you've ever seen.  It looked powerful and moved with breathtaking grace.  As it ran parallel to the car it would casually turn its head and look directly into my eyes.  Suddenly he started running faster than the car.  The large black cat ran far ahead of the car, stopped and  turned facing the road.  Then sat there in a crouched position.  As the car pulled near the cat I could see the muscles in it's back tense, it's ears fall back and the claws dig into the earth in a pouncing position.  Just as the car was going to pass the intersection with the creature, it leapt with power and force.  It's timing was perfect.  I could see it coming right through my window where I sat.  I threw up my arms for protection and started to scream when all of a sudden I pulled my head up from the pillow gasping in terror. 

Butch looked up startled.  He was still unlacing his boot.  His first boot.  I asked him how long did I have my face buried in that pillow.  He shrugged and said in his typical “Butch Cassidy” drawl. “Just a minute or two.  Hell I haven't even finished untying my first boot.  Why?  What's the matter man?” 

Breathlessly I told him what I had just experienced.  I expected him to laugh it off or call me crazy or something.  But he didn't.  He looked intensely at me.  I then realized I was covered in sweat and was visually shaking.  I might add at this point that neither of us were stoned or had been stoned in quite a long time.  We traveled clean to avoid any problems with police. 

Then I saw something come into Butch that I had never seen before or since in all the time we were friends.  Fear.  Butch was the most fearless take a chance guy I ever knew.  I saw fear come into his face as he said, “I believe you.” 

We spoke very little for the rest of the evening.  In spite of what happened we slept very well that night. 

We never spoke of the event again for a very long time, and for some unknown reason, I never told Jimmy or Jane.  Eleven or twelve years later I met Butch for the last time and we talked about it.  He confirmed my memory of the event and that it did frighten him.  He felt that something had happened there because he said he felt it.  And in his easy going world it was not a feeling he has experienced since or would ever want to again. 

This ends the first event of our trip to Boston in that second week in November 1969.  I will continue this later in The rest of the Chicago to Boston Trip  but for now I will continue on my narrative of The Shadow Man. 

Now what does a big black Panther cat have to do with a “Shadow Man”?  Initially I don't know but I do know that these nightmare experiences I'm about to describe began with and are linked to that first event in Chicago.  I don't know why it happened to me in the first place and continued to happen to me for the next ten years. 

In the beginning when it happened, which was between one to three times a year, it involved a black cat.  It always started the same way.  I would climb into bed and would suddenly become paralyzed.  Totally paralyzed yet I could hear my voice as if I was speaking out loud.  The only thing I could move was my eyes, so in a panic I would look around as much as possible.  My eye movement was limited due to the fact that I couldn't move my head.  As I would look around I would see a black cat walking around in the room or on the bed.  When it walked on the bed I could feel the slight shake. It would even walk across my body.  When it did that I could feel its weight which made me feel it was real and not in my head.  It was always silent and would sometimes look into my face and my eyes.  I was terrified.  I could hear myself screaming in my own head.  I felt as though I was in a coffin in the shape of my body and I could feel myself beating on the top of that coffin.  Banging and screaming.  Banging and screaming.  I could feel my fists actually hitting the walls and actually hear my futile screams.  I could also hear the silence of my paralyzed body. 

Then all of a sudden I would feel, usually in my left hand at the very tip of my little finger a feeling.  Kind of like the sensation of wetness.  This feeling of “wetness” continued to spread slowly, slowly, then faster and then it would quickly spread through my whole body.  The cat would be gone and I would feel completely normal.  All I could think of was that I was losing my mind. 

These black cat experiences continued to happen for the next few years.  Although these events were infrequent each time it happened it scared the hell out of me.  I never told anyone about them not even my wife Nancy.  We married in 1970 and when our daughter was around one and a half or two I had the last of the cat events.  After that the cat became the Shadow Man.  The last black cat event was the most extraordinary and the most terrifying. 

We were living in a basement apartment in Laramie.  I think it was about 1972 because Tana (my daughter) was a toddler around two or so.  I was an art student at the University of Wyoming and Nancy had a waitress job.  Our bed was in the living room and consisted of a thick mattress on the floor.  It was a small but comfy apartment.  It had those horizontal windows that are high up on the walls but are at ground level when seen from the outside.  Nancy was one these people who are fast asleep within minutes after hitting the pillow.  I was the insomniac so I always went to bed later.  One night Nancy was sound asleep when I crawled into bed.  I pulled the blanket up to cover me when I heard a “thump”.  Then I heard a second “thump” and I thought it sounded like something jumped from the outside window onto my desk directly under the window.  Whatever had come in then jumped onto the floor and was probably walking around the room.  The first thing I thought was that this could be was some alley cat.  Now I didn't think of the black cat because it had been some time since that had happened.  I simply forgot.  Then I felt this something jump on the bed and I could feel it walking around.  Then it walked on me right up to my chest.  I reached up and grabbed it by the fur on the back of the neck.  It was a cat.  I got up and carried the cat to the door to throw the beast out.  Which I did.  Then I remembered that the apartment had two doors.  I forgot to take the cat up the stairs to toss it outside.  I had just thrown it into the hall stairs.  As I turned to go back to the door to get the cat, take it up the stairs and outside, I realized everything was black on black. 

What I mean is that as I looked about the room or rather the hallway to the door there was no light.  Just black on black.  I could see things in the room but not in the way I would see things in a dark room.  When in a dark room the eyes adjust and see thing in diffused light.  Some things are lighter than others and colors are diffused but you know there are colors.  But what I was seeing was no colors no diffused light at all.  Just black shapes against blacker shapes.  I could tell what everything was but could not see it yet could.  The second I realized something weird was happening BAM!  Something hit me in the middle of my chest and knocked me flat on my back. 

It was the cat.  A black cat.  I suddenly realized that this was one of those “events”.  I hadn't realized it before because there was no initial paralysis which informed me that an altered state of reality was happening.  I felt the coldness of the concrete on my back and the claws of the cat dug into my chest.  It then turned and attacked my testicles.  I screamed as I felt it's claws dig into my balls.  I grabbed the cat by the neck in a stranglehold and tried to pull it off but it dug deeper.  As I wrestled with the beast I thought things couldn't get worse when all of a sudden the neck of the cat began to get larger. 

When I was strangling the cat I could feel the fur and the neck muscles and spine squirm and struggle in my grasp.  I could feel it trying to bite my hands.  As I struggled to maintain my stranglehold of the creature, it's neck started to grow larger in my hand.  It continued to grow until it was the size of a man's neck.  The animal had become huge but I didn't let go and kept trying to pull him off, his claws ripping into my testicles.  The pain was unbearable and at the same time my terror was beyond comprehension.  I was screaming and yelling for help when all of a sudden I was in my body in bed, paralyzed. 

I was still screaming and yelling and pounding on the inside of my body.  After what seemed to be an eternity of pounding I stopped and slid my arm into my arm like a hand inside a glove.  When I felt my hand inside my hand I wiggled my pinky finger until I could feel that “wet” feeling spread through my fingers and arm and all through the rest of my body.  When I felt my body completely merge with my body I sat up sucking up air and in a cold sweat.  Nancy was sound asleep and had not heard or felt a thing. 

Now at this point the obvious response to all this would be that I just fell asleep and had a bad dream.  The problem with that pat answer is that I am a thinker which makes me an insomniac.  I can't go to sleep without mentally winding down.  When I laid down that night I heard the sound of something landing on my desk which happened immediately upon my pulling the blanket over myself.  Immediately.  There was no time transition to fall asleep.  Whether people believe me or not makes no difference to me.  I am only telling what happened to me as objectively as I can. 

This was the last time I was to encounter the black cat.  The next time it would appear in the shape of a man.  A shadow man.  A silhouette.  Each time he would appear it was the same pattern,  As I would go to bed and lie down and pull the cover over me I would look up and he or it would be standing there at the foot of my bed.  The second I would see him/it I would be paralyzed.  Then it would walk around my bed or the room.  I would struggle inside my coffin body until I could get that “wet” feeling on my left little finger which would trigger the merging of me and my body. By the time the merging would be complete, the shadow man would be gone.  I continued to have the nightmare events until March 16, 1979.  This was the last time I would have a shadow man encounter and it was the strangest and most intense.  I recorded this event and the following is what I wrote the next morning. 

Last night I was attacked by two entities about or between 2:30 to 3:30 am.  As I lay down to go to sleep I found myself paralyzed (after meditation) from head to toe.  I saw what appeared to be a black shadow looming over me,  I felt that it was alive and intelligent.  I was terrified but could do nothing because I was frozen solid.  It started to move toward me as if slowly falling forward.  I managed to think a scream or a prayer.  I said (or thought)  “My immortal soul belongs to Jesus Christ for he is my Lord and Master!  Be gone in the name of Jesus Christ!”  Although I know I heard myself say this, there could be no physical audible sound because I was still paralyzed.  As it fell forward I saw a different creature which was light in skin or rather a white shadow man with blond (yellow-white) hair.  It looked like an ill fitting toupee.  The head was faceless like the black shadow man only completely white.  Like a white glow without the glow or it was moving so fast I could make out no distinguishing features.  As the black shadow fell towards me, the white shadow just right of it also moved forward directly in front of the black one.  Then I felt something grab me and slam me about.  Beat up and terrorized I had no fear.  Suddenly it was all over and it was all normal and I was alone.  I found myself in the corner opposite from my bed in a pile of books.  I had a bookshelf made of decorated bricks and wood boards (hippie style) and apparently I had been thrown into it.  It was a mess.  I was pretty shook up but unhurt,  I sat up and looked around.  Reluctantly I laid back down after a spell of just sitting and wondering what the hell just happened.  And then I went to sleep. 

At that time I lived in a duplex and my landlord and best friend Ernie G.  lived next door.  The next morning I called on Ernie to tell him what happened and also get some feedback.  He was gone playing basketball with Carlos S. but his wife Becky was there.  We sat to have a cup of coffee but before I could tell her what happened she asked what was going on because she and Ernie were woken up by a bunch of racket coming from my apartment.  She said it sounded like someone having a fight or tussle with someone else.  At first they thought I had caught a burglar so Ernie got dressed to go over and help me when all of a sudden the noise stopped.  They thought I probably had a girl over there and we were getting a little intense.  So they went back to sleep. 

What the hell is going on!  I'm getting tired of this! 

P.S. I thought the shadow creature was the same entity I have experienced before as a cat creature 

3/17/79 

Since I wrote those words I have not had another encounter with the black cat or the shadow man.  For a long time I thought I was just crazy but it never happened again.  So I assume and I hope that I am not.  I think perhaps the appearance of the white shadow man and my prayer/declaration of my faith in Jesus Christ has something to do with this.  I felt as if they were fighting for me.  I think the white shadow man won because I never had another of those horrific events again.   

Thank God.  I mean that.