'Shades' - making them scary

[Sheilawisz]

Hello Lorna, I have a type of shadow-like creatures in my Joan of England story... They are called just "shadows" and they travel to Earth from a separate reality via gateways, which have been opened by the Mages of that story.

My Shadows are described easily as being great, shapeless and totally black entities made of a shadow-like darkness about the size of an airliner, and they fly through the sky so fast throwing a destructive kind of magical fire that causes blasts and fires that easily destroy towns and cities...

In my opinion, giving eyes and other similar features to shadow-like beings ruins the scary effect =)

There exists a supernatural thing called the Shadowpeople, maybe you would find it interesting.

 

[Lorna]

Ok...

'Jarad felt the mountain tremble, sensed something stirring beneath.' (?)

Little Storm Cloud- the LARP I've been invited to is fantasy based. My impression is they play dark elf ninjas in a matriarchal society. Whereas your medieval would do much better (!).

Princess Miranda- unfortunately the antennae got the chop.

Shielawitz- I'd be interested to hear more about your shadows / shadowpeople. If you're willing to share PM me an excerpt

 

[Sheilawisz]

The Shadowpeople that I mentioned are not part of my stories, they are a supernatural phenomena in our world... They can be sighted sometimes (like ghosts and demons) and they are described as human figures that are completely made of "shadow" and can move very fast.

They sometimes have red eyes and it's a mystery what they really are, but I am sure that they are not human and also not a good presence to have around!!

I love researching the supernatural stuff =)

 

[PrincessaMiranda]

The Shadowpeople that I mentioned are not part of my stories, they are a supernatural phenomena in our world... They can be sighted sometimes (like ghosts and demons) and they are described as human figures that are completely made of "shadow" and can move very fast.

They sometimes have red eyes and it's a mystery what they really are, but I am sure that they are not human and also not a good presence to have around!!

I love researching the supernatural stuff =)

I know shadow people. They follow people who do meth a lot. Unfortunately an epidemic in my town. :/

Just thought I'd put that out there.

 

[shangrila]

There's a few ways you can make them scarier. Personally, I'm always more scared by something I don't see. Of course, I have no idea how that would work in a novel, but to me that sense of the "unknown" just adds something extra creepy to things. Something like the Slenderman creepypasta is a good example (someone even made a free game out of it...scariest game ever).

The other way that comes to mind is to show, in detail, the effects of their attacks. This came up in the later Black Company books, when they were fighting shadows, but basically they would hear a scream in the night and, in the morning, find this shrivelled up corpse with a face twisted into some horrific grimace of pain. The shadows themselves were never truly described, but the threat of them definitely made them scary in my mind and more so from the character's point of view.