Cover Art

My drawing from the series, "Shadow People" made it to the cover of a book! My friend Keith asked to use the image for the cover of his new book, I, Dagger, out now on Empty City Press .

This series was inspired by my first experience with sleep paralysis in June of 2012. At the time I was feeling lost and stifled personally. I woke up one night to what looked to be a black figure in a hat trying to strangle me and a swirling of black shapes/spirits in my room. My breathing was heavily restricted, as though the figure was succeeding in its task to strangle me--thus an incubus and succubus being depicted standing on one's chest. I kept repeating in my head "go away please. go away." Eventually the figure disappeared along with the swirling shapes. This happening profoundly affected me, and caused me to create these drawings. I think they probably took me maybe two hours total. After researching the phenomenon, I found that people reported seeing this same shape/figure. He is known as the 'hat man.' A hag or man with nails in his head have also been reported. These figures seem to be sometimes grouped into a larger phenomenon known as Shadow People, black figures and shapes seen out of the corner of one's eye. Shadow People are not limited to being seen at night, like those figures attributed to sleep paralysis. My experience with sleep paralysis and my hat man caused me to look back to my childhood. I have a memory of seeing a black figure of a man wearing a hat coming around the hall corner the first time I stayed at home alone at night when I was 10. I was incredibly anxious about being in the house-and I very much believed in spirits and ghosts, I have from a young age without question. I felt totally convinced someone was coming around the corner and called out my brothers name. A tall black figure of a man wearing a hat rounded the corner and then disappeared before I could totally look. I also from time to time when I was younger would see black figures out of the corner of my eye. Either way, to get through, I attributed my early experiences to tricks of the eye and anxiety because I was (and still am to an extent) uncomfortable with the idea of communicating with ghosts. But my later experiences caused me to revisit them. Who knows ultimately what happened when I was 10 or waking from my sleep at 22, maybe there really was an interdimensional being present who likes to wear a hat, or it was anxiety and my mind playing tricks on me. Either way, it was a pretty pivotal experience.  To learn more about sleep paralysis and other related expereinces  here is a video done by my friend Emerald Wilkins of The Diamond Net :http://www.thediamondnet.org/sleep-paralysis-and-obe

I highly recommend Emerald's other videos as well, she is a powerful and interesting person

Depiction of an incubus