Author Leticia Urieta: What They Do in the Shadows

In this month’s instalment of “Author(ized) Accounts of the Paranormal and Unexplained,” Leticia Urieta, author of Las Criaturas, will tell us the story of her personal encounter with a shadow person...

In middle school and high school, my dad drove a taxicab and would pick me up from school since I commuted to a magnet school far from my house. Besides flipping through classic rock stations, Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM played constantly in his cab on the way home. Dad loved talk of UFOs and strange phenomenon, and me being the weird kid I was, I enjoyed these episodes of hauntings, astral projection, aliens, cryptids and everything bizarre or unexplainable. Art Bell’s calm, personable voice always contrasted with the wild stories that people would send him, but he was always open-minded, allowing people room to share their thoughts and experiences. Some episodes were hokey, hilarious, and downright weird, but when Bell did a series on shadow people, I remember what an impression it left.

Thousands of people had written to Bell about the shadow people; it was not a new phenomenon. But this time, when he read the letter aloud about this person’s experience with the shadow people, described as dark beings or entities that lurk in the shadows of our peripheral vision, a sense of dread, almost imperceptible, overtook me. They were described as black or gray, sometimes ghostly with defined forms, others more amorphous like smoke and there were many theories as to why some people could see them and others could not, including changes in sound and light and radio wave frequencies, new computer technologies altering our perceptions, biology and much more. I was able to find a podcast that archives old Coast to Coast episodes, and this very well may have been one I listened to in the car with my dad. What strikes me about this recording is that at one point, Bell iterates, “they’re all around us and they’re real; I don’t have the slightest idea what they are.”

 That episode I heard in high school creeped me out like no other stories on the show had. I have always been intrigued by the supernatural and have loved horror and the paranormal since I was a child, but I am also very sensitive and was easily scared. Maybe it was because I was a teenage girl in her first year of high school at a new school, vulnerable to bullying and harassment and under a lot of academic pressure, but there was something sinister about the idea of entities that could see us, could see me and not know what they were or what intentions they had towards those who could catch a glimpse of them.

After a while, I subsequently forgot about the episode we heard in the busyness of school, church youth group activities and theater. That was until I was alone in my bathroom one morning, brushing my hair or washing my face. I wore glasses, and in the blur of the low light, I began to see dark shapes in my peripheral vision. For just a second, one of the shapes had the form of a tall black humanoid shape, almost like the Slenderman. I put my glasses back on, looking around me to find the source of the dark shapes behind me. Of course, there was nothing there.

I’ve never seen the shadow person again in such definition since then, but every now and then that memory comes roaring back when I see movement out of the corner of my eye, a shadow in the doorway, a flickering of something, or someone just out of reach of my full consciousness. For those of us who have glimpsed these phenomenon, is it just a trick of the mind, or are we perceiving across dimensions, pulling back a veil to some unknown place? 

Author Interview

The Night Librarian: That’s a truly chilling story. I think if I saw a shadow person I would have a hard time relaxing for a long time afterward… Can you tell us how you prioritize self care and wellness in your routine?

Leticia: It used to be very important to me to write daily or have a very set routine. As time goes on and I have navigated living with chronic illness, my need to have a strict routine has changed and become more flexible. I appreciate prioritizing making space for creative time but I also try not to be hard on myself when I don’t meet a particular deadline or goal, because I know I can always come back to that project. Just as I am a mood reader, I am often a mood writer too, and it can be pleasant and more fulfilling to follow where the energy goes rather than trying to force myself to create on demand. That’s why I started a monthly newsletter of “creative obsessions,” to connect with other writers, readers and creators and share what creative ideas or activities I feel most connected to at any given time.

The Night Librarian: What five words would you use to convince people to buy your book?

Leticia:  The monster you made me

The Night Librarian: Are you working on a new project right now? What can you tell us about it?

Leticia: My next book, The Remedy is the Disease, a collection of dark fiction, body horror and speculative stories, comes out in Spring 2026 from Undertaker Books, so I am currently working on adding to and revising those stories. I am excited to share that work with the world! I am also working on a poetry chapbook and a supernatural historical novel about a young Mexican American woman from South Texas who can communicate with the dead and who moves to Austin to connect to the Spiritualist societies there. There are many more projects I have cooking on a low simmer, but those three are my primary focus right now.

Follow Leticia: Website | Instagram | TikTok | BlueSky

In “La Mujer Alacran,” a woman who is sexually assaulted transforms into a literal “scorpion woman” in order to protect herself.  In “The Inbetween Mother,” a daughter attempts to reunite her selkie mother with her true form.