The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 594: The Midnight Game | When Ancient Shadows Come To Play (STRIPPED)

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

The Midnight Game begins with a drop of blood, a candle, and 22 knocks at the stroke of midnight. What follows is an ancient pagan ritual reborn in the digital age – a deadly game of hide and seek with a shadow entity known as the Midnight Man. From its origins as punishment to its spread across college campuses worldwide, this ritual has left countless participants traumatized by what they've encountered. The rules are simple: maintain your candlelight and avoid the Midnight Man until 3:33 AM. Victims report seeing the same entity – a tall, thin shadow with unnatural movements and conscious intent. The Midnight Man isn't alone, however, but part of a global phenomenon of shadow beings that appear consistently across cultures throughout human history. Scientists and paranormal researchers alike have documented strange occurrences during ritual attempts, from sudden temperature drops to inexplicable equipment failures. The Midnight Man waits in the darkness between worlds, just a ritual away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1jSDHxUmMM&t=268s SOURCES & LINKS Shadow People and The Hat Man:    • Shadow People and The Hat Man | Who a...  Who are The Dark Watchers?    • Who are The Dark Watchers? Don't star...  

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The house is empty, silent. You check your watch. It's almost time. Blood from your finger falls onto the paper where you've written your name. You light a candle and place everything by the door. At exactly 11.59, you begin knocking. 22 times. The final knock lands at exactly midnight. You open the door, blow out the candle, close the door, and relight the flame. The room changes. The air turns cold. Something moves at the edge of your vision. You hear a whisper. You're not alone.

The midnight game has begun. There's no turning back now. You have until 3.33 to survive, but the shadow in the corner has other plans. Humans have always been attracted to rituals that summon the darkness. Bloody Mary appears in your bathroom mirror after saying her name three times. Candyman works the same way. Light as a feather, stiff as a board requires chanting to unlock levitation. In the elevator game, you press the buttons in a certain order. The last button is the fifth floor. When the doors open, a woman will enter. It's crucial that you don't look at her, speak to her, or even acknowledge her in any way. She is not human.

Then you press the button for the first floor. If you did everything right, the elevator will actually go up, not down, and you'll enter a dimension called the other world. All these rituals have tasks that have to be performed in a specific way in a specific order. The midnight game works the same way. It began centuries ago as an ancient pagan ritual. It wasn't a game then. It was punishment or judgment.

The person was placed in a dark room or cave with a single candle for light. The room was then sealed. The elders started knocking. They would knock exactly 22 times. Why 22? Many cultures associate 22 with mystical properties. 2 times 11, a master number in numerology. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. The major arcana in tarot contains 22 cards.

All symbolize a bridge between worlds, the living and the dead, light and shadow. After the 22nd knock, the accused was left alone with whatever they'd summoned across that bridge. In the morning, the elders unsealed the chamber. Some people were dead, eyes still open in fear. Survivors were in shock, unable to speak. Some people were dead, eyes still open in fear. Survivors were in shock, unable to speak. Some people descended into madness. But all reported the same thing. A shadowy figure, not quite human, tortured them with fear and violence. This shadow entity became known as the Midnight Man. The ritual vanished from history until 2010.

A post appeared on a paranormal message board with instructions on how to summon the Midnight Man. The user found it in his grandfather's journal, written in faded ink, pages stained with dried blood. The post quickly spread across websites and message boards. The instructions are simple, but you have to be precise. Total darkness, total silence, blood on paper, 22 knocks ending exactly at midnight, and the darkness. You'll know if you follow the steps properly. The air turns cold. The darkness

shifts in front of your eyes. The midnight man arrives, and he's ready to play. Once you've performed the necessary steps in the right order at exactly the right time, you've summoned the Midnight Man. You've challenged his shadow entity to play the Midnight Game, and he gladly accepts. To win the game, all you have to do is avoid the Midnight Man until 3.33 a.m. and keep your candle lit. That won't be as easy as it sounds. The Midnight Man is going to do everything he can to leave you in complete darkness. Then you're in his world, the shadow world, where all your fears become real. Pay close attention to the temperature. If you feel cold or hear breathing, move and keep moving. The midnight man has found you.

But no matter what, keep that candle burning. If it goes out, you have 10 seconds to relight it. If you don't relight your candle in time, you have only one hope, salt. Surround yourself with a circle of salt. Sit and wait until 333. If you leave the circle, you lose. If you turn on a light, you lose. Leave the house, fall asleep, use someone else's blood, you lose. The hallucinations come next. Now this is where the Midnight Man shows his true power. He can read your thoughts.

He can bring your most terrifying fears to the surface. Fear spiders? You'll be swarmed with stinging tarantulas. Fear drowning? The Midnight Man will hold you underwater, drowning you again and again and again. At sunrise, the Midnight Man retreats to the shadows. If you're able to avoid him, you're safe. But if you didn't, the game continues.

The hallucinations follow you into your dreams, turning every fear you have against you. All you can do is go back to sleep and hope the Midnight Man has been satisfied or found another victim. That's where the internet helped. The ritual spread from forums to message boards to social media. Eventually, it landed in college dorms. The Midnight Man had found a new hunting ground, and thousands of students would be his new prey. Craving a thrill that doesn't require a plane ticket or a passport,

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TreadExperts.ca Online forums are full of Midnight Game accounts at Midnight Man Encounters. Real ones. People sharing what happened to them, what they saw, what they felt. One college student posted about her experience on Reddit. Her candle suddenly went out. The room went cold, ice cold. Then she saw him. I decided to try the Midnight Game after reading about it online. My roommates were gone for the weekend, so I had the place to myself. Everything was going fine for the first hour.

I kept moving through the house like the instructions said. Then, around 1.30 a.m., my candle suddenly went out. The temperature dropped instantly. I mean, I could see my breath. I fumbled with my lyre and matched when I saw it. A pure black humanoid figure standing in the darkness. Not just shadow dark, but like it was absorbing the light around it. It never moved so fast in my life.

That the candle lit with shaking hands just under the 10 second mark. A guy from Portland played with three of his friends. They all heard voices, strange whispering in an ancient language. About an hour in, my candle flickered. The air felt heavy, like right before a storm. We heard this whispering, not English, not any language we recognized. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. And there were these layered voices, some fast, some slow, all overlapping.

Something a lot of the witnesses have in common? They regret playing the game. Looking back, I shouldn't have tried it alone. I started in my bedroom, then moved downstairs to the living room. Around 2 a.m., the candle went out. I felt this intense cold wash over me. My fingers were so numb, I could barely work the lighter. I kept trying, but it was definitely past the 10-second mark.

Then I saw a dark figure standing before me. Not just the shadow, it had form. I completely forgot about the salt. I had horrible nightmares for weeks afterward. I couldn't sleep without the lights on. My parents didn't believe me, but they didn't see what I saw. The Midnight Man encounters aren't always the same. Some people hear whispers in languages they don't understand.

Some report the room being so cold they could see their breath. Some have nightmares for weeks after. They're all a little different. But all the Midnight Man encounters have one thing in after. They're all a little different. But all the Midnight Man encounters have one thing in common. They all see the same entity, a shadow, human-like but extremely tall and thin. It moves unnaturally but has its own will. Reports like this exist all over the world and always have. Ancient shadow beings in folklore. Modern shadow people sightings. The Midnight Man isn't new.

He's just one version of something older. Something ancient. Something that's been haunting and tormenting humans for a very long time. The Midnight Man isn't unique. Cultures from all over the world have stories about shadow entities. In Newfoundland, the old hag sits on sleepers' chests. Chinese folklore speaks of guiyeye Shen, ghost pressing on body. Japanese Kaneshibari, bound by invisible forces. Germany has the Schattenwesen, shadow beings. Ancient

Egypt's shadow people lived in the realm between life and death, again the bridge between two worlds. Scientists at the University of British Columbia studied sensory deprivation effects. They put subjects in dark, silent chambers and monitored their brain functions. After just 45 minutes, most people reported sensing a presence, seeing shadows move. But nothing was there. Or was it? Brain scans showed unusual activity in the parietal lobe. That's the area that processes spatial awareness and perception. The people were seeing

something in the darkness, but if nothing was there, why did their brains think there was? We don't see well in the dark, but our awareness heightens. You ever get the feeling you're being watched, but nobody's there? Your brain might be detecting something your eyes can't. The 3.33 end time appears in multiple cultures. The witching hour is traditionally 3 a.m., when the veil between worlds is thinnest. Paranormal investigators report increased activity between 3 and 4 a.m. Playing the midnight game has caused environmental changes that have been documented. Temperature drops of 15 to 20 degrees.

Electronic equipment fails. Batteries drain suddenly. Now, you might not believe in shadow people, but the U.S. government does. The Department of Defense conducted classified research in the 1970s to study supernatural phenomena and ESP. Project Stargate is the most famous. It's known for its work on remote viewing, and I've covered it many times. But there are references in Stargate to shadow entities in declassified files.

The project was officially closed down. Officially. Unofficially, I'm not so sure. Shadow people reports are consistent across continents and cultures throughout human history. First, the feeling of being watched. Then, hunted. Finally, the figure appears. Three-dimensional.

Not just a flat shadow. They have mass and consciousness and intent. And that intent is evil. Now I'm speaking from experience. I had a shadow person encounter when I was in my late 30s. It was the scariest thing I'd ever experienced before or since. And I tell the story in the shadow person episode linked below. Not only did I see this entity, I was physically attacked by it. The Midnight Game is designed to attract these entities. And the Midnight Man is always there, waiting between worlds, just on the other side of the door.

All you have to do is invite him in. When I started on this episode, I thought the Midnight Game was just another urban legend like Bloody Mary or the Elevator Game. Easy to debunk. Then I realized it's about a shadow entity. And I became afraid. I had a shadow person experience. And there are a few kinds of shadow beings that people report. The hat man, the cloaked figure, the child, the red-eyed shadow,

and the one that attacked me, the one we talked about from Newfoundland, that one's called the hag. I remember it vividly. I woke up in the middle of the night, and then I saw her. Not a shadow, the hag. A decrepit old woman like a witch at the foot of my bed, staring at me, smiling. And not a warm smile, like a predator. Then she climbed in bed on top of me, and I don't want to get into it.

You can watch the episode. I tell the story there. So did this experience make me a believer? No. Then what happened? Well, first let's sort out the Midnight Game. The historical claims about ancient pagan punishment, there's no evidence for that. No anthropological records, no historical texts. The earliest mentions of the Midnight Man appear online around 2010, on creepypasta forums like 4chan's Paranormal Board and Reddit's NoSleep.

The story did spread quickly. Urban legends used to take years to catch on. Now something like this can go viral in a couple of days. Within a few years, teens everywhere were attempting the ritual. Teenagers are often drawn to games that involve summoning evil. Adolescence is a time for pushing boundaries and taking risks. In the brain, the prefrontal cortex handles decision making, impulse control, and risk risks. In the brain, the prefrontal cortex handles decision-making, impulse control, and risk assessment. During adolescence, this part of the brain is still developing. Dump in a bunch of hormones on top of a still mushy brain, and you get thousands of teens knocking on doors at midnight trying to meet the midnight man. Now, after that,

teens post about their experiences online. They aren't known for their honesty, especially on the Internet. This creates a feedback loop of shared details, explaining why accounts sound so similar. But I wasn't a teenager when the hag attacked me. Shadow people mostly come from adults. Then the experiences are similar. So are shadow people real? Probably not. But our brains can make them feel real.

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You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. Our brains evolved for one priority, survival. For millions of years, humans weren't the apex predator. We were prey.

Our ancestors who detected danger fastest lived longer. They passed those detection systems to us. Your brain has an alarm system called the amygdala. This small almond-shaped region constantly scans for threats. When it finds something even suspicious, it triggers fear instantly. No waiting for your rational mind to catch up. Fear first, questions later. This is the fight or flight response. And darkness changes everything. Your vision degrades, shapes blur, details vanish. Our brain hates uncertainty, so it fills in the gaps with worst-case scenarios. Anything to get you moving. Your peripheral vision becomes more sensitive to

movement in low light. You catch flickers that aren't there. Your brain is trying to detect predators before they detect you. In darkness, your brain creates patterns from random stimuli. This is pareidolia. A shadow becomes a figure. A coat becomes a person. Tell someone about the Midnight Man first, and their brain is actively looking out for it. This isn't weakness. It's your million-year-old survival system functioning exactly as designed.

Another trick is the ideomotor effect. Your unconscious mind makes tiny muscle movements you don't notice. These micro-movements happen when you expect something to happen, when you expect something to move. Like on a Ouija board, nobody consciously pushes the planchette, but unconscious micro-movements make it slide across the board. Everyone swears they didn't move it. And they're being honest. Their conscious minds didn't move it. Their unconscious did. Most shadow person experiences happen when you're drifting off to sleep. While you dream, your motor functions get suppressed. This is sleep paralysis. If you're still awake when this happens, your brain panics.

You can't move. It's dark. Your amygdala fires up, and suddenly you're seeing an evil entity. Get moving. A lot of this is connected to sleep. Methamphetamine users report shadow figures after prolonged sleep deprivation. One addict said you don't see shadow dogs or shadow birds, you see shadow people. This chemical connection suggests our brains are hardwired to generate these specific forms, forms that we'd consider dangerous. Our brains evolved to keep us alive, not tell us the truth. The Midnight Man feels real because your brain makes him real.

Better to see a predator that isn't there than miss one that is. That's why, real or not, you shouldn't play the Midnight Game. The entity might not be real, but the terror is. And true terror changes you, like it changed me. These type of games prime your mind for fear on an unconscious level.

You have fears buried deep down in your mind you don't even know about. Childhood trauma, nightmares, painful, horrible experiences. Your brain tries to protect you by locking these memories away. But they're still there, waiting. So be very careful when you start

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