Shade

Activity

• It’s generally less active than other ghosts.
• It does fewer ghost events at high sanity: at 100% average sanity its ghost events never succeed, and the chance goes up 2% for every point of sanity lost. At 50%, every ghost event it attempts succeeds.
• When it manifests during a ghost event, it appears as a shadow 2/3 of the time. If you make it appear with the Summoning Circle, the Music Box or the Monkey Paw, it’s a shadow 50% of the time and in its full form the rest. When the hunt starts it’s fully visible again.
• It can’t do the singing or appear ghost events. It does the mist form ghost event 60% of the time (20% for other ghosts).

What it can’t do with people nearby

• If at least one player is in the same room as it, it can’t interact (not even with the fuse box or with whatever the Voodoo Doll forces), do ghost events or start hunts, regardless of sanity. In those cases it enters the favorite room state.
• When it throws an object (during a hunt or outside one), it can’t use the variant where the object levitates and is thrown toward a player.
• During a hunt it can move doors even with someone in its room, like any ghost, but it still can’t blow out flames.

Hunt

It only hunts with average sanity below 35%, lower than most ghosts.

Strategy

• Because it’s so shy, the lack of interactions can give it away, or frustrate the team because it gives no evidence. In exchange, it’s one of the safest ghosts, because that shyness also holds back its hunts.
• To get activity: keep everyone out of its room, use Incense or certain cursed possessions that increase interactions, and turn off the lights in its room.
• Test on Nightmare or Insanity: bring average sanity down close to zero and put players in its room and the rooms next to it. If it doesn’t hunt, or only hunts from a room with no players, it could be a Shade. Have escape routes or Incense ready: if it’s not a Shade, it can hunt in the same room as you. It’s very dangerous because it shares two evidence with the Jinn (very hard to escape with the fuse box on) and the Revenant (almost certain death if it hunts in your room).
• Appearing as a shadow with cursed possessions isn’t guaranteed: seeing its full form with them doesn’t rule it out.

A common misconception

• It can still interact “through walls.” Every ghost has an interaction range. If the Shade is in a room with no players but its range reaches into a room with players, it can touch things in that room. (The same thing explains why ghosts can’t throw objects in a lit room.)
• Ghost events always happen where there’s a player, but the ghost doesn’t need to be there to start them: in physical events it teleports to the chosen player’s room (in mist form events, it doesn’t). The same goes for the Shade.

Trivia

Shade (Latin umbra, Greek skiá) is, in the mythology of many peoples, the ghost or spirit of a dead person that dwells in the afterlife.

Change history

Version	Change
Alpha, 24 March 2020	Added the Shade.
0.3.0	Before this version, its evidence was EMF Level 5, Ghost Orb and Ghost Writing.
0.5.0	1 player in its room (previously 2) is enough to prevent its hunts. Being in its room prevents EMF 3 interactions. Prefers shadow form when manifesting. Its threshold drops from 50% to 35%.
0.5.2.0	At high sanity, its ghost events can fail.
(undated)	Can no longer interact if a player is in its room.
0.10.0	Can no longer blow out fire or write in the Ghost Writing Book if players are in its room.