From the author: An article about the illusory nature of perception and interpersonal interaction. Phantoms of perception often become stronger than reality and have an impact on a person’s life that he is not even aware of. There was a headless man standing on the railroad tracks... I saw him with my peripheral vision as I walked out of the forest along the tracks towards the house. It is difficult to convey the range of feelings that I managed to experience at that moment. Taking a closer look, I realized that it was some kind of railway box, on which a padded jacket was put on, apparently for protection from external influences, tied with a rope to be sure. But until the moment I realized this, a man without a head really existed. The emotions I was experiencing helped him materialize. As I have written in other articles, the energy of emotions has electrical potential. The sleep of my mind gave birth to a monster for a few seconds. Suppose that I turned out to be less stable, lost my balance out of fear, fell on the railroad tracks, and lost consciousness. Then the train would start. Then a terrible legend would be born about a “black railroad worker” who pushes people under the wheels. Here's the plot for a small thriller. I am convinced that the basis for all horror movie plots has a real origin. Everything that causes an active emotional reaction exists in reality. It turns out that our psychological life is realized in several dimensions. On the one hand, real people, things and phenomena. On the other hand, their images are colored by our imagination. When we communicate with a boss whom we are mortally afraid of, who are we interacting with at that moment - with a living person or with a phantom of our imagination? What if we assume that this boss also has his own emotional phantom towards us? Who is interacting with whom at the moment? Schizophrenia is much closer than it seems. Moreover, emotional phantoms cause a much stronger psychophysical reaction than real interaction with life. Life without phantoms is impossible. This is a kind of consequence of socialization. Babies have no illusions. They have only open sensory contact with the world. And as language occupies the brain, a social space of speech and relationships is created. There is no place for sensory experience. And he reminds of himself with the terrible horror of depth and height, the ominous silence of the cemetery. Phantoms can not only threaten, but also protect and inspire. The presence of emotional shadows is evidence that we are alive. It’s just that sometimes, as in the fairy tale of the same name by Evgeniy Schwartz, a shadow gains power and then life turns into a theater of the absurd. You just need to be able to say in time: “Shadow, know your place».