The Shadow Hunter by Koldo Barroso, 2009

“In the silence of the winter nights, amidst the labyrinth of silent alleyways of the sleeping city, you might hear the tormented steps of The Shadow Hunter, scrutinizing every corner with the abrasive light of his lamp. And if you dare to peek out your window, you might encounter a picture that you will regret having had seen for the rest of your days. Because The Shadow Hunter will unveil an invisible world of sinister figures to your naked eyes. Those who weave the web of a tragic destiny while you sleep placidly in seeming shelter.”

This dismal text from a newspaper published in London in 1893, portrays a pretty overdrawn picture of Professor Torsten Uhlenbrock, popularly known as ‘The Shadow Hunter’. But there is more behind his cryptic figure than a caricaturesque portray in children’s rhymes. In fact, before his tragic legend started, Professor Uhlenbrock had been a distinguished scientist at London’s Royal College of Chemistry who gained a reputation for his investigations on liquid fuels for domestic use.

Unfortunately, in 1879, aged 24 years old, he was the victim of a tragic accident during a chemical experiment, suffering from bad injuries in part of his body. His face was tragically disfigured, he remained blind for the rest of his life and consequently he was removed from the scholar life. Apparently, whatever provoked the unexpectedly fierce reaction was a fatal mistake in the mixture of one of the chemical products during the experiment. Professor Uhlenbrock, he who was a meticulous scientist, spent the rest of his life trying to understand how he let such a stupid mistake happen. From that dreadful day on, he tortured himself and formulated the most outrageous theories about accidents and errors.

Inspired by having glanced at the shadow of a little creature messing around in the laboratory at the very moment of the sulfur explosion, he spent several years creating a chemical element that would allow him to see this creature again, so he could investigate the nature of the accident. In the darkness of blindness, he locked himself in his private laboratory and worked for several years to develop a gas that, used as a combustible for lamps, would cast a green electric light similar to the one that occurred in the accident. Ever since, he spent every night of his life walking around the dark streets of London with the obsession of hunting the same creatures he said provoked his unfortunate fate, casting shadows on the walls.

In 1890, Professor Uhlenbrock announced he had discovered a race of little creatures who, in a familiar way he called “Troubledoodles”, were invisible to the naked eye but could be only seen by blind people by the green light of his special lamp. He chased them, watched them and classified them in several volumes. He described them as the real and sole cause for all accidents in life: dropping glasses, knife cuts, forgotten anniversaries… they were all to blame for the mischievous actions of these little Troubledoodles! The scientific world took him as a fool.

Curiously, many years after Professor Uhlenbrock’s death, in 1958, an American psychologist William C. Fonzarelli said he had an encounter of the same nature with these same creatures during a series of hypnosis sessions. He formulated a series of hypothesis about them in a different direction than Professor Uhlenbrock’s misstatements, he pointed out that these little Troubledoodlers are actually a mere product of the human subconscious and they’re also responsible for the happening of all the beneficial synchronicities in our lives.

In a report about his work, published in “The American Psychologist” magazine, 1964, C. Fonzarelli said: “The little bastard that provoked regret and torturous obsession in Professor Uhlenbrock’s life was, as a matter of fact, his very savior. This subliminal figure was sent out by his subconscious mind, right in that very second, in order to cast a synchronicity that would change his life. Uhlenbrock never realized that the worst of his enemies was himself and he was the one who created his own hell!”.

Detail of ‘The Shadow Hunter’