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It has always been supposed that "The Shadow" was merely a pseudonym, adopted by the infamous spiritual bounty hunter to conceal his true identity, and many were the guesses made as to who he might be. But now it can be revealed EXCLUSIVELY on these pages, that The Shadow is, in fact, a shadow.   The following facts have been unearthed at great personal risk by The Soaptown Reporter's hack on spiritual matters.   The Shadow came into being at the same time as his caster, a man whose name we have been unable to determine, in spite of diligent inquiries, but who apparently developed an early and disastrous interest in the supernatural. In one experiment, to prove that the real and the unreal were one and the same thing, the man "temporarily" invested his shadow with independent thought and motion. The Shadow, whose cunning was now as great as the man's own, used his caster's own knowledge of the supernatural to shut his unfortunate caster up in a spiritual twilight world, which is "neither here nor there", to use The Shadow's own words, but in a region remote from both, whose entrance lies hidden in a pea, in a potato, in a melon, in a chest, in a cellar, in a castle, in a dense forest, in a little frequented valley, surrounded by poisonous wastelands, somewhere on the astral plane.   Freed of the burden of constantly imitating his caster, and now, at last, "his own shadow", The Shadow began his career of spiritual bounty hunting, using his caster's clothes and flesh-coloured gloves and face mask to hide his shadowness. Being a shadow, he can, of course, pass through quite small openings, such as keyholes, although, like humans, he cannot pass through solid material.   So successful was The Shadow in concealing his lack of substance, that he was eventually elected chairman of Soaptown's Spiritualism Society, whose president is the renowned Madame Shamsky. In spite of clashing many times on differences of policy with Madame Shamsky, The Shadow has continues to hold his position up to the present day, and rumours has it that he has used that position to further his own career on more than one occasion.   But on foot of the revelations in this paper, the Spiritualism Society had called an extraordinary meeting for next Thursday, at which it is expected The Shadow will be ousted, under Rule 666FFF of the Society, which expressively forbids membership to a shade. It is unlikely, however, that The Shadow will leave without a fight, so, taking every precaution to protect its citizens, the local UDC has called for a curfew from eight o'clock onwards, when the meeting is due to start.