Anyone ever encounter the shadow people in dreams?

Not sure if they're people or demons. Crossed two who tricked me into entering a darkened room. Conventional weapons don't work. Prayer seems to be the only weapon they fear, but there are some more powerful than others, who do not flee, but hold onto the dream, just so you will know - just so you can know they can be very close. Closer than you would ever like to know, or encounter.

Best I can describe is this. Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? Have you ever visually spotted what it is in the dark that brings the dread and fear in nights of terror? I would guess not, because our consciousness would not be able to comprehend exactly what it is. It. What did the ancients, our ancestors, consider them as?

Usually there is a warning. You feel it coming. Either down a darkened corridor, or an approaching cloud. Never do you directly see it, but you can feel it. You begin to fervently pray, and then you are whisked away before any harm comes to the astral body.

Now what if they set a trap. Caused a sound to emanate from an obscure room within your dream's house. Concerned, you enter, expecting to find the cat that produced the mew.

Instead, you're confronted by two figures in darkness. They are visually indescribable in within blackness. But they are standing at arms reach, that much you do know. Their faces twisting within shadow. In shock, you stumble backwards, out of molasses. Groping at the walls behind you, never taking your eyes away from the room in dark, you escape to a room with a light to your back. You pull a gun. There are intruders in your house. You fire into the shadowed corridor... Click... nothing happens. You're gun doesn't work! Click... Click... The silence. The stillness. The unknowing sense of dreadful powerlessness being within a place, within some other place, familiar, yet simultaneously, awfully unawares. What else can you do, but pray, and try to awake. 1 second feels like twenty, 2 seconds feels like eternity, 3, it can't be, why am I still here? 4 ... What were those... forms?