The "Shadowy Figures" are textureless NPC models, which randomly appear in the Super Mario 64 game. These events were removed right before the game released, and most of the reports and information come from isolated testing events promoted by Nintendo in 1996.
While the information is scarce, they all tell almost the same thing: Interacting with the Shadowy Figures caused several bugs such as textureless places, unusual locations, audio glitches to the point the TV had to be muted, bugged text and epilepsy attacks due fast lights. The results varied between players.
However, due to the Personalisation A.I occurrences of bringing deleted objects or bugs to the final version, some players found the shadow figures, and shortly afterwards report that interacting with them fried the cartridges and / or consoles.
Subject 1-90[]
Name or other personal informations were hidden, perfectly crossed over with permanent marker, or only described with "???", probably to protect the guinea pigs' personal identity.
The subject played for a total of 10 minutes before reaching Princess Peach's Castle, trying to adapt to the game's controls. Once he entered, he noticed a textureless Toad near the door, the model was looking like a shadow, making us believe it was a glitch. The company has explicitly told us to report any strange glitches during the tests, so we were already noting this one until the subjected interacted with them.
The text-box appeared, unreadable lines of random letters and numbers appeared, with no end. Along with, a loud noise that came from the TV ;it looked as though music increased its volume to the point of causing deafness. The subjected covered their ears while one of the workers present desperately tried to turn the television down, until he pulled it out. We were lucky that at least there were no side effects.
We will be sending this file to Nintendo to correct this glitch.
Subject 1-30[]
Just like the other guinea pigs, this file had no personal information about the players. All the checkboxes were marked with "???", or "unlisted". Subjected played normally trough the Castle Grounds and Bomb-Omb BattleField. They were about to talk with the red Bomb-Omb NPC in order to unlock the canon-blast, but the Bomb-Omb model had no textures, looking completely shadowy.
As the subjected interacted with, the TV started to flash lights too quickly, the subjected quickly fell down the ground and started to have seizures. An extremely loud noise came from the TV before it turned off before we noticed smoke and a horrible smell came from the console. Other present works quickly proceeded the subject. They went to the hospital right after this occurrence.
Additional comments: The subjected has report nightmares during it's staying in the hospital, mostly telling about noises coming from the corners in their room. According to them, they seemed like laughs, but in a very poor quality.
Subject 4-58[]
No personal information is being given in order to keep the tester's anonymity. Subjected played normally until reaching the Bowser level, his model had no texture, making it look like a shadow. The text-box appeared, but with only one word from the original text. The battle appeared normal until the subject grabbed Bowser's tail.
Once this was made, the game made a loud beep noise and he screen froze before the console restarted, the Super Mario 64 logo appeared, but when the character Mario spoke the catchphrase "It's a-me, Mario", the word "Mario" sounded extremely loud, to the point that the audio burst. Soon after that, the TV went blank, and we could smell burning plastic coming out of the console.
Subject 2-90[]
The file was all scribbled with a permanent ink marker, only a few words could be read and extracted from it.
Shadow... Fourth Floor... Laugh.
Subject 9-10[]
The file had been torn to pieces. But mostly seems like the subjected had a seizure while playing from what the remains can tell.
