Hmm, this addon should only make one copy of the ragdoll (the puppeteer) and modify its pose, probably an edge case that causing multiple puppeteers to spawn. To clarify, there should only be one ragdoll being controlled. By dark shadows, are you referring to the blue puppeteer, or the shadows cast by the ragdoll itself?

Before checking if it's a problem with addons, you might want to check if you can reproduce the issue again without them. Pop "-noworkshop" into Garry's Mod's launch options (In the Steam Library, right-click Garry's Mod, click Properties, and edit the launch options entry) and see if you encounter the issue again

wouldn't noworkshop also disable puppeteer, since not everyone has it in local addons

Good catch. I think to make it easier for you so you don’t have to disable all your addons (since u might run into some issues with enabling addons that you intentionally disabled), you can just go to the source code[github.com] and download from there.

Click the green Code<> button, and click download zip, and plop the animated-ragdoll-tool-main folder from the zip into your addons folder

i figured out that it was an issue with a render addon i had, can't remember the name but i got rid of it and have had no further issue yet, thanks for all the help.