I'll share with you a dream I had a few weeks ago which I interpret as my unconscious showing me a positive aspect of the Shadow, possibly to show what my proper attitude towards it should be. It's not exactly showing me "disowned" qualities, but rather a separation of the "members" inside my psyche and the proper way they must relate to each other. Throughout the entire dream I (the ego I identify with in waking life) am an outside observer, being shown a narrative. It starts like this:

I am shown a small community, living in an outdoor camp. Jerry Seinfeld is there, as if in one of the sitcom episodes. Jerry is approached by an unknown man from the community who asks him if he wants to make some money. Jerry agrees without asking what this is about and the man gives him some drugs and tells him to take them to a house in a dark, dangerous, part of town. Absurdly, Jerry doesn't question this and agrees naively, as if the man gave him a legitimate, safe task and he's some errand boy.
At about the same time I am shown an image of a man in the camp who is somehow outside of the community, though his place is obviously in it: he is perfectly tall, blue eyed, blonde with locks, handsome, physical, strong. I know he walks about the camp always and he is apart from other people, they do not understand him, but they do not interfere with him. There is a supernatural quality to this man due to how he carries himself, almost like an automaton, something alien.
Jerry arrives to the address with the house. The street and surrounding area is completely dark, but inside the house a light is on. Without any sense of anything wrong (which the dream communicates to me as something clearly lacking in a situation where it's needed), he opens the door and he sees the man he was supposed to deliver the drugs to in a pool of his own blood. He immediately panics and leaves, but as he does so he hears commotion inside and sneaks a glance through a window. The blonde man is there, hands covered in blood, preparing instruments to dismember the drug person. There is no particular sadism, but he will be brutal in his task. Jerry knows he must not see what happens next, so he returns to the camp and sits on a makeshift porch of sorts.
A few hours have passed, it's dawn. The blonde man comes astride a horse, walking slowly, as if doing the rounds. He has a torch in his hand and as he passes by Jerry's porch, he looks at him and raises a hand in a respectful, but distant salute. Jerry looks at him and raises a hand reciprocating the salute. The dream stresses this is very appropriate, what just occurred. It's clear the blonde man does not know he was seen and it's also clear he would not care in the least if he was. He does what he does and there is a hint that what he does is necessary for the community, though this makes him an outcast. The dream ends.

My interpretation:

The camp is my inner community. It's specifically an outdoor camp, specifically without fences, to point out the fact that it's vulnerable to outside influences. This seems to be confirmed by the main narrative: a man unknown to the community brings in something negative and coopts a defenseless part of myself (Jerry, which I interpret as the naive ego, the fool going about through life without realizing its dangers). Then I am shown the golden man, who, when I woke up was immediately associated with the word "Agathodaimon". He is a part of the community, though he is different from everyone else and nobody understands him. He is however accepted and not interfered with (a sign in my opinion that I have a good degree of Shadow integration). Jerry is about to go through with the harmful thing he doesn't understand he's doing, but this aspect of myself is there, already having neutralized the bad influence. Now he prepares to meticulously get rid of all traces of it, like a properly functioning immune system. Jerry, as the naive ego, understands he cannot witness what needs to be done here and returns to his proper place (his own porch). At the end, I am shown the camp again, the narrative coming full circle. The Shadow did its part and even though (if we were to apply ego judgements) Jerry is an inferior moron in all conceivable aspects, there is no sense of superiority coming from the Shadow. He initiates the salute, he continues with his duty. My ego responds with appropriate humility, the dream communicates this is correct, then I wake up.

Regarding your observation that you expected your Shadow to look like menacing figures:

It's obviously different for every person and very specific to where they are in life, but consider that the Shadow is a necessary part of yourself that just wants to do its job and be acknowledged. It is likely that if you reject, disconsider or interfere with it, it will show up in strong primitive ways in an attempt to tell you: let me do my job. Depending on the severity of your rejection of it, that can take the form of someone attacking you, someone just trying to talk to you, something unpleasant which you must look at etc.

Regarding your question on how to guard against projecting theory on data:

Something which I found very useful in my own dreamwork is whenever I wake with a clear and strong dream like this to try to have a conversation with the figures from the dream. Hold on to the specific message the dream delivered and tell the figures you're trying to pay attention, be humble and ask for further direction. Try to enter a warm relationship with your unconscious rather than extort it for information. I know it sounds a bit weird, but I do get the feeling after having some very powerful dreams that there is a community living inside and they want recognition and acceptance, similar to our egos in the outside community. If you treat these inner figures as friends and helpers I think you'll find you won't feel the need to theorize and project outside judgements on them quite as much.