Ray-traced shadows will be pitch black if you use the correct settings for lighting and materials. The "light emitter" property is only of relevance if you have "indirect light" on in the render settings.

For the light, the shadow will be black only if the "Shadow" parameter is set to 1 (which is highly recommended in any case for realistic renders).

For materials, the shadow will be not black if you have ambient (or translucence, maybe also alternate diffuse) in the material, i.e. anything that may be independent from direct lighting. As EnglishBob said, do a render without any lights on to see if some material glows.

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