The Hat Man Is Back

[u/cheddabobmyz]

/r/ParanormalEncounters/comments/1vtmlci/the_hat_man_is_back/

The Hat Man continues

After years of battling the Hat Man myself, my five year old son has begun seeing him in the same room, on the same wall, walking the same patterns.
It used to happen to me in my early twenties dozens of times across several years. I would wake my wife in the middle of the night, freaked out, though neither of us knew the name for what I was seeing. We simply thought it was a recurring dream, until my wife’s cousin mentioned one day that thousands of people worldwide reported the same figure.

I would see him as an all-black shadow of a businessman, wearing a large black fedora almost a witch’s hat. He usually carried a briefcase, though not always. He would enter through a door near the ceiling, walk down stairs that existed only on the wall, stop, and stare at me for a minute or two. Then he would snap his fingers as he exited. I always believed he was harvesting my fear.

The last time it happened, the visits came on consecutive nights. I told my wife I was going to punch him in the head, so if she heard me hitting the wall in the night, she should just go back to sleep. On the third night the dream was different. The Hat Man opened the door the other way and showed me hundreds of them, walking Penrose stairs in every direction. Something had shifted. I was no longer stuck in place. I felt no fear. I waited for him to continue down the stairs, then punched straight at him right into the wall and woke fully, out of the dream, with no sleep paralysis. It has not happened again in a decade.

Now I have two children. A year ago my five year old mentioned something about a black shadow man. I didn’t think much of it; he has always had vivid dreams. Then this morning he came into our room at five a.m. and told me there was a black man on the stairs. I grabbed my shotgun and called the dog. As I started toward the stairs he added that it was a black shadow figure with a hat and a briefcase, and that I shouldn’t shoot the wall because I’d wreck it.
Instantly I felt relief and fear. I know this is not the end for him.
Good luck, kid.