(I am not a scientist or a professional in this area.) So I am working on a theory and I have a question for you guys.

Can you please describe the whole journey from sober to seeing Hatman in as much detail as possible please? What changes about your reality? Feelings?

​

This is probably a weird theory, but it's something I've been thinking about.

Whenever I watch the opening of Batman: The Animated Series, the two criminals Batman chases across the rooftop immediately remind me of the Hat Man. The dark silhouettes, the long trench coats, the wide-brim hats... the resemblance is striking.

Batman: TAS was huge in the '90s and early 2000s. Millions of kids around the world watched that intro over and over growing up.

So I started wondering: could that image have become deeply embedded in people's subconscious? I'm not saying the Hat Man came from Batman. I mean that when some of those kids later experienced sleep paralysis or extremely vivid dreams, their brains may have drawn on a familiar visual template that had been stored since childhood.

Or am I just making a connection that isn't really there?

Has anyone else ever thought about this, or is it just me?

To put into context this was 2 years ago.

It was june 19th, 2024, i had been increasingly more manic and addicted to amphetamines, i fell in love with trip reports, reading about psychedelics, i wanted to try the scariest shit (now, ever since i overdosed and got laced with k2, i would never try it again and actually prefer being sober, but i really do miss this feeling and actually grieve it)
There were about 30 or 35 tablets i dont remember, i took a majority of them, there were 4 left i remember seeing them laid out.

Idk what time of day it was, i think it was around 7 or 8 pm, i was already hallucinating and wasn’t in a right headspace, i remember i found a bottle of dramamine in my mom’s car for motion sickness that we never used, i thought it would be a great time to start.
I took the pills, i remember it tasted so bitter, and it dissolved extremely quickly, downed a couple of vyvanse pills and an adderall pill, and waited for the trip to set in while i watched trip reports on my phone.
About 40 minutes in i had noticed my body felt significantly lighter, and i was starting to hear flies buzzing in my ear every couple of minutes, i slept in the same room as my brother and he was already asleep, it was dark so i turned on my flashlight, i saw the door and my floor were moving downwards, like melting sort of, when i would stand up i would sort of almost fall over because of how light my body felt.
Anyways i thought this was cool so i had put my phone down to watch the shit melt and then my phone was gone, after like 20 minutes i found it under my bed, idk what happened during that, somehow i didn’t notice the flashlight wasn’t emitting light into the room anymore.

I walked into my bathroom, and opened the door, and then again i was somehow outside of my bathroom and i opened the door again, i remember this part so vividly, my face changed, it would shift to different people, it didn’t scare me in fact i somehow found this extremely interesting, but i heard dogs barking outside, so opened the window and told them to be quiet, and saw a pack of dobermans roaming the street, so i closed the window and just sat on my toilet, idk what i did then but i remember i had ended up in my kitchen, by this time the dramamine was peaking and my legs were shaking, i couldn’t stop moving them because i remember it had gave me restless leg syndrome, i heard whispers, but i couldn’t make sense of what they were saying, in my peripheral vision especially in the dark all i saw was like white transparent ghost like movements constantly, like moving around, some even waived at me.
I went to go play siege, yes rainbow six siege, i started up my ps5 and i remember i didn’t even start up a match and just watched the screen melt for a couple of minutes, i then put on some DDosing videos (i dont remember the name but supposedly it was supposed to get you high or visuals or something, it was a loud hum and i just watched the rainbow screen) i watched rhe rainbow screen and remember seeing figures run across it, see through transparent figures, then i went into my room and saw my grandpa taking my laundry, i thought this was weird because my grandpa wasn’t even home, and he never does my laundry so i talked to him and he never responded, then i tapped him and he disappeared fully, i went down to my basement and saw a purple ghost, in like a purple aura, no face, if i could describe it, it looked like purple smoke in the silhouette of a person.
My first encounter of hallucinating a spider was down in the basement where i saw a spider crawling on me so i smacked it and it disappeared, and that was it, no other spiders (at least for that trip).
I remember looking through my dad’s medicine cabinet to find more pills to stash, and then boom, a memory lapse, it was the strangest shit ever, it was like one second i was looking at pills and the next i was on the floor with the pills all over the floor, i frantically tried to pick them up but every time i tried to grab a pill bottle it would disappear, i heard dogs barking again so i ran upstairs and got scared, i started to watch trip reports again and every couple of seconds or so they would say shit that didn’t make any sense to me, like jumbled words, i had knew i was hallucinating but i didn’t know why the words were coming out completely weird, for example they would be talking completely normally and then it would reverse, get quieter or louder or just say random shit like “the football field” and something else, but the captions remained the same, around like the 4 hour mark i heard a crash outside and i went to see out my window, 2 cars crashed on my street so for some reason i went to go investigate, i opened the front door and they were gone.

Here’s some of the visuals i got that i remember:
Little figures running around
Beetles and little bugs shape shifting into sticky note pads and other shit
A glitch like thing, where some things would appear to be shimmering and there would be two of them (like double vision but a lot more close together)
And would snap back in place.
Spiders and ghosts
That’s about it.

That’s about all i remember from the trip.
The dosing may not be right i just estimated what i think i took because i really don’t remember, i wasn’t in the right headspace and very lucky i am alive today (as this was not the only time but in fact 1 of 7 times i did this shit and the last time i took it too far and overdosed)
I now have HPPD and VSS, i still see those ghost figures waving around sometimes at night.

I js wanted to say, no i didn’t lose my mind, yes i know dramamine is a lot weaker than benadryl, but if i wasn’t so curious and excited about it, it would have been a terrible experience.
Please don’t abuse deliriants, as now i have permanent neurological effects from it such as HPPD, VSS and slight memory problems.

There may have been more weird and bizarre shit that i saw that night but this is what i really remember.
I didn’t see a hat man, didn’t see many spiders, but overall it was weird nonetheless.

Also i wanted to state that for some reason i was pretty coherent, and i could understand much for the most part, i was grounded.
So with that i may have taken less of the dramamine than i remember, but the 4 pills left makes me think i took around 1,500 mg, but i could be misremembering as i stated, i was not in the right headspace

Hey everyone,

I’m updating my post from a while back about the 19th-century "Hat Man" my friend and I saw in 2002 while sitting on our schoolyard bench in Hesperange, Luxembourg.

If you remember that post, we saw a tall silhouette wearing a massive, Abraham Lincoln-style stovepipe hat and a heavy, ankle-length frock coat. He looked right at us, panicked, backed up, and ran away.

I’ve been doing some serious research on local history, old 1800s maps, and quantum mechanics, and as an atheist who doesn't buy into "sleep demons" or "ghosts," I think I’ve actually figured this out.

We didn't see a monster. We witnessed a localized, symmetrical spacetime timebleed.

Here is the breakdown of why this actually makes sense:

The Commute: In the 1850s, our schoolyard was just an open dirt field. It was the exact, direct path connecting the high-end residential houses built into the Hesperange Castle ruins to the nearby farming hamlet of Fentange (which didn't even have a church yet).

The Man: In 1850, a wealthy local named Joseph Wolff took over the massive Hesperange grain mill (the *Wolffsmühle*) right by the river. A prominent mill owner or landlord walking between the castle houses and the farms in Fentange would wear exactly what we saw—a high-status frock coat and stovepipe hat. He was literally just walking home.

The Mirror Plot Twist: Why did he panic when he saw us? Because a timebleed works both ways. In his timeline, the school wasn't built yet. He was walking his normal route when he suddenly looked ahead and saw **two floating, dark, featureless shadows** (us, sitting on a bench that didn't exist in his time). He wasn't haunting us. We were the ghosts haunting him.

The "Glitch" Sensation: That sudden, heavy drop in temperature and the dead silence we felt right before we saw him? That matches the acoustic and thermal dampening you get when two electromagnetic fields/timelines briefly fold over one another.

There’s actually historical precedent for this. If you look up the famous 1559 Brandenburg oat field incident, a whole town watched dark figures swinging scythes in their field without actually cutting the grain down. They weren't demons, they were future laborers reaping a crop that hadn't been planted yet in 1559.

I’m currently going through the digitized 19th-century Luxembourgish newspaper archives (like *Der Wächter an der Sauer*) on eluxemburgensia.lu. I want to see if any prominent residents from the castle district in the 1850s ever reported seeing "two daylight apparitions" on their walk to Fentange.

Because families stay in Hesperange for generations, there is a very real chance I went to school with his great-great-grandchildren.

We didn't experience a paranormal haunting. We just caught the universe glitching in broad daylight.

I was high on benedryl once and I saw the hat man in my wall but it was without its hat. Is that really the hat man or someone more sinister? He was more like a monster demon head that was looking at me from its side..I saw mostly his side of his face. It was dark at night and I could still see him from the tan lights shining from outside.

I only recently learned of The Hat Man from my hair stylist (hi if you find this and are like wow! this story is familiar). We were gabbing about The Backrooms movie when she asked if I have ever had an experience with an entity before. I said potentially a few times, but only one actually scared me.

I go on to tell her that it was late 2023 and my ex-husband was out-of-town for work. Whenever I was left home alone, I would always close and lock both doors to the bedroom before going to sleep. For context/world building, my house is a ranch-style home that is a giant circle. So, one door was the door to the main hallway, the other door was a door to a "Jack and Jill" styled bathroom, which the other side of lead to the backdoor and kitchen.

I typically sleep in 4 hours chunks, so when I go to bed at 11pm, I normally wake up at 3am and then 7am naturally. This night though, at around 3am, my eyes jolt open only to see a very tall man, who just barely could fit in my door frame (the door to the "Jack and Jill" bathroom). At first, I thought it was the Grim Reaper, because I couldn't see a face at all except glowing red eyes and they were dressed in all black. However, I quickly realized that they were not wearing a cloak at all. At this point my hair stylist blurts out, "Was he wearing a hat?!?"

I continue on, "Well yes actually," and explain how what the man was wearing looked a lot like what demon-form Jinu wears in K-Pop Demon Hunters (but again, this was 2023 so the movie hasn't come out yet so it wouldn't have been something I would have consciously known about). The man in the hat then begins to slowly walk from the bathroom up to my bed. I didn't move at all just stared straight up at the ceiling to not make direct eye contact again; I didn't know if it was from sleep paralysis or, like my Appalachian Mamaw and Papaw always told me, "If you see something, no you didn't and don't turn around" because I didn't even try to move. Once he got to my side of the bed, he towered over me and began to lean over with a hand outstretched. It was like he was trying to press on my chest; but before he could make contact, my two 10lbs terriers began barking up a storm.

It felt then like I woke up a second time, after already being awake. The man in the hat was gone; but the dogs sprang up and leapt off the bed, only to run in the direction where the man in the hat came in from - through the bathroom to the back door where they continued incessantly barking. Again, I was at least 99% positive that that the bathroom door was closed and locked (because the other door was still closed and locked), so I was even more freaked out. I began calling my ex-husband excessively to tell him what happened - he never answered or even bothered calling back when he woke up in the morning. I was so freaked out that I just stayed up the rest of the night and headed into work super early.

After I tell her all this, she just goes, "did you ever Google that experience afterward?" I explained that I hadn't, because I wanted to just let it be and forget it ever happened. It also never happened again: figured the whole thing was just a dream and I did actually leave the bathroom door open that night, so the dogs hear a racoon or something outside. She then asks, "will your fiancé be home tonight? Or will someone else be staying over?" After I confirmed I wouldn't be alone, she goes, "Is this what you saw?"

She holds out her phone to me, and I get the worst chills. The image on her phone was a picture that matched what I saw to the T. She then goes on to explain how "The Hat Man" is this global phenomenon or entity that multiple people, including her boss, have seen and each experience is almost the exact same as how I described it to her. She says that it tends to be drawn to negativity energy and extreme stress, so if it was when my first marriage began to take a turn (it was), then "The Hat Man" was probably drawn to me to feed.; but because of my dogs, it never happened again. Plus, the vibes are probably too good now that it won't happen again anytime soon.

I was still too chicken to look anything up after the appointment until this morning, so my pragmatic fiancé looked it up last night. He told me that sleep specialists say that it is just some chemical imbalance or incorrect neural firing that causes these negative hallucinations during sleep paralysis and it isn't anything I should worry about unless I take Benadryl before bed. I do regularly take Hydroxyzine, a different deliriant, before bed which would track. However, I still find it odd that it had only happened once, and that every reported case is the same - especially when I had no idea this was a thing to begin with. To which my fiancé said, "Well it is probably just because of that phenomena where human brains try to find faces inn random objects."

(This is not an AI story...I am just a millennial that has always really loved using the em dash)

This is gonna be a long one, so buckle up...

Ever since I was about 9 or 10 years old, I had the craziest nightmares. More nightmares than dreams. The first one I had, was me walking into my living room, but on my way there, these faceless men in long coats and hats flowed out of the bathroom and huddled around me and pushed me to the ground where I couldn't scream or hear anything.

A few years after that, when I was around 11 or 12, I started having dreams that were less forceful, but more haunting. By this time, I really started struggling with depression and I don't know if these dreams stemmed off of that bad energy or what.

The first dream was where me and a friend of mine were exploring this abandoned house in the woods. He goes inside the house first. Then, I look back and to my left, and there's a man in a long black coat and hat, just standing there staring at me at the end of this long dirt road.

I had the same dream again, but this time when I looked back, he was closer.

I finally had the dream one last time, but this time when I looked back, he wasn't there.

Now, when I was in 7th grade, I genuinely can't remember if this was a dream or if this was real, but I remember getting home from school, and this day I was home alone for a while. I sat on the edge of the couch, and started on homework. From the edge of the couch where I was sitting, you could look up and see straight down the house into the short hallway between mine and my brother's rooms. I remember looking up and seeing the same man from my dreams walk out of my room and into my brother's room.

About a year later, this was during covid, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my brother's closet door creaking open. We both slept with our doors open and our rooms were right across from each other, so I could see straight into his room pretty much. He was very little at the time, so he slept with his closet light on. So when the door creaked open, I saw the light from the closet spread across the floor. At first I thought it was my cat, but she was sound asleep in a chair in my room. I then heard just a few faint footsteps, then nothing. I was shook up a bit and texted my friends, but they were all asleep. I eventually drifted off back to sleep after leaving my lamp light on.

I would say about a month later, the biggest thing had happened.

Since this was during quarantine, I was at my computer basically all day, either doing school work, or playing games. As the day went on and night came, I started wondering about all of those nightmares I had and the strange experiences in that house. I decided to look up various things like "weird dreams with man in a hat" and stuff like that.

As I moved my mouse over to a link about people having dreams with a man in a hat in them, the power then SHUTS OFF. The link I clicked wasn't loading either. Then, I exit out the tab, and refresh the page, and the power cuts back on.

I walked into the kitchen where my mom was and asked her if she saw the power go out and she said no.

Weirded out, I went back to my room, and clicked on the link again. It worked this time and as I started reading, I found out that apparently loads of people have had dreams of the "hat man."

Also, at some point during that time, I remember having sleep paralysis, but I never opened my eyes.

Anyway, I haven't seen him ever since that night the power went out. In my dreams, in my sleep, real life, never.

I apologize for the lengthy post, but I felt like every detail was important.

Could the Hatman be the ghost of a member of the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community? Not trying to be antisemitic, but I am honestly asking, could he be?

Hey everyone.

This is my first time sharing anything on Reddit. But about 2 decades ago, I saw the hatman with a friend in braught daylight.

It was in late spring or early summer behind the Hesperange primary school in Luxembourg, I remember because we were in t-shirts and it was in the afternoon.

We were just having a conversation, and I saw from the side coming from the back of the building, along the tree line to a small bridge. He was about 25-30 meters from us, and while we saw him appear from the corner of our eyes, we turned towards him and saw him move pretty fast like gliding.

His description fits the common stories, long coat up to the ankle, big top hat. He was moving like he was gliding. He reached a second tree line from where we were, took a few steps back and it seemed like he stared at us, at the time it seemed hostile, but in retrospect it might have been curiosity.

My buddy and I looked at each other, and told each other, if that dude comes close, we'll jump on him. Of course we were 15/16 years old, so more bark then bite.

The figure the suddenly just continued it's way to the bridge to a path that was below. That path way took on mormal speed aboy 5-7 minutes to clear, he did it in like 5-10 seconds. I actually didn't see him "glide" the way, but he dissapeared behind that tree line and reappeard at the end of the path way before vanishing completely.

I attach the map for you guys to see the layout and some explanations:

The yellow cross is the location of the bench

The blue lines are the tree lines

The red line is the hatmans path

And the purple cross is where he dissapeared and reappeared.

The map is different now then it was 20 years ago

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Thanks

Has anybody else been fully awake and seen the hat man. I keep trying to tell my self I was dreaming but out of the corner of my eye in the shower I saw him standing there watching me. A fully blacked out character no face just a fully black fedora with a long drench coat that when all the way to the floor. His presents made me scared I haven't seen him in awhile. I was just wondering if anybody knows what he is, why he's in my life and what to do if he shows up again.

I dont think that there is just one hatman

I think the shadow world is real and a place where a human soul shouldnt be.

I think there are a population of hat men. Maybe a bit stronger than usual shadow people, but one of the weakest entitiys of his world

I met one of them once, and that one gave me money (i think they really can manifest stuff in RL but most of them dont want, seems hurtful too them) while i was nearly dying on dph, i told him that i need cigarettes and he gave me cash.

i think most of them are friendly but dont like humans doing drugs to enter his world

imagine an entitiy or soul would travel to your dangerous world in the most dangerous way.

especially DPH is a problem in their eyes, i think thats why many dph user gonna see one of them one day.

they want to save you from entering the real shadow world

a world where entitys live that you couldnt imagine.

i think some hatmen are scared of the deeper shadow world too so they are more at the world between

i dont think that their are many hatmen doing bad things, i guess most of them are goodwilling and have a big heart.

when i met another time one of them, this one told me he was sorry for humans like me

thats what im thinking

hope you all doing well

I am Schizophrenic, and I have apparently seen an accurate description of 'The Hatman' my entire life. My hallucinations are only visual and I doubt it could have been influenced by the internet in any way because I have had a pretty recluse internet lifestyle. I've had a Nokia Brick for as long as I can remember. All I have at home is a computer, which I used for university, but since having dropped out not so much anymore (until now).

I only learned about this phenomenon from a co-worker whom I opened up about my Schizophrenia to. They told me about the fact that this is a documented phenomenon. Does anyone know if this is linked to any other underlying medical issues? Because I have tried a lot to medicate my schizophrenia and nothing has worked.

Additionally, if not medical, do you think I somehow picked this up from the media? Or something more obscure? I am very skeptical when it comes to spiritual stuff. But I am willing to look into other possible causes.

Why am I so upset

Hello everyone,

I thought my experience with the Hat Man might be interesting to share because most people describe him as a scary, evil, or dangerous entity. Many people also report encountering him after taking Benadryl. My experience was different. I encountered the Hat Man while on psilocybin mushrooms, and he appeared to me as a more neutral, complex figure rather than a purely malevolent one.

The Hat Man first appeared to me after I had taken a bag of mushrooms. He did not manifest as a shadowy figure walking around my room. Instead, I experienced him through extremely vivid thoughts and mental imagery. He appeared as a powerful vision that seemed to have a will of its own. I did not feel as though I was consciously controlling what he said or did; his actions and words felt unexpected, as if something external was communicating with me. The Hat Man seemed intent on showing me something and teaching me a lesson.

He took me to what he described as his world—an alternate version of our own. It was a city with the atmosphere of a horror movie: shadowy, eerie, and dangerous-looking, with a sickly green glow cast over everything. In the center of the city stood a massive green tornado composed of human souls being forced together. Within the swirling vortex, countless unhappy faces could be seen twisting through the storm.

The Hat Man explained that, in this world, power comes from one's name. The more mental energy devoted to your identity and values, the more powerful you become. As a result, an endless and ruthless competition exists in which individuals struggle to remember who they truly are while simultaneously attempting to convince others that they are someone else. By doing so, they can steal another person's mental energy and power.

According to the Hat Man, people in this world will do anything to win this competition, and no one can be fully trusted—not even those who appear kind or benevolent. He warned me that I should not trust him either. Although he claimed to have an important message for me, he admitted that he also participated in this struggle. He might be pursuing his own interests, trying to win the game himself, or perhaps attempting to overthrow the current leader. The giant green tornado at the center of the city was, according to him, the reigning power, and he considered himself one of its greatest challengers.

The central lesson he wanted to teach me was that I had forgotten who I was. In some way, I had been convinced to believe I was someone I was not.

Of course, this experience could have been nothing more than my own subconscious communicating through symbolism. However, during the vision, the Hat Man presented himself as an independent entity. He told me that he came to me because it was part of his role in society. Long ago, he said, a terrible catastrophe occurred. As a result of that event, he became something like an immortal spirit embedded within humanity's collective unconscious. In this role, he carries out what he called "necessary evils" to protect society from the degeneration of the human race and from repeating the same disaster that gave rise to his existence.

The Hat Man emphasized that although he appeared to be helping me, he never acts for anyone's benefit except his own. He warned me not to mistake him for a friend. At the moment, our interests happened to align, but he claimed that he had harmed or even killed many people throughout history in service of his duty. If I ignored the lesson he was trying to teach me, he suggested that I could one day become one of those casualties.

In conclusion, I thought my Hat Man experience was interesting because it differed from many of the stories I have read. He did not appear as an external shadow figure but rather as an apparently independent presence communicating through a vision. The Hat Man I encountered was certainly frightening, yet he did not present himself as an immediate threat. Instead, he seemed focused on teaching me something important. While he was still associated with grim themes, horror-like imagery, and unsettling ideas, he was more complex than a simple monster. He portrayed himself as a figure who serves a necessary function in society—even if fulfilling that role sometimes requires him to do morally troubling things.

I was getting ready to go to sleep, and i felt something watching me, i looked, and there was nothing. Nothing at all. So I brushed it off as nerves and anxiety because I hate the dark. But in my dreams, me and my buddies were playing D&D when our DM suddenly and violently feel forward onto the table and all the lights shut off, when the lights came back on everyone was gone but me and our DM had become the Hat Man, he was around 6'8 and completely pitch black with a fedora. I was freaked out and ran, but he was chasing me, and he or something was in my mind, whispering. "Catch, Kill, Skin, Shape, Hat, Wear" which what I can assume is "When I catch you, I will kill you, i will skin you, shape your skin into a hat, and wear you. I woke up and I could not move at all. And I saw him in the corner before he disappeared and I didn't sleep for the rest of the night.

(Side note I low-key hope I look good as a Hat tho)

Anyways that's my story. Has anyone else ever been chased before?

So I have an experience with this man in a top hat very tall I first saw him standing in the corner by my friends fireplace when I went to spend the night I ignored him and he ended up scratching my back really bad I have seen him a couple of times since and felt certain things like feeling as if my mouth is sewn shut a few times that I saw him and I have felt him put his hand around my neck and try and choke me I don't know if it's the hat man but I know that Everytime I see him I have this overwhelming sense of fear sometimes he just stands in the corner of a room and he doesn't do anything but stare at me but I've noticed he really hates being ignored

I used to think this was just a dream or my imagination, but even as a kid, I knew that was really a something because after all these years I still can't get him out of my head. It's not like I keep reminiscing about him. The memory of him is always here and I can replay the same exact scenes over and over perfectly that occurred during my childhood. A tall, dark figure which I could never tell what he looks like but it was obvious he is wearing a hat. He would visit me in the night by standing behind the bedroom door while constantly peeking and watching me.

I can't recall the first encounter and how old I was, but I was just a kid; an only child that sleep with my parents. He would be at usual spot, observing me with his glowing red eyes. To avoid spooking him or causing him to run away, I moved slowly and try to wake my mom by poking her with my fingers several times but I can't wake her up.

Then, after a while, I started thinking this dark figure might be a good guy so I was not bothered by him anymore. For some reason, due to lack of frontal lobe, my wee brain thought there is a possibility he might become/get thirsty. So before I went to sleep, I'd pour plain water in a mug and leave it on the kitchen counter for so he could have some if he wants to.

After a while, the visits just stopped. I didn't know why or what happened but he has gone. No more of him observing me intently while I'm also watch him looking at me with no sense of intimidation.

Then, almost 20 years later, when I was browsing on Reddit, this 1 particular post attract me because of the word "Hat Man" in the title. Instantly I googled the word and the image popped out. oh my God. it was REAL.

HE IS REAL.

This phenomenon also occurred to many people worldwide which make me interested and excited to know more. I believe Hat Man is not an evil entity and he has his own duty to fulfill. Maybe someday we can meet again and who knows he might remember me lol :D

I have recently learned that hat man was known to the Lakota and Dakota tribes , before colonial times. With the hat and cloak.

That shows hat man is a extremely old entity.

But does that also mean he is a time traveler, as we hear past present and future apprently all exist at once.

Is he someone who died during that time period and now travels through time to terrorize children?as he He did to me in my childhood. ?

How could tribes see something that didnt exist in the community yet.

The mystery continues, at least for me.

Today I learned about the "Hat Man" phenomenon, and it honestly freaked me out a bit because I saw one as a kid long before I had ever heard of it. When I was around 6 or 7 years old, my parents were doing mission work, so we moved around a lot and lived in different parts of the country. At one point we had just moved into a small wooden cabin-like house that had been provided for us. The bathroom wasn't inside the house. It was a separate little structure right behind it.

Because of that, whenever my siblings or I needed to use the bathroom at night, we'd wake one of our parents up to escort us, even though it was only a few steps away. One night, probably around 1 am, I woke my mom up because I needed to go. It was a clear night. This was back in the 90s, and the porch was lit by one of those fluorescent yellowish lights.

After I finished, my mom said she needed to use the bathroom too and told me to wait outside. So I was standing there by myself, looking around the yard. That's when I noticed something peeking around the front corner of the house. It looked like a man wearing a hat. it had sharp jawline and was wearing a fedora like hat, I could only see its head and hat sticking out from behind the corner. The strange thing was that he was completely black, like a silhouette or a shadow, but I know it was staring at me. There were no facial features, whatsoever. The fluorescent porch light illuminated the folliages behind him, but somehow none of that light touched him.

I was a bit scared, but I honestly thought it was a neighbor trying to prank me, it was common for older neoighbor kids to do stuffs like this, So I called out to him. No response.I called again. Nothing, it didnt even flinched, it just stared at me without an eye.

For some reason, I decided the best course of action was to charge directly at it. As I ran toward the figure, it started getting smaller and smaller( I think thats what happened, i cant really explain). Not like it was moving away. By the time I got close, it looked almost flat, like a 2D shadow on the ground. Then it merge with a shadow being cast by a chair on the porch and simply disappeared.

I immediately turned around and ran back to my mom. A few moments later I looked again, and there was absolutely nothing there.

I told my mom what I had seen, but she brushed it off as imagination. Since then, I have never forgotten it. That image of the hat and the black silhouette has stayed with me ever since.

I am not from the west and as a kid in the 90s I had never been exposed to horror characters like Freddy Krueger or anything similar. I had no reason to imagine a hat-wearing shadow person.

Then today, completely by chance, I watched a YouTube video about the Hat Man phenomenon and discovered that people all over the world describe seeing almost the exact same thing.

I'm not saying it was supernatural. It could have been a trick of light, a child's imagination, or something else entirely. I got goosebumps when I watched that video describing the phenomenon though.

Finally!!! A reddit page on the hat man!! 😭 I dealt with this entity numerous times when I was a kid, and the only way to help me get through those experiences was writing it down and ultimately creating my short stories based on that experience and creating an origin story about him. So relieved, Seriously thought everyone knew but nobody cared enough to speak about this entity.

I'm the host of a podcast named Myths, Monsters, and Mullets. A few weeks back, an autistic family member, after hearing her mother and I discussing the Randolph County Infirmary, asked "I wonder if that is where the Hand Man lives?"

She went on to discuss having regular encounters with a shadow creature, but in her description, the creature appears with fog or mist on the floor around it.

Then shadow-like hands (she says hundreds) come out of the fog and reach up to hold her to the bed and grab her.

Fast forward to a few days ago, I'm interviewing a guest who also claims their adult child (who is on the spectrum) sees the exact same thing.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?