I have never, ever in my life experienced sleep paralysis until a few days ago. For context, I have a pet tortoise, and his cage has a red light for nighttime, so my room is pretty much always lit up. I’ve grown really used to having the room filled with a dim, red light as I sleep. However, the light bulb died a few days ago, and until the new one showed up in the mail, I was left in the dark.
So I slept in complete pitch black for the first time in months, which was odd enough on its own for me. But as I stared at the ceiling (I have a hard time falling asleep), my eyes got used to it, and I started to see the outline of shapes. I could tell where my mirror was and my door, and the handle to the closet, all by the dark shadows of their silhouettes.
Finally falling asleep, I woke up a few hours later, unable to move. Looking around the room, the first thing my eyes shot to was the new shadow in front of me. Standing directly at the foot of my bed, facing me, was a man. There were no identifiable features, but I could tell it was a man by the build of the shadow person. A tall man too, probably 6’4”. The one thing I noticed for certain was that he had a hat on. Too short to be a top hat but not wide enough to be a cowboy hat. Looking back, I’d say it was definitely a Fedora.
My body was so rigid as I looked at this person and watched, waiting to see if something would happen. I was so scared. Then, I watched the figure move backwards (like actually walk backwards) until the black appearance of the man had meshed in with the black shadows of my full-length mirror, directly behind him. THIS GUY WAS WATCHING ME AND THEN WALKED BACKWARDS INTO MY MIRROR!!!
As soon as the shadow was gone, I could move again, and you can bet your bottom dollar I stayed up the rest of the night, watching that mirror, trying to figure out if I was dreaming, imagining it, or going crazy… I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
The next morning, I realized what I had experienced was sleep paralysis and did a quick Google search to learn more. Looking at the images, I saw a black personage at the foot of a bed, similar to what I saw. The caption said “Hat Man,” so naturally I checked out the website it was from and looked more deeply into this man. It was all the same, a shadow man with – you guessed it – a FEDORA!! I swear, I had thought of the hat name WAY before reading that online.
Not only that, but online sources say it’s a common imagination based on the character Freddy Krueger. But I have never even seen Nightmare on Elm Street! I didn’t even know that guy wore a hat until now!
I don’t know how to describe it, but I found this blog and thought I’d share. I’m definitely gonna be keeping a spare tortoise light in a cupboard somewhere from now on. Honestly, before I had seen the “Hat Man,” I just resorted to laughing it off as a random dream. I joked that my sleep paralysis demon likes hats and lives in my mirror- I even named him Steven! I have no intention of making this up; what I saw was all real, and that’s why I’m so shook that “Steven” fits into place with “Hat Man.”
Here’s hoping this sleep paralysis thing was just a one-time ordeal!