My experience with the Hat Man was when I was 18 and living with my Grandparents in California. I don’t particularly remember and an unusual circumstance in my life at the time, but this was over 20 years ago. I can say that I wasn’t on drugs or taking any over the counter meds and was sober. I was however asleep, but I don’t believe it was sleep paralysis and I’ll explain why. I am usually a heavy sleeper and do not wake up in the middle of the night. I also don’t like to sleep with the door open – I make it a point to shut the door. My gram sometimes will crack the door to check on my, but closes it again when she is satisfied that I am comfortably asleep or have made it home ok if I am home after she had gone to bed and she wakes up in the middle of the night.

So, I say this because this particular middle of the night I wake up and hear someone at my door and that the door is being pushed open. I am waiting to see my gram peeping through with the hall light in the back ground. This doesn’t happen; the door is acting weird like it is pulsing open very slowly. My adrenaline starts to kick into overdrive and I think ok buddy the only way I am getting out of this if I surprise the SOB. So I hope up, leap over my bed and rip the door open ready to smash through whomever is standing on the other side. There isn’t anyone there. What I do see down the hall is a shadow of a man with a hat and a trench coat leaning over my grandfather who is sleeping in bed. I am confused, because I am wondering how that person got from my door to down the hall like that I a panic and start screaming, “Grandma, GRANDMA!!!!!” She wakes up and turns the light on and the shadow disappears. I run into the room and look into the walk in closet and in their bathroom yelling that there was someone in their room. No one there. I don’t remember my grandfather saying anything to me and all my grandmother said was, “Ok, it’s over try to go back to sleep.”

I don’t know if it is nice or unsettling to know that there are others who have seen the same thing. I have brought this up to other in conversations about ghosts and I felt like I was the only one who has had this experience other than my mother who claims to have seen a shadow “kid” when she was a little girl.

I feel that although it was a shadow of a man, I didn’t get the impression that it was a ghost. But IDK, I thank God that I haven’t had another experience to compare it to.

— HK