About two weeks ago, at four in the morning–I had worked night shift that night–my mom and I were returning from the gas station I work at. Turning off of this road from the highway’s off-ramp, there in the middle of the road was a two dimensional figure of a man. He had the wide brim, and the duster… but unlike first-hand-encounters; my hat man was on fire. I told my mom of course, she’s in the car next to me. Driving, in fact. “I didn’t see him,” she tells me, her eyes on the road the whole time, “but I saw the light.” Trying to find things about a burning man, and what that could possibly mean if they’re standing in the road; then vanish; I found this website. Going through it, I am reminded of my mothers on stories with The Hat Man that had occurred before I was born. Her and my father lived in Loring Air Force Base in the late eighties.. In my twenty-two years, people who I have talked to about Loring talk about a foreboding evil that surrounds the place. Things that aren’t mine to repeat because half of it I will account to senior enlisted trying to spook the young daughter of a higher enlisted. Any influence that Stepehen King acquired from the place though is horridly justified. Not that the Hat Man my mom met was evil. If anything, he was a prankster. My folks’ bed was across from a linen closet in the apartment they were living in as newly weds. The hat man simply moved into the apartment with them; and into that closet. My mom would set the closet one way while father was at work; and before he’d come home; everything in the closet would be an other way. She’d tell father, and like an a-typical macho man he’d just tell her she was crazy. This went on for months, until one evening my mom had left the closet door open when they had went to bed. As they were tucking in, my dad happened to look at the closet. Upon seeing the hat man; he screamed while pulling the covers over his head. My mom looked to the closet too, only to see the hat man flickering away in what she can only say was in fear of my father’s screams. The Hat Man never came back. Earlier this night, my mom and I were talking about all of this, which had sparked my looking online… could be my Hat Man is on fire, instead of being a shadow.
–Raven Benson