When I was a kid, maybe 8 or so, I don’t really remember the exact age, I saw The Hat Man in my room. He appeared to be sitting in a chair next to my bed. He had the brimmed hat and what seemed to be a trench coat. It was just a shadow of a person, with no real detail of the actual person just the clothing. It never made a sound or moved much. It would scare the shit out of me every time I saw it. It just sat there looking at me. Every once in a while, I would think I could see light reflecting on the eyes like they were wet. I couldn’t SEE the eyes, but I could sometimes see the wetness like they were there if that makes any sense.
I decided one day that I would just stop looking at it and turn my back on it. I was scared to not look at it, but I didn’t know what else to do. After a while, I would feel something poking my back. It felt like someone digging their knuckle into my back and it was very painful. I decided to lay on my back because I thought if he can’t get to my back, he can’t do it anymore. But it happened anyway… It didn’t matter how I would lay down it happened if I didn’t look at the “guy” in the chair. I had my mom come in and it didn’t show up with her there. I asked her to wait about an hour after I went to bed and then come in and see if I was alone. She said she didn’t see anything, and I never saw it when anyone else was around.
This went on for what seemed like a couple of years. One day I decided I was going to try some stuff to see what results I would get. I was still having a hard time convincing myself what I was seeing was real. I have always been very much into science and seeing things in that way as it made the most sense to me. But this didn’t fit that world at all.
The experiments…. I decided that I would put things in the chair. If he can’t sit down, maybe he just won’t. He sat there anyway. I put some tacks/pins on the chair so I could maybe hear it make a noise if it hurt it or maybe it would deter it from sitting there. It sat there anyway and made no noise. I thought, okay then I will surprise it by hitting it with something suddenly. My plan was to have a wooden pole that I found lay next to me in bed. It was about the size of a baseball bat just thinner so I could maneuver it faster. I was going to wait until I saw it sitting there and I was going to swing it at the chair as hard and fast as I could. That night as soon as I saw it sitting there, I very slowly moved my hand onto the pole while watching it carefully, I swung the pole according to plan and I hit the chair hard enough to wake everyone, but I didn’t hit anything else. The only plan I had left was to use light as a defense. My mom wouldn’t let me sleep with the light on and wouldn’t let me have a flashlight in my bed so again I decided I would just leap from my bed as fast as I could to turn the light on. Either I wasn’t fast enough or, like everything else, it had no effect.
I’ve never had sleep paralysis or been held down or anything like that. I did sleepwalk a fair amount though apparently. I would find my way outside and stand in the yard looking at the sky. Not sure if that has any relevance here but there it is anyway.
There was one other time I saw something similar. It was another shadow person. Same house, much later in life, no hat this time.
It was late at night, and I was on the computer. I must have been 16 or so at this point. I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye. I have seen things out of the corner of my eyes for some time and every time I look it is gone. Not this time… I looked at it and I saw its head move as if it looked back at me. It was in a dark room but the black of the person was blacker than the darkness if that makes sense. Again, no features or anything just a shadow but in 3 dimensions. I stood up because I thought it was an intruder. I grabbed a stapler off the desk (lol) and as I went to take a step toward it, I saw it turn the other way, take a step or two and it was gone. It didn’t move out of sight, it disappeared. One second there was a solid object in front of me moving and interacting with me and the next it just wasn’t there like it never was.
Super creepy stuff. I’ve only just realized that other people have seen this stuff too. I am not someone who is into weird stuff or that is gullible and just waiting for something special to happen to me. No drugs or substance abuse of any kind either. I am now in my 40s and haven’t seen anything in some time. Just to provide some rough demographic for me.