I’ve seen the ‘Hat Man’ quite a few times, for a small backstory I grew up in a highly abusive household but didn’t think anything was abnormal about that until recently.
I can remember a few times when I saw The Hat Man, once was when I was taking the bins to the end of the drive to be collected, and I looked down the road and there was a very tall figure standing there with a top hat on. It wasn’t a human either, this figure had to have been at least 8 to 10ft tall and was darker than any shadow. He had no features, it looked like a void in a humanoid form. Doing what any sane 10-year-old would that was standing in the dark staring at a strange shadow figure, I turned around and booked it back inside! I never really told anyone what I saw because I didn’t think they’d believe me. I saw the hat man a few more times over the years but he was always standing in the left corner of my room, just standing there watching over me.
As a kid seeing him was oddly comforting despite the fact that I was also terrified about the fact there was a shadow figure staring at me. It wasn’t until later that I figured it out, I would only ever see The Hat Man on bad nights with my parents. The nights that we’d argue so badly I felt unsafe and unloved in the house, or on nights I witnessed or received physical abuse from my parents or my siblings did. Again I never really brought it up, it wasn’t until I saw someone else say a similar thing a few months back that got me thinking, I know everyone’s experiences are different but to me, he felt more like a protector than someone who would hurt me, that he was watching over me on those nights to make sure I was safe. I don’t know that’s just my story and my experience with him, I thought it might be able to bring some others comfort if their stories are similar.