When I first saw the man in my wardrobe, I was living in a group home in Sevierville, Tennessee, US. When I had been placed in the cottage, the girls had told me about how they all see a dark man with a hat on and how he is most often seen in the hallway. They said that he was always at the very end of the hall, under the red glow of the exit sign in front of the closet. I have always believed in spirits and demons, so I believed them, but not completely, until I saw him myself. I lived in that cottage for 10-11 months, and over time, the girls would come and go, but I was there for the longest time. It was standard that we would rotate rooms, and no one had ever reported him showing up in any of them only at the end of the hallway when they’d get up to use the bathroom at night or something.
However, about 2 months after I moved in things changed and he started to appear in our rooms. There were four bedrooms with single beds and 2 closets in each for our stuff. I was put into Room 4 with a girl named Jackson who became a friend of mine. While we were having breakfast and cleaning the kitchen, the girls in Room 1 started talking about seeing The Hatman in their room the night before. Tawny said they’d seen him standing in the corner of their room with his glowing red eyes watching them. Both of them said they were unable to move while he was there, and that eventually they fell asleep but weren’t sure if it was a ghost or what it was. After a month or two, he came into my and Jackson’s room one night. I had woken up to go to the bathroom, and there it was, standing at the foot of my bed. I was terrified the first time it happened, couldn’t move or speak and Jackson said she didn’t see it that night but did a few nights later. We both knew instinctively that it was evil, but at that time we didn’t feel threatened which looking back seems weird to me. The visitations became so regular that after a while it became almost normal for us and we weren’t as scared.
Eventually, several girls left including Jackson, and we all moved rooms and I got one to myself for about a month. I moved into Room# 3 and was enjoying the privacy of my space, but within a week I had my first solo encounter with The Hatman. I had woken up to use the bathroom and it was looming over me as I lay in my bed. It looked like it was 9 feet tall, dressed in an old trench coat like my Grampa would have worn, and a wide-brimmed Fedora hat. The only thing I could see were the glowing green eyes which caught my attention because when I’d seen them before they were red. Are there different Hatmen or can they just change their eye color? I almost immediately fell asleep and at least twice a week I’d wake up in the night to see Him there in my room. Sometimes it was just within a hand space of my bed and other times it would be in the corner of the room. Sometimes its eyes were glowing green, and sometimes red. It got to the point that I could tell when visitation was coming as if I knew somehow when it was going to show up next. Not only did the visitations in my room increase it did so in the rest of the house too.
I had been in my new Room #3 for about 2 months, and it only had one closet instead of two like the rest. When I was told a new girl named Michelle was going to be assigned there with me, they brought in an old wooden wardrobe to use as a second closet. That was when things got strange and bad with The Hatman encounters. Michelle was moved in and she and I got along well and it was nice to have some company in the room. Michelle had been in Room 2 for over a month before she moved into my room and there were no problems. She was polite, kept her stuff clean, and was easy to get along with according to her former roommate Leena. But once she moved into my room, something seemed to change for the worse, especially with The Hatman.
It started with her talking in her sleep, something she said she’d never done before. Leena her former roommate even said that she’d never done that while sharing a room with her either which made me wonder. Then, occasionally she’d wake up in a panic from solid sleep jump out of bed, and bolt into the hallway in the middle of the night. It happened several times and woke me up because it made the bed slam into the wall when it happened which was loud. The staff had her checked out by a Dr. and a Psychiatrist, but she was fine as far as anyone could tell and the weekly counseling we got at the group home seemed to be pretty normal. According to her, the only reason she was in the group home was because she didn’t get along with her Dad’s new wife and kids and her Mother was a drug addict so there was nowhere else to go. She seemed to be working things out with them though through the counseling so even that didn’t seem to be the source of the problem. She got along well with everyone including me, so it wasn’t like anyone was bullying her or anything so it was a mystery why she was suddenly having problems…but I knew. I knew it had something to do with The Hatman.
About two months had passed since Michelle moved in and things were getting steadily worse. One night, I woke up to my roommate yelling, so I sat up in my bed and looked at her. She was standing in front of the wooden wardrobe, eyes wide open, pointing at it, and screaming, “Get out! You can’t be here! This isn’t your home!” She kept repeating the word “No!” We had a nightlight on the wall so I could see her. Her eyes were black as if her pupils had devoured her irises, and she was pale. She couldn’t seem to hear or see me so I just got out of bed and ran into the hallway where our night staff was already coming down the hallway in response to her screaming. The night staff and I went into the room. My roommate was getting into her bed like nothing had happened and seemed to have no memory of what had just occurred. She was confused why everyone was in the room and why we were accusing her of causing a disturbance to begin with. We were all spooked now, even the night staff. They told everyone to stop talking about The Hatman to each other hoping that would calm things down but it didn’t, especially when THE STAFF started seeing it. Within two months 3 of them had quit after seeing it in the hallway and the kitchen area, even AFTER the staff had a Pastor come in and bless the house.
After that night, she frequently started to point and yell at our wardrobe. I would just get up, the staff would check on her and I’d put her back in bed, and go to sleep myself. We all blamed The Hatman, but prayer and even visits by the Pastor didn’t seem to make a difference. Most of us had been cut off from the world for years because, in the group home, you aren’t allowed to have phones or even watch the news. So we didn’t know that other people were seeing this man, we all thought that the land itself or the house must be haunted. I’ve heard people say online that it’s only an illusion, that you see him when you’re tired and your mind’s playing tricks on you. But how does an illusion have so much power? How does an illusion grab your arms and leave bruises? Why is it so evil and what does it want? The hat man was the man in my wardrobe, who invoked fear in us all, who followed me wherever I went. I only recently left 2-3 months ago, and I still wonder if he’s gonna find me and start messing with me and my family. I hope this helps someone, and I’m glad to know I’m not alone.