Okay, this is the story of my experience with “The Hat Man”. I don’t know much about him other than that people see him when they take drugs that induce hallucinations or they see him when they are sleep paralyzed or in dreams. I may research more about him, but I may not…I’m still scared. I saw “The Hat Man” in a dream and this was before I even knew about this phenomenon.
It all happened a couple of months ago (I’m 17), since I didn’t know anything about the Hat Man before I didn’t document what I was doing the night before or in the days leading up to the dream. It was a weird dream. In the dream, it was nighttime, and it was pitch black outside. I was in my old tiny childhood apartment and my extended family was also there. Only a small yellow bulb was turned on. A young (around my age so 15-16 years old) fair blonde-haired girl had just given birth to what I learned later was my child. I guess in the dream she was my wife and I just went along with it (note that I’ve always been single and there are no blondes in my country). The next thing we did was we all moved to the bedroom (like 10 people) to sleep but my dad decided to sleep in the living room. My mom asked me to check up on him, and I walked through the narrow corridor/gallery to the living room (All lights were turned off now except the light coming from other buildings through the windows). As I was walking, old childhood fears of the dark crept inside me. Usually, when I’m in a terrifying or stressful situation, I just repeat the Jesus Prayer but in this dream, I didn’t think about God. As I stepped into the living room, I suddenly couldn’t move anymore and the light behind me got turned on on its own. I saw a dark faceless man with a hat (kind of like a shadow), just as described by other people. He was really big. His eyes weren’t visible or glowing. Suddenly my dream froze (like how video games glitch out and freeze before crashing) and I could see the hat man for about 4-5 seconds before I woke up. While the dream froze (when I couldn’t move and the light behind me got turned on), I made a very loud and weird noise, like the sound of a child being suffocated and giving out a terrified moan for 4-5 seconds.
When I woke up my mother came up to my bed and asked me if I was okay and my sister asked that too. Everyone heard the strange noise and gave me weird looks the entire day. I had never made such a sound in my life during sleep (and I don’t think I ever will again). Just decided to write this down instead of putting it off and writing it some other day and forgetting even more details. I have had weird dreams in the past and when I was a kid (most of the dreams I had when I was a kid were lucid). I had very unusual dream “loops” where I would realize I’m in a dream and “wake up” into another dream. In the past 2-3 years I’ve always done the Jesus Prayer and that would wake me up instantly from a nightmare. But this dream with The Hat Man was probably the most terrifying dream I’ve ever been in. I know I shouldn’t be interpreting dreams since I’m Orthodox Christian and I do think that the hat man is a demon. But why would he come after me in my dreams?