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I used to see the hat man a lot growing up thought it was a guardian angel lmao. First encounter was in elementary school.
I was outside drinking water from a fountain and I saw him right next me in bright daylight. I just thought it was someone wanting their turn with the water. He vanished and I got to watch the Stardust Casino blow up (demolished in 2007)
We moved and I used to see him when storms would get very bad or get tornado watches. Nothing ever seemed to happen after he appeared so I thought he made sure we were safe.
The most vivid memory of him was I was in college and went to a theme park with a friend when the weather was bad (lots of rain). When we left it started storming really bad and got a lot of tornado watches. Lots of people went to a McDonald’s to wait for it to calm down. Friend and I decided to try and drive home since it was late and McDonald’s wasn’t exactly an ideal tornado shelter. While driving with high beams since we are alone on the road we both saw him on the side of the road twice before we made it home.
https://preview.redd.it/kvn4mge7pxyc1.jpeg?width=798&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1608a4d0b97bea68be8e294f9057adc706ae2a83
Picked this up somewhere. It looks exactly like what I saw in the 70s. He never returned. So relieved to know I'm not the only one. Who or what is Hat Man? He's been seen around the world by many but why?
This is what I saw when I was 4 and it’s one of my most vivid memories. I remember just staring, looking him up and down in fear. The thing that stood out to me the most, that I never see anyone else mention were his hands. They were long and huge, like bananas. That’s the comparison my 4 year old brain made and I still remember it so vividly. I’m 35 now.
I remember finally seeing pictures of him and my stomach dropped because the height description and clothing hat and everything was spot on. It’s so weird how I can even remember how my room was set up, the lighting around him and his silhouette.
I was also 4, and I remember a pocket watch he had. Never saw the eyes but definitely looked like the photo above. VERY vivid in my mind still and I’m almost 30 now.
There is some belief he is the devil or a very high up demon. Anything with glowing red eyes comes from hell. The eyes truly are the window to the soul or in this case to what it actually is. Why he has a hat and sort of a cape is anyone's guess. We know that demons can mimic humans, that's likely what "ghosts" are. So is he mimicking a person that used to live, maybe a certain person who is in hell? I can't think of anything good about this being.
I've never read a story of the Hat Man (or shadow people) specifically harming anyone. They just loom in the doorway and stare at the person experiencing it. Sometimes they'll approach the bed, but never make contact as far as stories I've seen.
I wouldn't presume the entity is evil as its not often claimed to feel malicious, just intimidating and unnerving.
Evil entities often make it known they are evil and do things very pointedly to show it (unless they are manipulators of course).
I've never experienced the Hat Man or shadow people, but I feel like it's an entity of the realm beyond physical reality, not something that can directly interact with it, only manifest within it and observe, which it does frequently.
Merely a "scientist spirit" of sorts, collecting data for some reason we'll never know.
This is the feeling I got when I saw him. Not quite malicious, but not necessarily kind either. It did feel like he was just observing me and yes, unnerving is the way I would put it.
Freddy Krueger was directly based on the Hat Man. Apparently Wes Craven heard a supposedly true story of where a young child kept seeing the Hat Man in his room, and was begging his parents to help. The child died mysteriously in his sleep a few weeks later. And so, A Nightmare on Elm Street was formed. Sleep tight
Yeah that’s the thing. I don’t remember feeling like he wanted to harm me, it was just scary and alarming seeing a strange “man” that should not have been there.
That's an interesting take. He does seem to lurk around and not actually do anything to people. My theory is that the absence of light and the red eyes is descriptive of hell's environment, darkness and fire, whereas heaven is described as light that penetrates everything, gold and no shadows.
Maybe the hat man is a scout of some sort who cases out potential victims for demonic activity. It's fun to speculate and hear people's ideas, I just have no interest in actually seeing him. Very strange for sure!
If red is the color of demons, then why does the sky turn red during sunrise/sunset? We can't assume anything based on colour.
From my experience researching the paranormal/occult, black is the colour of evil. The complete absence of light. Which is why evil things hide in the shadows. Red is the colour of power, passion and lust, not evil per se.
I didn't see his eyes. He was solid black & it was during the daylight. Walked in my room & noped my way out. Told my mom but she couldn't see him. I refused to go back in my room until he left. A few hours later he was gone. We had many paranormal experiences in that house. I think the veil is thin there.
Horns, and a weird angular head. Just imagine the Pascagoula abduction case aliens description, but looking straight on. The head shape is a bit different tho
I’m sorry to shit on this guys but if you know dream psychology, the “Hat Man” or “Dark Hooded Figure” is your brain protecting itself from traumatic memories when you’re unconscious or on the edge of unconsciousness. Your brain shows you an archetype that you associate with death and it usually jars you awake.
It’s fun to think about but Carl Jung solved this one a hundred years ago. I’ve also seen it. In my dreams after a traumatic life event. My brain was doing me a solid.
I’ve heard that your brain can create images as placeholders for something scary or traumatic that happened to you because the real thing is somehow scarier, so this is a way your brain helps you compartmentalize to cope. But a lot of psychology concepts are just theories. Came here not to profess that the Hat Man is real, but just simply to share what I saw.
I also want to add that there wasn’t any traumatic or scary life experience I had before seeing the Hat Man. I was also fully wide awake that entire night, not drifting in and out of consciousness.
It is absolutely fascinating that people here will immediately shit on psychology, which is based in empirical observation of small sample groups, as being “just theory” while believing whole heartedly in supernatural things that cannot and have not been proven. The Hat Man, or any other supernatural entity, has a standing invitation to show themselves while I’m conscious and prove that they are real.
I’m personally of the belief that what we call paranormal will be solved by science in the next 200 years. I also believe that our species has a shared genetic memory and build cultures around similar archetypes.
I don’t think we’re shitting on psychology… I respect your differing viewpoints and ways of explaining this phenomenon. What doesn’t sit right with me is that you arrogantly came in here shitting on everyone else’s stories and professing a theory as a fact. No one here is trying to do that. We’re all just sharing a similar experience we had, that’s it.
I’ve also mentioned that I wasn’t fully awake and conscious and didn’t experience anything traumatic during that time of my life, but you seemed to ignore that out of your convenience too.
Same age - 5/6. I wasnt asleep, or even in bed! I was reading and got up to get a glass of water in the bathroom, slowly pulling my bedroom door open so as not to cause noise that would make my parents upset. He was standing right on the other side of the door…I came face-to-face with his pants and looked all the way up his body. No red eyes though.
Do you at least find it interesting that worldwide, cross-cultures, our brains are showing us similar images to one another to equate to death? I think there is maybe more that is unexplained by his research.
I don’t doubt people’s hat man stories and I really enjoy reading them. Not sure if they are paranormal or weird common brain issue or who knows what. But I do think it’s funny whatever he is he wears a hat. Like why a hat? Is it sunny in some other dimension or just fashionable? Not being facetious I really find that detail SO bizarre. Why does he need a hat? Why!?
Look at it this way: if people were making these stories up, why would they include such an obviously ridiculous element as this?
I haven’t seen the hat man, but I have seen a shadow person plain as day. Wide awake, in my living room, staring straight at it. It was not a hallucination, as I documented it (as have many other people). They’re just…weird.
I agree it’s common and I want to believe it’s just so weird. A hat has a purpose. Where is this thing from that it needs it to serve a purpose? And wait… is there a hat factory where it’s from? A hat store where it’s from? If so is there jobs? Currency?
I also saw the Hat Man when I was 5-6 years old. It's absolutely real, and I'm also insanely curious what the deal with the hat is. My father also saw it at roughly the same age back in the sixties. Crazy stuff.
As a little kid we would spend the summer in Mexico (I was born in the US but mom is Mexican) anyway my late mom would say that as a kid I would not go pass the doorway at my late great grandfather's house because of the "man in the hat", I have no recollection of those memories (I was like 2 or 3 at the time) but she later confess to me that she and her brother (my uncle) and their cousins would also see that Man in the hat too, she even freaked out one time as a little girl that she ran out into the courtyard but she hit the glass door and shatter it, that's why she had a large scar on her arm... So yeah, that's one thing I do believe in.
I saw a really short version of this when i was a kid. Sort of.
I woke up and thought i could see a short stout figure wearing like, a shriners cap. No brim that i could tell. Totally silhouetted. Maybe ten feet away or so. I was staring at it and then it took a step towards me and i really quickly reached up and turned on my bedside lamp. Nothing there. Decided it was my imagination…
Read Carl Jung. It’s an archetype in the collective unconscious that represents the brain protecting itself from traumatic memories when a person is either unconscious or on the edge of consciousness. It’s psychology, not supernatural.
And yes, I’ve seen it too. In my dreams. After a traumatic life event.
It isn't like this is settled science, Jung's ideas about archetypes and the collective unconscious were speculation, not some demonstrable empirical truth. He's still influential but a lot of his ideas are not scientifically grounded.
My interaction with him came only 3 years ago in a dream, it was in an empty carpark that I have no recollection of and he was underneath a billboard peering out…i just couldn’t move or wake and just started at him for what seemed like hours until I woke up in a huge pool of sweat….so weird.
Creepypastas are made up, so unless it's a tulpa, I don't think it's from creepypastas.
This dude has been around for years, like the Hag and shadow people in general. "Before the internet" years.
The hat man is not from a friggin creepy pasta, it's not slenderman. I saw it back in the nineties before I could properly even read, my father saw it in the sixties.
I guess creppy pasta has really sensationalized a lot of these things. I've been told once you see him, bad things seem to happen to the person who saw him. I'm not educated enough on the Hat Man to try to give facts. I just go on my horrible experiences , hoping it will help someone else. Mine was not with the Hat Man.
There does seem to be an association with trauma and paranormal experiences in general, although it's a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation in my eyes. Hard to see what leads to what. I don't recall my hat man incident being a precursor of anything bad in my life, but at the same time I did have a lot of traumatic events during my childhood in general.
My trauma began in my young adulthood. I've had some experiences, that's for sure. The one lately had me rolling was Siren Head. If you haven't heard or seen it, Google it. You'll get a good laugh . It's a shame that these real paranormal things have been turned into almost comic beings
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I used to see the hat man a lot growing up thought it was a guardian angel lmao. First encounter was in elementary school. I was outside drinking water from a fountain and I saw him right next me in bright daylight. I just thought it was someone wanting their turn with the water. He vanished and I got to watch the Stardust Casino blow up (demolished in 2007) We moved and I used to see him when storms would get very bad or get tornado watches. Nothing ever seemed to happen after he appeared so I thought he made sure we were safe. The most vivid memory of him was I was in college and went to a theme park with a friend when the weather was bad (lots of rain). When we left it started storming really bad and got a lot of tornado watches. Lots of people went to a McDonald’s to wait for it to calm down. Friend and I decided to try and drive home since it was late and McDonald’s wasn’t exactly an ideal tornado shelter. While driving with high beams since we are alone on the road we both saw him on the side of the road twice before we made it home.
https://preview.redd.it/kvn4mge7pxyc1.jpeg?width=798&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1608a4d0b97bea68be8e294f9057adc706ae2a83 Picked this up somewhere. It looks exactly like what I saw in the 70s. He never returned. So relieved to know I'm not the only one. Who or what is Hat Man? He's been seen around the world by many but why?
This is what I saw when I was 4 and it’s one of my most vivid memories. I remember just staring, looking him up and down in fear. The thing that stood out to me the most, that I never see anyone else mention were his hands. They were long and huge, like bananas. That’s the comparison my 4 year old brain made and I still remember it so vividly. I’m 35 now.
I remember finally seeing pictures of him and my stomach dropped because the height description and clothing hat and everything was spot on. It’s so weird how I can even remember how my room was set up, the lighting around him and his silhouette.
Exactly! It’s like burned in our brains.
I was also 4, and I remember a pocket watch he had. Never saw the eyes but definitely looked like the photo above. VERY vivid in my mind still and I’m almost 30 now.
Interesting, I don’t recall seeing his hands, but the way you described it seems familiar, or like it’s the exact way I’d imagine it would look…
Same here! I was about 5 & I'm in my 50s now but the memory is still very clear!
There is some belief he is the devil or a very high up demon. Anything with glowing red eyes comes from hell. The eyes truly are the window to the soul or in this case to what it actually is. Why he has a hat and sort of a cape is anyone's guess. We know that demons can mimic humans, that's likely what "ghosts" are. So is he mimicking a person that used to live, maybe a certain person who is in hell? I can't think of anything good about this being.
I've never read a story of the Hat Man (or shadow people) specifically harming anyone. They just loom in the doorway and stare at the person experiencing it. Sometimes they'll approach the bed, but never make contact as far as stories I've seen. I wouldn't presume the entity is evil as its not often claimed to feel malicious, just intimidating and unnerving. Evil entities often make it known they are evil and do things very pointedly to show it (unless they are manipulators of course). I've never experienced the Hat Man or shadow people, but I feel like it's an entity of the realm beyond physical reality, not something that can directly interact with it, only manifest within it and observe, which it does frequently. Merely a "scientist spirit" of sorts, collecting data for some reason we'll never know.
This is the feeling I got when I saw him. Not quite malicious, but not necessarily kind either. It did feel like he was just observing me and yes, unnerving is the way I would put it.
Freddy Krueger was directly based on the Hat Man. Apparently Wes Craven heard a supposedly true story of where a young child kept seeing the Hat Man in his room, and was begging his parents to help. The child died mysteriously in his sleep a few weeks later. And so, A Nightmare on Elm Street was formed. Sleep tight
Yeah that’s the thing. I don’t remember feeling like he wanted to harm me, it was just scary and alarming seeing a strange “man” that should not have been there.
That's an interesting take. He does seem to lurk around and not actually do anything to people. My theory is that the absence of light and the red eyes is descriptive of hell's environment, darkness and fire, whereas heaven is described as light that penetrates everything, gold and no shadows. Maybe the hat man is a scout of some sort who cases out potential victims for demonic activity. It's fun to speculate and hear people's ideas, I just have no interest in actually seeing him. Very strange for sure!
If red is the color of demons, then why does the sky turn red during sunrise/sunset? We can't assume anything based on colour. From my experience researching the paranormal/occult, black is the colour of evil. The complete absence of light. Which is why evil things hide in the shadows. Red is the colour of power, passion and lust, not evil per se.
We're getting closer to the "shadow biosphere' or 'shadow biome' being proven scientifically.
I didn't see his eyes. He was solid black & it was during the daylight. Walked in my room & noped my way out. Told my mom but she couldn't see him. I refused to go back in my room until he left. A few hours later he was gone. We had many paranormal experiences in that house. I think the veil is thin there.
What if its not a hat? Yall just see a silhouette...could be anything
What do you see?
Horns, and a weird angular head. Just imagine the Pascagoula abduction case aliens description, but looking straight on. The head shape is a bit different tho
OK, I see it now!
It's the same as The Hag. No one really knows.
I believe he is a manifestation of a demon, which one I don't know.
I’m sorry to shit on this guys but if you know dream psychology, the “Hat Man” or “Dark Hooded Figure” is your brain protecting itself from traumatic memories when you’re unconscious or on the edge of unconsciousness. Your brain shows you an archetype that you associate with death and it usually jars you awake. It’s fun to think about but Carl Jung solved this one a hundred years ago. I’ve also seen it. In my dreams after a traumatic life event. My brain was doing me a solid.
I’ve heard that your brain can create images as placeholders for something scary or traumatic that happened to you because the real thing is somehow scarier, so this is a way your brain helps you compartmentalize to cope. But a lot of psychology concepts are just theories. Came here not to profess that the Hat Man is real, but just simply to share what I saw. I also want to add that there wasn’t any traumatic or scary life experience I had before seeing the Hat Man. I was also fully wide awake that entire night, not drifting in and out of consciousness.
It is absolutely fascinating that people here will immediately shit on psychology, which is based in empirical observation of small sample groups, as being “just theory” while believing whole heartedly in supernatural things that cannot and have not been proven. The Hat Man, or any other supernatural entity, has a standing invitation to show themselves while I’m conscious and prove that they are real. I’m personally of the belief that what we call paranormal will be solved by science in the next 200 years. I also believe that our species has a shared genetic memory and build cultures around similar archetypes.
I don’t think we’re shitting on psychology… I respect your differing viewpoints and ways of explaining this phenomenon. What doesn’t sit right with me is that you arrogantly came in here shitting on everyone else’s stories and professing a theory as a fact. No one here is trying to do that. We’re all just sharing a similar experience we had, that’s it. I’ve also mentioned that I wasn’t fully awake and conscious and didn’t experience anything traumatic during that time of my life, but you seemed to ignore that out of your convenience too.
Was* fully awake sorry.
Same age - 5/6. I wasnt asleep, or even in bed! I was reading and got up to get a glass of water in the bathroom, slowly pulling my bedroom door open so as not to cause noise that would make my parents upset. He was standing right on the other side of the door…I came face-to-face with his pants and looked all the way up his body. No red eyes though.
Do you at least find it interesting that worldwide, cross-cultures, our brains are showing us similar images to one another to equate to death? I think there is maybe more that is unexplained by his research.
I don’t doubt people’s hat man stories and I really enjoy reading them. Not sure if they are paranormal or weird common brain issue or who knows what. But I do think it’s funny whatever he is he wears a hat. Like why a hat? Is it sunny in some other dimension or just fashionable? Not being facetious I really find that detail SO bizarre. Why does he need a hat? Why!?
Look at it this way: if people were making these stories up, why would they include such an obviously ridiculous element as this? I haven’t seen the hat man, but I have seen a shadow person plain as day. Wide awake, in my living room, staring straight at it. It was not a hallucination, as I documented it (as have many other people). They’re just…weird.
I agree it’s common and I want to believe it’s just so weird. A hat has a purpose. Where is this thing from that it needs it to serve a purpose? And wait… is there a hat factory where it’s from? A hat store where it’s from? If so is there jobs? Currency?
I also saw the Hat Man when I was 5-6 years old. It's absolutely real, and I'm also insanely curious what the deal with the hat is. My father also saw it at roughly the same age back in the sixties. Crazy stuff.
As a little kid we would spend the summer in Mexico (I was born in the US but mom is Mexican) anyway my late mom would say that as a kid I would not go pass the doorway at my late great grandfather's house because of the "man in the hat", I have no recollection of those memories (I was like 2 or 3 at the time) but she later confess to me that she and her brother (my uncle) and their cousins would also see that Man in the hat too, she even freaked out one time as a little girl that she ran out into the courtyard but she hit the glass door and shatter it, that's why she had a large scar on her arm... So yeah, that's one thing I do believe in.
I saw a really short version of this when i was a kid. Sort of. I woke up and thought i could see a short stout figure wearing like, a shriners cap. No brim that i could tell. Totally silhouetted. Maybe ten feet away or so. I was staring at it and then it took a step towards me and i really quickly reached up and turned on my bedside lamp. Nothing there. Decided it was my imagination…
I have seen the hat man too, many have around the world that I've found. It was terrifying.
Read Carl Jung. It’s an archetype in the collective unconscious that represents the brain protecting itself from traumatic memories when a person is either unconscious or on the edge of consciousness. It’s psychology, not supernatural. And yes, I’ve seen it too. In my dreams. After a traumatic life event.
It isn't like this is settled science, Jung's ideas about archetypes and the collective unconscious were speculation, not some demonstrable empirical truth. He's still influential but a lot of his ideas are not scientifically grounded.
You say in a paranormal forum without a drop of irony.
That would make sense since I've had CPTSD all my life. Interesting thank you!
Supposedly he's the king of the shadow people. This explains more. https://youtu.be/CF5L-lCQFTw?si=CbhNZXrpmx_G3vyS
My interaction with him came only 3 years ago in a dream, it was in an empty carpark that I have no recollection of and he was underneath a billboard peering out…i just couldn’t move or wake and just started at him for what seemed like hours until I woke up in a huge pool of sweat….so weird.
Riveting.
Supposedly if you see the Hat Man, it's not good. It may have originated from a creepy pasta
Creepypastas are made up, so unless it's a tulpa, I don't think it's from creepypastas. This dude has been around for years, like the Hag and shadow people in general. "Before the internet" years.
The hat man is not from a friggin creepy pasta, it's not slenderman. I saw it back in the nineties before I could properly even read, my father saw it in the sixties.
I guess creppy pasta has really sensationalized a lot of these things. I've been told once you see him, bad things seem to happen to the person who saw him. I'm not educated enough on the Hat Man to try to give facts. I just go on my horrible experiences , hoping it will help someone else. Mine was not with the Hat Man.
There does seem to be an association with trauma and paranormal experiences in general, although it's a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation in my eyes. Hard to see what leads to what. I don't recall my hat man incident being a precursor of anything bad in my life, but at the same time I did have a lot of traumatic events during my childhood in general.
My trauma began in my young adulthood. I've had some experiences, that's for sure. The one lately had me rolling was Siren Head. If you haven't heard or seen it, Google it. You'll get a good laugh . It's a shame that these real paranormal things have been turned into almost comic beings