The Hat Man stepped into the light, but there was nothing but shadow.
Since the early 2000s, there’s been no shortage of people online reporting sightings of a tall, dark, shadowy man sporting incredibly wide shoulders and an even wider-rimmed hat – many of these going back decades.
You might awaken to find this shadow man haunting the foot of your bed, an open doorway or even the darkest corner of your bedroom.
Creepy or what?
Even more spine-chilling, some terrified individuals wake up to find the Hat Man sitting on their chest as they fight off sleep paralysis.
Interestingly, we are not strangers to shadow people stalking our slumber, with stories dating back to Mesopotamian folklore.
But why does The Hat Man feature so heavily in our modern dreams? What is the real reason for his existence?
If you’re just as interested in discovering why weird things happen, read on for an interesting explanation of The Hat Man.
Online accounts of the Hat Man
Have you been unlucky enough to see The Hat Man? If so, he’s as real to you as you and me are to each other.
The descriptions people post online of this potential sleep demon are just too similar to ignore. They are consistent across cultures and time zones, which can’t be a coincidence.
Although interesting, he has a nasty habit of changing up his behaviour.
Some claim that he exudes a penetrating sense of dread or malevolence. Others say he just exists and observes, watching but never interacting. But for an unfortunate few, The Hat Man sits on their chests, terrifying and suffocating them.
Even more interesting is that those who experienced recurring dreams of The Hat Man as a child reported that their mothers were part of the apparition. Unfortunately, this often comes alongside an admittance of childhood trauma.
Does it then beg the question: Is this shadow figure a real entity, or is he a terrifying symbol of a shared psychosis?
The Hat Man — a personal story
I am all too familiar with childhood trauma and The Hat Man.
In the early 1990s, when I was just six or seven, night after night, I saw a familiar shadow figure lurking in the reflection of my small, old box TV. He stood in the open doorway between mine and my brother’s room, watching.
It’s all so surreal. I don’t remember being scared. But I do remember thinking that my mum must have put him there.
That doesn’t make sense. Why would I think my mum put The Hat Man there? How did my young mind come up with that?
For many years, I thought it was just a messed-up dream.
But, years later, sitting around the dinner table, I shared my story of the Hat Man. Shivers ran down my arms as my mum finished the description of the Hat Man before I could. She had seen him before I was born. How was that possible?
Tossing and turning that night, the peace of sleep eluded me until the early morning hours.
I waited. Waited for him to terrorise me, sure he’d heard us talking about him. The waiting was terror enough.
Thankfully, I did not see The Hat Man that night and have not seen him since childhood.
What is weird is how I woke up to a strange, round patch of water on the carpet right where he used to stand. There was no logical explanation. Some might say this was ectoplasm.
Did he come back that night? Did I miraculously escape a terrifying sight?
What interests me most is my perceived mother’s role in these sightings, combined with my own experience of childhood trauma.
It makes me wonder, is the Hat Man a shared psychological phenomenon brought about by childhood trauma at a time when our mothers were supposed to protect us?
What Science Says about The Hat Man
Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash
I’m not the first and won’t be the last to link the idea of stressful and traumatic life events to hallucinatory experiences.
Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, argued that hallucinations enter the conscious mind because of forgotten or repressed traumatic memories.1
Seemingly intrigued by this, The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) discussed whether hallucinations are a potential product of traumatic events and subsequent mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Reviewing recent clinical studies, the NCBI argues that there is evidence that intrusive images and hallucinations often occur together. However, whether the hallucinations are a re-experiencing of a traumatic event is difficult to confirm.
Interestingly, though, some of the theoretical accounts the NCBI discussed indicate a link between intrusive memories and the symptoms of psychosis, such as the link between abuse and hallucinations.
Although the research is inconclusive, the relationship between hearing voices, seeing visions, and traumatic events continues to be a real source of interest for clinical researchers.2
What is normal?
Dr. Gabor Maté, in The Myth of Normal, argues that what we call normal is often wrong. In fact, modern medicine usually fails to explain the real causes of our psychological distress.
Maté argues that various degrees of dissociative response arise from experiences too painful to tolerate. Therefore, hallucinations could be a path to escape an unbearable present.
The increasing problem is how Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person. Those countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems are now experiencing more mentally ill people.3
Could Maté’s theories indicate that The Hat Man is a personal construction of a modern world struggling with physical and mental health?
Questioning the Impossible
In reality, the reason why The Hat Man haunts us is so open to interpretation that the question remains wide open. Walking the tightrope between psychology, folklore, and the paranormal, we may never know until we reach the other side.
For example, could The Hat Man symbolize our evolutionary fears? Unlike our ancestors, we are no longer constantly threatened by predators like lions and tigers, but the innate fear of dangerous creatures stalking us at night does not disappear.
What do you think? Is this shadow figure leftover from our ancestors’ evolutionary fears, a trauma-induced collective hallucination, or something more sinister? Is he really a sleep demon sent by the devil himself?
Whatever the answer, the consistency of sightings across time and place is impossible to ignore.
If you see the Hat Man, you’ll never forget him.
- Freud S. (1936). A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis, Standard Edn. London: Hogarth.[Google Scholar] ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4569972/ ↩︎
- https://wislibrary.org/library/gabor-mate-md-and-daniel-mate-the-myth-of-normal-trauma-illness-healing-in-a-toxic-culture/ ↩︎