===TRANSCRIPT START===

Are we in, are we on, is it going?

I think so, I don't know how long this feed's gonna hold, but I think we're in.

We hacked the feed.

We did, it turns out.

Okay, great, we should get started then.

That's true. Hey everyone, Ed Voccola here. Some of you might know me as the mechanic on Astonishing Legends, but tonight, you can call me co-host. I'm here with buddy Chris Cullari to launch a brand new show, I guess under the Astonishing Legends banner, called Scared All The Time. Now, before we get into the show, I just wanna say right at the top, this is not Astonishing Legends. We are not necessarily family friendly.

We're gonna swear.

Sometimes we'll swear. Just saying that the vibe of the show is more like hanging out at a bar with friends after an Astonishing Legends show. So, you know, you wouldn't bring your kids to the bar, so put them away for the show. Put them away? Throw them in the basement, lock them up. Yeah, whatever you do with kids, just do it now.

You're the parent, we're gonna be R rated, so listener discretion advised.

We're not, the goal is not to be R rated, but we might swear sometimes.

We're definitely gonna swear. We're definitely gonna swear all the time.

Yeah, it should be called swearing all the time. That should be the name of the show.

It should be called swear all the time.

We're having a little bit of fun at the top. We didn't hack in. Scott and Forrest know we're here. Yeah, so welcome to the show. I'm Ed Voccola, otherwise known as the mechanic on Astonishing Legends. I've been the mechanic for the last year and change, but I've been around Astonishing Legends, like sort of since the beginning. I actually worked the merch booth at their first meet and greet at the Idol Hour Bar, where these two lovely fans of Astonishing Legends helped me because I was so hopelessly bad at folding shirts and really anything I was required to do.

2017, episode 91, The Yeti Part 1.

I also wanted to thank listeners Cass and Wendy, who are sisters, who helped our man Ed, who was temporarily assisting us with our merch table. To be fair to Ed, he made it quite clear when I asked him to help us that he had zero experience.

What was Ed's phrase to you when you asked, just in general, if he would help?

He said he was gonna put it down on his calendar as stepping outside my comfort zone. So he did, he came, he did really great though, and helped everybody get some merchandise if they wanted some, and Cass and Wendy helped fold it and make it look like it was the display at a Gap store.

And I actually know Scott through his wife, Emily. We both worked on television shows together. We're both comedy writers, which is kind of weird that I'd be doing kind of a spooky, horror-based, weird show, because I'm kind of known as a scaredy cat. I really go out of my way to avoid being scared. I'm not a horror guy at all. But we'll get more into that later and as the show progresses. But because of that, I thought, who better to do this stuff with than my buddy, Chris Cullari, who is a horror writer?

Hey, everybody, I'm Chris Cullari. I'm the second voice you're gonna hear on this podcast. I have known Ed since 2005. We met at Emerson College in Boston as film students trying to figure out how the hell you make movies. I am a horror filmmaker and a horror writer, which means, unlike Ed, I spend an inordinate amount of time just thinking about all the different ways I could die and all the horrible things in the world. Ed doesn't think about those things as much.

No, I do think about those things. Just not for story ideas, you know, for self-preservation, I guess. And that's exactly why we're here, to not necessarily talk about all the things that can kill us, but definitely all the things that freak us out. Aliens, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, simulation theory, you know, what have you. A lot of the stuff Astonishing Legends covers so eloquently, but that's just kind of scratching the surface.

Yeah, we want to talk about the entire world of terrifying shit that happens to people every day. Whether that's getting lost in an abandoned town or getting eaten by a bear or catching a flesh eating virus or liking your ex's new boyfriend's Instagram post.

By accident.

By accident or dying in a plane crash or meeting a lizard person or spontaneously combusting home invasions, clowns, the oceans, freezing to death. All the stuff that makes your blood run cold when you're laying in bed in the middle of the night, you can't fall asleep. All the weird, terrible, scary things that trigger our endless anxieties.

And as a person who literally had like a telemedicine call with a doctor earlier to talk about anxieties, I just want to say this is not a thing that stops when we hit stop on the recorder. This is an all the time thing.

We're trapped in this.

If we weren't talking to you, we'd be talking to someone else.

A professional.

But we're not here to dwell on doom and gloom. The reality is that everybody's afraid of something, which makes fear one of the most powerful ways to connect with people. And we decided to really act on that and figure that the more we share these fears, kind of less scary they might become.

Now, since this is our first episode, we don't have any housekeeping to cover up top, but we do want to give you kind of a brief lay of the land so you can decide if you like what you hear, how you can keep up with us and how you can keep hearing more of it. So you'll be able to find us anywhere you get your podcasts every Thursday.

That's the plan.

That's the plan. And we're gonna stick to it, for sure. You'll be able to find us at our site, scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

Yep, anywhere you have the internet, type that in. And I think there's gonna be a website there. We have to talk to Scott.

You'll find us on most socials at ScaredAllTheTimePod. Now again, that's most socials. We're both in our late thirties. So whatever Jen Alpha is on, whatever Bing Bang, Zimzam, whatever grandpa proof shit that they're using, we're probably not on that. We kind of tapped out around Twitter, but we're out there. You can find us.

Although we are not on Twitter at Scared All The Time Pod. We're on Twitter at some weird, it was too many letters.

Oh shit, all right.

Well, that'll be in the show notes.

It'll be in the show notes. The important thing is we'll drop Thursday. All the stuff we talk about will be in the show notes.

And if you want to drop us a line with questions, praise, a genuine plea to fucking stop doing this show, well, feel free to send us an email at scaredallthetimepodcast.gmail.com.

We really do want the show to feel like a two way street. We want to share our fears. We want to hear yours. So please do not hesitate to email us anything.

And help us keep a fear of speaking into voids off our list of anxieties. Please be sure to like and subscribe, rate and review, kind of all that shit that everyone always asks you to do. From what I understand, it's really important. So without further ado, welcome to season one of Scared All The Time. What are we?

Scared.

When are we?

Now it is time for.

Scared All The Time. So we're kicking things off for our first episode with a figure who has definitely scared some people. Possibly including myself and Ed, although we will get to that later. He's someone who straddles the line between the supernatural and reality. He's someone you might have actually met already. His name's The Hat Man, and he might be standing in the corner of your room right now. He's six to eight feet tall, dressed in a long black trench coat and a big black hat. His face is lost in the shadows that seem to hold him, if he has a face at all, and he's getting closer to you. As he does, there's a sound in your ears, a hissing, maybe a ringing. Your body starts to vibrate violently. Some describe it as a feeling that they're coming apart at an atomic level. He gets closer and closer until you can see his glowing, evil red eyes, and just as he reaches out for you, you wake up and The Hat Man is gone. That's the way that many people have met The Hat Man. No one really knows who he is or what he wants. And it's important to note that whatever he may be, he is part of a larger mystery, sleep paralysis. This is how thousands of people across the world and across time have been introduced to the figure of The Hat Man. He's become a bit of an urban legend, and we're gonna spend tonight going deep on who The Hat Man is, what he wants, and where he might come from or what he might be. It's important to note right off the bat that whatever The Hat Man is, he does seem to be connected to a larger mystery, one that is based primarily in human biology, the mystery of sleep paralysis.

And but now, do you need to be asleep to see him? Because in some of our cursory research, it seems like I saw people who were like, oh, I saw The Hat Man, I just saw The Hat Man. Like when I was awake, he was in my house, he was cruising, buying a fucking skateboard.

Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, if they saw him on a skateboard, that might be Bart Simpson. That might not be The Hat Man at all.

God, Hat Man rules, dude. I'm actually, I'm coming around on this guy.

I'm a cow, man. No, so look, I mean, there's a lot to talk about with Hat Man, there's a lot to talk about with sleep paralysis.

Like his budding skate career.

And shadow, yeah, yeah. Now I'm imagining like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, but it's The Hat Man on the cover.

I would play that game.

He should be an unlockable character.

He should be an unlockable character.

All blackboard, all black everything.

Yeah, it's like the Hex games or something.

It would be like- Hexen, but Hex games. No, there's a game called Hexen.

No, there's an Hex games.

Oh, Hex games.

But then you make it like Hex games because it's all like spooky, unlockable characters.

You can see this is why Ed's the comedy writer. He got to Hex games real quick.

Yeah, but like bad puns, I'd be fired immediately. But it'd be fun. You could like unlock the Babadook, you can unlock.

Holy shit.

I know, right? And other like, hatted people, like.

I love this. The guys from Dark City.

The guys from Adjustment Bureau. Just anyone who went to work before 1970.

Basically. Okay, so no, to answer your question, do you need to be asleep to see the Hat Man? Like long story short, there are other ways people see Hat Man, which we're gonna get to a little bit later. But mostly people see him when they wake up in the middle of the night experiencing sleep paralysis. Now, what is sleep paralysis? Simplest definition possible is that basically before your body enters the last stage of sleep, which is REM sleep or rapid eye movement.

Like the band.

Yes, the body will decrease its temperature. And when that happens, neuron communication in the brain stem becomes limited, which immobilizes your body and prevents you from acting out your dreams, which is really important, maybe now more than it even was when we were cavemen. Cause now you can like, you could fucking get in a car and crash into a building. Back then, you just might wake up in a field.

Yeah, I mean, but I love that you're like, the easiest way to explain this is neuron communication in the brain stem.

Well, but that's-

All you need to say, I think, is that like your body, when in the deepest form of sleep, basically shuts your physical body down so that if you're rolling around in your dream, you don't roll off your bed.

Yes, that's a very good point. It's a very simple process that our bodies do, but our bodies don't always work right. So in this case, you're sleeping, you can't move because we've evolved, so you aren't running around and falling down the stairs at night. But if you become conscious on the way into or out of REM sleep, you're trapped in a space sort of between being awake and being asleep. And it's in this space that people report all kinds of strange experiences known as hypnagogic hallucinations.

Hypnagogic hallucinations.

Say it three times fast.

And then will the hypnagogic, the monster of hypnagogia show up in my bedroom if I say it three times fast?

Yeah, cover your mirrors. Yeah, hypnagogic, hypnagogic.

Don't you fucking dare. I don't need whatever that is here.

So the mystery of sleep paralysis isn't why it occurs. The mystery is why so many people report seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching the exact same things during these hypnagogic hallucinations. We know that as far back as Chinese texts from 400 BC, all the way up through the first collection of sleep paralysis stories collected in a book from 1664 called Of The Nightmare, Two Words. People have been seeing all kinds of shadow beings.

It was wild when doing the reading to learn that medieval definition of nightmare is essentially sleep paralysis, right? It was like, I'm paraphrasing, but it was like a spirit or demon that would sit on a person's chest and suffocate them.

That's the definition of nightmare.

Yeah, I'm saying, like that was so surprising to learn as I think of nightmare as just, I had a bad dream.

Right.

And not having a physical element to it where like in the medieval definition was, oh, a guy sat on your chest so you couldn't move. They added the sleep paralysis aspect to something scary happening. And that I was really surprised by. And there's that famous painting, The Nightmare.

Yes.

Which is from, I looked it up, it's from 1781, which is, I'm just, that's younger than America. And that's weird to me. It's like people are drawing demons sitting on people at the same time that we're signing the Declaration of Independence. And I just feel like, yeah, cause it feels like the birth of like 1776, America's off to the races.

1781, The Hat Man's burst in the ladies' rooms.

It's like, I don't know why, I just feel like, yes, there was a Revolutionary War and all that shit. It just seems weird to associate. I guess not. What year was like Salem witch trials and stuff?

Salem witch trials, I think were like the 1600s.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So like a hundred years later, this guy's drawing magic and ghouls and demons. And we're signing this Declaration of Independence. It is a wacky thought to be like, oh man, they out here. They out here talking about nightmares.

Yeah, well, and I think even if he wasn't painting it as a like, this literally happened to people, he was clearly documenting an experience that many people had had and certainly felt like they had these demons on their chests. And yeah, it is weird because so many of these shadow people and some of the new agey thought around these things does feel particularly modern in a way that is funny to think about. Yeah, that like Ben Franklin's wife one morning was probably like, well, you know, Kitty down at the blacksmith, she had a demon sitting on a chest last night. And everyone was just like, cool. Yeah.

Ben Franklin's like, I'm gonna use lightning to explain this. Don't worry, I'm on the case.

To kill them. So yeah, people have reported waking up paralyzed and seeing freaks in their room, basically since like the beginning of recorded history. And there's a whole other podcast probably about sleep paralysis connection to alien abductions and out of body experiences and demonic possession and the host of other maladies that ride the line between the supernatural and science. But what's important for this episode is that the figures people see at night are generally known as shadow people. And there's lots of them. Sometimes these beings appear as an old woman, which is known kind of in sleep paralysis lore, she's known as the old hag. Sometimes people see literal demons, long finger demons. Sometimes they see animal like figures. Sometimes they just see a black mist or a shadow. And sometimes these beings appear as the hat man. Part of what's really funny about trying to podcast about hat man is that the real power of hat man is his image. He doesn't really do anything. He shows up at people's rooms, he stands, he stares, he scares the absolute shit out of people, and then he leaves. There's a few people who claim he's spoken to them or gotten physical with them, but for the most part, he's a complete mystery. And that might be part of what makes him so compelling. He's a slender man with no lore. Books have been written about him, documentaries have been made about him, but no one knows the fuck his deal is.

Yeah, he seems not cool.

No, he seems absolutely terrifying.

And I wish you guys were all here with us looking at a photo of this dude.

Yeah, if you're listening to this by a computer and you haven't seen the hat man, please Google the hat man, look at photos, scroll through stuff while you're listening to us because really it adds a lot and you can see how scary this fucking guy is.

Which is funny to say, because it is, I will say that you're gonna Google it and you're gonna see a lot of photos of like children's drawings and that were done by adults. I just think that art is not something everyone can do.

No, but you can, I mean, he's out there, he's on the internet, he's very frightening. For people who are familiar with Sleep Paralysis stories, which is probably most of you.

You guys are all Astonishing Legends fans, so you're already cool and you probably know a bunch of stuff.

Yeah, The Hat Man isn't really new. I mean, people have been talking about seeing him since at least the early 2000s. One of the most comprehensive studies of The Hat Man was put together by Timothy M. Brown Jr. who runs a website called The Hat Man Project. He's become a bit of an amateur historian of hat man lore. And he claims to have seen The Hat Man in 1994, which spurred a lifelong obsession with the mystery of who or what Hat Man is. And Timothy Brown didn't realize that Hat Man was even part of a larger phenomenon until he heard an episode of AM Coast to Coast in 2001 during an episode of the show talking about shadow beings. And for a long time, that 1994 date, Timothy Brown's sighting stood as one of the earliest recorded sightings of The Hat Man.

And probably some of the earliest recorded sightings of like AOL discs you would get in the mail with free hours.

Yeah.

I don't know what year that was, but that seems right, that feels right.

Do you think there was AOL keyword hat man? Think anything came up?

No, I don't know. What would be hat man?

Indiana Jones, probably if you typed hat man into AOL.

Yeah, yeah.

But we knew that that 1994 date was out there, but we wanted to try for our first episode to bring you guys something you probably haven't heard before. So we did a little bit of research and we did find at least one reported sighting that occurred way earlier than 1994. We found a sighting that claims to have happened in the 1960s. Now, this is from a woman on Reddit, so Grain of Salt, but she claims to-

That's her name.

Yeah, R slash Grain of Salt.

Her username was Grain of Salt.

No, it wasn't. But there is a woman who claims to have been visited by the hat man multiple times as a kid in the Midwest in the 1960s. She describes it like this. I opened my eyes and he would be standing at the foot of my bed. He was an all black figure that was dense. He wore a black cloak and a tall black hat. All I could think of when I was little was like Abraham Lincoln. He had a face, but he didn't have a face, if that makes sense. I knew he was looking at me. I would get so scared and pull the covers over my head and would stay there. I got very good at breathing under blankets. When he spoke, it wasn't audible, but I could hear it in my head like I didn't see lips moving, but I heard him in a deep, steady voice. I am now 60 years old, and I remember this like it was yesterday. I was traumatized by this and hated the dark and being put to bed each night was just an anxiety-filled event. I did not get a warm, fuzzy feeling from him. For years, I've tried to understand his purpose. Once PCs came along and the internet became a place to search for things, I came across a ghost story site and a story that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was about the hat man. That was the first time I knew someone else had seen what I saw and I wasn't nuts. Now, I do think she undercuts her credibility a little bit with this next part. She says, when I was growing up in that house, I learned that magic blankets and an army of stuffed animals do protect you. That and saying my prayers. I had encounters with other ghosts messing with me and by the time I moved out at the age of 20, I wondered how I would deal with the dark on my own. Thankfully, once I moved out, I didn't have that same level of fear. I can still feel when spirits are around and have made sure I cleanse and bless any place I live in. And then she ends this in a way that makes me convinced that she probably is a 60 year old woman. That is my hat man story. I hope you enjoyed it. I believe he has been around for a very long time, much older than me. Now, Ed, this could all be bullshit.

Oh yeah, it's on the internet.

So this brings us all to the present day where hat man in the past couple of years has picked up popularity on TikTok as part of what was being called a Benadryl challenge, which is never a great reason to turn up in pop culture. For whatever reason, teens have started challenging each other on TikTok to take, not making this up, 12 to 14 Benadryl in order to hallucinate and meet the hat man.

Which, you know, combined with the Tide Pod challenge, it's a good way to meet your maker.

On its own, it's a good way to meet your maker.

Yeah, that's a lot.

The most Benadryl I've ever taken is like maybe three, and I probably like couldn't function for a day.

I've only taken a Benadryl once. I think I just took one or whatever. I mean, I took it like according to why you're supposed to take Benadryl. And I fell asleep for like 20 hours. It was insane. I thought it was like Rip Van Winkle like made more sense to me after that. It was like, I didn't know what year it was. It was so crazy. So the idea that you would take 12 to 14.

12 to 14.

Benadryl is a lot. That's too many.

Like so many internet stories, it's important to note that it is hard to say how many kids have actually tried this. So we're not trying to perpetuate a panic, but for the record, you definitely should not do this. Or should you? We might be doing it right now. Who's to say?

I can say we're not.

It's a little mystery just for you and me.

That's a bad mystery. I'm gonna destroy that mystery right now. We're not, we would never. In fact, this is a true story. Chris, you probably know this. I had a lot of trouble swallowing pills. As a young person, I mean like into my thirties, I feel like I couldn't. I think I was in my late twenties. I went into a doctor. I had this doctor. He says, I'll never forget this. And I was sick. I need like a Z-Pak or something. And I was like, hey, what would that be in liquid form? Not even looking up from his clipboard. He just goes, yeah, I don't know. I'm not a pediatrician. It was the most amazing like asshole thing.

So you might have taken like a bottle of it in a pill form.

Yeah, just not even, yeah, I don't know. I'm not a pediatrician.

Incredible.

Amazing. So yeah, we're not doing that. I would never do it. I can swallow pills now, but it's not how I'm using that skill. Oh shit, sorry. I thought this was off. Oh jeez, we got to take this. It's Mr. Disclaimer. Yeah, hello. No, I kind of saw this coming. Go ahead.

Go ahead.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an endorsement or encouragement of drug use. Always consult with a professional before making any decisions related to substances. Do not look for The Hat Man. Do not seek out his embrace. Never take medication above its recommended dosage.

Okay, thank you, will do. Shit, what were you saying, Chris?

Yeah, so The Hat Man has become popular as this hallucination brought on by the abuse.

Well, the ice bucket challenge, the much worse ice bucket challenge. So yeah, so I did a little research into this Benadryl challenge, because I love stupid shit, and I can't believe that people do crap that's so dumb all the time. So yeah, so what we've learned so far is that there's two ways to meet The Hat Man, and both aren't great, both aren't great. You can either meet him on his terms, I guess, in some sort of sleep paralysis, or you can meet him on your terms, which is just swallowing a ton of Benadryl. So I found an article talking about the Benadryl challenge in Rolling Stone, and it says that on sites like 4chan and elsewhere, The Hat Man is often referenced as a hallucination brought on by the abuse of, I can't pronounce that word, but it is DHP.

Diffinhydramine.

Different hydramines.

Different, by the abuse of different hydramines. No, it's diffahydramine.

It doesn't matter, it's DHP.

The kids call it- I'm not a pediatrician.

Yeah, nice callback, DHP, which is the active ingredient in the over-counter allergy medication bandage roll.

Turns out it's DPH, but the Rolling Stone article got it wrong, so you can blame their shoddy journalism and not Ed's dyslexia for once.

And the article goes on to say that forums like reddit's slash I love HP. What does that mean? I think that means-

I love DHP. I love HP as a Harry Potter forum.

Or a Hewlett Packard forum. People who love printers and why they're so expensive, which has a lot to do with research and development. But anyway, yeah, the article goes on to say forums like reddit's I love DHP, where users post quote trip reports after taking dangerous amounts of the drug. The Hat Man is at once an inside joke and mascot. And then there's a quote here saying, I'm going to attempt to see the Hat Man and fuck him.

That did not make that up.

I want to find that person and see if they're still alive or not.

Well, they don't give you, I think it just says a DPH disciple, they're not named who said it.

Shout out Hat Man fucker.

Just, you know, dream big.

Shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars.

Sometimes you shoot for the stars and you land in the cold embrace of the Hat Man. But anyway, they go on to say that any mind-altering substance taken to excess is thought to grant access to the Hat Man, even caffeine. So I guess he's like a tributary situation, I think.

I guess, but I would like to see a citation on the person who met Hat Man by drinking coffee or diet cokes.

Well, I think I might have something on that. Let me take a look here.

That might be, that's so much caffeine.

Well, here's an interesting tweet I found regarding just this. It says, a customer just came in in order to flat white with six shots in it. For clarity, that's like a full cup of espresso with maybe an inch of milk sitting at the top. This motherfucker is trying to meet The Hat Man.

Okay. So we have at least one Starbucks barista who believes that this is a great way to meet The Hat Man.

Yeah.

That's all right. That's a first, secondhand account.

That's a secondhand account. Anyway, I'm just saying, so people were thinking caffeine can do it. So now another really funny tweet I saw was someone saying like, first date idea. We both take 23 Benadryl and try to fight The Hat Man.

Dude, that would trauma bond you.

Yeah, absolutely. What trauma bond?

Trauma bond? You don't know what trauma bonding is? When you go through a traumatic experience with another person, it can bring you closer. It can strengthen your bond.

Oh, like the end of speed? Cause those relationships never work. She says that.

Yeah, well, you know, Sandy, call us.

Sandy Wildcat?

Yeah.

Wildcat fan. So now I also found this interesting DPH dose calculator on Reddit that includes the Hat Man as its own category. And it has, it's a bunch of percentages and the percentages equal the survey respondents who described experiencing this effect during a trip. And 51.4% of people taking DPH or DHB while on a Delaware Highway Patrol.

By this point, Ed had realized his DPH mistake.

One of them is inaccurate in the Rolling Stone article.

They fucked it up, it's DPH.

But had decided they've come too far to turn back.

So these are people who were fucking high.

Taking tons of Benadryl.

Yeah, these are people who were just yacked out of their minds on Benadryl and these are some of the things they saw. 51.4% of people said they saw shadow people. And a staggering, to me staggering, 20.7% of people saw the Hat Man when polled. That's something that they saw when fucked out of their minds on Benadryl. They should have been sleeping.

Truly, yes.

But no, they saw the Hat Man. They should have entered his realm, but no, they saw him on good old Terra Firma. They were walking around seeing this dude, which is unbelievable to me. And kind of the number one or two thing here is 75.7% of people, almost the highest amount, saw spiders and insects, which is really nothing to do with Hat Man, but it reminds me of my favorite Simpson sign, which was the Springfield Psychiatric Center. And the sign outside just says, because there may not be bugs on you, which is one of my favorite Simpsons gags.

I mean, in general, I do think that this dose calculator that you found and the percentages of people who reported what they saw, I do find it really interesting that this is one of the things that I think fascinates me about the kind of crossover of human psychology and where some of these things start to step into the supernatural that, again, so many people experience the same thing. 75.7% of people see spiders or insects. What the fuck? Why? Why do you see spiders? Like I know that people are generally afraid of spiders and insects, but why not? Like if it's, let's say Benadryl is tapping, the drug taps into a part of your brain that allows your reptilian fears to come loose a little bit or something. Why aren't more people reporting seeing fucking tigers in their room?

I think because most people are taking the recommended dosage.

Yeah, true. But the people who aren't, it's just interesting. Spiders or insects, most everything else on this list is a little bit more vague. Familiar and unfamiliar voices. Okay, that makes sense to me.

So just voices then. You don't have to say a familiar name.

An object turning into another object. Okay, you know, that's a basic hallucination. But spiders or insects, shadow people, The Hat Man threatening strangers.

Well, I will say this. I find that it's interesting that you, because it says like object turning another object. Familiar voices, unfamiliar voices. Spiders, insects. It is just kind of like they have these catch all sections. It's like, okay, you're gonna see a lizard. It's weird that Hat Man has its own section. Why wouldn't that just be included in the 51.4% of people who see shadow people if he is amongst them in the lore of it anyway? Like why is he its own category?

It speaks to the idea. I guess I would be curious if, and I don't know how this study was conducted, but like if you broke down the shadow people category, would you have another 20% of people who reported seeing the old crone and another 20% of people who reported seeing like a human, like a wolf man or a skinwalker type creature? Like how would the, if you broke shadow people down into component shadow people, would there be others who are as commonly seen as The Hat Man? We don't know. It does make me chuckle that the very last thing on this list is 3.6% of people see angels, which speaks to whatever the fuck Benadryl does to your brain. It's not taking you to heaven. You're going somewhere else. If only 3% of people see angels.

These are, I think taking 16 Benadryls the next day. If someone was like, what was that like? They're probably saying it was hell.

No, yeah.

I mean, last night, oh, last night, last night was hell. I would never do it again.

Even on drug forums where I did research on some of this, like most forums dedicated to recreational drug use, people are like, there is no reason to do this. You should not do this. There are better ways to achieve every slightly positive effect that you might feel from getting high on a bottle and a half of Benadryl. There's something else that does it better and without the demons that you will guarantee to see if you take too much Benadryl. So, yeah, I mean, you know, you know what?

I like the idea. I like the idea that the Benadryl hat man is different than the Sleep Paralysis hat man. And he's just the both of them hate being confused for the other where like, you don't know what kind of like weird shadow people conventions they're in, but it's just like, oh, you hear about Jacob.

Oh, you mean the fucking drug dealer?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like I've had quite enough of him.

Well, that's the thing is you'll be talked about earlier. When I asked you, I said, you know, do you have to be asleep to see Hat Man? And then maybe there's a version where it's like, you absolutely do need to be asleep to see Hat Man. But that the one that you're seeing on Benadryl is not the same Hat Man. So if you asked Hat Man, if you woke up in the room and Hat Man's in your room and you're like, bro, I just saw you under the Sixth Street Bridge. He's going to be like, I would fucking never be seen under the Sixth Street Bridge. Like, I don't know who you saw, dude.

Yeah.

But that's not Hat Man.

Yeah. Well, the problem is you always see Hat Man in silhouette. So there's a Hat Man who is dressed very formally in a very nice jacket and hat. And then the other Hat Man is basically just like a fucking cracked out hobo who's wearing like a crooked hat and rags. And you're like, yeah, it's pretty much the same guy.

Or it's just because it's so it's just three kids standing under their shoulders high on Benadryl in their mom's padded shoulder trench coat. It's not even like a noire trench coat.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. That's the Hat Man. Do you think it's weird that the lady who saw Hat Man in 1960s, she's describing like Abraham Lincoln by her own admission, like like a stovetop hat. Well, she's not like a Victorian ghost.

Well, I mean, she does say at the end of the post that she also saw other ghosts in that house.

I don't want to tell the audience like we have breaking news, but that I'm also here to happily be like, you know what? I mean, she might have not seen that. Well, I mean, look, God bless her.

Yeah, she saw something. You know, I think a lot of hat man sightings now, at least since the 2000s, have a context for who hat man is. There's a cultural context for it. If you saw him out of the blue in the 1960s and you're a kid, I didn't quote it, but I think she said that she was five when she recalls seeing this. You know, I could see how you might mistake any kind of a large black hat and go, oh yeah, that's kind of like Abraham Lincoln because you probably haven't seen a bunch of guys dressed up wearing a black hat.

No, but she saw it in the 1960s, which means she definitely saw people wear exactly the outfit, the uniform of the black hat man.

True, although, and also to throw this out there, in our research, we have found that other people have said that they've seen hat man with other hats.

That's true.

Which I do think is really funny. It's like a Grand Theft Auto character who's constantly putting on a new hat, like a new skin.

That's true. I think it's like, do you think they have the offices, the shadow people headquarters, where it's like 200-bedroom invasions, you get a Mountie hat now. It's like it's a sign of...

Well, all the hat men are like, it's like if they scare enough people, it's like Fortnite. They can get a new, they get upgraded.

They unlock.

Yeah, they unlock a new hat and a dance move.

Oh my God.

Now, people are gonna wake up and see hat man flossing in their bedrooms.

I mean, here's the thing, he's genuinely scary. I don't wanna belittle his role in people's lives. I also don't want him visiting me ever. But yeah, if that guy's out there flossing, it's a very funny sight to me.

It is. I think we've talked a lot about who hat man is, his place in pop culture, that sort of thing. I think it's time to talk about some hat man theories and what we think might be up with this guy. So, you know, whatever triggers the sight of hat man, I have a theory on this. And maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but I think it's worth talking about because it's something I've been thinking about for a while. And, you know, I don't know, if this podcast reaches the right listeners, maybe there's somebody who can help us dive into this a little bit deeper. But here's how I see it. And I think it's important for me to say up top, I'm right on the fence between being a skeptic and a believer. I grew up loving ghosts, loving monsters, loving aliens, loving the X-Files, wanting to believe in all this stuff. But I've spent so long in forums, on the internet, and around places and people who are constantly promising proof and evidence, and it never comes to light. And I'm 37 now, and I am burned out, I'm a little cynical, and I'm a little more skeptical than I used to be. So I'm of two minds on all this stuff. But this is how I see it. Either there are malevolent entities all around us that we can only see when our brains are half asleep or fucked on Benadryl, or there is something kicking around in the collective subconscious that manifests in these very specific ways. And what that cultural influence that is tapped into the collective subconscious might be for the old crone or skinwalkers or demons seen during sleep paralysis is for another podcast. But I'm curious about the role that another well-known scary story might have played in the creation of The Hat Man myth. I'm talking about The Men in Black.

That is not a scary story. That is a phenomenal, hilarious comedy.

It is that as well. And actually that is part of what I'm gonna get to because that movie was very popular for a while in the 90s and I do love it. But basically what people are describing when they see The Hat Man is really similar to The Men in Black. And to be clear, I'm not saying that they're the same phenomenon. I don't think they are. Whatever each of those things are, they serve different purposes. They approach people in different ways. Like I don't think anyone's ever woken up in the middle of the night and discovered a man in black in their room, telling them to be quiet about a UFO sighting.

That is, gotta not be the, they definitely have.

Well, I mean, if that's happened.

I don't think it's through sleep perils this, but I'm willing to bet that like, the Men in Black show up when you're sleeping.

Maybe, but most Men in Black stories do tend to start with like a knock on the door or they're outside and they see a black car pull up. It's not usually as invasive.

Not as in your face.

What I'm getting at though is the idea that by the early 90s, which if we're going by Timothy Brown's citing in 1994 of The Hat Man, by that time, this was the height of the 90s conspiracy boom. You had the X-Files and black helicopters and Ruby Ridge. And so the idea of Men in Black or even just anonymous G-Men functioning as some sort of malevolent overseers watching Americans every move was as common as citing in pop culture as posters of aliens smoking weed. Everyone had seen images of the Men in Black, partially because of the super popular movie. Everyone knew what they were and they spoke to this powerful paranoid thread in American culture. And it's not a stretch to imagine that these images invaded our nighttime hallucinations as well. But then that raises the question of, okay, so let's say Men in Black kind of, you know, was absorbed into the collective unconscious. And that's part of what has created this rash of Hat Man sightings now. But then how do we explain sightings that go back before the 1990s? Like the woman who posted on Reddit saying she was visited by the Hat Man in the 1960s. And to that I would say, well, even though Men in Black became wildly popular in the 1990s, they've been around for a lot longer than that. The first guy to report being visited by the Men in Black was a guy named Albert Bender, who founded the first public UFO club in America. And in 1953-

You think that was the worst possible name to have, to like break news? You'd be like, the guy's name's Albert Bender? This guy's a fucking drunk, who's gonna listen to him. Like back when your family would be named, like how did the family end up with a name? Well, they're a bunch of drunks. Even in the cave, they were slashed all the time.

I mean, outside of the last name, I will say in researching this guy, he must have been fucking wild to have grown up next to. He was born in the 20s and from an early age, at least according to his Wikipedia page.

Just drunk, just drinking?

No, he loved Halloween and ghosts and stuff and he would decorate his home with like monsters and skeletons and ghosts and ghouls.

Wait, what year was this?

This was in like, well, he was born in the 20s, so this would have been like in the 30s.

You could probably get like a real skeleton in the 30s.

Yeah.

Like somebody at like an automat.

Within two miles, you probably could have found a real skeleton.

Yeah, 100%.

In the 1930s. But I'm sure he was a bit of a strange bird. There was no winking, ironic Halloween fan culture in the 1930s.

No, you're just the guy we all know. Oh, you mean him? Oh, you mean Albert?

Yeah.

With all the skeletons on the lawn?

The one who keeps asking me when my grandfather's gonna die?

You doing anything with that skeleton, dude?

Dude.

I don't know what the paperwork is, but just sign that over.

Yeah, I'll take it.

The kids love it. But we're gonna be bobbing for apples, which is a disgusting thing to do. We'll be doing that over at Albert's house.

I will say I saw also on his Wikipedia page, he died in 2016 in Los Angeles, and I was kind of bummed that I didn't know that the guy who founded this first UFO club and first saw The Men in Black was living somewhere in this city, and I could have gone and said hi to him. But anyway, Albert was visited in 1953 by The Men in Black, and they basically told him just to keep quiet about his UFO research. And he didn't make this story public until a few years later, one of his colleagues wrote a book called They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, and it was published in 1956, which means that one of the first published mentions of The Men in Black happened at least four years before the 1960s report that we found on Reddit. Now that woman, we don't know, she just said it happened in the 60s, so we don't know if it was 1960 or 1969, but at least four years before she saw The Hat Man, the idea of The Men in Black had been published in this book. Now let's say that even if this was the early 60s that our Reddit user saw The Hat Man, at the time, FBI agents and G-Men outside of, you know, the idea of them as Men in Black would have been seen more as heroes than they were in the 90s.

I mean, yeah, you look at just so, there's Dick Tracy, The Spirit, like, yeah, the FBI, Herbert Hoover.

Dragnet.

Dragnet.

Yeah, all that stuff, these guys were seen as heroes, but as the 50s rolled into the 60s, that did start to change. And I don't think it's out of the question that evolving feelings about the government's role in our lives combined with, you know, whispers and rumors and this growing idea of an early men in black phenomenon got the ball rolling on what would grow to become one of the world's leading urban legends. So something I would love to hear from our listeners, if anyone out there could hook us up with this, are Hat Man stories from before 1953. If we could find a Hat Man story from before 1953, especially, and I mean, I don't know how likely it is that we would ever find this, but if we could find somebody who saw the Hat Man in a contemporaneous source before 1953, that would blow my mind. You know, I know it's-

How long has Benadryl existed? I'm going to look it up, I'm going to look it up. Benadryl, I almost wrote a Benadryl origin story. Just Benadryl invented-

It got bit by a spider.

Benadryl was invented by a guy whose name is impossible to say in the 1940s. So, yeah.

Shit, all right.

People could be just taking too many, you know, that cocaine was in like fucking Coke for a long time. Like, you know, they were like, oh, you got the vapors? Take Benadryl. They were just probably handing that shit out.

Yeah. Benadryl used to just be in donuts. Like here, take some.

You know, I can't sleep. You've been eating your Benadryl donuts though, right? You have no excuse not to fall asleep.

Yeah. I mean, I know that this is a stretch that we would find these stories, but I do think in terms of Hat Man research, you know, if you write in with a story and you're like, oh yeah, my grandpa had this happen to him in the 50s, that would be amazing. But if we could find an article or a book or something from before 1953, preferably, I guess, before the 1940s, right around the time that Albert Bender would have been born. If we can find a Hat Man story from the 20s or the 30s, that would go a long way to convincing me that this entity has had a physical presence in our world that is outside of the scope of psychology.

And we understand this is a huge ask because it's a difficult search to be like, I need to find a newspaper article where it mentions a man in a trench coat and a hat in the 1930s. Yeah. That's gonna be everybody. That's gonna be, they're gonna be like, oh, you're looking for Hat Man? We have them everywhere. Just look out your window.

Yeah, true.

The Macy's Day Parade was like a weird early version of Mickey Mouse and Hat Man.

Well, I mean, and that's actually really interesting is a reason that maybe we didn't hear more of these stories earlier in history because maybe it was more likely for people if you woke up in the 30s or the 40s and you saw a guy in a hat and a coat standing in your room.

It's probably your husband.

It would be like, if you woke up and saw a guy standing in your room dressed like a pilgrim now, you'd be like, what the fuck? Who's this pilgrim? If you woke up when people wore pilgrim clothes and you saw a pilgrim in your room, you'd just be like, what the fuck? Why is there someone in my room? So maybe.

I guess what we're saying is if you find any articles from the Mayflower that saw The Hat Man, please let us know.

I'm throwing my Hail Mary shot, but if nothing else comes with this podcast, if one of you could find a Hat Man story from before the 40s, I think we'd actually like.

We're talking to you, two listeners potentially.

Yeah, but it would be a big stride in Hat Man research, and I could finally get back at Timothy J. Brown Jr. Who I don't know, I'm just kidding.

But I'm also willing to live with, if anybody listening just looked to their left and to their right and didn't see that information, totally fine to keep living your life.

Totally fine.

Like don't lose sleep over this. Let actual Hat Man sightings make you lose sleep.

Yes. Now there's another pop culture connection that I've been thinking about too. This isn't necessarily a theory really, but I do think it's a really interesting connection to the idea of the Hat Man because there is someone else really well known.

Okay, if you're gonna say what I think you're gonna say, let me beat you to it. Are you gonna say Ninja Turtles?

No.

Because a Hat Man, if you think about it, is kind of just how the Ninja Turtles would get dressed up to go to the movies. I don't know. Also, hold on, let me look this up.

Dude, is Hat Man just Raphael getting lost?

Yeah, he went to see Critters, I think, in that movie. Bro, 1990. The movie came out in 1990. Hat Man started popping up in 94, coincidence?

Coincidence?

I said that with, I had no string attaching anything, but he does, if you think about it, dress like a Ninja Turtle's going to the movies.

He does, absolutely. That's not what I was gonna say, though.

Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I thought that was real.

I was gonna say Freddy Krueger.

Oh, yeah.

It's more of a stretch. It's not even really a theory.

I mean, he wears a hat.

Freddy is, yes. A, he's a very famous hat wearing man who comes into people's rooms at night.

Infamous.

Infamous hat wearing man who comes into people's rooms at night. And B, was literally created after Wes Craven read an LA Times article about a boy who died in his sleep. Now, this story is crazy. This kid's family escaped the killing fields in Cambodia and after fleeing to the United States, this kid, this boy had disturbing nightmares that he never really described, but in them, he was being chased by someone or something. And it scared him so badly that he tried to stay awake for days. And obviously, he couldn't and eventually fell asleep. And within just a short couple moments of him falling asleep, his parents heard him screaming in the middle of the night and they came in and he was dead by the time they got to him. Scary enough story on its own.

Yeah, it's no good. And that was, he just read that and that was the inspiration?

Yes, but what's even crazier than that is if you dig deeper, the kid, this kid wasn't the only one who died that way. In the late 70s, after the end of the Vietnam War, nearly 100 healthy people died in their sleep throughout Southeast Asian communities. It was mostly Laotian men and they all died from unexplained nocturnal death syndrome is what it was called.

That's the official diagnosis.

Nocturnal death syndrome. The men showed no underlying causes except they all had experienced higher rates of sleep paralysis and expressed their belief in some form or another that the things in their nightmares were going to kill them. Yeah, and we could do a whole other podcast just on this. And there's actually a couple episodes of Unsolved Mysteries where they dive into very similar stories. And in the Unsolved Mysteries episodes, some of those years later resolved that some of those family lines had had like weird congenital heart defects. And that might've been what killed them in their sleep. But a lot of the, a lot of this is like documented as happening. Now again, to be clear, there is no official Hat Man connection, but I think there's something very almost poetic, darkly poetic about the idea that at least 100 some odd people died from having these insane nighttime experiences. And then they inspired an artist who created a monster who may have then contributed to people's subconscious Hat Man sightings is a very darkly weird poetic thing.

There's just never a place for you. Like if you are waking up and talking to your roommate, your significant other, your parents, how was last night? It was terrible. As I slept, I dreamt of a thing that I think is gonna kill me. Like your options are, well, I'm late for work, or you should see a doctor. And then they go see a doctor, and the doctor is like, yeah, that's not a thing. And then that person dies, and the doctor has to write, what did you call it? Unknown nocturnal.

Unexplained nocturnal death syndrome.

Unexplained. And it's like the parents are like, well, I get no closure from that. But then also they then have to like, somebody at that funeral is like, well, it seemed like he tried to explain it to us. Motherfucker said he'd go to bed at night and something he met is like, I'm gonna kill you, Doug. And it's like, and he came to, God, it's just such a bummer. Like that's, it's a lose, lose, lose, lose situation.

Yeah, it's why Nightmare on Elm Street is so incredibly effective.

I don't know if you did any research on this. And again, it's a totally different podcast, but it's like, were there more? But does this go on beyond those hundred people, like low weight?

I don't, I know that that is one of the most.

Like cataloged or recorded.

Cataloged and studied because it reached the level of like actual medical bodies being like, do we have some sort of a weird crisis on our hands?

I mean, there was like a sleeping disease that people had. I feel like it was all over Europe at one point when people just fell asleep and they were asleep for a long ass time. I don't mean like a coma. I feel like it comes up in this, that movie Amsterdam or something. Like it's, it was a thing where people were just like zonked out, then it drilled out.

Opium.

No, I mean, they were like for a long time.

I don't know.

Yeah, I shouldn't have even brought it up. I've done no research on it. I'm gonna type in sleeping for a long time. Europe. Disease or disorder. And I'm gonna pop a Europe in there. Yeah, for good measure. Nothing came up immediately. So, but you know, I do think it's important. The audience knows a little bit about how this show is made. So I want them to feel every minute of me getting no information. Yeah. I am, I was not a broadcasting major, but I feel like I saw somewhere rule number one, more dead air.

Yeah. Yeah. Let people really try to imagine what you're thinking. Don't tell them.

Hard to cut to, should our first episode be a silhouette that is super hard to describe?

And doesn't do anything?

It's a real trust me, it's scary situation.

Okay. Now the audience does have to trust us. It's scary, but you and I have both experienced sleep paralysis.

100%.

And it is terrifying.

I don't love it.

Do you want to tell your story first?

My story is easy pease, cause it's not a Hat Man story. Unfortunately, audience, but it was, yeah, it was a coming out of sleep. It wasn't going into sleep.

So coming out of REM sleep.

Coming out of REM sleep experience, I awoke to my body, unable to move, and not to be too cliche, but it was the medieval definition of nightmare, like heavy feeling on my chest, unable to move. I didn't see any shadow people or anything. I have a distinct memory. It wasn't, I want to say a skull, but it wasn't a skull. It was like my eyes wasn't seeing a skull, but my brain was getting a vision of a skull. Like I'm looking and it was my room without anything special in it, but I remember there being like a real skull vibe. I don't know how to explain that.

Well, people talk about that with Hat Man or any of these things all the time that like they weren't talking, but they were still hearing voices in their heads or they couldn't see a face, but they knew a face.

Yeah, like there was a presence there for sure. And the thing that makes it extra weird, because that's not too crazy, but what made it crazy, and it went on for longer than I would have liked. I'm talking a half minute. It was like a full 30 seconds of me kind of freaking out. But then I went downstairs for breakfast, I'm talking to my mom and I was like, man, I had the weirdest experience this morning. I felt like this heavy thing on my chest, like I couldn't move. There may or may not have been skulls involved. And she's like, oh, it's so weird you say that. Because your dad had the exact same thing this morning.

No way.

Yeah, she was like freaked out a little bit, but when I even said it, but she's also got a lot of like, she believes in a lot of the craziest shit too. But she was just like, oh, fuck, like that's so nuts because your dad was telling me this morning that that just happened to him. So presumably at like the same time, my dad and I like woke from our slumber into a Sleep Paralysis potential skull situation.

Yeah, I mean, and those are the kinds of stories where the phenomenon seems to stretch beyond the explicable.

But I will say this, as a person who's experienced that and who had heard of Sleep Paralysis and has listened to this, you know, Shadow People episode of Astonishing Legends years ago, I still always believed in my head and in my heart that like Shadow People, Hat Man, stuff like this was a strictly medical issue. Like I was like, well, that's, the explanation is you wake up, you can't move because your body is designed that way. And then like some, you know, dream synapses are still firing and you're just seeing that. So you can discount anything you just saw as the last firings of, you know, your brain doing dumb shit. And I slept fine with that, like calm assurance that that is all that is. And then we started reading about this crap and like we watched this documentary called The Nightmare and we watched this Hat Man documentary as well. And people are out here being like fucking Hat Man, opening doors, people getting slapped around by fucking ghosts. Because as soon as we started watching, we were watching it together and I'm like, wait a minute, how the fuck's the door opening? Because it's just a synapse firing in your brain. Like you're, like people getting cell phone calls, the devil's calling and shit. And I'm like, oh no, I've been going about this all wrong. Like I sat here with this ignorance that I felt shielded by. And now I feel 10 times more scared about sleep paralysis than I did fucking two days ago.

Well, and that's the kind of stuff that like, I had been reading sleep paralysis stories probably since middle school. I probably found them online in like the late 1990s, early 2000s. And I was terrified of ever having a sleep paralysis event because everything that I ever read sounded so horrifying. And I had-

But you had like a real one. Mine was like, there might've been a skull.

Yeah, but I was scared for a long time. And then I saw the nightmare in like 2014 or 15, whenever it came out. And I was like, I'm never gonna be able to sleep again. And then one night in probably like 2017, 2018, I finally did have a sleep paralysis experience. And again, like it was only maybe like 30 seconds long. I'd fallen asleep on my back. I hadn't realized I'd fallen asleep on my back. All I knew was I suddenly felt the presence of something in my apartment, which was a very small studio apartment. So there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I knew something was there. I couldn't move. And then as I'm frantically looking left to right, trying to see if I can see anything, this giant black obsidian hand comes out from under my bed and pushes down on my chest. And I-

You physically saw it.

Yeah, I physically saw it come out from under my bed.

We're talking big hands, like how big? Big for comparison to your hand or foam finger size?

Like foam finger size.

So really big, like it would stretch across your chest.

It was bigger than a human. It was more like a monster hand that came out from under my bed and pressed down on my chest. And then as I started panicking, the elbow joint kind of like popped. I had the corner of my vision, like it bent. And then it started to pull the rest of itself out from under my bed. And that was when I really started shitting my pants and was like, if this isn't real, I need to wake up. I need to wake up. And then I woke up and it was gone. And I was pretty freaked out. I didn't sleep the rest of the night. And yeah, it was really scary. I mean, even though I quickly was like, oh yeah, that was sleep paralysis. It was about as bad as I've heard that it is. It was still really frightening. And then like a year later, I was researching sleep paralysis for something or another. I don't remember what it was, but I was looking through all these sleep paralysis images on Google and all of a sudden, and we're gonna include this image in the show notes, I hit a picture, a drawing that someone had made that like made the hair on the back of my neck stand up because it literally looks like me in my bed with like the same headboard in front of the same windows with the same creature. The only difference is in the drawing, the whole creature has pulled itself out from under the bed and is sitting on top of the guy in the picture, whereas I had only seen the hand, but the hand looked exactly the same. And I mean, look, I'm a white guy in his 30s living in an apartment in Los Angeles. It's not like I'm the most unique person to have drawn, but it was unsettling how much it looked exactly like it would have looked to somebody watching me in this moment. So-

You think Hat Man was there? You think it was Hat Man?

No, I don't know.

Do you think he could have? They're watchers, Hat Man.

I don't think it was Hat Man.

But you think he could have been there?

I think he could have been there. I mean, it's funny, I've had dreams about Hat Man like figures, but I've never had a sleep paralysis event with a Hat Man. So I don't know what the fuck this thing under my bed was, but-

Which apartment was that? You've been a couple of different places. Where was this? Was it the one in West Hollywood?

Yeah, it was my third apartment.

Jeez.

And yeah, it was really frightening.

When did you move out? Like from when that happened to when you moved out?

Oh, I moved out-

So you were there long after this event?

Yeah, because it's not the apartment. I wasn't afraid that the apartment was haunted. It was just, I knew it was sleep paralysis and I know it can happen anywhere. I will say I never have slept on my back ever again because I do feel like sleeping on my back might have had something to do with it.

So you don't attribute, so this is a little bit more, so you're also in that synapse firing realm. You don't attribute this to, because we were watching that documentary, The Nightmare or whatever, and there was a couple shadow people in disguise, oh, there was a couple shadow people, and the hat man was the leader of them. And the hat man directed them, what have you. And so for that person, that's not synapses firing. That's like there's a greater work at play here. And that's not what you felt about that at hand. You don't think that was an alien or a- No, no, and we haven't really gotten into what this shit is, but it sounds like both of us were in the realm of medical reasons for ours.

Yeah, I mean, and this is a great, I mean, it's a great pivot into what this shit is because we don't know, no one knows. It's very hard to study because we don't know exactly what triggers it. Again, I have read, sleeping on your back, being distressed in general, having trouble sleeping in general can help trigger these things, but it's really hard to study. I think one of the reasons I wanted to start the show with this idea is, I think more than almost anything else, Hat Man and Shadow People lie truly at the very intersection of science and the supernatural. Because I think even if I believe that my experience is triggered by a scientific event, such as waking up when I'm half awake and half asleep or taking a certain amount of drugs, I think there's a question beyond that of, is that medical event causing you to see these things? Or is your brain changing in a way in those moments that's allowing you to kind of see through a veil that we normally have up?

Which is always there.

Which is always there. And that in those moments where our brains function differently, we're taking in different sights and sounds that are just as real as anything else, but our brains usually filter out, you know?

But that would also, I guess, imply that, let's say Hat Man, because it's what the episode is, he's often watching people. Where I feel like part of me is like, oh, if at this moment we're able to see beyond the veil, shouldn't I just see him doing his taxes or going to work? The fact that they're also seeing beyond the veil and they're just taking that opportunity to watch you sleep.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think, look, Hat Man in particular is a weird one because he does seem to be dressed in a very specific way.

Well, I have a theory on that, and it's so stupid.

Go ahead.

Because he's dressed in this kind of bygone era of humanity.

Yeah.

This is dumb. I'm saying this out loud, this is dumb.

Go ahead.

What if it's a time traveler? Now hear me out. Like, what if it's a time traveler from the past? Who just keeps from the future? I didn't think about the past. Now I feel extra dumb. But in my mind, it's a time traveler from the future who needs to go back to the 40s to like warn them about something and they just keep landing in the wrong time.

But only when people are asleep.

I think maybe something about in the future, you can only travel at night in like Pacific Standard Time. But like it is, I don't know, but just something about, or it's from the past. That's a good idea too. But just something where...

And you're saying that they'd be dressed this way because they want to blend in with the time.

They want to blend in with the time period. Yeah, and so they'd have to go back to be like, listen, don't build the A-bomb or whatever. But they landed in 1979.

It would be hilarious that for whatever reason, they can't seem to go back any further than the 60s. Even though they're trying to get back to the 40s.

Oh yeah, there's a bunch of hiccups. They keep ending up in kids' bedrooms. The only thing they got right is the dress.

Yeah, I mean.

I mean, look, time travel, aliens, these both seem right and good to me.

Time travel theory, notwithstanding.

I said it was dumb. Like I entered.

No, but it's not, what I was gonna say is, I think there's definitely something to be said, and this starts to get really expansive and almost like a theory of everything. But the more that we talk about UAPs and the more evidence that seems to be gathered for those, there does seem to be this growing school of thought that perhaps some of these entities aren't actually from another planet. They're from another dimension or they're from some other space in our reality that we can't see.

And that's the place you're thinking you're getting a little slip beyond the veil.

Possibly, yeah. Now, why are they just watching us? Who knows?

I mean, Well, the watching as aspect to the people who think it's aliens. Yeah, sure. They seem like watchers. I mean, the big, And, oh, this is a good idea. Again, probably really bad, stupid idea. You know how when we see a star, it's like we're actually seeing the light of a dead star from like a billion years ago and it just reached us now. What if however far away aliens are, the light they're getting from earth, they're seeing the 1940s. So they pack the ship with shit for 1940s America. And they're like, listen, we've set the destination earth. We've added a bunch of shit you're going to need, which includes how everyone dresses. Cause you have to remember the 1930s, 40s and 50s, people kind of all did dress alike. It wasn't like now where people were just wearing fanny packs across their chest.

I actually liked this theory better than the time travel theory.

Well, I'm glad they're all coming out in real time. So they can be bad potentially, but yeah, like where it is just like, okay, I've looked through my telescope. I see what these guys are up to, but yeah, they're like 50, 60, 100 years late to getting those images.

Yeah, they've trained their top alien diplomats to fill their communications with our leaders with references to I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners.

Oh yeah, I do love that they got just episodes of Honeymooners and kept hearing to the moon, Alice. And they're like, they're fucking minutes away from space travel. We gotta get over there. We gotta start talking to them. We gotta send our diplomats from Pluto. Hey, we're here from planet Pluto. And they're like, that's not what we heard.

Sorry.

Sorry, Dingaling.

What was I gonna say?

I don't know. Everything I said was so dumb.

No, it was-

That you were actually shocked, like you're stunned.

No, the people seeing our past and thinking it's our present. Like, you know, I think there's something to that. I think in general to me, really this all comes down to, are these beings sentient or not? And I kind of feel the same way about ghosts. Like, I think they're all-

Wait, wait, when you say sent, do you mean like, are they watching us? Well, yeah. Or are they, that's just their move, is they just stare like a non-playable character?

Well, are they physical beings who think and reason and maybe feel or whatever? Or are they some kind of phenomenon that we sometimes are able to cross paths with, but it's more like, I can't think of a good metaphor, but is it more like interacting with the wind or a rock or something where you can see it and you can experience it, but it isn't really experiencing you?

Well, that's why I asked, do you think it's staring at you or it's just a cutout? Staring would imply intent to look at you and it doesn't have that. Although I will say that we saw a number of things where people said that the Hat Man in their version or what they saw had red eyes. And I just don't think you're out there on these streets with red eyes, once you're up to no good.

Well, I mean, the idea to me.

And I feel like I could say that there's no red eyed people.

No, there aren't.

It's not like I'm alienating the audience.

Except Dracula's.

Are they red eyed?

I don't know.

Okay, we're gonna have to do an episode and find out for sure.

Our next episode is gonna open with a very sincere apology to Dracula's.

Here we are, Dracula's, just upstanding citizens of our Knight community.

Wait, what were you talking about?

We had some theories.

Well, I mean, I would say that I think the most likely theory outside of a purely materialistic or material sciences sort of take of it's just your synapses firing in a weird way when you're half awake is the idea that we are surrounded by beings of some other type of dimension or spatial whatever that we just don't normally experience or interact with and that there's points where we can, whether it's through drugs or through sleep or through somehow our brains not operating the way they normally do these things. It's like all of a sudden you can see UV light and you're like, oh shit, now I see all these other ranges of colors and stuff. Maybe that's what it is. I think that's the most likely that there's just some type of intelligence that exists alongside us that we will probably never be able to understand, but we can sometimes experience.

So you don't have a strong enough urge to understand it where you would take 16 Benadryl to find out?

No, I mean, again, for anyone thinking that maybe they want to try to meet the Hat Man by taking Benadryl, the most experienced psychonauts on the internet beg you to not bother, because apparently it's just, there's no benefit to it.

So is Benadryl like a protected thing now? Is it like you have to go behind the counter? Because you know how like certain drugs you have to go behind the counter to get, I think Benadryl must-

I think you have to sign them out or whatever. Like the library, you need to write your name down.

God, do you imagine if it was like, I don't hear a sniffle. You trying to see Hat Man? Like the person at the counter just won't give it to you. They just don't believe you. They don't believe you have allergies.

No, probably not.

Fuck, Hat Man, what a G.

So the last thing we gotta cover is the introduction of something that we're calling the Fear Tier.

It's a device to help us rank the fears we cover. I guess the top one would be the most scary and the bottom one would just be less scary or the least scary.

And I think it's important before we rank where Hat Man goes that we explain what is the premier fear tier, what goes to the very top of the fear tier.

This is my personal biggest fear.

This fear, Ed Voccola, drum roll please, what are we comparing every fear to?

Hot shit and piss, which let me explain. There was a woman here in the city of Los Angeles a couple years ago who a hobo, homeless man, I don't know, unhoused, he poured a bucket of hot piss and shit per her own admissions on her. And she said it was too much for like one person to have made. I'm not saying it was a group of people, it could have been like collecting it over time, but it's just a person who was walking on the street and then a person who they don't know with a bucket of what she believes to be hot piss and shit. And the fact that it's hot is like also a problem for me.

That leans towards he'd been collecting it for a while. Yeah, it's just sun-baked hot piss and shit.

Hot piss and shit and poured it all over her. And I don't know how you come back from that.

That's Ed's greatest fear.

The reason it's like my number one fear is it seems, it's a likelihood thing. In Los Angeles, there's a much greater chance of that happening to me than being bitten by a shark because this is a future episode, but I don't go in the water. A lot of the really scary things that are out of my control, I just feel like it's such a smaller roll of the dice to have that happen here. And it's just the fucking most disgusting, grossest, weirdest thing that like, God, anything else, if it was fucking a bucket of dead bees, if it was a bucket of living spiders, if it was like anything else, I'd be like, let's brush this off. This was an unpleasant day. But just hot piss and shit is, and I know people have turned off the podcast. Nick, no one wants to hear me. I guess we'll change it to like hot P and S or whatever.

No.

Well, hot S and P.

No, it's hot piss and shit is the very top.

And so basically it's like, where does this rate, I guess you're asking, got a scale of one to hot piss and shit?

I do feel like Hat Man kind of near the top because we've both experienced sleep paralysis. It can happen to anyone at any time that they are asleep or taking drugs. And at least according to the poor souls of a hundred different Laotian men in the 70s, Hat Man might be able to kill you.

Hat Man, he's snatching up souls.

He might be snatching souls right off the streets. Shit.

Yeah, no, and you're right. The first two things you said, it's similar to the bucket of hot P&S.

I wouldn't put it in the same category. Whatever that top level is, I wouldn't put Hat Man.

Well, if we were looking at categories of like, is it out of your control? Can it happen at any time? Are you adjacent to it? Well, yeah. Hat Man and a bucket of piss and shit can happen at any time. Hat Man and a bucket of piss and shit are out of your control. And Hat Man and a bucket of piss and shit. Like I am steps away from these here streets. And I have also already had sleep paralysis.

The difference is that hot piss and shit is a very physical thing that can cause very concrete physical problems for you. Whereas we don't know that about Hat Man.

No, but we have. We've had people who claimed experiences where there was physical altercations.

True.

So yeah, I guess.

Same tier.

Fuck, it's close.

It's close.

I didn't think Hat Man, because prior to recording this, Hat Man lived in the world of shadow people who in my mind, like I said, were simply synapses firing. And I didn't think that they can touch you and strangle you. But some people said that he came over them and put his.

What if the Hat Man dumped a bucket of hot piss and shit on you?

That's stratospheric. That's stratospheric.

That breaks the fear tier.

What is the, is it the Luxor? What's the pyramid hotel in Vegas that has that light that shoots the fucking space? Yeah, that's the light going to space. Is what Hat Man wielding a bucket of excrement, that's the fucking light going to space.

Shit, man.

Well, until next time.

Yeah, so that's our show. Thank you for joining us on what's sure to be.

A thing we do.

A thing we do. We're committed to getting freaked out by something once a week. And again, we will drop every Thursday. You can find anything we've referenced tonight in the show notes. And in the meantime, we wanna hear from you. So any Hat Man experiences that you've had, any Shadow People experiences that you've had, let us know. We particularly again wanna hear from anyone who saw or has found a Hat Man reference from before 1953. Until then, I'm Chris Cullari.

I'm Ed Voccola, otherwise known as The Mechanic at my other job.

And this has been Scared All The Time. We'll see you next week.

Scared All The Time is co-produced and written by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity Tess Feifel.

Our theme is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is.

No part of the show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

Good night.

We are in this together.

Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===