===TRANSCRIPT START===

Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Hey guys, I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And welcome back to our anniversary email Replyaganza. We're taking a break from answering the deluge of regular emails this episode to answer emails about one very specific topic, our very first episode, Hat Man.

What are we scared? When are we? Now it is time for Time for Scared All The Time.

We received more emails about this episode than anything else we've covered, so we thought it would be good to split this episode out into its own Reply episode, where we can talk just about Hat Man and the crazy emails that you guys sent. So without further ado, here's the first email we have for our Hat Man episode. My Hat Man encounter from Joseph Ship. Hey guys, just finished listening to the Hat Man episode and I felt compelled to reach out and share with you my Hat Man encounter. I wrote all this down a few years ago and apologies in advance. It's long. TLDR, I saw the Hat Man around 1998 when I was a teenager. I had never heard of Hat Man at that point, which continues to be the most disturbing piece of this to me. Years later, I was telling my mom about the experience and she said she saw him when she was a little girl. Sadly, this was not prior to 1958, but it must have been around then. She was born in 54. Loving the show, Joseph from Nashville, Tennessee. And this is Joseph's story. In 1998, I was 16 years old and still living in my childhood home in rural Tennessee. This is when I saw the Hat Man for the first and only time. Of course, I had no previous knowledge of any kind of Hat Man or Shadow Person up to that night. It wasn't until weeks, months later, when a friend of my parents informed me that what I saw was indeed an occurring phenomenon and it had a name, Hat Man. She had learned about it herself from a Coast to Coast radio show. Since then, I've read many similar accounts like mine, where one discovers this wasn't some unique one-off nightmare, but something universal, random and frequent enough that it's a thing. At that moment of realization, the event finally sinks all the way in. I still get chills thinking about it myself. To me, that's the real story here, the phenomenon. As much as science tries to explain, rationalize and demystify this happening, it fails to explain why the Hat Man. To my knowledge, this nightmarish character expands cultural barriers, age and sex. It can happen to anyone at any time, anywhere. To me, that fact alone is just a little too weird, not to be anything other than supernatural. Here's my Hat Man story. Like I said above, I was 16, possibly 17, and living at home. I grew up in this house. It was a new structure. My parents designed and built it themselves before I was born. It sat at the edge of the woods off a small quiet street in a rural part of middle Tennessee. My bedroom was on the house's second floor and at the end of a long hallway directly across from my parents' room. The wall closest to the foot of my bed had a large window covered in metal blinds that let in a little bit of the streetlight 150 yards away. Other than that and the red numbers from my digital alarm clock, my room was dark. I liked it that way. Sleep is my friend. I love it and need a lot of it. It's rare that I have trouble falling off to dreamland. Usually, as long as I'm horizontal, it's easy to find slumber. However, this particular night in 1998 was different. For some reason, that night, I could not go to sleep. I remember being extremely tired when I went to bed, but it never happened. This might have been the first time I had insomnia. I tried all the tricks. Hundreds of sheaths, breathing exercises and my favorite, the make your eyes tired by staring at a point for as long as you can game, which my dad had taught me. The point I had picked out to stare at was a tiny part of the window at the foot of the bedroom where light was getting through the heavy blinds. It was coming at 4 AM and I was praying that I could at least get a few hours of sleep. Completely out of nowhere, a figure appeared at the foot of my bed. It wasn't as if he just popped into existence or dissolved into being in my room. I didn't see him walk in or float in from a wall or a window. I must have blinked or looked away for a moment, but now he was there. He was directly in front of the window I had been staring at. His black silhouette contrasted with the striped horizontal light leaks of the metal blinds. I distinctly recall he was wearing what I used to call a pilgrim hat and cloak. The hat wasn't too tall, but had a large, flat, evenly round brim. He was tall and stood very still with dominion. Up to this point, what I've described is similar to all the other accounts I've read, but here's where my story gets interesting. I was lying on my back, arms to my side, eyes wide open. I was very awake.

With eyes wide open.

I was very awake.

It's not even the lyric.

Aware. I could not take my eyes off of this man, obviously terrified, petrified. I was too scared to scream, too scared to move.

Too hot to handle, too cold to hold.

True, true. Look out, Hat Man. You don't know what you're in for. Upon further research, I'm positive that I was experiencing sleep paralysis, but to me, it felt like the man controlled that part of me. I remember thinking this could not be happening. My goal was to try to simply disappear. I thought he would leave me alone if I didn't move. If you're getting attacked by a bear, play dead, right?

I don't know. What did we put in eating alive? I don't remember.

Hopefully, we gave you a good answer to that.

I think if you're getting attacked by a bear, what did we say? Just to kill yourself?

No, no, no. I think you do play dead because most bears...

I thought you got big.

Well, if it's coming at you, I think if you're in the middle of being attacked by one, you play dead because most bears aren't trying to kill you to eat you.

Except for grizzly bears.

If a starving grizzly bear might be trying to eat you, but most bears are just trying to make you not a threat. Sure.

They say it's important when someone tells you something incredibly personal that you interrupt them a hundred times and make jokes about their story. Maybe we'll change that for the next email.

Sorry. We're sorry, Joseph. This is a really good email. I'm actually really into it. That sounded like I was lying, but I am. He was no bear and he could very much see me and I felt very much alive. My eyes were glued to the man's face. I was trying to make out as many details of a human face as possible. I guess I wanted a description to give to the police when they were filling out a breaking and entering report. The harder I looked, the more I could make out his eye. One normalish eye. It wasn't red or all black or anything like that. It's possible he had two eyes, but all I could see, all he allowed me to see was one eye, his right eye. At first, the eye was hard to see, blurry. As his eye became more focused, I realized that my body was moving closer to him. I realized that I was lifting out of bed toward him like a telephone pole being raised upright into position, feet still on the bed. The closer I came to him, the more detail I could make out of his eye. It was wild and kinetic. His eye was rolling, fluttering back and forth in his head really fast. When I thought I couldn't take it anymore, I felt myself lowering back into bed. In bed again, I rolled over to my left side in a fetal position and got all the way under the bed covers again, hoping again to disappear. I fell asleep like that with the feeling that he was still in the room. The next day, I told my dad about my experience, and he must have thought I was crazy. He'd never seen the Hat Man. A few years ago, around Christmas, I was visiting with my mom. We were sitting at the dinner table eating a nice home-cooked meal. She lives in a new house now. We moved out of my childhood house after my dad passed away in 2003. Somehow, the Hat Man story came up, and I realized I'd never told her about my experience. Just when I got to the part of the story where I explained what the Hat Man looked like, she stopped me. That's the old man that used to live in our closet, my mom exclaimed. According to her, her childhood house was haunted, and the ghost lived in the closet of her and her sister's room. Cold chills washed over my body when she told me. Could it have been the same Hat Man I saw and all of you have seen? Since that night, I've experienced sleep paralysis two other times, once when I was 19 and the other when I was 20. Both of those times happened to me in the middle of the day, during nap time at a summer camp I was counseling at. The entities were different on those occasions, more demonic. The last time it happened, it shape shifted from my girlfriend at the time to a demonic hairless being with crazy Baraka from Mortal Kombat features.

Oh wow, remember Baraka?

Yeah.

That's amazing.

This guy does.

Sure does. I think they're chasing Baraka. If anybody listening right now is hearing a helicopter a bunch, this is just Los Angeles man and we've been trying to stop, but I think a crime is happening outside of my apartment, so just please ignore it if possible.

Both were equally terrifying and real as the Hat Man encounter. I understand how hard it must be to believe such stories if this has never happened to you, but this was as real as me sitting here typing this. I hope my story is further evidence in a growing body of similar accounts to the possibility that this phenomenon exists far beyond our understanding of the current scientific worldview and into possibly the spiritual or multidimensional realm. Until this mystery is solved, let us rest in the cold comfort of our common experiences with the Hat Man. So wow, goddamn, Joseph Shipp kicking us off strong. This is a very scary story.

Yeah, it's a long story, but it's well written, except for that one word on a no dominion, if that was used correctly or if I had to stop, I don't know it. But other than that, like, yeah, definitely setting the bar high for people who write in. And I'll try not to, I mean, you can't ask me when it would be out already by the time it comes out, but I guess, let me know. If you get to the end of this episode and you're like, I don't want Ed doing the Ed thing during Scary Stories because it fucks with the vibe, which we've talked about in the past when I wrote with you on horror stuff, where I would just be like, ghost enters, because you're like, Ed does not know how to create a creepy vibe in his brain. Just doesn't doesn't work that way. So, yeah, people if people want creepy stuff to remain creepy and uninterrupted, I will happily do that in the future.

Well, we've got a bunch more stories coming up because I think this first wave of emails is from when we did Hat Man. We asked for people to write in with Hat Man stuff because we were like, oh, we might do a Hat Man part two.

Yeah.

And then we never did.

We're doing it now, I guess.

Doing it now, kind of. All right, this next one is actually a submission through the Astonishing Legends website that got forwarded to us.

Classic.

So this is from Daniel, subject the Hat Man. Today, I listened to the episode on the Hat Man. I can't tell whose pod this is, though it came up under my AL feed. So that was us. Daniel, I hope you're still listening to us. And Daniel says he Googled the image out of curiosity. When I came to this image, I stopped my scroll and was unable to look away from the computer screen. So he has included this link here.

Okay, I'll take a look.

It's the Hat Man.

He's famously in his silhouette pose.

Yes. The image immediately took me back to my childhood and a memory that I have that I've been trying to forget and understand since 1977 or 1978. In the 1970s, when I was around six or seven, I had a recurring dream that has stuck with me for more the last 45 years. Okay, no, there's a typo.

For more than.

For more than. In the dream, I was abducted by a man in a black cloak and a black hat. This dream has stuck with me all this time and the memory comes to me periodically and the memory is as real as any other memory from that time in my life. I was a nervous kid whose parents were going through a divorce so I always figured it was just a manifestation of my anxieties and fears, but it always seems so real and I remember that for months after the series of dreams, I felt I was living under a dark shadow and was completely preoccupied by the man in my dream. Listening to the Hat Man episode made every hair on my body stand on end and chilled me to my core. For nearly five decades, I've been struggling to understand why the dream had such an impact on me and why I was so terrified and traumatized for months after the dream. Thanks for the episode and all the work you guys do.

Oh, that's very nice and a horrible dream. It stuck with you to this day, it sounds like.

Yeah, although I think the thanks for all the work you guys do was to Astonishing Legends, not us.

Oh, true. Yeah, I went to their website, including confusing me with this weird...

Yeah, so we're doing our own thing, baby. We're not Astonishing Legends.

No, but maybe he kept listening to our show and now if he had written another email, he would say it to us.

Maybe. Well, this next one's also forwarded to us from Astonishing Legends from Samantha. The subject is generational hat man. This is another long one. Oh, good. Message. Hello, Astonishing Legends and Scared All The Time. I just finished listening to the hat man episode and wanted to share my story. I have had two experiences that involve the hat man. My first experience happened to me when I was in middle school. One of my family members ran a daycare and I would go there after school. As I got older, I was always allowed to hang out away from the little kids and do my homework or watch TV. This day in particular, I decided to go into the spare room. I never went in there. I always felt creeped out in there because my cousin was not here to keep me entertained. So I go in there, turn on the TV and get comfy in the bed. It's really easy for me to fall asleep anywhere so long as I'm warm. So I eventually fall asleep.

Pretty nice. Pretty nice superpower.

Yeah. I remember having this dream of being in the desert and walking around confused. I'm walking around aimlessly until I fall asleep.

Desert's a pretty warm. I fall back asleep.

I'm walking around aimlessly until I feel my stomach drop, my heart beat quicken. Oh no, I'm sorry.

She was asleep in the desert?

No, no, no. I'm walking around aimlessly until I see a huge drop off. I walk towards it and don't see where it ends.

Oh, a cliff. I thought it was like an Amazon drop off.

Yeah. I walk towards it and don't see where it ends. I'm peering over the edge and in my dream, I slip and start falling. Cue the very familiar falling dream feelings. I feel my stomach drop, my heart beat quicken, and all the anxiety in the dream. I do fall and watch my own head smush on the ground.

Oh my gosh. Usually you wake up.

No. Well, she smushes and then I'm suddenly jolted awake and I'm looking around the room still in a panic.

Which reminds me of a Bjork song I like.

When my eyes meet the mirror, that is opposite the bed I'm sleeping in, I see the biggest, darkest figure ever. It was so big, its neck was bent in a natural, very uncomfortable looking way. At first, I thought I was still dreaming, so I hit myself really hard in the legs to try and actually wake up. But when my eyes averted from the mirror to where the big figure was standing in the room, it was still there. The figure was at the foot of my bed and its head was positioned over me. When I realized I was actually awake and this figure was just standing there looking at me, I got freaked out.

I bet.

I hurried out of the bed, grabbed my backpack, and ran as fast as I could out of the room. The entire time, the figure did not move its body, but only its head to watch me. I could still see it in the mirror the whole time, just this giant, dark, deep black figure. I did get a sense of danger and fear, and like I definitely needed to leave immediately. I made it out of the room and down the hall to where the living room was. I told my family member I'm going outside and sat there until my parents picked me up. After that day, I never went back into that room. I have many spooky stories regarding that house, but I can save those for another time. Flash forward 10ish years later, me and my husband have renovated our current bedroom. We turned the attic into our bedroom loft slash living area, and we were looking for furniture. The same family member who ran the daycare found out I was in need of furniture and called me saying she had a lot of random pieces that I could come look at before she donated them.

Yeah, you don't want to donate that mirror before we get a chance to get it.

No, me and my husband were happy to go see, so we went that evening. When we got there, she was showing us where to get the furniture from. She's older and would not have been able to help us that much. My heart dropped. I knew exactly where she was leading us, to the room where I saw that figure, the hat man. I started panicking, but didn't want to seem rude or freak out my husband. When we entered the room, the whole energy felt different. The room felt colder than the rest of the house and felt so isolated. I live in LA where the seasons don't really change. It's basically summer all of the time. So to feel cold is something that doesn't really happen. I put on a brave face and me and my husband start looking through the furniture. We did take three items and we were off. When I got home, my husband could tell something was on my mind, so he asked me. I told him everything. I told him about my experience, the way I had felt the day it happened, and how I felt coming back into that room. I also told him about the other experiences I had in the home. He was also pretty creeped out, but he reassured me I was just probably a little triggered from that traumatic experience and there wouldn't be any bad repercussions from taking furniture from that family member.

Not financially, you got it all for free.

Well, he was wrong.

Ah, classic.

That night, I was pretty freaked out, so I asked to sleep with my lamp on. Well, I saw the hat man again, but this time there was no bad dream to summon him and I know I didn't take 14 Benadryl. At this point in my life, dealing with the paranormal and entities was something I would say I was more accustomed to. I didn't talk to him, but I acknowledged him and he acknowledged me. It felt as if he was checking in on me. I was scared for sure, but not to the same degree as when I was in middle school and that seemed to make him disappointed. I remember thinking in my head, okay, I'm scared right now, but I see you. I know you're real and I'm okay with that. It was like I could hear his thoughts. It was something to the effect of, well, damn, I wanted you to be more scared. It was probably a few moments of this just blank staring at each other before I noticed he was moving towards me. That is when I really started getting terrified. I pulled out this small card from under my pillow that has a prayer on the back and the archangel Michael on the front. I encounter a lot of spooky things. Yes, I do have this card as my one line of defense, and if that doesn't work, I'm screwed.

Okay, well.

I held it out in front of me and yelled, no. This was the first time I ever saw features on him. He smirked, but there was no teeth, just like an open mouth hole, and he dissipated into the ground. It was like he melted through the floor. My husband shot up in bed and immediately put his arms around me, asking me what was wrong. I struggled to process what happened for a moment because I was scared, but once I calmed down, I got my encounter out and he shook his head and told me to stop watching scary movies.

Oh my God, this guy is not going to give up free furniture for any reason.

No, he wants that bed frame. Damn. I shook him off and went downstairs and stayed up till morning because I was not going back to sleep in that room. The next day, I was hanging out with my immediate family and we all love a good, scary story, so I told them what happened to me last night and to my utter shock, my godmother, the daughter of the family member who owns the daycare, started crying. We all focused our attention to her and asked what the hell happened to her, and she blurted out, I thought he wasn't real. She proceeded to tell us that her and her two sisters would see the exact same figure almost nightly until they had to move rooms because they were renovating the home.

Wow.

I had no idea the room I slept in the first time I saw him was their childhood bedroom. She always chalked him up to some irrational way of coping during her childhood because her and her sisters did experience a lot of abuse in that home. It was definitely unnerving and creepy to hear that from another family member validating that whoever we saw, if it truly was the hat man, is somehow visiting the same home throughout time.

But also interesting that the hat man stayed in the room. The kids moved rooms during renovation.

Yeah.

It sounds like it didn't follow them into the other room.

Yeah.

So maybe it's attached to literally a piece of furniture. Get rid of this furniture. I'm telling you guys this right now.

Burn the furniture. I know this is a year late.

Yeah, hopefully you've burned the furniture by now.

Get rid of it.

That is, it's also just a lot of interesting elements of this hat man story as well as like waking up from the dream. And it's not a sleep paralysis demon. Like she can move. She left the room. He's in a mirror. Yeah, like there's just a lot of elements to this hat man story, kind of giving more agency to hat man and the and the hat man viewer than some of the other ones where it's like, I'm paralyzed.

Yeah, it's a very concrete story with a lot of like layer and detail. Yeah, that would be a good one if we ever like wanted to, I don't know, investigate or something. It seems like that's a, yeah, that's definitely a good starting point. She won't, she probably won't respond to us after a year. Samantha, I'm sorry.

No, sorry, Samantha. We're jerks when it comes to emails, but we're getting around to it now.

Samantha sent an additional non hat man email that for organizational purposes, we thought would be good to just include in the hat man episode. So consider this email a hat man bonus bonus email. And thank you very much to Samantha for sending it our way. Satanic Panic from Samantha. Hello again, Ed and Chris. I have yet another story that got brought back up from your most recent episode. So as I mentioned in the hat man email, I have a lot of strange supernatural encounters that have happened from as early as I can remember to about last week. I am convinced that my family is just more in touch with the supernatural and paranormal. My dad's side of the family is from El Salvador and I'm technically the first generation from his family to be born in America. My immediate family from my dad's side were all born in the motherland, El Salvador, in a town called Chaltuapa. This town is right where an old ruins still lies till this day. On a map, it's called Colonia Tatsumal, but the locals just refer to it as El Tatsumal, meaning my family lineage has direct indigenous bloodline. Actually, I found out from a family member that the language the Marvel character played by Tenacuerta is speaking is actually a little bit of our language. Of course, this language is dying out, but I thought that was really cool. That is really cool.

My mom speaks a dialect of Italian that no one speaks anymore, so I'm going to start telling people that most of the Star Wars languages are...

I should do that with my dad too. It's the same thing. Very obscure dialects. Anyway, the reason I'm writing to you is because I have a personal satanic panic story to share. My dad used to tell me this story quite often as a child, and now after verifying it with my grandma, I know that it's true and just as terrifying as it was when I first heard it. My grandma was a homemaker when she lived in El Salvador. She used to help her sister at one of her stalls in the market. We still have that stall to this day to make some extra money here and there. In her spare free time, my grandma would attend this church. At times, she would drag my dad and his sister, my aunt, with her to the services. Well, my grandma has always called herself a witch. She said all the first born women in our family are witches. Which, does that include Samantha? Was I keeping track of this correctly?

Well, Samantha, is that in this story?

Yeah, she said she's the first generation from her dad's family to be born in America, so she would be the first born.

Well, she'd be the first generation. If she did anything like, my parents' family is one of eight. You know what I mean?

She said all the first born women in our family are witches. However, not all of us have this extra spark like her and her mother did. My grandma's affinity is with plants and nature. She has the most popular garden on her block. People literally stop when she's out gardening and ask about her giant tree and countless thriving plants. This meant when I was younger, anytime I had pains or tummy ache, there was a handmade salve or tea to help me. And it did work, but it just tasted and smelled like shit.

Yeah, my grandma, to bring back to the family, I guess, was so rarely sick. And when she is sick, makes this wacky, disgusting smelling shit from the homeland.

Yeah.

That fucking works apparently, but I never got the info on exactly what it was, but it was, it's just a bunch of shit taken from like the garden and the ground and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it's all, it's just, yeah, it tastes like dirt plant mix. When I was younger, maybe middle school age, I asked her how she knew how to do all this stuff. And she told me that she learned everything from her mother and honed it when she attended this church. When I asked her to explain more, she began to tell me her story. Ever since she could remember, she knew her mother was a witch. People would always be at her home asking her mom for medicines to help them, and she would. Eventually, my grandma showed interest and her mother taught her. When my grandma grew older and had her own children, she continued to do the same. When she joined the church, not a major one, just one of those little pop-up ones, it was known by the other members that she was an herbal witch. She was approached by some of the higher ups in this church to join them in helping aid some of the sick members of the church. Of course, she was happy to do so. After some time, maybe a year or so, as she remembers, they invited her to an after-hours type of event with the leaders. At this event, she witnessed her first ever ritual. She told me that when she got to the event, there was a huge white circle with symbols in the circle and candles lining the circle.

What kind of church is this? Well, I guess the church had accepted a witch.

Yeah, she was hesitant at first to stay because she knew of satanic archetypes. I've always said that Latin cultures have a deep understanding and respect of the supernatural. So when she saw something that looked like a weird, creepy satanic ritual, she wanted out. She always labels herself as a good witch and did not want to be involved with something that went against her core beliefs. The person who brought her to the event calmed her down and told her it was not bad or conjuring or anything like that. So she stayed to see what would happen. She said nothing happened.

Well, they didn't conjure anything. So yeah, what was gonna happen? It's all about not conjuring.

Everyone was just praying together for each other, for other members. So she decided to attend other events like these. Fast forward a few months after she went to this first event, she was approached by the pastor and he asked her to make this batch of tea for the next event. And at the time she thought nothing of it. However, the pastor pulled her aside before the event and asked her to follow this list of instructions when making the tea.

Well, I make the tea. Yeah. I don't come to your fucking church.

Slow your roll, pastor.

Yeah. Knock the collection plate out of your hand.

Yeah. She went home and looked at the instructions, which kind of felt weird, but decided to follow it. This was coming directly from the pastor. Who was she to question him? She's the tea maker.

Yeah. You're the tea maker.

She's the person to question him.

Literally your position to be like, I have notes on this.

Before she started to make the tea, she had to draw a circle on the ground and draw symbols inside that circle.

Right there. I'm like, that's not how I make tea.

Can you imagine if you're like a mechanic or something and a guy drops his car off and he's like, now listen, this is a little unusual, but could you draw a pentagram beneath my car before you fix the brakes? You'd be like, well, no.

No, it's not, because I'm absolutely not. That's, yeah, it's pretty silly. Or I've never also opened like a Bon Appetit recipe online. It starts with like drawing a circle.

Yeah. So before she started to make the tea, she had to draw a circle on the ground and draw symbols inside that circle. After that, she had to get my dad and my aunt to stand at opposite ends of the circle and repeat this chant all while my grandma makes the tea.

Look, God bless people who have faith and feel, you know.

So compelled to do what the pastor asks.

I think, well, the thing I was going to say is, I think we need to distance ourselves from feeling compelled to do what the pastor asks.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think you can, I mean, I would just show up with tea and say, did you follow these instructions? They'd be like, absolutely.

I don't know why she just followed these instructions when she at first had hesitation, like when she first attended that event. And I asked her this because to me, it didn't make sense why she would just pretty much blindly follow this weird ass, clearly ritualistic thing.

Thank God the email is in the same page. We seem less like dicks now.

Yeah. She smirked and said she was tricked. I was still confused and she explained the craziest part. She said that she was weakened because at these events when they were, quote, praying for each other, the pastor and the higher ups were actually praying to this entity, a demonic entity.

Ball.

And everyone else who was not aware of this were basically just pawns.

That's interesting, actually. I do find that interesting.

I asked her how did she know she was tricked if she was weakened by attending so many events? Samantha, on it. Great question.

Yes.

She said that she had a dream that night she made the tea, and in her dream, her deceased mother visited her and essentially showed her a vision of the entity living and inhabiting the church. When she woke up from the dream, she said she was compelled to immediately throw the tea away and of course never attend the church again.

Wild.

She was so freaked out that she forced my grandpa to move to another town.

Fuck that, another country.

Yeah. This was of course a time where if you just moved towns, you'd essentially disappear. Essentially in such an underdeveloped place.

That's really funny.

I was shocked and creeped out to hear this and the fact that it actually happened to my dad. My dad always told me that he remembers being in this circle and forced to recite this chant over and over while my grandma made the tea. He remembers being scared because he said as soon as him and his sister began chanting it, it was like his mom wasn't his mom anymore. He recalls feeling like he was isolated and surrounded by darkness and if he stopped, his mom would yell at him to continue.

Interesting.

I asked him if he ever went to church with my grandma and he said even to a few services but never felt weird, but that night he clearly felt something was off. I asked my grandma if something followed her since she saw the entity. She said she got lucky by knowing how to do protection spells from her mother. She said she would replace the protection charms every week and she had one in every room. However, she did tell me that she saw the entity one more time. It happened when she almost died. She went into diabetic shock. It was quite literally in between life and death. She had seen this entity the first night back home, but she said it felt more like it was disappointed. She said she even felt anger coming from it. Sorry, that was a long one, LOL. Totally understand if you don't even read this.

Oh my God. I like that we have two stories, not in a row, but two stories in this segment we're doing where the entity is bummed. We had the hat man who was disappointed they weren't scared, and this ball figure disappointed that this person got the one up on them because an ancestor dropped a dime on the devil.

Yeah, but is this, hold on, this is the same Samantha who sent us the hat man story with the haunted mirror.

Oh, so disappointed figures are part of her au revoir of material.

But also, I think I know where the hat man in her house came from.

LOL, not a ball demon.

I mean-

Who's chapping the hat man check in.

I don't know, I'm putting two and two together on the fly here, but this seems like-

Samantha and her family have been letting down ghosts since at least the 70s.

Easily, if not longer, and that's why they keep visiting and that's why they're so mad.

Generationally upsetting ghosts.

Yeah.

Well, thank you. That's awesome. Two great stories.

Yeah. So now this next one is actually not an email that came directly to our inbox, but it's from my friend Raj.

Did any emails come to our inbox? We have like two lists.

No, no, there's plenty of emails that came to the inbox, but this is from my friend Raj, who did the theme song to the show, Scared. When he heard Hat Man, he was like, I have a Hat Man story, can I send it to you? And I was like, yeah, send it.

So this is a carrier pigeon.

We sent it to my email.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

And then I forwarded it to our email.

So you sent it to the place where emails don't get responded to. Yeah. You're like, I can't deal with this right now. Let me put it in this place where I know I can ignore it for a year.

So Raj says, I had sleep paralysis on a nearly weekly basis from when I was 16 until I was in my 30s. This manifested itself in a number of traditional forms, seeing the hat man standing in my doorway, thinking someone was sitting on my chest, finding out from my girlfriend that I was talking, yelling, screaming in my sleep, et cetera. But the worst sessions always happened when I was on tour with my bands. I've basically never slept a full eight hour night in my life and sleeping in bands and on strange floors was no different. The absolute pits of this came with my first band, The Appreciation Post, who were fans of driving halfway to the next city and sleeping in a rest stop, Walmart parking lot, et cetera. In one of our early tours, we stopped at one of the RT-15 rest stops in Connecticut and set up to slumber.

Shout out Merritt Parkway.

Yeah. Some on the floor, some on the bench seat or the loft over the gear and me and a fully reclining captain's chair next to the front door. I'll never forget waking up that night and being completely immobile. I was able to turn my head enough to see a guy looking in the front windshield directly at me. He picked up his hand as if to knock on the windshield, but it didn't make any noise. He came around to the side window and peered in. I tried lifting my shoulders, but couldn't. He went to knock the window again. I bolted up, soaked in sweat. The rest stop was silent. I hopped out to get some fresh air and make sure what I'd seen was merely a spirit being and not a corporeal creep. There was one other car in the lot and I could see a man sleeping in the front seat. I sat on the curb and read one of the free newspapers they had in the rest stop until my bandmates woke up so we could leave. So that's a pretty creepy, I think that's the only band on the road hat man story I've ever heard.

Yeah, and the term corporeal creep might make a good pin too.

Yeah.

Good button.

Thanks, Raj. All right, this next one is from Amy. She says, I've had a strange shadow man experience through my ex-husband, Greg. Prior to listening to your show, I had never heard of anyone physically interacting with a shadow man before, but it's interesting to know I may not be alone. When I first started dating Greg and we started staying over each other's houses, he warned me that he often had nights where he suffered sleep paralysis, and he would shake in his sleep trying to wake himself up.

Oh my gosh.

He did mention how he would see this thing, and it terrified him, but didn't go into detail about it.

I have never had to have a conversation with anyone yet, which is nice. I've never had to be like, listen, I know this is new.

Our friend Pat had to. He told me once.

Oh, with a partner?

Yeah.

OK, yeah, I just don't have that. Like, luckily, I sleep pretty well, but I guess you have to. If you feel like it's something you have a lot, you definitely have to be like, hey, you know, I'm doing this early enough that you can leave me.

Yeah.

And there's no big deal.

But I laugh in my sleep sometimes.

Well, you hang out with me a lot. You're still processing in the end of the night.

All the jokes I missed. Yeah. So Amy says, there were a few nights where I did notice him shaking slightly in his sleep and I'd wake him up. This was tough. He did not come out of these easily and would usually take a minute to get up while normally he was easy to wake. One night, however, as I sat up in bed and tried to wake him up, I saw this black figure at the opposite corner of the room and felt scared. I then felt myself thrown back down to the bed and felt hands around my throat and I couldn't breathe. As soon as I was thrown down, Greg was able to get up. He saw me struggling in bed and didn't know what was wrong or what to do and he grabbed my arms and started shaking me. After a few seconds, I felt the other set of hands leave me and I could breathe and sit up in bed again. I explained to Greg what I saw and what happened to me and I pointed to the corner where the shadow man was still standing, even though both of us still awake. Greg told me that was what he always saw when he had his sleep paralysis moments and that's where he saw it standing. While he could not see it while he was awake, I could still see it there some nights as he slept. It never bothered me again but continued to haunt him even after we separated. I've heard these things referred to as sleep paralysis demons and seeing as it did not just affect him, I've always felt like the demon term might be accurate. Or maybe instead of dealing with sleep paralysis in the same way other people had, maybe his actually was brought on by something that was really there.

Wow, yeah, because it transferred at least a couple of times to her.

Yeah.

As scary as it was to experience that, especially there's a physical component to it. And I do like the, actually, I do like the imagery of, the written imagery of like the first set of hands gave way to the second set of hands. But it must have been a little nice for her to be like, see what I got to fucking deal with every night? Have him do it once, try and wake her up, get her out of some bullshit.

Oh, nice for him.

No, no, for her, who's like every night has to be like, shut the fuck up, you're screaming or whatever. And so, do you not understand what I'm saying?

Well, I feel like-

Like it's a wild inconvenience for the partner, which is why the person felt that they had to warn them about it.

Yes.

And so now it's like, hey, see what I have to deal with all the time?

Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's good for her.

No, no, I mean, it's clearly bad for everybody. I don't even know. I don't even know what I'm getting at. Just go to the next story.

Next email, the hat man broke my toe.

Shit.

From Luke, sup Scaredy Cats. Sorry, I'm late to the game, but I heard in episode two that you might do another hat man segment. So here we are.

Yeah, man, hope you're still listening to you later because it's coming out, baby.

Yeah. So my story of the hat man is pretty funny. If you're into schadenfreude, I was sleeping with my girlfriend at the time. It's important to note that I was sleeping on the side of the bed. It was against the wall. I wake up, go to rollover, but I can't move. I turn my eyes as much as I can and I see a large black figure standing next to my bed, staring at my girlfriend. Still frozen, I try to devise a plan on how my 25-year-old 150-pound body was going to kick this massive thing's ass because I have the hubris of a chihuahua on cocaine. Near my feet was a metal stool and my left arm was behind my pillow and under my head. Plan made. I don't see it, but okay.

Also, I knew there were going to be 25 because I'm like, you still sleeping against the wall?

I keep struggling to...

I haven't had the bed against the wall in a couple of years.

I keep struggling to enact my plan that took four seconds to make and start moving, but I'm just kind of shifting a little while still in paralysis. It was then when the massive black figure raised its arms above its head, still staring at her, the girlfriend, like it was about to attack. Apparently, that was enough to get me going.

Shit, dude.

With my left arm, I sling my pillow at it to distract it. It quickly hits it out of the way, but that was enough time for me to slide my foot down under the stool and send it hurtling towards its head.

Whoa.

It blocks it like that woman from Waffle House.

Okay, I missed probably a YouTube video.

I think a viral video, yeah. I push off my girlfriend's ass with my left hand, scaring the absolute shit out of her by this point, and leap forward to punch this eldritch bitch right in its glass jaw.

Wow.

That's when it disappears. My would-be hero's punch goes nowhere. I slam my face in the hardwood floor, collapse out of the stool completely naked.

Oh my god. Everyone knows I don't sleep naked, so this is why.

Realizing my foot was out of order because a bar from the stool had broken my toe, and once I finally managed to free myself from the stool, I turn around, see my girlfriend looking at me like I'm a goddamn madman, not even realizing I just fought a fucking demon for her.

Wow.

Love the pod, by the way. If you use my segment, it wouldn't mind shouting out my podcast, Cryptid Cocktail Party. That would be much appreciated.

All right, guys, this is from one of the creators, hosts, Unclear of Cryptid Cocktail Parties. One party? Party or parties?

Party.

From Cryptid Cocktail Party. And you know what?

It's better that we've waited till now to read this because we have a bigger audience now than we did.

Yeah. So we will check in and make sure it's not like just a bunch of neo-Nazis or anything.

But I don't I don't it doesn't sound like it.

One nice thing about Ed falling behind on this Hat Man special is that he was able to check out Cryptid Cocktail Party and thought they were a lot of fun and don't seem like neo-Nazis from what he has heard so far.

So I guess the moral of this story is not all heroes wear capes. This case they wear nothing. And sometimes you do a good deed, you put money in the tip jar when no one's looking, and it sucks because you want to be recognized for that. But yeah.

You know what, Luke, I hope you and your girlfriend are still together. And I hope when she hears this story on the air, I assume you told it to her when it happened. Now the whole world knows that you are a hero.

And if you're not together anymore, you can send her this and see what you're missing.

All right. Next email. So Laura sends us a smattering of Hat Man historic records, which thank you, Laura, for sending this email. We're not going to read the email because it's really just a list of links that she found of Hat Man and references to sleep paralysis, which is super fascinating. And we're going to go through this.

Probably something Chris should have had before we wrote the episode.

Well, hers seems much more complete than mine. But yes, this is really interesting. Thank you for sending it, but there's not too much here to read. It's more something we need to look into.

So we're getting back to you now with a thank you.

Thank you. So Hat Man from Joshua. Good evening and thank you for a great new podcast to listen to. I'm only two-thirds through the episode, but wanted to relay some information on the Hat Man.

I love this, by the way. I'm going to interrupt you the way that he's interrupted his own enjoyment of the podcast, where the number of people who reach in or reach out or go to DMs or whatever who are like, listen, I'm at this part of the podcast and I'm pretty crazy that people just feel so compelled to just stop what they're doing at that moment, look up our social media, look up our stuff and reach out. I love it. I love it, but then also sometimes it's like they ask a question or have this idea, which is answered 15 minutes later in the episode. So I'm happy that people do it, but sometimes I might be like, hey, you can save some time by just listening a couple more minutes.

Well, this isn't one of those.

No, no, I get it.

Josh has some good ideas here. He says, Disneyland started working on the Haunted Mansion in 1951, if I read correctly, and it did not open until 1969. Somewhere in between those years, the Hat Box Ghost was created for the ride.

51 to 69?

Yeah.

We went to the moon during that time period and faster.

I mean, I know Haunted Mansion took a while. That seems like a really long period of time, but it could be accurate.

The Hat Box Ghost is cool. I mean, I have a great sweatshirt from that.

He says, it can't be a coincidence that this evil entity on the ride and the Hat Man look so similar. I'm sure he must be based on the Hat Man lore, meaning it existed before the 1960s, most likely.

Interesting theory.

Maybe the old lady on Reddit wasn't under the influence of Ben and Jill after all, or maybe she was. Love the show. Please thank Scott and Forrest for me for finding younger versions of themselves to host an engaging, funny and informed podcast. Hey, all right. All right. Looking forward to many more episodes. Finally, I'd love to hear y'all discuss Bob Lazar on a future episode. Oh, we might. He's he's a he's got a crazy story. Take care and stay off the DPH.

DHP because we fucked it up in the middle of the episode.

Oh, right.

Remember, we did it one way, the wrong for a while and then fixed it.

Josh, thank you very much for your hat man email. That's actually a really good. It's a good catch that hat box ghost maybe has its roots in hat man lore.

Yeah, it's a great. It's a great theory.

1970s hat man from John. Gentlemen, I really enjoyed your first episode and figured I'd write in with a secondhand hat man story from the 70s. For some background, I consider myself an open minded skeptic. I find stories of the paranormal and supernatural fascinating and listen to a fair number of such podcasts during my commute to and from work. I've never really had any personal experiences, but I'm open to the concept to completely believe that there are things in this world that we simply don't know and probably can't understand. Anyhow, I was at a work conference a few months ago. After one of the training days, I met up with a few good folks that I'd met during the conference. We were hanging out at the hotel pool and having a few drinks. I don't recall how we got on the topic, but me and one of the guys began talking about paranormal experiences, and this guy had a lot of them. Now, this guy seemed pretty squared away, but I acknowledged that I'd only met him a couple of days prior, so a few grains of salt are warranted. On the other hand, he showed me a few videos from one of his experiences that were pretty compelling and backed at least one of his claims. After showing me the videos from one of his modern experiences, the guy tells me that he had been having experiences for most of his life. This guy is in his 50s and told me about growing up in South Central LA in the 1970s. I won't try to recall all the details. It's not my story after all and I'd probably butcher them. The broad strokes though were that the guy would routinely see a shadow person in his room at night. He went on to describe the shadow person and described that it was clearly masculine, had a wide flat brimmed hat and some sort of large jacket, think trench coat or duster. As the guy talked through his experiences, he never once used the term hat man and only referred to him as a shadow person. When he was done with his story, I made a comment along the lines of, so you saw the hat man. He was confused and had never heard the term before.

Interesting.

I then explained what I've learned through the last few years of listening to podcasts about the hat man phenomena.

It's a little bit like we always say on the show, it's the square and rectangle, like not all hat man or shadow people would all shadow, you know, whatever it is.

Yeah. This guy had never heard of the hat man and knew nothing about it. He'd heard of shadow people before, just assumed that this particular shadow person that visited him as a kid had a hat on. Like I said, this story is second hand from a person I met several days prior. That said, between his videos, seeming genuine shock upon learning about hat man and general demeanor, I got the sense that he was honestly recounting an experience to me. While this story is not pre 1953, it is still from the mid 1970s and I figured you'd find it mildly interesting. I find it very interesting.

I find it interesting. I'd like to know what these videos are. Are they like of hat man or there's other weird, wacky, paranormal things?

I mean, it kind of sounds like other paranormal things. He showed me a few videos from one of his experiences that were pretty compelling and backed at least one of his claims.

Okay, got you. So it wasn't necessarily hat man.

Yeah. I don't know if anyone's ever taken a video of hat man.

We can be the first.

I know. Let's get that Benadryl flowing. That'll be a bonus episode. All right. Thank you, John. Thank you for that email. That is a... I feel like it's kind of rare to hear urban hat man stories. They're usually like, I was at a farmhouse in Illinois and out in the middle of Los Angeles.

Yeah. Where it's like, you imagine it's deathly quiet where people experience this and they wake up and it's just them and hat man here. It would be like helicopters going over.

Although Stephanie said she was from LA. And that was a whole big crazy story.

No, I feel bad because as soon as she said she's in LA, I'm like, man, it could have actually been faster for us to knock on everyone's door and answer in person than necessarily waiting a year to reply to her. But yeah, so LA is, it's got shit going. It's Hat Man Central.

Annie writes in, sleep paralysis and demons on my chest is her email. Hey guys, just checked out your first episode on the Hat Man and sleep paralysis and was immediately hooked. I enjoyed it. And since I have a couple of experiences of my own in this realm, I thought I'd share them with you.

It's interesting. People were like, I'm instantly hooked on the show. We never really did a Hat Man style episode again with music and artistry. Now, I like what we do now, because I felt like maybe I was just aping or mimicking how other paranormal podcasts did things. And I feel like what we do is different now and it's great. But yeah, it is interesting. If people were like by episode three, we're like, wait, what the fuck? The thing I fell in love with isn't the thing.

Yeah, well.

Well, no, but she's a year ago. So hopefully they still exist.

Yeah, we don't know. These people, I'm assuming they all still listen to us.

I hope so.

What sparked my interest right away was your mention of the nightmare painting from the 1700s. I was listening to the show and popped over to Google to look at that painting, and my jaw nearly dropped the floor. I have seen that creature on my own chest.

Sorry to interrupt, but yeah, we did not have show notes back then. This person had to take it upon themselves to go and find it.

I'm glad she did because that's fucking really scary and really cool that she Googled a painting from the 1700s and went, I've seen that thing.

That's fucking crazy, yeah.

I was living in a super creepy house at the time. Something sinister was in that house, and I felt plagued by creepy feelings and bad dreams nearly every night I lived there. But one night in particular, I had what we can call an episode. I don't think it was sleep paralysis as I actually left my body in the same way people describe NDEs. I could see my body from a distance. By NDEs, she means near-death experience. I fell asleep like any other night, but when I woke up, I was standing on my front porch. I realized there was a crack in our blinds where two of the plastic blinds had stuck together and peaked inside my bedroom. I could actually see my own body asleep in the bed, but the disturbing part was sitting on top of my chest was that creature from the Nightmare painting.

Wow.

I mean, it was exactly the same size and shape, only mine was totally black. I remember its pointed-eared head turning to look at me, looking at me, looking at it.

So it's like a shadow person, basically a little impish shadow person.

And while it didn't have a face, it was definitely looking back at me and I could feel the energy. It was a taunting feeling like I could do anything to you right now, when I woke up, I immediately looked at the window and there was indeed that same crack in the blinds. I moved away from that house and have mostly have been demon bad vibes, bad juju free since, except story two, the number one item on my fear tier would be the nun from the Conjuring movies.

Oh wow, okay.

The one and only scary event I've experienced in my current home seem based on that, but after listening to your episode, I wonder if I had a visit from the hat man. Where is this going? I was having a dream where I was surrounded by people dressed as the nun, and when I woke from that dream, I could see my body, the room, just like I had woken up, but it was presumably having sleep paralysis. All of a sudden, a voice whispers in my ear, there she is, presumably the nun. Because I was laying on my back with my head tilted towards the floor, all I could see was big black boots and a trench coat walk up about a foot from my face. I couldn't move or look up to see the rest of the creature, but I had a primitive fear come over me. Somehow I willed myself awake, which involved a full body vibration so strong I could feel my eyeballs vibrating.

Wow.

And then poof, I was awake in the exact same position, but the apparition was gone. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I also never sleep on my back anymore.

Interesting.

Annie, damn.

Yeah, I like a couple of things. I mean, any kind of large booted trench coat wearing, anything walking up to your bed is definitely cause for concern. But I like the kind of imagery of kind of forcing yourself out of a different dimension almost, like molecularly shifting. Yeah, I have to vibrate my way out of whatever this is.

Yeah.

Wild. I really like the seeing herself through the cracked blinds.

That is so creepy.

Really interesting cause it's, yeah, you've moved yourself out. Like, I don't know, you're still within that space. Like you're looking at yourself and it's an out of body experience, but like, weirdly your body went just a little too far. Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're like, shit, I'm behind a wall now. Yeah. I'm interstellaring.

Yeah. All right, this next email, this next Hat Man story is from William. Hat Man Follow Up is the title of the email. And William says, hi guys. First time listener, long time emailer. So I guess just he means he's been emailing people for a long time, not us.

Well, if it's a Hat Man story, then there's not much to listen to on our side.

I listened to your Hat Man episode the other day, and there were so many weird coincidences with my experience that I had to write in. I've never written an email to a podcast, so you should be proud you elicited such a profound call to action.

Oh, wow. Unless he's like, your podcast is so similar to my story that I'm suing you.

Well, let's pick what it is, Billy. Are you a long time emailer or you've never written an email to a podcast before?

That's true. He's been emailing for a long time, but just a lot of pedestrian stupid shit.

Yeah. William says, I saw the hat man at my grandma's house in South Carolina when I was five or six. This would have been in the 95 to 96 window. We were never a Benadryl family, so I never tried it at this point, recreationally or otherwise.

I do like the idea of that's a real thing. You know not to bring Benadryl into this house. The family is staunch, not a Benadryl family. We're just like, you know this house is generic only.

My house was, I don't think we weren't really a Benadryl family. If we had stuffy noses, my dad would microwave a glass of Cognac and then we would inhale it, and that shit will rip right through your sinuses.

Oh my God, is that real? Does the microwave get it hot enough that it creates steam?

I guess, or just because it's alcohol, maybe. There was never steam coming off of it, but maybe, I guess, the hot alcohol, you would like, and it would get in your nose. It would burn.

Generic Cognac, too. It's the weirdest.

Yeah. Oh God, yes. CVS brand Cognac.

Did you notice that was weird when you moved to Los Angeles? When I came to California, it was the first time I ever saw alcohol in a CVS, where you can go buy a handle of something at the pharmacy.

Yeah.

It's pretty wild. But anyway, you said this guy's family were anti-paying full price?

Yeah, we were never a Benadryl family, so I had never tried it at this point, recreationally or otherwise. It was a fun treat to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor of my grandma's bedroom as a child for some reason. This night, I was sleeping with my head down at the corner of the foot of her bed, and I woke up to see a figure walk into the room towards the other corner of her bed. The figure was solid black, had a large brimmed hat, and a long black trench coat. The description you guys gave in the podcast made it sound like it was the attire of a door-to-door salesman or something similar from the 40s. But this guy, this is interesting, this guy gave off a real cowboy vibe. That's the biggest point of my feedback. This guy's not some fucking dork. He was this gunslinger from the wild west.

Fucking Marlboro man was like, hey, you got room for a carton of cigarettes in that sleeping bag?

Hat man, if you need someone to help write your autobiography, I think William's your man here. He knows how to make you sound good. He took a few silent steps into the room, leaned up against the four-poster bed frame, and looked down at me.

I guess he's not wearing spurs, this cowboy. Quiet ass little shoe taps here.

I'm terrified staring up at this large, completely black figure, and then he disappears. I don't recall having sleep paralysis during this event because my instinct was to stay completely still anyway. I've had sleep paralysis as an adult once, but had no visual experiences. After a few minutes of me laying there in shock, I got out of my sleeping bag and walked through the creepy ass house to my parents' room. I didn't tell them for a few days, but when I did, they took me seriously, but also kind of played it off so I wouldn't become some weirdo.

Oh, good.

I was obsessed with the Men in Black movie as a child. I had the CD of the soundtrack, so you could say I was a fan.

This person's exactly our age, by the way.

I thought your parents didn't want you to become a weirdo. Well, I guess everybody had the Men in Black soundtrack.

It was a monoculture.

Yeah. Also, hats off. You want to know a weirdo Men in Black soundtrack story. Brief aside, but I just talked shit on this guy, so I have to follow up by admitting how much of a loser I was. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, whenever that movie came out, I was on a rec soccer team and we had black jerseys. Everyone was a different color team. There was red, blue, green. We were the black team and I had the bright idea. One of the first CDs I ever had was Jock Jams. And so I was like, yeah, Jock Jams. When you score a goal, you should play Jock Jams. So I had the Men in Black CD and every time we scored a goal, I brought a boombox and I asked, I don't know, maybe the coach or somebody to play Here Come The Men in Black every time we scored a goal.

But you never scored a goal, so it just silence sat over the stadium?

No, we scored, but everybody thought that it was a really loser move to play the Men in Black song.

That's the like, here come the men in black, that one.

Yeah, and then my team immediately, when people started making fun of them, they were like, well, he did it, this kid. So everybody knew it was me.

And then you're like, I don't understand, but the good guy is dressed in black, remember that? Everyone's like, get the fuck out of here, idiot. Anyway, yeah, sorry. Sorry, we've totally derailed this guy's story.

So William tells us he had the CD of the soundtrack, you could say I was a fan. This happened before that movie, and I wouldn't describe the experience to be anything like that or historical men and black figures have come to learn about. When the figure walked to the room, it was like he was walking on an airport moving walkway. So he was walking at a normal pace, but moving slightly faster. When I would watch Shaggy walk-

He jameriquied into the room.

What's that?

He jameriquied into that room.

He did. Well, William says when I would watch Shaggy walk in Scooby-Doo, it was like that. Take some Benadryl and stay awake, and that analogy will make more sense.

No, I understood it.

I think I get what he's saying, yeah.

I completely get it. I mean, I've been watching cheap animation since Cartoon Network only had those. That's all they played.

So you know the way that those legs will wobble across the frame.

Yeah.

William says, I listed to your podcast while I was driving back from that house last weekend. In a strange turn of events, I'm buying that house. It will be sleeping in that room every night, starting in a few weeks.

Wow, weird.

I have not told my fiance this story, and I think I've justified this decision. If the Hat Man is seen all over the world, the likelihood of popping into that room twice has got to be pretty low. I'll keep you updated if I'm wrong. Thanks, William.

Weird flex, but okay. Congratulations on owning a home soon.

Well, congratulations on owning a home, but I want to hear from William and make sure this guy is doing all right. I feel like, first of all, he never kept us updated.

So this was a year ago.

He said he'd keep us updated if he was wrong. So no update means he was right.

Oh, shit.

And I hope the Hat Man didn't get him.

Well, cowboys don't know how to use phones. So he can probably get that gizmo back.

Cowboys don't know how to use phones.

I'm just saying, it's not like the Hat Man, you know what I mean? What are you reaching for? It's not a six shooter. And then he just uses his phone to call us or to email us.

Fair.

Oh, this? This is just nothing.

I don't know if I'd want to buy the house that I saw the Hat Man in.

Yeah, let us know, William. And I don't think that, I don't really understand the logic because it's like, oh, what are the chances I'll see him twice? It's like, well, maybe this house is one of the like five doorways you can walk through. And so he's always checking this house.

And I don't know where we are gonna sit this email in the flow of the Hat Man Stories show, but there's at least one other email in this group of someone who's like, yeah, yeah, I've seen the Hat Man in the same house a couple of times. So highly likely that you will see the Hat Man again.

Yeah, hit us up. Let us know if you're still listening to the show. If the Hat Man lets you listen to the show, then give us a shout.

Maybe William's too busy. He's chained to his writing desk, continuing to tell the story of the coolest Hat Man ever.

Oh my God, it's coming out next year.

He's no fucking dork.

No way, dude.

It's my favorite line from this email.

Yeah.

All right, next up on the list, we have Hat Man's story from 1948 to 1949 from Jamie. Now this is, I remember putting out a call for this because we were saying that like some of the first descriptions in fiction of men in black that might have caused people to think about or see Hat Men were right around this era. And so we asked for early, early Hat Man stories. And that's exactly what this is. Jamie says, hi, my name is Jamie. I have literally never contacted anyone to tell a story, but I just heard your first episode while catching up on the backlog of Astonishing Legends. And at one point, I felt like you were yelling at me personally to share this. We were, though there's no way to confirm this actually occurred. I have had a lot of strange encounters, but this one actually happened to my grandmother. For some reason, people just tell me weird things that make me promise to never tell anyone they talked about something so out of the norm. I am the only person in my family interested in the woo. I would love to ask my grandmother to refresh my memory on the details of what happened to her, but unfortunately she passed away in 2016.

RIP, God bless.

RIP, God bless to your grandma. She told me that when she was four or five, so probably in 1948, but possibly 1949, she was asleep with her sister in a bed they shared. They lived in rural Kentucky at the time outside of Lexington. It was late at night because she remembered the house was silent and everyone was asleep. From what I understand, there were several generations of family in the house at the time.

All sleeping in that same bed.

Yeah, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style. Unlike most Hat Men stories, she didn't wake to find him in her room. She heard a car outside, which she immediately found strange because of the time and area they lived. I've seen photos of where this house was once located and it definitely doesn't experience heavy traffic even now. It's a very narrow two-lane road that's miles outside the closest town and on the edge of the Appalachian Plateaus.

Fuck that, that's like some fucking in cold blood shit. You know, it's just like a house under a tree.

Yep. To be more specific, it's east of Winchester, Kentucky.

While more specific, it doesn't help me at all with picturing where this is.

Yeah, I don't know Kentucky regional geography at all, but if you do, you probably are imagining the most isolated house in America. She got out of bed to look out the window and saw four men exit a dark colored car. She found it strange that they were dressed in outdated suits from the 1930s, and she said even the car appeared to be from the 1930s and had white wall tires. I remember she literally said, they looked like gangsters from the 1930s.

This is 1948, so it's only 18 years earlier.

Yeah.

We've already moved. I was going to say, it's like a bunch of kids got out of a car with mullets and Looney Tunes shirts, and yet I remember that that's just how Gen Z dresses now. So maybe 20 years in, people just started dressing like that again.

Or we could also ask, how stylish were the gangsters east of Winchester, Kentucky? I feel like they might have been hitting up the Goodwill.

Can some of you Chicago gangsters send out your old clothes?

Yeah, they're not coming down from New York or Kansas City. But all right, in any case, these four gangsters from the 30s disappeared from Jamie's grandmother's view, and she heard the front door open below. My grandmother was scared then, so she went and hid under her blankets. She tried to shake her sister awake, but she didn't respond. She heard heavy footsteps below her and then heard them on the stairs. The door to the bedroom opened after that. She didn't hear any voices in the rest of the house. She then felt someone sit on the end of the bed. She looked out of the blankets then, scared to death. She described what she saw as blackness. She saw the shape of a man and even the shape of a fedora, but there were no features, just pure black. But he spoke to her. He patted her foot over the blankets and told her not to be afraid. And then he sat silently and didn't move for several minutes. After that, he stood and walked silently out of the room. She heard the front door close and then the car start up and drive away. After that, her sister asked who those men were. She'd been awake the whole time and too afraid to speak or move. No one in the family mentioned it the following morning or acted any differently. I know my grandmother was young. It's possible some men did show up at the property, maybe for not so friendly purposes that any adults in the house didn't want to share. But the fact she heard nothing in the rest of the house doesn't seem to line up with that idea. And also their clothing was so strange to her. The fact that her sister also remembered it afterwards seems like it wasn't a dream. I also wouldn't know if this would be classified as Hat Men or Men in Black, so I thought your conversation relating the two was interesting. I will definitely be catching up on your episodes as well. Thanks. That's a wild story.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

I mean, there's so many, there is like, yeah, there's the possibility that they were Men in Black, that like somebody in the family saw a UFO and didn't talk about it. I also hope they did a head count on all the adults in the house the next morning.

Yeah.

To see if anybody left with those guys, because that definitely sounds like somebody possibly owed somebody else money.

Yeah, you're coming with us.

Yeah, but what I mean, see, this is god, this is the perfect kind of story to me, the perfect kind of like creepy, old timey story because in any version of it, it's so evocative. It's so like creepy.

Yeah. Is it a ghost story? Is it a villain origin story where it's like these people took my dad and now I'm going to bring this fight to their doorstep. It was not the men in black, but just like some mobsters.

Well, that's what I mean. Even if it was just gangsters, like Southern Dixie mafia gangsters showing up to shake somebody down or scare somebody into doing what they wanted them to do, that's still a really intense and I want to say a very cool story. I'm sure it wasn't super cool for whoever it was happening to.

No, these things rarely are.

No, but the idea, it's a great family story to have. It's such a great mystery. And I do love that we now have a story of Hat Man or Hat Men from possibly 1948, which would be the very, very earliest written context for any of this. So thank you so much for sharing, Jamie. That story is incredible. We should give like an award maybe. I don't know, maybe we'd send them a Hat Man button.

We don't have time.

We don't have time. All right, we've got.

That'll be the second year anniversary, the awards will go out.

Yeah, we've got one more Hat Man story here. This is called Possible Hat Man, A Very Scary Story from Fove Ellen, F-A-U-V-E hyphen Ellen, Fove Ellen.

Sure.

Fove says, hello, I'm Fove from England.

So that means that name could be anything. We never know how to pronounce shit from over there.

Yeah, Elfling of sorts, a bog fairy.

A bog fairy, dude.

No one's gonna want to be compared to a bog when they get next week's episode, so.

That's true. I've got bog on the brain, but for the wrong reasons.

Ed tried looking up what episode in the last few weeks he's referring to, but he's too tired to figure it out. Could have been human sacrifice. Could have been the boogie man. No one may ever truly know.

So anyway, Fove says, I've been a listener of Astonishing Legends and Graveyard Tales for a few years, and it's great to add a new podcast to the list. So far, very much enjoying it. Well, I hope you still are a year and 38 episodes later.

Yeah, they're going to be like, this email is going to end with like PS, and if you don't write me back, I'll never listen again.

Oh, well, wait, hang on, hang on. So this email actually came in last December. So it's not as late as the rest of these.

Sure.

So I know it's a couple of months later, but I think you might like to hear about this horrid possible hat man slash shadow figure experience my partner had years ago. Yes, please.

Sure, we'll take it.

It was back in 2009 after my daughter had been born. Weed, in parentheses, his ex, moved into our first house and had been living there for a few months.

Who's his? Did it say his in parentheses?

Yeah, this is going to be a who's on first. Yes, there is a weed and then his ex. I don't know who the him is.

It's got to be her ex. Wait, it's got to be her ex's partner's ex. So it's about her partner.

Yes.

So now we don't know. We don't have a list of names, like European names. So we're just going to go ahead and let's just start it over from the beginning. This one.

Hello, I'm Fove from England. I've been a listener of Astonishing Legends and Graveyard Tales for a few years, and it's great to add a new podcast to the list. So far, very much enjoying it. I know it's a couple of months later, but I think you might like to hear about this horrid possible Hat Man slash shadow figure experience my partner had years ago. So the email continues here. It was back in 2009 after my daughter had been born. We'd moved into our first house and had been living there for a few months. One night, I randomly woke up in the early hours, roughly 4 a.m. My partner at the time and daughter were asleep and everything was in darkness. I sat up and checked my phone to see it was early, set it down and rubbed my eyes. I decided to look up and just look around the room after feeling slightly uneasy to see a silhouette standing in the corner. It was roughly close to seven feet tall and possibly thin with no features at all, aside from these long pointy fingers that it was holding across its general face area. It felt like a complete void, like it had been cut out of reality and was just sucking everything into the space it occupied. That's pretty cool. I stared for a while before it slowly lowered its hands and raised its head to acknowledge me before sprinting directly at me, screaming in various different voices, low pitch, high pitch, male and female, et cetera. I dived under the duvet terrified and shook my then partner awake incoherently trying to explain what I had seen. When we both sat up, there was nothing there. Since that event, the back room of the house had a horrible energy. It felt gut wrenching and just vile. You couldn't stay in there for long before beginning to feel panicked. A friend who'd managed to sleep in there reported scratching at the walls and their feet being touched. Eventually, we moved from the place with no further encounters until our second home. The second encounter was in 2011. Again, like before, I randomly woke up in the middle of the night and sat up to check my phone as I had before, again, roughly 4am. I casually glanced around the room before noticing something odd on the wall. Straining my eyes to see, I saw a hand reaching around the doorframe and resting on the wall palm flat. It was again like a void and had long pointy fingers. As I tensed up, it slowly withdrew around the doorframe and a head peered around, again, no features at all, and drew back again. As I sat, terrified, I heard the stairs creaking as footsteps made their way down before sprinting back up. At that point, my daughter started screaming in utter terror from the next room, and both myself and my then-partner ran in to comfort her. She had scratch marks down her arms.

Oh my god.

The third encounter was only a week after. My then-partner and I woke up gasping at again roughly 4 a.m. We both saw the figure standing in the corner and like before, ran at us screaming before disappearing.

So crazy. It's crazy because this is I think the first story where, I don't know where this is going to end up in the episode, but there was another email where the person, you know, individually like them and then their partner each saw a hat man. But the fact that they're both seeing it is so, like that's what's so nuts to me. Like they both shoot up at 4 a.m. presumably, from how this is being read to me. It seems like they both are like, oh shit, there it is.

Yeah. And then again, years passed without incident. I split up with my kid's mother after my son was born in 2013, and eventually she moved out, taking both the kids. I eventually moved on and found another partner in 2014. I had never told her about these incidents and had since buried them deep in my memory. One night, she stayed over and told me the next morning that during the night, I had shaken her awake while thrashing in my sleep, seemingly having a very vivid night terror. She tried to wake me to no avail before feeling uneasy like she was being watched. She said she looked around the room to see a figure really tall and impossibly thin with no features aside from long fingers covering its face standing there. It remained there for a while before fading away and my night terror seemed to stop. The last experience I had was a short one. I had turned the light off in a room before going to bed and upon turning around was met with the same figure stood right in my face. I immediately spun around, turned the light on and just stood facing the wall terrified, but it had gone. I've not had an encounter since.

Wow, a couple of things. Oh, there's more.

And then Fove just ends it by saying, thankfully I've never encountered it. He still has nightmares, the partner, and full on night terrors about it occasionally. We aren't Christian, but demonic is the way he can describe it.

Oh wait, so I'm a little sorry. So this person, Fove, experienced none of this? This is all secondhand from the partner?

I don't know, I guess.

Because this is now making a lot more sense, like tenses and pronouns wise.

Yeah, you know what? I'm realizing now that the story is in quotes in the email.

Oh, okay, so that's just us being idiots.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so, okay, I got it. It's Fove's partner's story.

Oh, gotcha, gotcha. So the partner's ex was like, I'm Audi 5000, enjoy the hat man. And then he was like, will do. And then Fove enters the picture, who's impervious to the hat man's touch. And they were like, listen, our one defense against old Ricky Longhands here is to just tell your story far and wide.

Yes, yes, from the mountains to the plains to the prairies to the sea, the tale of the hat man in Fove's room.

In Fove's partner's life, I guess.

And yeah.

And now our podcast. So thanks for reaching out and telling it to us. It's definitely scary stuff.

Yeah, we're sorry your partner is still in the trenches, but we're glad that you're still in the clear and also glad you're listening to and enjoying the show.

100%.

So that's an incredible run of hat man stories.

Yeah, it took a year to get to some of them.

Man, I never thought we'd get this kind of response to our hat man episode, but it is awesome that we did. So hopefully next time we ask for this kind of, we ask for these emails, we ask for these sorts of stories, we will put them on the show or reply to each of you in less time than a full calendar year. But with that, I think that's gonna do it for us on this hat man stories episode. Thank you so much to everyone who sent in hat man stories and links and info. It was a blast to get them and read them and share them and everything. And we've already, just from announcing that we are doing this hat man episode, we've had a couple people be like, oh no, I should have sent in a hat man story. Guess what? You still can. These emails are from more than a year ago. So you're not behind, we are.

There's always time around here.

There's always time. Just send in some and if we get enough, we'll probably do another one at some point.

Yeah, and maybe next year we'll make it more of a thing and build some sound design around them and stuff like the bigger and better shows do. You know, instead of just reading them kind of half out of breath.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yeah, till then, I'm Ed Voccola.

And I'm Chris Cullari.

And this has been Listener Hat Man Stories, a Scared All The Time anniversary based special presentation.

And we will see you tomorrow for emails part two.

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

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Vifel.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****.

And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon. You can get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access and exclusive merch.

So go sign up for a Patreon at scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

Don't worry, full Scaredy Cats welcome.

No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends production.

Night.

We are in this together. Together. Together.

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