2000-2002 Multiple Family Member Hat Man Encounters

 2000-2002 Multiple Family Member Hat Man Encounter

By Cole Herrold

An old acquaintance of mine reached out to me after she learned about the Hat Man. As a girl about 6 or 8, she and the rest of her family had seen the entity in daylight hours several times. She was unaware beforehand of the phenomenon, and after talking with her, I noticed some differences and similarities between the traditional Hat Man accounts.

It was early in the day, around 2000- 2002, when she entered a bedroom in her house and, upon looking in the bedroom mirror, saw the entity. The entity was in appearance similar to the classic hat man image of a dark entity with no discernible facial features, a hat-like object on its head with a rounded top and wide brim. She noted that 1 and two days before, she saw the being in the mirror, and her stepsister saw it while going into the laundry room, as well as her stepmother, who saw it in the same bedroom that she had. Both the stepmother and stepsister did not tell her about their sightings until after she had hers. Her dad, at the time of her sighting, was getting a shower and the bathroom door was directly to the right of the mirror and the entity. She felt in reflection that perhaps she wasn't meant to see it and that her seeing the being was some sort of fluke. She also said the following that during the time of the sightings, there was a lot of "bad in the house…a lot of anger and hostility". She wondered if there was some connection between the being and this. When I asked about any paranormal activity in the home beforehand or after, she stated that the house she lived in did burn down twice and that occasionally people would hear things moving around in the house at night, but all of this was minor at best. Because of the strangeness of the encounter and seeing the entity in a mirror, the witness to this day has some problems and weird feelings with mirrors.

Unfortunately, our conversation was rather brief, and due to the clearly sensitive background of the case, that probably is best even though it does raise many questions which may shed some further light on the entity reported. Hat Man traditionally is associated with Sleep Paralysis as it is one of the most popular entities reported in these cases. The fact, however, that in this case, the being reported is observed multiple times during the day seems to indicate that this entity or entities are not confined to nocturnal encounters only. Perhaps if this is to be the case, Hat Man is simply a spectral apparition in the classic sense and that further interpretation as a unique entity is unnecessary. The fact that the entity, at least from what my acquaintance experienced, was seen in a mirror is something that goes back to the traditional belief that mirrors are either gateways for ghosts or that they can hold and capture the spirits of the dead. Another possibility is that what witnesses are seeing is similar to the Dark Watchers of California, black wide-brimmed hatted entities that are reported observing witnesses from far-off rocky mountains and cliff sides. If this is to be the case, perhaps they are not as nefarious as we are led to believe. In recent years, many Hat Man witnesses have come forward who now claim that the Hat Man manifests during times of stress and other negative instances but that its appearance is not to cause or inflict harm but to actually comfort or protect those suffering. This is something in the course of a year I’ve heard over and over again from experiencers on social media platforms, but I’ve never heard a reason as to why they feel that this is the reason, and so it's also, to give the devil it's due, possible as many witnesses claim that this entity feeds on or even causes negative energy. Yet with a lot of these more supernatural encounters, we can only speculate and attempt to find patterns.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Spectral Apparition or Paranormal Entity

Location: Unreported

Sighted: 2000-2002