this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
40 points (91.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43989 readers
1423 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The Hatman. Weird phenomenon, cannot explain it outside of generic "pareidolia" approach, but definitely remember it to this day. That said, I never saw him when asleep like many/most. I was usually awake.
Yup I have heard of it, still I do believe it is related to the shadow people phenomenon and not just one entity, I have seen shadow people as I described above, and non have had a hat. Also, can you describe some of these experiences? Sound very interesting o.o
Sure thing. I was quite young, but I think it was multiple occurrences, none of them scary so I thought not too much of it.
I was often in our kitchen from which extended a hallway, my room was on the hallway left. It was a very small house, so every room was off the hallway lol. I often would be sitting at the table eating, at the end of the table. I would have my back-left side to the hallway, and my mother would always complain about unnecessary lights being on, so the hallway lights would be off although the kitchen lights on, and brought enough to light half the hallway. See the attached image. I'm making a better version now, but this shittier version will help with the layout for now. Lol.
Anyway, I would see this Dick Tracy type man watching me as I would eat or whatever, just inside the hallway and out of view of the others. I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh, he looks a bit of Dick Tracy." Which was strange, as I never saw a movie about him. Just felt like the right words. Now, I can say--Same coat. Same hat. Always just a shadow person. NEVER the evil red or white eyes reported by some others. No eyes whatsoever. Never aggressive. Never intimidating. Just... unsettling and cold to realize one is watching you... I do believe it to be the same entity multiple times. I was never sleep-- (although as a funny side story, I once left some laundry in a pile in my bed when I was young and lazy, and when I woke up and looked at it, I thought it was Abraham Lincoln shaped in my sleepy state and got scared haha).
This Hatman would occasionally watch me until I aged. Fast forward to just this year, and someone I know on Mastodon posted about it. I watched a video, was shocked. I thought it was something my child brain had imagined. I'm not sure I even believe in ghosties. I'm agnostic. I couldn't even have an imaginary friend because it made me feel silly like I was obviously making it up and trying to fool myself (later this has been my experience with org. religion as well).
As I mentioned, hard to say it's not a weird... Shared pareidolic experience due to the nature of the human brain. Or maybe he's a System Admin making sure my code isn't buggy in the simulation we live in (why not?). But it fills me with wild curiosity that I've experienced such a weird phenomenon. I've never "seen a ghost" otherwise.
Regardless of the cause... It's fun to tell my new parent friends to ask their children if they've seen a hat man...