When i was little, me and my sister were playing outside and i saw a strange man standing on the corner. The creepiest part was that he was completely black. I could only make out that he was wearing a coat and a hat. Last year i was talking to my mother about it and she said she once saw the same figure in the hallway when she was in her early twenties. I’m a science guy so i don’t believe in the supernatural or spiritual stuff. But when i read somebody else on reddit had the same experience and people linked the urban legend of the “hat man”, i became pretty creeped out.
There is probably a scientific explanation for it but it still scared the shit out of me.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/hat-man-benadryl-tiktok-monster-1234620397/
I saw the hat man in my room one night as a child and I wasn’t on Benadryl. He just stood in my doorway and stared at me. He had no eyes but I knew he was looking at me. I called out for my mom and she walked through him.
I think it has to be some subconscious thing. I have also seen a hat man in sleep paralysis but i doubt it is something supernatural. Like i have a trick to get out of sleep paralysis, i did it and obviously my door wasn’t even open like I saw. Also its interesting that so many diverse cultures have this myth like i am from south east asia and even i have this picture in my head.
What’s your trick for getting out of sleep paralysis? It doesn’t happen to me as often as it used to, and fortunately I’ve never seen anything during those episodes (only heard things like people talking or music playing), but it’d be good to keep a trick in my back pocket for next time. It’s certainly not a comfortable feeling.
So even when your body is paralyzed, you can still move your toes and fingers, keep doing that and slowly you will be able to move your hand/foot. So you just keep moving basically until you “get up”
I actually wrote a short story when I was like 20 based off of an experience I had. Story was just a narrative version of what I’m going to say.
I had just gotten home with groceries. Standing outside my front door and pulled off my headphones and out my keys. Typical sounds of the world bled through. Kids behind me that were playing. The usual. Went into the house and turned right to go into the kitchen. House was weirdly shaped and the kitchen stuck out further than the front door. The window even looked the same direction. Window was also open. That’s what confused me. The kitchen sounded dead silent but the window was open. I should have heard the same sounds I did before but there was nothing. I turned around and walked out of the kitchen to go to the front door and was met with my living room a shade of dark I had never seen. Was like a void was laid over everything. Consuming light and sound. I stopped, kinda shook, and saw something move. It was nothing. Literally. A void in the shape of a person shifted in the living room. Their movement made them really obvious because while everything was dark, this was pure blackness. I stood there, beyond shocked, for a few minutes. Staring at it. After a bit it moved again and I gasped. That noise I made was like something that popped a balloon. The noise of then world faded back in, bleeding through the window behind me, but the dark room wasn’t gone. The void wasn’t gone. I asked who it was and it disappeared.
Later than night I’m in bed and the room gets eeriely quiet. I look round and my closet door is open. Inside its dark. Too dark. The darkness moves and I swear it’s staring back at me. “There are many things in this world to fear. I am not one of them” drifted through the air towards me. It wasn’t like it was said. It’s like an overheard conversation when you’re walking past a restaurant. The pitch even waving as if whoever said it was moving away from me. I had no roommate home at the time and it was 1am. My bedroom window overlooked a dense forest. My back yard also had a massive fence. There was no reasonable explanation as to where the sound came from or why it sounded like it was moving away.
Stared at the void again for a bit before it just faded away. Eventually fell asleep but I don’t remember it. When I woke up everything was fine and normal with two exceptions. The overheard light in the living room had burned out and the sticky wall light in my closet, one you press to turn on, had also burned out. Living room bulb got replaced but the light in my closet couldn’t. New batteries didn’t change it despite it being a relatively new purchase. From the dollar store so fair.
Couple years later I ended up in an abusive relationship that ended with me being homeless for years. It was… Difficult. Eventually I escaped and was settling into my new place. It’s about 7pm so nowhere close to dark but the sun is going down and making everything dim. Everything had been set up. Was start of summer so the windows were all open. Crickets chirping outside. Occasional cicada. Went to the kitchen to get a drink and all sound bled away again. I was confused for a couple seconds before realizing how familiar it felt. I turned around, pretty quickly, and same deal. Whole house was dark, way darker than it should have been. Stood there again, both hoping the same thing was happening and hoping it wasn’t. Again, a void moved. Like a swath of the night sky had been cut out in the shape of a person. This time it was sitting on the couch and stood up. Started moving towards me and said “Welcome home”. As it got closer, the darkness faded and light came back to the room. Again, it was dim but it was nowhere near the dark that it was a moment before.
I’ve never felt afraid. I’ve felt confused and shocked but never afraid. I don’t know why. Whatever is going on, whether it be supernatural or hallucinations, it doesn’t feel menacing. If anything it feels protective.
Oh i don’t need sleep anyways. I have smth similar, one time i woke up and was getting out of bed with one arm in the air and yawning and saw smth of light immitating me literally in front of me, that day i knew how quickly i would kick if someone did it with me. Still no idea if it was my imagination or smth else. Never had it again
Someone asked a similar question not long ago, I’ll copy my story from that post here:
A relative of mine is into supernatural stuff. Like, ALL of it. Always offering crystals and essential oils to fix pretty much anything. I’m skeptical, but I listen, and when I think something is bullshit (which is almost every time), I politely say so.
This same relative teaches classes on how to communicate with spirits from beyond, and offered to do an automatic writing class just for the family. I’m curious, so myself and about 4 others agree to try. I’m expecting absolutely nothing out of this, but I will go in open-minded and see what happens.
If you don’t know, automatic writing consists of a bit of meditation and you hold a pen to paper. You think your questions, and the “spirits” move your hand to write the answers.
I’m thinking about questions and my hand kind of drifts into random squiggles. I assume it’s just natural fatigue, or fidgeting. After half an hour or so of pretty much nothing, I think “ok, let’s reset, clear my mind, relax, and focus on one simple question.” Most importantly, a question I can verify right here, right now.
How many pieces of fruit are in the fruit bowl?
I know there’s a fruit bowl in the kitchen. I didn’t buy the fruit, I haven’t eaten the fruit, I have no possible way of already knowing the answer to the question, but I can find out very easily. Perfect.
How many pieces of fruit are in the fruit bowl?
I focus on this question and my hand moves a bit faster than it had up until this point. It slides to the right about 2 inches, and then down. It’s a 7. I’m thinking pretty simple number to draw, could be coincidence that my hand just moved that way.
I stand up, walk over the bowl, and I count the fruit. And wouldn’t you know… 7 pieces of fruit.
I’m skeptical, but I asked for something very specific and I got it, so I can’t call it debunked.
After this experience, I attended another one of her classes, and actually got two more impressive answers. One being another “how many x are in y?” And when I asked if I would get a promotion that I thought was a sure thing, I got “no”. So, I asked if I even wanted the promotion and I got “nononononono” I called bullshit at the time because, of course I want a promotion, and I thought I was the clear choice. But sure enough, I did not get that position, and a month later, somebody quit unexpectedly at an office that’s 30 miles closer to where I lived and because I DIDN’T get the first promotion, I was eligible for this one, which I did get.
I don’t know.
If you tell me you saw a ghost or an alien, I’m going to find 100 logical reasons why you probably didn’t. Im not going to say that I channeled my dead grandpa to uncover secrets from the future, but something happened there and I don’t know how or why, but it did.
Have you done any more ‘writing’ since then?
No. I think I might have unsuccessfully tried a few times after that on my own, but I don’t sit still well, and I think being able to focus on a guided meditation helped it happen.
I have asked that relative a few pressing questions, and I usually got vague or confusing answers. I’m pretty sure some of her writing is her writing. But who knows?
Ill start, i keep having dreams that come true but they seem so random tho.
When I was younger, right up through college age, I’d occasionally have precog dreams. Not dejavu — I’d dream an event, a place, a person, and then the event would happen, we’d go by that place, I’d meet that person. Our society does not believe in these types of things, so there is no way to learn how to maintain or build on these abilities, so they faded away.
Very first one I really remember, our TV was out for repairs and I dreamt we got it back and my dad was watching my favorite show. I told my mom that morning about the dream, and she said, “they haven’t fixed it, we don’t know when we will get the TV back.” Came home from school and the TV was back!
For me they briefly stopped but then started happening like crazy. But for me it is usually related to people around me like i dreamt about a boy playing in my house, turns out my sister was pregnant with a boy. She didn’t know the gender and i live in a different country so i never knew she was pregnant. She said she wanted to give me some important news. I said i already knew and then told my mom the gender of the baby.
One interesting thing that i have noticed, sometimes video in the dream doesn’t match when it comes true but audio matches more often, do you also feel this?
This is mine too - I used to record my dreams and kept a journal. Some of them came true, and it was always random piddly details, not things one could see coming ahead of time, never anything useful. Dreams of being in a particular place and situation and seeing a particular someone I’d not seen in years, so specific it seems unlikely to be random. Like I would see what they would be wearing, or other details like that. And no I don’t expect it to convince anyone but me but because I was documenting the dreams I know for myself.
I always thought it was my head messing with me until i started telling my friend about it. And then they still come true and at least she knows that it is not my memories being faulty.
Have you ever tried changing the outcome? I feel like if we were to try this would cause a paradox and then we wouldn’t get the dream in the first place.
I have thought about changing the outcome but I always come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be me if i did it. Like if i saw myself avoiding someone then it usually is that person does something later that i would avoid them anyways.
Really interesting stuff but yeah most people wouldn’t believe us which is understandable.
No, I never knew which were dreams of future, and which just dreamy dreams. No lucid dreams has ever been pregognative for me, so no changing them while dreaming either.
At least twice I have dreamed with other people too, once I told my friend in a dream I was pregnant and she called the next day to congratulate me, (this was before social media and I had not told anyone else) and another time I got someone to call by finding them in a dream as I didn’t have their phone number.
But the precog ones pissed me off - I was so mad because I didn’t want to believe the future was already set like that, and they weren’t vague enough that any other answer makes sense.
I meant changing the outcome because you saw something in the dream.
I don’t think the future is fully determined. Just some parts have to be because of our actions. I have some theories:
Theory 1: maybe the universe is like a machine, and while it gives the impression that everything is possible, reality is that some outcomes are just not possible due to some limitation. Kinda like a game, you can have infinitely many possibilities of actions in an open world game but still there will be some options not possible because you choose some action at the start.
Theory 2: maybe there really is someone who controls what happens in this universe. Like our dream is the announcement that something will happen but the enforcement happens later. And the exact nature of the enforcement depends on our and everybody else’s actions. In other words it is not decided what will happen but whatever happen will not go against the dream. We just dont know what other things could have happened given a dream.
Of Course nobody knows the true nature, and we can only guess and ponder about it.
