The Hat Man

[00:00:00] Hey, I'm Andy. If you don't know me, it's probably because I'm not famous. But I did

[00:00:05] start a men's grooming company called Harry's. The idea for Harry's came out of a frustrating

[00:00:09] experience I had buying razor blades. Most brands were overpriced, over-designed, and

[00:00:14] out of touch. At Harry's, our approach is simple. Here's our secret. We make sharp,

[00:00:20] durable blades and sell them at honest prices for as low as $2 each. We care about quality

[00:00:24] so much that we do some crazy things, like want to say it right at the top. This is not astonishing legends We are not necessarily family friendly swear This sometimes will swear just saying that the vibe of the show is more like that he had zero experience. Well, it was Ed's phrase to you when you asked just in general if he would help. He said he was going to put it down on his calendar as stepping outside my comfort zone. So he did, he

[00:03:00] did really great though and helped everybody get some merchandise if they wanted some. And Cas

[00:03:04] and Wendy helped fold it and make it look but definitely all the things that freak us out. Aliens, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, simulation theory, you know, what have you? A lot of the stuff astonishing legends cover so eloquently, but that's just kind of scratching the surface.

[00:04:20] Yeah, we want to talk about the entire world of terrifying shit

[00:04:23] that happens to people every day.

[00:04:25] Whether that's getting lost in an abandoned town share these fears, kind of less scary they might become. Now since this is our first episode, we don't have any housekeeping to cover up top, but we do want to give you a kind of a brief lay of the land so you can decide if you like what you hear, how you can keep up with us and how you can keep hearing more of it. So you'll be able to find us anywhere you get your podcasts every Thursday. That's the plan. That's the plan, and we're gonna stick to it for sure.

[00:05:42] You'll be able to find us at our site,

[00:05:44] scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

[00:05:46] Yep, anywhere you have the internet to share our fears. We want to hear yours. So please do not hesitate to email us anything. And help us keep a fear of speaking in to voids off our list of anxieties. Please be sure to like and subscribe, rate and review, kind of all that shit that everyone always asks you to do. From what I understand, it's really important. So without further ado, welcome to season one of Scared All The Time. What are we?

[00:07:00] Scared.

[00:07:01] When are we?

[00:07:02] All the time.

[00:07:03] Join us.

[00:07:04] Join us.

[00:07:05] Join us.

[00:07:06] Now it's important to note that whatever he may be, he is part of a larger mystery, sleep paralysis.

[00:08:22] This is how thousands of people across the world and across time have been introduced So look, I mean, there's a lot to talk about with Hatman. There's a lot to talk about with sleep. Like a sweating skate career. And yeah, yeah. Now imagining like Tony Hawk Pro Skated 2, but it's the Hatman on the cupboard. I would play that game. Oh, it should be an unlockable character. It should be an unlockable character. All blackboard, all black everything. Yeah, it's like the hex games or something.

[00:09:41] It would be like Hexen.

[00:09:42] What hex games?

[00:09:43] No, no, no, there's an X games or X games.

[00:09:47] But then you make it like hex games which is REM sleep or rapid eye movement. Like the band. Yes, the body will decrease its temperature. And when that happens, neuron communication in the brainstem becomes limited, which immobilizes your body and prevents you from acting out your dreams, which is really important, maybe now more than it even was when we were cavemen, because now you can like,

[00:11:00] you could fucking get in a car and crash into a building.

[00:11:03] Back then, you just might wake up in a field.

[00:11:05] Yeah, I mean, but I love it.

[00:11:06] You're like, the easiest way to explain this monster of hypnagogia show up in my bedroom if I say it three times fast. Yeah, cover your mirrors. Yeah. Hypnagogia. Hypnagogia. Don't you fucking dare. I don't need whatever that is here. So the mystery of sleep paralysis isn't why it occurs. The mystery is why so many people report seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching the

[00:12:20] exact same things during these hypnagogia hallucinations. We know that as far back as Yes, which is from I looked it up from 1781 Which is I'm just it's that's younger than America and that's weird to me It's like people are drawn demons sitting on people at the same time that we're signing a declaration of independence And that's crazy. Yeah, cuz it feels like the birth of like 1776 America's off to the races

[00:13:41] 1781 the hat man's bursted into ladies rooms. Yeah, I know I'm saying it's like I don't know why I just feel like

[00:14:43] one morning was probably like, well, you know, kitty down at the blacksmiths. She had a demon sitting on a chest last night.

[00:14:46] Everyone was just like, cool.

[00:14:48] Yeah.

[00:14:48] Ben Franklin's like, I'm going to, I'm going to use lightning to explain this.

[00:14:53] Yeah.

[00:14:53] Yeah.

[00:14:54] Don't worry.

[00:14:54] I'm on the case.

[00:14:55] Kill them.

[00:14:56] So yeah, people have reported waking up paralyzed and seeing freaks in their room basically since

[00:15:02] like the beginning of recorded history. He stands, he stares, he scares the absolute shit out of people, and then he leaves. There's a few people who claim he's spoken to them or gotten physical with them, but for the most part, he's a complete mystery. And that might be part of what makes him so compelling. He's a slender man with no lore. Books have been written about him.

[00:16:20] Documentaries have been made about him, but no one knows the fuck his deal is.

[00:16:24] Yeah, he seems not cool.

[00:16:26] No, he seems absolutely terrifying. who runs a website called the Hat Man Project. He's become a bit of an amateur historian of Hat Man lore. And he claims to have seen the Hat Man in 1994, which spurred a lifelong obsession with the mystery of who or what Hat Man is. And Timothy Brown didn't realize that Hat Man was even part of a larger phenomenon until he heard an episode of

[00:17:42] Am Coast to Coast in 2001 during an episode of the show

[00:17:46] talking about shadow beings. grain of salt, but she claims to her name Yeah, I was our slash grain of salt her username was grain of salt No, it wasn't but there is a woman who claims to have been visited by the hat man multiple times as a kid in the Midwest in the 1960s she describes it like this I open my eyes and he would be standing at the foot of my bed

[00:19:00] He was an all-black figure that was dense

[00:19:03] He wore a black cloak and a tall black hat

[00:20:06] back of my neck stand up. It was about the hat man. That was the first time I knew someone else had seen what I saw and I wasn't nuts. Now I do think she undercuts her credibility

[00:20:11] a little bit with this next part. She says, when I was growing up in that house, I learned

[00:20:16] that magic blankets and an army of stuffed animals do protect you. That and saying my

[00:20:22] prayers. I had encounters with other ghosts messing hallucinate and meet the hat man. Which, you know, combined with the Tide Pod challenge, it's a good way to meet your maker. On its own, it's a good way to meet your maker. Yeah, that's a lot. The most Benadryl I've ever taken is like maybe three, and I probably like couldn't function for a day. I've only taken the Benadryl once.

[00:21:41] I think I just took one or whatever.

[00:21:43] I mean, I took it like according to

[00:21:45] why you're supposed to take Benadryl.

[00:21:46] And I fell asleep for like 20 hours. I'll never forget this and I was sick and he like a z-pack or something and I was like hey What would that be in liquid form not even looking up from his clipboard? He just goes yeah, I don't know I'm out of pediatrician It was the most amazing like Taking like a bottle of it in a pill for yeah, just just not even look yeah

[00:23:00] I don't know I'm out of pediatrician incredibly amazing. So yeah, we're not doing that. I would never do it

[00:23:05] I can swallow pills now, but it's not how I'm using that that skill

[00:24:01] Great, both aren't great. You can either meet him on his terms, I guess, in some sort of sleep paralysis, or you can

[00:24:07] meet him on your terms, which is just swallowing a ton of enidryl.

[00:24:11] So I found an article talking about the Benadryl Challenge in Rolling Stone.

[00:24:14] It says that on sites like 4chan and elsewhere, the hatman is often referenced as a hallucination

[00:24:19] brought on by the abuse of, I can't pronounce that word, but it is DHP.

[00:24:23] Different hydromine.

[00:24:24] Different hydromines. The Hat Man is at once an inside joke and mascot. And then there's a quote here saying, I'm going to attempt to see the Hat Man and fuck him. That did not make that up. I want to find that person and see if they're still alive or not. Well, they don't give you, I think it just says a DPH disciple. They're not named who said it. Shout out, Hat Man fucker.

[00:25:41] It's just, you know, dream big.

[00:25:43] Shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars.

[00:25:45] Sometimes you shoot for the stars and you land drill and try to fight the hat man. Dude, that would, that would trauma bond you.

[00:27:00] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:01] That person.

[00:27:02] I don't know, what trauma bond?

[00:27:04] Trauma bond, you don't know what trauma bonding?

[00:27:05] No.

[00:27:06] When you, when you go through a traumatic experience far to turn back. So these are people who were fucking high taking tons of Benadryl. Yeah, these are people who are just yacked out of their minds on Benadryl. And these are some of the things they saw 51.4% of people said they saw shadow people and a staggering to me staggering 20.7% of people saw the hat man when pulled.

[00:28:23] That's something that they saw when fucked out of their minds on psychology and where some of these things start to step into the supernatural that again, so many people experience the same thing. 75.7% of people see spiders or insects. What the fuck? Why? Why do you see spiders? Like, I know that people are generally afraid of spiders and insects, but why not? Like if

[00:29:41] it's, if let's say Ben and drill is tapping them in the lore of it anyway? Like why is he its own category? It speaks to the idea, you know, I guess I would be curious if, and I don't know how this study was conducted,

[00:31:02] but like if you broke down the shadow people category, where I did research on some of this. Like most, like forums dedicated to recreational drug use, people are like, there is no reason to do this. You should not do this. There are better ways to achieve every slightly positive effect that you might feel from getting high

[00:32:20] on a bottle and a half of Benadryl.

[00:32:23] There's something else that does it better

[00:32:25] and without the demons that you always see hat man in silhouette. So there's a hat man who was dressed very formally in a very nice jacket and hat.

[00:33:40] And then the other hat man's basically just like a fucking cracked out hobo.

[00:33:44] Who's wearing like a crooked hat and rags?

[00:33:46] And you're like, yeah, There's a cultural context for it. If you saw him out of the blue in the 1960s and you're a kid, I didn't quote it, but I think she said that she was five when she recalls seeing this. You know, I could see how you might mistake any kind of a large black hat and go, oh yeah,

[00:35:01] that's kind of like Abraham Lincoln

[00:35:03] because you probably haven't seen a bunch of guys

[00:35:06] dressed up wearing a black hat. I mean, he's genuinely scary. I don't want to belittle his role in people's lives. I also don't want him visiting me ever. No. But yeah, if that guy's out there flossing, it's a very funny sight to me. It is. I think we've talked a lot about who Hatman is. His place in pop culture, that sort of thing.

[00:36:22] I think it's time to talk about some Hatman theories

[00:36:26] and what we think might be up with this guy. a little more skeptical than I used to be. So I'm of two minds on all this stuff, but this is how I see it. Either there are malevolent entities all around us that we can only see when our brains are half asleep or fucked on bed a drill, or there is something kicking around in the collective subconscious that manifests in these very specific ways.

[00:37:41] And what that cultural influence

[00:37:44] that is tapped into the collective subconscious

[00:37:46] might be for the old crone or skin walkers quiet about a UFO sighting. That is, there's got to not be there. They definitely have. Well, I mean, if that's happened, I don't think it's through sleep paralysis, but I'm willing to bet that like the men and blacks show up when you're sleeping. Maybe, but most men and black stories do tend to start with like a knock on the door or they're outside and they see a black car pull up.

[00:39:01] It's not usually as invasive.

[00:39:02] Yeah, not as in your face.

[00:39:04] What I'm getting at though is the idea that by the woman who posted on Reddit saying she was visited by the hat man in the 1960s. And to that I would say, well, even though men in black became wildly popular in the 1990s,

[00:40:25] they've been around for a lot longer than that.

[00:40:27] The first guy to report being visited in the 20s, so this would have been like in the 30s. Before there were real- I mean you could probably get like a real skeleton in the 30s. Yeah, I mean- Like somebody at like an automat. Within two miles, you probably could have found a real skeleton. Yeah, 100% In the 1930s. But I'm sure he was a bit of a strange bird. There was no winking ironic Halloween fan culture in the 1930s.

[00:41:42] No, you're just the guy we all know.

[00:41:44] Oh, you mean him?

[00:41:44] Oh, you mean Albert?

[00:41:45] Yeah. With all the fucking- which means that one of the first published mentions of the Men in Black happened at least four years before the 1960s report that we found on Reddit. Now that woman, we don't know, she just said it happened in the 60s so we don't know if it was 1960 or 1969, but at least four years before she saw the

[00:43:00] hat man, the idea of the Men in Black had been published in this book. Now let's to hear from our listeners, if anyone out there could hook us up with this, our Hatman stories from before 1953. If we could find a Hatman story from before 1953, especially, and I mean, I don't know how likely it is that we would ever find this, but, oh, yeah, my grandpa had this happen to him in the 50s, that would be amazing. But if we could find an article or up and saw a guy standing in your room dressed like a pilgrim now, you'd be like, what the fuck, who's this pilgrim? If you woke up when people wore pilgrim clothes and you saw a pilgrim in your room, you'd just be like, what the fuck, why is there someone in my room?

[00:47:00] So maybe, I guess what we're saying is,

[00:47:01] if you find any articles from the Mayflower

[00:47:06] that saw the hat, man there is someone else really well known. Okay, if you're gonna say what I think you're gonna say, let me beat you to it. Are you gonna say Ninja Turtles? No, because a hat man, if you think about it, is kind of just how the Ninja Turtles would get dressed up to go to the movies. I don't know. Also, hold on, let me look this up. Dude, is hat man just Raphael getting lost?

[00:48:21] Yeah, he went to see critters, I think, in that movie.

[00:48:23] Bro, 1990.

[00:48:24] 1990.

[00:48:25] Movie came out in 1990. that he never really described, but in them, he was being chased by someone or something. And it scared him so badly that he tried to stay awake for days. And obviously, he couldn't and eventually fell asleep. And within just a short couple moments of him falling asleep, his parents heard him screaming

[00:49:40] in the middle of the night and they came in

[00:49:42] and he was dead by the time they got to him.

[00:49:44] Scary enough story on itself.

[00:49:46] Yeah, it's no good.

[00:49:46] And he just read that and that was the inspiration. into very similar stories. And in the Unsolved Mysteries episodes, some of those years later resolved that some of those family lines had had weird congenital heart defects. And that might have been what killed them in their sleep. But a lot of the, a lot of, this is documented as happening dies and the doctor has to write, what did you call it? Unknown, no, no, no. I'd explain nocturnal death syndrome. Unexplained. And it's like the parents are like, well, I get no closure from that. No. But then also they then have to like somebody at that funeral is like,

[00:52:20] well, it seemed like he tried to explain it to us.

[00:52:22] Yeah.

[00:52:23] Motherfucker said he'd go to bed at night

[00:52:25] and something he met is like, I'm gonna some type in sleeping for a long time Europe disease Or disorder I'm gonna pop a Europe in there. Yeah for good measure Nothing came up immediately. So but you know I do think it's important

[00:53:41] The audience knows a little bit about how this shows made so I wanted them to feel every minute of me getting no information

[00:53:47] Yeah, I wanna say a skull, but it wasn't a skull. It was like my eyes wasn't seeing a skull, but my brain was getting a vision of a skull.

[00:55:01] Like I'm looking and it was my room

[00:55:04] without anything special in it,

[00:55:05] but I remember there being like a real skull vibe.

[00:55:08] I don't know how to explain that. She believes in a lot of the craziest shit too, but she was just like, oh fuck, like that's so nuts because your dad was telling me this morning that that just happened to him. So presumably at like the same time, my dad and I like woke from our slumber into a sleep paralysis potential skull situation. Yeah, I mean, and those are the kinds of stories where the phenomenon seems to stretch beyond the explicable.

[00:57:21] And people are out here being like, fucking, having open doors.

[00:57:24] People getting slapped around by fucking ghosts.

[00:57:26] Because as soon as we started watching,

[00:57:28] we were watching it together and I'm like,

[00:57:29] wait a minute, how the fuck's the door opening?

[00:57:30] Because it's just a synapse firing in your brain.

[00:57:33] Like, you're doing, like people getting cell phone calls,

[00:57:36] the devil's calling and shit.

[00:57:37] And I'm like, oh no, I've been going about this all wrong.

[00:57:41] Like, I sat here with this ignorance

[00:57:43] that I felt shielded by.

[00:57:45] And now I feel 10 times more scared about sleep rails house's experience. And again, like it was only maybe like 30 seconds long. I'd fallen asleep on my back. I hadn't realized I'd fallen asleep on my back. All I knew was I suddenly felt the presence of something in my apartment, which was a very small studio apartment. So there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I knew something was there I couldn't

[00:59:02] move. And then as I'm, you know, of the night and yeah, it was really scary. I mean, even though I quickly was like, oh yeah, that was sleep paralysis. It was about as bad as I've heard that it is. It was still really frightening. And then like a year later, I was researching sleep paralysis for something or another.

[01:00:21] I don't remember what it was, but I was looking through all these sleep paralysis images on

[01:00:25] Google and all of a sudden, and we're going to include this image in the show notes. You think Hatman was there? You think it was Hatman? No, I don't know. Do you think he could've, they're watchers Hatman. I don't think it was Hatman. But you think he could've been there? I think he could've been there. I mean, I've had, it's funny, I've had dreams about Hatman like figures, but I've never had a sleep paralysis event with a Hatman. So I don't know what the fuck this thing under my bed was, but.

[01:01:41] Which apartment was that?

[01:01:42] That was a, wait, wait,

[01:01:43] you've been a couple of different places.

[01:01:43] Where was the,

[01:01:44] it was the one in West Hollywood?

[01:01:46] Yeah, it was my third apartment.

[01:01:47] Geez. That's like there's a greater work at play here And that's not what you felt about that at hand like you don't think that was an alien or a no No, no, I mean we haven't only gotten into like what this shit is but but it sounds like both of us We're in the realm of like medical reasons for yes I mean and this is a great I mean it's a great pivot into what this shit is because we don't know no one knows

[01:03:02] It's very hard to study because we through a veil that we normally have up. Which is always there. Which is always there. And that in those moments where our brains function differently, we're taking in different sights and sounds that are just as real as anything else,

[01:04:20] but our brains usually filter out, you know?

[01:04:23] But that would also, I guess, imply they just keep landing in the wrong time, but only when people are asleep. I think maybe something about in the future you can only travel at night in a Pacific standard time. But it is, I don't know, but just something about or it's from the past, that's a good idea too.

[01:05:42] But just something where...

[01:05:44] And you're saying that they'd be dressed this, or they're from some other space in our reality that we can't see. And that's the place you're thinking you're getting a little slip beyond the veil. Possibly, yeah. Now, why are they just watching us? Who knows? Well, the watching us aspect to the people

[01:07:00] who think it's aliens, yeah, sure.

[01:07:02] They seem like watchers.

[01:07:04] I mean, the big one.

[01:07:05] And, oh, this is a good idea.

[01:07:06] Again, probably really bad, stupid idea. They're like 50 60 100 years late to getting those images. Yeah, they've trained their top alien diplomats to fill their Communications with our leaders with references to I love Lucy and the honeymooners. Oh, yeah, I do love that they They got just episodes of honeymooners. Yeah kept hearing to the moon Alice Yeah, and they're like they're fucking minutes away from space travel

[01:08:23] We got to get over there. We got to start talking to them. We got to send our diplomats from Pluto able to cross paths with, but it's more like, I can't think of a good metaphor, but you know, like, is it more like interacting with the wind or rock or something? We're like, you can see it and you can experience it, but it isn't really experiencing you. Well, that's why I asked, like, do you think it's staring at you or it's just a cutout? Yeah. That's staring would imply intent to look at you and it

[01:09:42] doesn't have that.

[01:09:43] Although I will say that we saw a number of things where

[01:09:45] people said that the hatman't normally experience or interact with and that there's points where we can, whether it's through drugs or through sleep or through somehow our brains not operating the way they

[01:11:01] normally do these things.

[01:11:02] You know, it's like all of a sudden you can see UV light and you're like, I don't hear a sniffle. You trying to see Hatman? Like the person at the counter just won't give it to you. They just don't believe you. They don't believe you have allergies. No, probably not. Fuck, Hatman, what a G. So the last thing we gotta cover is the introduction of something that we're calling the fear tier. It's a device that helps us rank the fears we cover. I guess the top one would be the most scary

[01:12:20] and the bottom one would just be less scary

[01:12:23] or the least scary.

[01:12:24] And I think it's important is like also a problem for me. That leans towards he'd been collecting it for a while. Yeah, it's just sun-baked hot piss and shit. Hot piss and shit and poured it all over. And I don't know how you come back from that. That's Ed's greatest fear. The reason it's like my number one fear is it seems

[01:13:40] it's a likelihood thing.

[01:13:41] In Los Angeles, there's a much greater chance of that happening to me

[01:13:45] than being bitten by a shark because we'll get experienced sleep paralysis. It can happen to anyone at any time that they are asleep or taking drugs. Yeah. And at least according to the poor souls of a hundred different Laotian men in the 70s, Hatman might be able to kill you. Oh, Hatman's he's snatching up souls.

[01:15:00] He might be snatching souls right off the streets.

[01:15:03] Shit.

[01:15:03] Yeah, no, and you're right.

[01:15:04] The first two things you said,

[01:15:05] it's similar to the bucket of hot piss and shit on you? That's the shadow piss. That's stratospheric. That's what breaks the fear tier. What is the, is it the Luxor?

[01:16:20] What's the pyramid of the Talon Vegas

[01:16:22] that has that light that shoots the fucking space?

[01:16:25] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:16:26] That's the light going to space. Chris Clary and Edvacola, edited by Edvacola, additional support and keeper of sanity test Fifell. Our theme is the track scared by perpetual stew and Mr. Disclaimer is ******. No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. Good night. We are in this together. Together.

[01:17:40] Together.

[01:17:41] Hey, I'm Andy.

[01:17:43] If you don't know me, it's probably because I'm not famous.

[01:17:46] But I did start a men's grooming company called Harry's.