Have You Seen the Man in the Hat?

Edwin, you're having a cozy night in Robert, don't play with that right now. Edwin, You're having a cozy night in No, you don't get foxy back right now. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle Edwin. You're having a cozy night in. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. You always say, I do. You climb into bed with your sleeping cap and matching pajamas. You snuggle into your book because it's your reading time. I mean, what are you currently reading? Are you reading something good? No, I'm actually I'm reading something that's probably not that interesting. It's a business book. Nothing interesting, nothing creepy. Okay, Well, you snuggle into that, you finish a chapter. Time for bed. You switch off the light, sink deep into your pillows. You start to doze. Anyway, time passes. At two am, you slowly wake up. Your mouth is dry. Luckily, there's water next to your bed. You slowly open your eyes. There stands a figure in the darkest corner of your room. It's wearing a brimmed hat. Above a featureless face with no discernible nose or mouth. It towers over you, staring, and its presence feels malevolent. You are paralyzed with fear, unable to scream for help. All you can do is stare at the man in the hat, who slowly fades away, leaving you alone in the darkness to contend with what you just saw. I've heard the man in the hat like, that's one of the things where I imagine being paralyzed and you see that, oh, as in paralyzed with fear, as in like you can't move, you can't scream. You're just like, I went parp alegic with your scenario. But also like that's awful too, because you know how like when you get steep Prolysses and you're like, but imagine seeing that. For decades, a terrifying, faithless figure has appeared to countless witnesses during dissociative episodes or waking states. Unsettling. These sightings have increased exponentially in the last several years, and witness descriptions remain bizarrely consistent. A shadow figure wearing a fedora hat or a top hat and an old timey out of date coat, which I love the term out of date? Out of is it a lapel coat? Like? What is what style is making it out of date? I imagine like bigger, oversized like capes. Oh that's all. Cape would be scary as opposed to just a trench coat. Cape. You should get a cape? Why not get a cape? Anyway? Encounters with the Man in the Hat have spread like wildfire through redditt TikTok, and yet we're still no closer to understanding what is the man in the hat? Why are so many people sharing the same waking nightmare? D da da. So there's some archetypes throughout time that the Man in the hack fills as a new iteration of it. Throughout time, there's always been a shadowy figure that appears in the fugue between sleep and dissociation, you know, like in pre Islamic Arabic, the form was called the gin Ji n n who are powerful in visible spirits lived in a world that overlapped our own, and they were invisible, but they could manifest into physical forms through shape shifting. They could become animals, objects of people. Descriptions of the gin are even mentioned in the Qur'an and many early beliefs about the gin share commonalities with the man in the hat. It's believed that the gin become more active at night. They are capable of harming, even killing their victims. And one specific gin al just algae algaejoom who l just wo yeah okay, One specific gin alg justum brings nightmares sleep paralysis to its victims ancients, the symptoms of this attack include pain or weight on the chest and shortness of breath. In European and Latin cultures, there's a shared folklore of a similar creature known as incubus or succubus, which I think we're more familiar with. In the Middle Ages, there was basically that a sucubus or an incubus. They called it the old Hag. That was what the demon was called that gave you sleep paralysis. And the word nightmare derives from the Middle English of the word mayor, which meant an evil spirit thought to lie upon and suffocate sleepers. So like night mayre, isn't that weird? Another example is the Homong people, who are indigenous as East Southeast Asia East Southeast Asia. Right like somewhere in the corner sure East Southeast Asia, we get it kind of In that culture, there is a high rate of sleep paralysis, sleep acnea, and chillingly sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome. Wait, hold on what? Yes, sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome, which is weird because I had a friend die of that, like when he was thirty. What sometimes people just die in their sleep. That's scary. What I know culturally they have a higher rate of this in that area. So among the Hamong people, there's an entity known as dab Tong, so dab Tsog. The entity is believed to crush the chest of his victims and steal their breath. Isn't that interesting that, like all these cultures, the exact same thing is happening to me, It's like goes. It's like, how can people keep sharing ghost stories for so long? Like, I don't know, it's just interesting that it crosses countries, cultures, centuries. I mean, this is only like a little smathering of the names. You know that it's hat and the man in the hat is considered to be a type of shadow person and the most modern iteration of a shadow person, like what a shadow person is. It's funny because I don't know if this is a sidebar or what this is, but the most modern iteration of a shadow person archetype appeared in the early two thousands. In April two thousand and one, Art Bell interviewed a First Nation elder on Coast to Coast AM broadcast. You know it's real if we're bringing Coast to Coast in here, you know it's real because we're a serious podcast. We are a serious podcast. And Art Bell and the First Nation Elder spoke about shadow people and they encouraged listeners to submit drawings of these entities. Of course, people submitted all these drawings of these shadow entities that people have been seeing forever. Basically, shadow people is another word for nightmare or like gin or whatever, you know, like it's all kind of connected. That's like our modern equivalent to this as a shadow person. These beings were described as living shadows, humanoid figures with indiscernible features. They would appear in the corner of a room or at the edges of vision, and they would remain immobile, simply watching, or they would travel first the space as if they were unaware of anyone else in the room, like cats. You're right, are they just cats. Wait a minute, are these cats they don't care? They're just like thing. Yeah, they just they don't give a shit. I mean, you think what a cat stares at nothing, it's staring at a shadow person. But maybe the shadow person's actually staring at that cat, being like, what is that freakish thing? Cats haunt the shadow people. That's what's happening. I love cats anyway, as we all know, all these stories started to purbate Reddit in the Internet, and they were boosted by additional paranormal authors, investigators, media personalities, and a trend emerged, the Man in the Hat. People were seeing the same type of shadow person, this guy and a hat, who is described as bringing malevolent feelings of intense dread, and unlike other shadow people, the man in the Hat actually seems intrigued by observers and is always watching them. So as stories of the Man in the Hat became increasingly popular, this guy named Timothy Brown created the hat Man Project in two thousand and nine. What it's got a website. It's the Hatmanproject dot com. Nonprofit. I don't know what it is. It's like. The purpose is to record witnesses of the Man in the Hat. Like here's like an abbreviated example of his account. He created it because he had an experience with the man in the hat, and so he just wanted to connect with other people that had experiences. So this is Timothy Brown's experience. What I saw gripped me immediately with fear and dread. I saw a tall, human like figure, and the figure looked like a man. If the man had no distinguishable features whatsoever. I could see no eyes, no mouth, no nose, only blackness. He looked like a shadow, only darker, much darker. He had a very wide brimmed hat and a long trench coat that flowed as it moved. He leaned his head and his body into my great grandmother's bedroom and looked in, turning his head towards her, then towards me. I had my eyes closed as much as I could so I could still see him and yet still look like I was sleeping. He stood there for what seemed like an eternity, just staring. He then moved very slowly and without a sound, back into the hallway, just out of view. As I kept watching, I then saw this blacker than black figure move toward my grandmother's room just like before he leaned his body and head in her doorway, looking at her again, not making a sound, and then he leaned back and moved out of the view of the hallway. Wow. Reddit is full of testimonials, and the majority of these sightings happen while you're falling asleep or waking up at night. Until there was a new method discovered on meeting the man in the hat and it's a super dangerous way and it's cost many lives. And then I wrote, break dang it, Okay, we'll be right back now, we're back to reddit, because there's a reddit called dph and this subreddit was established in twenty fourteen to discuss the recreational and experimental use of dive phenhydramine. This drug is commonly known as benadryl, and it's the over the counter antihistamine and sedative that's commonly used to treat various conditions like if you're having an allergic reaction to something and for some reason this says insomnia, but I don't take benadrill if you have insomnia, figure something else out. But in large doses, benadrille can cause delirium, which is characterized by confusion disorientation and hallucination. Diephenhydramine is a delirient, not a psychedelic, Although the two can cause hallucinations, delirius cause greater disturbances and motor functions, emotional and perceptual processing, and more characiferent. Long term delirians are more destructive to the human body and mind. I am seeing literally like, yeah, this is a warning, and so they're known as delvers. People who abuse deliriums are known as delvers. Delvers. Yeah, and so before discussing the connection with the man in the hat, it's important to understand that danger and lethality of diephenhydramine aka benadryl abuse so scary, mystery, surprise cares. Just don't do it. I knew a kid in high school who made himself stupid by drinking cough s her up. So don't do it. It like permanently damages you if you start taking benadrill like as a means to get high. But I wonder because I mean, I carry Benadryl with me, but I rarely take it. But when I do it do feel weird, Like I feel like sleepy weird. I'm talking about recreational taking it do not take it as a means to get high or see something. So wait, so people would take this to see the hat man. Yeah, this was a comment on a YouTube video and I'll just call her Higura g. She wrote her experience as someone who fell down the DPH rabbit hole for two years and basically lost those two years to sleep medicine abuse. It really is no joke. I thankfully never went over four hundred and fifty milligrams of the stuff, but even that was pretty dangerous. I saw the hat man one time when under the effects of the drug. He basically stood across the room then lunged at me, causing me to jump out of bed and panic. I also commonly saw black tendrils and giant black bugs. Once I saw a strange dog band creature I can't properly describe. I'm thankful I managed to quit that nonsense back in twenty eighteen before I got too deep into it. I basically don't remember those two years, and it was almost impossible to sleep peacefully for months while quitting. I recommend no one ever get involved with DPH beyond its intended usage, and I've sworn it off all together. Oh that's I liked this account because it's like, not only did she see the man in the hat, she saw bug, she saw weird tendrils, she saw a dog faced guy. Like, what about this says do this drug? You know what I mean? Like, do this recreationally? Nothing about this says that it's fun. And then, of course, the viral sensation that is TikTok, the Benaederyll challenge emerged. Let's hear it, Let's hear it. The benadrill challenge promoted the consumption of exceedingly high doses of DPH, resulting in a surge of benadryl poisoning cases. TikTok has since deactivated the corresponding hashtags and taken down videos promoting the challenge, and the FDA published a public warning about the potential dangers of benedryl abuse. However, the damage was done, and the DPH Subretta nearly doubled in its subscribers in a year. You know, there's sidebars that include the amount that you should take for different experiences. And weirdly enough, if there's an unofficial survey that was conducted of delvers, fifty percent of delvers witness shadow people and over twenty percent have said they've witnessed the Man in the hat. Why do they want to see the man in the hat? This is like people that really want to see a ghost or whatever, or like, you know, I think it's that whole, Like, don't get addicted to benadryl. Do not, it'll make you dumb, guys, like actually physically dumb. It doesn't sound like a good experience and is dangerous. Oh man, I think I have a tip an imask, and then you never have to deal with seeing anything in your room ever. Again, that's true. Can't be scared of seeing something if you can't see it. If you can't see it, done and done. But people haven't been witnessing the Man in the Hat for decades, Like, it's kind of insane that so many people have had this experience with this one apparition. So I wrote down some theories about what this could be. The number one possible theory sleep paralysis. You know, when you're in rem sleep, you're paralyzed, so you don't like thrash you hurt yourself while you're dreaming, especially with the kind of dreams that I get. That's a good thing. The weird thing is when I'm not paralyzed and I wake up when I'm like punching the air. Yeah, I like kicked some sort of dream apparition that was coming towards me to choke me out. So I kicked it, and I kicked the The worst I've gotten is that weird jump. Oh yeah, yep. Drug use from benadryl. You know, that could also be a reason it's appearing. It's just like a shared hallucination by imbalanced chemicals in the brain, That's basically what it could be. And then it's being influenced by Reddit, by folklore, you know, and you know, the Internet spreads information really easily, and so it's like a lot of people have had this experience, and like there's all the accounts on Reddit and four chan, and they've all had the same experience. And then is the legend just manifesting and being made real as people tell the story. So that's, you know, another thing that could be happening. It's like, once you know about the man in the hat, you're more likely to experience the man in the hat. And that's you listener who because now you know' Another possible theory is that it's just kind of like the Mandela effect. Someone I was like looking at this and it was like stranger danger. Do you remember those PSAs about stranger danger? Huh? And that maybe they compounded into our minds as children, and now the hallucinations are like shared in our subconscious and it's all like dredged up the old feelings and imaginary warnings that they're of danger and that something's not right with our bodies and like something's like wrong. So it could be something like that, since everybody watched those or The most terrifying theory is the man in the hat real? Is it just a paranormal phenomenon of an interdimensional being like Bigfoot or the Mothman? I want to believe that one some entities can cross between other dimensions. It could not be contained by our physical laws. With that theory, I do love the image of a supernatural being that actually had to buy a hat at some point, and possibly at a hat outlet mall, trying several hats until it figured out the correct size of the hat and the hat style that it was the most fond of, and then paid legal tender of its dimension that it lives. And I don't want to gender it and Finally, at last, I was ready to set off on its mission to casually watch humans sleep and linger in the shadows, just like a normal Fedora guy. The end, he could just be Jason Moraz, just sneaking into your room. Have we all been imagining Jason Maraz all this time? Oh? My god? Does he exist? Is he real? I don't know? Have you seen Jason Moranz? Write in and let us know here It's Scary Mystery Surprise. We love hearing from you whether you've seen Jason Mraz or not, but also let us know if he's real, because we're now that we're thinking about it, we don't know. Jeez. Anyway, what are we going to talk about next week? Edwin? I think it'll be a surprise. Scary Mystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin karub Yes. This podcast was edited and sound designed by Sarah Vorhe's Wendel a VW sound