Personal Experience with the Shadow Hat Man
In college back in the late 80s a friend and I would experiment with astral projection. Had some interesting experiences that we honestly thought were just dreams (although I once woke up as he floated through my locked dorm room), but then it turned terrifying. My friend was "attacked" in his dorm room in '88, and several times during the summer of '89 I'd suddenly awaken feeling like something was trying to rip me out of my body, but unable to see what it was. I usually slept on my stomach, and it would be on my back tugging furiously like it was pulling my insides (soul, consciousness, energy, etc.?) out of me. So, we stopped playing with fire, and it died down.
Until about a year later, when I had a vivid lucid dream (I knew was a dream, but it felt like an intentional presentation that I had control of) where I strolled around a very large mansion with huge front doors (a good twenty feet tall), and massive columns all throughout, where everyone I knew, or had even briefly encountered, both throughout my life and in the future, were also milling about. I spent much of it wandering around talking to people. Seemed like quite some time passed while I did that, and it was actually quite pleasant.
Then I was compelled to make my way outside, where I discovered the mansion existed on an open, barren plane with an orange sky, and nothing else as far as the eye could see except what looked like a couple of burned trees in the distance. Then I felt something behind me, so I turned, and about twenty or so feet away stood the brimmed-hat shadow man with cloak (or overcoat--it was hard to tell). I looked at him for a moment then suddenly I either zoomed up to him or he to me (I couldn't tell which, although there was a sense of motion, or at least motion blur) in an instant, and right as I stopped, just a few feet before him, he whispered, "It's tiiiimmee", which echoed in my head as I woke and shot upright, only to see an orange outline of him fading away at the foot of the bed (the sky in this "dream" was orange and he was pitch black and just like staring at a silhouette in front of a light then looking away, the image was burned into my retinas).
No idea what "time" it was supposed to be exactly, and nothing significant happened in my life. It affected me do deeply I wrote a poem/song lyrics about it (snippet below). I'd never heard of this before, nor heard anyone describe this "hat man" before.
Three times of seven times becomes twenty one
Then the warrior journeys for keeps
Into a dimension which our world shadows
Where the midnight man lurks and creeps
"It's time," he declares from his silhouetted form
His garment flutters without sound in some breeze
The words echo and ramble as I ponder their meaning
Amazed at what my third eye sees
Hey, I didn't say it was very good.
Many years passed uneventfully. Then the last experience I had with shadow people was around 1999 or 2000. I was married at that point and in a different house. I woke up paralyzed, knowing instantly what was going on, but this time instead of a single entity, the room was filled with dozens of shadow people, all standing around the bed as if they were observing me, many of them short, a couple of them tall. There was a chatter or buzzing sound from all of them "talking" (I couldn't discern any words) at once. I wasn't particularly afraid in this case, though, and instead of struggling as in the past during similar experiences I decided to just let go, and within a few minutes it all faded into normalcy, leaving me laying there on my stomach with my head facing to the right, no longer paralyzed.
It's never happened again, and I very much hope it doesn't. Whether this widespread phenomenon is the product of something real, or some genetically passed on predisposition from past eons of human history (although if so, the wide-brimmed hat and cloak/overcoat shadow man being so common is truly bizarre), it's unnerving and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
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Never believe or disbelieve. Always question. Rebuke bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason. share