73. The Hatman

Please like, share and review and support us at patreon.com/highwaytohell He stands in the doorway. He stands at the foot of the bed. He has no face, and you know exactly where he's looking. He's called the Hat Man, the tall shadow in the wide-brimmed hat and long coat that people all over the world describe in almost the same words. We start with the night visitors of the old world: the Babylonian lilu and alû, the Egyptian shadow-soul, the Norse mara that gave us the word nightmare, Odin walking the roads as "Broad Hat". Then the witch trials, where the hat first shows up on paper. Swedish children in 1669 described the Devil in a gray coat, a red beard and "a high-crown'd Hat." In Salem in 1692, Richard Carrier, eighteen, confessed that a man "black and had a high crowned hat" met him on the road home and offered to walk a little way with him. Then the modern Hatman from pop culture to TikTok challenges and possible scientific explanations why it happens. SOURCES (full list on patreon) - Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1682), appendix on the Mora and Älvdalen witch trials translated by Anthony Horneck. archive.org - Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive, University of Virginia (salem.lib.virginia.edu): Examination of Tituba, March 1, 1692; Examinations of Ann Foster, Mary Lacey Sr. and Mary Lacey Jr., July 21, 1692 (SWP No. 87); Examination of Richard and Andrew Carrier, July 22, 1692 (SWP No. 25) - Susannah Sheldon's testimony against Bridget Bishop, June 1692, in the notes to Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World (Project Gutenberg) - Isbrand van Diemerbroeck, Observationes et Curationes Medicae (1664), "Of the Night-Mare" - Sumerian King List; Ynglinga saga; the Eddic name lists for Síðhöttr; Sahih Muslim 2814a on the qarin - The Hat Man Project (thehatmanproject.com), Tim Brown's founding account and the Stephanie, Tammy, Theresa, Tibor and Anchorage submissions, as reprinted at believingthebizarre.com/the-hat-man - Thought Catalog, "17 People On Their Real Experiences With A Shadow Person," June 2014 - Wikipedia: Shadow person; Mora witch trial; Saducismus Triumphatus; Gray Barker; El Sombrerón; La leyenda del Charro Negro; Qareen; Choctaw mythology; Ancient Egyptian conception of the soul; Alû; Night hag - Art Bell archive, Coast to Coast AM, April 12, 2001, "Shadow People – Thunder Strikes" - Heidi Hollis, The Secret War (2001); The Hat Man: The True Story of Evil Encounters (2014) - Jason Offutt, Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us (Anomalist Books, 2009) - Rodney Ascher, The Nightmare (2015); The Hat Man: Documented Cases of Pure Evil (2019) - Miles Klee, "How the 'Hat Man' Went From Benadryl Joke to TikTok Horror Villain," Rolling Stone, Nov. 2, 2022 - Know Your Meme, "The Hatman" and "Benadryl Challenge" - The Week, "Who is the Hat Man? 'Shadow people' and sleep paralysis" - IFLScience, "Who Is 'The Hatman'?" April 1, 2025 - All That's Interesting, "The Hat Man" - CBS News and ABC6 Columbus on the death of Jacob Stevens, April 2023; FDA warning on diphenhydramine, September 2020 - Mental Floss and History.com on the 1981 Los Angeles Times coverage of the Hmong deaths and Wes Craven; Slashfilm and Yahoo Entertainment on Craven's Cleveland memory and Robert Englund on the fedora - Bridgeport Public Library, "Bridgeport's UFO Legacy: Men in Black and the Albert K. Bender Story" -