The Hat Man at the Foot of the Bed

I had heard people talk about the Hat Man online and always assumed it was sleep paralysis dressed up as a story. Then I moved into a cheap room in an old subdivided house, and I met him.

The first night I woke around three, unable to move, and there was a shape standing at the foot of the bed. Tall, thin, a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat, blacker than the dark room around him, so that he was a hole in the shadow rather than a thing in it. I could not see a face, but I knew, the way you know things in that state, that he was looking at me. After a minute I could move again, and he was gone.

I told myself it was a nightmare. The second night he was there again, closer. The third night, closer still, standing beside the pillow now, tilting that hat down toward me.

On the fourth morning my new roommate, who slept in the next room and knew none of this, said over coffee that she kept having the same bad dream: a tall man in a hat, standing at the foot of her bed, getting closer each night. She described the brim, the coat, the missing face. Word for word what I had seen.

We did not sleep in that house much longer. I have talked to two other people who lived in that subdivision and both went quiet when I described him. I do not have an explanation. I only know that whatever he is, he does not belong to one person's dream, because he visited both of ours.