The Hat Man (Full Version) Part 3

by Kira MacTire
(West Valley City, Utah)

(It appears I can put more of the story in one submission than I was before, so I will see just how much I can put in this portion of the story.)

It was then that we decided that the activity was focused mostly on her room for some odd reason. (possibly because she is the youngest and therefore, the weakest person in the house.) After that, staying in my sister’s room, alone, in the dark for as long as you could became a test of bravery. You know, stupid kid “don’t be a pansy” type stuff. A few of our friends accepted the challenge, and most only reported feeling very uneasy. But, there was one incident that immediately put an end to the “game”. One of our friends decided she wanted to try it, so we let her into the darkened room and closed the door. We stayed outside the door and listened. Several minutes passed before anything happened. Suddenly, our friend began making a strange choking sound, so we threw the door open to see what was the matter. Another one of our friends was the first one in the room and she said that she saw a sort of face hovering behind our friend, who was struggling for air at that point, before it quickly disappeared and our friend was able to breathe again. Her neck was free of any sort of markings, but given the level of fear she had shown and the obvious lack of air she had experienced, we were convinced that she didn’t just do that to scare us. Whether or not this is related to the dark figure, “the Hat Man” as others who have seen him have come to call it, or not is unknown. What we did know is that that thing could and would hurt us. The “game” was put to a stop because of that and hasn’t been attempted again. We never spoke to our parents about the incident and probably never will.
After that, there was another lull in activity, but it provided little solace. We now knew that just because it was gone for now, didn’t mean that it wouldn’t come back. And, when it did, it was usually more, I guess you could say, powerful? Bold? I’m not entirely sure, but I do know it was definitely more scary. My sister and I were both afraid, and it had changed our behavior. We didn’t want to be alone in the house, we wouldn’t go into my sister’s room when it was dark (even if it was the middle of the day and all we had to do was pull up the blinds. We didn’t even want to go far enough in there to flip the light switch that was only about a foot away behind the entertainment center.), and we would always remain close together if we were in the house alone even though we normally fought like cats and dogs and wanted nothing to do with each other. We could tell that our mom believed that there was something that was scaring us and knew that something needed to be done to put our fears at rest, but our dad was far more skeptical. He thought that I was just playing along in an attempt to scare and torment my sister; he would get mad at me for it and demand that I stop no matter how much I insisted that I truly believed her and I knew there was something there. Not long after that, we stopped talking to them about it altogether and spoke of it only amongst ourselves or with our most trusted friends whom we knew wouldn’t ridicule us.
About two years ago, my mom decided that enough was enough. It was ridiculous for an eleven year old to be too afraid to sleep in her own room and would instead sleep on the floor in either her parents’ room or her older sister’s room. So, she redecorated the room to get rid of the pink that my sister hated so much, hoping it would make her more willing to give my mom’s plan a try, and then “blessed” the room with sage smoke. Once she finished with my sister’s room, I demanded that she do the same to mine; I did not want whatever was in her room to come into mine once it was kicked out. Also when no one was looking, I put salt across the threshold of my door, where it has stayed ever since, because I had heard somewhere that it was supposed to keep spirits for entering. I also did the same to my windows for good measure a while latter when activity picked up once again. It’s a good thing I had my room saged as well because it left her room alright, but it now inhabits the rest of the house instead. This put a stop to the nights my sister would sleep downstairs on the couch and watch TV; heck, she won’t be down there alone at night for more than two minutes now.
Blessing the room did ease my sister’s fears and she went back to sleeping in her room, a least for a while, but, there was a problem; the room had been blessed, but the attic above her room had not. This allowed for a terrifying event that caused my sister to go back to sleeping in either our parent’s room or in my room rather than her own; it had only been a few weeks since the rooms had been blessed. She was sleeping peacefully in her room when she suddenly sat up, feeling as if something was horribly wrong. Then she heard what she described as a series of heavy footsteps and dragging that started from the area of the attic that was above our kitchen and got progressively faster as it neared the area above her room. Step, drag, step, drag, step, drag. She tried to stay put, to be brave and wait for it to go away, but she couldn’t. She ran from her room and went to our parents’ room. She looked at the clock before laying down to try and get some more sleep; it said 3:05 am. Normally I would have just thought she had had a nightmare, but I distinctly remember her going to sleep in her room, and yet, she was in our parents’ room in the morning and she had no history of sleep walking. She hasn’t even attempted to sleep there again.
Then, once again, there was a lull. Well, not exactly; a few things happened: knocking, banging, cold spots, creepy feelings, and the occasional figurine flying off of a shelf or dresser, but there was nothing really scary; we had gotten used to those kinds of things by then. But, of course, something happened.
It happened on a Saturday sometime around 10:00 pm when I was downstairs doing the dishes (on weekends, I never do my chores at a decent hour). I had just turned off the water to put away a pan I had just washed and was just about to turn it back on to continue my task when I heard a deep, gravelly voice whisper, “hey……….”. No one else was downstairs; they were all up stairs watching TV. All the doors were closed, so I knew I wasn’t just hearing the TV. I dropped what I was doing and bolted up the stairs, leaving the dishes in the sink and the water undrained. I refused to leave my room the rest of the night. I did think for a second that the voice was just a figment of my imagination, but that was entirely not the case. Your imagination doesn’t make you feel cold breath on the back of your ear or make you see a little bit of your hair move as if someone really was standing behind you, whispering. I won’t do the dishes at night, or even during the day if I’m alone, without having my iPod turned on and cranked up so that I can’t hear anything outside my little musical bubble I have made for myself. Is that damaging my ears? Probably, but it’s better than having to experience that again.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only time I have heard this voice. To date, I have heard it two more times. The first of the two being the most disturbing and actually made me really question my own sanity. It was around 3:00 am on a Saturday about a month after the first time I had heard the voice. I decided that I should probably go to bed at that point, so I left the relative safety of my room the use the restroom and brush my teeth. As I was walking back to my room, I heard the same voice from before either say, “Kill you mom…….” or Kill them all…….” What had just happened didn’t sink in at the time, so I nonchalantly continued on to my room. Once I entered, it hit me; this THING was trying to get me to hurt the people I loved. I slammed my door shut and stood, hyperventilating in terror, with my back against the door. I slid down it to the ground and just sat there for a while, trying to comprehend what was going on. Was this thing a ghost? A demon? Or something else? I didn’t know, I still don’t, I but I do know that its intentions were not of a benevolent nature. When I told my sister and my friend, who had stayed over that night, what had happened, my friend asked me if I was schizophrenic; I could understand why she did so, so I didn’t get mad at the question. This was some Amityville House of Horrors crap going on, and they believe that guy was schizo.
I have been psychologically evaluated before due to some emotional issues; from this, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and clinical depression, but not schizophrenia, and I was tested for pretty much everything. Because of this I knew that it wasn’t all in my head. I didn’t know whether to be relieved by this or scared. Then my sister told me that when I had my door open that night, she could feel something staring into the room at as from the hallway as if it wanted to enter but couldn’t.
(To be continued)