My First Unsettling Encounter With The Unknown

I'm sure many of you have heard of "The Hat Man" as he is called on the internet. I've only recently discovered that the strange experience of seeing The Hat Man was more widespread than my own experience. I have seen The Hat Man and it is something that has bothered me my entire life.

The first time I remember seeing him was around the age of five. At the time we were living in Fredericksburg in a small house located in a quiet neighborhood. It would have been around 1990 when all of this began. I don't remember my first encounter exactly but I do remember many subsequent encounters with The Hat Man.

Basically, I would wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom like any normal child would, I suppose. My mother always left the door to my bedroom--which I shared with my younger brother--and more often than not he would be standing there. The Hat Man was a dark shadowy apparition. It appeared to be about six or so feet tall. He wore a large-brimmed hat that always covered his eyes. He was dressed in a long coat of some sort, most likely a trench coat. The area where there would be facial features was shrouded in a misty, grey color that gave the appearance that no face existed on him. The worst part of all I suppose, at least in my memory was the fact that his legs just vanished a bit past his knees.

He always just stood there. Never moved. Sometimes he was right in the doorway, other times a bit back. Sometimes more to the right, other time more the left. He never entered my bedroom; I am not sure why not, to be honest. I would have passed this off as merely a troubled imagination if it wasn't for the fact that it followed me.

When I was eight years old we moved about 16 miles out of town, about halfway between Harper and Fredericksburg. He was there too. His behavior never changed, he'd just stand there, apparently staring at me. As I am sure you can imagine, I was quite terrified and decided that wetting my bed was a better idea than trying to face the terrifying apparition that haunted me each night. As a result I kept what I saw a secret from my family for years and instead just took the shame of being a bed wetter instead.

Eventually, when I was 11 years old, my parents divorced and we moved halfway across the state to Hallettsville. I never saw him again...

Many years later, when I was in my early twenties I finally told my mother and brother what I had seen while I was a child living in Fredericksburg. They seemed concerned, but not as much as I was when my brother told me something chilling. After I had moved out of my mother's house when I was almost 16, my brother told me that he got up to use the restroom once and standing outside of my old bedroom was The Hat Man, staring at my closed door.

I've never seen him since and I never hope to, but I have always been concerned as to why he followed me for so long, what did he want and has anyone else had dealing with The Hat Man? I always wondered if it tied into my experiences at the Ezzell School (which I will regale very soon).