I don't know who or what the Hat Man really is, only that he is real.
The Hat Man is an Urban Legend, a shadowy figure who is often only seen fleetingly, and has a tendency to hang around hospitals and death beds. Some say he is a harbinger of doom, a sort of Banshee type spirit.
I saw him many many years ago when I was a sick child back in the 1960s. I was very ill with a fever, and my mother was so worried she left me alone whilst she went to a neighbour's house to use their phone to call for an emergency doctor (we had no telephone.) I think I was about seven or eight at the time.
Whilst she was gone, My bedroom door opened and a man walked in. He did not switch the light on, but I could see by the light that flooded in from the landing, and I assumed him to be the doctor. Although he didnt look quite like my regular doctor – he was tall and thin, whereas my doctor was short and dumpy, but he did carry a leather bag just like my doctor's, and he wore the same sort of coat. I believe it's called an Inverness coat.
My regular doctor often wore a rather old fashioned heavy black coat that had a sort of short cape covering the shoulders – a bit like the sort you see in Victorian dramas. The figure in my room wore one like that, and I had the idea that is what doctors wear. His hat was different though – my doctor wore a trilby, but this man had a wider brimmed hat. I'm not sure if the hat cast a shadow over his face, or whether the room was just too dark, but I don’t recall seeing his face at all. In retrospect, this is a bit wrong, because he went to the foot of my bed, facing me, so the light from the doorway should have lit up his face.
Then he did something odd. He effortlessly grabbed the end of my bed, and lifted it up a few feet, so my legs and feet were at about 30 degrees, making the blood rush to my head. I felt very giddy and light headed, and just a little bit nauseous for a moment. Then he lowered the end of the bed, and left without giving me an examination or even taking my temperature. I was very puzzled by his behaviour, so when my mother came upstairs to check on me I asked her what the doctor had said.
My mother told me that the doctor hadn't arrived yet, and was on his way. When I insisted that a doctor had been in my room and had tilted my bed up, she said that I was delirious and probably hallucinating because I had a fever.
I accepted that, because my head certainly was feeling strange, and I thought no more of it; but I never forgot the experience, and for many years after that whenever I was sick in bed with a fever or flu, I would get the sensation that my bed was floating and tilting up, raising my feet until I was giddy and passed out.
Then recently, whilst surfing the net, I accidentally stumbled upon the legend of the Hat Man. Other people have witnessed this phantom, and describe the same figure. He has been seen by nurses haunting hospital wards, been seen standing at the foot of beds, and though the descriptions sometimes vary slightly, there seems to be a startling similarity.
So have any of my readers seen the Hat Man?
