Enter Hatman

A Meme of Demonic Proportions

Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time on internet message boards in the late 2000s, will recall the emergence of creepypasta. It was the internet’s own urban legends, which became sort of a psychological and cultural horror meme with creatures like slenderman. Part of the mystique of the creepypasta phenomenon is that it blurred the lines between meme and reality, as there was no way of truly knowing whether it was based on a real phantom or if it was a collective creation of the internet hivemind that projected itself from the consciousness of Reddit and 4chan.

Upon reading a story about Aaron Rodgers having recurring encounters with a figure known as the “Hat man” after returning from an ayahuasca retreat, I tweeted a simple comment that it was a demon, and it surprisingly went viral.

Anthony of Westgate @orthodago

It’s called a demon.

Admittedly, I was not familiar with the legend of the Hat Man until I read about Rodgers’ story. So the thread led to some very eye-opening discussion, some immediately rejecting the story as too absurd to be real. Many of the replies to my post explained that they had similar encounters with the Hat Man, most commonly recurring during sleep paralysis.

Scrimblo Bimblo⚓️ @ScrimbloB

@orthodago People also talk about the "Hat Man" when they experience sleep paralysis.

Bill @Bill74227214

@orthodago Same as the ones you see in sleep paralysis. I know because it happened to me when I was young

Of course, being the helpless pattern noticer I am, these replies compelled me to research this phenomenon for the next 24 hours. I quickly realized I had discovered another rabbit hole. I even found that there is an entire subreddit dedicated to the Hat Man, as well as an ongoing independent research project since 2001 called The Hatman Project.

Various paranormal researchers found that the most common features of the Hat Man that have been consistently and universally documented, are that it’s a dark faceless shadowy apparition, wearing a top hat, and most who have encountered him have experienced some form of sleep paralysis. I found that this was also the case according to the replies on my thread.

Being that the only time I see any content from TikTok is when the occasional clip makes its way to my Twitter feed, I generally have no clue what zoomer trends are happening over there other than mentally ill teenagers vlogging about their gender euphoria. But upon my brief peek down the rabbit hole on this subject, I discovered that the occult and paranormal is a very popular TikTok trend. The paranormal TikTok zoomers I saw covering the Hat Man phenomenon were all saying the same things stated here, along with their own retarded theories as to what the Hat Man is besides simply a demon. However, the things they were likening the Hat Man to, such as aliens or a “man in black”, also happened to be what other paranormal researchers have ascribed to being demons.

In February 2005, Rodgers had an encounter with a UFO in New Jersey, where he described the event in great detail. He had been seeing the Hat Man since he came back from an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. The seemingly unique experience for Rodgers has been that he is encountering the Hat Man while he is awake and fully conscious, even while in motion. I believe this is a result of him opening the “doors of perception” to the demonic realm through Shamanistic spiritism and ayahuasca. I can assure you, this is not just a case of “Source? I made it up.”

The UFO phenomenon has been well accounted for in a book that I will likely be referencing in this publication very frequently, that is, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr. Seraphim Rose. In his chapter on UFO’s, he references the book ‘The Invisible College’ (1975) by renown ufologist Dr. Jacques F. Vallée, where “he notices the similarity between UFO encounters and occult initiation rituals which 'open the mind' to a ‘new set of symbols’. All of this points to what he calls the ‘next form of religion’”.¹

In a bibliography produced by the Library of Congress for the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research published in 1969, the introduction states that “Many of the UFO reports now being published in the popular press recount alleged incidents that are strikingly similar to demonic possession and psychic phenomena which have long been known to theologians and parapsychologists”.²

Another famous ufologists, named Albert Bender, recalls having an encounter where he was approached by 3 “men in black” who visited him at his house, communicated with him telepathically and gave him a metal disk. During their visit, the men in black shared with him the origins of UFOs and as a result, Bender fell ill. He later experienced yet another encounter with these men in black, as he reported that they were shadowy black figures that hovered above the floor without touching it. They told him that they had captured people from earth and used their bodies to disguise themselves.³

Albert K. Bender, displaying his drawing of the “man in black” figure he encountered.

In some reports on the Hatman Project website and subreddit, there have been instances where multiple shadow Hat Man figures have appeared simultaneously, typically in groups of 3, like what Bender described in his encounter. In rare cases, there are reports of one or more hat men physically attacking the person, sometimes even leaving cuts and bruises on their bodies.

Bender’s encounter with the men in black interacting with the material, seems to be consistent with Aaron Rogers’ experience of the Hat Man audibly moving through the physical environment, as he recalls in a recent interview:

“It was behind me, not even breathing hard. I heard its feet hitting the ground in a constant rhythm. I ran to my car, opened the door, slammed it behind me and locked it as fast as I could.”⁴

While there may be many variations of how and when the Hat Man is encountered all over the world, the Hat Man’s ability to directly engage with the material realm is found consistently in these stories, which disproves the cope that it’s just machine elves or some recurring hallucination.

Jen Wilding ^^ @jen_wilding

@orthodago I had a hat man experience in childhood. Unforgettable event. Yes, a demon. I was not harmed, but he/it does pick up and move physical objects.

Anyone who is familiar with the Lives of the Saints can attest to the nature of various demonic manifestations materializing and dematerializing. St. Anthony the Great, St. Marina and St. Cyprian the former sorcerer, for example, had confrontations of the like. I should also add this very important detail. There are countless stories of encounters with these demonic entities, whether it be hat men, aliens, or other apparitions, where the person ends the experience immediately when they say the name of Jesus. Let us be alert whenever these phenomena of demonic encounters becomes normalized, as the world becomes more prepared to embrace this new religion of the future.

The mini-documentary that Quartz produced on the Hat Man features interviews by psychologists, paranormal experts and scientists trying to come up with some naturalistic cope as to how people from all parts of the world are having the same encounter with this figure. Some replies to my thread were suggesting mass hallucination, or “ayahuasca entities”, but none of these people can substantiate their claims against the thousands of testimonies that attest to encountering the Hat Man without taking 15 Benadryl or tripping on DMT. All mental gymnastics to avoid the obvious explanation, of which I simply stated in my tweet: It’s called a demon.

If you ever encounter this or any demonic entity, say the Jesus prayer:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

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1. Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, 5th ed., Platina, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, 2018, p. 101

2. Ibid, p. 102, Lynn G. Catoe, UFO’s and Related Subjects: An Annotated Bibliography, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1969.

3. Gulyas, Aaron John (May 6, 2013). Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist: Alien Contact Tales Since the 1950s. McFarland. (Accessed January 12, 2023).

4. Paul Seaburn, NFL Star Aaron Rodgers Shares His Scary Encounters With the Hat Man, Mysterious Universe [website], https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2022/08/NFL-Star-Aaron-Rodgers-Shares-His-Scary-Encounters-With-the-Hat-Man/, (accessed 12 January 2023).