S1 Ep39: The Hat Man Takes a Seat

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Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Astonishing Legends Network. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, The Hat Man Takes a Seat. So this dead letter comes to us tonight from Josh B. in suburban Atlanta. And yes, he gave us permission to share the location as well as his first name. And while I've only been to Atlanta a few times, this is my current neck of the woods, the urban south, now that I'm in North Carolina. But the subject of the story, the hat man, or a hat man, is a global phenomenon. Indeed it is. We've come to learn, and I always love teasing you about this, when I first broached the subject of covering it way back when, this might have been, I don't know, 2015, 2016. But I was coming across this concept. And again, a lot of this was listening to Jim Harreld's Campfire about these people's stories. And I started noticing the patterns here of, why the hat? It's a global phenomenon, as you say. Yeah. Why the need for the hat? And then as you learn more about this, as we have in our journey of exploration, back in the day, the Middle Ages and earlier, it may have been a monk's cowl, a hood. And it was the black monk and the covering. And then there's the horns. Why the horns? That seems really in the way of wearing the hat. And it's like just, and color, people of different colors. I've heard of not just the black shadow man and women and people, well, that's silly. How would you know? It's like, well, you just, you know, I mean, if you saw an outline of some human, you might be able to identify them in that way. And then I've heard more stories of beings of solid, different colors. One story coming from the then child of good friends of ours, whose daughter and son both saw something standing in the corner. Yes. The purple man. The purple man. And she goes, I, I, oh, just a child's imagination. As they say on the Kryptonaut podcast, the whims of a child. And it's like, well, I don't really see anything. And that's nice, honey. And then they had then a son a few years later. And of course she goes in there to check on him. And one day he's like, mommy, who's that purple man standing in the corner? There you go. Same corner, same purple man. And then I've heard of a yellow man and a red man. Also, let's not forget all colors. Sam, of course he appeared as a clown. Robot clown with a microphone. Whimsical clown with odd features and wood, wood appendages or just a wood, wooden things on him. But yeah, I just, it's a global phenomenon. It's timeless. We have different names for them now. No official one. We'll talk about that aspect in a bit here, but it does seem to be some kind of something happening there. And is it us visiting from the future? That's one theory. We've somehow found a way to metaphysically pop back into this timeline and this presence. Well, why are we creeping in people's bedrooms? That's where the hat man always is, it seems like. Well, no, they're different places too. Yeah. I mean, there's another story. I liked the variations, again, trying to track this. And that somebody from a Jim Harreld's campfire story was, I think at dusk, walking across an athletic field, like at a high school or something, and saw a strange man, you know, standing in the bleachers. And normally it's like, oh, some guy just kind of hanging out, standing there in the bleachers. And then he noticed that his legs were going through the bleacher seats, like he was half materialized within the seats of the bleachers. And he was some sort of a shadow, and I believe had a hat. So now they have the fedora. When will the hat styles change? That's what I'm asking. When is it going to be the flat brim? I don't know what's in style. The baseball cap, something different. But the fedora look is a classic one. Yeah. Maybe it's the whole choose a form thing. Well, for me, one of the most fascinating things about this dead letter tonight is the paranormal apathy in this, which is something, you know, we talk about this all the time. It's something that Rob Christopherson introduced us to, the idea of many, many years ago. And we've since co-opted it possibly a little too much. But this letter has a lot of it going on. And when we read the story, you'll understand. We'll talk about it on the other side of it. But there's a lot of it in this one. Yeah, well, Rob, to my knowledge, has experienced it twice in his life, at least. Here's somebody who we love, and he's always been fascinated by UFOs as a kid. And then I remember that one night, I think he and his sister saw something, but he saw this orange light coming through the window, through the curtains or Venetian blinds. And he looks out, and there's this glowing orange orb outside the window in the yard. And I said, well, what did you do, Rob? He's like, well, you know, as a kid, you know, he's about 10 years old. He's like, oh, school's tomorrow. It's getting late. I better just go back to bed. And goes back to bed and falls right asleep. And then when he's older at his, you know, when he's an adult and at his job, and I love this aspect of it because this is after he's done a lot of reading and a lot more research and is much older. And he's at his job and he's with a friend at a little break at their work and they're outside and they're talking about UFOs. He's like, wouldn't it be cool to see a UFO? Yeah, it would. They go outside for the break and there's a large egg hovering in the sky. Yeah. And they're like, hey, look at that. Yeah, that's really weird. And then I said, then what'd you do? It's like, well, we just chatted for a bit and we went back inside, back to work. And that is definitely the classic definition of that. So our hats off to Rob again for discussing the concept about that. And then we've come across so many more stories where that's happened. And then I wonder, has either of us, you or I, seen something strange and we just still never registered or remembered as being something noteworthy because of that kind of forced apathy? That's a good point. Well, whatever the case, there's another observation I'm anxious to make about the story tonight, but I'll save it for later after the reading. This particular incident happened, I believe, in 2020. At the time, I would have been 28 years old. I was living in a relatively new house built in 1989 with my then girlfriend, now my lovely wife. The house felt very nice and unassuming when we first moved in. I didn't feel anything wrong with it, just a normal house with no spooky vibes, nothing like that. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night, it was 3 something in the morning, and I had to go to the bathroom. So I got up out of bed, walked around our bed, went to our bathroom, and did my business. After I finished, I turned to head back to the bedroom, still feeling completely normal. At that moment, the possibility of anything paranormal was the furthest thing from my mind. It hadn't occurred to me in years, since I was younger and had had a few experiences. As I crossed the door threshold from our bathroom to our bedroom, I could see in the corner of our room and directly in my line of sight, a silhouette of a tall man sitting in a chair with a wide-brim farmer's type hat. He was tall with long arms that were resting on the armrests. The silhouette looked like you could make out clothes, but at the same time, not really. My body at that moment immediately went back to the muscle memory of what I used to do when I was a kid, when I got scared, and I immediately looked straight at the ground. I took a sharp inhale through my nose and froze for a second. I then clenched my fist and walked around my bed with my head down. I didn't want to look up. I never looked up. I got into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I tried to get calm as best I could, and finally, I went back to sleep some hours later. Growing up and throughout my life, these experiences seemed to follow me. When this particular incident happened, it had been a long time, and in that moment, I had no idea who the apparition was. I had not looked into any spookiness or any haunting or any ghost stories connected to where we lived. After I saw the apparition, and after I checked all our locks and gates and everything else in the house, I started to look into what that might have been and consequently found your show. I have listened to tens of thousands of hours, and I really enjoy it. The hat man I saw was not the traditional hat man with glowing red eyes, as mine had no face. I hope you enjoy the story and can add it to the hat man archives. I've never spoken to a psychic or anybody about this, so maybe it wasn't the official hat man. Which, if not, is almost more terrifying. But based on what I've read, hat man shows up before big life changes. He seems to be an observer. Since that incident, my wife and I got married. We own this house that now emits noises all the time and have two amazing children. I'd say that's pretty big. Our normal surrounds us, and we'll dive back in shortly. Exploring the unknown is what makes Astonishing Legends so much fun. But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. With over 100 recipes to pick from every week, there's always something new to try, whether you're in the mood for a comforting classic or something a little more adventurous. Marley's Spoon adapts to your life, from breakfast to dinner, and even those in-between snack moments. The subscription is simple and flexible, so it fits your schedule, no matter how busy things get. Go to marleyspoon.com slash offer slash pod 45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right. 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's marleyspoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. This is Sophia Bush from Work in Progress with Sophia Bush. Check out this special moment we did on our show, presented by eBay. There's a different kind of care that comes with letting something meaningful go, especially when it has a story attached to it. When you pass something on, you want to know it's being handled with respect. I took part in my first ever giant charity sale, and I was able to auction several items from my personal closet on eBay. Some of them were truly one-of-a-kind pieces connected to specific moments, TV sets, or from personal collections. One of the things I loved the most about doing this with eBay is there was a way for everyone to shop. Sure, people who wanted a pair of my jeans could get them, but people who might be a different size than me could buy accessories. If you're a size 8, you're lucky, because that's my shoe size. They could do purses, jewelry, all sorts of things. Some people needed winter wear. Some people wanted summer dresses. It wound up being so much fun. To listen to more, check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Find what you love. Sell what you don't. eBay. Things people love. Let's continue our investigation into tonight's dead letter. Well, first off, let me take this opportunity to poke fun at you once again that I forgot to in our introduction to this story. We started to talk about the idea of the shadow man and the hat man. I pitched the idea to you, and your first reaction was, I think that happens when you take too much Sudafed. Well, supposedly it does. By the way, we're not encouraging anyone to do that. No, no, no. Do not go looking for the Benadryl hat man. Not wise. But the concept, I mean, it was funny because I thought like, well, okay, maybe, but I'm hearing all these stories where they didn't take anything, you know, middle of the day, they get up at night, they're fully awake. It's not hypnagogic or hypnopompic, hypnopompic, hypnagogic, hypnopompic. It is something where they're fully conscious and they remember it. And like I said, it could be any time, day or night, any place that there's no specific place for the official hat man or not. And so that's kind of what we found out and it's been one of our most enduring and talked about topics that we've ever covered. And I think for the first Halloween one, it was, it sparked a lot of conversation because I think while it's very rare to see one, it does happen and is not completely uncommon. Yeah. And to your point about that and being awake, Josh has fully already been to the bathroom. Right. And as he said, did his business, we certainly don't know if it's a number one or a number two, so we're not sure how much time was spent in the bathroom, but he's awake, right? So he's coming back to bed. I don't know about you, but for me in the middle of the night, when I get up to the bathroom, thankfully, mostly to do number one, I'm awake enough when I come back that I'm aware of the room and what's going on in the room, no matter how dark it is. So I find that interesting because it's not just when you pop up from a dead sleep and you see the thing in the corner. Right, right. Which I have personally seen stuff in those circumstances. And then as I can feel myself waking up and becoming aware, and then I realize that I'm looking at the coat rack or the whatever, I don't have a coat rack, nobody does anymore. But I'm saying, I realized that the thing I thought was something was my mind playing tricks on me. Yeah. As opposed to getting up, going to the bathroom, walking back into the room, however many minutes later, and being like, okay, what's that? Also, for all the Hat Man stories that I know and Shadow Person stories, I think nine times out of 10, if not 10 out of 10, I feel like all the ones I know, they're never sitting in a chair. No, that was an unusual aspect of the story, which I appreciated. I have heard of different stories where we were talking before about one of the Jim Harrell campfire stories, and that's where I've heard a lot of these types of things, where the people seem very sincere. Now, we don't know them personally. I can attest, as we said before in the intro, that some very close friends of ours have seen one, or at least their children do. And I know both kids very well. I've known them all of their lives and trust that even as children, that anecdote or what they relayed was accurate at the time, let's say. So that one was probably standing. But the Red Man, I believe, the being that was completely red, like it was a plastic molded action figure or little toy that was sitting on the couch, as the woman described. It was yellow, completely yellow or completely red. Our friend's character was completely purple. This one was sitting. This is the one I think with the horns. And it was sitting on the couch, just observing her. And I have heard that before. But generally, yes, they are standing still in a corner, observing, sometimes walking, sometimes disappearing into a wall or seemingly to go somewhere through solid matter. Or just there, the person leaves. It's like, I need to go into the other room and lay down. And it is an unusual aspect. But I guess, why wouldn't they sometimes? Hey, it's a long journey where we're coming from. What other dimension it is? Got to take a break. And so out of all these stories, like you were referring to, I try to piece together the elements of the details, if they're accurate, and see what the patterns are. And again, there's something we mentioned in the last episode, epiphenia. We're, yeah, maybe no connection at all, but that's all we got to go on to make any sense of this. And so you look at it, it's like, well, some seem to be sitting, some are very tall and thin. That's another aspect, but not always, not always a man either. Just quickly to relay this, there was another Jim Harrell campfire story from many years ago. A young boy was, he's in a childhood bedroom, and I think his brother was in there as well. But, and he may have been, or at a sleepover or some, you know, cousin's house. And he's, I think he's sleeping on the floor. He claimed to be fully awake. And yeah, he's younger, he's a kid, but he saw some beings walk by. And I believe he sensed one of them was female, although in a similar attire and get up. And as we've described before, what it looks like to see them is that they are a shadow, but like the story here says, you can kind of make out that there's some detail, but not really, in my mind, I always bring this up. Remember the old iPod commercials from Apple back in the day where you had dancing silhouette characters and the technique they use, they weren't completely black cutouts. Well, yeah. My friend directed those. I actually know that guy. So, right. I know. Yeah. So the process is that they de-chromed it or turn the contrast down or up so much that you still see some outline and detail, but it's like they're in complete shadow, right? Yeah, you go into special effects, you do what they call a high con pass, where you just crank the contrast massively up, and then you can latch onto those hard borders between the bodies and the background and just close everything out. Shut the shadow all the way down and then replace the back with whatever you want. Right. So the concept is that it's not just, like I said, a solid black 2D cutout of somebody. Right. That's easy to do, is that you're seeing some shape and form to it, but not really. Right. And that's how I picture seeing these beings. The other unusual thing, I think, about Jim Harrell's storyteller is that they walked by him and he was not afraid. He had no fear. Even as a little kid, he wasn't afraid. And he's like more fascinating. He reached up and touched one. And that's, I think, the only time in a story I've heard somebody touching one. Oh, that's interesting. And the way he described, I've talked about this several times, but I find it so fascinating, if accurate. He said, well, what did you do when he touched it? And it's like, he said, the being rocked back, like it was one of those old toy punching bags. Remember that you used to inflate them as a kid and there was sand in the bottom compartment. And so it was a punching and it would kind of flop back up. And he said, kind of like in slow motion, this thing kind of rocked back, like it was taking it back, not expecting to be touched. Maybe that's against the rules. He rocked back and then he kind of righted itself like one of those old punching bags. And then it continued on its way. And I believe in a, all the figures walked into the wall. Just, yeah, walked into the wall. And the way he described the feel was that it was like dark black velvet. He said it was kind of soft, like a velvety feel to it. And that always stuck with me. And that's the only time I've heard somebody actually touching one. That's a pleasant tactile experience too. Well, he wasn't, like he said, he just wasn't scared. He reached it like, what is this? And he just reached, you know, like a kid will do, you know, unfortunately sometimes with stoves or something they shouldn't touch. What is this? This feeling is not pleasant. Yeah. The stove, hot, bad. So, but he reached up and it's like, that's maybe what they feel like again, if accurate. And here, the angle of the story that we're going to talk about is, is just the feeling of, I don't want to see this. And so I'm going to go back to sleep. And he tried to calm himself. He did eventually, and then it did eventually go back to sleep, whereas you think most people would be up all night. Like, what was that? We got to talk about that. And I know we mentioned Rob at the top of the show. And by the way, folks, if you didn't know who we're talking about, Rob Christofferson hosts a show, a podcast called Our Strange Skies. He's probably one of the foremost experts on UAP phenomena that we know personally. And I think the show's on hiatus right now, but it's still up there. If you can find it, it is absolutely outstanding information on obscure cases that most people have never heard of. But again, talking about this apathy in this, it's like, you've come back into the bedroom. There's a strange man sitting in a chair in the bedroom. And you walk, I guess, around or near this person, go back around, get in your bed with your significant other, and then pull the covers up over your head and spend several hours trying to go back to sleep. So in those several hours, you're laying in bed under the covers, covers pulled up over your head, your significant other sleeping next to you, and a stranger sitting in a chair in the bedroom watching you both. Yeah. Well, that's one way to react. Like, and I can't say anything because I know this feeling. I know the feeling of like, I'm going to, it's very much a, you know, we always talk about Jose Chunks from Outer Space episode of The X-Files, which just this whole thing, and which, by the way, I think there's even a podcast called this now, where it's a human being in a gray alien suit who's been kidnapped by a real alien, and he's rocking back and forth in a cage on the alien, real alien spaceship going, this is not happening. This is not happening. This is not happening. And that's that feeling. And I guess maybe it's akin to fight or flight, but I don't understand why the flight MO is to get in bed in the same room with the thing and pretend it's not there. You know, and it's the monster under the bed and all of those ideas. But I mean, what are you going to do? You're going to walk over to the hat man and be like, you and I outside now, you know, it's like, it's, there's something going on there. And I think that's super interesting because we've talked about, especially in the dead letter shows, but also in our other shows related to alien abduction and screen memories and your perceptions being controlled. We've talked a lot about this idea that you're being manipulated, that your mind is being manipulated and that we're just at play things. And maybe we're play things, not only for these aliens that intrude in our bedrooms and those sorts of things, but maybe also for these spirit beings or these creatures that, and they may not be ghosts at all. This may not have to do with life and death. This may be interdimensional existence and, you know, manipulation of time and space. And as you said, you know, visitors or maybe ourselves coming to visit from another time period, like in Christopher Nolan's movie, Interstellar. Oh, not to spoil anything. Yeah, the tesseract existence, you know, time folding in on itself and all of that sort of thing. I mean, who knows what it really is? We label it what we can wrap our heads around in this moment and what we understand about quantum mechanics and physics and technology and the possibility of other dimensions and all these sorts of things. And when we can't figure it out, it's like, oh, it's a spooky ghost. And it's like, okay. But there's a level of sophistication, I think, in this idea that you're going back to bed. On the other hand, counterpoint, when folks are listening or just like, yeah, dude, it's just a guy's like sleepwalking. He's sleepwalking. And, you know, it's like, I don't know. I mean, I'll tell you, I've, there are some people in my family that I have, who shall remain nameless, but I wake them up and have a conversation with them that goes on for almost two solid minutes before they realize that it's a nonsense conversation. They're not there. They're up and interacting with me and, but they're not really, really awake. I don't think it's real mysterious other than just the, the person I'm talking about is like, was sleeping hard and woke up and is able to communicate for several minutes before realizing that what they're saying is essentially nonsense. You realized it right away that they were like, yeah, because they were saying things that don't make sense. They're basically awake and talking to me. Yeah. But they're having a dream. They're still stuck in the dream. Yeah. I don't know where they are. They're not in the current time and place. Yeah. What happened when they woke up, when they finally kind of snapped out of it? I don't know. Because usually when that happens and it's not super often, I give it a break. I leave for a while and come back. Oh, interesting. Okay. And in most cases, this person who I'm not always in the same household with, that person, when I speak to them, they don't remember the nonsense conversation they had at all. Not one thing about it. All right. So you leave it alone. You leave them alone. You come back later. You remind them that that's what they were doing and they have no recollection of that at all. They have no recollection of the nonsense conversation they had when they first woke up that went on for, and I would say as a former television commercial editor, I'm a very good judge of time. And I can tell you these conversations last 60 to 90 solid seconds, almost two minutes sometimes. That's interesting. Well, it happens. It's just a natural thing. It happens, uh, to some folks. And, uh, what's funny, a good friend of mine, she will occasionally sleepwalk and she's had odd things. And so she's knowing I have the podcast. She's asked me about like, well, what does that mean? Or this, this happened on things like waking up and the TV was on, like she was woken up by the TV being on really loud and candles now being lit that weren't lit when she went to bed and she said, well, is that something strange? I said, well, you know, you do, uh, you have been known to sleepwalk. She goes, yeah, that's happened to me occasionally, but you know, nothing where I've done anything. You're just kind of walking around mumbling. I said, well, it's, it's hard to say, but it's like to that hook on the story, the, the button, which is, I'm going to retire that phrase. That doesn't seem appropriate. I thought the hook, you know, like the hook on the story where it's like, oh, the calls are coming from inside the house to make you wonder about that. And, uh, so I said, well, you have, you know, you have been sleepwalking in the past. She goes, yeah, but I've, I've not ever done any, you know, this is the first time for everything. I've never touched anything or turned anything on or, or, you know what I'm saying? Like interacted with any object. So it's pretty safe. I just, I realized where I will, I'll wake up and I'm standing, you know, in the living room or something. And, uh, I said, okay, but did you do anything? She said, well, I did do a little ceremony with these candles I got from the, the witchy crystal shop and it was like a blessing to the four winds or something, you know, it was like for good luck and good vibes and all that. But you, I said, well, you did try to reach out to something spiritual and maybe that's an answer. So it remains undetermined to my mind, accepting that that's possible. So it could very likely be that she turned on the TV loud, lit the candles, went back to bed, then woke up. It's like, well, who did that? You know, it was woken up by the loudness of the TV. Not then when she turned it on loud, but a few minutes later. Yeah. Or you also kind of invited some spiritual interaction in a way, even though it was a gift shop candle thing, you know, like, uh, I invite the four winds to come, you know, bless me and this and that. It's like, well, it's kind of an open ended invitation for something to come in and not really wake you up with the TV, but for some interaction. Now getting back to our story here, uh, the idea though, that most of the time when I see a rebuttal of this type of anecdote or experience and testimony is that, well, it all has to do with a hypnagogic or hypnopompic experience. You're halfway between awake and sleep as we're just, you know, it's, it's appropriate. It's a, can you quickly, I know you've done this a million times, but can you explain to our listeners the difference between hypnagogic and hypnopompic? Well, just very simply here, because it's, uh, one of the two has happened to me a couple of times. Hypnagogic hallucinations happen as you're falling asleep and hypnopompic hallucinations, or just what you think is happening, happen when you're waking up. So you feel they're very real. It happens to a lot of folks. It's not that uncommon. My point here is that that's what a lot of people attribute these sightings to is that, well, you're, you're just waking up, you're going to the bathroom. I know, but you are really just halfway between sleep and waking and seeing this. Well, I would say to that, then the hat man is a fairly common, as we said, worldwide phenomenon. Like, why is everyone seeing this hat man as when they're half awake? Is it that popular in pop culture? Well, as the letters we get, a lot of people will say, I've never heard of this happening. That's why I reached out to your show or I Googled it to see if anyone else has had this happen to them. And they haven't. So nowadays, yeah, more people are hearing about it. And there's the fat on TikTok with the Benadryl man and such, but you know, all the years that this has happened to, it's not a such a common thing. I think people are just, it's just part of people's imagination in a pop culture way. I think there is some primal element to this, but I think that all the other stories as well that kind of negate the rebuttal of that just being a sleep episode thing is that there's lots of anecdotes where people see this in the middle of the day, as we were just talking about in the intro, all times of the day and night, all locations, it doesn't seem to matter, but yes, the more popular their, their go-to is the bedroom at night. And I remember, uh, is it the psychic P, uh, psychic Peter sounds like a Noel fielding character. Uh, he was saying he used to be in a lot of this eighties ghost hunting shows and was a kind of a pioneer in that sense. And just simply, as he always said, uh, our nighttime is their daytime. For some reason there's an easier to function for them. So yeah, the go-to is at night in the bedroom where also a lot of ghost stuff happens. It's just, you're vulnerable and quiet. You're there and observable. How many, innocently and lovingly, how many parents go in to look on their children? Yeah, that's a good point. Wow. Forrest coming in with the deep thoughts on that. Well, the, no, I thought about it when I was a little kid, it's just like, I would wake up like, what are you doing? Yeah. Why are you standing there staring at me? No, they're just like, they, they pop in and kind of wake me up. I have definitely scared my son a few times just kind of like looking at him. Yeah. Like I said, that's done out of love, you know, it's like, are you okay? And then like, oh, look at the little, the little one sleeping there. It's so cute. And then he realizes as a other human being, it's like, I'm trying to get some sleep here. Come on. That's creepy. Yeah. But you understand. But back to the story. It's like, yeah, that doesn't float for me of just being a sleep thing. Although it often happens to be centered around sleep in the bedroom. Yeah. Is that we've heard stories all the time of, like I said, just being looked at by that weird guy under the street lamp, just something about it that is perhaps when they're more active. Yeah. It's like, you're more active to get a, a ghost sighting at night at a haunted place rather than during the day. But we've, if you believe that it's happened at any time, you can see that any, any time of the day or night. It just happens to be more frequent and more facilitating to be in the bedroom at night. But this story here, what I liked about it is that, yeah, eventually he did go check the locks and the gate and make sure it was secure. Yeah. But that's, by the way, I'm so glad you brought that up. That's the other thing. Go to bed with the dude sitting in the chair, hide under the covers. Then the next day, check the locks and all that kind of stuff. Right, right. I feel like we need to, we need to go quicker. Yeah. I don't know. But that points to me to be maybe a forced reaction then, you know, a response of like, you're fine. You're trying to process it because you're in shock. I mean, that's, maybe that's part of the paranormal apathy is that it's, it's shock. Maybe that, that feeling or projection is, is derived from the being itself. Like, you're fine. You're just dreaming this. You didn't see anything and go back to bed. And then you, uh, right. There's something maybe going on. It doesn't always work, but it's a little bit of a mind control thing. Cause let me ask you this. If you wake up and you see this giant wolf spider on the bedroom wall above your head, do you wake up to dispatch the spider? Or do you just like, yeah, he doesn't eat much. Go back to sleep. I'm one of those people. And I know it's a little weird, but I think wolf spiders are very cute. Let's say it's a, like a praying mantis, something weird of like just sitting on your bedpost. Like, it's like, oh, he's a video of me on the internet with a praying mantis. I've seen that. That's why I brought that up. Running up my arm at 50 miles an hour. Yes. Right. And you had a, uh, you had a very shocked reaction. That's, that was a long time ago, but yeah, no, uh, but inherently praying mantises do not scare me. And you're right. I probably, and I see plenty of things that I don't care about or worry about, but it's because I have looked them all up and I know what they do. Like when I see the little millipede looking dude that comes out of your sink and I know that they eat bugs like a silverfish or whatever, I don't worry about them. This is the point here is that there are degrees of what you are willing to go back to bed. Like if I wake up. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. In the very corner of the bedroom, way over on the other, you know, the ceiling and there's a spider. It's like, he's fine. He's probably not going to make it over here. I go back to bed. But if he's a foot above my head. Yeah. That's no good. He's got to move. Yeah. Yeah. So if, uh, I don't want to get anybody upset, but like whatever, by whatever means necessary with extreme prejudice. Yeah. Like I said, if you saw, you're not afraid of praying manti, but if you woke up and one's on the pillow next to you, do you go back to sleep or it's like, okay. Absolutely not. Yeah. That's my point. Yes. You see him across the wall or. Yeah. So it just depends. Like I said, I'm not getting up and getting, you know, getting a glass and a, you know, whatever vacuum cleaner to, to get rid of them. But here it's a different scenario. Like that doesn't work because it's obviously a being. It looks like a man and it's a stranger. Yeah. But not completely. You don't react the same way. It's not like he, because it would be different if he saw a man there. Yeah. In Josh's case, he's not thinking this is human. And that's a really good point, by the way, Forrest, is that in terms of paranormal apathy and these encounters, when people go back to sleep, even when it's something, because we had that one story that was a Halloween story of the woman that they saw. It wasn't a hat man. It was like a, this crazy gremlin-esque thing with a thousand teeth in its mouth. And, and, and she went back to sleep. Okay. You're talking about that or one of our Halloween listener stories where she saw something like the Gorn that was like reptilian with a bunch of sharp teeth, it's across the room and she's like, I'm just going to turn my head and pretend he's not there. And then when she opens her eyes, now it's right next to the bed. Yeah. But she still didn't get up. I don't think, did she? I can't remember. I think she just turned. Yeah. She thought the survival thing was like, I'm just going to turn over. Yeah. And then she looked. That's what I'm talking about. That's different, but she was awake. Right. Yeah. You're dealing with, maybe there's a part of our brains that has a different way to deal with a paranormal interaction than one with a living human being. I was about to say that. Because maybe that works. Maybe hiding under the covers works. Maybe going back to sleep works. As Josh described, he had kind of a childlike reaction where he, you know, he said, my body at that moment immediately went back to the muscle memory of what I used to do when I was a kid. That's right. When I got scared, I immediately looked straight at the ground, took a sharp inhale through my nose and froze for a second. I then clenched my fist and walked around my bed with my head down. I didn't want to look up. I never looked up. And what do kids do? They throw the covers over your head. The fist is like a little bit of a defensive reaction. Like, what are you going to punch this thing? Yeah. Well, that's all you got. But basically. Proud of you, Josh, by the way, for that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But the thing is like, don't look at it. Yeah. And that's the adult reaction. It's the child reaction. But here it triggered like a childlike reaction. Yeah. And a feeling. So it is kind of primordial in a sense, especially for those that have experienced this all their lives. And that we've, and now it sounds silly, but so many people as adults, it's like, I saw something in the room. It looked like an apparition. I got scared. I threw the covers over my head. I looked up again and it was gone. So it works. Yeah. Often. Maybe it does. And it's like, yeah. And the thing is, but you're to your point here, which is interesting to point out is that it wasn't as if a tall, threatening man was sitting in the bedroom chair there. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's my thinking. It's going to elicit a different reaction of, uh, what are you doing here? Get out. Your wife's there. You know, I'm calling the police. It's, it's a threat and a physical one and a human one here. It was instantly sensed, sussed that it was not human. It was something other than that, something paranormal, supernatural, and that the defense against that is like not to go tackle it, but to just go to bed and it should go away. Well, Josh, thank you so much for sharing this story. The good news about the hat man is that most of the time he lets you off easy. So you're not going to have to punch him. It just pops in for a visit and vanishes. There are far worse things to encounter. We are curious about the various noises and things you're still hearing in the house, though. Have you seen anything else? Let us know. The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess and is executive produced by Tess Feifel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. The theme is based on the Astonishing Legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Carissia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more dead letters, so if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletteroffice at astonishinglegends.com. Please include how you would like to be credited. First name only? First name last initial? Anonymous? A pseudonym? Let us know. Due to the number of emails coming in, we often cannot respond, but we do read them all. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright, Astonishing Legends Productions. Exploring the unknown is what makes Astonishing Legends so much fun. But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. 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