Since I wrote my book The Hat Man I have gotten many responses from people who have also seen the Hat Man or know someone who has. Interestingly I’ve learned that there may be some things common to those who see Him. I will talk about the main four that kept coming up but there may be other things/experiences that could trigger His visitations. The first trigger is if the person experiences severe depression especially if they become suicidal or have suicidal thoughts. The second thing I heard was if the person had experienced emotional or physical abuse. Also, obviously if the person had engaged in the occult like Ouija boards and black magic. And the last thing was if the person had been a severe drug abuser.
So, what frustrated me was that I hadn’t experienced any of these things yet I’ve been plagued my whole life with so many visitations I lost count a long time ago. I’ve been seeing Him since I was 16 and am now 53. I kept wracking my brain what happened when I was 16. And then I remembered. My dad got a new job when I was 15 and moved our family from one side of Ohio to the other. I was really angry and lost. I had to try and fit into this new life and make new friends. I felt powerless over my life, and to try and fit in, I fell in with the wrong crowd and started smoking cigarettes and pot and drinking sometimes and even took LSD a couple of times but it wasn’t until I did *****. I’m calling it ***** because it is very dangerous and I don’t want anyone to do something stupid and try and find out what it is and try it. If the fact that it’s very dangerous doesn’t deter you, what if that’s what opened a door to Him for me!
I was an angry resentful stupid teenager now 16 and was hanging out after school at the park that bordered the school grounds. We used to hang out there and smoke cigs and pot and bitch about our powerless lives. An acquaintance came up to the picnic table we were sitting at and showed us these two pods from a plant and said, “hey you should check this out it will make you trip like LSD”. He broke open the pods and there were seeds like mustard seeds and the stupid kids we were we just popped a bunch in our mouths and thought nothing of it. A little while later I went home and had gone to the bathroom. I went to wash my hands and looked in the mirror and almost fell backwards as my face terrified me, not because I was tripping, although I was, but because my pupils had dilated completely open so my normally green eyes were black. I looked like an alien or a demon from a scary movie. I’m surprised I didn’t ruin my eyesight. I know they actually looked like this because later that evening my mom noticed and asked me what I was on, but I managed to divert the conversation and go to my bedroom. Anyhow after looking in the mirror I started having the hallucinations. First, I would hear my friend Jill ask me if she could bum a cig and I would answer her only to realize seconds later Jill wasn’t there. But weirder I spoke to her again and again remembering after each time that she wasn’t really there. Then I saw a little green man, out of the corner of my eye, run down the hallway to the bedrooms. Thank God, my mom, dad or little brother weren’t home because I grabbed a butcher knife and went into the hall to see him dash into my brother’s bedroom. Once I was in his bedroom the little green man dashed into the closet. But when I opened the closet…nothing. This drug, these hallucinations, were very different from LSD. With LSD, I knew the whole time that I was tripping and that the things I was seeing weren’t real. For instance, I was at a bar once and I had to use the restroom but the floor looked to be undulating almost like two foot waves, but I knew that wasn’t really happening so I was able to ignore what my eyes were seeing and walk to the bathroom. But with this drug reality and unreality were blended. I had trouble knowing what was real and what was not.
I tripped for three days and managed to go to school never being detected by teachers or parents. I acted normal somehow. I think there were about five of us that did this drug and only myself and another guy didn’t end up strapped down in the emergency room. I found out later that I probably should have died, people have died from this drug. I also read later somewhere in a book that American Indians use this drug in a ceremony and if it throws you in the air and you land like a feather, then you’re a shaman. I don’t know about that but I was thrown in the air and landed like a feather. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think it may have been this that opened a door to Him.
