There was a series of murders on the nearby island, and I was supposed to meet with each one of the murderers. The trials had been decided, but I work for a publication that deals with true crime and the macabre, so I was on assignment to interview these people. The murders weren’t connected in any way except that they followed a similar motif. Each murderer was a mother, and each victim was one of their children. Because the murders were so close together and so viscerally disturbing, they were seen as great content for our budding publication.
I’m going to present you with the transcripts of these interviews, each interview was conducted in person at the state penitentiary. All of the interviewees have volunteered, and none have been coerced. I am no longer writing in the interest of my publication - I am writing in the interest of my life. I hope that by reading this that one of you out there might help to bring some solution to all of this.
Interview with Mary Hoffsteader 7/18/2022
James: Hello, Mrs. Hoffsteader, thank you for meeting with me, I know it must be difficult.
Mary: Don’t call me Mrs., I’m no Mrs.
James: Why shouldn’t I call you Mrs?
Mary: You know exactly what I did.
James: I know what the officials have told me, I know what the press has told me, but I want to know your story.
Mary: My story? It’s the same as you’re going to hear from anyone else. I went on a psychotic break and killed my child, my husband won’t speak to me, and neither will the rest of my family. I can’t say I blame them.
James: Mary, can I call you Mary?
Mary: That’s fine
James: Mary, I have my suspicions that things aren’t exactly how they should be. Forgive me for the conjecture, but I do not believe that a mother who has no previous criminal record or history of violence would be capable of killing her own child. I really want to hear your story, there must be something else to this, tell me I’m not wrong.
Mary: You’re not exactly wrong
James: Then tell me, walk me through that evening.
Mary: Okay, my husband was away at work, he worked late, at some office job, I never really understood what he did, something in finance I think. Anyway, it was around nine in the evening - Cody and me were watching cartoons, and he was eating some chicken nuggets I had put in the oven for him.
James: What was the cartoon?
Mary: Spongebob. He was enjoying his chicken nuggets while I had a glass of chardonnay. My husband was going to be home in a couple of hours, and I had planned for Cody to be in bed by the time he got home. I thought I saw someone in the kitchen, but it was just my imagination.
James: Hold on, someone in the kitchen?
Mary: I told you it was my imagination
James: Tell me what he looked like - please.
Mary: He was tall, and he was wearing tattered clothes, an old charcoal suit, and he was wearing this hat on his head, he just stood there in the kitchen. I asked Cody to look over at the kitchen figuring that if he saw something it must be something other than my mind playing tricks on me, but he didn’t, he didn’t see anything. That’s how I know it was in my mind. But he stood there, and I tried to ignore him, but it felt like he was staring into me like he wanted something from me.
I got a call then, it was from my husband.
“Mary, sweetie, would you mind having some dinner cooked when I get home, I’m starving”
Something like that. My plan was to heat up the lasagna from the night before and serve that to him. I had honestly had a couple of glasses of wine and didn’t feel like preparing an entire meal. I dreaded going into that kitchen, I knew the man with the hat wasn’t real, that I had nothing to be afraid of, nevertheless, I could feel his presence. In other circumstances it would have been good that I had gone back into the kitchen, I had left the oven on. Not this time though, as I stood by the oven the hat man whispered to me so many words, words that I was mesmerized by, I can think of no other way to describe it. Something inside me had changed.
James: What did he say to you?
Mary: I can’t remember
James: Can’t remember, or don’t want to remember?
Mary: My mind won’t let me remember, I don’t know, I don’t know what he said. I promise.
James: Okay, then what happened?
Mary: I told Cody that I had something to show him in the kitchen, and I walked him over to the oven, my poor two-year-old child. I forced him into the oven, he protested, and screamed “Mommy”, but it was no use, I was completely mesmerized and under the control of the hat man.
James: The hat man from your imagination?
Mary: I can think of no other answer.
Mary: I managed to get him in the oven, and forced the oven closed with my back, I shoved the door back each time he tried to pound his way out. I can still hear his terrible screams from the burning, even with all of his might poor Cody had no chance of escaping. Finally, it ended and he stopped moving.
My husband got home later, and he asked me what the burning smell was. Still, in that horrible state of mind, I told him that it was his lasagna waiting in the oven. I have never seen another human being so horrified in my entire life, and this was the man that I loved the most, that I still love the most. That he didn’t kill me right then and there is mercy I know I didn’t deserve. But he didn’t, he only called the police, and sat with me, crying, sobbing, and asking why. I had no answer for him.
James: And what about the hat man?
Mary: I saw him just one more time, as I was walking out of my own house in handcuffs, he was standing at my doorway, smiling.
James: Is there anything else you would like to say about what happened?
Mary: Only that I’m sorry.
James: Thank you for your time.
End of interview.
I sat in my hotel that evening feeling a sense of loss where I thought accomplishment would be. I had no idea who this hat man was, I wanted to think it was the ramblings of a woman driven to insanity or an evil woman looking for an excuse, but it felt like more than that. I powered up my laptop and began to do some research. To my surprise, and honestly, my shame considering my line of work, there was quite a bit on this “hat man”.
A figure witnessed all around the world by people experiencing sleep paralysis or high on psychedelics and especially deliriants. Whole communities of people discussing the nature of this hat man, what he’s capable of, arguing over whether he’s real. There are some who believe that he’s some kind of demon, and some believe he’s an extraterrestrial of some kind.
None of the accounts, at least none that I could find, attributed the hat man to any death other than the death of the person visited by the hat man. The most disturbing stories of the hat man revolved around him stealing the breath away from his victims. Those who survived encounters, if they are to be believed, often recalled the hat man deciding their fate at a time when they were close to death.
My interview the next day was with Irene Flowers. I did not want to exert too much control over the interview, but I wanted to see if there was any connection, any at all, with this Hat Man.
Interview with Irene Flowers 7/19/2022
James: Hello, Ms. Flowers, thank you for speaking with me
Irene: You can call me Irene.
James: Thank you, Irene, can you tell me what happened?
Irene: What happened when?
James: The night that your daughter died.
Irene: You mean the night I murdered my daughter
James: If that’s how you want to put it, I just want to hear your story.
Irene: I can tell you what I’m supposed to say, what everyone thinks, that drowned my baby in that bathtub because I’m some heartless evil bitch.
James: I don’t care what you’re supposed to say, I care about what happened.
Irene: You’re not going to believe me
James: Try me
Irene: I was putting Cindy in the bath, I was sitting next to the tub playing with her rubber ducky, washing her hair. Mom and daughter stuff. She was laughing, that beautiful laugh of hers, the laugh I’ll never get to hear again. Then there was a knock on the door of the bathroom, a soft, polite knock. I guess I wasn’t thinking, so I instinctively answered the door. And there he was.
James: There who was?
Irene: The Hat Man, this man with a tattered charcoal suit, and a wide-brimmed hat. He looked over and smiled at my daughter, and I felt such a pain deep in my stomach then, the smile looked predatory like he wanted to devour my poor precious Cindy. But then the man said something to me, well he leaned over and whispered it to me.
James: What did he say?
Irene: I can’t remember, I don’t know, but everything changed then. I felt like I wasn’t me anymore, and I shoved my daughter’s face into the water, she struggled, but I kept her down, it felt like hours, but I know it could only have been a few minutes before she stopped moving.
James: And what did you do then?
Irene: I looked around for The Hat Man, but he wasn’t there. I had done it, I had murdered my daughter, so I called the police on myself. I couldn’t live with myself as a mother, and if I hadn’t turned myself in, I would have killed myself. Sometimes I still think that might have been better. I had to sit there waiting while my daughter’s body stiffened in the bathtub, her face turning blue in the water while I waited for so long for the police to show up. (Irene starts crying)
James: Is there anything else I should know?
Irene: No, I would prefer it if you left.
James: Thank you for your time.
End of interview.
That night at my hotel was even worse, I got myself a bottle of vodka, just to take a little bit of the edge off this horrible experience. Yes, there are the topics I make my living off of, but this was different. This rattled me to my core, I lay in bed with my bottle of vodka half drunk beside me, I stared at the wall with the air conditioning unit as it hummed. Soon enough I had to use the restroom, I tried to get up, but I couldn’t, I was stuck on the bed, my eyes stuck on the room, and the air conditioning unit.
The lights had dimmed, and there was a presence in the air, it felt so hostile. I know what sleep paralysis is, so I did my best to ignore it. I knew that if I struggled that it would only become worse, sleep paralysis is scary precisely because your body goes into a panic when it realizes it is immobile, I wasn’t going to let that happen. It had been a long couple of days, and I wasn’t about to let my own imagination terrify me.
He walked into my view, the Hat Man that I had heard so much about, he looked a little over six feet tall and he had a lanky frame of a body that was covered with a loose-fitting charcoal suit. The suit was tattered and covered in brown stains. The man smelled like rotting, like meat that had been left out for too long, and like sulfur. I could feel my eyes watering from the stench, I had never had a hallucination this vivid, none that I could remember, at least. He paced back in forth in my line of view, and I lay there, terrified, trying my very best not to struggle, I didn’t want to make things worse for myself. I knew that this must be all in my head.
He walked out of my line of sight, I thought maybe he had disappeared, that it was over, so I tried to move, but I could not. I was still stuck there, not knowing where the Hat Man was. If he was anywhere. This not knowing made my stomach want to explode, my heart pounded against my chest as if it were a cage, and it needed to get free. I could still smell the lingering rot, and I could feel my limbs aching, I wanted to move so badly at that moment, I wanted to get away. If it was only my imagination, I was terrified of my imagination.
The room seemed darker, and like it was shrinking, and then a weight on my bed. I could feel someone, something, crawling into the bed next to me. An arm wrapped around me, I knew who it was, I knew it was the Hat Man. I could feel his labored breathing on my neck, I could feel his suit coat pressed up against me, I saw his hand, gray and scarred, clutching onto my chest.
Sometime later, I woke up, I don’t remember falling asleep, but it was morning. I had one last interview to do, some of me wanted to continue investigating this, but I would be lying if I didn’t feel a terrible sense of dread. A sense that I was messing with things I had no business messing with.
This suspicion was all the more confirmed when I arrived at the penitentiary, when I got to the front desk I was informed that the woman I was to interview, Rachel Stafford, had hanged herself in her cell with a bed sheet the evening before.
“Was nobody watching her?” I asked.
“She wasn’t considered a risk” the officer replied.
“Well, did she say anything?”
“No, well, she did draw something”
“What?”
“she cut her finger open, and drew a picture of a…”
“She drew a hat, didn’t she?”
“How did you know?”
“Call it a feeling”
That night was much like the previous night, and it wasn’t any more pleasant. The putrid smell, the unwelcome visitor in bed, it was all there. There was nothing I could do, but hope it would go away soon. The only difference was that this morning, I found a cut on my arm, six lines that made up a tiny rudimentary hat. There was no knife near me, I know that I couldn’t have done this, whatever this Hat Man is, I have to believe in it now.
I got a call today from my sister Jacqueline.
“Hey, James, I need you to come over right away”
“What for? I’ve been busy with this assignment”
“I know, I know, she laughed “But I want to show you something”
“Show me what?”
“Show you what I did to my daughter”
“What did you do?” I knew what was happening, but I didn’t want to accept it. I wanted it to be anything else.
“What he told me to do”
“What who told you to do?” I yelled.
“You know who, silly”
“Who?” I demanded, I don’t know if I really wanted the answer.
“The Hat Man”.
She hung up.