# The Hatman

The Hatman is a shadowy fedora-wearing figure that people report seeing during sleep paralysis episodes and Benadryl-induced hallucinations. Timothy Brown began logging firsthand accounts on The Hat Man Project blog in 2008[1], and by late 2021, tweets describing the apparition were gathering hundreds of thousands of likes[5].

## Origin
The Hat Man Project went live on June 1st, 2008, run by Timothy Brown, who had started collecting sighting reports in 2001[1]. Brown's earliest surviving post dates to October 30th, 2009, and the oldest essay on the site describes the figure as part of the shadow people category[8].

- **Platform:** WordPress blog (The Hat Man Project) / 4chan and Twitter (viral spread)
- **Creator:** Unknown
- **Date:** 2008

## Overview
Accounts of the Hatman share a consistent template: a tall, pitch-black humanoid in a wide-brimmed hat or fedora, often spotted in a doorway or at the foot of a bed[4]. He never speaks, radiates dread, and vanishes once the witness fully wakes. Many people place him within the wider folk category of shadow people[8], a group of dark apparitions reported across cultures.

A second strand of lore ties the Hatman to deliriant drug use. Users on r/DPH describe him as a recurring hallucination after taking antihistamines like Benadryl at doses high enough to trigger delirium[2]. In practice, Hatman posts tend to pair a creepy first-person retelling with the stock visual: hat, long coat, no face.

## How to Use
Hatman posts typically take the form of a short first-person sighting story, often set during a sleep paralysis episode or a Benadryl trip, with the figure described as a tall silhouette wearing a brimmed hat. A common convention is to drop the article (as in 'saw Hatman last night') to signal familiarity with the folklore.

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is The Hatman?
The Hatman is a tall, dark humanoid figure in a wide-brimmed hat that people report seeing during sleep paralysis and deliriant hallucinations, often grouped under the folklore of shadow people[4][8].

### Where did The Hatman come from?
Timothy Brown started collecting sighting reports in 2001 and launched The Hat Man Project blog on June 1st, 2008, which is the earliest sustained online archive of the figure[1].

### What does The Hatman mean?
In the folk framework of shadow people, the Hatman is read as a specific malevolent apparition that appears to witnesses in altered states of consciousness like sleep paralysis[8].

### How do you use The Hatman?
People typically post short first-person sighting stories or jokes about Benadryl-induced visions, as seen in r/DPH threads and viral tweets like @bootleghinata's[2][5].

### Is The Hatman still popular?
The figure stayed active in paranormal and drug-culture spaces through 2022, with Twitter posts about him gathering hundreds of thousands of likes that year[5][9].

## References
1. [https://thehatmanproject.com/hello-world/](<https://thehatmanproject.com/hello-world/>)
2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DPH/comments/bee4w0/the_hatman/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/DPH/comments/bee4w0/the_hatman/>)
3. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbA6Tjux24](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbA6Tjux24>)
4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-hatman](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-hatman>)
5. [https://twitter.com/bootleghinata/status/1463540697064255494](<https://twitter.com/bootleghinata/status/1463540697064255494>)
6. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/291010/The_Hat_Man_Shadow_Ward/](<https://store.steampowered.com/app/291010/The_Hat_Man_Shadow_Ward/>)
7. [https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/18365026/](<https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/18365026/>)
8. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_person](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_person>)
9. [https://twitter.com/LuhChance/status/1483923317899866117](<https://twitter.com/LuhChance/status/1483923317899866117>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/the-hatman
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