Jeff in Austin, Texas called in to tell her weird story:
“Last week I was in downtown Austin, Congress Avenue visiting a local Honda bar. It’s a well-known place for paranormal activity out here in Austin. I met a young man and I asked him if he had any ghost stories about the place. He said that yes, he did. He told me a few. Then he told me, 'You know, there’s something that still bothers me from when I was a kid.' I said, 'What is that?' He said, 'When I was 6 years old, in my bedroom, I saw a dark, shadowy figure that was wearing a trench coat and a hat.' I said, 'What kind of a hat?' He said, 'A little bit of a broader rimmed hat.' I said, 'Like a fedora?' He said, 'What’s a fedora?' I went on to describe what a fedora looked like. He said, 'Yeah, that’s it.' I said, 'What happened then? Did it come closer to you?' He said, 'No, it just stood there.' I said, 'Did you see its face?' He said, 'No, I didn’t see its face.' I said, 'What did you do then?' He said, 'I just pulled the covers up over my head.' I said, 'Of course, I understand that.' He said, 'I looked all over the place. I tried to meet people who saw the same thing. It’s all over the internet,' he told me. I said, 'Ironically, I have not found anything on the internet like that but you just met someone that saw the same thing you did.'
I was 14 years old. I’m 47 years old now. I was in my house. I had an old friend of mine, I grew up with across the street. And the house was wide open. My parents were gone for the evening which was unusual. Front and back doors open. We had screen doors. I was trying to air the place out. It was the summer time. We went back to the old kitchen, back towards the back door to go outside and right on the other side of the screen door, we saw the same thing – this dark, shadowy figure. It looked like it was wearing a trench coat. It was the 'Hat Man.' I looked it up online. That’s what I saw. Here’s the thing that’s different from all the other stories I saw online – I actually saw the face. And the face was a skull. Yeah, it was a skeleton. From what I can tell, the only part of the body I could see was the face. It was a skull. It was wearing a trench coat and it had the fedora cap on its head and it just stood there. And so I looked at my buddy that I had grown up with and I could see his eyes were wide ope. He had the look of fear on his face. I looked at him and he looked at me and we ran outside, through the old house, back to the front of the house, out the door, back across the road to his old house. We stood there wondering, what are we going to do? Before anything, I said, 'What did you see? I know you saw something, I saw your face.' And he told me what he saw. And I said, 'Well, we saw the same thing.' I said, 'We got to go back over there. My house is wide open. I can’t just leave it like that. My parents will come home and kill me.' And so I said, 'I’m going back to the house and you’re coming with me.' He said, 'No I’m not.' I said, 'Yes, you are. You’re coming back with me.'
I was terrified. And that’s not the first thing that happened in that house but that’s another story. But this was the time I saw that apparition, entity, whatever it was. We wet back into the house. Nothing was there. The house was still wide open. Nothing behind the back screen door. Nothing was there. But we did see the same thing. And this young man that I met, at this particular bar in Austin. I was not drinking by the way. I was just asking questions. He said I have other stories about this place and he told me, after our conversations about ghost stories and what not, it was entertaining, but he told me that he had seen the same thing I had. He was 6 years old. I was 14. We both saw the same thing.”
Source: Coast to Coast – August 31, 2018
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