In 1978, Rebecca was 6 years old and then she had a frightening encounter with a creature, which she calls the "Man in the Hat" and about which she thinks that he is not really a man.
Rebecca now lives in Florida, but she spent all her childhood in Missouri, including 1978 in the city of Independence at her grandmother's house.
According to Rebecca, in those years, my grandfather was often sick and ended up in the hospital, and in those days, the whole family (mom, Rebecca and her younger sister) came to live with her grandmother to support her.
On this memorable night, Rebecca, her sister and grandmother herself slept on the same bed in grandmother's bedroom, and mother slept in the guest room. The house was quiet at night, but it soon became clear that they were not alone in their grandmother's bedroom.
“I was lying very uncomfortably between my sister and grandmother and my head was at their feet, because we were lying with a jack,” says Rebecca. “I woke up in the middle of the night because I had a strange nightmare. I dreamed that all the drawers of the dresser and wardrobe in our room opened and things themselves flew out of there, as if they were thrown out by an invisible person."
Waking up, Rebecca lay quietly for a while, but fear did not let her go and she tried to wake her grandmother. She did not succeed. Then the girl decided to get out of bed and go to her mother's room, but the path lay past that very chest of drawers and the girl was very afraid to go there.
But when she turned her head to the dresser, she was even more frightened. A tall, dark man with a hat stood between the dresser and the window, right behind the headboard of their bed. He appeared to be very tall to Rebecca and was dressed in antique clothes.
Promotional video:
“He was wearing a long dark coat, and on his head was a top hat, and in his hand he was holding a cane. Nothing more was visible in him, but in a strange way he blocked all the moonlight coming from the window with his figure. And he frightened me not so much by the fact that a stranger entered my grandmother's bedroom, but by the fact that I immediately understood that this is not a person."
The girl and the man in the top hat stared at each other for several seconds, maybe even minutes. Then the man pointed a finger at her and said, "This is your last chance." At the same time, his voice sounded muffled and it seemed to Rebecca that it was most likely published right in her head.
After that, the mysterious man in the top hat repeated these incomprehensible words again, dropped his hand and suddenly disappeared. The frightened Rebecca told her mother and grandmother the next morning, but no one believed her.
“Young children often tell different 'fairy-tale' stories, and adults listen to all of them with a slight smile, not even listening to the words. But after that incident for some time I was afraid of the grandmother's room itself. Fortunately, we soon left there and I never returned there."
But Rebecca more than once then told her story to relatives and finally there was someone who believed her. Then Rebecca was already an adult and her story suddenly interested her aunt. Aunt Rebecca told her that she also saw this man at her grandmother's house.
Rebecca's grandmother has long died and Rebecca herself is no longer young, but she still wonders what that person wanted to say to her and what his words meant.
“I am still trying to understand what he meant when he said 'This is your last chance.' My grandfather died soon after this vision and maybe it had something to do with him, but he was not even in the house that night, he was in the hospital. Could it be that the Man in the Top Hat was hinting to me that this was my last chance to talk to my grandfather while he was still alive? I don't know and I'm not sure of anything."
It is worth mentioning that the Man in the Hat is often mentioned in various Internet horror stories (creepypastas). Including those who come to children. But the story of Rebecca, which was told a few years ago in a book by the researcher of anomalous phenomena Jason Offut, according to the writer's statements, is completely real and has nothing to do with horror stories.
