Project UMPRA

In the chilly spring of 1995, the internet was still a distant whisper, and supernatural research remained a niche curiosity, far from the mainstream obsession that shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures would later ignite. Encounters with the shadowy entities now known as Shadow People or the Hatman were shared in hushed tones, confined to tight-knit circles of friends, religious groups, or obscure academic societies. The term “Hatman” had yet to enter public consciousness—until paranormal researchers Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Heidi Hollis brought it to light. On June 13, 2006, during an episode of Art Bell’s Midnight in the Desert on Coast to Coast AM titled “Hauntings, Shadow People & Dreams,” they unveiled their groundbreaking research on ghosts, demonic hauntings, Shadow People, and the Hatman, igniting a firestorm of fascination in the paranormal world and giving a name to the terror that had haunted listeners like me. For the first time, we had words to describe the unexplainable horrors we had faced, and the enemy finally had a name.

My sister and I, survivors of deeply traumatic paranormal experiences, have carried these memories like a heavy shroud, only daring to whisper about them to each other even as grown women. It’s taken nearly 30 years to muster the courage to share our chilling encounter with the Hatman from our young adulthood, but we feel the time has come to speak out. This experience reshaped our understanding of reality, opening our minds to possibilities far beyond the ordinary. Like countless others, we’re left with more questions than answers, searching for meaning in the shadows.

I was 26 and she was 15, we were drowning in grief, having lost both parents and three other family members to tragic circumstances within a single year. Life uprooted us from our small hometown, forcing us to relocate to the bustling city of Portland, Oregon, to survive. My sister, torn from her friends, home, and school, joined me in a modest two-bedroom apartment in Milwaukie, a gritty suburb of Portland. It was all we could afford, but its proximity to my job and the small luxury of a courtyard pool gave us a flicker of hope. We longed to rebuild our lives and find peace after our devastating losses, clinging to the fragile threads of normalcy.

We pressed on through those bleak, frigid days—I worked to support us while my sister struggled to resume her education and adapt to our new reality. But the semblance of stability we fought for was a cruel illusion, as a sinister presence in our new home soon shattered any hope of safety or serenity. For the skeptics, consider this: our family’s history with drug and alcohol struggles led my sister and me to swear off both, a vow we’ve kept to this day, ruling out any substance-induced hallucinations. We also never dabbled in the occult—despite a passing curiosity, we steered clear of practices like Ouija boards or demonic summonings, so those explanations don’t apply.

What sets our family apart is our rare psychic gift, particularly strong among the women, which we attribute to our RH-negative blood type, a trait shared by only 9-12% of the global population. This uncommon blood type is often linked to heightened physical, mental, and psychic abilities, and in our family, it manifests as a subtle telepathic bond. We’ve always been emotionally connected across distances, finishing each other’s sentences, making simultaneous calls without planning, or even cooking the same meals without discussion—a quiet, profound link that keeps us in sync. But these gifts, while remarkable, opened us to forces we were unprepared to face, testing our psychic connection in ways that blurred the boundaries between the real and the unimaginable. Our experience defies simple dismissal: we were sober, uninvolved in the occult, yet what unfolded in that modest Milwaukie apartment upended our understanding of reality, leaving an indelible mark on our lives.

One crisp evening, roughly a month after we’d settled into our modest Milwaukie apartment, a fragile sense of calm had finally begun to take root. The day had been long and draining, so after a few spirited rounds of cards, we decided to turn in, retreating to our beds around 10 PM. Our bedrooms sat side by side, a comforting closeness we’d always cherished—doors left wide open, just as they’d been throughout our childhood, ensuring we could hear each other if need arose or danger struck.

Adjacent to my sister’s room was a small bathroom, its faint glow spilling into the short hallway between us, a gentle light that never disturbed our sleep but kept us from stumbling in the dark. Unbeknownst to us, that soft illumination would soon transform into our sole lifeline, a dim flickering shield against an encroaching darkness poised to swallow us whole. I was deep in slumber, wrapped in the quiet solace of my bed, when a piercing cry shattered the stillness—my sister’s voice in my mind screaming my name, raw with terror, so drenched in despair that it tore me from sleep into wakefulness with a visceral jolt. Parents will understand the primal instinct that surged within me: her tone, so hopeless, so utterly forsaken, propelled me upright, my feet hitting the floor as I bolted down the hallway toward her open door, heart pounding with dread.

I tore down the hallway, reaching her doorway at a full sprint, my breath ragged, adrenaline surging through my veins like wildfire. My mind raced with the certainty of a break-in, bracing to confront an armed intruder with the ferocity I’d honed as a Merchant Mariner on the Columbia River, where years aboard a Steamboat Cruiser had forged my body into a weapon, ready to defend my sister with lethal force if needed. Violence was a language I understood, a necessity I was prepared to wield—but nothing, not a single moment in my hard-earned life, could have steeled me for the horror that awaited, or the nightmare that would unfold. As I charged through her wide-open door, I collided with… nothing. An unseen power slammed into me, hurling me back with vicious force, pinning me against the hallway wall so violently the air was crushed from my lungs. I was trapped, held fast by an invisible hand, my body pressed against the cold wall surface as if bound by invisible chains, my every muscle frozen in place.

The hallway throbbed with an unnatural cold, a bone-deep chill that seeped into my very bones and showed my breath. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I tried to hurl myself forward but my body betrayed me—my limbs weighed down, paralyzed, as if bound by spectral chains. Then I saw it: the Hatman, a towering void looming just a foot from my sister as she lay helpless in her bed, her form dwarfed by its oppressive presence. Its featureless face, a yawning chasm of darkness, turned slowly toward me, and where eyes should have been, two crimson spheres erupted into life, their searing glow boring into my soul, stripping away every shred of courage I’d ever clung to. It was monstrous—easily seven feet tall, its frame broad and formidable, as if unseen muscles churned beneath the inky blackness of its long trenchcoat, a 1940s-style fedora with a wide brim crowning its bizarre, anachronistic silhouette. I could scarcely believe what I was witnessing, yet a strange telepathic link buzzed to life, as if the entity were whispering directly into my mind, its thoughts a venomous intrusion I couldn’t shut out.

In that moment, three harrowing truths burned into my consciousness with icy clarity despite my shock. First, this thing was not human, nor had it ever been—a being from a realm so far beyond comprehension that its very existence defied the laws of our world. Second, it despised us with a hatred so visceral, so personal, that the word “hate” felt woefully inadequate; I had never encountered such infinite malice, such utter disdain, a malevolence so profound it seemed to unravel the very fabric of my soul. Third, we were about to die. There was no doubt, no flicker of hope—just the cold, unyielding certainty that our lives would end here, in this unassuming apartment, and no one would ever know the truth of our demise. As the Hatman’s searing crimson gaze tore away from me and locked once more onto my sister, our psychic bond—that sacred, unshakable thread that had always tethered us—flared with a fierce, desperate intensity, a lifeline pulsing through the suffocating terror that gripped us both. I could feel her fear as if it were my own—her heart thundering in her chest, her body rigid beneath the blankets, her mind a cacophony of silent screams for escape—and I knew she felt my resolve, my frantic, unyielding need to shield her from this nightmare.

With every shred of willpower and raw physical strength I could muster, I tore myself from the wall’s invisible grip, planting a foot against it and thrusting forward with a guttural cry of defiance that ripped from my throat like a primal, desperate plea to the universe. The Hatman, sensing my rebellion, turned from me with a predatory crouch, its shadowy form coiling like a beast poised to strike, then launched itself into the air toward my sister’s prone, defenseless figure, its inky mass cutting through the dim light like a harbinger of doom. In that fleeting, heart-stopping moment, I sensed a ripple of surprise emanating from the entity, as if it hadn’t anticipated my wakefulness or my ability to break free from its spectral hold—a strange thread of sudden desperation that pulsed from it, as though it realized something unforeseen had shifted, and this was its final, fleeting chance to fulfill the malevolent purpose that had drawn it into our fragile lives.

The invisible force pinning me released its hold, and I surged forward, pushing through the doorway as if wading through thick, molasses-like air, the threshold resisting me with an unseen barrier that threatened to hold me back. As I crossed into her room, two shocking events unfolded in an instant. First, the Hatman engulfed my sister and her bed in a void of utter blackness, a suffocating shroud of darkness that obscured her entirely, swallowing her in its inky depths. Second, a blinding light erupted from the far right corner of the room, beyond my line of sight—a nuclear blast of the purest, most radiant brilliance I could ever imagine, filling the space with an otherworldly glow that seemed to burn with divine purity. My right arm flew up instinctively to shield my eyes, and I turned my head to the left, where the cinderblock wall separating our rooms stood. The light was so intense that it pierced through the tiny pinpricks in the concrete, blazing into my bedroom like a thousand suns, illuminating the impossible. Through the telepathic link, I heard the Hatman scream in my mind—a sound of raw, helpless despair, the same forsaken terror that had jolted me awake with my sister’s cry, but now it poured from the entity itself. It was utterly petrified of this radiant force, its malice no match for the light’s overwhelming power. And just as abruptly as they had materialized, they vanished—the Hatman and the Light, disappearing in an instant, leaving behind a silence so deep, so absolute, it felt as though the world itself had paused to catch its breath. A profound sense of peace flooded the room, a stark contrast to the terror that had held us in its merciless grip only moments before. Gradually, the familiar sounds of the bustling street outside our apartment crept back into our awareness—the hum of passing cars, the distant murmur of life—sounds we hadn’t realized had been completely severed, as if our space had been unnaturally cleaved from the rest of reality, trapped in a void of eerie stillness until that very moment.

I collapsed onto the floor, my vision utterly consumed by the blinding light, my voice a raw, desperate cry for my sister as I groped through the darkness that had overtaken my sight. She screamed back in return, her voice a lifeline in the void, and I heard the thud of her body as she tumbled from her bed, crawling toward me with a frantic desperation, her own eyes rendered useless by the same searing brilliance. If you’ve ever had an old Polaroid camera flash in your face, leaving you momentarily sightless, you’d understand—but this was far worse, a blinding radiance that left us both completely blind for nearly five agonizing minutes, our hands reaching blindly for each other in the suffocating aftermath of that unearthly light.

“Did you see that?! What in the world was that?!” we gasped, a torrent of frantic questions and exclamations spilling between us in the agonizingly slow minutes it took for our vision to return, each word trembling with the weight of our shared terror. We clung to each other, hands clasped tightly, our bodies quaking with fear and shock as we sought solace in whispered reassurances, our voices a fragile tether in the aftermath of the unknown. The moment our sight flickered back, we stumbled to our feet, racing to flood the apartment with light, flipping on every switch with trembling fingers before throwing on clothes in a haze of urgency. A fleeting glance at the clock revealed the hour—3:30 in the morning—and without a second thought, leaving every light blazing behind us, we fled the apartment, seeking refuge at a nearby Shari’s restaurant. There, over steaming cups of coffee and slices of pie that we barely touched, we poured out our story, piecing together the nightmare in hushed, fervent tones. We lingered in that corner booth, wild-eyed and unwilling to leave, until nearly 9 a.m. The morning manager’s gentle prompting—tinged with concern and an offer to call the police if we needed it—finally nudged us back into the world, our hearts still racing with the echo of terror that had almost consumed us.

As our conversation unfolded over the diner table, several chilling details came to light, each revelation tightening the knot of dread in my chest and creating more questions. My sister recounted how she’d been deep in slumber when a sudden, overwhelming sensation of being watched ripped her from sleep’s embrace. When her eyes snapped open, she was horrified to see the Hatman looming in the doorway of her room, its burning red eyes fixed on her with an intensity that pierced her soul. Like me, she had felt an inexplicable telepathic connection flare to life, a sinister intrusion that carried the same visceral hatred and malice that had nearly unraveled me—an infinite loathing that seemed to seep from the entity like a poison. She described how, upon seeing it, she realized she was utterly immobilized, her body frozen in the bed as if encased in invisible ice, unable to move or even speak. It was then that she had called my name—not with her lips, but through the desperate, silent plea of our shared telepathic bond, a cry for help that had pierced my sleep and confirmed the depth of our connection in the face of this otherworldly terror.

Our fervent discussion at the diner unearthed even more unsettling truths, each word deepening the mystery of our shared ordeal. My sister revealed that when she saw me burst into the doorway only to be hurled backward into the wall behind me, it had appeared to her as though the Hatman stood in the doorway—not beside her bed as I had witnessed—its shadowy form raising an arm toward me with deliberate menace as I was flung back with violent force. She, too, had sensed a flicker of dismay and surprise radiating from the entity, as if my sudden awakening and presence had caught it off guard, an unexpected disruption to its malevolent design. But the most haunting revelation came next, a detail that sent shivers down my spine. My sister described how, as the Hatman enveloped her in its suffocating darkness on the bed she had said in her mind “Please God help me” and thats when the blinding light erupted and engulfed the room, shattering the illusion and revealing what she believed to be its true form. She, too, had initially seen the towering silhouette cloaked in a wide-brimmed hat and floor-length black coat, a menacing giant of shadow. Yet, as it leaped toward her, the radiant light unveiled a far more grotesque reality: a small, emaciated creature, no larger than a 12-year-old child, its wiry frame cloaked in wrinkled, muddy-gray skin that seemed to sag with an ancient, unnatural weight. She spoke of its lack of ears—mere holes where they should have been—and a lipless mouth, a thin, dark slash across its face. It bore an eerie resemblance to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, but utterly hairless, with the same burning red-coal eyes that had seared into my soul, a visage of primal horror that stripped away any lingering doubt of its otherworldly origins.

We had never encountered tales of such a creature, our minds grasping for any frame of reference to anchor its horror, but we were already drowning in the weight of grief and struggle, our lives too burdened to make sense of this new terror. Desperate for escape, we fled the apartment within weeks, clinging to the fragile hope that the entity was bound to that cursed space—only to discover, years later, that it had likely followed us from the very home we’d grown up in, a revelation that chilled us to the core. It came to light that our mother and father had also glimpsed the Hatman, but in an entirely different location from our childhood house, a haunting thread that wove through our family’s history. As we grew older, my sister and I began to unravel a tapestry of grave paranormal encounters from our childhoods with The Shades and other supernatural encounters. Experiences that spanned the 11-year age gap between us, each memory a stark reminder that the shadows had always been watching, waiting to claim us in their unrelenting grip for reasons we didn’t understand.

Our first encounter with the term “Hatman” came as we listened, hearts pounding, to a riveting broadcast of the renowned Coast to Coast AM radio show, hosted by Art Bell, where Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Heidi Hollis first unveiled their chilling research on this shadowy entity. At last, the enemy had a name, a revelation that shattered the isolation of our terror—we were not alone, nor were we crazy; others had seen it. That moment ignited a lifelong quest within us, a relentless hunt for answers that burned with urgency: what was this entity, why had it targeted us, and how had it invaded our lives—and, most hauntingly, what force had intervened to save us, and how had we been pulled from the brink of its malevolent grasp?

Three decades slipped by, and we watched with keen interest as shows like Ghost Adventures and Skinwalker Ranch captivated the public’s imagination, their use of technology heralding a new era in the quest for answers about the paranormal. Yet we remained cloaked in silence, the weight of uncertainty pressing heavily upon us, unsure whether to unveil the haunting truth of what we had learned and endured. Despite poring over thousands of reports dealing with others’ encounters with the Hatman, our experience stood apart, marked by a uniqueness that I had never seen echoed in those countless tales.

One day, while searching for answers online, I stumbled upon The Hatman Project website. I connected with Pastor Tim Brown, discussed his work, and volunteered for the project, which included an interview for a Village Roadshow Pictures documentary. Through a series of intriguing coincidences, I also met renowned paranormal investigator Joe Franke who worked with the legendary Ed and Lorraine Warren. This led to a fateful connection with Dr. Heather Leigh Landon of Exploring the Paranormal, she’s been on Ghost Adventures and several other programs and is an amazing investigator. Eventually I landed on TikTok, where everything truly shifted. I was amazed by the countless individuals who had encountered the same phenomenon and were eager to share their stories. To better understand these experiences, I created a survey about The Hatman, uncovering startling insights—details you’ll find in Chronicles of The Hatman. Thank you for being here and engaging with our story. I hope it inspires you to share your own experience with confidence!