Seasidepagan
Junior Acolyte
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2020
- Messages
- 80
I’m new here (posted the haunted pub last afternoon). I have a lot of stories from when I was growing up and as an adult so when I get time I’ll post them all one by one. Many times I think that no one will believe the things that happened but then I think, I know it’s true so that’s all that matters.
This story concerns my brother, two years my junior, who has sadly passed on now. We lived in a semi detached 1970s house on an estate at the time where lots of odd things were identified by both him and my mum, I was only witness to one of them. But the stories were told and retold all our lives.
My brother was 5 and I was 7 when my dad died overseas. He hadn’t been present in our lives and although a shock ( the funeral etc) I can’t say it traumatised us, my parents had divorced the year before, although it must have had an impact. In the year before the events I’m going to describe, my brother had been telling my mum he had seen a pair of see through legs with boots running up the stairs. I remember once my brother screaming hysterically that he wasn’t going upstairs because the legs had run up just before him. In addition to this I once saw my mum drying up the dishes and literally watched the glass she had dried fly across the room and smash. In our house these types of things happened and we just accepted it ( in the 1970s as a single mum what else could my mum do?). For example when my dad died I would feel him tickling my toes when I was in bed at night ( it happened again recently), which was something he would do when I was a little tiny girl.
Anyway I digress, things took a sinister turn when, in the mornings, my mum started to find my brother asleep at the bottom of the stairs wrapped tightly in his blanket. When she asked him what he was doing there he would say the top hat man had come and got him and moved him there in the night. My mum dismissed this thinking that my brother was ‘disturbed ‘ by my fathers death. This started happening on about a weekly basis with my older cousin stying with us finding him, a neighbour my mum had got in to verify she was t going mad, and me on another occasion. My mum took my brother to the gp who recommended a child psychologist and in due time my brother saw the psychologist who said it was indeed the trauma of bereavement. The nightly visits continued however. Mum would sleep with her door open onto the small landing and would be vigilant but she obviously slept and then the top hat man would visit. Eventually we moved and the visits stopped ( although other things happened which I’ll save for another day) .
Fast forward to when my brother was in his mid 20’s and his first child had just been born. I was staying with them and had offered to look after said baby for the night feeds. As we were bedding down I said to my brother ‘ here, what was all that about the top hat man when you were a kid?’ And he said to me, as if it was completely normal, that a man in a long black cloak, and a black top hat , with large protruding eyes and a full mouth, would make his presence felt and stand in his bedroom door way and beckon my brother with a crooked finger to come with him. He had a smile on his lips that didn’t reach his eyes. I said to my brother ‘ didn’t it scare you?’ He said ‘of course it Bloodey did , I told mum about it everytime it happened but nothing was done’. The top hat man would have to duck under the door way as his hat was so tall, would pick up my brothers blanket and carry it down the stairs, all the while twisting slightly and beckoning my brother, then tucking him him tightly at the bottom of the stairs before letting himself out of the front door. This went on for over a year. Thoroughly freaked out I said to my brother ‘ why didn’t you refuse to go to bed?’ And he said he did use to kick up at bed time but mum assumed it was his age and reassure him. I asked ‘why didn’t you refuse to go downstairs?’ And he said ‘ I didn’t dare to’ He remembered going to the psychologist and thinking that thank god it might stop. It didn’t of course.
Anyway, fast forward again 20 years, my brother ( who continued to experience phenomena his whole life) has died ( we are all devastated), and I’m sat in the garden one day thinking about all this and instead of just replaying it in my mind as one does when it is something that has happened in your family, I am actually analysing it and questioning it. I’m thinking, maybe it was the bereavement, my mums anguish transferring to him, why didn’t it happen to me etc. So I google ‘top hat man’ and to my utter terror and horror up pop accounts of people that have experienced the top hat man as well.
Without him here to ask all I am left with is the very uncomfortable feeling that the top hat man did visit my brother many many times, that my brother was telling the truth, and that nothing was done to try to stop it.
In these times of child protection, my mind of course wanders to ask was it abuse? But there was just me, mum and my brother there and we were a close little trio after our loss. Has anyone else experienced the top hat man?
This story concerns my brother, two years my junior, who has sadly passed on now. We lived in a semi detached 1970s house on an estate at the time where lots of odd things were identified by both him and my mum, I was only witness to one of them. But the stories were told and retold all our lives.
My brother was 5 and I was 7 when my dad died overseas. He hadn’t been present in our lives and although a shock ( the funeral etc) I can’t say it traumatised us, my parents had divorced the year before, although it must have had an impact. In the year before the events I’m going to describe, my brother had been telling my mum he had seen a pair of see through legs with boots running up the stairs. I remember once my brother screaming hysterically that he wasn’t going upstairs because the legs had run up just before him. In addition to this I once saw my mum drying up the dishes and literally watched the glass she had dried fly across the room and smash. In our house these types of things happened and we just accepted it ( in the 1970s as a single mum what else could my mum do?). For example when my dad died I would feel him tickling my toes when I was in bed at night ( it happened again recently), which was something he would do when I was a little tiny girl.
Anyway I digress, things took a sinister turn when, in the mornings, my mum started to find my brother asleep at the bottom of the stairs wrapped tightly in his blanket. When she asked him what he was doing there he would say the top hat man had come and got him and moved him there in the night. My mum dismissed this thinking that my brother was ‘disturbed ‘ by my fathers death. This started happening on about a weekly basis with my older cousin stying with us finding him, a neighbour my mum had got in to verify she was t going mad, and me on another occasion. My mum took my brother to the gp who recommended a child psychologist and in due time my brother saw the psychologist who said it was indeed the trauma of bereavement. The nightly visits continued however. Mum would sleep with her door open onto the small landing and would be vigilant but she obviously slept and then the top hat man would visit. Eventually we moved and the visits stopped ( although other things happened which I’ll save for another day) .
Fast forward to when my brother was in his mid 20’s and his first child had just been born. I was staying with them and had offered to look after said baby for the night feeds. As we were bedding down I said to my brother ‘ here, what was all that about the top hat man when you were a kid?’ And he said to me, as if it was completely normal, that a man in a long black cloak, and a black top hat , with large protruding eyes and a full mouth, would make his presence felt and stand in his bedroom door way and beckon my brother with a crooked finger to come with him. He had a smile on his lips that didn’t reach his eyes. I said to my brother ‘ didn’t it scare you?’ He said ‘of course it Bloodey did , I told mum about it everytime it happened but nothing was done’. The top hat man would have to duck under the door way as his hat was so tall, would pick up my brothers blanket and carry it down the stairs, all the while twisting slightly and beckoning my brother, then tucking him him tightly at the bottom of the stairs before letting himself out of the front door. This went on for over a year. Thoroughly freaked out I said to my brother ‘ why didn’t you refuse to go to bed?’ And he said he did use to kick up at bed time but mum assumed it was his age and reassure him. I asked ‘why didn’t you refuse to go downstairs?’ And he said ‘ I didn’t dare to’ He remembered going to the psychologist and thinking that thank god it might stop. It didn’t of course.
Anyway, fast forward again 20 years, my brother ( who continued to experience phenomena his whole life) has died ( we are all devastated), and I’m sat in the garden one day thinking about all this and instead of just replaying it in my mind as one does when it is something that has happened in your family, I am actually analysing it and questioning it. I’m thinking, maybe it was the bereavement, my mums anguish transferring to him, why didn’t it happen to me etc. So I google ‘top hat man’ and to my utter terror and horror up pop accounts of people that have experienced the top hat man as well.
Without him here to ask all I am left with is the very uncomfortable feeling that the top hat man did visit my brother many many times, that my brother was telling the truth, and that nothing was done to try to stop it.
In these times of child protection, my mind of course wanders to ask was it abuse? But there was just me, mum and my brother there and we were a close little trio after our loss. Has anyone else experienced the top hat man?
I think from your posts so far it is safe to say that you have a lot of interesting (although sad, as in this case) stories to share which fit right in here, they aren't 'out there' in an unbelievable sense, so do not be concerned about posting any more you may have, when the time is right.
