. Black Hat .
A short burst of ghostly visitation checked and verified
IIt was near the 4th of July in 1976. The actual date has been forgotten,
but the Bicentennial fervor was at fever pitch. Red, white, and blue was everywhere.
Missy’s overalls bore those colors. Her mother had even made a matching
pair for the doll she liked to play with every afternoon. The sun was going
down and the slanting rays revealed dust shadows in Missy’s room. Her
doll was just about to decide it was time to take a nap when the room suddenly
went darker. Four-year-old Missy looked up from the doll’s bed and only
saw black.
It was the black
trousers of a man. She looked up and it was a very tall man. He was dressed
completely in black. He even had a black hat. His head was turned to one side
and Missy could not see his face. She was startled, but not afraid. The man
could be somebody visiting her parents. Maybe he was some relative she had
never met. Then he turned his face to her and Missy screamed and ran. The
man in the black hat was missing his face and instead of feet, he had horse’s
hooves!
Missy’s mother was in the kitchen when Missy ran up to her and buried
her face in her lap. Her mother asked her what was wrong and finally figured
out that Missy had seen a man with no face in her bedroom. Missy’s mother
grabbed a pistol from her purse and began to walk down the hall. She peeked
into her daughter’s room to find it empty. She sighed with relief and
was about to chalk the whole incident down to her daughter’s imagination
when Missy screamed again. Missy’s mother turned around and saw what
looked like a black coattail vanishing into the living room.
The summer of 2003
in Tennessee was starting to heat up to its usual state. There are highs in
the 90’s with a chance of a thunderstorm every afternoon. It has been
that way for eternity. Every year as a boy I would visit my grandmother during
the summer and the tradition has remained with my daughter visiting her grandmother.
We pulled into Grammy’s driveway and my 4-year-old daughter Emma grabbed
my sleeve and told me somebody was on the front porch of Grammy’s house.
I hadn’t noticed anybody, but we were at the back of the house parking.
I asked Emma if she was sure and she said yes. Anybody visiting Grammy would
know to use the back door. The only people who ever used the front door were
strangers. We went into the house and asked Grammy if anybody had knocked
on the front door. She told us no. Emma went into the living room and said
the man was still on the front porch. Maybe there was somebody there. I went
to check. I couldn’t see anything from the windows. I started to open
the front door and Emma told me not to open it. The man was scaring her. She
ran to her bedroom and brought back her tee ball bat. I asked her if the man
was still there and she shook her head yes. I tried to open the door, but
it wouldn’t budge. Grammy told me that the door hadn’t been opened
in years, but that it tended to stick.
I decided to go out the backdoor and try to catch the guy. When I made it
around front, the man was gone. I asked Emma what he looked like. She told
me that he was very tall and he was dressed in black. He even wore a black
hat. It was strange, but not completely odd that some guy might be trying
to sell Grammy something, or maybe he was looking for directions. What was
strange was when Emma told me the man did not have any face and that his feet
looked like horse’s hooves. It was just like the story my wife, Missy,
had once told me.
Postscript
We told Missy and Grammy about the man in the black hat making his encore appearance. Grammy went to praying again. Emma said she’d hit him with a stick if he showed up again. We asked some occultist friends what they thought about the situation. We were told that it must not be a malevolent spirit since he’s only appeared twice in 27 years and that it looks like Grammy had prayed him out of the house back in 1976. We were told not to worry too much about it, but for some reason men wearing black hats now scare me and I don’t even want to listen to Johnny Cash.
The above story is
true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the man in the
black hat.