Black Suit, Top Hat Ghost?

Hello Justwanttotellsomeone,

Thank you for sharing your experience, it can be awfully hard to post such personal things. I hope your fellow readers will be as helpful and sympathetic as mine were.

Please know that (as an adult) I am a very cautious person with trauma responses, and my own personal boxed set of paranoid anxieties. Morbid paranoias is a familiar thing to me. These alone can be mind bending, but they feel distinctly separate from the mental responses (as an adult) which myself had during my own, unexplainable experiences. I will try to explain, in the hopes of helping you sort out what you saw. Feeling watched and being paranoid can be separate mental experiences, I mean, if that helps.

It is hard enough to even share a story where you see something unexplained watching beside your bed, much less "prove" what still does not make " sense ". It is brave to share. I feel that your brother would have felt or responded to any dark intentions toward you, even if you were too startled or small to react. It seems like thankfully it was a one time thing you saw, and I agree with the other responses that this was a harmless "passing by" or "replay" type of scene. I am curious how long the home or property was in your family, and if the man bore resemblance to your known relations?

Since I have had both two experiences of "seeing a faint replay of someone" in an old fashion hat, and the far separate much more bizarre experience of seeing something unexplainable beside my bed, I truly empathize with how strange, scary and irritating it can be to stew mentally over all this. As a child I would have lost my mind trying to cope, even without internet folklore, and I am sorry you have had to carry this around. I am grateful YGS readers have compassion.

I also wanted to add that while I lived at the address where sometimes I "saw" the person in a workmans cap come up the steps, that different from those oblivious "replays" the entire time in that house I felt the most intense and sometimes uncomfortable feeling of being watched while at inside at home. Not a feeling of threat or danger but of active regard or expectation, being looked at in sort of a mute child like way, or like by a watching animal. Alone at home with blackout shades, watchdogs, good neighbors and no actual sight line possible, all trauma and paranoias tucked aside. Not like feeling mindless unnatural company but the physical feeling of eyes on me.

I had several people over casually to try and read the situation. None of them, nor any geusts or housemates ever commented on any negative energies in the house. My persistent watched feeling was fairly constant in all four rooms but only the attic crawlspace was unbearable. Still I lived at that address safely and content ten years. I would encourage you to try NLP and meditation to help sort your paranoias because that helped me to calm my anxiety from and be more rational in trying to explain my feelings when facing the unknown. It also helps me to literally claim my own physical space, and I encourage you to do so according to your beliefs.

However -though I chalked it all up to my own paranoid imagination-my own constant feeling of being watched was only ever in that house.

It has been suggested to me since that exposure to poorly rigged and dangerously old electric wiring like in that home, may result in poor health consequenses including actual hallucinations, and paranoia. I am not a doctor, but it explains the feelings, and possibly seeing someone who was not there come up the porch? Maybe something like failing wires could be at play in the home from your story?

Not every possible explaination is sinister. Give yourself credit for your strength and curiousity, which I applaud. I hope you find answers, and hope you are less frightened with new perspective or time.

Regards from WA State

Bettina Marie

Hi Justwanttotellsomeone.

Thanks for sharing. It can be somewhat alarming when we encounter spirits who appear then disappear.

I agree with Biblio that what you saw does not mean your house is necessarily haunted. And I certainly don't think that this particular manifestation was an "evil entity', nor a "soul eater".

I've re-read your account and for the life of me I can't see how this image behaved in any way, or gave off any "vibe" to indicate any malicious or malevolent intent other than just standing there.

In my opinion, to suggest that this chap in the hat was anything like that is simply grasping at straws and probably adding to your paranoia; a very good point that Biblio made, and one that, I would hope, other folk here shouldn't want to exacerbate.🙄

To add another angle / theory, these apparitions that you and your sister witnessed could be residual hauntings whereby for whatever reason, people leave an image of themselves, a bit like a film that plays over and over. It would appear that these residual hauntings can be inane things like someone walking through a wall where a door once was, or someone sitting on a toilet, as witnessed by your sister. Or even someone standing in a spot and staring, for example.

These could be just imprints in the ether with no consciousness behind them. I have NO idea why some people can see these residual hauntings, why or how they are imprinted in space and time, and why some seem to keep replaying and others not.

Can you please elaborate on the presences you have felt, and also what caused your Mother get the Holy Water out? Was it solely based on yours and your sisters experiences, or did she have some of her own?

Regards

Mack

I've heard about the top hat man, and it was all negative, I don't think it was a ghost but rather an evil entity, I also think that there's more than one spirit in your home (your narrative suggests that) I think this top hat entity could be some sort of soul collector 🤔

Greetings, Justwanttotellsomeone, and welcome to YGS.

Your attempts to identify the source of the spirits you've seen are commendable. I suspect, however, that your research has led to people claiming to see a phenomenon they refer to as "The Top Hat Man" during sleep paralysis; this figure almost always has a blank, dark space where his facial features should be. Your description of the individual you witnessed suggests to me that you simply saw a spirit of an ordinary man wearing a top hat, perhaps from approximately 150 years ago.

Your description of your experiences suggests that it may not be your house that is haunted. You may be witnessing entities that are simply "passing through" and want someone to acknowledge their presence. This is a speculation on my part, absent other evidence, and my be in error. Your clarification of "I feel like I'm being watched" would probably help determine if my guess is accurate or not. Goodness knows I don't want to add to your feelings of paranoia.

Best,
Biblio.