For years, my children and I had to deal with an entity commonly known as, The Hat Man.
It all started after my daughter and youngest child, turned 12 years of age. Various forms of psychic/intuitive gifts exist in my family. My daughter Ava, however, never had shown any sort of abilities, ever. Then suddenly, after we moved into a small two bedroom apartment next to the Greenway in Knoxville, paranormal activity amped up like nothing I had ever faced in my life.
I had throughout my life, mostly encountered voices of deceased relatives leaving messages for loved ones or the occasionally goosebumps you get when you know something is “watching” you. I believe I saw a small demon in my childhood, a story for another day, and the occasional faint apparition from the corner of my eye. My son, Kaleb, is older than my daughter. As soon as he could speak, it seems that my son was always saying he saw angels. When he was 10, he encountered a full bodied apparition, of which was a frightening experience for him, still a story for another day. Despite all of this, nothing had prepared us for what we experienced in 2016 to 2017.
This is not some silly game…This is life and death Angels and Demons.
Melissa de la Cruz
It’s hard for me to even write about this. The skepticism I had received from others, the judgement, and the self doubt…nothing I want to experience again. I’m a professional. At that time I was working at a Psychiatric Hospital. Here I was, an RN, experiencing things I could not logically explain. We medicate people, who see or hear things others do not. I thought, “what if the kids and I are experiencing some sort of group hallucination or maybe we all have some sort of mental illness.” The anxiety I felt about how to proceed was unbearable and isolating. After many sleepless nights, I came to realize that we were perfectly sane and what we were experiencing was very real to my family.
The first encounter…I was asleep one night, alone in the apartment. My daughter was on a trip with her grandparents and my son, who was 17 at the time, was in school in Pensacola. I remember waking up from this most intense nightmare and hearing this inhuman guttural growling beside my bed. It was the middle of the night and the growling was brief. Before I could even process that, my phone rang, startling me even further. It was Kaleb. He said, “Mom I had this dream and it bothered me. I need to talk to you about it.” I said “Did you dream about a white farmhouse surrounded by a white fence, and a row of dark trees?” He said, “Whoa, yes Mom! And there was an old pickup truck there. Also, a room with a bassinet.” “There was a piglet in the bassinet in my dream. The bassinet was full of blood,” I said. We discussed more details about our dreams, both seeing the same imagery: a white farmhouse at night with a lit Street lamp, the white picket fence, dark trees, the piglet in the bassinet, and the battered pickup truck. The only differences being that I saw blood in the bassinet and Kaleb had an ominous feeling that a creature was lurking in those dark trees. Kaleb goes, “Mom I don’t know why, but Ava’s in danger.” I said , “Ava’s the piglet.”
About a month later, on a lazy weekend, my daughter and I were curled up in the living room binge watching Netflix. I’ll never forget this, never. I was sitting on a perpendicular couch across from Ava. The only thing separating the couches was a lamp and a vintage yellow chair. I was talking to my daughter, who was laughing about some silly thing on the TV, when suddenly her smiling face turned into a look of horror. I said, “Ava what’s wrong.” Tearful, Ava said, “Mom there’s an old man behind you, coming out of the wall. He’s angry and growling at you.” I turned and although my arms were covered in goosebumps, I saw nothing. My child was still claiming to clearly see the angry, growling, and withered man. He stayed briefly, then went back through the apartment wall. My daughter described him as looking basically like Emperor Palpatine of Star Wars. She was clearly shaken up. I tried my best to comfort her, but how do you protect your child from a boogeyman that you cannot see yourself.
After that experience, Ava was plagued by constant nightmares. I would still be woken up feeling like I was choking and still hearing the occasional growls. Shadows would dart across the apartment walls. Ava started seeing a little girl apparition all over the apartment. I had never faced anything like this. I had no one to ask. It’s not like real Ghostbusters are a phone call away. I tried everything I could think of and even did things to make it worse, in the beginning. I just didn’t have a manual for these things, so please don’t judge me for my mistakes.
The first mistake I made was trying to communicate with the entity. I thought if I could just figure out what he wanted, he would go away. I had been a Lenormand card reader for years prior to all this…and no I don’t believe it’s an evil occult tool that brings…blah blah blah. Anything can be used as a tool for good or evil. It’s all about maturity, intention, and how you approach things, in my opinion. Plus, like I said, I did things all wrong at first. There was a huge learning curve and I so had wished I had someone to help me. Anyway, I decided one afternoon to use my cards to try to figure out what the heck this thing wanted or why Ava kept seeing a little girl in our apartment. I was sitting at the dining room table, cards all laid out. Carefully, trying to scrutinize what it all meant. Little Ava was sitting at the table watching me (another mistake). The Lenormand cards kept showing the Man and Child cards, but nothing else of note. I was frustrated and just said loudly “what do you want!” A few moments later, a frightened Ava said, “Mom he came out of the wall again. He’s right next to you with his arms out. He’s soooo angry. Mom he wants to hurt you!!!” I saw the terror on my child’s face and grabbed her hands doing the only thing I could think of. I told her to close her eyes and we prayed to Jesus Christ. I should state that I’m not a religious person at all. I had terrible experiences in Church as a child, that left lasting negative impressions of Christians to me, but I never had any issues with Jesus…so prayer it was.
Here we were at this dining table praying like I had never prayed before. Ava was never really exposed to Christianity other than the occasional visit to Church with relatives. I prayed gripping her hands tight. I told her to keep her eyes closed, but even with her closed eyes she still saw the angry Old man. Then suddenly, Jesus appeared. I saw a black and white image of Christ in my mind, kind of like the image on the Shroud of Turin. Ava was seeing a bright figure of pure white light on a cross. According to Ava, Jesus spoke. His voice was soothing and he said, “Be gone now, leave this child alone!” Suddenly the Old man disappeared and Ava states that he was struck by bright light. A sense of calm and peace swept over us and we both started crying.
Invigorated by our experience, we tried to explain what had happened to family. First to Ava’s grandmother, who just stared at us like we had three heads. She didn’t believe us at all. Then I felt I needed to tell my father of our experiences. My Dad was retired from the Army. I felt if anyone would logically discern all of this; it would be him. Surprisingly, my father believed us and over the coming months it would be him I would confide in. Later, I would have huge guilt about telling my Dad, as it caused issues with him and my Step-mother, of which there still is resentment to this day, as she is a skeptic.
Things were quiet again for a few months. I thought everything was past us. Then the shadows came back and Ava had the strangest dream. Ava dreamt of Jesus surrounded by geometric figures. She described it as a twelve year old child would. In her dream, he showed her the universe then disappeared. Researching on the internet, I learned that there is a thing called a Merkabah, which is a divine light vehicle of geometric shapes according to Jewish mysticism, which Ascended beings used to travel. Why would at little girl be dreaming about such things?
At this point, I just thought to myself “what the actual fuck is going on.”
To be continued…
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