Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

My family moved to Hamilton, Montana in 2004. We moved into a brand new duplex on a quiet cul-de sac and lived there peacefully for about 3 months.

For reasons I can’t explain, I was always afraid of the entrance to the crawl space that was located in the master bedroom closet. I hated to go down in there and the few times I did go to get some of the things we had stored there, I would make my husband go with me. He wasn’t at all uneasy about it.

Well, about 3 months after we moved in my husband was called out of town for an extended job in another state. He was gone for 3 weeks at a time and home for only 4 days in between these periods. Very shortly after he left the first time, my son and I began to experience strange things. For one, I noticed that no matter how many times I turned off the light in the garage, it was always on. Another thing is my son began to be too frightened to sleep in his own room, something he had never done before. He swore to me that someone walked by his room at night and looked in at him. He was only 3 years old at the time and we are not parents who allowed him to watch scary movies nor did we discuss things like “spirits” or “ghosts” in his presence, so I had a hard time not believing him on this. I tried to calm his fears and ended up letting him sleep in bed with me for his ultimate comfort.

Then one day, while my husband was home we were all three of us lying in the master bed which looked out onto the galley kitchen. We were watching a kid’s show on TV. Suddenly my son sat straight up and pointed into the kitchen and screamed, “There he is Momma!” and grabbed me in real terror. I asked him, “Who’s there?” He said, “The man who watches me! Oh no! Oh no!” I did my best to calm him, and my husband even went through the house to show our son that no one was there. He came back and tried to get Krue (our boy) to go with him so he could show him that there was no one there, but he flatly refused and clung to me begging me not to make him go. I didn’t make him, but asked him what the man looked like and he said, “He wears a hat and he’s old.” Well, to a 3 year old everybody looks old, so I pressed him. I finally got out of him that he was tall and skinny and never smiled, only stared at Krue and scared the wits out of him.

After this episode, my husband again left for work for 3 more weeks and one morning as I was making Krue’s breakfast in the galley kitchen and he was sitting on the master bed, again watching TV, Krue suddenly said in an oddly calm voice, “He’s looking at you now, Momma.” I asked who, and he replied, “The Hat Man.” I asked where he was and Krue said he was standing right next to me but is gone now. I really didn’t like the sound of his voice and began to think I should take him to the doctor and made an appointment with his pediatrician for an appointment the following week. But before we could go to see the doctor Krue and I experienced something together that I could not deny was unexplainable, and changed my worry that my boy might be imagining all this. I suddenly knew that what he was telling me was very real.

We were having dinner at our dining room table, which opens into the galley kitchen. There is an opening into the dining room from the living room as well. As we were sitting there, peacefully having our dinner a sound began to emanate from the living room. It sounded like a lot of people all talking a once, like party chatter. It was very loud and moved toward us pretty quickly. It was like it was coming from a stereo speaker that was moving across the room. We didn’t see anything but our eyes followed the sound as it passed by us at the table and disappeared around the corner into the kitchen. When it was over, Krue, who by this time was 4 years old, looked at me with eyes as big as dinner plates and asked, “Did you hear that?” I looked at him, nodded, jumped up and grabbed him and we left the house for the night, staying at a local hotel. Now I was afraid. I finally felt the fear my poor little boy had felt for months now. I felt very guilty for that too.

The next day we returned to the house and it was calm. I checked the garage and, of course, the light was on, but there were no more disturbances until about a week later. I was closing the house down for the evening, locking the doors, checking the windows, turning out the lights. As always, I opened the garage door to turn out the light. But as I did I noticed a silhouette against the far wall. I looked like the bust of a man wearing a bolo hat was growing out of the top of a group of boxes stacked there. I stared at it for a moment, not comprehending what I saw. Then I leaned into the garage to look at the wall closet to me and opposite the silhouette to see if there was something there that could cause a shadow like that. When I looked back over at the silhouette, it had moved from it’s original position above the boxes and closer to the door where I stood. I was startled and frightened and must have jumped at the sight because the shadow reacted to me and began to come closer, sliding down the wall toward the door leading into the house where I stood. I was so terrified that for a moment I couldn’t move, I was rooted to the spot in which I stood. Then, luckily Krue came up behind me and saw what I was seeing. He immediately started screaming in terror and that jerked me out of my stupor. I reached behind me and grabbed his arm to keep him from falling as I careened backward into the house, all the time keeping my eyes on the “Shadow Hat Man” coming rapidly toward me. I slammed the door, locked it and began piling furniture against it like an idiot. As if that would keep out a ghost.

Krue was hysterical and kept begging me, “Let’s leave Mommy! Let’s leave right now!” So I ran into the bedroom with him hot on my heals, grabbed my purse and phone and we raced outta there to stay in a hotel for the second time in less than 2 weeks. I called my husband, sobbing and told him what happened. He came home immediately, good man that he is. He could plainly see how afraid we really were and didn’t doubt the validity of what we were saying. He told me later that he had experienced some weird things in the house as well, but didn’t mention them before for not wanting to frighten us. He would never be specific about what he experienced, but told me that he knew that there was something in there. He said he didn’t believe it wanted to hurt us, but since our terrifying experiences with it, he didn’t want to stick around to find out. We moved out of that house  within a week and never saw the “Shadow Hat Man” again.

Sent in by Michelle, Copyright 2010 TrueGhostTales.com