The Man With The Black Hat

The  story on this page was taken from my book "No One Would Believe It". My book contains the back story and more, true, strange stories 

In 1989 our daughter was now five years old when my husband and I bought our first home in Derry NH near the Robert Frost Farm. It was a 3 bedroom Ranch. Shortly after purchasing the home, I would become pregnant for my second daughter who was born in early 1990.

I remember the day that we closed on the house.  My husband had a beautiful night planned unknown to me ahead of time... He got Champagne, cheese, crackers, grapes and some adorable cupcakes and tall candles. He had lit a fire in the fireplace in front of A beautiful fur carpet, it was truly romantic. 

It was the night that we had closed on the house earlier in the day  so we were not moved in yet and there was no electricity or phone hooked up in the house.

To surprise me with this romantic evening and to get all of the romantic stuff ready, he had told me to go down the hallway and into the master bedroom to wait, until he called me out for the surprise.

The house was sold to us through a Realtor who owned it and she was willing to take a second mortgage on the property to get us into it. This was during the whole Dime Savings bank fiasco in the 80”s.

At the time that I had found this house, I had previously spent my days calling as many houses that were being sold “by owner” as I could, to locate sellers who would take a second mortgage on their property. My husband and I had previously attended a few of those real estate seminars on how to buy houses with no money down. And we did it. We found a few houses, and this is the one we had decided to buy out of them. 

So, there I was waiting in the master bedroom in complete darkness, and in an unfamiliar house, waiting for my husband to call me out for the romantic surprise, when I hear some kind of shuffling coming from the inside of the bedroom closet.  I yelled down to hubby letting him know that I could hear something making noise in the closet, and he said it was probably squirrels in the attic, because the house had been vacant and the house was surrounded by trees.

But,  from what I was hearing, whatever it was, sounded big. This was more like someone was in the closet, and it kept doing it and it kept making the noise in different areas of the closet. 

I waited, and when I couldn't bring myself to stay in the bedroom in the dark anymore, I yelled down again and I told my husband I would wait in the hallway closer to the living room. My husband started getting upset because he felt that I was ruining the surprise he had for me.  

Neither He or I realized that night what we were about to be in for after we would move in. 

Two days after we moved into our new home, my five year old daughter insisted that there was a man with a black hat that would somehow appear in different windows.  She was very upset and was seeing this mysterious man, always wearing a black hat repeatedly. But, I chalked it up to the experience or anxiety of moving to a new home.

As the days went on, strange things, sometimes strange physical, unexplainable things began to happen.

For instance... my husband and I had gone to bed one night and were both woken up to the sound of running water.  When I was completely awake, I realized it was gushing.

I slept on the side facing the door and when I woke up and heard the water,  I made my husband go and investigate. I don't know, there was something that made me feel super uneasy about it. When my husband got up to investigate, he called me into the bathroom to "see this".  

The two bathroom faucets were turned all the way back, in an abnormal position, they were both facing the wall behind the sink, and the water was gushing onto the floor because the sink was over flowing.

There was no way that our daughter could have gotten out of bed and did this. She was too short and you would need pliers to turn the faucets into the position they were both in.  My husband fixed both of the faucets while I cleaned up the bathroom and eventually we went back to bed. 

In another example; our bed would feel like someone shaking it or bumping it over and over again. This happened nightly. It was as if someone was standing at the foot of our bed and shaking the bed or using their body to bump in to it over and over again.  I remember nights waking up to this, it would stop, then all of a sudden, while I was awake it would start again. Our bed would literally shake. 

There were times that my husband would be woken up by a dark figure standing over him, bending over him and getting close to his face.  

At the time, he believed it may have been his deceased father who had unexpectedly died only a few months earlier.

After more and more strange things were happening, my husband disclosed something to me that he, my mom and my sister knew about the property, but had kept from me. 

Apparently, a 34 year old woman had died in the living room of the house  before we bought and moved into it.  Our bedroom was the woman's bedroom, but when she became very sick and needed help, she was moved into the living room where she eventually died. 

Clearly, there was something, some force, that was in that house, that wanted us to know it was there. Strange enough, after I had my second child in early 1990, she couldn't have been more than four months old,  a young 17 or 18 year old girl showed up at my front door.

Upon opening the door, the young girl wasted no time in  telling me that her mother had died in the house at 34 years old. The young girl told me that she was here because she just wanted the opportunity to come into the house to reminisce, and she asked me if I minded. Honestly, what I saw was a young girl, probably hurting and missing her mom. 

What I felt however was a dreadful, sinking, pit in my stomach. I definately felt uneasy about this, but how do you tell this young girl no?  So, I made the quick decision to let her in.  Her vist would turn out to be another strange of strange events that we can add to the collection. Once inside, the young girl immediately explained to me that she was graduating from high school and that her mother had planted a rose bush under her bedroom window (which was now my 5 year old daughter's bedroom). She said that her mother planted it so it would bloom when she graduated from high school. 

The young girl then took my hand and led me down to my daughters bedroom, and over to the window we go and low and behold, there was a fully bloomed Rose bush right there outside of my daughters bedroom window that I either never noticed or paid attention to. 

The young girl then immediately went to the nursery, the bedroom where my baby girl was.  She did not take me by the hand this time, she quickly left the first bedroom and got to my nursery before I had a chance to stop her, which I would have because my baby girl was napping. But, she just stormed right in, no hesitation.  In my nursery was particular wall paper that we had not yet changed. 

The young girl told me that she used to call it the “jail” room because the wall paper had what she perceived to be bars. She said that she had spent a lot of time in “that room”. I'm beginning to really feel nauseous now, my baby was still sleeping, she didn't even stir. I told the young girl that we had to leave the room, my baby was still sleeping and I did not want to disturb her nap.  

The young girl quickly left the room,  and she walked back into the hallway.  I closed the door to the nursery and the young girl was already down the hall, going into the kitchen and she was walking toward the basement door. I said; "Hey, wait a minute, I said you could look around, but I'm not comfortable with you just going from room to room.  

She paid no attention to me, she opened the door to my basement and quickly went down the stairs. I ran down the stairs and found her swinging around the pole in my basement with one arm stretched out, singing a child-like song that I did not recognize. I could here her say; "And if you don't hide, I'm going to get you" Now, I was getting creeped out. 

I asked her to stop and with each swing around she said; "I'm not done yet", "I used to do this when I was little".  I finally demanded she stop. I told her she had to leave. I said that I had an appointment to get to and that I still had to get my baby up and ready, to which she replied; "Your baby is fine, she's always fine" with a grin on her face.

 I said OK, thats enough, time to leave. I escorted her back up the stairs and into the living room.  She thanked me for letting her inside the house as I opened the front door. The young girl walked out, walked  down the dirt path that started at my front door that led to the road, and she only got mid-way across my front yard and she disappeared.  

There was absolutely no trace of her. How is this possible I thought? I was really freaked out now. Here was a young girl in my house, she was here for about 45 minutes, she walked through my house, in bedrooms and my basement, I walked her to the door and she just disappears?  

It occured to me that the young girl never asked or attempted to go into her mom's bedroom, she never wanted to go out and actually see the Rose bush either. You would think that if her mother planted it for her, she would wanted to have seen it other than through a window, and maybe even touch it or take a flower from it right?

We later learned that the woman who died in my house had no children. 

Things were really getting strange and things were happening much more frequently in my house.

I would put my baby down for a nap and shortly after, I would hear a loud banging from the nursery.  When it first started happening, I thought my baby girl was standing in her crib and jumping up and down. It sounded like my baby's crib was being slammed over and over again into the wall. I would run into the nursery and she would be sound asleep.

On any given day, our dog Max would run to the top of the basement stairs and she would bark at nothing.  Some days you would suddenly hear loud banging on the oil tank that was in the basement as if someone took a heavy object and hit the side of it over and over again. Other days, we would hear the inside basement (fire) door suddenly slam, and what sounded to be my husband coming home, shouting “I'm home hun” in his voice. My five year old daughter would come running and scream “daddy's home”, but he wouldn't be home.

Other times, we would find black candles lit outside on our mailbox.  

Sounds crazy I know, but it's true.

I was never comfortable in that house, I actually hated that house and I could not wait to move out. 

At one point, my husband and I went out to dinner with another couple and upon returning home, our Bose speakers that were each 15 pounds and on custom built shelving, were completely spinned around with their wires hanging out of the back of them, and the family wooden Crucifix that we had hanging in the threshold  between our living room and kitchen was turned upside down.  

We did not move from that awful house until after my third daughter was born in 1991, so read on to learn more short, but true stories. Some are a little more frightening, some are just odd happenings and some may even enlighten you.

More short stories available in my book; No One Would Believe It