𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧, 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫, 𝐋𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐚𝐠: 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐒𝐨 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐞?

Guest Blog: Amber Love

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧 and the 𝐋𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 were the first entities I ever encountered, and it wasn’t just me. I knew other people who had seen them too, long before I ever talked openly about my own experience. When I finally started digging into it, I realized just how far back reports of them go. I own multiple encyclopedias of the paranormal spanning many years, and almost all of them mention both of them. There are countless websites, podcasts, books, documentaries, and entire Reddit threads dedicated to figuring out who or what they are.

For a long time, I sat with all of that without a clear direction. Then I experienced the Creeper. And honestly, if you want to fall down a full-blown rabbit hole, start there. Watch any season of almost any ghost-hunting show, do your own research, and pay attention to how many locations report a Creeper, or sometimes called a Crawler. Then listen closely to how each location describes it. The stories are almost carbon copies of one another.
• more about the Creeper later •

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧 (who I believe is different from the Shadow Man) and the 𝐋𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞, especially, are figures that appear everywhere-across continents, cultures, and generations. Some researchers even trace reports of both of them back to the 1800s. What fascinates me most is how consistent the descriptions are.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐧 is almost always described as extremely tall, often well over seven feet, and instantly recognizable because of the hat. The style of the hat varies, but never enough to pin it to a specific historical era. No matter the variation, people immediately know it’s the Hat Man. In most encounters, he doesn’t interact at all. He simply stands there, silent and motionless, watching, before fading away or slipping back into the shadows. Despite how widespread the reports are, stories involving direct interaction are rare.

A lot of people explain him away as a sleep paralysis hallucination, but that explanation doesn’t fit every case. I didn’t see him during sleep paralysis, and many others I’ve talked to didn’t either. That’s what keeps pulling me deeper… how can so many people from different countries and backgrounds, who have never met, describe nearly identical encounters?

The Sleep Paralysis Witch, also known as the Old Hag, and the Creeper fall into the same category of phenomena. Different cultures and different countries—yet the reports are almost identical.

𝐋𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞/𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐲 is another one I feel like could have her own discussion. I’ve seen her a few times, both personally and during investigations. The earliest experience was when I was a kid. I was outside with friends, jumping on a trampoline at a building we rented that was connected to our property. All of us looked up at the same time and saw her standing in a window, just watching us. She was translucent white, almost like a wedding dress with a veil. I wasn’t close enough to make out her skin, but she did have dark hair. The building was vacant at the time, so my friends and I went inside to look for her, and there was nothing there. What sticks with me is that I didn’t witness her alone. I saw her with five other people, and every single one of them will still give you the same description to this day.

Over the years, I’ve run into her again during investigations, and I’m confident she is not the same one from my childhood. In some places, there’s a full story behind her. There are people who know who she is, what happened, and even why she’s there. In other spots, she has no connection at all. She’s just… there.

The Lady in White is recognized worldwide. You can find reports of her in castles and historic buildings in almost any country, with mostly identical descriptions. In the U.S., she’s usually tied to historic buildings and sites, roads, and cemeteries, and nearly every state seems to have one, often with a tragic backstory. The consistency in how she’s described is wild. Probably the most famous Lady in White is around Chicago, but I’ve seen her closer to home. I lived in Indiana at my childhood house during my first encounter, and I’ve also seen her in Kentucky. She truly fascinates me.

The 𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐚𝐠 is probably the most common of the three. She almost always appears during sleep paralysis and is described the same way over and over again: an older woman dressed in black, approaching while the person is completely frozen. These encounters feel incredibly real. People report feeling her weight, her heaviness, and her presence. When they finally wake up, she’s gone, but the sensation lingers.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫 is just as consistent in its descriptions. It usually doesn’t take on a humanoid shape. Instead, it’s described as a mass or blob of darkness, darker than the surrounding shadows, constantly shifting or moving and sometimes growing larger. It often appears in old or abandoned buildings. What’s strange is that these locations typically have their own hauntings tied to the site, and then there’s just this random Creeper hanging out on the ceiling or in a corner with no apparent connection to the place at all.

I have had a lot of discussions about the Creeper and there is a theory that I'm leaning more to: A type of Boggart (not the Harry Potter version), but the actual folklore regarding them- they feed off of fear. They seem to appear in places where the original location developed a bad reputation and/or a place with horrific past. I’ve never seen it in places that are still actively used or feel emotionally neutral. The idea of something taking shape through fear and expectation lines up almost perfectly with how these encounters are described. Maybe the Creeper is reactive and behaves very differently than a fixed “entity”. If Creepers are an amalgamation of fear and residual emotional energy, those places would naturally act as shelters for them. If it exists and grows due to fear, there’s something unsettling about the idea of paranormal investigators unintentionally creating shelter for these things-feeding them, in a sense.

Maybe these figures aren’t exactly what we think we’re seeing, but symbols our brains use to make sense of something happening under very specific conditions- whether that “something” is neurological, psychological, a shared subconscious, or something else entirely. I also know these aren’t the only ones, there are too many for one conversation. I can acknowledge that some experiences may come from sleep paralysis, but the sheer consistency of these reports across time and geography is hard to ignore.

We spend so much time asking the usual questions: why is this building haunted, why hasn’t this spirit moved on, and what’s keeping them here? But maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions altogether. Maybe the paranormal isn’t just about ghosts tied to tragic histories or energy-soaked locations. Maybe it’s something far more intricate, something woven into human consciousness, or a dimension we only glimpse under certain conditions. What if these recurring entities aren’t random at all, but part of a larger system that intersects with our reality in ways we don’t yet understand?

It’s all a big “what if,” and I would love to hear what everyone else’s theories are.

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Thank you to Amber Love for letting us share your thought-provoking post (originally found here: REDDIT , but with edits found on the Crescent Moon Paranormal Society facebook page).

To join the conversation, visit the post on Reddit or facebook, and don’t forget to also leave a comment here and tell us if you’ve had any experiences like these, and what YOUR thoughts are!