BOGEYS AND GHOULIES - SEASON 4 - THE HAT MAN By Sarah Golding (PG 10+)

Hello #KidsHorror Lovers👻☠️🧟🧛🏼‍♂️🧙🎃

HAPPYYY HALLOWEEN!

Here's a (quite scary) horror story for those 10+ (or parents, guardians ...listen first!) all about

                 THE HAT MAN.

It is Inspired by a nightmare my daughter had when she was 2 ..ish ...and all she could say was....'Man....Man...Hat man....Black Hat' - it terrified me that she thought a man in a black hat had been staring at her for half the night as she was paralysed in her cot. And so. This story...brewed.

Trigger warnings include...
Peril, Danger of soul being taken, Children being naughty. Child in peril, Paralysis, Whimpering child, Stair Stomping, Gurgling Tummy, Threat from an entity, scary deep voices (manipulated pitch).

The narrator is speaking as if in the house in which this story takes place. Shut your eyes...be brave, and see....the story...

The message to be kind is universal. Maybe do something kind every day to keep the HAT MAN away....

And it goes without saying that

I hope none of you get a visit from

THE HAT MAN

Feel free to review these BOGEYS AND GHOULIES STORIES or ping any artwork or your own stories inspired by this one to

QUIRKYVOICES@GMAIL.COM

All Sound effects were made by me or are Creative Commons 0 from free sound.org.

Thank you for listening

MAKE SURE YOU ALSO ENJOY SEASON 4 SHOWS
Ghost innn spppaaaace with Fiona Thraille and Robert Cudmore
and
PART 2 - A YEAR IN THE MAKING😬 OFFF
The Ghost who lost their scare.🌏🌍🌎💙👻👻👻👻

STAY SAFE
BE KIND
MAKE STUFF

Sarah☠️👻💙

Transcript

The hat man….

A Bogies and Ghoulies special 

By ©️Sarah Golding
2022

————————

It was a quiet October 31st in the early 2000’s. I was three years old. We’d gone trick or treating down our road a few hours before bed - me dressed as a ghost - and knocked on too many pumpkin footed doors, and I had eaten far too much chocolate, and felt a bit Ill and was a bit naughty.

Mummy and daddy, unsure of how to stop me being hyper said that if I didn’t go to bed soon and stay in bed, and behave myself, the hat man would come for me. They said The hat man took the souls of naughty greedy unkind children and my behaviour that night, though part the fault of a self induced chocolate sugar rush, was also rather naughty, greedy and unkind. 

I eventually had my milk with a side serving of sulk time, and settled to bed, my tummy like a storm as it digested the rich foods and the too many sweeties  I’d eaten. 

I’d been dressed for bed in a flurry of ‘don’t want to, I’m not sleepy’ taut refusals and eventually settled in a grump a little under the warming covers, my quick breath making smoke of the air around me for a short while, which was odd, as I listened to a story with my hands on and off my ears like a spoilt grumpy pickle, and felt slowly dozier with the turning of each beautifully read page. 

I fell asleep before the end of the story and opened my eyes to see mummy retreating backwards in the dark, thinking I was fully asleep….I gazed dreamily up at my smiling backwards walking mummy, as she blew me a kiss whispering  ‘goodnight my darling, sleep tight I love you’ and put my door-to. A little sliver of dampened landing light sprawling across the wall.

It was a very quiet house. 

My tummy rumbled on.

In a pre sleep daze I turned my gaze upwards to the prone animal mobile I had still next to my bed, long broken but there for comfort. ‘Goodnight Tiger’ I said out loud, a cloud of condensation pushing through the air. That was again…odd, but I was so tired I didn’t really think about it. With a big breath in, I shut my eyes. 

AND OPENED THEM AGAIN

I awoke just as the clock was striking the first of 12 loud slow motion dongs.

It had felt like seconds had passed instead of hours since the end of the story, as I jerked awake with a quick sharp breath to the sounds of the clock and my mobile - my long since broken beloved mobile - rotating uncomfortably quickly then slowly quietly then slowly round my head above the cot bed, thrumming with familiar tunes that had somehow turned to menace from the soothing tones expected. 

I was still in a cot bed as mum and dad couldn’t afford another bed yet. It was a high backed cot facing the window, barred to the sides and a Winnie the Pooh etching up the tall bed head. I was too old for this bed now and nearly too big. I hoped that maybe in a few weeks I’d be in a big kid bed. I thought. I wished? I hoped.

I wanted so much to be a big kid. I really did. 

But 

One day

That day.

The night of that day.

The hat man came

And changed me

Forever

SFX DINGING CLOCK SLOWLY STRIKES 12

Tick tock tick tock went the big

Landing clock

Squelch sqwerch thump thump

Up the stairs 

Some footsteps trump

Jingle jingle goes his belt

Spurs and leather 

Mini pelt

All in black 

Dark as a bat

IT IS HE WHO IS COMING

The man

In the hat

I was asleep

But awake

But asleep

(Whisper) But awake

I could hear him coming but 

Felt deaf to the world

Felt dumb to the world

Felt blind to the world

Felt numb

I wanted to 

get up 

and scream 

for mum and for dad

Start running 

He’s coming

He’s coming

The hat man

Is coming

But

I was somehow paralysed.

Unable to move.

Truly 

Unable to do…

Anything

He’d climbed to the landing

Could hear his dark breath

His movement relentless 

His presence meant death

He entered the doorway

Stood still for a mo

Me wondering. 

What’s he doing?

Where will he go?

He didn’t approach

From the front  

In straight lines

But zig-zagged

So strangely

flickered

Glitched hole black lines

I held all my breath

I still couldn’t move

So scared was I lying there

Heart stopped

In a groove

I lay looking up

At the ceiling above

At the edge of my cot

At the mobile I love

And at once

All the air

Seemed to go 

From the room

I just could not breathe

As an eerie hush loomed

As if time itself

Had just uttered 

Last breath

And my eyes darted round

As I feared my death

I didn’t wait long

As I stared up at bed head trim

Gentle eyes raising up

And I spotted th’black brim

Of his round rimmed wide hat

As it sheared into view

And I croaked in my throat

“Hat man…

I don’t like you”

The hat kept on growing until it was full

The brim getting wider 

What scared face I did pull

And the 

Eyes of the hat man

The nose of his face

The chin of the hat man

Rose stark into space 

The scariest

Face of the hat man in place

Looming over the lip 

Of the bed 

By my face

A terrifying smile

Appeared underneath

With threatening menace and grey shiny teeth

I screamed a no scream

“MUMMY DADDY HE’S HERE”

But all that came out was a squeak I do fear

The face above mine

As I looked up so scared

Was close enough now

To sweet kiss if I dared

The frozen expression

Of malice on face

That a three year old child

Should so never 

Embrace

The smell of tobacco

The stench of decay

Accompanied the hat man

Who froze here

No play

His eyes locked on mine

His teeth dripping fluid

And me paralysed

Under spell

Of this

Dark Druid

He sucked in his teeth

And sighed out a soul

And I started to whimper

And feel so less whole

I felt all my innards

A buzzy and shaken

And wished with all I had

That myself

Could awaken

For what could this mean

This hat man by my bed

It is surely a dream

This dread figure and head

A soul sucker man

Was the man with the hat

The hat man

Who took all bad children like that 

The cheeky ones, naughty

The weak and faux brave

No none could escape 

The rapture 

Of this knave

A true prince of darknesss

A reaper of doom

And I couldn’t believe he was here

In

My room

In desperate attempt 

To free soul

Of his glare

I remembered my life

And my love

And a prayer

 I managed to say 

As my soul sucked out flat

With last breath

And a will

‘Oh hey night man sir 

I do love your hat

I’m sorry for bad words

And being so naughty

I promise

I’ll try to be nicer

Not haughty

I’ll do what my parents

Both ask me to do

I won’t answer back

Or be silly it’s true

I’ll sure think of others 

Be gentle and kind

And all this I promise

If you leave me

My mind’

These words fell like glitter

And lit up the room

The hat man

He spiralled 

And whizzed to his doom

‘Oh child of night

Your good words

You have stated

Relieve me of duties 

Your soul liberated’

Some kind words

Well meant

Was all that it took

To rid my night time

Of the hat man

The spook.

The screams of trapped thousand

bad souls 

In his hat

Screamed out

‘Well done big kid!’

And poof

Just like that

Normal ticking resumed

From the clock in the hall

And the moonlight fought through

To shine bright on my wall

The hat man 

Dissolved 

In a sharp moonlight ray

And I turned on my side

Hugged myself and did say

“Well the hat man is gone

Phew

Thank goodness for that”

As the dawn

Peaked without  

looming Man 

In The Hat.

Hours passed 

Tick tock 

I stared up and out 

Until my eyes could stay open no more 

And no doubt

I felt awash with relief and soul kept

I succumbed to a deep deep slumber, and slept 

Next morning my parents 

came soft to my room 

none the wiser for my night time chills and thrills and near brush with death. 

It was a cold, unusually frozen November morning. There was a tinkling frost on my walls and even some on the ceiling. My parents were both so bemused that the carpet was like snow, and it crunched as they trod, covering as they slippered across the room the heavy footsteps of THE HAT MAN who had last night visited, hopefully never to be seen again. 

I was raised aloft and cuddled in a shiver of love, and grateful for their kindness and warmth and care. 

So, the moral of this story? 

Well, if you are in peril, 

and things do feel scary, 

and your heart beats fast 

Misch’vous soul feels wary

Do adhere to big kid’s survival code, 

be polite to an entitity no matter what forebodes, 

for some

             good 

                    kind 

                           words 

may be all that you need, 

to get rid of a nasty thing, 

stop a Hat Man Feed.

Be kind big kids

The end