The man in the stovepipe hat
I have been inspired by correspondence over my encounter in the early 1990s with the phenomenon known as the ‘black stick man’ to write today about a much earlier experience. If the story of the black stick man freaked you out and gave you bad dreams, don’t read this entry because it relates the true story of an apparition even scarier and definitely malevolent towards those who encounter it. This is the story of how myself and many others met the man in the stovepipe hat. He’s dangerous and if you ever see him, run.
In the autumn of 1988 I began studying for my [A-level exams in English, Theatre Studies and General Studies. I finished my studies in 1990 and part of the summer that year was spent visiting a friend who I'd made in the year below me. She had successfully auditioned for the Manchester Youth Theatre and for six weeks was based on a UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) campus, closed to its usual students but open in the summer for many young actors to use as a base while preparing to tour the show they were working on. It was on that campus I met – or didn't meet, but saw – the man in the stovepipe hat.
This apparition was far scarier than the black stick man I saw several years later. I also saw it on more than one occasion. The first time was during the day – I used to spend occasional weekends crashing over in my friend’s room – and he was walking on a large area of waste ground near the campus. I say ‘waste ground’ but it was in fact more akin to a vast undeveloped area of trees and dry, knotty clumps of grass. People walked their dogs there all the time. I remember seeing a very thin man, quite substantial but dressed like someone out of a production of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. He was all in black with white shirt cuffs visible and a white collar. He had a stovepipe hat on and a mean, bitter, vindictive expression on his face. His eyes glowed red, like hot coals. He had a huge black dog with him – I’m not up on dog species but I think it was a kind of bull mastiff – and the animal was equally malevolent. He kept it on a long lead and it wore a thick, leather collar. He was walking towards me and a couple of people I was with, and we ran off. We didn’t want him near us, that was instinctive and we were rattled by the encounter for some time afterwards.
This is a multi-page entry: page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4
tags: aliens, bizarre, elementals, Fortean, ghosts, nature spirits, sightings, stovepipe hat, strange, weird
9 comments on “The man in the stovepipe hat”
July 17th, 2006 at 1:15 am
Hi A…!
Wow! Thank you for having the courage to share this experience with us. My friend Heather in BC, Canada collects these reports of the stovepipe hat apparitions, and they do occur all over the world. I will send her the link for this entry as I’m certain she will appreciate it.
Often people write to me because they are frightened by a haunting that they are experiencing and I will tell them that it is very, very rare that anyone suffers physical harm beyond what they might cause themselves fleeing (such as tripping in their rush to get away or banging into things).
However, I think that might be true only in case where the apparition or haunting was once human.
I do not believe that these stovepipe hat fellows are the same as a traditional haunting or what we define as “ghost.”
Very scary indeed!
July 17th, 2006 at 2:51 am
the Stovepipe Hat Man
July 17th, 2006 at 8:57 am
That’s interesting. I’ve no idea if he was human once or not but I have theorised that he’s an archetype, though how that word translates from our usual sense of it into a being apparently capable of intelligence and action/reaction, I don’t know.
I’ve never believed in the devil - who is more or less a Christian construct - and I know the Anti-Christ is, again, not only a Christian construct but one with absolutely no foundation in the Bible but instead created in the early Middle Ages. Similarly, there are no Biblical grounds for the evangelical and other fundie Christian concept of the Rapture. All that said, I wonder if we create these beings ourselves somehow or if these beings are the foundation for belief in such things as the devil.
I also wonder why this entity chooses to appear dressed in black with skeletal appearance and a stovepipe hat. Maybe it doesn’t choose; maybe it just is but either way, the look of the character conveys such an image to me of witchfinders, the Inquisition, the darker more shameful aspects of Christian history rolled into one being.
Many belief systems talk of there being spirits and then there are demons, angels, gods, goddesses. If demons exist it doesn’t point to the existence of the devil as their leader but, if they do, then this man certainly fits the label of demon. I’d be interested to hear from your friend.
I agree that spirits do not and cannot harm, neither can what might be termed inactive ghosts. But there are definitely, in my view, more things ‘out there’ than the spirits of the departed. There are gods and goddesses some of whom are good and some of whom are anything but, so maybe there are demons but maybe there are simply a mix of other-worldly beings both good and bad, reflecting the state of things in our own realm of existence. After all, people have long talked of war between Heaven and Hell or, when stripped of that theological baggage, the notion of good versus evil being played out on a cosmic scale.
I have difficulty accepting dualities as they invariably don’t play out in what we call the ‘real’ world - I mean, even Hitler must have loved, even Pol Pot had feelings, even Stalin knew tears and so on. We use judgement to define who is good and who is evil and we can never judge anyone correctly as wholly one or the other. In the case of the man in the stovepipe hat, my usual belief in complexity is confounded because he appears thoroughly evil with no redeeming elements to be found whatsoever. x
July 17th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Hi A…,
I too wonder if “we” create them … like a Tibetan Tulpa ????
I’ve added a link to this entry on our blog.
Cheers!
Sue
July 17th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Thanks Sue - and even some scientists agree with the idea that a poltergeist is a created, mental phenomena. I’ve been checking your blog at least once a week so will head over in the morning. It’s late here!
x
July 19th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
That’s a powerful and scary image. It reminds me of a brief mention from the book Gumbo Ya Ya that a friend and I researched once upon a time when I was a reporter. Gumbo Ya Ya is a book of folklore about Louisiana and was written in the Great Depression. It told of the Mother Hubbard Man seen in Alexandria, LA, my hometown, in 1915.
My friend and I went through microfilm and found the newspaper article which was brief but described the Mother Hubbard Man frightening people in an Alexandria neighborhood.
It was almost certainly a man dressed up but still came across as eerie, especially coming from so far in the past. Reading familiar street and neighborhood names mentioned from a different era added to the tale’s tingle of fear.
July 20th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Hi Sid! All the scarier because it’s true - at least, it’s what happened as I perceived and experienced it at the time, and the memory is burned in. I don’t think I will ever forget although this is the first time I’ve ever written down what happened.
The Gumbo Ya Ya story you relate sounds very similar, though, to Spring-Heeled Jack; as a horror writer I am sure you’ve heard of him. The question, was he a man dressed up or something altogether different? The descriptions of him match the man in the stovepipe hat in many ways, particularly the burning coal eyes.
I searched for ‘man in stovepipe hat’ online and all I found were references to Abraham Lincoln! x
July 21st, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Spring-Heeled Jack reports were very well documented and researched … I personally do not believe it was a man dressed up.
I haven’t heard of the Gumbo Ya Ya story before, it sounds interesting!
Cheers!
July 22nd, 2006 at 8:44 am
No, I don’t believe Spring-Heeled Jack was a person dressing up. I think he was something else, somehow kin to these beings we’ve been discussing in this and the other post on the stick man. I hadn’t heard of the Gumbo Ya Ya, either.
We have a Beast of C… V… round here but that’s not human or humanoid but a Big Mystery Cat - thought to be a panther! It’s killed sheep and cows. I hope, to be honest, I never catch a glimpse of it. I’ve seen a wild boar and that freaked me out, let alone a wild big cat! x
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