287 | The Hat Man Has Been Here For A Thousand Years

Welcome back to Tall Tale Social Club. This week we're dipping our toe into horrors on the high seas as we take a look at some terrifying things people saw at sea.The worst thing about the ocean isn't what you can see. It's what you can't. Because when you're standing on a ship in the middle of the Pacific at three in the morning, that black water doesn't just surround you. It goes down. And down. And down. Four miles in some places. There's no light down there. No horizon or landmarks. No way to know what's beneath you. Just miles of cold, crushing water between you and the bottom. If you think that's the terrifying part, I have some unfortunate news. Most of the sea has never been looked at by anybody, and we've got better maps of Mars than we do of our own ocean floor.People have looked out over that darkness and seen things that should not exist. A creature so enormous that a Navy captain watched it surface beside his ship. A craft witnessed by an entire town before it disappeared beneath the waves. A ship found drifting at sea with food still sitting on the table and not a soul aboard. Tonight, we're going out there. And by the time we're done, you may never look at the ocean the same way again.Keep that life vest handy, we're going overboard…TIME STAMPS:0:00 - Hotel Night Auditors1:00 - Intro2:30 - Welcome Back / Tangent Bits4:00 - Christian is a Leo, After All.4:30 - We're Now on Twitch @TallTaleSocialClub5:45 - EPISODE STARTS HERE5:49 - STORY: THE SERPENT9:48 - chat, where do we stand on sea serpents..?12:15 - Thank You For Your Stories 12:50 - Real Animals That Give Sea Creature "Vibes"16:40 - STORY: INTO THE SEA19:00 - Rage Baiting Canadians & Cop Wars (We're Having Fun)20:30 - What's The Scariest Thing You've Seen At Sea?22:08 - INTERMISSION: MERMAID OR MANATEE (So sorry for this)23:30 - A Rich History of Military Reported USOs26:17 - STORY: THE (REAL) GHOST SHIP30:30 - Mutiny, Rum Runners or Aliens, chat?33:00 - Mermaids: The Dogman of the Sea 34:15 - STORY: THE MAN THE OCEAN TOOK40:00 - Christian Spins a Yarn (Classic) 41:00 - Honorable Mentions & Some Light Debunking49:00 - Help Us Spread The Show / YouTube Member Update51:51 - Closing Thoughts52:25 - Outro54:02 - Mermaid or Manatee (sorry for this.)________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected] on channel notifications to be alerted of livestreams and to catch all-new episodes of our Live Paranormal Call-In show, FRIGHTLINE.

At 2 in the morning, the loneliest job in America is that of the hotel night auditor, sitting at a hotel front desk, watching a hallway on camera that's supposed to have nobody in it. Every hotel you've ever slept in has one. Night auditors take that shift for a paycheck and a quiet night, but a lot of them come out of it with a story they can't explain and a room they won't walk past anymore.What you’re about to hear are stories from the people who work that shift, describing what they saw in the quiet hours when the rest of the world was fast asleep. Let's get it.TIME STAMPS:0:00 - Hotel Night Auditors0:33 - Intro2:00 - Welcome Back / Tangent Bits4:20 - Christian Meets Samuel L. Jackson5:15 - Join The Sweet Dream Horror Gaming Livestreams!8:00 - EPISODE STARTS HERE8:01 - STORY: Seeing Double 11:30 - "There's Always Coffee at a Hotel…" 16:45 - STORY: THE POST DINNER RITUAL21:00 - THE LITTLE BITS INTERMISSION 21:52 - Welcome Back 23:00 - STORY: Christian's Hotel Ghost 28:00 - Christian Is Proud of all the Tangents This Episode..29:00 - STORY: THE INTRUDER32:00 - Call 911 or Check For Yourself? 32:30 - Some People Like Whales 33:19 - Chit Chat A La Menger Hotel 36:00 - Get Us A Hair Growth Sponsorship, STAT. 37:37 - STORY: STAIR STOMP'N SHADOW MAN39:35 - SHORT STORIES & THEORIES44:00 - The Stone Tape Theory 45:30 - Let's Go To The Hotel Captain Cook 49:00 - The Closeout ________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

Everybody's got a spooky-house story. A cold room, a creak on the stairs, a fleeting shadow you caught out of the corner of your eye. This is most certainly not that. Tonight, we're dipping our toes into a very particular pool of spooky as we get into tales of four families who experienced hauntings so intense that they packed nothing, and fled, leaving behind furniture, toys and food in the fridge. Four homes, from the 1970s to the 2000s, on two continents, that stopped being "home sweet home" and quickly became "haunting sour haunting" (sorry, workshopping that phrase, but you get the idea.From a Wisconsin bunk-bed nightmare to a Missouri rental with the locks on the wrong side of the doors, and a modern haunting that escalated to text messages and voicemails. As we enter peak spooky season, it felt like the perfect opportunity for us to unpack some truly terrifying haunted homes, and the supernatural squatters that were waiting just beyond the threshold..We'll see you on the inside..TIME STAMPS:0:00 - Cold Open: The Families That Fled0:49 - Intro2:23 - Welcome Back / Mothy Tangent Spiel 3:50 - Doing Livestreams Now on YouTube5:45 - EPISODE STARTS HERE6:00 - STORY: The Glowing Hag12:00 - Christian Weighs In for Gen X (and Boomers, prob) 13:00 - Ghosts, y'know?15:00 - Unsolved Mysteries & The Lying Neighbor 16:05 - STORY: The Union Screaming House20:00 - Poor Design & Infrasound 22:30 - Authenticity Vs. Sensationalism Vs. Clicks in the Paranormal Culture26:27 - INTERMISSION: SPOOKY SEASON TIME OF YEAR27:20 - Welcome Back / Halloween Livestream, Yes or Yes? 28:44 - Christian Brags About His NHL Video Game Season For Some Reason..? 30:45 - Close Out on Steven LaChance's Story 33:00 - STORY: House in the Hills36:50 - Can Infrasound Cause Hallucinations?37:30 - Should We Bring Heather Back On? 39:00 - Christian Misses Psych Wards 41:34 - STORY: The Poltergeist of South Shields44:50 - Realities Of Haunting Activities & Stuff That Doesn't Add Up 48:00 - Supernatural Squatters48:30 - Christian's Closing Thoughts 50:30 - Closing Time 51:42 - Outro ________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

You figure out you're dreaming, and instead of waking up, you decide to see just how far down this dream goes. You walk to the middle of the room and you drop straight through the floor on purpose, because a hundred people online swore that's how you get somewhere better. Problem is, you didn't get anywhere better, and now you're nowhere, in a place with no floor, no walls, no light, no body, just you and the black and the slow, sinking understanding that you don't know the way back, and nothing out here is going to wake you up.That is lucid dreaming. A dream-walking technique that allows people to freely control and navigate their own dreams. A feeling people chase on purpose, and a skill everybody wants, not realizing that like all things in life, it has an undeniable dark side that is often overlooked. Tonight we're peaking behind the curtain, only slightly, to look into some true stories from folks that got good at doing just that, and would later go on to wish they hadn't.Fire up those nature sounds, baby, we're going under.TIME STAMPS:0:00 - Fire Up Those Nature Sounds, Baby0:58 - Intro2:30 - Welcome Back / Tangent Spiel3:50 - Christian Lucid Dreams5:30 - Social Plugs, Members & Merch6:30 - EPISODE STARTS HERE6:31 - STORIES: DON’T FALL THROUGH THE FLOOR10:00 - Don't Think About Your Fears (Good Luck) 13:00 - Dream Science & The Gap Between Dreams14:00 - Nostalgic For a Time We Can Never Return To16:00 - STORIES: FALSE AWAKENING LOOPS20:40 - DREAM LOGIC INTERMISSION22:43 - That Didn't Make Sense 25:31 - STORIES: “I KNOW, ME TOO” & NPC INTERACTIONS28:00 - Researchers Stephen LaBerge and Paul Tholey30:28 - Scott's Lucid Dream Memory34:00 - Funny Correction From Last Episode37:00 - STORIES: ENTER - THE DEMON DREAMS40:00 - Sleep Science & Theories 44:00 - Do Dreams Serve a Purpose?48:00 - I zoned out, no idea what is here. The from earlier void maybe?50:00 - OUTRO ________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

Almost everyone who sees him describes the exact same thing. A tall shadow in a wide brimmed hat, sometimes a top hat, sometimes a bowler (he's a man of many hats I guess you could say), standing in the doorway at two in the morning, watching, while you lie there unable to move. This episode is the Hat Man in the witnesses' own accounts. A woman woken by her own mother's voice, sisters who both saw him from their bunk beds, a little girl who watched him stand over her dying grandmother.This time we took it a step further than first hand accounts. We track him backward through every culture that's already met him, because it keeps looking like one visitor under a laundry list of names. Odin wandered the old Norse world as a tall man in a broad hat who appeared in doorways right before someone died. Papa Legba stands at the Haitian crossroads, and that same crossroads figure became the tall stranger in black you meet at midnight in the American South. Baron Samedi waits at the grave in his top hat. El Sombrerón haunts a girl's window in Guatemala. The Alp stands over your bed in Germany.Same hat, same threshold, from cultures that never touched. If you've ever woken up and felt someone in the room, this one's for you. Real firsthand Hat Man encounters, the cross cultural entity behind him, and the sleep paralysis science, all in one. Be sure to share your personal experiences with the hat man in the comments below for a chance to make it into our Hat Man Listener Stories episode which is coming down the road once we collect enough stories from all of you! Buckle up, this ones a doozy. We'll see you on the other side.CHAPTERS:0:00 - The Same Visitor, One Hundred Names1:01 - Intro2:33 - Too Tall Jones / Welcome Back Tangent Warning5:30 - EPISODE STARTS HERE5:45 - Who Is The Hat Man?7:55 - EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS: THE ONES WHO WOKE UP TO HIM10:45 - Enter: Odin, The Norse Wanderer13:25 - Displacing the old gods (courtesy of the Lord)16:00 - You Like Historical Hat Facts?17:00 - EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS: THE HAT SHOWS UP WIDE AWAKE20:20 - Papa Legba, Baron Samedi, Robert Johnson & A Man At The Crossroads24:00 - THE NEXT 8 MINUTES ARE PRETTY TANGENT HEAVY, PLEASE STFU24:04 - Chocolate Thunda / The Cat In The Hat Is Absolute Cinema25:00 - Crossroads, The Pick of Destiny, Robert Johnson Again & Supernatural27:00 - Anyone Under a Microscope is a Horrible Person28:30 - Actually Back on Topic (Let The Angry Tangent Haters Comment Away!)29:30 - Christian Wants Hat Man Romance Books 31:40 - Let's Get Back to the Actual Episode Again32:00 - El Sombrerón & The Alp34:37 - STORY: HE CAME FOR GRANDMA36:34 - Christian Mentions The Old Hag (Okay)37:30 - Is The Hat Man Just a Bald Shadow Person?41:00 - Did Christian Have a Glimmer Man Experience as a Child? 42:25 - SKEPTIC TAKES / SLEEP PARALYSIS & OTHER THEORIES46:40 - Scott Scared a Shadow Person While Living in Las Vegas50:00 - Are Shadow People Astral Projectors That We Can't Fully Decipher?51:30 - Please Share The Show on Socials, Repost Reels on IG!54:00 - Sweet Dreams, Mr Hat Man________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

Thomas Edison, the man who quite literally lit up the world, spent the last years of his life trying to build a telephone that could call the dead. Not a séance, or ouija board. An actual machine with wires, valves, probably a few odd little pulleys and gears, sitting on a bench in his lab pointed straight at the afterlife.And he's honestly not even the strange one in tonight’s episode.. Tonight, five men who wrote the rulebook for how modern science is supposed to work. The ones with their names carved into buildings all over the country. Every one of them went on the record saying he'd seen something no scientist is allowed to believe. Seems like maybe the people who wrote the rules turned out to be the ones who’d later go on to break them. Let's get into it.Did these men truly experience the supernatural splendor of the other side? Or were they bamboozled by the crafty ways and parlor tricks of spiritualist con artists? Let's get into it.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Ol' Tommy Edison, Geniuses & Ghosts0:40 - Intro2:41 - Welcome Back Tangent Warning5:30 - EPISODE STARTS HERE6:22 - STORY 1: Thomas Edison & The Phone to the Dead8:00 - Rage-baiting Trolls12:55 - Frank Sumption's (RIP) Spirit Box Invention in 2002 14:50 - STORY 2: Carl Jung & His Crafty Cousin19:46 - Christian Likes Em Jung20:35 - THE RAGEBAIT INTERMISSION22:30 - STORY 3: THE FATHER OF CRIMINOLOGY, CESARE LOMBROSO24:30 - Italian Doctors & Scott Really Does Tan Well Please Stop Doubting It 25:30 - Back to Cesare…29:00 - Parlor Tricks Vs. Real Paranormal Phenomena 34:16 - STORY 4: HANS BERGER & THE BRAIN MACHINE38:00 - Ideas & Whatnot41:00 - Christian Says Way Too Much Without Saying Anything At All43:20 - STORY 5: THE NOBEL LAUREATE - CHARLES RICHET52:00 - Listener Stories Will Return (We Have MANY) 52:15 - Coming Up: Shared Death Experiences & The Hat Man Through Cultures55:00 - Share The Show, Repost & Send The Reels, Por Favor0:00 - Goodbye ________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

This week we skipped the headlines and the documentaries and went straight into the forum archives, comment sections, and the places where only the most reliable of witnesses openly talk about the strangest night of their lives. These are (ALLEGEDLY!) firsthand alien encounters and abduction stories, told in the witnesses' own words.Grey aliens standing at the edge of your bed, ufo sightings witnessed by multiple people at the same time, saucers that stop a whole homeless shelter in its tracks over an Arizona highway on a not so average Tuesday night, and even a camper in the Sierras who woke up next to a dead fire after being plopped inside a craft and told the origins of humanity (finally, concrete evidence, amiright?) We can't verify any of these, but that's kind of the whole point.We got no news crews, and no proof, just people who were dead sure of what they saw and had nowhere else to say it. If you're a sucker for alien encounters, abduction stories, and obscure UFO accounts pulled from the deep corners of the internet, you're in for a treat.Seen an alien face to face? Let's talk about it. Send your story to [email protected] STAMPS:0:00 - *raises hands to chest* "Aliens."0:53 - INTRO 2:26 - Welcome Back, Amigos. 0:00 - Thank You For Your Stories5:34 - STORIES: IT'S STANDING OVER YOUR BED9:00 - Dreams or Something Darker? 13:06 - The Validity of Multiple Witnesses 14:00 - Christian Does Episodes Too19:32 - STORIES: DOWN FROM ABOVE22:53 - Known Different Alien Species 23:14 - ROAST COMMENT INTERMISSION 23:44 - Always Feed The Trolls In Our Comments, Folks 24:30 - How Many UFO Sightings Are Just Government Ops? 27:40 - STORIES: IT CAME TO THE DOOR30:10 - STORIES: IN GOOD COMPANY36:43 - Explaining To Christian Why UFOs Need Lights…38:40 - ALIEN LIGHTS INTERMISSION 40:41 - STORY: THE ABDUCTION51:00 - Episodes Coming Up & Stories Received 54:00 - Scott Tries To Close Out The Episode 30 Times But Christian Never Stops Talking56:00 - Betty & Barney Hill, Grey Aliens & Whitley Strieber's Communion________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

Every night shift nurse has one story they won't tell their family at Thanksgiving, and almost all of them happen at exactly three in the morning. Okay, that's a little theatrical, maybe not exactly 3 a.m., but you get it. The night shift is notoriously spooky by ambiance alone, and when you add the frightful, and often times completely unexplainable experiences shared by those brave enough to work the night shift, it's no wonder these folks make the big bucks. Just from posting clips leading up to this episode, we received countless first hand accounts from nurses all over the globe, sharing their experiences through comments and dm's. So much so, that we might just need to make a part two, filled with exclusively listener submissions. So if you're a nurse, or know a nurse that has experienced a thing or two they can't explain while on the job, please be sure to comment your story below, or send it in to [email protected] (make sure you don't add an S at the end of TALE. It's singular, not plural.) and you might just be featured in the next installment.TIME STAMPS:0:00 - Night Shift Nurses Have Seen Some Crazy Stuff2:30 - Florence Nightingale Believed In Spirits3:22 - INTRO THEME6:41 - How Do You Do's / Banter / New Merch Drop 8:45 - STORY: Room 82712:00 - Christian Talks About The Twilight Zone13:30 - Oscar The Therapy Cat, Steere House Nursing, 200715:33 - The Big Why?17:57 - Christian Shirt Intermission 18:39 - STORY: The Boy In The Red Pajamas25:30 - Return of the Wrinkled Ball Bag26:28 - STORY: GEORGIE & THE ELEVATOR30:55 - The Terminal Lucidity Phenomenon34:01 - Shout Out Reliant K Intermission 35:15 - STORY: Man at the End of the Bed39:00 - I Do Know Movies… 41:00 - LISTENER STORY: The Radio45:20 - End of Life Dream Research & Other Studies48:00 - OUTRO 49:40 - Talk To Your Family on Halloween / L8R G8R________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

Folks, welcome back in to Tall Tale Social Club, we're excited to spend another hour with you guys, talking strange. This one's about the moments when reality seems to skip. Real people, mostly anonymous, sat down and typed out the glitch in the matrix experiences they've never been able to explain. If you've ever arrived somewhere with no memory of the trip, felt a place go strangely familiar, or caught the world doing something it shouldn't for a few seconds, these are gonna resonate.We also get into the real science of déjà vu, and the actual simulation argument.ever experience your own glitch in reality? Send it in to [email protected] STAMPS:0:00 - Journey Down The Rabbit Hole…0:48 - INTRO 2:22 - Jefferson Aeroplane 6:06 - STORIES: THE DRIVE THRU & VANISHING VEHICLES9:40 - Long Drive Thru Times 13:00 - It Do Be A Hard Knock Life 15:00 - STORIES: DOPPELGANGÄR DOUBLE TROUBLE 19:20 - No Thank You Doppelgänger Daddy 24:00 - The Doppelgänger Intermission 24:30 - Christian's Got More To Say (Classic) 28:00 - Double Walkers, Omens & Death By Diarrhea 30:30 - STORIES: TRIPPY TRAVELS32:00 - Cotton Eyed Joe / Should We Shorten The Intro? 38:00 - Breaking Down These Glitchy Travel Tales 41:30 - STORIES: THINGS THAT CAME BACK44:00 - Bringing Back the Stephen King is a Pervert Bit 49:30 - STORIES: AURORA55:00 - Wrong Place, Wrong Ritual Episode Coming Soon55:50 - LISTENER STORY: THE VANISHING KEYS62:00 - Tad's Through History: A Crash Course64:04 - THOUGHTS & THEORIES71:10 - Super Secret Code Word 71:44 - PEACE.________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]

Park rangers work in some of the most remote places in the country, and over the years, a surprising number of them have shared stories they still can't explain.In this episode, we look at four real accounts from named park rangers. You'll hear from members of the Navajo Rangers' Special Projects Unit, whose investigations included reports of Bigfoot, UFOs, hauntings, and shape-shifters, including one case where coins reportedly fell from nowhere during an investigation. We also cover the story of a backcountry ranger in North Carolina who watched a man hike up a mountain in the middle of the night and silently stare at a campground full of sleeping children until sunrise. Then there's Yellowstone ranger Bob "Action" Jackson, who described seeing a tall, two-legged, fur-covered figure moving through the backcountry, and Galen Clark, America's first park ranger, who claimed he once heard the cries of a drowned child coming from an empty lake in Yosemite.We also take a look at several well-known national park disappearances, including Dennis Martin, Stacy Arras, and Trenny Gibson, along with the Missing 411 phenomenon and the strongest arguments both for and against it. Some of these stories have reasonable explanations. Others are a little harder to dismiss.Everything in this episode is based on real people, documented cases, and firsthand accounts. Whether you think there's something strange happening in the wilderness or not, these are stories that have stuck with the people who experienced them.Get your thick hiking socks ready, we're going off trail.CHAPTERS:0:00 - We're Going Off Trail..1:13 - INTRO 3:40 - The Tangent Disclaimer5:37 - A Vast & Untouched Wilderness6:55 - STORY: THE RANGERS WHO GOT THE OTHER CALLS 12:00 - Don "The Rain Man" Decker 15:12 - INTERMISSION: Christian Is Snarky / Get Off Your Soap Box 16:21 - Creepy Human's Episode on the Horizon? Yes or Yes? 17:15 - STORY: MOUNTAINTOP WATCHER 22:00 - No Xbox in the Wilderness 23:16 - The Disappearance of Dennis Martin 25:30 - Christian Forgets His Granddaughters Name (he's elderly, it happens) 27:00 - A Lot of Fire Lookout's Hit Us Up 29:00 - You Guys Are Insane, btw 31:24 - STORY: IT RAN ON TWO LEGS36:00 - Discussing Bob Jackson's Yellowstone Bigfoot Encounter40:05 - INTERMISSION: Does Bigfoot Have Pockets? 40:39 - Supernatural Was a Great Show42:00 - STORY: THE BOY IN THE LAKE 45:00 - Do You Trust The Locals or Your Ears? 48:00 - David Paulides & Missing 41150:00 - Sensing Danger While Isolated & Third Man Syndrome51:00 - The Staircases In The Woods Verdict52:00 - OUTRO53:39 - 4 THA H8Rs________Become a Member at www.talltalesocialclub.com Shop Merch at www.talltalesocialclub.com/merch Follow us on Socials @talltalesocialclubFollow Mothy on X @heymothySubmit your story → [email protected]