In sleep paralysis the most recurring "beings" that show up are shadow people. What interests me is the shadow man, but with a hat. What's up with that?
I saw the documentary "The Nightmare" (2015) and he showed up there too, but turned out to be an authority figure, like one guy tried to fight back two normal shadows, he was winning and then the hatman showed up and scared the shit of him back into normal waken state (or at least that's how I remember it).
Here's another really wierd case: in a ayahuasca session, a friend of mine got into a bad stage of the trip and lo and behold, hatman was there. He's never heard of sleep paralysis before that.
So, who is he? why the hat dude? it's out of style…. or at the very least, what would he represent in the subconscious mind? do some of us see the hat as scarier and/or more authoritative?