Spooked - Tall Man in The Hat

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Amy is a nurse’s assistant in a progressive care unit. One day, one of Amy’s patients says to her: “The tall man in the hat doesn’t like you.” Later that day, the woman passes away. Then, a few months later, the exact same thing happens. And then it happens again… and again… and again… Thank you, Amy, for sharing your story with Spooked!Produced by Zoe Ferrigno, original score by Leon Morimoto, artwork by Teo Ducot Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In my dream, I asked the wind if the dead would walk again. I heard the laughing, mocking, vile, the dead, he said. They're walking now. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. I'm a college student. All alone, it's the middle of the day.

What I remember is sitting at my desk and feeling like my heart, is trying to tear itself from my chest. What I don't remember is exactly what happens next because I don't call an ambulance. I don't call a friend. I recall my grandmother long past telling me a story from a book I cannot see. Before she finishes, somehow I'm laying on a bed.

I'm terrified. Terrified. My chest pounding. monitors tape to my skin, screaming machines on either side of my head and surrounding this bed hangs a pink plastic curtain. How did I get here? The doctor, and I'm assuming he's a doctor, pulls back this plastic curtain, flashes something in my eye. Doc, he pulls the curtain closed again and starts shouting. Does anyone know his history? Do you know his history? We're going to lose this kid. another male voice

We're throwing everything we have at him You are not helping And it takes me a moment to understand That the doctors On the other side of that plastic They're screaming at each other About me And I've told you this story before here

I have about the doctors On that side of the pink curtain The cursing, the screaming Imagining I suppose that the plastic curtain It's a magic force field sound barrier So no one on the other side can hear what they're saying.

I've told you this, but I admitted a piece because I was ashamed to tell you what really frightens me more than the doctors and the monitors and the shouting and the vice gripping at my chest. What really terrifies me, lying half naked on that hospital bed is that I do not have health insurance. And I know if I stay here much longer, I'm going to bankrupt my parents. I knew all along that I had a choice between college and getting insurance. I couldn't do both. Schools seem like a smart bet until I hear I'm talking about arterial myopathy and spas modic cardiac fibrillation. I don't understand these words. I just know I've got to go away from

here. And then to my surprise, they tell me I can go, that my situation is temporarily stabilized, but I need to see a cardiologist at once, and they are delighted that I'm scheduled to see a doctor renowned as the best hard specialist in the entire Midwest region the very next day. Uh-huh. Right. That sounds expensive. I walk home knowing I can't go to any famous cardiologist appointment. Instead, I shower. I refuse to look down at my own chest. I put on my PJs, pull the shades.

I climb into my bed at 7 o'clock in the evening, hoping to maybe sleep it off. But instead, I lay there. Listening to this offbeat rhythm from my chest, it's so loud. I've never really paid attention before, but I'm sure my roommates can hear it rattling the bedroom, walls in between each heartbeat.

I wonder my grandmother will finish her story. Every single shadow has a story. In our first storyteller, we're going to call her Amy. Amy was working in a hospital when she decided that she wanted to become a nurse. Now she's a nursing school, working with patients every single day, trying to learn everything she can from her coworkers. even the co-workers that Amy can't see. I am a nursing assistant.

I work on a progressive care unit and cardiology unit. It sadly would be fair to say that I see a lot of death in the work that I do. So normally I work day shift, and to start my morning, I go through, I do vitals, and then I go check on my patients to see who needs to get immediately washed up for the or who just needs cloths or anything like that. On this day in particular, I had a woman who was not very happy, not very comfortable, even though we've tried our best to do everything we can. I went in to get her washed up.

She's in her bed. She is just yelling all of the obscenities in the book already. But with a little bit of coaxing and saying, oh, but we're going to do your hair. It's going to look so nice. She finally agrees. And so I start, go over to the sink, and I fill up the sink with warm water. And I'm trying to work kind of as fast as I can before she changes her mind on me.

So I start washing her up. I'm washing her face. I get to about halfway through her arms before she decides that she does not want this anymore. And she starts yelling at me. trying to kind of push me off her. But at some point, she stops yelling. And I thought that it was because she was just kind of tired herself out of whatever was going on. But she looks me dead in the eyes.

And she just says in this almost like hiss of a voice, The tall men in the head doesn't like you. And she said it over and over and over again. And just got louder every single time she said it. To the point where she was back up to her yelling. Like she was just yelling at me over and over again. And so I finish up and I make sure she's comfortable. I make sure she's safe.

And I just, I walked out of the room, cleaned up all my stuff, and I took it as just part of her rambling. So the next day, I went around. to do my vitals and I was fully expecting to see this woman. So I go and I find the nurse that she had yesterday and she goes, well, she passed overnight. I can't say I was surprised because she was in not great shape at the time. But the sentence that she was saying over and over really stuck with me, but I didn't think there was any kind of connection to it. I thought that it was just, you know, just her time. And it just happened to be an audience.

coincidence. A couple months later, I walk into the same room and it was this very nice man who, I believe he had just fallen in his home and was here for observation purposes. He was very sweet and receptive and talkative and I loved it. He's just sitting in his bed and we're having a conversation and, you know, just talking about anything, the weather, what kind of sports teams he likes. and I had to go do something because I got a phone call so I go to leave the room and I say oh I'll see you I'll be back in a little bit and he hesitates to reply to me and it was almost as if like the next sentence that was going to come out of his mouth

was something he was holding on to the whole time and like he wasn't sure if he wanted to say it or not and he said honey I really utterly froze in my tracks like right when I was was going to leave the door. And all I could do was kind of nervously giggle. And when I turned around to make some kind of a joke, the look on his face was just like, why aren't you more concerned? Did you hear what I just said? I didn't know how to respond. And so I just, I just kind of went, all right, that's, that's unfortunate. Tell him I said sorry for whatever I did. I 100% thought it was something that I couldn't see in that room specifically.

For a little bit for the rest of the day, I started kind of recounting my patients that were in that room, thinking of anyone who could possibly match that description who had died in that room. And I was really racking my brain about it, and I could not think of anybody. I do kind of pride myself about being kind to all my patients, because that's what they deserve.

And so to also think that someone had passed and had this kind of vendetta against me was something that I couldn't really wrap my head around either. So I go in the next day, and I go up to the night aid to get report from them, and I stop after I hear the report for this specific room, and I say, oh, what happened to Mr. So-and-so? He says he coded at around 3.30 in the born,

They tried to get him back and stable for like 45 minutes, but in the end, he just passed away. It was a huge shock to me. He was supposed to go home within the next couple of days. That's one of the conversations that we had. I immediately think about the tall man in the hat doesn't like you. If he hadn't said that, and he had just passed a woman. way I would have been sad. And I was sad, but that sentence is what made me scared. Because I don't know who this tall man in the hat is. I don't know why his name keeps getting brought up. And ultimately,

within the next day, that patient who has said that sentence has passed. Hospital life is very, very busy. So it's easy to kind of push things out of your mind and forget about things just because you're so wrapped up in all of the other craziness that's going on. A couple months goes by, I think maybe about four and a half months or so. And it's been a pretty routine day. I'm just going throughout my vitals, cleaning people up, answering call bells. I had a patient and he also suffered from dementia. After lunch, he had taken a nap. I go in to do vitals. You know, I wheel my little vitals cart in there, and I tap on his arm, and he wakes up. But as soon as he sees me, he grabs my arm. And for the first coherent sentence, I had heard him say in hours upon hours was,

I whipped around, I turned around because I wanted to see this thing if it was there. and there was nothing in the room. He had this death grip on my arm. It was hurting me, and he just kept saying it over and over and over again. With this thick smoker's voice and just getting louder and louder and louder. And he just kept screaming that over and over and over again.

To the point where some of my coworkers started to come in to see what he was yelling about. he's so confused that it didn't mean anything to them like it did to me. So they helped get his hand off, calmed him down. I was able to take his vitals and then he kind of just fell asleep and I left the room. And my other nurses asked me if I was okay and I said, yeah, I'm totally fine. Meanwhile, in my head, my heart's going about 600 beats a minute because he had said it. And I had not thought about that.

I had not heard that sentence in months. And it just immediately snapped me back to the first patient, the second patient. I don't really want to talk to anyone about it because I don't want to either scare people or to come off as honestly like a little odd, a little strange. On my way out, I had my little call. heart, went over to my computer to throw in his vitals. And like, I obviously knew the room number that I was in, but I didn't make the connection that, oh, this is a different room

until I had finished typing in all my documentation. When I realized that it was a different room, I felt even more scared because now this thing was moving. It wasn't just a spirit that was haunting a room or hanging out in a room. this thing could go wherever it needed to. I had a couple days off in between shifts. This whole time I was just thinking about this man and what he had said, and I was curious. So I go in and I'm looking around,

and thankfully the nurse that was treating him those next couple of days was there. I went up to her, she was sitting in a bench. I was like, I just need to know about room so-and-so. did he pass? And she said, oh, he passed later that night. And I was just kind of floored, and my heart once again was going so fast. Because now that's not once, that's not twice, that's three times that that has happened.

At times when people are really ready to go and it's their time and there's nothing we can really do for them anymore, they'll come to us and say, oh, my daughter was here or my husband was here. and comes to find out that their daughter died at a very young age or that their husband passed a couple months ago. We take that as a sign of their loved ones coming to get them and those are the ones that carry them over to the other side. I think the tall man in the hat is also here to take people just like loved ones are. He seems to have control over the more random deaths that I've seen.

Those that see their loved ones, they're ready to go. Some will even tell you that. But these ones that see the tall man in the hat, yes, these people aren't doing well, but it's also that no one expects it to happen. He's getting the ones that you don't expect. When I'm helping someone who has passed afterwards, you know, if I'm cleaning up someone who has passed or doing post-mortem care,

It can feel quite heavy in that room when you're there, especially by yourself. I always wonder if he's there with me, probably literally standing behind me, tapping his foot. You know, that kind of frustration of, okay, can we move this along, please? And that's where the dislike comes from. Thank you, Amy. Sharing your story of the spook. And guess what? Amy is a spook listener.

We love hearing from the spooksters. if you have a story to share, let me know. Spooked at snapdgment.org. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Zoe Virino. No, just from you think it's going to bob, it leaves. You never understand what's going to be around that bin. And what's this?

You've got a story that I need to hear. The world needs to understand. Let me know. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. because the best thing ever is a spook story from a spooked listener and the best way to let folk know you're on this inside track

is by sporting some spook gear the t-shirt of your dreams available right now at snapjudgment.org and remember if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day subscribe to our amazing sister podcast Snap Judgment Storytelling with a beat Spook was created by the team that never missed deals a deck of cards,

but you should know that Mark Ristich always hides the aces up his sleeve and assessment. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen to Win, Davy Kim, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzhouer, Tayae, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Furino, Greta Weber, Tiffany Delisa, Ann Ford, and Doug Stewart. The Spook theme song is by Pat McSilly Miller. my name is from Washington and I'm not saying never pick up a hitchhiker I'm not saying to bar your door

to the strange red night I am saying be wise be careful, be clever and always remember and never forget to never ever ever ever never ever ever never ever never ever ever ever ever never

never