Emily Chan
“This Man” is a person who was said to have shown up in thousands of people’s dreams since 2006. However, the man’s face had never been identified in the real world. He has been depicted as having a round face, bushy eyebrows, thinning hair, and small lips.
According to a website created by sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella in 2008, the first person to report dreaming about This Man was a patient of a well-known psychiatrist in New York.
In January 2006, the patient drew the face of the man, claiming that he continued to appear in her dreams and that he had given her advice about her life. She also asserted that she had never met a man like that before.
A few days later, another patient noticed the drawing lying on the psychiatrist’s desk and said that he recognized the man’s face. This Man was also a frequent visitor in his dreams.
So, the psychiatrist decided to send the portrait to fellow colleagues. Four of his colleagues’ patients reported that the man was repeatedly present in their dreams.
After Natella created his website, it became a viral sensation. Soon, more than 8,000 people from cities around the world, such as Los Angeles, Beijing, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Moscow, and New Delhi, declared that they had also seen the man while they were sleeping.
Witnesses of the man didn’t seem to have any common trait or characteristic linking them together. The man’s behavior varied in different people’s dreams. He was often the center of a romantic fantasy. Sometimes, he would try to harm the dreamer. Other times, people would dream that he was their father or schoolteacher.
Many theories based on both psychology and supernatural beliefs arose, explaining the phenomenon, but none of them were supported by any evidence.
In 2010, it was exposed that This Man was a hoax and it was all a marketing campaign set up by Natella’s advertising agency. Natella revealed that he had invented the entire story, and the portrait of This Man was based on a photo of his own father.
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