Table of Contents: What is This Man? EVER DREAM THIS MAN? The Urban Legend of This Man: The Creepy Man Appearing in Dreams / Hypotheses on the This Man Phenomenon / The True Identity and Reality of This Man / Works Based on This Man / Conclusion
What is This Man? Have you ever seen the face of a smiling man with large eyes, thick eyebrows, and a slightly receding hairline? "This Man" refers to an unfamiliar man who repeatedly appears in the dreams of a vast number of people.
EVER DREAM THIS MAN? "This Man" spread explosively across the world via the internet, originating from the website "Ever Dreamed This Man?" mentioned above. It first appears in the dreams of a female patient attending a psychiatric hospital. Gradually, eyewitness testimonies began to flood in from other people claiming he appeared in their dreams as well. Named "This Man" to signify "this man," he continued to increase his eyewitness accounts around the world, turning into a massive urban legend.
The Urban Legend of This Man: The Creepy Man Appearing in Dreams The detailed specifics of the "This Man" urban legend are as follows. In January 2006, a female patient at a psychiatric hospital in New York drew a portrait of a man who repeatedly appeared in her dreams. The female patient stated that she had never met the man from her dreams even once before. At the time, the doctor in charge did not pay special attention to this story. However, a few days later, another male patient claimed that an unknown man kept appearing in his dreams. When shown the portrait drawn by the female patient, the male patient declared, "This is the man." Moreover, the male patient had also never met the man in the portrait before. Finding this strange, the doctor sent the portrait to a colleague to check if any other patients had seen the same man, and within a few months, four patients reported seeing the man in the portrait. The patients all referred to the pictured man as "This Man." An official website was created to gather information about him, and over 2,000 people worldwide claimed to have seen This Man. The contents of the dreams in which "This Man" appeared varied wildly depending on the witness: "just staring at This Man," "flying in the sky together with This Man," or "This Man dressed as Santa Claus." Amidst the successive eyewitness reports, individuals even began appearing who claimed that they themselves were "This Man."
Hypotheses on the This Man Phenomenon The official "This Man" website, "Ever Dreamed This Man?", proposes the following five hypotheses regarding this series of phenomena:
The theory that "This Man" is one of the archetypes subconsciously imagined by the majority of people. The theory that "This Man" is a god, and the man's appearance is one of the forms of a god. The theory that a major corporation possessing mind-interference technology is making people dream of This Man. The theory that people who heard the story of "This Man" were influenced and merely saw him in their dreams as well. The theory that since it is difficult to remember people's faces in dreams, whenever one tries to recall a figure from a dream, their face transforms into "This Man."
Reference: THEORIES – EVER DREAM THIS MAN?
The True Identity and Reality of This Man What on earth is the true identity of the mysterious figure "This Man" who appears in the dreams of numerous people? In reality, this This Man phenomenon was orchestrated; an Italian marketer named Andrea Natella admitted to carrying it out as a piece of guerrilla marketing. Andrea Natella, who operated an advertising business, was engaged in "viral marketing" that utilizes word-of-mouth on the internet, such as social media, to spread information. He created the "This Man" website as part of this effort. While it became clear that "This Man" was marketing orchestrated by Andrea Natella, it remains undisclosed what he was trying to promote. One theory suggests it was for the advertisement of a certain movie, but the movie in question was never released.
Works Based on This Man "This Man" shot to fame and became an urban legend through viral marketing that swept the entire world. Even after his true identity was revealed, his brilliant advertising strategy was adopted by other industries, and works based on "This Man" were produced. Here, we would like to introduce some works based on "This Man."
Manga: "This Man: The Face of Death" (Manga: Hiroshi Kouei, Original Story: Sora Karin) The protagonist, a police officer skilled at drawing portraits, receives a request to "draw a portrait of a certain 'suspicious person'." Based on the client's testimony, he draws the portrait, and the resulting figure turns out to be identical to This Man from the urban legend. The man in the portrait is a dangerous individual who commits serial murders, declaring, "Death comes to those who see This Man..."
"Dream Man" (Broadcast on April 29, 2017, in "Tales of the Unusual '17 Spring Special", Starring: Ayami Nakajo) The story begins when a female university student learns in a university lecture that messages are hidden within dreams. Driven by morbid curiosity, she recreates the face of the man who appeared in her dreams using illustration software, uploads it to Twitter, and posts, "This man appears in my dreams. Please help me." By the next morning, the post had gained massive traction, and her surrounding friends one after another began saying, "I've seen this man in my dreams too..."
Conclusion Although the truth behind "This Man" has been revealed, it still persists as an urban legend. The mastermind Andrea Natella spread the rumor of "This Man" as an experiment, but does that alone truly cause large numbers of people to dream of him? Urban legends often take on a life of their own, and "This Man" likewise became an entity spread and recognized through human rumors. If "This Man" had a face resembling that of a Japanese person, eyewitness accounts in dreams might have surged in Japan as well.
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