Yeah, that’s not a thing. TBH the voodoo types are well known to be particularly superstitious and histrionic, but they don’t really know why it’s just a very emotional religion. You don’t need to worry about this. You can’t sell your soul either, even if you wanted to. It just doesn’t work like that. The trope comes out of medieval propaganda by the European church against magickal practices and the witch hunts in the 1600s.
You do want protections though, because astral parasites are annoying and time wasting. When astral projecting, the easiest thing to do is teleport elsewhere. You’re untouchable to be honest. Unless you choose not to be.
Here is a getting started with magick guide that also tells you everythign about the forum, and links to FAQs and tutorials. You’ll want to get your spiritual hygiene sorted out, and start work on developing your astral senses, then when you can know you have a decent chance at avoiding impostors and parasites then try the first contact guides we have on here.
For reference:
The rules are here
The posting guidelines are here in the FAQ
The Hat Man is fiction - an Internet creepy pasta meme. Great for youtube videos for teens to scare each other. Magickally it’s basically an egregore - a man-made non-sentient astral thoughtform. There’s trillions of astral entities you’re more likely to meet first.
Shadow people exist, and sometimes they appear to have hats, they’re not all that and a bag of chips: tell them to fuck off and they do.
Can be. They also sometimes just move on and it doesn’t sound like you have an issue now. If you’re not sick, depressed, cranky unmotivated and/or lethargic with constant feelings of dread and anxiety you’re probably doing pretty good. Some of them are only curious about you and don’t even mean it as an attack.
But it doesn’t sound like what you had was a shadow person. It sounds like you had a “hag attack” - this is caused by astral entities that feed on your energy including sexual energy. We (humans) are food. This is the source of the myths about succubi, which are also parasites. We have a lot of info on getting rid of parasites because the are a common problem for almost everyone. Here is a sampling: Forum Tutorials: Parasite Collection