The Hands That Come at Night

Okay, so here’s my hand story. This happened between 1979-1982 (roughly). I was living in Northwest Indiana in a town called South Haven, about 45 minutes from Chicago. I was Between the ages of 4 and 6, when I would get visited.. by a hand. It appeared at random times, but it seemed to show up when my father would run the water softener. The softener was fairly loud, so the sound of the machine would muffle any of my screams. My dad used to run it at night, even though I begged him not to. My bedroom was closest to the softener, so it was much louder.

The visits were often enough that I asked my parents if I could sleep with my sister in her room. Gross. Well, then the hand started visiting me in my sister’s room. Despite my screams my sister never moved; she seemed in a trance like sleep. If I put my hands under my pillow, the hand would come out from under the bed and yank me by my wrists. It would disappear quickly when I would scream.

As odd as it may seem, one night it appeared and it had a black glove on, one with an opening on top, where I saw dark, coarse hair emerging. That night it grabbed my wrist when I stretched my arm behind my head. I know this sounds odd, but the hand used to come from the air register. To my parents dismay, I used to cover the register with books, hoping that would help. It didn’t.

One night, I actually got the nerve to jump out of bed and tried to run to my parents’ room, which was at a straight shot for me. I had to leap over my sister, since I slept next to the wall. Being clumsy, I tripped, and the hand grabbed my ankle and started pulling me under the bed! I shouted to my older sister, “Jenny, get dad. The hand has got me.” She slept like a log. But as soon as I said “get dad”, the hand let go right away. I ran to my parents’ room again.

The following night when it came, it was accompanied by a tall, Frankenstein-type character that blocked the entrance to the bedroom, so I think the monster thing and the hand were working “hand in hand” to torment me. It’s difficult to remember how many times I was visited by the hand, but I recall about 10 times in two years, but I am sure it happened more. Finally, at some point the hand disappeared, I went back to my bedroom, and things went back to normal.

The hand looked like Thing from the Addams. At that age, I had never watched or knew anything about the Addams family, so this didn’t influence my experiences. I recently mentioned all this to my psychiatrist. He said that the brain of a child is pretty much like mush and during its development the brain can make us see odd things. Well, oddly enough, to this day, I won’t sleep with my hands anywhere near my head or under the pillow. Also, I still cover some of the registers in the houses I lived in. I know, all this stuff sounds crazy, but it happened. Hand to God, it happened.