Seeking some expert opinions...

[bagtaggar]

You all know I'm thoroughly skeptical of any woo claim regarding ghosts, angels, goblins, psychics, gnomes, spirits, etc.

I have, however, found myself unable to explain the account of my sister, who claims to have had a terrifying paranormal experience. It is my opinion that there is a perfectly naturalistic explanation for her experience, and I would like to find out if anyone here can offer a possibility. Let's rule out that my sister was lying, though I can only offer my assurance that she was not. Confused, perhaps, or uninformed, or perhaps a little imaginative, but lying she was not.

Anyway, here's what "happened":

My family was on vacation in Mexico. We were staying in an old hacienda that my step family owns, and one of the rooms had been locked up and boarded up. The story goes that my step mother's infant brother died there several years back and has been haunting the premises ever since.

My sister and step sister were sleeping in the room directly adjacent to the locked up room. Everyone had retired for the evening, and every door in the house, including theirs, was locked and would remain locked till morning (there is a big open atrium and its a small, dangerous village. You have to lock the door on both sides).

So, sis and step sis are sitting on their bed, playing with incense and candles. My sister is on one side of the bed and step sis on another. At one point sis accidentally drops an incense stick on the ground next to the bed. Bear in mind that step sis is on her other side, on the bed (which is about 2 ft off the ground, tall bed).

As she reaches down to pick up the stick, when her fingers touch the floor, she claims that she feels an icy cold hand wrap its fingers around her forearm. Terrified, she rips her arm free and the two spend the next couple hours hiding under the covers arguing over who is going to turn on the lights.

Eventually step sis agrees to, and they spend the rest of the night wide awake, waiting for dawn to come. Eventually, grandpa comes by and knocks on the door, and they reluctantly leave the bed to open it.


So what do you think happened? Perhaps it was some hallucinagenic property of the incense, or maybe my sister has a mental illness we should check into?

 

[Ashles]

How old is your sister and her friend?

Had they been spooking each other out up until this point?

They are in a house with a locked and boarded up room where an infant supposedly died.
They are up late.
They are playing with incense and candles...

It sounds like they may have been telling spooky stories or scaring each other a bit in which case anyone's imagination can run riot.

But surely we can rule out the dead infant ghost, unless it was an infant with freakishly large hands capable of wrapping its fingers around someone's forearm.

Or an infant who has somehow grown or got older since dying.

 

[bagtaggar]

How old is your sister and her friend?

A year younger than myself, so.... carry the 6.... er, 19.

Yes, the elements of the story certainly don't add up. They had been spooking each other for a whole week actually, they both claim to have experienced strange things all week. I'm pretty sure it's the imaginations, the late night, the strong belief, basically a self-reinforcing dellusion.

 

[UrsulaV]

A year younger than myself, so.... carry the 6.... er, 19.

Yes, the elements of the story certainly don't add up. They had been spooking each other for a whole week actually, they both claim to have experienced strange things all week. I'm pretty sure it's the imaginations, the late night, the strong belief, basically a self-reinforcing dellusion.

I'd say at a guess that a cool draft under the bed startled her, and being already in a susceptible state, she spooked. Then she told the story to your stepsister, who reinforced it, and memory, which is notoriously suceptible to rewriting, got conflated until it was definitely, genuinely, honest, an icy ghost hand. I did stuff like that myself when I was a teenage girl, lo these many moons ago.

The problem is that we believe our memories to be so infallible, and we don't realize we're rewriting them constantly, that you'll probably never convince her otherwise--she REMEMBERS an icy hand, even if it was no more than a breeze.

 

[c4ts]

If the ghost can get out of the room enough to touch other people, then what's the point of boarding up the place? That would have been a good excuse to take the boards out, unlock the door, and see what was really in there.

 

[petre]

May I suggest also that the nerves of the body, especially in the limbs, are capable of sending all kinds of misleading sensations to the brain. Sudden changes in circulation, impacts, and even just twisting things the right way can cause limbs to "fall asleep", "hit the funny bone", "feel like freezing/burning", and experience other such odd sensory inputs.

It is possible that her wrist bent when her hand hit the floor in such a way to produce a sensation that (given her frame of mind) seemed to be an icy grip.

Also, (without knowing specifics of it) the bed could have had a metal frame that would have felt quite icy at the time, and she may have had contact with it.

 

[LordoftheLeftHand]

What does the grasp of an "icy hand" really feel like? Cold and pressure?

Ever been touched by something (you couldn't see) and assume it was something it wasn't? In my experience the sense of touch is not very discriminatory. The "touch" of something gets your attention then you turn to look at it to identify it.

Once while I was driving I felt a very brief stabbing pain on my belly. It was very cold and I was wearing several layers of clothing and I just assumed it was "pins and needles". A few minutes later I felt the pain again and just disregarded it. I felt the pain a third time and looked down. Apparently my friend’s cigarette ash had landed on my chest and burned through my jacket, flannel shirt, undershirt, and was working on my long johns. The hole on my outer jacket was the size of a silver dollar! Until I looked down the pain was always a stabbing sensation, never burning. The instant I saw what was wrong, it became a burning sensation.

LLH