Your True
Tales
June 2003 –
Page 6
Alien
Hand Syndrome
by Yvonne
I am a grandmother now, but this happened when I was a young girl. I won't talk much about my family life, because it disturbs me to dwell on it. I will say that it was dysfunctional and even unsafe. At night, I would lock the door to my room and push a large chest of drawers in front of it to keep my parents out.
From the time that I was 12 or 13 until somewhere around my 15th year, I used to wake from sleep to find myself under attack. A hand would be attacking me. I would fight with all my strength to hold it back. It would choke me and clutch and scratch, tearing my gown, pulling my hair. I would be rolling on the floor fighting with this thing and screaming. Eventually, I would be holding the hand and I would focus and I would say to myself, "That's MY hand." Then it would stop trying to kill me and be my hand again. This did not happen every night or even all that often. My parents never were able to get the door open in time to see me fighting with my hand. They thought I had had a nightmare. I believed one of two things caused this. I believed it was either demon possession, or that I was suicidal and too chicken to do the deed when awake, attempted to do the job when I was asleep. My life was so sorry that I believed the latter scenario to be the most likely. Eventually, it never happened again. I am not sure when it quit, but I married at 16 - no surprise - and it had stopped happening by then. I did experience sleep paralysis at this point until my early 20s, the last time being when I was pregnant with my first child.
Flash forward to my middle age. I happened to catch an episode of "20/20" on television. The subject was alien hand syndrome. The people being interviewed had all experienced the same nocturnal attacks as I did. Some were unlucky enough to have no control over the afflicted hand even when they were awake. Alien Hand Syndrome usually affects teens and pre-teens, is thought to be caused by a misfiring in the frontal lobe of the brain. It usually targets young girls. The causes are not known, there is no cure, but it usually goes away by itself. There are a few unlucky cases in which it does not go away. My heart went out to the older people who had no control over what their hand wanted to do.
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