I once woke up to find a disembodied hand floating above my head.

A dream? Yes, and no. Because I awoke from the dream and reached up to check... and grabbed a solid flesh and blood hand.

To step back and explain a little here, I grew up in rural Devon (England), a mile away from the nearest street light (there were a grand total of three in the village, all of which were switched off at midnight) so if you woke up in the middle of the night and there was no moon it was as dark as the inside of a cow (or any other animal you happen to mention with the exception of some jellyfish which are see through).

The house I grew up in is well over four hundred years old and a Devon longhouse, so there are always odd noises from inside and out. The house wears its history like an old suit; comfortable, well used, but a little patched and with odd bits of memory in the pockets. At the time I used to suffer from a recurring nightmare where we'd dug up an old box from under the floor: the box contained a severed hand which came to life at night and tried to kill us while we slept. Cheery, but I was a depressed teenage boy with an overly fertile imagination. 

On this particular night I awoke just as the hand was hovering over my head ready to pounce on my exposed throat. A dream, of course, but in the dark you need added reassurance, so my left hand reached up... and touched fingers. The resultant yell of alarm was probably heard in the village.

Since then I've given up using my right arm as a pillow when sleeping as it quite often cuts off the circulation resulting in a nerveless 'dead arm'. Grasping the resultant dead hand in the middle of the night after a bad dream is not good for the nerves, and my father charging into the room with a golf club thinking I was being attacked was also an unexpected side effect. I've never been much of a fan of golf since either.

I did use the idea of the 'ghost hand' for a short story some twenty five years later though, so there's always a silver lining somewhere...

~~~

An odd little musing for #wattpadwednesday courtesy of Brian who I still blame for the bad dreams...

The resulting short story was called The Pen is Mightier and was one of the first stories I uploaded on to Wattpad.