Myrtle Gardens – Part III

As I mentioned earlier, I shared a bedroom with my younger sister Louise and older sister Clare.   One night I woke up and I felt something really cold on the side of my face.  it was so cold and rubbery and horrible that I immediately sat up in bed. the lights were out, it was the middle of the night and a hand covered my face. It wasn’t trying to suffocate me it seemed to be taunting me by flickering fingers all over my face.  I was screaming and my older sister Clare  sat up in her bed and was shouting at me “Laura, wake up , wake up!”  And I was screaming back at her, ” I am awake.  Get it off me! Get it off me!”   I could see Clare in her bed.  The following morning I was that ill with the stress of it that I couldn’t go to school. My mum had come in our room the night before saying “what’s going on?” and I’d said that there was a hand in my bed and it was in my face and it was just flapping these rubbery fingers all over my face.  Clare explained it away by saying I’d been asleep on my own hand and it had gone dead and “you’ve been hitting your own face”.  I said “Clare, that would be all well and good, but at one point, I’d got hold of it with both of my hands” and I threw it down onto the pillow and it was just a disembodied hand and it came back up into my face.  I told Clare that I could hear her telling me to wake up and could see her in her bed.  I don’t know what happened, whether it was someone putting the light on that made it go, but anyway it was gone.  My brother thought it was hilarious and all the next day was waving his hand in front of my face.

I’ve never been so frightened and to this day it still frightens me to think about it.  In fact, I’ve got chills thinking about it now.

Laura Dove