Beyond Southwest Sierra — #32

The Hand

4530 Alamo St., Oct 15, 2023. According to my Uncle Sam, the house was boarded up for a couple of years after a fire. Now it looks like it is being rebuilt.This week, I am taking the liberty of going beyond our local environs to share a story that is seasonally apropos. Last week, we traveled to Simi Valley for a Celebration of Life. I made a point to look at the first home that I remember on Alamo Street where this story takes place.

My family (Mom, Dad, and three brothers) lived in a house in front and the Emery family lived in a trailer in back. Their youngest daughter Debbie was a year older than I. She hadn’t started school yet, so I couldn’t have been more than four years old when the first story takes place. The older kids were at school and Debbie and I were playing in the yard on a beautiful clear and windy day. There was a room that we called “the little room” that had its own entrance near the back door of our house. The room was long and narrow, not much wider than the doorway. Its length was the full width of the house with windows opposite the doorway that faced the front yard.

Dad used the little room as a workshop where he refinished furniture. Kids were not allowed in there, but on this particular day with nobody around, we decided to sneak in. We opened the door and had just crossed the threshold when Debbie exclaimed “What’s that!?” I looked where she was pointing towards the back of the room. The tall Eucalyptus trees blowing in the breeze in the front yard caught my eye. I said: “It’s just the trees blowing in the wind”. She said: “No that!” and pointed again. There were two dressers stacked on top of each other near the back of the room. One was painted lime green and the other one was painted pink. As I looked again, I saw a white hand with a dull glow rise from behind the stacked dressers where it hovered. The index finger was pointing straight up and it moved back and forth as if to say “no”. It disappeared behind the dressers for a moment then rose again with the same motion. As it disappeared behind the dressers again, I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran!

Even though the back door to our house was right next to the doorway of the little room and my mom was in the kitchen, my instinct was to run AWAY from the house! I ran to the Emery’s trailer, with Debbie close behind. I don’t remember what we said to Debbie’s mom Millie, but I do remember Millie and my mom taking us back to the room, to show us that nothing was there. Our moms told us that we imagined it. I felt indignant that my mom didn’t believe me.

After that, (I have no idea how long) the hand appeared lying on the top corner of my bed one night. Mom had tucked me in and turned off the light, but I wasn’t sleepy. When I saw it, only inches from my face, I told myself that it must be the sheet, in a configuration that looked like a hand. Then I saw that the sheet was not up there, nor was the pillowcase and there was the faint glow that I could not rationalize. By the time all these thoughts had gone through my head, it was as if I decided that being frightened required too much energy. I just looked at it until finally I became drowsy and nodded off. This time, I didn’t tell anyone about it.

Over seven years later, one evening at the Golden Bear Mine Bunkhouse my parents, two younger brothers and I were sitting around talking. The topic of early childhood memories came up and Steven shared that his earliest memory was in the house on Alamo Street. He was very little, and the toy box seemed very tall. He looked in the toy box and saw a white hand sitting on top of the toys! It frightened him so badly that he never forgot it. (He was three when we moved out of that house).

As a young teenager I had an opportunity to see the Emerys. I couldn’t wait to ask Debbie if she remembered the hand. When I asked, she gave me a completely blank stare and said: “no”. I was both puzzled and disappointed, after all, she had seen it first!

I recently learned that my older brother DBJ had an experience at the same house one night when he had to sleep in my room (he doesn’t remember why he had to sleep in my bed, but he was in the room alone). He said that he woke up during the night and reached straight into the air and shook hands with a hand that felt real. He didn’t see anything. It scared him so badly that he lay awake with his head under the covers for most of the night! At the time, he never talked about it. We moved out of that house in 1971 and none of us ever experienced anything like that since. I did have an elaborate dream once, about the owner of the hand and she was a protector of children. Maybe!

About the author: As a kid in 1975, Rae Bell (aka Pauline) moved with her family to the Ruby Mine area located between Alleghany and Downieville. She and her husband have lived in Alleghany proper since 1992. If you have news or suggestions to share, please send an email to: raebell44@gmail.com,

or mail to: PO Box 919, Alleghany, CA 95910