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The Tale of the Bloody Fingers

What if, after stumbling into some horrible bloody corpse (that you've mercifully blanked from your memory) you wiped the palms of your hands on the only clean area of it's shirt. Being in a highly distressed state, you didn't do a thorough job of it. So, you have clean palms but blood on the tops of your hands.

Did you by any chance check your jeans or coat for blood stains? Maybe you wiped your hands on your own clothes.
 
I have experienced something like this quite often, and found my fingers covered in dried blood when i couldnt recall cutting myself.

Personally, I have found that it is almost always a small slit or tear in the area of cuticle and the side of the fingernail, which has usually been caused by catching the skin or nail on something without noticing. These cuts rarely even feel let alone hurt, and always tend to bleed a load. Due to their 'slit' or tear nature, they often become virtually invisible once they have stopped bleeding and tend to heal together very quickly, which is the reason why it can look like you have not cut yourself at all, and along with a lack of pain or physical sensation can be quite odd.

Slightly off topic i remember an occasion when i was scratching my knee in bed, under the cover. Nothing extreme, just getting rid of an itch. When i removed the cover my whole knee was drenched in blood, even though i felt no pain at all! Its amazing how much a small scratch or cut can bleed without even feeling it.
 
I'm going for the nosebleed idea. You probably just thought your nose was runny.
I've woken up before to discover my entire knee covered with a huge black bruise! You'd think I'd remember if I'd smacked it that hard! I can only imagine that I hit the wall in my sleep.
 
I've had experiences like HowardMarks, with cuticle cuts bleeding profusely and painlessly. Suddenly there's blood everywhere and I'm trying to figure what it all came from.

Or maybe you tore a cuticle, had a slight nosebleed, and scratcedh yourself bloody, all in your sleep.

:p
 
I agree the most likely explanation would be bleeding from breaks in the skin. Take what happened to my 24 year old colleague a couple of months ago.

He was back at his workstation after lunch. About an hour later, he noticed a cold wet feeling in his right foot. Kicking off his shoe, he was shocked to find his sock, shoes and lower trouser leg soaked in blood! He was bleeding slowly and profusely from a small hole on his shin. Despite cold compresses and keeping his leg immobile we couldn’t staunch the constant flow of blood, so he was taken to Emergency at the nearest hospital about 4 p.m. He told us later even after bandaging the bleeding did not stop until 8 p.m.! Next morning the doctor had to perform surgery to tie the broken vein. Apparently there was a congenital defect of this vein – he always had his small purple bump on his leg.

Well, he’s OK now but certainly gave us quite a scare that afternoon!

I imagine that if the bleeding had stopped before he noticed that cold slimey feeling and assuming the blood tracks down his leg were wiped off by the dark trouser fabric, we would have a Fortean Strange Happening "Blood inside shoe".
 
I found this in another thread. Interesting...

I also remember waking up once to discover that I was covered in blood, all over my face and hands and pyjamas. When I went out to the bathroom I discovered there was blood smeared all along the wall of the corridor all the way out to the front door. I never found out what had happened, but I remember dazedly wiping it all up, cleaning it very thoroughly off the walls, unable to think of anything at all, rather like an automaton. I was about 14.


http://forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=60145#post60145
 
Very straight forward

When I read this post I had to laugh as exactly this kind of thing used to happen to me quite often, with the difference that I knew what it was.
Especially after nights out!
It is a little embarrassing as you have to admit that you picked your nose.
When you are very drunk and you pick your nose, you sometimes get a smallish nosebleed brought on by your picking (blood under fingernails), the resulting "running" you wipe away with the back of your hand, smearing it all over. As these smallish nosebleeds usually stop fairly quickly you end up with blood under your nails and over the back of your hand.

Next time your nose feels "itchy" you'd better watch out!
 
That reminds me....

When my sister was about 4 or 5 years old, she woke up one morning to find herself covered in blood. Covered. My parents were naturally worried that she had cut herself whilst asleep, but once the blood was washed off there were absolutely no cuts on her, and no explanation for where the blood came from. It was mostly on her torso and arms, not her face, which ruled out a nosebleed. In the end my parents tried to laugh it off as being 'teddy' that had got cut, as she habitually slept with a teddy bear.
 
Do you ever get spots on your shoulders/back? Mundane I know, but knocking the top off of one can produce a disproprtionate amount of blood, and they can be hard to find when checking for cuts.

That or that nice old couple down the hall are preparing you to give birth to the antichrist. Whichever seems more likely.
 
clarrie: I did check everywhere and apart from the backs of my fingers there was no sign of blood (not even a smear). Also if the source was my back it would have been difficult to get my hands in the position to accidentally transfer the blood to the backs the fingers of both hands.

Giving birth to the Antichrist? Well I could do with losing a few punds but.........
 
I'm an awful nailbiter; this has happened to me on more than one occasion, usually at the movies (I bite more there). Cuticles bleed like crazy, like was said before. But when you aren't paying attention (i.e., when you don't think to yourself "I'd better not get blood on my other hand, too.") your hands probably go through all kinds of little wringing episodes that you don't know about. Also, cuticle cuts do put blood underneath your nails a little when untreated; blood is liquid, and liquids like to fill in cracks. If you had a cuticle cut, washed it off, and went to bed, it would probably just repeat the process.
 
Abarine: Some good ideas but I'm not a nail biter and it wouldn't really explain the even distribuiton of blood on my fingers and under my finger nails (unless I'd been nibbling them very evenly I suppose).
 
Emps, I had a bit of an experiment with the ketchup over the weekend,trying to replicate this. From your description it sounds like a dip & drip incident rather than some thing that originated on your hands. The bit about having blood on both hands that is so mistifying. ketchup-wise its very messy and tricky to achieve. Did you check the lining of your pockets?
 
Problem solved!

From the distribution of the blood-like substance, you would have had to make one of two movements, whether consciously or not, both of which required you to be sitting in the pub earlier that night.

The first one is sitting with your elbows on arm rests with your knuckles loosely rubbing and/or scratching for a long period on a lower table surface, which may or may not have been smeared with some kind of red dye, stain, paint, melting varnish or even liqueur, or have been so rough as to induce bleeding without your noticing it.

The second one is holding tight to the ends of the arm rests so that your nail tips and upper knuckles are rubbing on some kind of underside nooks of the arm rests and coming into contact with the same array of mysterious substances.

A third possibility is that on leaving the pub you put on gloves that were dipped in such a substance. (You didn't mention whether you were wearing any.)
 
Re: Problem solved!

Good to see this is still ticking over ;)

annanicole said:
Emps, I had a bit of an experiment with the ketchup over the weekend,trying to replicate this. From your description it sounds like a dip & drip incident rather than some thing that originated on your hands. The bit about having blood on both hands that is so mistifying. ketchup-wise its very messy and tricky to achieve. Did you check the lining of your pockets?
Click to expand...

Yep all my clothing was clean (I checked as they might be a clue to the source) - it was also certainly blood or somethig that looked and tasted like it (I am aware that tasting it wasn't wise but it was as soon as I spotted it and I assumed that if it was blood it was mine).

baracine said:
From the distribution of the blood-like substance, you would have had to make one of two movements, whether consciously or not, both of which required you to be sitting in the pub earlier that night.

The first one is sitting with your elbows on arm rests with your nuckles loosely rubbing and/or scratching for a long period on a lower table surface, which may or may not have been smeared with some kind of red dye, stain, paint, melting varnish or even liqueur, or have been so rough as to induce bleeding without your noticing it.

The second one is holding tight to the ends of the arm rests so that your nail tips and upper nuckles are rubbing on some kind of underside nooks of the arm rests and coming into contact with the same array of mysterious substances.

A third possibility is that on leaving the pub you put on gloves that were dipped in such a substance. (You didn't mention whether you were wearing any.)
Click to expand...

Good ideas but:

1. My local is a little rough and I wouldn't touch the underside of a table unless I really had to. It was also certainly blood - not somehting too unusual as (before the most recent renovations) there were floor boards coated in my blood but it would have been noticeable. It would also not account for how it get thickly under my finger nails. Its also unlikely that I had blood on my hands in my local as they turn the lights up full at the end of the night and I walked a friend home afterwards and my hands would have been visible at all times.

2. There aren't arm rests in my local and the above objections also count there.

3. I only have one pair of gloves (which have never had any subsances in/on them like that. I was also not wearing them that night.

Good stuff though but "Problem solved!"? Not yet ;)
 
I once had blood disappear from my hand. When I was a teenager, a friend of mine had a swimming pool party at night. The pool was large and surrounded by vegetation, so the parts most distant from the house were rather dark.

Walking around the pool in one of the darker areas, I slipped on the wet cement, fell, and hit my mouth. When I got up, I put my hand to my mouth, then looked at it, and there was blood on my hand. I ran over to the lighted area and asked a friend of mine to look at my mouth and see how bad the damage was. He couldn't see anything wrong, and the blood on my hand was gone.

The only thing I can think of is that I so anticipated that my mouth would be bleeding that I mistook some trick of the light or something for blood...

-Neil
 
Crude but honest

I don't mean to be crude but I think my mind works this way as it was the first thing I thought of. You said you walked a friend home. Was it a girl? How can I say this nicely, did you have any goodnight fumblings and was it her time of the month? I just thought if the blood didn't come from you, and you didn't find blood at home, the only other person you were with was the friend. Feel bad for asking but in the name of science and all that! :oops:
 
Re: Crude but honest

NeilUnreal: Its possible that in the poor light you mistook a bit of saliva for blood?

Ringo said:
Feel bad for asking but in the name of science and all that! :oops:
Click to expand...

LOL - well if it is in the name of science then we need to examine the angle.

1. No I didn't have a goodnight fumble.

2. Even if I had and (how you say) the timing had been right the distribution (across the backs of my hand) would be difficult to explain. Due to point 1 I don't think we need people to post unusual ways it could happen like that.
 
Well, Emps, you seem like a nice sort of person, so we can set aside the "Dr Hyde Amnesiac Murdering Rampage Maniac" angle. Or accept is as a possibility and set it aside.

Seems to me that perhaps you had some injury to your head, perhaps a small cut, and ran your hands through your hair. Perhaps you scratched your head a little too hard and...geez, though. That's a lot of blood.

I'm going to back away slowly and cause no offense. Please don't include me on your next amnesiac murderous rampage.
 
Emps, I know this is an old thread but it's fun to dig through the posts. What is your take on it all then? Is it an Unsolved Mystery hosted by Robert Stack? I'd be interested to hear your analysis after the full weight of our Fortean intellect has borne little. :?
 
Ringo said:
Emps, I know this is an old thread but it's fun to dig through the posts. What is your take on it all then? Is it an Unsolved Mystery hosted by Robert Stack? I'd be interested to hear your analysis after the full weight of our Fortean intellect has borne little. :?
Click to expand...

Well given the passage of time we can't really pin it down and say "Ah ha that was it then!!" but I'd iamgine it was something along the lines Fitz said as a little blood will go a long way. I did check everywhere but found no traces of blood (other than on my hands obviously ;) ) but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a cut or something (possibly hidden by my hair) which had scabbed up. The pattern of blood (under the finger nails and the backs of the fingers but not the front or plam) suggests it arose from more of a scratching motion but it was evenly distributed across both hands which is trickier to explain - not impossible though ;)

Ultimately there are sometimes you just have to shrug and admit that you don't have a definitive explanation although it seems likely that there is a natural explanation along the lines of those outlined above.

To be honest if there had been a lot of blood or it had been all over my hands and on my clothes I'd have probably had to phone the police or an ambulance just in case I was going mad or something ;) As a precaution I did let my friends and family know so if a body is found I will turn myself in.
 
I dont want to scare you. BUT a friend of mine had the same thing happen
to him. Only difference is he dreamt he was a werewolf before waking up to find the blood on his hands and mouth. He went to the police but there were no attacks on the night in question animal or human. Strange really ....hope this helps rather than hinder lol
 
baddog: Thanks for the info.

I'm not scared but I am impressed they went to the police. Was he worried or just being cautious?
 
I think he was worried that he'd hurt someone, no attack was ever reported but he lived in a pretty rural area so it could have been a wild
animal i suppose.Truly strange and it never happened again.
 
Peni said:
Here we see the superiority of fiction to fact. That's a stunning opening for a story - thriller, mystery, certain kind of science fiction, horror - but no pay-off. You get mysterious blood all over your hands and something *ought* to happen. It doesn't make any sense - which is one way to be sure it's real.
Click to expand...

Strangely enough, it is the opening of a story; The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag by Robert Heinlein.

A man who suffers from memory loss during office hours hires a Private Detective to find out what he does for a living. All he knows is that when he gets home there's dried blood under his fingernails. I seem to remember that a parallel universe accessible through mirrors and a non-existant 13th floor of an office building are involved. And an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style ending. I always thought it would make great movie. Being John Malkovich meets The Twighlight Zone.

Mike Paterson
 
Mike63 said:
Peni said:
Here we see the superiority of fiction to fact. That's a stunning opening for a story - thriller, mystery, certain kind of science fiction, horror - but no pay-off. You get mysterious blood all over your hands and something *ought* to happen. It doesn't make any sense - which is one way to be sure it's real.
Click to expand...

Strangely enough, it is the opening of a story; The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag by Robert Heinlein.

A man who suffers from memory loss during office hours hires a Private Detective to find out what he does for a living. All he knows is that when he gets home there's dried blood under his fingernails. I seem to remember that a parallel universe accessible through mirrors and a non-existant 13th floor of an office building are involved. And an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style ending. I always thought it would make great movie. Being John Malkovich meets The Twighlight Zone.
Click to expand...

Ooooo thanks for the lead - I read quite a bit of Heinlein in my youth but not that collection of short stories but I'll track it down.

An excerpt:

"It is blood, doctor?" Jonathan Hoag moistened his lips with his tongue and leaned forward in the chair, trying to see what was written on the slip of paper the medico held.

Dr. Potbury brought the slip of paper closer to his vest and looked at Hoag over his spectacles. "Any particular reason," he asked, "why you should find blood under your fingernails?"

"No. That is to say--Well, no--there isn't. But it is blood--isn't it?"

"No," Potbury said heavily. "No, it isn't blood."

Hoag knew that he should have felt relieved. But he was not. He knew in that moment that he had clung to the notion that the brown grime under his fingernails was dry blood rather than let himself dwell on other, less tolerable, ideas.

He felt sick at his stomach. But he had to know--

"What is it, doctor? Tell me."

Potbury looked him up and down. "You asked me a specific question. I've answered it. You did not ask me what the substance was; you asked me to find out whether or not it was blood. It is not."

"But--You are playing with me. Show me the analysis." Hoag half rose from his chair and reached for the slip of paper.

The doctor held it away from him, then tore it carefully in two. Placing the two pieces together he tore them again, and again.

"Why, you!"

"Take your practice elsewhere," Potbury answered. "Never mind the fee. Get out. And don't come back."
Click to expand...

www.wegrokit.com/the_unpleasant_profess ... n_hoag.htm
 
Not worth an extra thread but I woke up this morning to the taste of blood in my mouth. Looking in the mirror my teeth were red with (apprently failry fresh) blood, as was my tongue. Swilling my mouth out revelaed no further blood or any nicks or cuts.

My best working hypothesis is that that a vole crawled into my mouth during the night* and I chewed it up, somehow swallowing all the bones, skin and fur but leaving traces of the blood (probably like an owl might). I will be examinig my pellets for the next few days for tell tale tiny bones.

*In much the same way that, during our lifetime, it is said we eat hundreds of spiders in our sleep.
 
he had clung to the notion that the brown grime under his fingernails was dry blood
Click to expand...

Pity. Might've been much more fun if it'd been, well, any number of things... :D

Emps M8, at least the blood was fresh. ;)
 
bloody hands

Something similar happened to me last week in fact... I was in my kitchen making a hot chocolate when suddenly I saw that the backs of the fingers on my right hand were bright red, sticky and wet. Immediately panicking (I'm pregnant) I rinsed my hand and checked myself all over. Nothing presented itself, so rational thought taking over I retraced my steps. My daughter was not noticeably pouring blood, neither was the cat- however, the tub of cocoa was... I'd used the old tub which had been in the cupboard for at least two years and in that time a bottle of blood red food colouring had leaked all over the lid. The action of taking off the lid had spread it just on the backs and nails of my fingers! I have to say that old food colouring was "bloody" convincing; it looked and felt like blood, and was exactly the same colour. If I wasn't too cheap to throw old groceries away I would never have made myself freak out!
 
Hah! :)

I've just finished re-reading the entire thread, and had finished the last page, hesitated pondering whether to reply, and clicked the IHTM link to go back to the forum... and while waiting for the page to load, I heard from the TV "And so, this episode ends in blood." :shock:

I'm watching a 'Mysteries Of The Bible' program on the Biography channel, featuring Elijah. Damn fine coincidence, if you ask me! 8)

Oh, and the blood under the nails would mean scratching, and reaching around to your back, legs, or head would leave blood on the back of your hand. There, we have the answer... are we solved yet? ;)
 
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