Why Is Your Arm So Cold?

My sister and I visited the Rosewell Ruins while we were doing a road trip through Virginia a few years ago. We’d never been there before and really didn’t know much about the place other than that it was the remains of a huge colonial house.

It was a pretty warm day, and we’d been walking around outside for a while when I suddenly felt really cold.

It happened when I stepped through one of the openings in the ruins. The temperature change was so noticeable that I stopped and told my sister to come over because there had to be some kind of draft coming through the walls.

She stood right where I was standing and couldn’t feel anything.

I stepped back out and immediately felt warm again. When I stepped forward, I felt the cold air.

We did this a couple of times because it was actually kind of funny. My sister kept moving around trying to find the spot, but she couldn’t feel it at all.

We eventually decided it had to be some strange air current created by the ruins and kept walking.

Maybe ten minutes later we were in a completely different area when I felt it again.

Same cold feeling.

This time there weren’t any walls around me that could explain a draft. I kept walking, expecting to move out of it, but I stayed cold.

I told my sister it was happening again. She laughed and said something about me being haunted, and then she reached over and touched my arm.

Her expression changed immediately.

She asked me why my arm was so cold.

That got my attention because until then I assumed I was just feeling cold. I hadn’t considered that my skin might actually feel different.

I touched her arm and hers felt warm. Then I touched my own and even to me there was a noticeable difference.

We moved into the sun and stood there for a minute. She checked my arm again and said it was still cold.

Then it just went away.

There wasn’t a gradual change. One minute my skin felt cold and shortly afterward it felt completely normal again.

Nothing else happened while we were there.

It wasn’t until later that I started reading about Rosewell and discovered that visitors have reported sudden unexplained drops in temperature at the ruins. I hadn’t heard anything about that before our visit.

I’m sure there could be an explanation for it. We were outside, the ruins create all kinds of shaded areas, and temperature can change depending on where you’re standing.

The part I can’t explain is why the cold seemed to follow me when I walked away.

Or why my sister could feel it on my skin when she couldn’t feel anything unusual in the air around us.