To ask what this is? (Pics included)

[TheWooTrain]

So my mums house, she has been there many years. The wall in the picture is 3rd floor next to the outside of her bedroom door, behind the door is a bathroom. The wall is bubbling out (it’s quite hard to see in the pictures), I thought typical bubbling was lots of little bubbles, this looks like a handprint and we’re secretly freaking out! Suggestions to calm us down

It's just moisture in the wall...causing the paint to push outwards. It's only a very vague hand shape. You're seeing things which aren't there. Have you had any issues with damp?

If it’s by a bathroom I’d be much more worried about a leak rather than a ghostly handprint. (It doesn’t look like a handprint to me anyway, btw).

Is the shower leaking? What exactly in the bathroom is directly behind that wall?

Tbh, if anything it looks like a trotter! It’s tiny too. If she’s been there years and not redecorated in a while it’s a new leak or something.

You really need to get that sorted. A disaster in the making.

No damp issues, bathroom well ventilated. Behind that wall is just a plain wall, sink is opposite the plain wall (at quite a distance away) and shower is other end of the room. Very random! Asked mum if she’s maybe flicked water up the wall after a shower/washing her hands, but she is insistent that wall stays dry

@NoSquirrels she isn’t very good at taking pictures haha! In person it’s honestly 4 fingers and a thumb, I didn’t have my phone with me when I went there!

It's definitely a handprint, but coming out from behind the wall! .

Did anything weird ever happen in the bathroom behind that wall?

@Linguini I bloody hope not! Me and DD lived there before I moved and it was never there then.

I'd get someone to look at that, looks like damp or a leak below the plaster.

It's from an old light switch, filled in badly with Polyfilla (or as likely cheap plaster) when the house was rewired - probably around 1983.

The only other thing that would have happened the other side of the wall would be an awful lot of baths, showers and poos over the intervening years.

@NeverDropYourMooncup

It's from an old light switch, filled in badly with Polyfilla (or as likely cheap plaster) when the house was rewired - probably around 1983.

The only other thing that would have happened the other side of the wall would be an awful lot of baths, showers and poos over the intervening years.

This sounds right. You can even see the faint lines around the hand in a sort of square shape.

@Linguini

It's definitely a handprint, but coming out from behind the wall! .

Did anything weird ever happen in the bathroom behind that wall?

No it isn't lol.

I think it’s the Jesus’s face on a slice of toast phenomenon. Some dodgy polyfilla work going on here by the looks of it. It’s like looking at the clouds and seeing a horse, a car or something. We are hardwired to find familiar patterns and shapes in things.

I lived in a rented house in my student days where a strange bulge appeared under the paint in my room. Nothing supernatural. It was the fruiting body from a major dry rot infestation. It finally erupted through the glosswork six months later.

It's the handprint of a ghost child - probably a child servant who died in your dm's house. It is also a greenish colour which suggests ectoplasm - deffo the sign of a ghost.

I would call an exorcist immediately.