THE FOUR-FINGERED HAND

Balladeer’s Blog presents another neglected American horror legend in honor of Halloween Month.

THE FOUR-FINGERED HAND

Andover, NJ in the years just after the Revolutionary War was the setting for this macabre tale. Four merchants of the area would often get together in the evenings at various taverns for a meal followed by several drinks before staggering home for the night.

Their last names are all that is now known and those were Evans, Bailey and Hill, but the name of the fourth man is no longer mentioned for reasons that will become clear. This fourth man had lost the middle finger of his left hand to a musket ball during the Revolution. 

One night while drinking together the four men swore by God above that whichever of them died first would somehow get word back to those still alive about what sort of existence waited beyond the grave. A few years later the now-unnamed man was the first to pass away. 

His family and friends mourned him and on the first get-together of the surviving trio after the nameless Andoverian’s funeral Evans, Bailey and Hill recalled the promise they had all made to each other. At first it was dismissed as drunken folly but the more the three men had to drink the more serious the notion seemed.

Eventually Evans, Bailey and Hill were so drunk that they had become positively indignant at their late colleague’s failure to communicate with them. The threesome immediately set out for Andover Cemetery to see if the unnamed one had made any effort to emerge from his grave to enlighten them about his posthumous experiences.

It was a hot summer night and by the time Evans, Bailey and Hill arrived at Andover Cemetery they were perspiring heavily and were stumbling a bit less drunkenly after their exertions to reach the dismal site. The trio walked through the cemetery gate and counted off the hundred paces to their friend’s gravestone.  

To their surprise there was already another mourner there. The man was garbed in a dark cloak and hat and was loudly sobbing as he stared down at the grave before him. The three merchants did their best to impose a sober air over their inebriated minds to avoid seeming callous to this odd nocturnal mourner.

Or at least two of them did. Evans was so far-gone that he walked right up to the man in black, clapped him on the back and attempted to jolly him out of his state of grief. Though Bailey and Hill did their best to contain Evans his merry air would not be stifled.  

Attempting to make the eccentric mourner smile, Evans regaled him with the tale of how the man in the grave had once joined them in swearing to God about sending back word from the great beyond. By way of a punchline Evans hurled a series of good-humored insults at the dead man for breaking his solemn vow. 

The black-garbed figure at last spoke. Turning to the threesome he raised his head at last to reveal that he was their deceased friend. The unnamed  Andoverian viciously stated that he knew well the story and the vow and that it was the cause of his inconsolable grief.

Evans, Hill and Bailey stood rooted in shock as their late friend bitterly informed them that because of that blasphemy and his attempt to return from death to educate them as to its ways he was now trapped among the living. His dead body lie in the grave but he could not return to the sweet rest of death, having shown the impiety to flee its embrace.  

In his new form he could touch and be touched but his body was not human. He did not breathe. He had no heartbeat. He neither hungered nor had thirst. He could never sleep and never grew tired. He had prayed at his own grave every night since his death but God was not inclined to forgive him.

He now hated his former friends for their role in his present cursed condition and resolved to show them why he avoided seeking out any of his loved ones. With his left hand the unnamed dead man seized Evans by the shoulder. At his touch the drunken merchant cried out and a frost slowly spread over his entire body. His frozen form fell to the ground, lifeless. 

The only spot on Evans’ body that was not white with ice was the outline on his shoulder – the outline of the dead man’s hand, with the one finger missing. The unnamed Andoverian next turned his attention to Hill and Bailey who fled the cemetery in terror.

They ran until they were exhausted but while huffing and puffing to recover their breath they caught sight of their pursuer in the moonlight, calmly approaching them off in the distance. Again and again they fled with the same result – the unliving Andoverian was still slowly but relentlessly following them.

Hill and Bailey reached the latter’s home first and, brushing away the curiousity of Bailey’s wife and children they huddled behind the locked door of the house, dreading the potential knock on that door from their pursuer.

As the sun rose Hill and Bailey awoke on the floor by the doorway, their heads beating with hangovers and their ears assailed by insults from Bailey’s wife. The pair hurried away to make inquiries about Evans, hoping against hope that the horror of the previous night had been a dream or drunken delusion.

Unfortunately they soon learned that Evans had been found frozen to death in the cemetery with a four-fingered handprint upon him. The body was slowly thawing out and the strange death was becoming the talk of the town. Hill and Bailey were terrified but feared no one would believe their tale and spent the entire day in hiding.   

By nightfall the pair split up to try to make it harder for the Andoverian to stalk them. Come the following morning Bailey was found frozen to death in his own kitchen, with a four-fingered handprint marking his corpse.

Hill went nearly mad, telling everyone who would listen about the macabre events surrounding the deaths of Evans and Bailey. No one believed him, but the following morning the bachelor Hill was discovered barricaded in his bedroom, frozen to death with the tell-tale handprint upon him. 

As time wore on, Bailey’s wife and children were found in the same condition after relating to others the tale Bailey had told them. Any townspeople who spoke the name of the deceased man said to be responsible for killing with his touch were soon visited themselves. Their corpses always frozen like ice and always with a four-fingered handprint marking them.

Decades later superstition had shut the mouths of the citizens of Andover, who knew better than to ever attract the four-fingered man’s attention by speaking his name out loud. Today his name is completely unknown and will remain that way, unless any curious soul might enter the gate of old Andover Cemetery and read the name on the grave a hundred paces in.

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