The
Bloody Hand
Abstracted from many sources
and reported in Barren’s
Black Roots, Volume 2,
Michelle Gorin Burris, (c)
Aug 1992. By permission.
Abstraction by Sandi Gorin,
Gorin Genealogical
Publishing
On Columbia Avenue in
Glasgow KY stood a two-story
house, the scene of a
vicious murder in 1857. The
Frank family lived there;
John Frank, his wife and
family. They had a beautiful
daughter who was courted by
and later married a dashing
young man from Bowling Green
KY by the name of Stone. He
came from a established
family and had a goodly
amount of money and wished
to build an appropriate home
for his bride. While the
house was being constructed,
the Frank family agreed to
let the newlyweds live
there.
Several months into the
marriage, in the middle of
the night, there was a loud
scream, and the bedroom door
of the Franks flew open.
Their beloved daughter Mary
stood there, sheathed in the
moonlight, clutching her
abdomen with one hand and
holding on to the door with
the other. Without uttering
another sound, she fell to
the floor, dead, in a pool
of blood.
The Franks household
screamed for help and as
they were calling out the
second-story bedroom window,
they heard the sounds of
feet racing down the stairs
– the front door opening –
and then the sight of Mary’s
new husband running towards
a nearby tree where a
saddled horse was waiting.
In short time a posse was
formed and the men took off
in the direction they had
seen Stone go, towards Cave
City. They almost caught up
with him, when he suddenly
dismounted, took the murder
weapon, a knife, and slit
his own throat. He fell to
the ground dead.
Many court cases followed
and both Mary and her
husband were buried in the
same grave in Glasgow.
Years later, the Vic Bybee
family moved into the house
after the Franks family left
– haunted by sounds in the
night and the outline of a
bloody hand print which
appeared on their bedroom
door every moonlit night.
The Bybee family, a good
Black family of Glasgow,
stayed there for a number of
years, although they all
claimed that often times,
when the clouds scudded,
here and there, when the
winds soughed in and bent
the tree tops, and the
lightning flashed and
quivered all over, they
could hear a muffled scream.
A door would then open as if
with great difficulty, then
the sound of pattering bare
feet and a creak; then loud
proclamations of horror and
amazement, intermingled with
moans and much sobbing; then
the sound of the front door
slamming.
Others said it was just the
wind and their imaginations
gone wild; possibly the
popping of the
house-timbers; the wind
blowing the doors open and
closed – after all, it was
an old house.
The house that Stone was
building for Mary is now the
location of the Hatcher and
Saddler Funeral Home on
North Race Street and Happy
Valley Road. The entire
story of the Bloody Hand is
told in “Blood Runs In the
Barrens” by Sandi Gorin.
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