The Deadman's Hand - Welcome to Grimming It Up

Is the Dead Man’s Hand a superstition, an omen, or just another urban legend? It sounds so ominous, almost like a ghost story begging to be told.

Is it based on actual events? What is the origin and history of the Dead Man’s Hand? It’s related to the Wild West and poker, but why? Has anyone killed someone or been killed after playing it? What cards make up the Dead Man’s Hand? Lastly, what are some of the pop culture references to the Dead Man’s Hand?

If you do even the most basic searches on the internet for the Dead Man’s Hand, you will first find that it’s a superstition or omen relating to poker. Second, James Butler’s “Wild Bill” Hickok’s death story seems to be tied to it. After finding this for myself, a few new questions arose. Why Wild Bill? Did the Dead Man’s Hand have a history before this?

The Dead Man’s Hand Before Wild Bill’s Death

It turns out the Dead Man’s Hand had a life before Wild Bill; well, sort of anyway. Before we get into that part, let’s settle on what style of poker it’s most commonly associated with. That would be a five-card stud. But there are also some variations of the hand related to five-card draw, seven-card draw, and seven-card stud. Clear as mud, right?

Next, trying to answer questions about the Dead Man’s Hand before Wild Bill would depend on geographic locations in the United States. It seems there wasn’t a standard, either, as in some places, specific suits in a full house, three of a kind, or two pairs, were all said to be Dead Man’s Hands. For example, here are a few:

Full house with three Tens and a pair of Jacks
Full house with three Nines and a pair of Jacks
Full house with three Aces and a pair of Eights
Three of a kind with Nines
Two pairs of Queens and Eights
Two pairs of Jacks and Eights
Two pairs of Jacks and Sevens
Two pairs of Tens and Threes

From Wild Bill’s Death to Wilstach’s Book

Try as I might, I couldn’t find documentation of what location is associated with each specific combination. This is where you Grim folks might have more info about your regions of the United States. If you do, please share in the comments or on our socials. This could be very entertaining for us all to see.

There was a man who tried to nail this down, but it looks like he pulled together some hands from newspapers and a couple of books. Cecil Adams shared his research from the column called The Strait Dope. Here are some of his findings:

A Full house with three Tens and a pair of Jacks from Grand Forks Daily Herald, 1886
A Full house with three Jacks and a pair of Eights from Eau Claire Leader, 1898
A Full house with Tens and Eights from Trenton Times, 1900
A full house of Jacks and Sevens from Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences, 1903
A full house of Jacks and Eights from Hoyle’s Games, 1907

Wilstach’s Book Ties Dead Man’s Hand to Aces and Eights

Who is Wilstach? How does his book fit into the lore of the Dead Man’s Hand? Well, he was an author named Frank G. Wilstach, and he wrote Wild Bill Hickok’s biography in 1926.

I believe he defines what cards make up the “official” Dead Man’s Hand today (plus or minus on the kicker card). As far as I can tell, it was after he published his book that we now associate black aces and eights with the Dead Man’s Hand. Wilstach had been in correspondence with Ellis T. “Doc” Pierce, who was the barber in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Doc had prepared Wild Bill’s body for burial and through their discussions, Wilstach was able to piece together what brought about Wild Bill’s death.

Wild Bill’s Death

It’s story time, y’all, but this is the Wild West, and that means stories are larger than life and, more often than not, provable facts are scarce. I’m going to simplify the story of Wild Bill’s death, as there is a lot of back and forth about everything and every aspect of this story. Seriously! Y’all think I’m joking? Was Wild Bill’s hand still clenched when the undertaker prepared him? Did Wild Bill argue with the shooter? Was the shooting an act of revenge? What were the actual cards Wild Bill was holding? The list goes on and on.

Picture an old western main street: wooden buildings, some single-story, some multi-story, and a dirt road parting them. Maybe a tumbleweed rolling down the middle. Then we pan into a saloon complete with wooden, slatted swinging doors. Peer inside and off to one side. You see a card table and a long bar against the far wall, and a few other tables on the other side. There are men scattered throughout, some sitting alone, others in groups. Maybe the table closest to the door is empty. We’re going to focus on the card table. The men fill all the seats. One man stands up and leaves the table, sulking.

In walks a cowboy with a wide-brimmed hat, his long, dark hair flowing over his shoulders, his face stern with his long mustache with whips scans the room, then he struts up to the recently vacated chair at the card table. He sets his hand on its back, hoping one of the other players will want it so he can have his back on a wall. No luck. He sits down with his back to the swinging doors and joins the other poker players in five-card stud poker.

The players at the table take turns betting and revealing their cards for a few rounds. The poker players watch one another for signs or tells, hoping to know when to fold and save their chips. Perhaps an eye twitch showing the others a good hand, maybe a casual finger tap on another in hopes he might get a better card in the next round. These men are gamblers. They each want to walk away as a winner with more money than they had when they started. Smoke is wafting in the air. This is Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10.

A young, drunken man named Jack McCall staggers through the swinging doors. He stumbles over to the poker table and takes a recently vacated seat. Jack pulls out the chair and falls into the seat. He then asks to be dealt in the next round. The young man scans the other players: Wild Bill with his back to the door, Charles Rich, William Massey, and Carl Mann, and the dealer. It’s now a full table again; Jack is feeling lucky. He plays his hand and bets everything he has on a game. As the other players reveal their hands, it becomes clear that Jack has lost it all. Frustrated and upset, he stands up to leave. Wild Bill offers him a coin or two so Jack can at least buy breakfast. Jack stumbles out of the saloon, offended.

The men who are left at the table shrug at one another after the sore, drunk loser’s departure. They continue playing as the night goes on.

After some time, the poker players are focused on their game. Jack stumbles back into the saloon, makes his way to the bar, and orders a drink. He turns toward the poker table and pulls out his Colt .45-caliber revolver. Shouting, “Damn you! Take that,” he fires a shot. Struck with a bullet in the back of his head, Wild Bill falls forward. The other men at the poker table all jump out of their seats and scramble for cover.

They soon capture Jack McCall after he flees the saloon. In the first trial, McCall is found innocent by the local “miners’ jury,” since he claims the shooting was retribution for Wild Bill Hickok killing McCall’s brother.

But our boy Jack starts running his mouth and boasting about killing Wild Bill. This gets folks in Deadwood talking. It turns out to be very bad for Jack McCall and this time, he’s found guilty of murdering Wild Bill. Jack’s sentence is death by public hanging. On March 1, 1877, Jack McCall is executed by hanging him until his death. Six months have passed since he killed Wild Bill Hickok.

Birth of the Modern Dead Man’s Hand

Doc, the barber, would tell anyone who asked that he pried the cards from Wild Bill’s hand and that the cards were aces and eights with a queen as the kicker. In other versions, Neil Christie collected the cards and passed them on to his son. No matter who actually retrieved the cards, Frank Wilstach’s book took this moment as the birth of the modern version of the Dead Man’s Hand. The modern version is black aces and Eights with the Queen of Hearts. In Wilstach’s book, the queen had a blood droplet on it from Wild Bill’s murder.

Is the Dead Man’s Hand a Superstition or Omen?

I don’t have a definitive answer as to whether it’s an omen, a superstition, or if it’s good or bad luck. Just like the Wild Bill death story, it truly depends on whom you ask or what sources you review. Here are a few versions I found interesting.

“Aces and eights, the Dead Man’s Hand can’t be beat.” I feel safe in saying this one was good luck. If you looked good in a suit, then you looked “aces and eights.” The fastest horses at a racetrack could also be “aces and eights.”

Now, on the bad luck side, poker players’ superstition says the hand is an omen of death like Wild Bill.

Has Anyone Actually Died After Playing a Dead Man’s Hand?

It appears only Wild Bill Hickok has this distinction. But I found a couple of other poker player’s stories y’all might like.

Jack Status was quite a poker legend. He had an amazing comeback story one year and, in another game, he pulled off a major bluff. His comeback story goes that about midway through a poker tournament, he went all in with his chips but didn’t declare it. This turned out to be a wonderful thing, since he had missed a single twenty-five-dollar chip. He ended up losing that hand. With his remaining chip keeping him in the tournament, he ended up winning the whole tournament.

That is a heck of a comeback. His bluff, much like his comeback, is cool too. He had a losing hand with seven cards. Jack had a two, three, four, five, six, and seven, but his last card was no strait. He kept that to himself, though, and in true Jack style, he built up the drama by turning over a single card at a time. With each new card, the other players folded and forfeited their bets. In the end, with his incomplete strait, he won the entire pot for that game. Sadly, Jack died of a ruptured aneurysm while he was playing poker when he was fifty-eight.

Lastly, we have Tom Abdo, who had a heart attack while playing poker in 1967. Emergency services quickly put him under treatment. While Tom was being taken from the table, he asked another player to count his chips and save his seat. Get this, y’all: he had this conversation while he was in cardiac arrest! This proved to be fatal for Tom. His dedication to the game resulted in his induction into the Poker Hall of Fame.

Pop Culture References to Dead Man’s Hand

If you’re into Western movies or TV shows, you have likely heard the phrase “dead man’s hand.” I figured out this part, but be careful what you think you will find doing this. Turns out sci-fi, cop dramas, and even a few comedies have also used this phrase.

There were way too many to list, so here is one movie: John Ford’s 1939 western, Stagecoach. John Wayne killed the character holding aces and eights.

Books

The Dead Man’s Hand is also featured in books like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published by Ken Kesey in 1962. A character, R. P. McMurphy, has a couple of tattoos; one of the poker cards fanned out over his chest shows aces and eights. Some other stories with “dead man’s hand” in the title are from George R. R. Martin. This is a collection of Wild West stories. John Joseph Adams has a collection of horror stories that center on the theme of gambling. John Meaney’s novel is a supernatural thriller that follows a woman who receives a mysterious deck of cards that seems to be tied to a string of murders. Lastly, Tim Curran’s horror novel is about a group of friends who venture into an abandoned casino and find themselves trapped by a malevolent force.

Heck, I think I’m going to have to check out these last two; they are right up there on my preferred reading lists.

Music

In songs, there is a whole lot of this phrase being referenced by Bob Dylan’s Will O’Conley character in his song, “Rambling, Gambling Willie.” Both Lord Huron and The Moonshine Bandits have songs titled “Dead Man’s Hand.” Five Finger Death Punch and Black Veil Brides do too. Oddly enough, I made a playlist to listen to while I was researching and writing this up that had some of these on it on YouTube.

Law Enforcement

The last pop culture reference I’m going to leave y’all with is the police. Not kidding either. The Deadwood Police Department uses aces and eights as a patch on their uniforms. If we’re being honest, I think this one is expected-ish. But the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Division and the Los Angeles Police Department CRASH squad, along with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, all use some form of aces and eights in patches on their uniforms too.

Yes, the town of Deadwood in South Dakota also does reenactments and ghost tours too!

If anyone has been to any of these, please let the rest of us know what it was like. Might help other Grim Folk who will be visiting Deadwood to add to their “fun” lists. I hope it is cool, some of the ghost walks I have done I have enjoyed greatly.

Thanks for Spending Time With us!

Some final thoughts: First, we’re so glad you stopped by.

Next, if you want to read on, we have some other creepy Western posts you might enjoy, like New Hope Cemetery. New Hope has a fun urban legend I dug up while I was researching a lesser-known true crime story from my hometown. If you want a creepy and strange true crime story then this is one I bet you haven’t heard of Colorado’s Other Cannibal.

Lastly, we hope to see you again soon.

P.S. I want to give a shout-out to my editor Donna Marie West, she is amazing! And trust me, y’all she helps my posts make sense. I have ADHD and major grammar issues. I can’t sing her praises enough. She is also an author herself! If you click on her name it will link you to her Facebook author/editor page.