Not Just for Evil Dead Anymore

Remember Evil Dead and its sequels? Remember that one of the key factors in all hell breaking loose and trees coming to horny life was a human-skin-bound book called, alternatively, the Necronomicon and the Book of the Dead?

Well, binding books in human skin isn’t, it turns out, just for Hollywood. It’s for Harvard, too. An article in today’s issue of the school newspaper, The Crimson, reveals the following:

A few individuals give new meaning to the idea of spending forever in the library—their skin binds three of the books in Harvard’s 15-million-volume collection.

Without extensive genetic testing, Harvard librarians still do not have the “foggiest notion? of how many volumes wrapped in human hide exist throughout the system, says Director of University Libraries Sidney Verba ’53. But they have identified three such volumes in the Langdell Law Library, Countway Library of Medicine, and the Houghton Collection. The three books range in content from medieval law to Roman poetry to French philosophy.

I’m torn between thinking that this is pretty cool and pretty, well, weird.

Luckily, all this human-skin-wrapping-paper isn’t just for the Ivy League (though Brown University’s John Hay Library has some, too. They also have some of H.P. Lovecraft’s original manuscripts. Good library, apparently. I just saw the Lovecraft stuff a few weeks ago. Keep an eye on Rue Morgue later this year for my article). Apparently, libraries all over the country have these kind of books.

A Boston Globe online article from earlier in January reveals these thrilling details:

The Cleveland Public Library has a Quran that may have been bound in the skin of its previous owner, an Arab tribal leader … The College of Physicians of Philadelphia [home to the Mutter Museum] has four bound by Dr. John Stockton Hough, known for diagnosing the city’s first case of trichinosis. He used that patient’s skin to bind three of the volumes.

The Globe article keeps referring to “human leather.” Makes me think of fruit leather. Mmmm, chewy.