Better Suited for Halloween...

This certainly isn't what I want for Christmas, but it's pretty dang cool!

'Ghost Face' In Human Skin-Covered Book

By Gerard Tubb
North of England correspondent
Updated:08:19, Wednesday November 28, 2007

A 400-year-old book covered in a sheet of wrinkled human skin is going under the hammer in a bizarre auction.

It is thought the skin was cut from the corpse of one of Guy Fawkes' fellow conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

And if you hold the novel in the right light, you might even see a ghostly face on the cover, it is claimed.

It was published in 1606, just months after the Jesuit priest Henry Garnet was captured and executed for his part in the plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

The book's owner, who does not want to be identified, told Sky News he hopes it will go to a museum so that people can see it.

He believes that marks on the leather are evidence of torture, and says a Latin inscription on the cover which reads "severe penitence punished the flesh" was written to make sure people knew what had happened to the victim.

Sid Wilkinson, of Wilkinson's Auctioneers in Doncaster, says the ancient human skin feels smooth "and a little bit strange to the touch."

Several other books covered in dead people's skin are held in museums around the world.

The practice, known as Anthropodermic bibliopegy, had a novelty value hundreds of years ago. The most popular were court reports of murders that were covered in the skin of the perpetrator.

Ok, you can all call me creepy now.