Books Bound in Human Skin, and Their New England Connections

The other day, I went down an Internet rabbit hole reading about books bound in human skin. You know, just your average light summer reading. I usually associate human-skin-covered books with horror movies and novels, but there are some real ones out there in the world. 

Interestingly, quite a few of these books are connected to New England, even though there aren't that many of them out there in the world. Megan Rosenbloom, a UCLA librarian, is an expert on "anthropodermic bibliopegy," which is Latin for "binding books in human skin." In a New York Times interview last year, she estimated there are only 51 books on Earth allegedly bound in human skin. She and some colleagues have verified that 18 of them are authentic. Fourteen are fake and actually bound in animal leather. The remaining 19 books still need to be tested. (New York Times, April 19, 2024, "Books Bound in Human Skin: An Ethical Quandary at the Library")

A book once believed to be bound in human skin. From the Wellcome Collection. 

A few of the 51 books are connected to people from New England. One such book is The Highwayman, a confessional autobiography by convicted criminal James Allen. The full title of the book is quite long: Narrative of the Life of James Allen, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the Highwayman, Being His Death-bed Confession to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison. I love those old-fashioned, don't you?

Allen died from tuberculosis in a Charlestown, Massachusetts prison in 1837. He was only 27, but had lived a life full of criminal exploits, which he dictated to the warden as he lay dying. Per Allen's instructions, after his death the book he dictated was bound in Allen's skin and given to James Fenno, the one man who had fought back when Allen tried to rob him. The Highwayman remained in Fenno's family for many years until it was donated to the Boston Athenaeum, where it remains today. I saw the book once when it was on display. It's small, gray, and unassuming. You'd never guess it was covered in human skin. 

The Highwayman. Image from Atlas Obscura. 

Two libraries in Cincinnati, Ohio also have copies of a book bound in human skin. The book is Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Boston poet Phyllis Wheatley. Wheatley is famous for being the first published Black poet in North America; she died from pneumonia in 1784 at the age of 31. Poems of Various Subjects was quite popular when it was published in London in 1773, but it's unclear why these two copies were covered in skin and who it came from. 

Image from the Preservation Lab Blog.

The Wellcome Collection, a museum and library in London, owns a small notebook with silver clasps supposedly bound in the skin of Crispus Attucks, the Indigenous/Black man killed by British soldiers in 1770 at the Boston Massacre. The book was created around 1780. A handwritten label on it reads: "The cover of this book is made of Tanned Skin from the Negro whose Execution caused the War of Independence." 

Reading about this book made me very uncomfortable. It's one thing for James Allen to bind The Highwayman in his own skin, but it's another thing entirely for someone, probably a white Englishman, to bind a book in the skin of an Indigenous/Black man killed in a political uprising. It reeks of oppression and exoticization. Happily, testing has shown that this book is not bound in Crispus Attucks's skin, or in any human skin at all. It's bound in leather from an animal, probably a horse, camel, or goat. In other words, it's a fake. 

Some scholars have pointed out that the skin of marginalized people was often used in anthropodermic bibliopegy. That's certainly the case with the copy of Des Destinees de L'Ame (Destinies of the Soul) owned by Harvard. The book, written in 1879 by Arsène Houssaye, and was covered in human skin by Ludovic Bouland, a French doctor, using the skin of a woman who died in a psychiatric hospital. A handwritten note by Bouland says "a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering." Creepy.

In 2024, Harvard decided the skin on Des Destinees had not been given with consent; they removed it and placed it in storage. The university is still determining the best way to dispose of it. 

Havard is not the only university with a book like this. Brown has four anthropodermic books in its collection, including two copies of Dance of Death (featuring prints by Hans Holbein) and Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books). Testing has proven the books are indeed bound in human skin, but Brown does not know whose it is. They have been taken out of circulation, but remain intact. 

The fourth book at Brown is a copy of Adolphe Belot's 1870 novel, Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife, a steamy novel about a lesbian love affair. A letter from Samuel Loveman, dated November 10, 1936, accompanies the book. (Loveman was a bookseller and close friend of Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.) It's addressed to W. Easton Loutitt, the university's archivist at the time, and says that "[we] are assured by our consignee that this book is of unquestioned authenticity so far as the human skin binding is concerned." Once again, it's not clear who the skin came from. 

When I was younger, I was more enthusiastic for morbid curiosities like these anthropodermic books. I probably would have bought one if I could. As I've gotten older, my enthusiasm has waned a little bit. Yes, they're products of a different time when people held different ideas about the human body, but now that I'm almost 60 I find myself identifying more with the people whose skin was used to cover the books, and less with the people who did the binding. 

The Deadly Ghost of Harvard College: Killed by a Prank

I'm giving a tour of Harvard Square for a group of friends this weekend, and have been trying to find good ghost stories I can tell. Cambridge is an old city and Harvard is America's oldest college, so there must be ghost stories, right? 

No surprise, there are a lot of ghost stories about Harvard Square, including this one from a 2012 Boston.com article titled "Nine ghost stories in haunted Cambridge." The author of the article heard it on a Harvard Square ghost tour:

... an incident that happened at the Porcellian Club, one of the oldest, secretive final clubs at the school. A group of men wanted to trick a skeptical man into believing ghosts were real. 

A man dressed as a ghost and woke the other man up, who then swallowed his tongue and died. The man now allegedly haunts the hall as a warning. 

I like a good Scooby Doo story (you know, one where the ghost is fake at the end), but in this one, the fake ghost results in a real ghost. It's an added twist. If it's true I feel bad for the poor skeptic, forced to spend eternity as the very thing he didn't believe in! 

I was curious about where this story came from, since it's so good. When did it happen, and to whom? I did a little browsing in my library and found some clues. My friend Sam Baltrusis had written about it in his 2013 book Ghosts of Cambridge, and happily Sam cites the source, an 1846 book by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. 

But Sam doesn't say the dead skeptic haunts the Porcellian Club, and neither does Darley. In fact, the title of Darley's book is Ghost Stories; Collected with a Particular View to Counteract the Vulgar Belief in Ghosts and Apparitions. Yes, you read that title right. Darley's book is a collection of ghosts stories aimed at counteracting the belief in ghosts. Darley doesn't believe in ghosts, and doesn't want you to either. It's an entire book of Scooby Doo stories.

"It's not your undead mother, it's just a dog."

Every ghost Darley writes about is revealed to have a logical, non-supernatural explanation. That undead noblewoman haunting a French chateau? It's really just a dog that sneaks into the bedroom at night. That demonic figure seen in an old German town? Just a local priest in disguise scaring people away so he can have some peace and quiet. That pale wet hand a sleeper on his face feels at midnight? Just someone trying to see if his sister has rented out his bed to a lodger. 

The Harvard ghost story was told to Darley by Washington Allston, a prominent 19th century painter. He's not particularly well-known today, but he was very popular in his time. He was so popular, in fact, Boston named one of its neighborhoods after him. Allston graduated from Harvard in 1800, and claims the ghost story happened while he was a student there. It goes something like this...

Washington Allston, Self-Portrait, 1805. He's projecting "Timothee Chalamet
chaotic twink" energy. 

One night a group of Harvard students were telling each other ghost stories, but one student was skeptical ghosts existed:

The thing was too absurd in itself to gain his belief. He would never believe in ghosts till he should see one with his own eyes. As for fearing them, "he would like to see the ghost that could frighten him"(Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 13).

Upon hearing this, one of the other students decided to test the skeptic's bravery and disbelief. He didn't necessarily believe in ghosts either, but he didn't like the skeptic's attitude and wanted to play a trick on him. 

The next night, he dressed up in a white sheet and snuck into the skeptical student's bedroom. The skeptical student reached under his bed, pulled out a pistol, and fired at the 'ghost.'

Happily, the trickster knew the skeptic kept a loaded gun under his bed, and had secretly removed the bullets earlier (but not the gunpowder). The skeptic didn't know this and thought the gun had fired after the gunpowder went off. Upon seeing the ghost was unharmed after being shot, the skeptic panicked. 

Instantaneously the appalling belief came over the mind of the unhappy beholder that he was actually in the presence of a spirit from the other world. All his preconceived opinions - all his habits of thought, all his vaunted courage vanished at once. His whole being was changed; and he instantly fell into the most frightful convulsions (Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 14).

Uh-oh. The prank had gone too far. The student continued to convulse. The fake ghost and some other students tried to help him, but were unable to revive him.

Convulsion succeeded convulsion; and the unfortunate youth never recovered sufficient consciousness to be made aware of the trick that had been played upon him, until the melancholy scene was closed by his untimely death (Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 14).

The moral of this story is, obviously, don't pretend to be a ghost. Reading it reminded me of something that happened when I was a freshman in college. A friend and I were jogging around the track one night when another friend of ours, a notorious prankster, jumped out from under the bleachers wearing a hockey mask and waving some kind of weapon. My friend and I briefly panicked, thinking we were about to be attacked by a homicidal killer, but we soon realized it was just our friend and the weapon was just a hockey stick. Lucky for him we didn't go into deadly convulsions! Still, it's interesting that college student behavior hadn't changed much over 200 years.

It's also interesting to see how different the story in Boston.com is from the original version. For one thing, the Boston.com story is more specific than the original. Washington Allston doesn't say it happened at the Porcellian Club, but I suppose it could have, since he was a member. He also doesn't say the student choked on his own tongue, just that he died of convulsions. But most importantly, he doesn't say the student came back as a ghost. 

The whole point of Darley's book, including Allston's story, is that ghosts aren't real. Darley wants to convince people ghosts don't exist. If the student came back as a ghost, it would defeat the whole purpose of the book. But I suppose that wouldn't make it a good story for a ghost tour. Someone obviously read Allston's story and decided to embellish it for the tour. 

Personally, I'm a little skeptical that even Washington Allston's original story is true. Wouldn't it be better known that some Harvard students scared another student to death? Wouldn't they have been arrested? Or was there some conspiracy of silence? It sounds like the premise for a good horror movie, particularly if the dead student's brother started murdering the other students while disguised as a ghost. I Know What You Did Last Summer of 1799! And of course it would have a sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer of 1799. 

Once Again, Harvard Students Plan to Raise Satan

Once again some Harvard students are planning to raise Satan on campus. It's not the first time it's happened, and probably won't be the last. 

So, here's the story. Tomorrow evening some students at Harvard University's Extension School will be participating in a Satanic Mass. The students are part of the Extension School's Cultural Studies Club, and are holding the devilish rite as a way of learning about other religions.

The Boston Archdiocese is outraged, saying the Black Mass mocks Catholicism and is contrary to "charity and goodness." The school's administrators responded to the church and said they support the club in this educational endeavor. The club is also planning to perform rituals from other religious traditions like Shinto and Buddhism.

The Black Mass will be led by the Satanic Temple of New York. Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves says they will base their Mass on La Bas, a 19th century novel by the French Decadent Joris-Karl Huysmans. Greaves is an atheist and a Harvard alumnus, and claims the ritual is more political than religious in intent.

“This is not a supernatural ritual,” Greaves told the Daily News. “We don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don’t think belief in the supernatural should give you any privilege, since any deeply held belief should be protected."

"...There’s no stronger cultural symbol for the revolt against the general idea of arbitrary authority and revolt against ultimate tyranny,” Greaves said of Satan. “There’s no better a construct that can act as a narrative for our works and goals.”

The Satanic Temple of New York is no stranger to publicity. They've been in the news recently with their efforts to erect a statue of the goat god Baphomet in front of the Oklahoma state capital building. Last summer, Greaves and the Temple performed a Pink Mass at the grave of Christian fundamentalist Fred Phelps's mother with the intent of making her lesbian in the afterlife.

Lucien Greaves (center) celebrating the Pink Mass

The Satanic Temple seems like a group of political pranksters more than serious Satanists, but their presence on campus still indicate how things have changed at Harvard University. Harvard was founded in 1636 to train Puritan ministers and they took the Devil quite seriously.


The last time Harvard students tried to raise the Devil things didn't go the way they expected. That story goes something like this. One day, way back in the 1640s, Harvard's president Henry Dunster was called away to Concord on business. A group of student took advantage of his absence to experiment with some black magic. After all, Harvard had an extensive occult library, so why not use it?

Harvard's Dunster House, named after Henry Dunster, the school's first president.

The student's did succeed in raising Satan, but unfortunately were not able to control him. The Evil One proceeded to run amok on campus. In a panic, the students sent a message to Dunster that he needed to come back to campus immediately. Dunster mounted his horse and galloped back to campus to handle the rampaging demon. He was a well-trained minister and knew just what to do.

When he arrived at Harvard he poured the contents of his gunpowder horn onto the ground and told the Devil to appear. Satan obeyed, apparently drawn by the familiar, sulfurous smell of the gunpowder. Dunster ignited the gunpowder and the Devil disappeared in a fiery explosion, leaving behind only a foul smell. There's no word on whether the students were expelled or were given extra credit for successfully applying what they found in the library.

I'm all for youthful occult experimentation, but I do think caution is required, particularly if you're summoning Satan. Let's hope Greaves or one of the students brings a horn of gunpowder in case their ritual is more effective than they think.

(The story about Henry Dunster and the Devil was first told by one of his descendants in Proceedings of The Centennial Celebration of The One Hundredth Anniversary of The Incorporation of The Town of Mason, N. H., August 26, 1868 and has since been repeated in various folklore books.)