my uncle bought an antique book. the cover was human skin.

Okay so this is my uncle's story.

He's really into collecting old books, like genuinely obsessed, always hitting up used bookshops whenever he had a free moment. And one day he finds this antique book at one of them. An American's diary about battles with Native Americans, written in journal format. Not an original but a period reproduction, so still legitimately old. He paid a lot for it and brought it home to his personal bookshelf. Treated it like a treasure.

Then the next day? He can't sleep. And the day after that. And the day after THAT.

Every time he came home from work the air in his room felt... heavy. Wrong. He started having nightmares almost every single night. This went on for MONTHS. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him.

So he starts thinking, okay, maybe something in the room is bad news. He calls up a mudang (a Korean shaman he knew personally) and asks her to come take a look.

The second she steps into his room she makes this horrible expression and YELLS at him.

"Why do you even HAVE this?!"

She walks straight to the bookshelf. Trembling hands. She pulls out the antique book, the Native American diary.

And she goes:

"This is human skin. THE COVER. It's made from a person's skin."

They took the book to a nearby Buddhist temple that same day and asked the monks to perform memorial rites for it. After that the air in his room cleared up. No more nightmares.

My uncle finished the story and then looked at me and said:

"I only bought volume one. The set had multiple books. That used bookstore still had four more volumes sitting on the shelf."

All I'll say is it was a used bookshop somewhere in Tokyo.

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**[follow-up from same poster]**

Oh I forgot to mention. There were a few other books on that shelf that the mudang said were also "not great to own." She took those herself and dealt with them personally.

That's it.

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**[reply from another user]**

Wait I heard almost this exact same story from an old friend. Book about battles with Native Americans, cover made of human skin, the owner having nightmares the whole time they had it. It's literally identical.

When did this happen? The one I heard was over 10 years old at the time. Could it have been a different volume of the same set??

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**[another reply]**

So in the American west where a lot of the frontier fighting happened, there are still white families with Native American skulls in their houses. War trophies from like great-great-grandfather's era. I've actually seen one with a hole drilled in it and feathers stuck in for decoration.

I was visiting a white friend's house and there was one hanging above the living room fireplace. I assumed it was fake and asked about it. The guy went "oh that? Apparently grandpa dug it up while gardening when he was young. Looked boring so I decorated it myself."

I was just. I couldn't.

Anyway. If people were doing that with skulls, someone absolutely would have made a book cover out of Native skin. Easily.

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**[another reply]**

This is so disturbing. There's actually a story by Inagawa Junji¹ about a mask made of human skin too.

Speaking of human skin, here's one more.

A festival in some Italian city. Big colorful parade, everyone in high spirits. And there's this group of young guys walking around showing off, wearing novelty masks. You know those animal masks and monster masks they sell at general stores.

One of them is wearing a mask that's weirdly, unsettlingly realistic. A human face.

It's real.

The guy was low-level mafia. The face on the mask belonged to someone who had betrayed the organization. The kid had killed him, peeled the face off, and wore it around as a warning.

At a festival. In public. Just... walking around.