Most of us are pretty bad at giving gifts. It's hard to know what people want, and making them tell you feels heartless and perfunctory. But below us there is another tier of people who are really bad at giving gifts. They give the kind of gifts that make people wake up screaming in the night ...

6 James Allen Re-Gifts Himself in Book Form

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James Allen was a notorious highwayman in the early 1830s. He robbed and killed people mostly because, you know, in 19th century Massachusetts what else was there to do? The only two jobs were bandits and cowboys, if movies have taught us anything. Anyway, the long arm of the law caught up with Allen when detective John Fenno, Jr. apprehended him and sent him off to be hanged. Allen, having some respect for the man who caught him, decided to give the detective a little gift. One made out of his own skin.

So Allen wrote out his life story and confession and, well, let's just say that he put a lot of himself into the book.

Via atlasobscura.com

The Late James Allen. Five stars on Amazon.

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It was Allen, who had once declared himself to be the "master of his own skin," who specified in his will that a copy of the book was to be bound in his own skin and given to Fenno as a final gift to the man who was skilled enough to bring him down. The detective accepted it and, presumably wearing the thickest pair of gloves he could find, took it home to display on his mantle.

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Next to the shrunken head, Satan's antlers and the rusty fishing reel of the dead.

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As the years went on, the book was passed on from generation to generation with Allen's descendants supposedly using the flesh-book to spank and/or traumatize children. Perhaps wanting to save on money being paid to trauma counselors, one of the descendants finally donated the book to the Boston Library. Patrons and staff haven't heard any screams or noticed the book levitating and they describe its creepy cover as, "a slightly bumpy texture, like soft sandpaper."