If these were made of white kid
gloves, stuffed, the idea, at least, was borrowed from ghost stories,
in which ghostly hands, with no visible bodies, are not unusual. We
see them in the Shchapoff case, at Rerrick, and in other haunted
houses. Here are some tales of Hands, old or new.
THE COLD HAND
[Jerome Cardan, the famous physician, tells the following anecdote in
his De Rerum Varietate, lib. x., 93. Jerome only once heard a rapping
himself, at the time of the death of a friend at a distance. He was
in a terrible fright, and dared not leave his room all day.]
A story which my father used often to tell: "I was brought up," he
said, "in the house of Joannes Resta, and therein taught Latin to his
three sons; when I left them I supported myself on my own means. It
chanced that one of these lads, while I was studying medicine, fell
deadly sick, he being now a young man grown, and I was called in to be
with the youth, partly for my knowledge of medicine, partly for old
friendship's sake. The master of the house happened to be absent; the
patient slept in an upper chamber, one of his brothers and I in a
lower room, the third brother, Isidore, was not at home.
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