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->''"He's making himself a "woman suit," Mr. Crawford - out of real women! And he can sew, this guy, he's really skilled. A dressmaker, or a tailor... That's why they're all so big - because he needs a ''lot'' of skin. He keeps them alive to starve them awhile, to loosen their skin..."''
-->--'''Clarice Starling''', ''TheSilenceOfTheLambs''

Some people are [[SerialKiller a bit bent in the head]]. These people are often living incarnation of NightmareFuel in any case, but the best... well... if best is the word to use here... perhaps "most effective" methods of making them even {{Squick}}ier than they already are is to have them skin their victims and then use the collected skin for some disgusting purpose.

The possibilities are horrific to contemplate, but include masks, clothing, lampshades, and so on.

See also FlayingAlive. Related to SkeletonsInTheCoatCloset, HumanResources.

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* The Akuma from ''DGrayMan''. They kill the human who summoned them and wear their skins.
* ''Manga/AnatoliaStory'': Zuwa from the Kaska/[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Kashga]] clan kills humans and sews his clothes out of the collected skin. Features include black for nubian and brown for egyptian.
* Youaltepuztli Nahualpilli from the anecdotes of ''SaintSeiyaTheLostCanvas'', who did it for ''warmth''.
* Some of the "Health Department" goons from ''{{Biomega}}'' wear aprons and masks made from the humans and zombies they've killed as trophies.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comicbooks]]
* There's an obscure ''Comicbook/{{Batman}}'' villain called Jane Doe who murders, skins her victims, and then wears their skin while assuming their identity.
** At one point in GrantMorrisonsBatman, a member of the Black Glove wears the skinned face of his victim, philanthropist John Mayhew, as a mask. [[spoiler: It's actually Mayhew himself, wearing the face of a man who resembled him.]]
** And just when you thought TheJoker couldn't get any more disturbing than he already is, as of 2012 he's joined this club... [[spoiler:except it's ''his own flayed face'' that he's strapped in place.]] Eugh...
* Carrick in ''NoHero'' was shown on a variant cover in a chair made with human skin with faces.
* NeilGaiman's ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' featured a one-issue story called "Collectors" that was about a SerialKiller convention. One of the killers who attends (he's been dubbed "Flay by Night" by the press) is a nationally famous doctor who has treated presidents and congressmen. The fact that he likes to wear "handmade leather ties" was once commented upon during one of his many talk-show appearances. He makes the ties himself, out of the skin of his victims. And he's got over a hundred of them.
* DrDoom, in what is arguably his [[MoralEventHorizon most heinous act]], murdered his former lover Valeria and made a suit of leather armor out of her skin as part of a magic spell to boost his sorcery.
* ECComics' ''[=Shock SuspenStories=]'' had this as the ending of "The Rug!" and "What Fur?!", both Anvilicious anti-fur stories.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]
* ''Fanfic/{{Cupcakes}}'': Pinkie Pie wears the cutie marks of all the ponies she tortured and killed.
* The ''[[WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers Galaxy Rangers]]'' DarkFic "Raumjager" uses the real-life example of Ilse Koch. Doc is trapped in the "Nazis won" timeline, and sees an "antique lampshade" with a tatooed American flag and the words "Semper Fidelis" on it.
* In TheDresdenFillies , Harry Dresden travels to Equestria. Being herbivores, ponies don't use leather at all, so when Rarity and Applejack inquire about his trademark coat, he finds himself in quite a bind.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''TheSilenceOfTheLambs'' has Buffalo Bill (so named because he likes to "skin his humps") trying to make a "woman suit" out of the skin of his victims in a strange attempt at transformation. Hannibal Lecter also wore a policeman's faceskin in one scene.
* ''RepoTheGeneticOpera'' has Pavi, who cuts off women's faces, keeps them fresh, and wears them over his own, attached with straps and staples.
* Leatherface from ''Franchise/TheTexasChainsawMassacre''.
* In ''Film/MenInBlack'', the alien villain spends most of the movie wearing the skin of Edgar, a farmer he killed and skinned.
* The ''[[TomeOfEldritchLore Necronomicon]]'' as seen in the ''Franchise/EvilDead'' movies is bound in human skin, with the face forming the front cover.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* The Eelfinn in the ''[[Literature/TheWheelOfTime Wheel of Time]]'' series wear a lot of decorative leather. It is strongly implied that they obtain this from people who forget to negotiate the price for their services.
* As part of the Voigt-Kampff psychological battery in ''DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep'', Deckard directs a subject's attention to his briefcase, then declares it to be "100% genuine babyhide" [[InvokedTrope to gauge her reaction]].
* The Canim sorcerers from the ''Literature/CodexAlera'' series wear clothes made from enemies. That means human skin for a part of seen cast. They also use it to write letters on, including supposedly-friendly diplomatic messages to humans. One high rank priest slept on a pile of human scalps.
* In Cornelia Funke's ''Reckless'', Jacob fights the Tailor, a blade-fingered monster who wears the skin of his victims.
* House Bolton in ''ASongOfIceAndFire'' is associated with this. Their sigil is a flayed man and older lords of the Dreadfort would wear cloaks of human skin.
** [[spoiler:Ramsay Snow (aka the Bastard of Bolton) seems to have taken up the tradition, sending Asha Greyjoy a patch of her brother's skin and claiming to have made Mance Rayder a cloak from the skin of his six spearwife companions.]]
** When Ramsay tells his dad he wants to make boots out of human leather, his father is horrified, but not for the obvious reason. He knows from experience that human leather is too thin and weak for such purposes!
** It's also revealed that the Faceless Men use the faces of the people who die in their temple (plus some AppliedPhlebotinum) to disguise themselves.
* In Gregory Maguire's ''Son Of A Witch'', sequel to ''Literature/{{Wicked}}'', dragons have a penchant for peeling the skin off their victims' faces and bringing them back as trophies. As if this weren't bad enough, the Emperor has the faces stretched over frames, and plans to put them on display to intimidate a rebellious faction.
* In ''Our Man in Havana'' the local police chief, Captain Segura, is rumored to carry a cigarette case made of human skin. [[spoiler:It's true, though to make it slightly justifiable, the skin came from the guy who murdered his father]].
* At one point in the ''[[{{Belgariad}} Mallorean]]'', Belgarath finds that the scroll holding a prophecy he seeks was made of human skin. This frustrates him, however, because human skin is ''terrible'' at holding ink, and the prophecy is now unreadable.
* A minor villain in a Brad Thor novel wears boots made of American soldiers he killed. The {{badass}} operative going after him is ''not'' amused.
* There's at least one comment in the ''PlanetOfTheApes'' novel ''Conspiracy Of The Planet Of The Apes'' about 'man pelts'.
* As there are no other animals present on the {{Riverworld}}, people wind up using human skin as leather.
* One of the more disturbing [[TheMorlocks hadal]] artifacts retrieved from underground in Jeff Long's ''The Descent'' is a leather ball made from human skin. Several different races of human were used to craft it, so the ball would have an interesting pattern.
** Since the underplanet is so bereft of biological resources, the hadals are pretty much required to make do with each other for raw materials. Human skin, sinew and bone are vital parts of their economy -- not to even mention [[IAmAHumanitarian meat]]. The surface people who try to colonize the underplanet either learn to adopt the hadals' methods of survival or don't (survive, that is).
* The [[Literature/TheNightmarePeople Nightmare People]] hollow out their victims.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* "American Horror Story: Asylum" serial killer "Bloody Face" skins his victims and uses their skin to make lampshades and the mask he wears when hunting new victims.
* The Slitheen from ''Series/DoctorWho'' and ''TheSarahJaneAdventures'' masquerade as humans by killing overweight humans and wearing their skins.
* Not quite human, but played the same way. On ''Series/{{Angel}}'''s "Life of the Party", the green-skinned demon Lorne bumps into a partygoer wearing a familiar-looking blazer.
-->"It's Pylean."\\
"Ah! My home dimension."\\
"Not made ''in'', made ''from''. ''(beat)'' Anyone you know?"
* The third part of the Reaver M.O. in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' (the first two being raping people to death and eating their flesh, and if you're lucky it's in that order) is sewing their victims' skins to their clothing.
* In the fifth season of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' a demon disguises himself as a "Human Bean" for Halloween by dressing in human clothes and putting on a human "mask".
** There's the season one episode where a demon was taking human skins as disguises. But they kept failing on him and he'd leave behind a blob of human skin.
* The Skins in ''{{Roswell}}''.
* The Visitors in ''{{V}}'' appear to be doing this.
* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' villain Jim Moriarty informs the person who was [[KindaBusyHere so inconsiderate as to phone him during his climactic showdown with Sherlock]] that he will have the caller skinned and made into shoes.
* ''{{CSI NY}}'' 'Yarzheit' references the concentration camp officer's wife mentioned in the RealLife section.
* In the fourth series of ''Series/BeingHuman'', the Warchild prophecy is written on human skin. So that the nature of the skin is obvious, one of the pieces has a nipple on it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* Gorthor the Beastlord in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' wears a cloak made of shaman hides. This is both a declaration of strength and a symbol of the favor of the gods - to kill a shaman is supposedly horrid luck, but given that Gorthor has killed countless shamans and still lives...
** Among the (currently obsolete) mercenary units, Mengil Manhide's Manflayers deserve mentioning.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' has Chaos and Dark Eldar, two of the more morally monstrous factions use human skin in decorations, like clothing, banners, etc. Chaos Space Marines gives us Chaos worshipper and [[ObviouslyEvil all-around cackling madman]] [[DeadlyDoctor Fabius Bile]], whose [[IconicOutfit labcoat]] is, quite [[MemeticMutation infamously]], made of human skin over his power armor. Dark Eldar [[TortureTechnician Haemonculi]], also wear labcoats of skin, though not nearly as memetically as Bile
** Similarly the Flayed Ones of the Necrons get their names because they strip the flesh from their enemies and drape themselves in the strips.
* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' gives us the Tzimisce, the vampire masters of BodyHorror, who use their victims for clothes, augmentation, furniture... and many of them have enough skill to have the victim [[AndIMustScream survive the experience...]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Videogames]]
* There was a mad tanner in the video game ''[[BaldursGate Baldur's Gate 2]]'' who could craft an evil-only leather armor from human skin and the blood of a silver dragon (the only non-evil species of dragon encountered in the game).
** Much earlier you encounter gauntlets of ogre strength, which seem to be made from actual ogre hands.
* Done in ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'' with the duelist gloves...maybe. The description is your character doubting that it's REALLY human skin.
* Sakahagi in ''ShinMegamiTenseiNocturne'' wears an outfit made from the skins of Manikins he's killed.
* In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', the [[http://images.wikia.com/elderscrolls/images/d/da/Skyrim_oghma_infinium.png Oghma Infinium]] appears to be bound with the skin of every race of Mer you collected blood from to get it.
** ''[[http://www.imperial-library.info/content/confessions-khajiit-fur-trader Confessions of a Khajiit Fur Trader]]'' is exactly what it says on the cover: The tale of a Khajiit who made an absolute fortune selling the pelts of his fellow cat-folk, as well as Argonian leather. It all began with his brother's hide and went downhill from there.
* The Tome of Eternal Darkness, from [[VideoGame/EternalDarkness the game of the same name]], is bound in human skin.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* A rare semi-positive portrayal in ''{{Webcomic/Digger}}'' - the Skin Lizards. They wear the skins of sapient beings, believing themselves to be the cast-off skins of men who have died. They mean well by it, offering to skin the main character and her companion to spare them of having to see a dead god. In their own bizarre way, they're trying to be helpful. [[spoiler:This ritual is eventually Ed's send-off.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Originals]]
* The Skin-Taker from the ''DarthWiki/CandleCove'' CreepyPasta is the villain of the fictional show who wears a top hat and cloak made from children's skin.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''{{Metalocalypse}}'' had an episode where Dethklok creates their own line of S&M styled clothes (made of leather, of course). The fashion designer hints at this trope throughout the episode with several ominous references to his "special leather", but the end of the episode has the band discovering the truth, and after all the not-so-subtle hints, {{the reveal}} is so over-the-top that it arguably CrossesTheLineTwice. When the band actually find this out, rather than declaring it metal, they're so horrified that they scream continuously with Nathan pausing momentarily to fire the designer in question.
** Edgar Jomfru forced the upper face of his brother Eric onto a kid imprisoned for [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil illegally downloading Dethklok music]].
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' provides one example that doesn't involve murder, but is just as [[{{Squick}} unsettling]]. Because Randy wanted a prescription for medicinal marijuana, he contracted such an extreme case of testicular cancer that he got around by using his balls as a hippity-hop. He eventually got them removed and had a coat made from his scrotum.
* [[DiscussedTrope Mentioned]] by {{Shrek}} when he says that one of the things an ogre's likely to do is "make a suit from your freshly-peeled skin."
* A criminal in ''SuperJail'' has a habit of pretty much making anything from human hide and body parts.
* ''TotallySpies'' actually pulls this off where one of the criminals turns humans into animals before skinning them and making fur coats "without a single stitch".
-->"It's genuine lawyer."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* The Roman emperor Valerian I was captured at the Battle of Edessa by the Persian King Shapur I. At first, Shapur merely used Valerian as a human footstool. However, when Shapur grew tired of this game, he had Valerian flayed alive, then stuffed his skin with dung and straw and had it put on display in one of the larger temples in his capital.
* Ed Gein, a murderer and grave-robber who was eventually used as the basis for [[Film/{{Psycho}} Norman Bates]], [[Franchise/TheTexasChainsawMassacre Leatherface]], and [[TheSilenceOfTheLambs Buffalo Bill]], was actually more notorious for the fact that he skinned and dismembered corpses he dug up from his local cemetary and the fact that he made leather items out of those skins than he is for the two[[note]]Possibly three. He was suspected of murdering his brother, or at least leaving him to die in a fire, but this was never proven.[[/note]] actual murders he committed.
* Ilse Koch, the wife of a Nazi concentration camp commander, had gloves and lampshades made out of inmates' skin.
* Priests of the [[UsefulNotes/AztecMythology fertility deity Xipe Totec]] would completely flay sacrificial victims and dress in their skins. On the plus side, before they were killed, the victims got several days of feasting and sex before the sacrifice.
* It is said that William Wallace used the skin of the Sheriff of Lanark to cover his baldric.
* One of the plastinated figures in the "Body Worlds" museum exhibit is of a peeled human body holding its own skin.
* There are examples that still exist of medieval books bound in human skin.
** Not just Medieval; it's not even prohibitively expensive to buy a 19th century volume bound in human skin.
* There is [[http://www.humanleather.co.uk/ at least one website]] where one might purchase small items crafted of human hide, thanks to similarly-minded people offering to donate their skin to the cause.
* According to Herodotus, the Scythians used human skins as saddle-cloths and decorated their horses' bridles with human scalps.
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