Quote:
Originally Posted by The Bloofer Lady
No, but I'm going to Google it right now.
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I googled it after i posted, but didn't find any by that name (not surprising because i heard it from my sister when I was a kid). I had to type in "ghost story and licking" and found it quick.
It goes by
The Licked Hand on wiki.
I checked out some of the variations, but didn't find one exactly like i heard it. The version i heard was the best
, with the effective "drip, drip, drip" house search, which really mounts the tension and puts you there effectively.
We called it, "A Derelict". As a kid, I thought that was the lunatic's name "Aderelict".
Anyway, apparently this ghost story, with an urban legend feel, really got around in the late 70s/early 80s. Figured you might have heard it too.
David M. Brown copyrighted it in 1980, published 1982. I know for a fact I heard it before 82 (before winter 1980). I could have have heard it in 1980, but I don't know how Brown got it out there... that I would have heard from a kid. Interesting.
Anyway, per wiki, "There is a forerunner in the 1919 story 'The Diary of Mr Poynter' by M. R. James, where a young man absently strokes his dog (as he thinks) while reading an old manuscript account of the sinister death of a young student obsessed with his own hair. Of course the creature crouching at his side is not the dog."