SOURCE: "The Beast With Five Fingers" (The New Decameron, 1919) by W. F. Harvey

DESCRIPTION: "About ten yards in front of him, crawling along the floor, was a man's hand. Eustace stared at it in utter amazement. It was moving quickly in the manner of a geometer caterpillar, the fingers humped up one moment, flattened out the next; the thumb appeared to give a crablike motion to the whole...He noted with disgust that the nails had grown long and discoloured...There it was, old and maimed, dumb and blind, with a ragged hole in the middle, crawling, staggering, trying to creep up the slippery sides, only to fall back helpless." ("The Beast With Five Fingers" by W. F. Harvey)

NOTES: The left hand of Adrian Borlsover gains its evil spirit through the medium of automatic writing. While still attached it decides that it will haunt Adrian's young nephew, Eustace.  After Adrian's death the hand engineers it so it is sent to Eustace in a box. The thing escapes and begins to haunt the house, frightening the servants. Eustace traps it in his desk and a safe but the thing keeps escaping. Running away does little better since the hand finds ways to sneak into luggage or gloves. In the end Eustace and his friend Saunders hole up in a locked room but the creature finds its way in through the chimney, starting a house fire. While Saunders runs for help the hand kills Eustace.

HISTORY: Harvey's story is probably the most famous animated hand story. Guy de Maupassant was earlier with "The Flayed Hand" and "The Hand". Famous hand stories after Harvey include Clive Barker's "The Inhuman Condition" in which everybody's hands go W. F. Harvey. The story was written in 1919 but expanded in the more familiar version in 1928. "Thing" on The Addams' Family TV show and movies is based on the 1948 film version of this story.

Peter Lorre in The Beast With Five Fingers