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Chapter 74 - The Licked Hand

If you're a pet lover, skip on to the next tale, please! This brutal urban legend depicts a scared, young girl who is spending the night home alone for the very first time. While trying to sleep, she hears an ominous dripping noise coming from her bathroom. Too spooked to investigate, she curls up under the covers, reaching down to find reassurance in her faithful dog who licks her hand from the floor. The next morning, she decides to investigate the strange sound only to find her beloved pet slaughtered and a terrifying message written in blood across the bathroom wall: "humans can lick hands too."

In the case of The Licked Hand, its origins go back more than a century. In the 1990s, a similar motif dates back to an Englishman's diary entry from 1871. In it, the diary keeper, Dearman Birchall, retold a story he heard at a party of a man whose wife woke him up in the middle of the night, urging him to go investigate what sounded like burglars in their home. He told his wife that it was only the dog, reaching out his hand. He felt the dog lick his hand ... but in the morning, all his valuables were gone: He had clearly been robbed.