The Flayed Hand

Title: The Flayed Hand

Author: Guy de Maupassant

Narrator: Jonathan Dunne

Original Publication: 1875

Public Domain: Yes

Series Placement: Number 25 in the Timeless Terrors series

Description:

The Flayed Hand by Guy de Maupassant is a macabre tale of obsession, vengeance, and the supernatural — a chilling exploration of how the dead may reach back to punish the living. When a collector acquires a mummified human hand, said to have belonged to a murderer, he regards it as a mere curiosity. But when the relic’s gruesome history begins to manifest in reality, terror takes hold, and reason gives way to horror.

Maupassant’s sharp realism and psychological insight lend the story a disturbing plausibility, transforming a simple ghost tale into a meditation on guilt, possession, and the price of curiosity.

Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance captures the story’s eerie tension and mounting dread — the quiet unease of an ordinary setting pierced by the inexplicable. While the text itself resides in the public domain, this narration is an original work and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne.

This audiobook is part of Timeless Terrors, a series devoted to reviving the dark classics of horror and the uncanny — timeless stories that still chill the blood, rendered in haunting new performances for a modern audience.

Listeners should prepare for a tale where curiosity becomes curse, where relics of the past refuse to rest, and where the hand of the dead may yet reach for the living.

© 2025 Jonathan Dunne (Audiobook): 9798347836314

Release date

Audiobook: 10 October 2025