The Bizzare Story Behind the 'Necropants' Made from Human Leg Skin

A pair of sorcerous "necropants," which were made in the 17th century from a dead man's skin, are currently on display in Iceland.

These pants, which were traditionally made from the legs of a dead person, were thought to bring the wearer good luck.

"I will have to burst the bubble that the necropants on display are a replica, from a mold made from a man (except the most intimate part, which is made up)," Anna Björg Þórarinsdóttir, who runs the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft, told Newsweek.

"But the necropants were believed to bring wealth to the one who wore them and in Icelandic grimoires and folklore there are descriptions on how to make them."

According to Þórarinsdóttir, the pants must be made with skin that is completely intact, with no holes or scratches. The sorcerer then steps into the skin which will "immediately become one with his own."

"A coin must be stolen from a poor widow, either at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsunday [a Christian festival on the seventh Sunday after Easter] and kept in the scrotum. It will then draw money from living persons and the scrotum will never be empty when the sorcerer checks," Þórarinsdóttir said.

"However, his spiritual well-being is at risk unless he gets rid of the necropants before he dies. If he dies with the pants on, his body will become infested with lice as soon as he passes away. The sorcerer must therefore find somebody that is willing to take the pants and put his leg into the right leg before the sorcerer steps out of the left one. The pants will keep on drawing money for generations of owners."

The Museum of Icelandic Witchcraft and Sorcery, located in Hólmavík, Iceland, also contains a variety of other weird and wacky displays, including mummified animal skulls and rune-carved wooden staves.

There are many museums that display this kind of macabre exhibits, ranging from plastinated cadavers, soapy corpses, and malformed fetuses in jars. Despite their graphic and often disturbing content, museums dedicated to the deathly and disgusting get huge footfall: the real plastinated corpses of human beings on display in a variety of poses and levels of anatomy in the Body Worlds museums have attracted more than 50 million visitors in over 150 cities, according to the museums themselves.

"I would imagine the reason most people visit these displays is the same reason people watch horror movies. The ability to see something scary when, ultimately, you are completely safe, gives us a chance to explore feelings of fear, death, and disgust, while being in no actual danger," Matthew Goldfine, a Clinical Psychologist, told Newsweek.

According to Goldfine, curiosity also plays a large role in what attracts us to the macabre, allowing us to experience the darker parts of humanity in a safe environment, and being able to leave it behind easily.

"When the source of the disgust is in a museum or a film/video, I think these sources are far enough removed from ourselves that allows one to feel safe from the gross things. We might have strong feelings of disgust (just the thought of human skin anything would induce disgust in most people) but the safe distance allows some people to perceive the situation in a different way. Someone seeing a real dead body in a street would be more disgusting than seeing a dead body in a video," Alexander J Skolnick, director of the Animal Studies Program at Saint Joseph's University, told Newsweek

"Disgust motivates withdrawal and revulsion, while curiosity can motivate one to approach and learn about something, thus the opposite of disgust. There are many people that thinking something is very gross would prevent curiosity and they are the ones who won't go to these museums displaying death and bodies and necropants. People that might tolerate being disgusted can act on their own curiosity. I think the necropants would normally draw strong curiosity in many and an item so weird might trump feelings of disgust, allowing them to view it," he said.