Warning: the latest news from Harvard University might make your skin crawl.

Researchers from the school's library have confirmed a report first surfaced last year that at least one of the books in the collection is bound in human skin, a university press announcement says.

Contradicting an earlier announcement that the 19th-century tome was determined to be wrapped in sheepskin, on June 4 Harvard's rare book library confirmed human skin was the covering of choice for the 315-page work, "Des destinées de l'ame," or, translated in English, "The Destiny of the Soul," written in the late 1800s by French author Arsène Houssaye and presented to Ludovic Bouland, a doctor and enthusiastic book collector.

According to personal notes linked to the book, it was apparently Bouland who had the book -- which dealt with issues of the human soul and belief in an afterlife -- bound with the skin off the back of a mentally ill woman, an unclaimed patient who had died of a stroke.

Harvard's Houghton Library announced many of the story's details back in May 2013

Bouland included a handwritten note with the volume, which a book collector left with Houghton in 1934.

The note, translated from the original French reads:

"This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman. It is interesting to see the different aspects that change this skin according to the method of preparation to which it is subjected. ..."

Using a technique known as peptide mass fingerprinting to study the book cover, Harvard's expert staff said there's a 99.9 percent chance the binding originated from a human body, not that of a sheep, cow, goat -- or even ape.

Houssaye's ultra-human work is believed the only one of its kind at Harvard. Another human-bound book referenced by Bouland, and from the 17th century, is held at the Wellcome LIbrary in London.

In April, Harvard announced that a 17th-century Spanish book in its law school library was bound in sheepskin, not human flesh, as initially thought.

The practice of binding books in human skin, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, dates back to at least the 16th century, while tanning the flesh of human enemies, criminals or heretics has been associated with the Scythians, an ancient Iranian tribe prominent from about 7 B.C. To 4 A.D.

In the 19th century, bodies of executed criminals were routinely handed over to medical education as their skins were often given to bookbinders and tanners.