Ed Gein and the Dark Heart of Wisconsin: Why the Plainfield Ghoul Still Haunts Us
With a new streaming series reigniting fascination with one of America's most notorious killers, Ed Gein's story has once again emerged from the shadows of central Wisconsin. But for those who know the state's darker history, Gein never really left. His legacy haunts Plainfield's quiet streets, influences our understanding of horror in popular culture, and draws curious visitors to Wisconsin's most macabre landmarks.
The question isn't whether Ed Gein still matters... it's why his story continues to grip our collective imagination more than six decades after his crimes came to light.
The Butcher of Plainfield: A Wisconsin Horror Story
Edward Theodore Gein wasn't supposed to become a household name. Born in La Crosse in 1906, he spent most of his life as what locals called "the village idiot"... a quiet, odd bachelor who babysat children, took odd jobs around Plainfield, and seemed harmless enough. That perception shattered on November 16, 1957, when police investigating the disappearance of hardware store owner Bernice Worden made a discovery that would horrify the nation.
According to the news reports on that fateful day, when the police entered the farmhouse of Gein, the horrifying discoveries caused Sheriff immediately to rush outside and regurgitate. What officers found in that isolated farmhouse defied comprehension: human remains fashioned into household items, masks made from preserved human skin, and evidence of grave robbing that had gone undetected for years.
The most chilling detail? One room in the squalid, cluttered house remained immaculate... his deceased mother's bedroom, preserved as a shrine to the woman who had dominated his entire existence.
The Making of a Monster: Augusta Gein's Shadow
To understand Ed Gein, you must understand Augusta. A domineering, deeply religious woman with extreme views about sexuality and sin, she raised her sons in isolation on their Wisconsin farm, convinced that the outside world, particularly women, represented corruption and temptation.
To young Eddie, Augusta's influence was absolute. Her views on sexuality were, as one historical account describes, "characteristically extreme." She saw most women as harlots and raised Ed to fear and revile them while simultaneously making herself the center of his world. When Augusta died in 1945, Ed was devastated beyond measure.
It was only a span of about six years, Gein lost his entire family. First his father in 1940, then his brother Henry in 1944 under suspicious circumstances, and finally Augusta in 1945. At that point, he was completely alone. There was no one in the world that he is close to or he loves or loves him left anymore.
What followed was a descent into madness shaped by religious delusion and desperate grief. Ed believed he could resurrect his mother through sheer willpower... a warped interpretation of the biblical story of Lazarus that his mother had drilled into him. When that failed, he found another way to keep her close.
From Grave Robber to Killer: The House of Horrors
Beginning around 1947, Gein started visiting local cemeteries at night, exhuming recently buried remains of middle-aged women who reminded him of his mother. He would later confess to robbing nine graves, though the true number may never be known.
His fascinations fed his compulsions. He devoured stories about headhunters, cannibals, and Nazi atrocities, particularly tales of Ilse Koch, the "Witch of Buchenwald," who allegedly created lampshades from human skin. These sensationalized accounts from pulp magazines and adventure stories seemed to provide a blueprint for his own grotesque craft.
But Gein didn't stop at grave robbing. On December 8, 1954, tavern owner Mary Hogan disappeared from her bar in nearby Bancroft. Three years later, Bernice Worden vanished from her Plainfield hardware store on opening day of deer hunting season. Both women fit a profile: substantial, middle-aged German women who bore a resemblance to Augusta.
When police found Worden's body "strung out like a deer, beheaded" in Gein's shed, they knew they'd found their killer. The subsequent search of the property revealed the full extent of his crimes... human skin crafted into furniture, bowls made from skulls, and other items too disturbing to detail.
The Cultural Legacy: How Ed Gein Shaped Horror
Perhaps nothing illustrates Gein's enduring impact better than his influence on popular culture. Within three years of his arrest, author Robert Bloch, who lived just 40 minutes from Plainfield in Wautoma, published Psycho, featuring Norman Bates, a character clearly inspired by Gein's crimes and his relationship with his mother.
Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film adaptation of Psycho became a watershed moment in cinema, essentially creating the modern slasher genre. It is the first slasher film and ends up changing the face of horror movies and influences everything after. It's Ed Gein who gave us the modern slasher film.
The influence didn't stop there. Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"(1974) featured Leatherface wearing masks of human skin and a house decorated with human remains, direct echoes of Gein's farmhouse. However, the TV show takes great liberties with Ed and the chainsaw, having him fling it wildly like Leatherface at the end of the movie, which is a fun homage, but never happened in real life.
Thomas Harris also drew on Gein's story for Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, the antagonist who killed women to create a "suit" from their skin.
Even heavy metal found inspiration in the Plainfield ghoul. Tom Araya, lyricist and vocalist for Slayer told Metal Hammer, that "It’s just fascinating to me how people can do such things to each other... I came across a book called Deviant: The Shocking True Story Of Ed Gein – and I think it was the first printing of the book, because it had all these gruesome photos in it of what Gein had done to his victims that they omitted from the later editions. I read it and I thought it was really interesting.”
Interesting enough to pen one of Slayer's most distinctive and disturbing tracks. Slayer's 1990 song "Dead Skin Mask" explicitly references Gein, featuring a child's voice asking eerily, "Hello, Mr. Gein... This isn't fun anymore." Ed never attacked any children that we know of, but obviously the subject matter of the song's title, a mask made of human skin, is based on Gein.
Ghost Stories and Dark Tourism: Gein's Plainfield Today
While Gein's farmhouse burned down mysteriously in 1958, many suspect it was arson intended to end the macabre spectacle, his presence lingers in Plainfield. The town has struggled with its dark legacy, caught between wanting to move past the horror and acknowledging the morbid curiosity that draws visitors from around the world.
My friend Jeff Finup from Badgerland Legends shared in a podcast we did about Ed Gein that he "grew up about 20 minutes outside of Plainfield, so it was my old stomping grounds, and there was some Gein lore abound." He recounts stories of locals who knew Ed, including his friend's grandmother who allegedly roller-skated with the future killer, and families for whom Gein babysat.
Indeed on ghost tours I have done myself, I've met people whose family members were babysat by "Uncle Eddie" and enraptured by his stories of shrunken heads in the Pacific and Holocaust concentration camp atrocities that were often exploitatively written about in adventure and men's magazines of the day. The kids enjoyed his wild stories, not knowing that Ed was making his own horror stories at the farm a few miles away.
My sister Allison had a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee who used to volunteer for dances at Mendota Mental Institute in Madison, Wisconsin where Ed spent his final years. She says that one time she was dancing with this very polite older gentleman and she really liked him... it was only afterwards that another volunteer told her who the gentleman was, the Butcher of Plainfield himself, Ed Gein.
A 2021 Discovery Plus documentary featured investigators who claimed to make contact with Gein's spirit, allegedly hearing him say "put on the suit" through ghost detection equipment. Psychic Cindy Kaza reportedly sensed that Augusta's malevolent spirit may have influenced Ed's crimes from beyond the grave.
Even Gein's grave became part of the legend. His headstone was stolen in 2000, recovered in Seattle in 2001, and now resides in evidence storage at the Waushara County Sheriff's Department, itself a testament to the enduring fascination with one of Wisconsin's most infamous son.
Experience Wisconsin's Haunted History
The story of Ed Gein represents the darkest chapter in Wisconsin's history, but it's also a reminder that real horror often surpasses fiction. His crimes influenced generations of filmmakers, writers, and artists while forever changing how we understand the human capacity for darkness.
Today, visitors to central Wisconsin can explore the broader context of these events through ghost tours and historical experiences that examine not just Gein's crimes, but the psychological, social, and supernatural dimensions of the story. From La Crosse, where the Gein family began, to Plainfield, where the horror unfolded, Wisconsin's landscape holds the echoes of this tragic tale.
Understanding Ed Gein isn't about glorifying violence... it's about confronting the uncomfortable realities that exist beneath seemingly ordinary surfaces, in small towns that look like they could never harbor such darkness.
Ready to explore Wisconsin's darker side?
Join us for a ghost tour that delves into the state's most haunting true crime stories and supernatural legends. From Milwaukee to the backroads of central Wisconsin, discover the real stories behind the horror on one of our Wisconsin ghost tours.
