Ed Gein was the original Hannibal Lector or Buffalo Bill and in fact was worse than them because he really did the things that are portrayed in the two movies. Ed Gein was one of the most horrible gruesome people that ever lived. And some people claim his ghost still haunts the area of his home to today.

Ed Gein was born to Augusta Lehrke 1878–1945 and George P. Gein 1873–1940 on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, both were natives of Wisconsin, and had married on July 7, 1900, Their marriage produced Edward and his older brother, Henry G. Gein 1901 – 1944. George Gein was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. Ed and his brother rejected their violent, aimless father, as did Augusta, who treated her husband like a nonentity.If he asked her a question she often would not anwser him for days. Despite her deep contempt for her husband, the atrophic marriage persisted. Divorce was not an option due to the family's religious beliefs. Augusta operated the small family grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of another small town, Plainfield, which became the Gein family's permanent home.

Augusta moved to this desolate location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. Gein only left the premises to go to school and Augusta blocked any attempt he made to make friends. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, who was a fanatical Lutheran, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were prostitutes and whores. According to Augusta, the only acceptable form of sex was for biological reproduction. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder and divine retribution. And it is said she put her own spin on what she read.

With a slight growth over one eye and an effeminate demeanor, the young Ed Gein became a target for bullies. Classmates and teachers recall other off-putting mannerisms such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal joke. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading and the study of world economics.Teachers would later recall that he was a rather strange little fellow and that he was known to take animails from the road that had been run over and take them home with him. It was never really known what he did with them. It was just observed on several occasins him loading the dead animails into a wagon he pulled and taking them home.

Deaths of family members

By the time his father George died in 1940, Henry had begun to reject Augusta's twisted view of the world. He had even taken to bad-mouthing her within earshot of his mortified brother.People often heard Ed telling his brother that he was doomed to hell if he did not repent and pray.

In March 1944, the brothers found themselves in the middle of a brush fire on property they owned in a neighboring county. When Ed ran to get the police, he told them he had lost sight of Henry, but then led them directly to his brother's corpse.

Although there was evidence Henry had suffered blunt trauma to his head, the local county coroner decided he died of asphyxiation while fighting the fire. Gein confessed after his capture that he killed his brother because if he lived he was going to hell.

Gein then lived alone with his mother. Less than two years later, on December 29, 1945, Augusta died from a series of strokes, leaving her grief-stricken son alone on the isolated farmstead. And after her death Ed became even more strange and with drawn.

His Mom is probally the only thing that kept the young serial killer in check and with her gone he began to act stranger and stranger. It is believed that about this time is when he began to steal recently dead corpses from the local graveyards for his

Gruesome Experments.

Arrest

Police suspected Gein to be involved in the disappearance of a store clerk, Bernice Worden, in Plainfield on November 16, 1957. Upon entering a shed on his property, they made their first horrific discovery of the night: Worden's corpse. She had been decapitated, her headless body hung upside down by means of ropes at her wrists and a crossbar at her ankles. Most horribly, the body's trunk was empty, the ribcage split and the body "dressed out" like that of a deer. These mutilations had been performed postmortem; she had been shot at close-range with a .22-caliber rifle.

At that day and time DNA was far in the future but the police did have a large pile of blood tested and it was later revealed at his trial that the semi dried up pool of blood had came from as many as

Searching the house, authorities found:

* human skulls mounted upon the cornerposts of his bed;

* human skin fashioned into a lampshade and used to upholster chair seats;

* human skullcaps, apparently in use as soup bowls;

* a human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; the deputies' reports all claim that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, with some crime scene photographers claiming it was in a paper bag);

* the facial skin of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner, found in a paper bag;

* a window blind pull consisting of human lips;

* a "mammary vest" crafted from the skin of a woman's torso;

* a belt made from several human nipples, among many other such grisly objects;

* socks made from human flesh.

Gein's most notorious creations were an array of "shrunken heads." Various neighborhood children — whom Gein occasionally babysat — had seen or heard of these objects, which Gein offhandedly described as relics from the South Seas, purportedly sent by a cousin who had served in World War II. Upon investigation, these turned out to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from cadavers and used by Gein as masks.

Gein eventually admitted under questioning that he would dig up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and take the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his macabre possessions. One writer describes Gein's practice of putting on the tanned skins of women as an "insane transvestite ritual". Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining, "They smelled too bad." During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Hogan, who had been missing since 1954.

Shortly after his mother's death, Gein decided he wanted a sex change, although it is a matter of some debate whether or not he was transsexual; by most accounts, he created his "woman suit" so he could pretend to be his mother, rather than change his sex. So Gein was making a girl suit long before the days of Hannibal Lector , Red Dragon or the Tooth Fairy.

Harold Schechter, an author of several true crime books, wrote a best-selling book about the Gein case called Deviant. In this book, Schechter mentions that Plainfield police officer Art Schley physically assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall; because of this, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible. Schley died of a heart attack at the age of 43 shortly before Gein's trial. Many who knew him said he was so traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and the fear of having to testify (notably about assaulting Gein) that it led to his early death. One of his friends said, "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him."

Art Schley told a friend that Ed Gein was the worst human being that had ever lived and he was going to get by with it. His friend said that the knowledge that Ed Gein was going to a Mental Hospital and not to Death Row worried the policeman into a early grave. Schley believed that Ed Gein was a lot smarter than people thought and the nut act was what he did to get away with his horrid acts.

Late Breaking News About Ed Gein

In 1995 near the location of the old Gein home place parts of up to eleven human skeletons all female but one were discovered in a old well. Local police said that while they can not say 100 percent for certain it is in all likely hood that these 11 remains were the work of Ed Gein as they dated back to the time when he was on his killing spree in the area. One the only male was a mailman that vanished the year before Ed Gein was caught. Yes at the time of his disappearance he had been Ed Geins mail delivery person.

The Ghost Of Ed Gein

Many people over the years since his death have claimed to have seen a younger Ed Gein walking along the road walking in the direction of his former home which had burned to the ground years before. He is often seen in his car driving the roads around his former home. Several young couples parked in make out areas over the years have claimed to have been approached by a man who fits Geins description and several have claimed Gein has beat on their car windows. The local police refused to post the drawing of the lovers lane stalker because he so closely resembled Ed Gein.