Behind The Horror - The Horrifying True Story Of Ed Gein

In 1944, Ed and Henry worked in a field near to their farmhouse. They set a fire to burn away marsh vegetation, which suddenly got out of their control. When firefighters arrived, only Ed was there for them to talk to and he advised that his brother had gone missing; assuming he had died in the fire.

Later, police located the dead body of Henry, however the condition in which the body was found only raised more questions. His body was found quite a distance away from the location of the fire, meaning it was unlikely that he had died of smoke inhalation, and his head was covered in mysterious bruises.

A year after Henry’s death, Ed lived with Augusta in their farmhouse until her death on December 12th 1945. Following his mother's death, Ed sealed up her bedroom to preserve his mother’s memory and also boarded up their family home, disappearing for a year. And it was in that time when Ed truly spiralled into madness.

He spent this time cooped up alone, obsessing over horror novels, Nazi experiments, pornography and the female anatomy, and hoarded books on taxidermy. In 1947, Ed began leaving his house to make trips to the Plainfield cemetery. It was here where he started to put his studies of taxidermy into practice as he dug up and stole bodies from the cemetery. Initially only collecting organs and body parts and returning the bodies to their graves afterwards, as time went on he decided to drag the bodies from the cemetery and keep them in his farmhouse.

In 1954, Gein travelled ten miles north of Plainfield to Pine Grove and entered the local tavern, where he met Mary Hogan who worked there. He openly shot Hogan and dragged her body on a sled back to his home, and carried on stealing bodies from the local cemetery to conduct his vile acts of taxidermy.