10 Real Life Horror Stories That Will Freak You Out

7. Ed Gein (1906-1984)

Ed Gein is the real life inspiration for Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He also influenced the creation of Norman Bates, and Buffalo Bill from The Silence Of The Lambs. Despite have only two known murders to his name, his exhumation of recently deceased corpses and the fashioning of trophies from the bones and flesh of the dead makes Ed Gein a particularly strange tale.

Gein's childhood was a particularly sordid one, being punished for making friends by his controlling mother, displaying symptoms that would now be recognised as psychosomatic. His mother bought a farm on the outskirts of Plainfield, Wisconsin and Ed was only allowed to leave the farm to go to school. Ed's mother preached to his brother and he about the evils of the outside world, the evil of drinking and the belief that all women except herself were prostitutes in service of the devil. She would read the most gruesome tales of death, murder and smite from the Old Testament to the boys, every day. Ed's mother, father and brother eventually died (leaving Ed the prime suspect for the death of his brother) but not before Ed's mother suffered a stroke paralysing her. This meant that Ed had to look after his mother in every single way, caring for her every need until her eventual death a few years later.

The loss devastated Ed, leaving him totally alone in the world. Eventually, Ed Gein was connected to the disappearance of Bernice Worden. After searching Ed Gein's farm, police found Worden upside down, decapitated, suspended by ropes from the ceiling of a farm shed. Her torso had been "dressed out like a deer" (which is to say, her skin had been peeled back as if to prepare her for butchering) and she had been shot with a .22 caliber rifle. The mutilations were made after her death. Inside the house police found a number of gruesome artifacts. Whole human bones and fragments of bones, a bin made of human skin, human skin covering several chairs, skulls attached to the bedposts of Ed's cot. Female skulls, some opened, bowls made from human skulls, a corset made from a woman's torso skin and leggings made from human leg skin.

Were that not enough, police also found masks made from the skin of female heads, the face of missing woman Mary Hogan constructed into a mask, along with the skull of Hogan in a box. Bernice Worden's entire head was found in a sack and her heart was in a saucepan on the stove ready to be cooked. Nine vulvae were also present, along with a young girls dress and the vulvae of two girls around fifteen years of age. A belt made of female human nipples, four noses, a pair of lips, fingernails from human females and a lampshade made from the skin of a human face. Gein was tried and found insane, after his confession could not be used in court due to the sheriff beating Gein during interrogation. He spent the remainder of his life in a maximum security asylum for the criminally insane, to the age of 77.