Ed Geins House

There was no electricity in the dark house so the police officers conducted their inspection with oil lamps, lanterns, and flashlights.The place looked like it had not been clean or tidied in years, there were piles of rubbish everywhere.  The few rooms that weren’t nailed off were littered with books, old papers, magazines, utensils, tin cans, cartons and a lot of other junk. What those police officers also found in that house is in the extreme.  In the house they found - two shin bones, four human noses, a quart can converted into a tom-tom by skin stretched over both top and bottom, a bowl made from the inverted half of a human skull, nine ‘death masks’ (from the well preserved skin from the faces of women), ten female heads with the tops sawn off above the eyebrows, bracelets of human skin, a purse made with a handle of human skin, sheath for a knife made in human skin, a pair of leggings made from human skin, four chairs with the seats being replaced by strips of human skin, a shoe box containing nine salted vulvas of which his mothers was painted silver, a hanging human head, a lampshade covered with human skin, a shirt made of human skin, a number of shrunken heads (Ed always joked that he had a collection of shrunken heads), two skulls for Gein’s bedposts, a pair of human lips hanging from string, Ed’s full woman body suit constructed with human skin and complete with mask and breasts, Bernice Worden’s heart in a pan on the stove, and the refrigerator which was stacked with human organs. The bodies of 15 different women had been mutilated to provide Gein’s trophies.  It is also said that sometimes Gein brought house gifts of fresh venison to his neighbours although Gein said he had never shot a deer in his life.

Ed Gein never married and remained a bachelor throughout his life. This was perhaps because from childhood he had been ambiguous about his masculinity. He considered amputation of his penis on several occasions, he also considered transsexual surgery, but could not do so as the process was costly. Eventually Gein discovered other ways to “become a woman.” He haunted three local cemeteries between 1947 and 1954 and opened an estimated 40 graves. The object was to steal dead bodies or sometimes simply some bits and pieces from the corpses. From these he carved out a number of fetish objects, which he would wear, imagining himself to be a woman. “Often he would dance underneath the moon wearing a woman’s scalp and face, a skinned-out ‘vest’ complete with breasts, and female genitalia strapped above his own.” By ‘putting on’ another sex and personality, Gein seemed to find a measure of contentment.

Gein later confessed that he enjoyed dressing himself like this and pretending he was his own mother. Interestingly his victims were roughly the age of his mother. Confirmation of Gein’s grave robberies was obtained by opening three graves. In one, the corpse was mutilated as described be Gein; the second held no corpse at all; a casket in the third showed pry marks, but the body was intact. Gein appeared to be suffering from multiple paraphilias; most notable were fetishism and transvestism.

A gruesome discovery in an apartment in Russia in November 2011 - the decomposing remains of two dozen women dressed up as dolls. The bodies were found in the home of 45-year-old Anatoly Moskvina, by his parents when they returned from their summer home. Russian media reports that Moskvina kept at least 26 bodies in his small, three-room apartment. They all belong to females aged between 15 and 26 who died years ago. Moskvin, a local historian, had a fascination with cemeteries and had visited the cemeteries at night and dug up the bodies with a shovel. He then put the remains in plastic bags and dragged them to his home. Once the bodies were in his apartment, Moskvina dressed the bodies up as dolls. Photos released show one skeleton wearing a dress, stockings and other clothing while another body appeared to have been dressed as a teddy bear. On at least one occasion, Moskvina is believed to have slept in a coffin while on other nights he slept on benches at cemeteries.

In the house of Ed Gein the police found:

• Human skulls mounted upon the corner posts of his bed

• Human skullcaps, apparently in use as soup bowls

• An array of “shrunken heads”

• Skin fashioned into a lampshade and used to upholster chair seats

• Skin from the face of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner, found in a paper bag

• A vest crafted from the skin of a woman’s torso

• Socks made from human flesh

• A sheath made from human skin

• A human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; deputy reports all claimed that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, while some crime scene photographers claimed it was in a paper bag)

• A window shade pull consisting of human lips

• Four noses

• Organs in the refrigerator

• Pieces of salted genitalia in a box

• 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.

• The skins from ten human heads were found preserved, and another skin taken from the upper torso of a woman was rolled up on the floor. There was a belt fashioned from carved-off nipples, a chair upholstered in human skin, the crown of a skull used as a soup-bowl, lampshades covered in flesh pilled taut, a table propped up by a human shinbones, and a refrigerator full of human organs. The four posts on Gein’s bed were topped with skulls and a human head hung on the wall alongside nine death-masks - the skinned faces of women - and decorative bracelets made out of human skin. The stunned searchers also uncovered a soup bowls fashioned from skulls, a shoebox full of female genitalia, faces stuffed with newspapers and mounted like hunting trophies on the walls, and a “mammary vest” flayed from the torso of a woman. Gein later confessed that he enjoyed dressing himself in this and other human-skin garments and pretending he was his own mother.