If anyone wants to know what I want for my birthday, it’s a jumbo sized framed photo of this incredibly creepy photograph from the Life magazine archives. This is the bedroom of Ed Gein, the psychotic murder who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. They say you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their home… If that is true, this picture tells me things I don’t want to know!
If you aren’t squeamish, click through the jump to see more totally disturbing photos of the REAL Psycho house…
Ed Gein was a notorious murderer and grave robber who lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin back in the 1950s. While investigating the disappearance of a local shop owner, police stumbled across a horrifying scene in this modest house. The garbage filled rooms contained body parts stolen from local cemeteries, bones and human skin, as well as the body of the shop owner, trussed up in a shed like a deer. Ed was a meek little loner who babysat his neighbors’ kids and always gave packets of venison to his friends during hunting season. After he was caught, he admitted that he had never shot a deer in his life.
The photographer for Life magazine showed up at Ed’s house just as the police were packing up and leaving. Curious neighbors swooped in on the house and started peeking in the windows and checking the locks on the doors. The photographer entered the house with them and shot these uncomfortably revealing pictures, which were published in Life magazine in 1957. In March of 1958, the house burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances. The rumor was that the locals didn’t want the house to become some sort of serial killer theme park. Many speculated that the police hadn’t really done a thorough job of checking out all the nooks and crannies in the house. No doubt, the fire ensured that many of Ed’s secrets would remain secrets forever.
Inside, the house was in a state of total squalor… with the exception of one room. The living room was orderly and neat- exactly as Ed Gein’s mother had left it when she passed away a decade earlier, leaving Ed all alone in the world.
The kitchen held many of the worst horrors. Organs were in glass jars in the refrigerator. The shop owner’s heart had been cooked in a pot on the stove. A bowl made from the top part of a human skull stood on the kitchen table.
For years after these chilling photos appeared in Life, midwestern children would scare each other by whispering about the strange man that lived all by himself in the woods that was going to come to town and “Gein ya!”
Now, thanks to the Life magazine archives, you can hang these historic photos in your own home, custom printed and framed to fit any decor… Well, almost any decor… Just click through the image you like and click on the “BUY PHOTO” button. Go on! I double dare ya!