5 Horror Villains Inspired By Ed Gein, the Butcher of Plainfield

Ed Gein may have only been convicted of murdering two people throughout his life, but he’s become known as one of the most notorious killers of the 20th century, earning the nickname the “Butcher of Plainfield.”

Born in 1906, Gein experienced a traumatic childhood, brought up on an isolated family farm in Plainfield, Wis. He was raised primarily by his overbearing mother Augusta, a devout Christian who kept a tight rein on Gein and his older brother. She prevented the boys from having any social interactions with other children and preached a strict moral code based on the Bible. Meanwhile, Gein’s alcoholic father was often absent. 

Through the years, Gein developed a strong emotional attachment to his mother, with the obsessive relationship eventually shaping his criminal behavior. When both his father and brother later died and his mother suffered two paralyzing strokes, their dependent relationship reached new levels. 

After her death in 1945, Gein’s fixation on his mother continued as his mental health declined—and his life of crime began. He would later confess to investigators that following her passing, he began to rob graves, digging up the corpses of recently deceased women so that he could create a skin suit to completely recreate his late mother. 

“He wanted to crawl into her skin,” forensic psychiatrist Carole Lieberman previously told A&E Crime + Investigation. “His schizophrenia made him feel very lonely and abandoned by his mother and perhaps is why he heard voices telling him to get another mother.”

Eventually, Gein went on to murder Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, two women he believed resembled his late mother. It was Worden’s death that led to Gein’s capture, with authorities discovering her headless and disemboweled body hanging in his shed. Inside his home, they found dozens of female body parts horrendously put on display—from stuffed heads on the walls to lampshades made from skin and boxes containing nipples and noses.

Shortly after being arrested, Gein was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a mental hospital. When he was later deemed fit to stand trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remained in the mental health facility until his death in 1984. 

In addition to his portrayal by Charlie Hunnam in Monster season 3, Gein's infamous crimes have inspired a variety of horror villains and characters in pop culture, from television shows to video games—all influenced by Gein’s abnormal relationship with his mother, his obsession with human remains and horrific crimes. 

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho was based on Robert Bloch’s pulp novel of the same name, which loosely took inspiration from Gein’s backstory. In the film, Anthony Perkins portrays Norman Bates, a troubled man eerily similar to Gein.  “In inventing my character, I had come very close to the actual persona of Ed Gein. It horrified me how I could think of such things,” Bloch shared in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.

Throughout the movie, viewers see the murder of several victims that Bates initially blames on his overbearing mother, similar to Gein’s own domineering mother. It’s later learned that Bates was the one behind the crimes and had actually killed his own mother years prior. Following her death, Bates mummified her body, keeping it in his cellar dressed in clothing and a wig. Gein, too, notoriously stored human remains in his home, eventually constructing a new version of his dead mother to “inhabit.” 

At the climax of the film, Bates can be seen wearing almost an identical outfit and wig to his deceased mother, seemingly one of his alternate personalities. Although Gein is not known to have had split personalities, he did deal with schizophrenia, which could have inspired Bates’s mental health condition. Decades later, Psycho led to prequel series Bates Motel on A&E, further exploring Bates’s childhood and his relationship with his mom Norma.     

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s central character Leatherface has also drawn comparisons to Gein. In the 1974 film, Leatherface was just one of a family of deranged cannibals, but he stood out by wearing the human skins of his victims as masks. 

Director Tobe Hooper has said that the costuming choice was partially informed by Gein’s penchant for crafting wearable pieces out of human remains and also influenced by a story from his family doctor. Late in his career, Hooper revealed that the doctor told him that he had once “skinned a cadaver’s face, cured and dried it,” and then wore it to a Halloween party.

“When the doctor told his story, I was a teenager and all that stuff about Wisconsin came back to me,” Hooper shared with The Flashback Files, adding that his Wisconsin family members told him about Gein. “...I had relatives from Wisconsin and they would pay us a visit when I was about four or five years old. They told us the story about this man who lived in the next town from them … who was digging up graves and using the bones and skin in his house. That was all I knew about it. They didn’t mention his name. But to me he was like a real boogeyman. That stayed in my mind.”

The Silence of the Lambs, based on Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel, centers on horror villain Buffalo Bill, who was inspired by a composite of several different killers throughout history. In the film, Buffalo Bill bears notable resemblance to Gein in that he wanted to create a skin suit out of human remains in order to fulfill his disturbed desire of transformation. Gein, too, attempted to create a wearable suit out of skin.  “Tom Harris, the author of Silence of the Lambs, he spoke to several of us and he developed this bizarre character,” John Douglas from the FBI Behavioral Science Unit told Entertainment Tonight. “It’ll be a bizarre character to the public, thinking that someone like this can’t possibly exist but we know in the National Center this person does exist. He is a composite of several serial killers.”

As a central character in American Horror Story: Asylum, serial killer Bloody Face pulled heavily from Gein. Like the real-life murderer, Bloody Face had a tumultuous childhood and a strained relationship with his mother, who abandoned him when he was a little boy. 

In the series, Bloody Face spent his life searching for a replacement maternal figure, and while some women seemed to fit the bill, he eventually uncovered each of their supposed inadequacies. Upon realizing they no longer served a purpose to him, he brutally murdered each woman and then skinned them, much like Gein did to his victims. Bloody Face even wore the skin of the women he killed as a mask and used other pieces to create decor in his home. 

Eddie Gluskin, also known as “The Groom” from the 2014 survival horror video game Outlast: Whistleblower, boasts many similarities to Gein. In addition to sharing the same initials, both Gluskin and Gein experienced a traumatic childhood that seemingly influenced their violent actions later in life. Although Gluskin and Gein sought out different kinds of people as their victims, both used their corpses to create objects they kept in their homes.