Ed Gein Created a Real-Life House of Horrors on a Farm in Rural Wisconsin

When it comes to murderers and their dastardly deeds, the crime scenes can often become as much of a focal point as the killers themselves. John Wayne Gacy famously buried most of his victims in a crawl space under his house.

Authorities later discovered 29 bodies on Gacy's property, 26 of which were beneath the very rooms where he and his family slept.

Jeffrey Dahmer lived in a small apartment, but that didn't stop him from dismembering his victims and stashing their body parts around his home. Following his arrest, investigators discovered a 57-gallon barrel filled with hydrochloric acid that Dahmer used to dissolve his victims's remains.

Both Gacy's home and Dahmer's apartment building were later demolished. Serial killer Ed Gein carried out his depraved acts on his family farm. Where did he live? Keep reading for more information.

According to Time, Gein lived on a 275-acre farm just outside of Plainfield, Wisc. At the time, the small town had a population of roughly 680 people, many of whom were simple folks who enjoyed hunting and going to the local ice cream parlor for a treat.

At one point, Gein's father, mother, and brother lived and worked on the farm. His dad passed away in 1940, and his brother followed four years later.

After Gein lost his father and brother, the home fell into deep disarray despite the fact that his mother was alive and well. There was no plumbing or electricity. When Gein's mother, Augusta Gein, had two strokes in quick succession, he boarded up the sitting room where she died in 1945.

It was filled with pictures of family members who were no longer there. The room was never touched, unlike the rest of the house, which became a museum of horrors over the course of the next 12 years.

The day Gein was arrested is part of the DNA of Plainfield. It changed that town and the people who lived there.

Police found the body of 58-year-old Bernice Worden, the proprietor of a local general store, who had gone missing the previous day. She was hung by her ankles in Gein's kitchen and had been gutted in the way a hunter would dress a deer.

Her decapitated head was in a box, and Worden's heart was in a plastic bag sitting on top of Gein's stove.

Harold Schechter, author of the Ed Gein book Deviant, described in a documentary how police discovered the killer's other known victim.

"Investigators opened up some receptacle and saw this face, and pulled it out," said Schechter. "They realized it was Mary Horgan's." In December 1954, Gein murdered 58-year-old tavern owner Mary Horgan.

He removed the skin of her face and fashioned a kind of mask out of it.

While Gein was being interrogated, he revealed that the other artifacts discovered in his home were made from corpses he dug up at a nearby cemetery. This occurred between 1947 and 1952. He typically took a trip to the cemetery after reading the obituaries and discovering that an elderly woman had passed.

This obsession was traced to Gein's dysfunctional relationship with his mother.

Circuit Judge Robert Gollmar presided over Gein's trial and eventually wrote a book about it in 1981. In Edward Gein, America's Most Bizarre Murderer, Gollmar included a comprehensive list of the ghoulish items the killer made from the human body parts he stole from the cemetery. They include, but are not limited to, a trash can, chairs, a corset, and leggings made from human skin.

Gein also turned human skulls into bowls and mounted some on his bedposts. The farm burned down in 1958.