In 1957, police entered Ed Gein's home in Plainfield, Wisconsin, to find a missing woman. They not only found her decapitated body, but also chairs, lampshades, and wastebaskets made of human skin.

In a run-down yet otherwise nondescript farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin, a macabre and gruesome collection was coming together. Ed Gein, who came to be known as the “Butcher of Plainfield,” had always been reclusive, but unbeknownst to other Plainfield residents, he had a morbid fascination: making furniture out of human skin and other body parts.

After his mother’s death in 1945, something in Gein snapped. He boarded up the rooms she’d used and turned their home into a chilling shrine to her memory, all the while slipping further into his ghoulish obsessions. He spent his days reading abou

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