Ed Gein: Spirit Box Session With Infamous Serial Killer

Friday, April 15th   10pm ET / 9pm CT / 7pm PT

It’s time once again for Anthony and I to conjure up a spirit for communication. But this isn’t your ordinary spirit. The spirit we will try and communicate with has given Hollywood inspiration for such movies as Psycho, Silence of the Lambs and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I am talking about the infamous serial killer – Ed Gein. Will we get inside the insidious mind of one of the most notorious gruesome killers?

Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein

After police found body parts in his house in 1957, Gein confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in 1957. Initially found unfit to stand trial, following confinement in a mental health facility, he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital.

The body of Bernice Worden was found in Gein's shed; her head and the head of Mary Hogan were found inside his house. Robert H. Gollmar, the judge in the Gein case, wrote: "Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder—that of Mrs. Worden."

With fewer than three murders attributed, Gein does not meet the traditional definition of a serial killer. Regardless, his real-life case influenced the creation of several fictional serial killers, including Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates from Psycho and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.