Sympathy for the Devil

Dear reader,

Before you begin, I’ll offer a sort of “trigger warning”. I write as a way to entertain, but also to tell the truth, my truth, to the best of my ability. Sometimes the truth is ugly. What’s written below shares some ideas and descriptions of the deep, dark depravity of one such cases. I write about this not just because it is dark, and disgusting, and that it’s the type of thing I know can get clicks, but also to share an idea. The idea that we can see some possible good, if you can call it that, in what is otherwise a situation and person that has consumed my psyche for some time now in a way I can only describe as “unhealthy”. I hope you can take away some perspective from this piece, some openness to accept your fellow man, even at their worst, or, if nothing else, look into this darkness for a little while so you can see the light around you.  

Much love,

Chris Nielson

As we embarked on this journey into the twisted psyche of Ed Gein, I can’t speak for Kelly, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of trepidation, a lurking fear of what lurks beneath the surface of his story. For Ed Gein is not just a mere mortal; he is a specter of madness, a product of a deranged mind forged in the fires of a troubled childhood and marred by the demons of mental illness.

To understand the man, we must first delve into the abyss of his upbringing, a tale as dark and sinister as the deepest recesses of the human soul. Born in the rural town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, in 1906, Ed Gein was raised in a household plagued by dysfunction and despair. 

His father, a drunk, strict, and domineering figure, instilled in him a sense of inadequacy and worthlessness, while his mother, a fanatical religious zealot, smothered him with a toxic blend of guilt and shame.

Growing up in such an environment, it is no wonder that young Ed would retreat into the recesses of his own mind, seeking solace in the twisted fantasies that would come to define his existence. In his isolation, he found refuge in the macabre, immersing himself in the lurid tales of horror and depravity that populated the pages of his beloved pulp magazines.

But it was not just the toxic environment of his upbringing that shaped Ed Gein's descent into madness; it was also the insidious grip of mental illness that tightened its hold on his fragile psyche. From a young age, he exhibited signs of schizophrenia, a condition characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking. 

As the years passed, his grip on reality grew ever more tenuous. When his beloved mother passed away, he was then consumed by a darkness from which there was no escape.

So there we were, the shadows cast by the barred windows and the box of the cell structure leaving us in an eerie darkness despite the fact it was mid day.  The beams of light that did make their way through seemed to taunt us with false hope of warmth rather than be a comfort. 

We found ourselves caught between an old wooden cabinet with a glass door and a life size cut out of the man himself. Inside the case, a few old rifles, a book, and a seemingly ancient, misshapen, crude to look at knife. Although we suspected the guns would have their own spectral discomfort attached it was the knife that had me most disturbed. It was the knife after all that Gein used for much of his work. 

It was in the dead of night that Gein's true nature emerged from the shadows. Like a scavenger drawn to the scent of decay, he prowled the graveyards of Plainfield, searching for fresh trophies to adorn his macabre collection. But his lust for flesh knew no bounds, and soon, the line between the living and the dead blurred beyond recognition.

In a frenzy of madness, Gein embarked on a spree of unspeakable horror. Bodies were exhumed with surgical precision, their remains desecrated in rituals too gruesome to comprehend. Skin became his canvas, and flesh his medium, as he fashioned grotesque artifacts to satisfy his insatiable urges.

And in the frenzy of all this insanity, a tool was required. One that could work in Ed’s horrifying medium. The knife. Maybe even this knife. 

“There’s an energy to it.” I remember Kelly saying. She had a face that I don’t get the displeasure of seeing too often, last time was at the Villisca ax murder house in Villisca, Iowa.  It was a look of disgust, concern, and a strange, powerful something that is felt when met with the truly horrifying. I don’t believe there are words for what I just described without doing a severe injustice to the feeling. 

“Do you want to hold it?” Kelly asked. She looked down at the crude, old, misshapen knife. 

This was a knife taken from Gein’s possession after his arrest. This had, without question, carved human flesh with the same cavalier attitude that one might carve a turkey on Thanksgiving day.  

To look at the thing alone could turn the stomach. It could be a movie prop. It looks like something that has committed sins against everything we hold sacred as human creatures. 

I walked around the cell in something of a daze. Feet moved independently of the brain. I entered the cell and held out my hand. 

The instant the handle touched my hand bile rose into my throat. 

Confusion. A sickening, perverse pleasure. A loss of sense of self. Complete disassociation. My stomach turned again. Shame. A cold room around me. 

Without going into too much detail as to disturb the average reader, I was given a brief glimpse of this blade’s dirty deeds. 

It was strung up similar to how you would a hog for butchering. A human form. Breasts exposed and slit from just under the sternum to below the belly. No head. 

Place your heel on the back of the step and let it slide down. Once that foot is planted, do the same with the other. I use this trick to walk down stairs in the dark. I touched on a similar psychic self preservation mechanism to step away from what I saw. Careful, intentional steps. Careful not to delve full tilt into the depression and depravity of what I had just seen. It’s been over two weeks since, and as I write this, I’m still trying. 

“I went into this expecting to feel a lot of things towards him.” I remember Kelly saying shortly after, “I didn’t expect to feel sorry for him.” 

As difficult as it might be, I couldn’t help but agree. I want to hate the man. For what he did, for what I saw. It would be easy for many to make him less than human. 

In the annals of criminal history, Ed Gein occupies a unique place, not just as a perpetrator of unspeakable acts, but as a symbol of the fragility of the human mind. He is not simply a monster, devoid of humanity; he is a tragic figure, a victim of forces beyond his control.

And yet, even as we acknowledge the darkness that consumed him, we cannot help but feel a twinge of pity for the man beneath the madness. For in his twisted fantasies and acts of violence, we see not just the product of a deranged mind, but the cries of a soul lost to the abyss.

The next day we found ourselves outside the gate to Ed’s old property line. The house has long since been removed. 

We stared for a while. It stayed somehow unassuming while also giving the impression of being some sort of gate to hell. 

Not too long before that, Kelly had said something to the effect of, “I’m not feeling so good. It’s like the closer we get the more my stomach is getting upset.”

What she didn’t know is that we were just about to turn down the road to the gate. 

We parked at the entrance for a moment, not too long as to draw the attention of the locals. The residents of Plainfield just want to forget old Ed Gein and his gorey legacy and who could blame them. We had just recently been warned by a friend who is a local to not linger too long. On more than one occasion people had been chased away from the property by people screaming profanity and shotguns. 

We pulled out of the drive and rolled along the property line very slowly, looking in between the trees in the hopes that a story would emerge.

Then, a whisper, “We watched him. He was one of you, but he was sick.” 

This psychic message came from the trees themselves. 

In the end, perhaps the greatest tragedy of Ed Gein's life is not the horror he inflicted upon others, but the torment he endured within himself. He was a man adrift in a sea of madness, unable to find his way back to the shores of sanity. And though we may never fully understand the depths of his depravity, we can still recognize the humanity that lay buried beneath the facade of madness. 

He was a man consumed by his own darkness, a prisoner of his own twisted mind. And though his crimes may be unforgivable, his story serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of the human psyche, and the darkness that lurks within us all.