The Real-Life Texas Chainsaw

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre wasn’t born in Hollywood. It came from Plainfield, Wisconsin, 1957 — and from one quiet man named Ed Gein. To neighbors, he was harmless: a shy farmer who fixed fences and muttered to his late mother’s chair. But after her death, his house rotted around her sealed room.

Then women began to vanish. A tavern owner. A shopkeeper. When police entered his farmhouse during a snowstorm, what they found would echo through every horror movie that came after. Furniture stitched together. Lamps carved from faces. And a rusted hook swinging gently in the cold.

One deputy whispered, “We stopped counting after twelve.”

Ed told investigators he wasn’t killing — he was rebuilding. Piece by piece, he was trying to make her live again.

The w ...