Ed Gein’s House

The infamous Ed Gein house once stood on what is now an overgrown patch of land on private property on the corner of Archer and 2nd Ave outside Plainfield, WI. The Gein family moved from La Crosse, where they owned a grocery store, to Plainfield in 1914 when Ed was just 8 years old. After his father, brother, and mother all died, Ed continued to live in the decrepit farm alone for years.

When the body of hardware store owner Bernice Worden was discovered gutted and mutilated in Gein’s house on November 16, 1957, everything changed. Besides Mrs. Worden, investigators found years of human remains scattered throughout the house that Gein had collected from freshly buried remains he dug up local cemeteries. Most of them were unidentifiable, though the discovery of tavern owner Mary Hogan’s face put her unsolved disappearance to rest.

Ed Gein was arrested that evening (you can visit his jail cell at this museum) and he never returned to his home.

The house mysteriously burned to the ground in March 1958 right before it was to be sold as part of the estate sale. Rumor had it that someone was interested in buying it and turning it into a “House of Horrors” attraction, leading to speculation that it was burned down intentionally to prevent such an atrocity. See old footage of the burned ruins here.

The land once occupied by the Gein farm was bought at the auction by a private buyer, who spent the next several years tearing down the barn and other outbuildings, planting trees, and trying to erase the memory of what happened there.

Today, nothing remains of the Gein house, at least above ground, but some believe Gein’s evil spirit still haunts the vacant land.