Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho"

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Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho"

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 1,698 ratings · 66 reviews

The truth behind the twisted crimes that inspired the films Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs... From "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (The Boston Book Review) comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, a mild-mannered Wisconsin farmhand who stunned an unsuspecting nation -- and redefined the meaning of th...more

Paperback, 242 pages

Published October 1st 1998 by Gallery Books (first published 1989)

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Jul 18, 2011 Bryn Dunham rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the story of the guy who inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs. Like Dahmer, a little pitiful man named Ed Gein, raised by a dominant mother and abusive father, drifted into insanity after the death of his mother and proceeds to murder two women, rob the graves of several others and uses their body for multiple goulish ends.

Easy read, well written, but overly simple, this book does not delve significantly in depth into the mind of Gein but just explains...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Alshia Moyez rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked true crime, so I liked this. But it's one of those books you just don't want to read twice. I like author Harold Schechter's work, but I've kind of gotten myself out of this genre for now, so I won't be reading more by him anytime soon. Nor will I become a fan of his on GR because I'm stepping away from this type of stuff.

This was the first book I read on Ed Gein, so I can't say whether or not this book shed more light on him or not. I just don't know. It was well-written and edited but...more

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Sep 27, 2011 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, own, crime, horror, murder, serial-killers, biography

I normally don't read a lot about "real" serial killers, preferring to stick with the fictional kind, but this book was highly recommended by a friend, and I quickly saw why. For me, the case of Ed Gein was obscure; I knew next to nothing about him before reading this book, even though I have visited the general area in which the events took place (Wisconsin Rapids, and I'm pretty sure that we drove through Plainfield on our way to visit a friend in Neshkoro). Anyway, I'd never really heard of E...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Daisy*•.♥.•* rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: true-crime, my-favorites

After reading this I am simply floored. This is one of the best true crime books I have ever read. It gets into very vivid details on Geins and his crimes. I have to admit, part of the reason why I finally picked this book up from my bookshelf is because I went to see the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie (Which I liked). My liking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies began when I was in my teens. It was later on that I learned that “Leather Face” as he was called was an actual real life killer...more After reading this I am simply floored. This is one of the best true crime books I have ever read. It gets into very vivid details on Geins and his crimes. I have to admit, part of the reason why I finally picked this book up from my bookshelf is because I went to see the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie (Which I liked). My liking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies began when I was in my teens. It was later on that I learned that “Leather Face” as he was called was an actual real life killer. It was just so intriguing to read about what Geins did. His actions were very horrific and very gory. Here is some new information about him and his crimes that I did not know about until I read this book:

1. I never knew he was a short man (he stood only 60 inches). The book kept referring to how the people of Plainsfield were shocked that “the little man” had committed such shocking murders.

2. Geins made dining room, chairs out of the skins of his victims. I knew he made face masks that he wore out of the skins but I never knew about the chairs.

3. In the 50’s when this happened it became common to hear “Gein jokes” about the crimes he comiited.

4. He lived and committed his crimes in Wisconsin and not Texas.

5. He made belts out of human lips and women’s vulva’s.

6. The Gein farmhouse was burned by unknown suspects during the time that Gein was standing trial for his insanity.

The author really excelled in describing the little town of Plainsfield, Wisconsin during the 50’s when Gein lived there. I was deeply engrossed in the book that I felt like I was in the small town watching all of the events unfold before my eyes. It seems like lately I have been reading up celebrities and famous events of the 50’s & 60’s. Also known as Hollywood’s Golden Era. These were the times when I love Lucy was popular, Elvis Presley was rockin’ away, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe were known for their beauty…. And when one of America’s most gruesome murderer lived and committed his acts. It almost seems impossible that this all happened in the same era and time. But it did and it was real. I highly recommend this book to any true crime reader and or people who want to read on Ed Geins.
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Nov 28, 2011 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Mum

Shelves: 2011, kindle-baby, own

Mothers, be careful how you raise your boys, especially if you're an overbearing religious wackjob who thinks the best lesson she can impart is that all women are wanton, wicked and deserve to be punished as this could lead to a host of mental illnesses and some terrifying life choices on the part of your child...

Ed Gein is infamous as the inspiration behind more than one of our cinematic bogeymen - Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill being the most notable exa...more Mothers, be careful how you raise your boys, especially if you're an overbearing religious wackjob who thinks the best lesson she can impart is that all women are wanton, wicked and deserve to be punished as this could lead to a host of mental illnesses and some terrifying life choices on the part of your child...

Ed Gein is infamous as the inspiration behind more than one of our cinematic bogeymen - Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill being the most notable examples, but as ever the truth is far stranger, more horrific, shocking and plain insane than fiction could ever hope to be (film audiences would reject half the occurrences within for being too outlandish to be plausible, but unfortunately this is all real.)

Raised by the aforementioned mother and a weak-willed, alcoholic and abusive father, Gein was always considered an oddball, meek and polite but completely unequipped to socialise with others (early opportunities were halted by Mommy Dearest who, of course, thought that every friend Ed made at school was wicked and stopped him from seeing them). With his mother being a larger-than-life, almost God-like figure to him, his problems really started to bubble up once she died, leaving Ed alone in the world. Sealing up the rooms she lived in as a make-shift shrine, Gein lived in absolute squalor in the few rooms left to him, reading lurid true crime magazines (which will be blamed for the crimes by some *eyeroll*) and accounts of Nazi atrocities (some of which will inspire his grisly collection of memorabilia).

Described as a voyeuristic, schizophrenic, fetishist necrophile and transvestite Gein fixated on women who resemble his mother, although as women who could never be as good as Augusta was, murdering and dismembering them in the most awful manner (the accounts of how the last victim was found seriously gave me the heebie-jeebies) though he was also a keen grave-robber, digging up yet more women, and taking body parts home with him. Collections of human heads turned into masks, chairs made from human skin, and body parts sewn into yet more furniture abounded through Ed's house of horrors (local kids had been telling stories for years of Gein's shrunken heads, which were written off by their parents as wild imaginations) and it is obvious that Gein's transvestitism went a lot further than most - instead of wearing women's clothing he much preferred wearing their skin (yeesh).

As you can see, the subject matter is fascinating, and more than a little sensational, but it was mostly handled well imparting a fair amount of information in a very readable format. There was one instance (as there was in another of Schechter's books that I'd read) where the author presents an 'inside the mind of the killer' moment that I could have done without (I take exception in true crime books to the kind of recreations when no-one could really have known what was going on, and Gein's constant memory lapses, whether real or fake, made sure he never came clean about what had happened after Mrs Worden's murder) and I would have liked a lot more depth to the psychology angle, as well as more on what was behind the rash of 'Gein humour' as the local population struggled to come to terms with what had happened in their midst.

The most successful angle of the book was with regard to the media frenzy that Gein's crimes inspired, and the antagonistic relationship between the press and police. While a strong believer in press freedom, I also believe that can only be properly achieved when the press that you're dealing with have ethics, and unfortunately most of the mob of reporters behaved much more like those in trouble recently in the UK for hacking and other various underhand methods than journalists with integrity - happy to print anything, true or not, if it gave good story.

As for just why Ed Gein has had such a lasting impression on our collective psyches, this book doesn't quite pin it down but gets points for making a decent attempt.(less)

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May 16, 2013 Renee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime-favs

Albert Fish knew he was a psychopath before they even coined the phrase. To the cops, they turned New York inside out searching for a grey faded "bogeyman", a deranged predator no longer bound by childish nightmares; he trolled the streets for his innocent prey. This book tells the story well, especially the victim's family and life, who sometimes get overshadowed by grotesque details (which do abound in this sad case especially) in true crime books. This author illuminates the shockwave of grie...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

Harold Schechter is an author with Tourette's Syndrome - consider some of his book titles:

Deranged!
Depraved!
Fiend!
Bestial!

Now imagine inviting Mr Schechter to dinner....

"Ketchup!"
"Salt!"
"Mayonnaise!"
"Pickle!"
"Hideous!"
"Fuck!"
"Vile!"

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Apr 03, 2013 Bill rated it 3 of 5 stars

Author Harold Schechter is professor of American literature and popular culture at Queens College of the City University of New York. His passion for writing true crime is reflected in his many books about America's worst serial criminals. In Deviant he relates the story of the Butcher of Des Plains, Ed Gein, whose ghoulish exploits in 1950s rural Wisconsin became the basis for several horror films including Hitchcock's "Psycho", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Silence of the Lambs." A true a...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Traummachine rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's been a while since I read one of Schechter's books, and he's just as good as I remember.

This was the story of Ed Gein, and it inspired Hitchcock's Psycho (actually, it inspired Robert Bloch's Psycho, which Hitchcock made into a movie). Many of the trappings of that movie are here: remote location, dead mother drives son mad, etc. To be honest, I think Gein inspired Texas Chainsaw Massacre even more. Although Ed Gein was no chainsaw-wielding maniac, he first cured and then wore the skins of...more

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Jan 22, 2009 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you have a sick fascination with serial killers, as do I, this book will be intriguing, addicting, and incredibly creepy. Gein is said to have been an inspiration behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a favorite of many horror movie fans, including this one, which made the book all the more addicting.

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Oct 17, 2011 Alexander rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those with a strong stomach and an interest in true crime

Shelves: non-fiction

Rather sensationalist, but due to the nature of the subject it is difficult to be otherwise. What was lacking, and what I was interested in, were the psychological theories/reasons put forward by the forensic psychiatrists why this man sank into degradations so utterly uniquely bizzare and terrible.

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Mar 25, 2013 Susie rated it 3 of 5 stars

An easy read, but it contained a few glaring errors that drove me nuts and made me wonder if this author even has an editor. (If the author is reading this, the hymn you mentioned is "Abide WITH Me" not "Abide BY Me" and you refer to the same day by two different dates. Check your facts, dude. Check your facts.) I enjoyed it, though, and it creeped me out.

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Feb 08, 2011 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-as-could-be, macabre

Well, I love Hitchcock so in that regard I was fascinated. It's a pretty unusual story and I always like the macabre and the psychology behind it. Ethics and psychology are fascinating topics to me.

I also really enjoy Schechter's writing style!

The scary thing about this book is that it's more twisted in some ways that the movie Psycho ever was...

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Oct 21, 2010 Dale rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography

This was a highly disturbing book mostly because it was true! I don't know how I missed this in the headlines when it came out. If you don't have a strong stomach, skip this book. What IS interesting is that the book and movie, "Psycho," was based on this wierd man's story.

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Apr 09, 2011 Corey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

Ed Gein was on of the weirdest true cirme stories.... This guy start out as a grave robber, stealing body parts from the dead and eventually killed at least one person... He was the basis of the horror movies "Psycho", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Derranged".

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Jun 22, 2011 Tim Hickey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good book and scary. I always wondered if Ed Gein was one of the first psychpaths what happened back in the 50's or in that town in Wisconson that caused such a break with reality.
What he did is almost tame compared to what we are seeing nowadays.

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Mar 26, 2012 Mike Reid rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have always had a fascination with Ed Gein but not in the Deviant way, just an odd curiosity about him and what was going through his mind when he was doing what he was doing. It is true his story sparked a flurry of horror flicks and he will always be the "godfather" of gore..The book was easy to read, gory at times and very informational. You almost felt for the guy as you learned more and more about his back story and his life..

I recommend it!

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Jun 29, 2008 Gwen added it

The true story about Ed Gein was the basis for Hitchcock's "Psycho". While the movie Psycho scared me from taking a shower for years, it's nothing compared to the real life of Ed Gein and what he was able to do in a small Wisconsin town.

Because he was believed to be slow witted, this man was able to terrorize a town and still walk about unnoticed. Gein was sick but the man had skills... he skinned these women and preserved their skin so well that he was able to sew pieces of the skin together to...more

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Sep 27, 2012 Penny Bedborough added it

I read this a long time ago. I feel like giving it any stars would somehow be wrong. I certainly learned a great deal from it but I cannot remember well enough to rate it

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Jul 26, 2010 Brett rated it 3 of 5 stars

Poorly written for sure, but if you're a ghoul like me you need to know the full story of Ed Gein, instead of just the awesome details you get off of rotten.com and wikipedia.

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Jun 27, 2012 Chanoah rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the first true crime books I've ever read. Ed Gein was definitely a sick little man. It's amazing as he was so nonchalant about almost everything he had done.

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Nov 27, 2010 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

This is the second Schechter book that I read and I liked it much better than Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer . However, I still find it a little weird that a nonfiction book has absolutely no sourcing...the historian/researcher in me just can't quite get passed that fact.
However, this book reads like fiction and it is clearly very well researched. I honestly did not know that Psycho was "based," quite loosely, on the Ed Gein murders.
Overall, a very enjoyable read.

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Jul 15, 2012 Ginny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Love forensic stuff but this guy is one of the biggest sicko ever. He's the guy that some movies were made after. Good read if you like this stuff.

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Aug 23, 2007 Lori rated it 2 of 5 stars

Ick...this sicko Ed Gein was wacked! For those who know nothing about him - he was the basis for the character in "Psycho." I remember my dad reading something about this dude way back when I was a little girl and the book had a lot of black & white crime scene photos... The images of the skulls on the bedposts stuck in my mind all these years. And I wanted to read more about this quack, especially b/c he was from Wisconsin. Why are there so many high profile sicko serial killers from WI? Ob...more

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Nov 16, 2010 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

I've always heard about Ed Gein and what he had done but never knew the details. This book not only gives details but also has little tidbits about other monsters I'd never heard about. When all is said and done Ed Gein was a sicko genius.

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Jul 20, 2009 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jim and I read this book aloud to each other and it really freaked us out. I think I had nightmares about it, but fairly well written.

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Aug 06, 2011 Rosanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was truly fascinated by this bizarre man and what he did. The depravity of many other murderers pale in comparison to Ed Gein.

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Feb 08, 2011 Seneca Massie rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you like thrillers of true life accounts then you will love this book! Read all about Ed Gein's life and how he was found out!

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Jul 10, 2011 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

What really surprised me about this book was how well written it was. I was expecting some hack job (bad pun), but it was interesting and thoughtful.

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Nov 28, 2010 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommendation from my friend Mike. Lived up to expectation and plan on acquiring more of Schechter's books.

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About Harold Schechter

Aka Jon A. Harrald (joint pseudonym with Jonna Gormley Semeiks)

Harold Schechter is a professor of American Literature and culture at Queens College, the City University of New York. Among his nonfiction works are the historical true-crime classics Fatal, Fiend,Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved. He also authors a critically acclaimed mystery series featuring Edgar Allan Poe, which includes The Hum Bu...more

More about Harold Schechter...

Books by Harold Schechter

The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World's Most Terrifying Murderers

The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers

Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-Of-The-Century Chicago

The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century

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