To Higgens, the Gein atrocities could be traced directly to the harmful influence of such material on a dangerously impressionable mind, and her plan was to travel to Plainfield in order to collect firsthand information for a series of lectures on the dangers of crime magazines and horror comics—publications which, she maintained, offered their readers nothing less than “short courses in murder, cannibalism, necrophilia, and sadism.”
Ridiculous conclusion. The juvenile printed material for sale in 1957 America involving sadistic crimes are predated by an avid worldwide public interest in such crimes going back for millennia - any student of Ancient Greek plays and even more ancient Norse/Mesopotamian/Japanese/religious books of myths - for example, The Torah, Bible, Qur'an - can speak to the validity of my statement. It was the stories in the Bible and Ed's mother's religious fundamentalism which created Ed Gein's fantasies. Cultural entertainment simply validated Ed's feelings.
