Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story rips the bandage off an old wound we all thought had healed but clearly hadn’t: the ugly way American popular culture mines a real man’s desecrations to create fictional celebrities of evil.
The show—and the media frenzy around it—confronts an uncomfortable truth: Ed Gein’s crimes didn’t just horrify; they fueled the creation of some of the most infamous on-screen monsters. This phenomenon repels and instructs us at the same time, exposing the spiritual vacancy behind the spectacle.
Let’s look at the plain facts of influence.
The series directly links Gein to fictional villains like Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), and even Hannibal Lecter. Showrunners and journalists confirm these ties: the writers and directors treat Gein as the grisly muse for modern horror’s most enduring nightmares.
Actor Charlie Hunnam, who portrays Gein, described the creative tightrope he and the production team walk to humanize a monster without glorifying him—a tension the show intentionally amplifies.
Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, insisted for years that he didn’t deliberately base Norman Bates on Gein. Still, he admitted the eerie similarities between his fictional mama’s boy and the Butcher of Plainfield. “I did not use Ed Gein as a basis for Norman Bates at all,” Bloch claimed. But given the uncanny parallels, it’s hard to believe his denial entirely. Considering the timing—the late 1950s and early ’60s, right after Gein’s arrest—the resemblance feels too convenient to dismiss as coincidence.
Augusta Gein, Ed’s mother, ruled him with a suffocating religiosity. She drilled into him that women were evil—except her, of course—and punished Ed and his brother, Henry, for making friends or showing natural affection. Her tyranny shattered Ed’s psyche, driving him toward sexual deviance, cross-dressing, and a grotesque fixation on his mother.
After Augusta died, Ed began robbing the graves of recently deceased women who reminded him of her. He tried to resurrect her by mutilating their corpses—sometimes decapitating them or preserving their genitalia. He even built furniture from human skin and stitched together a “woman suit” he could wear to become his mother. Many psychologists argue that he didn’t just miss her—he tried to be her.
Sound familiar? Norman Bates in Psycho digs up his mother’s corpse, adopts her personality, and murders in her name. He kills while believing “Mother” committed the crimes, revealing the split personality his mother’s emotional abuse caused.
With Leatherface, the link becomes undeniable. Director Tobe Hooper openly acknowledged that Gein’s grotesque trophies and grave-robbing inspired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hooper explained that he drew on small-town rumor and the horror of domestic decay when designing Leatherface’s world of flesh and madness.
Buffalo Bill, the other notable Gein echo, embodies similar obsessions. In The Silence of the Lambs, Bill—a disturbed man desperate to become a woman—murders women and skins them to craft his transformation. His gruesome behavior mirrors Gein’s ritualistic acts.
Our fascination with Gein stretches far beyond Hollywood. Real-life serial killers like Jerry Brudos, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer mimicked Gein’s mutilations and trophy-taking rituals. Several even expressed admiration for him, feeding the sick legacy that Gein’s crimes left behind.
So why does Gein fascinate us?
Spiritually, he strips away our comforting illusions about evil. He proves that wickedness doesn’t hide in gothic castles—it festers in lonely farmhouses and ordinary hearts. His story makes us question our neighbors and ourselves. Psychologically, we’re drawn to depravity because it lets us feel righteous by comparison. Just as spectators once crowded to watch public executions, we gawk at monsters like Gein to reassure ourselves that we’re better.
That’s why our culture sometimes turns murderers into antiheroes. Myth-making beautifies the ugly, simplifies the complex, and centers the criminal while erasing the victims.
In truth, staring into Gein’s darkness comforts us because it lets us believe our sins are small. “Sure, I’ve done wrong,” we think, “but at least I’m not him.”
From a Catholic viewpoint, that reaction exposes the deeper wound. When commercial art transforms wickedness into spectacle without repentance or justice, it commits a kind of sacrilege—an idolatry of the wound.
That doesn’t mean we should censor art out of moral panic. It means we must confront evil truthfully. We should remember the victims, reject the glamorization of sin, and examine the broken families, spiritual isolation, and moral emptiness that allow such monsters to rise.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story forces us to choose. Will we treat Gein as a cautionary example—a call to heal the decay in our culture—or as another marketable myth that turns blood into profit?
Our answer reveals the health of our national soul. If we truly believe in human dignity, we cannot let depravity entertain us without demanding a moral reckoning.
