May Monster Madness 2014

Greetings darklings, and welcome to my creepy contribution to May Monster Madness 2014.

This is the first year I have been involved with this wickedly wonderful celebration of monsters - a big thank you to Annie Wells, Emma, of Little Gothic Horrors, and Ked, of Something WicKED This Way Comes, for organising and hosting this fabulous event! 

While there are many monsters I find absolutely fascinating, probably the most important of all would have to be the real-life one who inspired so many of my favourite fictional villains - the timid little farmer from Wisconsin, Ed Gein.

Ed was a Mama's boy, a shy underachiever, a disturbed loner whose strict, religious mother distorted his view of women and the world. When she died, his entire way of being was shaken. As Harold Schechter in his book Deviant explained, Ed had "lost his

only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world." Shortly after, Ed began body snatching, digging up bodies and wearing their faces while dancing in the moonlight so as not to feel alone. He started tanning the skins of recently buried women in order to create a 'woman suit' so he could pretend to be a female. He moved from grave-robbing to murder and killed two local women before being caught and imprisoned in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Upon raiding his farm house, the police found things they could not have even imagined - among other things, there were dining room chairs covered in human skin, bowls made of skulls, and this: "On the kitchen table was a cup. The cup held four noses. Human. With horror, the sheriff opened Gein's icebox and found various human organs-livers, hearts, lungs-wrapped in butcher's paper. He was, by definition, a ghoul." --Milwaukee Journal

Sound like anyone we know and love in the world of horror fiction and films?

Ed's mother obsession? My beloved Norman Bates, pictured here when he was freshly inked on my calf last year as part of my Psycho leg sleeve.

Woman-skinning murderer? Jame Gumb aka Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. If, like me, you were a big fan of the film, this video is priceless - watch it if you feel like a good laugh.

Buffalo Bill stitching his 'woman suit' together

Killer who uses his victims bones and skin for furniture? Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre's bone sofa
created by art director Bob Burns

Finally, here is Ed alongside some of the world's other most notorious killers, as drawn by my tattoo artist last year - can you name them all? 

Happy May Monster Madness everyone!

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