N5691 2nd Avenue
Plainfield, WI, USA

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Property Story Timeline

Preserving home history
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Aug 02, 1957

  • Amanda Zielike

N5691 2nd Avenue, Plainfield, WI, USA

N5691 2nd Avenue, Plainfield, WI, USA

Jul 02, 1957

  • Amanda Zielike

Want to know what Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs have in common? This house.

It started with a missing woman. On a cold November morning in 1957, the sheriff’s office in Plainfield, Wisconsin received a report: Bernice Worden, the local hardware store owner, had vanished. Her cash register was missing. Bloodstains trailed across the floor. Her last known customer? A quiet, withdrawn handyman named Ed Gein — known around town as odd but harmless, still grieving the death of his domineering mother. That evening, police drove down a rutted dirt road to a dilapidated farmhouse at N5691 2nd Avenue. What they found inside would change American horror forever. A headless corpse strung up in the shed like game Chairs and lampshades made of human skin Skulls repurposed as bowls A box of preserved organs And masks and garments sewn from the flesh of the dead Gein confessed to two murders — including Worden’s — and to robbing graves for years, collecting female remains to fashion a grotesque “second skin” in tribute to his mother. He slept beside corpses. He sealed off her bedroom. He built a shrine of flesh. His twisted legacy became the basis for Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel Psycho, which Alfred Hitchcock adapted into one of the most iconic horror films of all time. The story also inspired Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Before the farmhouse could be auctioned off in 1958, it mysteriously burned to the ground. Some say it was arson. Others say it was mercy. 📍 The address was: N5691 2nd Ave., Plainfield, WI Today, the house is gone — no ruins, no memorial, only a quiet patch of woods marked by a faded “No Trespassing” sign nailed to a tree. Do not visit. Do not trespass. Some places are better left alone. Explore the location here: https://housenovel.com/single-property/plainfield-wi-usa-home-history #HouseNovel #Psycho #EdGein #TrueCrime #HorrorInspiration #TexasChainsawMassacre #BuffaloBill #HomeHistory #HistoricHorror #BehindTheWalls #RealLifeHorror

Want to know what Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs have in common? This house.

It started with a missing woman. On a cold November morning in 1957, the sheriff’s office in Plainfield, Wisconsin received a report: Bernice Worden, the local hardware store owner, had vanished. Her cash register was missing. Bloodstains trailed across the floor. Her last known customer? A quiet, withdrawn handyman named Ed Gein — known around town as odd but harmless, still grieving the death of his domineering mother. That evening, police drove down a rutted dirt road to a dilapidated farmhouse at N5691 2nd Avenue. What they found inside would change American horror forever. A headless corpse strung up in the shed like game Chairs and lampshades made of human skin Skulls repurposed as bowls A box of preserved organs And masks and garments sewn from the flesh of the dead Gein confessed to two murders — including Worden’s — and to robbing graves for years, collecting female remains to fashion a grotesque “second skin” in tribute to his mother. He slept beside corpses. He sealed off her bedroom. He built a shrine of flesh. His twisted legacy became the basis for Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel Psycho, which Alfred Hitchcock adapted into one of the most iconic horror films of all time. The story also inspired Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Before the farmhouse could be auctioned off in 1958, it mysteriously burned to the ground. Some say it was arson. Others say it was mercy. 📍 The address was: N5691 2nd Ave., Plainfield, WI Today, the house is gone — no ruins, no memorial, only a quiet patch of woods marked by a faded “No Trespassing” sign nailed to a tree. Do not visit. Do not trespass. Some places are better left alone. Explore the location here: https://housenovel.com/single-property/plainfield-wi-usa-home-history #HouseNovel #Psycho #EdGein #TrueCrime #HorrorInspiration #TexasChainsawMassacre #BuffaloBill #HomeHistory #HistoricHorror #BehindTheWalls #RealLifeHorror

Property Story Timeline

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