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Only three episodes into a season that spans 13, FX's American Horror Story: Asylum is already the year's wildest, most exciting free-for-all of small-screen genre entertainment. Series co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk clearly took the enthusiastic response to last year's inauguralAmerican Horror Story run and used the success to give themselves imaginative carte blanche.
Set in 1964 at the fictional Briarcliff Mental Institution, the current season—anchored by wonderfully unhinged performances from AHS returnees Jessica Lange and Lily Rabe and newcomers James Cromwell and Chloë Sevigny—isn't wasting any time. Viewers have already seen an exorcism, a deformed serial killer called Bloody Face, mutated woodland humanoids, aliens, dismemberment, and murderous nuns.
But, come on—American Horror Story: Asylum, as enjoyable as it may be, is never actually scary. Bonkers? Yes. Perversely exciting? Indeed. But terrifying? Not quite. Because nothing is as disturbing as the real thing, and, in the last 200 years, America has concealed enough serial killers and sadists to render 20 seasons' worth of American Horror Story-styled madness inconsequential.
Which is why we've combed through the most startling pages of our country's history books to compile The 25 Craziest Real-Life American Horror Stories. By the end, you'll laugh in the presence of Bloody Face and shed a tear for humanity.
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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)
25. The Zodiac Killer
As David Fincher's outstanding 2007 movie Zodiac lays out meticulously and thrillingly, the Zodiac killer's identity has never been confirmed, and it seems that's how it will remain. Although the Zodiac claimed to have killed 37 people (through his multiple threatening, even taunting, letters sent to Bay Area press, complete with cryptograms), his official, confirmed body-count stands at five, all killed between December 1968 and October 1969.
The Zodiac's most shocking attack happened at Lake Berryessa, in Napa County, California, on September 27, 1969. Two Pacific Union College students were picnicking when a man walked up to them wearing a black hood (a la an executioner), sunglasses, and a white bib decorated with the now-Zodiac-dubbed cross-circle symbol. Claiming to be an escaped convict, the man ordered the woman to tie her boyfriend up with plastic clothesline, then tied her up and stabbed each of them numerous times.
24. Andrea Yates
If stories about kids dying ruin your day, as they should, you might want to skip past this account of Andrea Yates.
For those still with us, the Houston mother of five, for years, suffered from an intense postpartum depression, which compounded with her pre-parenting years stricken with thoughts of suicide and self-hatred due to bulimia and suffocating insecurities. The suicidal impulses continued throughout her marriage to Rusty Yates, and on June 17, 1999, Andrea tried to kill herself by overdosing on pills. Sent to the hospital, she was prescribed antidepressants, released, and quickly brought back into the hospital after additional suicide attempts. In July, she had a nervous breakdown, tried killing herself two more times, and was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.
Repeated hospitalizations and self-mutilations culminated, on June 20, 2001, into the murders of all five of her children. While Rusty was at work, ignoring their doctor's orders to watch over her at all times, Andrea drowned their kids—ages ranging from 6 months to 7 years old—in a bathtub, then laid three of them out on her bed and left the other two floating in the tub.
23. Richard Speck
Richard Speck lived a dark, nomadic life. An experienced seaman, the Illinois native jumped from ship to ship working odd jobs, but in July 1966, a lack of sufficient employment sent him to a Chicago-area tavern, where he started drinking the pain away. Liquored up, Speck held a 53-year-old woman, Ella Mae Hooper, up at knifepoint, forced her into his Shipyard Inn room, raped her, and left with her .22 caliber pistol. Dressed in all-black, he returned to the bar for more drinks and eventually left with Hooper's gun and a switchblade, walked a mile and a half, and decided to break into a townhouse.
As it turned out, the townhouse was actually a dormitory housing young nursing students. Speck's own account suggests that he was high out of his mind and possibly only wanted to rob the place, but the incident played out far more horribly. He kept the women prisoner in their home, leading them out of a room one at a time, killing them through stabbing or strangulation, and even raping one of them before strangling her to death.
One woman, however, managed to hide under a bed for seven hours, and her escape—as well as someone recognizing Speck's "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo while he was in a hospital after a suicide attempt—ultimately led to his apprehension and jail sentence. He served 24 years in prison before of dying of natural causes.
22. Scott Peterson
The media went into a frenzy over Scott Peterson from 2002 to 2005, giving those who frequently watch the news story fatigue. Looking back on the case a decade later, one remembers just how shocking the whole ordeal was, and how big of a monster Peterson, who's currently on death row in San Quentin State Prison, remains.
Peterson reported his pregnant wife, Laci, missing on December 24, 2002, less than two months shy of the date when she was due to deliver their first child, a son they planned to name Conner. Initially, Peterson was not considered a suspect, but inconsistencies in his story made police suspicious and his darker side was revealed. They discovered that he was a habitual cheater, and one of his side-chicks, Amber Frey, later testified that he claimed to have "lost" his wife weeks before her disappearance.
Then, on April 14, 2003, a fetus washed out of the San Francisco Bay and onto the site where Peterson was boating on December 24, 2002. The next day, Laci's partial torso—without the head, feet, or hands—surfaced in the same location. Eight days later, Scott Peterson was arrested, and in 2005 he was sentenced to death via lethal injection. But, as he maintains his innocence, his case has been held up by appeals.
21. Lizzie Borden
On August 4, 1892, Fall River, MA, resident Lizzie Borden finally reached her breaking point. The only child of undertaker Andrew Borden, the then-32-year-old Lizzie has endured her father's miserly ways (such as ridding their home of indoor plumbing just so he could save some cash), his marriage to her stepmother, Abby Gray, after Lizzie's birth mother died (Lizzie refused to call Abby "mother"), and various other incidents, like the time Andrew killed Lizzie's beloved pigeons with a hatchet because he felt they were attracting intruders to their barn.
As the story goes, Lizzie, armed with a hatchet, struck her father's head 10 or 11 times while he was asleep, splitting one of his eyeballs in half, and also caved Abby's skull in with 19 hatchet strikes.
After being arrested that August, Lizzie was acquitted the following June, due to a lack of evidence. Still, many people believed she was the culprit and that Lizzie had been in a fugue state at the time and was simply unable to remember doing it.
The public immortalized Lizzie with folklore and even a delightful nursery rhyme that goes, with statistical exaggerations intact, "Lizzie Borden took an axe/And gave her mother forty whacks/When she saw what she had done/She gave her father forty-one." Perfect for kids, isn't it?
20. Christa Pike
While most of her peers were getting ready for the prom and looking at colleges, West Virginia teenager Christa Pike was worshipping the devil and committing homicide.
In 1995, Pike, 18, was in love with Tadaryl Shipp, whom she met through Job Corps, a Knoxville, TN, program that assisted low-income kids by housing them and teaching them career skills. Together, they messed around with the occult, and when fellow student Colleen Slemmer, 19, started talking to Shipp a bit too much for Pike's liking, she conspired against her with Shipp and friend Shadolla Peterson.
On January 15, they brought Slemmer to a vacant steam plant where, for about 30 minutes, they physically assaulted her, sliced her up, and carved a pentagram in her chest. Finishing the job, Pike finally crushed Slemmer's skull with a slab of asphalt paving and kept a piece of the skull as a souvenir. Back at school, Pike showed the skull fragment to classmates, and, merely 36 hours after killing Slemmer, Pike, Peterson, and Shipp were arrested.
19. Gary Ridgway
For female drifters aimlessly marauding in the Seattle and Tacoma, WA, area, (specifically on the Pacific Highway South) during the 1980s and '90s, soliciting Gary Ridgway was a tragic mistake. It's been reported that Ridgway murdered over 70 women, most of whom were either prostitutes or runaways. He'd pick them up on the Pacific Highway, choke them to death, and then leave their bodies in the woods surrounding the Green River.
The details of his routine are truly horrendous. Once the woman was in his vehicle, Ridgway would show them a picture of his son (to get them on his side), and after sex he would strangle them with, at first, his hands, but as he became more experienced, he realized that hands leave bruises and fingerprints, so he switched to ropes and wires. He further assaulted his favorite victims, even after death—Ridgway would often return to the Green River to practice necrophilia with the corpses.
18. Ricky Kasso
Fans of heavy metal music hate it when old people and conservatives blame their beloved tunes for destroying society and turning youngsters into deviants. It's been going on for decades now, and in many ways it can be traced back to the case of New York teenager Ricky Kasso.
At age 17, while wearing an AC/DC T-shirt, he murdered fellow teen Gary Lauwers in the Aztakea Woods of Northport, Long Island. Along with two other friends—who, like Kasso and Lauwers, were high on mescaline—Kasso was in the woods to dabble in occult practices, as part of their self-dubbed "Knights of the Black Circle" cult.
Tensions had long before mounted between Kasso and Lauwers, after the latter allegedly stole 10 bags of PCP from Kasso. On June 16, 1984, in the Aztakea Woods, unsuccessful attempts to build a fire prompted Lauwers to make up for the damp driftwood by using his socks and denim jacket's sleeves. Kasso said that they should use Lauwers' hair instead, which led to Kasso biting him on the neck. Then, over a reported three-to-four-hour period, Kasso and his two other friends stabbed Lauwers upwards of 36 times, burned his body, gouged his eyeballs out, and stuffed rocks down his throat.
As he was killing Lauwers, Kasso ordered him to "say you love Satan," but Lauwers said, "I love my mother." Kasso covered the thought-to-be-dead body with branches and leaves, but, as reports tell, Lauwers rose back up, said "I love my mother again," and prompted the assailants to continue their assault until he was confirmed dead.
On July 5, Kasso was arrested. Two days later, he hung himself in his jail cell.
17. Sharon Tate and the Manson family
It's referred to as the night when the free-loving, happy-go-lucky era of the 1960s officially died. Non-metaphorically, five innocent people were brutally murdered on August 9, 1969, by followers of charismatic and deranged cult leader Charles Manson. Famously, one of the victims was aspiring actress, and wife to acclaimed director Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate. Technically, six people died that day—Tate was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant at the time.
Polanski, on that fateful day, was working on a movie in London. As for Tate, she was hanging out inside their Los Angeles home with three of her friends (the fifth victim was an unrelated driver who rode past the property as the murderers approached). Manson had ordered four of his young followers (one guy and three girls) to go to the house, where an associate formerly resided, and "totally destroy everyone in [it], as gruesome as you can."
And so they did. Or, as Mansonite Charles Watson told one of Tate's houseguests, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business." By the time Manson's minions left the premises, they'd killed Tate and her friends with multiple gun shots and stabbings. Tate, specifically, was stabbed 16 times after pleading for the life of her unborn baby.
16. Henry Lee Lucas
Labeling Henry Lee Lucas a "hypocrite" is just about the nicest thing one could ever say about the psychopathic Virginian. At one point, after being arrested, Lucas wrote a letter that stated "I am not a serial killer," but, in all, he confessed to around 600 murders, bringing the nickname "The Confession Killer" upon himself.
Growing up as a victim of abuse, Lucas, during his childhood, spent three days in a coma thanks to his mother beating him with a wooden plank, which happened when, for a change, she wasn't making him watch her have sex with men. She even dressed him up as a girl, and, as reports state, beat him up for accepting a teddy bear from a grade school teacher.
On January 11, 1960, Lucas killed his mother by smashing her neck with broom, leaving her in a pool of blood to slowly die. After serving 10 years in jail for that, he—per his own accounts—teamed up with friend Ottis Toole and went on a cross-country killing spree. Although only three victims have been directly pegged to Lucas' hand, his claims of about 200 times that have earned Lucas one of pop culture's more notorious serial killer reputations.
And he certainly had no problems with increasing his profile. Although later considered to be bullshit, Lucas' confessions grew increasingly ridiculous before his 2001 passing. Amongst other claims, he told authorities that he killed Jimmy Hoffa and also hand-delivered poison to Jim Jones for the cult leader's Jonestown mass suicide.
15. Dean Arnold Corll, the "Candy Man"/"Pied Piper"
In Houston, TX, Dean Arnold Corll was affectionately known as the "Candy Man," since his family owned a candy store and he often gave local kids free pieces of candy. Unfortunately, that's not all he was giving Houston's youngsters.
Along with his much younger accomplices David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, Corll—in his early 30s—spent the years from 1970 to 1973 abducting, raping, and killing at least 28 little boys. The victims ranged from 13 to 20 years of age, and Corll would coax them into either Ford Econoline van or Plymouth GTX by telling them he knew about a party or that he would give them rides to their homes. If they resisted, he'd grab them, trick them into putting on handcuffs, or force drugs into their system. Sometimes, he even made the kid call his parents to tell them that he was OK, just to make sure that they didn't worry.
As for the killing methods, Corll would strangle some victims and shoot others with a .22 caliber pistol. Their bodies would then be wrapped up in plastic and buried.
14. David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz
Armed with his trusty .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, the Brooklyn-born madman David Berkowitz conducted several shooting attacks throughout New York City from July 1976 through August 1977, leaving six people dead and seven others wounded. Media outlets jumped on Berkowitz's actions as he left numerous letters threatening the NYPD with future killings, and when he was finally apprehended, the "Son of Sam" was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences.
All that is awful, of course, but the real "horror story" elements of Berkowitz's case are as follows. Back in the '90s, Berkowitz changed his confession to add that he'd been part of a Satanic cult and was shooting people to carry out ritualistic murders. But here's the real kicker: He blamed his actions on his neighbor Sam Carr's dog, a labrador retriever named Harvey, which he told the authorities was possessed by an ancient demon that ordered Berkowitz to kill people.
Now try watching FX's Wilfred without thinking about that every second.
13. The murder of Elyse Pahler
In March 1996, the body of 15-year-old Elyse Pahler was found in Arroyo Grande, CA, not far from her house, after one of her murderers, Royce Casey, confessed to the crime. The reason Casey came clean is where the story gets really bizarre: He has recently converted to Christianity. Prior to that, he was a Satanist, and, along with friends Jacob Delashmutt and Joseph Fiorella, raped and killed Pahler eight months beforehand as part of a ritual "sacrifice to the devil."
But, wait, it gets worse. The three friends were part of an upstart heavy metal band, named Hatred, and they claimed that killing Pahler was meant to give them the "craziness" to "go professional." Elyse's parents later blamed the popular metal group Slayer, specifically the band's songs "Postmortem" and "Dead Skin Mask," which provided Casey, Delashmutt, and Fiorella with the the guidance to efficiently rape, kill, and "commit acts of necrophilia" on Elyse. However, in an interview with the Washington Post, Delashmutt rebuked the Slayer charges and instead blamed the murder on Fiorella's obsessions with Pahler.
12. Richard Ramirez, "The Night Stalker"
Before media outlets officially dubbed him "The Night Stalker," Richard Ramirez was called both "The Walk-In Killer" and "The Valley Intruder," since his first few victims were found dead inside their homes. By the end of his spree, the El Paso, TX, native killed 13 people and almost killed five others. And his methods of execution were especially revolting.
One victim, 44-year-old Maxine Zazzara, had a "T" carved onto her left breast and her eyes gouged out; another woman had pentagrams drawn onto her thigh with lipstick; others had their throats slit after being sodomized.
Hoping to find reasons as to why Ramirez went so bad, reports have cast blame on a cousin named Mike, a Vietnam veteran who showed a young Richard pictures he'd taken of tortured Vietnamese people, specifically decapitated women the young boy had earlier seen in other pictures giving Mike blow-jobs. Even worse, a 13-year-old Richard watched Mike shoot his wife to death, which left Richard covered in the woman's blood.
11. The Black Dahlia
The horrific murder of Elizabeth Short is one of the most notorious crimes in American history and has inspired multiple movies and decades' worth of conjecture. But nothing hits quite as hard as the real thing; meaning, the actual January 1947 crime scene photos, which are easily found on Google but too gruesome for us to post here.
On January 15, 1947, the 23-year-old woman's mutilated body was found in Los Angeles' Leimert Park area. Her body had been bisected at the waist, all of her blood drained out, and there was a pronounced slash that stretched the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating a Joker-like smile. Lastly, her mangled corpse was washed and "posed" on the ground.
The cause of death was ruled as a hemorrhage caused by powerful blows to her head and face. To this day, nobody knows who killed Elizabeth Short, though upwards of 60 people—presumedly looking for fame or recognition—have confessed.
10. The Bloody Benders
For John Bender, his wife, and their two kids, murder was a family trade. From 1987 to 1983, the "Bloody Benders," as they've been dubbed in subsequent years, ran a general store and inn in Kansas, where guests would check in but, for the most part, never check out.
Allegedly, the Benders would invite a guest to have dinner with them and have the person sit on a chair that was positioned over a trap door. The wife would distract the guest long enough to give John time to bash them over the head with a hammer and one of their kids to slice the throat open. The trap door would then open, dumping the body into the cellar where someone would tend to it before burying the corpse somewhere near the orchard.
9. Big Lurch
Prior to April 10, 2002, Antron "Big Lurch" Singleton was a reasonably successful member of the Bay Area rap music scene, having worked with artists like Too Short, Mac Dre, E-40, and Yukmouth. But any hopes that Lurch had of becoming as popular as those rappers were obliterated on that April night, when the then-25-year-old heinously murdered Tynisha Ysais, 21, in her Los Angeles apartment. This wasn't a murder like any other you've ever heard about before, though.
At the time, Lurch was tripping from smoking tons of PCP. When Ysais' mutilated body was found, the unlucky discoverers saw that her chest had been ripped open and teeth marks were seen on her face and her lungs (which has been removed through the chest opening). There was also a three-inch knife broke off into her shoulder blade, which, allegedly, was used to cut through her chest.
Eyewitness accounts stated that Lurch was seen walking down the street naked, drenched in blood, and lifelessly looking up at the sky. And after he was captured, medical tests revealed that chunks of human flesh, not his own, were found in his stomach. Years later, though, evidence surfaced that suggested Lurch didn't in fact commit the murder, due to DNA found in Ysais' apartment that didn't match his. Singleton is still currently serving a life sentence inside California State Prison.
8. Ted Bundy
You know how they say "It's the nice ones you have watch out for," right? Well, they're talking about guys like Ted Bundy, a serial killer, necrophile, and rapist who killed upwards of 30 women all by using his good looks, natural charisma, and disarming personality to manipulate his victims.
Bundy was one hell of an actor, portraying various types of characters in order to lure his victims. Sometimes, he'd pretend to be injured or act like he was suffering from a disability; other times, he'd make women think that he was a cop. Once he'd earned their trust, or coerced their fear of authority, Bundy would bring them to secluded areas, assault them, and leave them for dead.
Unhappy with just killing the ladies, he'd later go back to the crime scenes and have sex with the rotting corpses, before returning home, where he kept at least 12 of his victims' decapitated heads as keepsakes. Bundy's reign of terror stretched throughout seven states, including Florida, Washington, and Colorado. On January 24, 1989, he was executed via an electric chair inside Raiford Prison, in Starke, FL.
7. John Wayne Gacy
And psychologists wonder why kids are so often afraid of clowns. It's not just Pennywise from Stephen King's It who's to blame—sickos like John Wayne Gacy have been giving the colorful, supposedly playful jesters a bad name for decades now.
Gacy definitely takes the cake for the most sadistic clown of all time. The Chicago resident earned paychecks by dressing up as "Pogo the Clown" and attending various fundraisers and children's parties and performing for the little ones. Of course, the adults who hired Gacy didn't realize that, when he wasn't acting as lovable Pogo, he was sexually assaulting and subsequently murdering teenage boys in the years between 1972 and 1978—33 victims, to be exact.
He buried 26 of the corpses in the crawl space of his home, and spread three others out elsewhere on his property. Whether Gacy wore his clown get-up while killing has never been confirmed, and his May 1994 execution buried the answer along with him. But imagining so makes the story that much more nightmarish.
6. The Columbine Massacre
Since April 1999, school shootings have, unfortunately, become an almost yearly occurrence, but regardless of how many like-minded tragedies take place, no one will soon forget what happened at Colorado's Columbine High School. That's when two students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, clad in trench-coats, casually walked into the building, killed 12 schoolmates and one teacher, and injured 21 others, before committing suicide once their murder spree ended.
Initially, Klebold and Harris planted bombs in the school's cafeteria, but those failed to explode. Thus, they grabbed semi-automatic guns, walked through the hallways and popped into classrooms, and opened fire on anyone in sight.
Various theories have come up as to why Klebold and Harris committed the act, ranging from the negative influences of video games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D to bullying and the overuse of anti-depressants. Whatever the case, though, no explanations will ever alleviate the pain felt by the victims' families and friends.
5. Dr. Henry Howard Holmes
In 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' introduction into the New World, the storied Chicago World's Fair took place in the Windy City from May through October and attracted over 20 million people. The most unfortunate visitors checked into a nearby hotel owned and operated by Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, but little did the lucky ones know that the hotel's proprietor was also a ruthless, sadistic mass murderer who'd often kill his guests.
Later called Holmes' "Murder Castle," the hotel became ground zero for the doctor's evilest impulses. Not limiting his murders to guests, he forced many of his female employees to take out life insurance policies in order to start working, would kill them soon after, and then reap the spoils since he was always the beneficiary.
Holmes' approach to murder was, in the most macabre sense of the word, creative. Sometimes, he would lock victims in soundproof rooms full of gas lines and slowly asphyxiate them; for other people, he'd choose the bank vault next to his office, lock them inside, and make them suffocate. A secret chute would send bodies to the basement, where Holmes would remove their flesh, turn them into skull-and-bone models, and sell the skeletons to local medical schools.
4. Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer definitely earned his sterling reputation as one of the sickest serial killers of all time. Over a 13-year span, from 1978 through 1991, the Wisconsin-born freakshow killed 17 men, but when we say "kill," we really mean that he ended their lives via rape and dismemberment and then prolonged his sadistic enjoyment after their demises by having sex with corpses and eating some of their flesh.
Dahmer was a sexual predator, meeting guys at local gay bars, flirting with them, and having sex with them before his real "pleasures" would begin. Late into his murder spree, Dahmer thought that he could turn people into "zombies," so he started drilling holes into his still-living victims' skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid into their brains' frontal lobes, hoping to turn them into docile, submissive sex slaves.
In the end, Dahmer received his comeuppance in prison, where another inmate beat him to death in November 1994.
3. Albert Fish
Albert Fish was given many nicknames throughout his time as a serial killer, and they cover nearly the entire spectrum of the horror genre's favorite kinds of monsters. Most notably, you've got "the Werewolf of Hysteria," "the Brooklyn Vampire," "the Moon Maniac," and, simply, "The Boogey Man." After reading about his abhorrent lifestyle, you may be inspired to think up a few more.
Fish, who lived from 1870 to 1936, harbored fascinations and obsessions with castration, which stemmed back to the time a male lover brought him to a wax museum and Fish was enamored by a bisected penis. He was also big on S&M, routinely visiting brothels in order to indulge his sadomasochistic kinks.
But then, around 1920, he began killing. Fish specifically targeted African-Americans and mentally handicapped children, using either a bone saw, a butcher knife, or a meat cleaver, his "implements of Hell." His most infamous murder victim was 10-year-old Grace Budd. In 1934, six years after Grace's disappearance, Fish sent a letter to her mother, which, amongst other awful things, told Mrs. Budd of how Grace picked wildflowers in his presence, he choked her to death while they were both naked, and then cut her up, cooked the body parts, and ate them.
The letter ended with this: "How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin."
2. The Ripper Crew
Robin Gecht certainly worked his way up the serial killer ranks. Initially, Gecht learned the trade, so to speak, by working for John Wayne Gacy, but he eventually amassed his own group of homicidal colleagues (Edward Spreitzer, Andrew Kokoraleis, and Thomas Kokoraleis) and made a name for himself.
In 1981 and 1982, on the streets of Chicago, Gecht and his buddies drove around abducting prostitutes, forcing them into their van, and bringing them back to Gecht's apartment where they'd murder (or, rather, sacrifice) the women in gruesome Satanic rituals. Per the killers' own claims, they would cut off one of the prostitute's breasts and eat it as Gecht would read aloud from Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey's 1969 book The Satanic Bible.
And that's not all. Once they finished eating, they would take turns raping the area where the breast had previously been, before masturbating onto the breast and consuming it in little pieces.
1. Ed Gein
There's arguably no one man who's been more inadvertently influential to the horror genre than Mr. Edward Gein. Because of him, authors and screenwriters were inspired to create the following characters: Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. But let's not give Gein too much credit here. After all, he was a murderer who also dug corpses out of graveyards and made trophies and other home-adorning paraphernalia from their bones and flesh.
In 1957, the Plainfield, WI, native confessed to a pair of murders, saying that he offed two local women over a three-year span. And when the authorities searched his home, they discovered a treasure trove of horror: human skin covering chairs, bowls made from skulls, four loose noses, the two victims' severed heads in bags, a belt made from female nipples, a lampshade made from a person's face, and 10 women's heads with the tops cut off, amongst other grotesqueries. OK, one more, for good measure: They also found nine vulvae snipped off and placed in a shoe box.
So, yeah, there's your Chainsaw Massacre connections. As for Psycho, it was later learned that, after Gein's abusive mother passed away, he started creating a "woman suit" (i.e., female skin taken from bodies that he'd tanned) so that he could give himself a makeshift sex change. Any questions about why Ed Gein takes the top spot here?