A jacket inspired by murderer Ed Gein made by Kayla Arena.
 
Not only can you own a jacket that that would make “Buffalo Bill” forget all about putting the fucking lotion in the bucket shout “shut up and take my money!” you can have it customized to your precise measurements. Because nothing looks worse than a poorly fitting blazer made of authentic looking body parts.

The inspiration for this creation by Kayla Arena and Toby Barron was, according to their Etsy page,  “American Murderer and Body Snatcher, Ed Gein.” If you’re unfamiliar with Gein’s handiwork, Arena and Barron are referring to the career of one of the world’s most infamous murderers. Ed Gein’s life and nefarious activities have provided storylines for numerous films including Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. After Gein’s mother died he descended into a poor mental state and became a regular at local graveyards searching for body parts which he collected in great numbers. Gein would return the bodies to their resting spots sans a few limbs with such care that his grave robbing went unnoticed for several years. When he escalated his after-hours activities to include the murder of two women in 1957, he was arrested, tried, and convicted for his crimes. Gein would die at the age of 77 in a psychiatric facility in Wisconsin.

As a full-time ghoul myself, I enthusiastically applaud Arena and Barron’s commitment to making this odd piece of outerwear as realistic as possible. Arena has worked as FX talent on several films since the late 2000s. According to her Etsy page it takes 8-10 weeks to make one of these babies which will ship to you from her homebase of Australia for $1100. In addition to the jacket she also sells many more gorgeously grotesque items on her website such as hats, lamps, handbags, shoes and a retro-style chair all constructed with the same “fabric” (which includes details synthetic hair and false eyelashes) as the Ed Gein jacket. Yikes!
 

A close look at the back detail of Arena’s Ed Gein jacket.
 

YOU could be wearing this!
 
More after the jump…

 
I understand the fascination with murderbilia—to a point. John Wayne Gacy’s clown paintings are terrifying, and Charles Manson’s music is unsettling its seductiveness (in an AM gold kind of way); we’re usually drawn to these artifacts because we think they can provide some insight into murderous minds. Obviously, this is unlikely; lots of perfectly harmless and good people create disturbing art (and if Hitler’s watercolors are any indication, we should be on the lookout for the banal, not the unnerving). Still, there is that vain hope that we can understand something about the monsters in our midst by examining their more mundane hobbies and habits, perhaps learn to identify their kind, and maybe keep ourselves safe that way.

Then there are the people who just covet gruesome souvenirs.

Recently, a cauldron that supposedly belonged to notorious serial killer Ed Gein—a cauldron he supposedly used to store the discarded remains of his victims—was advertised at a modest, small-town Wisconsin auction. There is some debate as to whether or not the cauldron actually belonged to Gein—a few people have wondered why such an object wouldn’t have been seized for evidence, and it’s a good question. The backstory sounds plausible enough though—the seller got it from his grandmother, who had purchased it at a Gein estate sale. The seller also says that a former neighbor of Gein’s recognized the cauldron from when he helped police clean up the gore at Gein’s farm. That part sounds a little more suspect—I’m not sure the police would enlist civilians for that kind of job.

Regardless, I’m not so much curious about the authenticity of the cauldron as I am the mindset of a prospective buyer—why would you want such a thing? You can’t even make the (in my opinion, pretty dubious) argument that it has a historical significance (love you Lemmy, but you’ve got a ghoulish hobby). And if it is a fake, who is more perverse—seller or buyer?

The cauldron was set to be auctioned on the 28th—no word on if it sold, or for how much. You can see pictures from the ad below.
 

 

 

 

Gein’s Wisconsin farmhouse
 
Via Cult of Weird

 
“I’m cooking like a man on killing spree, my mom says I’m dating, weird like a thug, I’m in love, ‘cause she’s all cooked up!”  If Mel Brooks did it with Hitler, maybe filmmaker Steve Russell can do it for Plainfield’s most notorious flesh fetishist?  Get ready for Ed Gein: The Musical:

According to the Associated Press, this jaunty-creepy portrait of Gein?