In the house of Ed Gein the police found:

• Human skulls mounted upon the corner posts of his bed
• Human skullcaps, apparently in use as soup bowls

• An array of “shrunken heads”

• Skin fashioned into a lampshade and used to upholster chair seats

• Skin from the face of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner, found in a paper bag

• A vest crafted from the skin of a woman’s torso

• Socks made from human flesh

• A sheath made from human skin

• A human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; deputy reports all claimed that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, while some crime scene photographers claimed it was in a paper bag)

• A window shade pull consisting of human lips

• Four noses

• Organs in the refrigerator

• Pieces of salted genitalia in a box

• Gein’s most notorious creations were an array of “shrunken heads.” Various neighborhood children — whom Gein occasionally babysat — had seen or heard of these objects, which Gein offhandedly described as relics from the South Seas, purportedly sent by a cousin who had served in World War II. Upon investigation, these turned out to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from cadavers and used by Gein as masks.

• The skins from ten human heads were found preserved, and another skin taken from the upper torso of a woman was rolled up on the floor. There was a belt fashioned from carved-off nipples, a chair upholstered in human skin, the crown of a skull used as a soup-bowl, lampshades covered in flesh pilled taut, a table propped up by a human shinbones, and a refrigerator full of human organs. The four posts on Gein’s bed were topped with skulls and a human head hung on the wall alongside nine death-masks - the skinned faces of women - and decorative bracelets made out of human skin. The stunned searchers also uncovered a soup bowls fashioned from skulls, a shoebox full of female genitalia, faces stuffed with newspapers and mounted like hunting trophies on the walls, and a “mammary vest” flayed from the torso of a woman. Gein later confessed that he enjoyed dressing himself in this and other human-skin garments and pretending he was his own mother.