You've probably heard the story. It’s a late, dark night in rural Wisconsin. A teenage girl is watching a couple of kids when she notices something off about the man lingering near the edge of the property. Maybe she finds something horrific in the basement. Maybe she never makes it out alive. It’s the classic "babysitter in peril" trope that has fueled a thousand slasher flicks, from Halloween to Black Christmas. But because Plainfield, Wisconsin, was home to the real-life "Butcher of Plainfield," people always ask the same question: Did Ed Gein kill the babysitter?
He didn't.
That’s the short version. If you came here for a quick "yes" or "no," there’s your answer. But the long version is way more interesting because it explains how a quiet, eccentric handyman became the blueprint for every movie monster of the last seventy years.
The Reality of the Plainfield Crimes
Ed Gein was a nightmare, but he wasn’t a prolific serial killer in the way we think of Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy. Honestly, he was more of a grave robber with a DIY streak that would make a taxidermist vomit. When police raided his farmhouse in November 1957, they were looking for Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner who had vanished. What they found wasn't just Bernice; it was a literal house of horrors.
The tally of confirmed victims is surprisingly small. Gein officially confessed to killing only two women: Mary Hogan in 1954 and Bernice Worden in 1957.
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Most of the "parts" found in his home—the lampshades, the chairs upholstered in skin, the "woman suit"—came from local cemeteries. Gein spent years digging up middle-aged women who reminded him of his deceased, overbearing mother, Augusta. He wasn't hunting teenagers. He wasn't stalking babysitters. He was obsessed with a very specific, maternal age bracket.
Why Everyone Thinks There Was a Babysitter
If he didn't do it, why is the "Ed Gein babysitter" story so persistent? It basically comes down to how pop culture digests real-life trauma.
Gein’s arrest happened right as the "Slasher" genre was being born. Robert Bloch lived only 35 miles away from Plainfield when the news broke. He heard the rumors, felt the local panic, and wrote Psycho. Then came Tobe Hooper with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Later, Thomas Harris gave us Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
These stories took the most sensational elements of Gein’s life—the skin-wearing, the mother obsession, the remote farmhouse—and grafted them onto traditional horror structures. One of the most effective structures in horror is the "vulnerable youth" narrative. By the time the 1970s rolled around, the legend of Ed Gein had been so thoroughly blended with the "urban legend" of the babysitter and the man upstairs that the two became inseparable in the public consciousness.
The Urban Legend Connection
Think about the "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs" legend. It’s the one where the calls are coming from inside the house. That story started circulating heavily in the 1960s, just a few years after Gein was sent to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. People were already primed to believe that a weird, lonely man in a rural shack was capable of anything.
Even though there is zero evidence that Gein ever targeted a babysitter, the atmosphere of his crimes fit the vibe perfectly.
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The Missing Pieces: Could There Be More?
Now, I should be fair. Some true crime buffs point to the disappearance of 15-year-old Evelyn Hartley in 1953. She was babysitting in La Crosse, Wisconsin—about 100 miles from Plainfield—when she vanished. Her shoes and glasses were found in the house, along with bloodstains.
Naturally, people looked at Gein. He was in the general region. He was definitely "active" during that period.
But the shoe didn't fit. Literally.
Gein's "style" (if you can call it that) was focused on adult women. He was also a creature of habit who stayed very close to home. Investigators looked for a link between Gein and Hartley for decades, but they never found a shred of physical evidence connecting him to the scene. Most modern profilers believe Evelyn was taken by someone younger and more mobile. Gein was a weirdo, but he wasn't a kidnapper of children.
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Why the Myth Still Matters
The reason we keep asking did Ed Gein kill the babysitter is that we want our monsters to be "complete." We want them to fit the movie versions we grew up with. It's almost disappointing to some that the real Ed Gein was a small, stuttering man who spent most of his time reading pulp magazines and digging in the dirt rather than being a calculated slasher lurking in the bushes of a suburban neighborhood.
The truth is often more mundane and simultaneously more disgusting. Gein’s horror was internal. It was a breakdown of the boundary between the living and the dead, not a hunt for "final girls."
Moving Past the Movie Myths
If you're trying to separate the man from the mask, the best thing you can do is look at the actual trial transcripts and the inventory lists from the Plainfield crime scene. It’s grim stuff. You won't find mention of high school students or babysitting gigs.
Instead, you'll find a tragic, terrifying look at what happens when isolation and severe mental illness collide in a vacuum.
Actionable Insights for True Crime Researchers:
- Check the victimology: When researching any "did they do it" claim, look at the age and demographic of confirmed victims. Gein’s victims were 54 and 58. A 16-year-old babysitter would have been a total outlier for him.
- Verify the geography: Gein didn't drive much. He was a local handyman. Crimes occurring more than 20-30 miles from Plainfield are statistically unlikely to be his.
- Consult the 1957 Inventory: The most reliable way to debunk Gein myths is to read the "Items Found in the Gein Residence" report. It is a specific, finite list. If a "babysitter's locket" or something similar isn't on it, it didn't happen.
- Differentiate between "Inspired By" and "Based On": Understand that movies like Texas Chain Saw Massacre are "inspired" by the feeling of the Gein case, not the facts. Don't let cinematic tropes rewrite the historical record.
Ed Gein remains one of the most influential figures in American folklore, but he wasn't the boogeyman in the babysitter's closet. He was the man in the graveyard, and that was plenty scary enough.