History of the “Ed Gein Ghoul Car” and Its Rockford Connection

If you’ve been glued to the new season of Netflix’s MONSTER: The Ed Gein Story like I have, you know just how horrifying this real-life tale gets. But, did you know that an important piece of Ed Gein infamy used to call Rockford, Illinois home?

Ed Gein Madness

In case you aren't a true crime addict like I am, let's fill you in on the most famous, and disturbing facts about Ed Gein, aka The Butcher of Plainfield or The Plainfield Ghoul.

Ed Gein was born and raised on a farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin, but his crimes shocked the entire nation in the 1950s.

Ed Gein only confessed to murdering two women, but he also admitted to exhuming corpses from local cemeteries and making furniture, clothing, masks and more from their skin and bones.

Ed Gein was terrifying, declared mentally insane, and the inspiration for some of Hollywood’s most disturbing characters like Norman Bates from Psycho and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.

After Ed Gein was arrested and committed to a mental institution, the Gein property in Plainfield, Wisconsin sat abandoned until it mysteriously burned down in 1958.

While most of the remaining Gein family property was destroyed in the fire, one thing survived, the car Ed Gein used to transport bodies in.

Ed Gein's 'Ghoul Car'

Here’s where things get really weird: Rockford has its own eerie tie to Ed Gein, in the form of a 1949 Ford sedan.

An article on mystateline.com says:

 Bunny Gibbons, a carnival owner from Rockford, Illinois, purchased the car at auction for $760 and toured it around the Midwest as a sideshow attraction, naming it the “Ed Gein Ghoul Car.”

Charging a quarter to see the car, Gibbons pulled in more than 2,000 paying customers in July 1958 when he first showed the Ford at the Outagamie County Fair in Seymour, Wisconsin.

Crowds wanting to see the car grew, outrage spread, and officials began to ban the display, so Gibbons brought the car back home to Rockford. Later it vanished.

Some say the car was scrapped. Others say it’s hidden on a Wisconsin farm, locked away like the twisted relic it is.

Either way, it's chilling to think that one of true crime’s most infamous artifacts once called Rockford home, and perhaps still does.