Is Psycho Based on Ed Gein? All About Alfred Hitchcock’s Real Inspiration for Norman Bates’ Sinister Character

Psycho was the horror movie that forever changed Hollywood, and its storyline resembles certain parts of Ed Gein’s life.

In Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the latest season of the Netflix anthology series, the disturbing true tale of Gein (Charlie Hunnam) is brought to life. The Wisconsin farmer murdered two women, and dug up graves, stealing corpses and using body parts as decoration in his homemade house of horrors.

Monster also tells a parallel story of the making of the 1960 movie, Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The Netflix series portrays the filmmaker as inspired by Gein’s gruesome crimes when he was making the movie, but the reality of how the events unfolded is quite different.

While Gein’s crimes came to light around the time Robert Bloch was writing the 1959 novel Psycho, neither the author nor the Oscar-nominated director said that their character Norman Bates was directly associated with the serial killer.

So is Psycho inspired by Ed Gein? Here’s everything to know about the book and movie, and how the convicted killer was connected to the projects.

Is Psycho the book based on Ed Gein?

When Gein was arrested in 1957 in Plainfield, Wis., Bloch lived 35 miles away in Weyauwega, Wis. The author began writing Psycho in 1958, and the book was released the following year.

While Gein and Psycho‘s Bates share similarities, Bloch said the small-town murderer didn’t inspire him, although he noted the connection between the two men.

“I’d discovered how closely the imaginary character I’d created resembled the real Ed Gein both in overt act and apparent motivation,” he said, per Galaxy Press.

Despite denying using Gein as a point of reference for Bates, Boch clarified at the 1991 World Horror Convention that he was inspired by the “circumstances” of the killer.

Is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho based on Ed Gein?

Though scenes from Monster: The Ed Gein Story depict Hitchcock’s fascination with Gein, there is no evidence that the filmmaker looked to the serial killer for ideas about Bates’ portrayal in Psycho.

Per The Post-Crescent, in the 1971 book, The Celluloid Muse, Hitchcock said, “Psycho all came from Robert Bloch’s book.”

In episode 2 of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) brings Perkins (Joey Pollari) to a film set where Gein’s house has been recreated, including skull soup bowls and a collection of body parts.

The scene is disturbing, but according to Hitchcock historian Tony Lee Moral, it most likely never happened.

“There is no historical record of Hitchcock ever reconstructing Ed Gein’s house or walking Anthony Perkins through it. This sequence in Ryan Murphy’s series is best understood as dramatic license, not history,” he told Business Insider.

What are the similarities between Norman Bates and Ed Gein?

Whether Gein inspired Bates or not, there are similarities between the two subjects.

In addition to having close, intense relationships with their mother, Gein and Bates spent much of their time alone in their small towns. The real-life serial killer was from Plainfield, Wis., while Bates’ story was set in the fictional Fairvale, Calif.

On-screen, Bates tried to preserve his mom’s body after her death by storing it in the cellar. He would also dress in her clothes and eventually developed another personality, which he called “Mother.”

While Gein didn’t keep his mom’s body after she died from a stroke, he closed off parts of the house she used frequently, like her bedroom, which served as a shrine to her. That said, Gein’s connection to Augusta Gein influenced his crimes.

The two women Gein killed, Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, resembled his mother. He also admitted to digging up the bodies of recently buried middle-aged women who he thought looked like Augusta.

While there are connections between Gein and Bates, there are two main differences: Gein didn’t run a motel or stab someone to death in a shower, like Bates does in Psycho.

What other movies and shows were inspired by Ed Gein?

Apart from Psycho, other movies that were inspired by Gein and his gruesome crimes include The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Deranged (1974) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper — played by Will Brill in Monster: The Ed Gein Story — said he heard stories about Gein from family relatives who lived in Wisconsin.

“They didn’t mention his name, but to me he was like a real boogeyman,” the filmmaker recalled, according to The Flashback Files.

On the small screen, Block’s Psycho novel inspired the A&E show Bates Motel, which ran for five seasons from 2013 to 2017. The show starred Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates and Vera Farmiga as his mother, Norma Louise Bates.

Where can I watch Psycho?

Psycho is available to stream on Peacock.