Halloween is on the way. Cheesy horror movies and pumpkin spice everything are all around. Giant inflatable spiders and ghosts haunt the front lawns of many American households. Horrors lie everywhere for the whole month of October. Many think the sheets of ghosts and the plastic spiders are the deepest horror. Real life holds many other horrors. Serial killers and murderers lurk everywhere.

Until the past century, serial killers weren’t classified differently than criminals who killed one person. In the 1970s, FBI agent Robert Ressler and his partner started to realize these types of violent offenders differ from the rest. Not only the body count, but the psychosis of the killers classify the killer. The FBI has a classification system in which killers are tested. Even if the person only kills one person, they can still be classified as a serial killer. The term ‘serial killer’ was invented shortly after the Manson had his rein of terror. This FBI breakthrough spread to other countries, though serial killers are still said to be an ‘American fascination.’

It all started with the Benders, America’s most terrifying family. A husband and wife and possibly their two kids, or their daughter and her husband  killed at least 50 victims in the 1870s. There is still a field in Kansas that may hold more of their victims, but since the case is closed, it has never been dug up to find the remains.

The first solo serial killer in The U.S. is none other than H. H. Holmes and his murder castle in Chicago. Holmes was born in New Hampshire as Herman Webster Mudgett. The unusually intelligent child took a fancy to medicine and surgery , often using animals in his youth to feed his fascination. Then as he was accepted to the University of Michigan as a medical student, his human experiments took place. He stole bodies from the medical school but was never caught. He graduated and moved to Chicago and bought a pharmacy. He turned the building into a house of horrors. Walls could move and crush people, pipes were filled with poisonous gases, safes were all around to suffocate people. He made the Chicago Murder Castle. The castle is a three story building with many rooms and a pharmacy on the bottom. Conveniently, the World Fair was happening blocks away from the castle. He started renting rooms out to visitors. He has been estimated to have killed as many as 200 people in his 35 years. Unfortunately due to severe lack of forensic and investigative techniques, he was only convicted of one murder. He was hanged in 1896.

In the 1940’s, the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin had a monster among them. Ed Gein had been born and raised in Plainfield. The rumor is that at 13he murdered his father while on a hunting trip, but that has never been proven. His extremely religious and strict mother controlled and tainted his mind with warped views. Among the harsh beatings and warped views, there was an unhealthy attachment between Gein and his mother. When she died in 1945, Gein was sent on a downward spiral that turned his boyhood home into a place of nightmares. The most normal thing about the farmhouse was his mother’s room. He preserved it, left it untouched and sealed off, leaving it in the same conditions his mother left it. He closed up all but one bedroom, the kitchen, and a den. The town noticed the change in Gein. He became obsessed with females. He started digging up fresh graves of women in cemeteries. There were acts of cannibalism and other unspeakable horrors. After years of grave digging and kidnapping his barn was full of bodies hanging from the ceiling. All the furniture was made from human body parts and skin. He had a suit made out skin. He was caught after kidnapping someone from his hometown and was committed to an asylum where he died in 1984.  These disgusting acts have influenced television and movies. The Silence of the Lambs had Buffalo Bill mimic the suit of skin unique to Gein. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alfred Hitchcock’s character Norman Bates, and American Psycho are all based off of Gein and his horrors.

Charles Manson is perhaps one of the most infamous American killers. Manson had a hard life from the get-go. Born to an unfit mother and an absent father, by age 12 he was homeless. He turned to crime, petty at first. The 1960s were known for cults and Manson showed the personality traits of the cult-quasi-religious group leaders. He formed a cult, referred to as “The Family,” with extreme drug use, hate for African Americans, and extreme beliefs tied to Scientology and The Church of the Final Judgement, the cult became murderous to please Manson. The cult grew to be around 100 people and claimed to be about peace and love. Manson was trying to get a record deal. When he was denied, he ordered his most loyal disciples, Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian to kill everyone at the residence of the actor Roman Polanski. That fateful night, Polanski was actually away filming. but friends happened to be staying the night. Pregnant actress Sharon Tate, writer Wojciech Frykowski and his partner Abigail Folger, and celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring were all at Polanski’s house. The gardner was first to be murdered and then once the cult was inside, they released a level of brutality that was almost unheard of. After everyone was dead, the members were instructed to write racist words and phrases in order to start a full on race war in America. After those murders, Manson took Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten to the house of a supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, who were killed in the same fashion. Manson and some of his followers are either dead or rotting in prison with no chance of leaving.

John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 17, 1942. He was the third child, the only boy, in his family. His mother was said to be a nice woman who cared for John. His father, however, unleashed brutal punishments. John was forced to dress as a girl for punishment by his father, giving him a brutal hatred for women. John also showed what his father called ‘homosexualness’ and often beat John up, calling him disgusting names. John also had a heart condition that he needed medication for, but his father refused to give it to him, saying he wasn’t a man if he had to rely on medication to live, though his mother got him the medication in secret. Despite John’s father’s abusiveness, John did everything he could to impress him. He was class president in high school. He mentored many government positions and owned a few KFC’s in Iowa. His father was never impressed and died soon after John’s first marriage. John got married twice and had children, even though he was sexually attracted to men. Even with the seemingly normal life, John went to jail for the sexual assault of two teenage boys, an indication of what he was later going to do. Once he was an established business owner of a contracting company in Chicago, he then started killing under the noses of his second wife and stepchildren in 1972. He killed as many as 33 boys from the Chicago area, all while raising a family, owning a business, and even performing as a clown for children’s parties. His basement was filled with corpses and clothing of the 33 boys. John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death and died in 1994.

Jeffrey Dahmer was born a happy child. But when he was 6, he had a head injury that altered his personality. Then the birth of his brother,  the later divorce of his parents, and the struggles of his sexuality led him to become the serial killer he was. Dahmer had liked violence from his early teens, and when he was 18 he committed his first murder, right after his high school graduation. Dahmer liked to experiment on the bodies, often trying to create zombies. He also took part in cannibalism and other things close to those of Ed Gein. He terrorized the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area from 1978 to 1991. He was caught after one of his victims got loose. Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 957 years in prison or 15 life sentences for his murders. After just three years in prison, he was killed by an inmate.

A statistic says that you walk by a murderer or serial killers 30 or 40 times in your life. Another says there’s 40 to 50 active serial killers every year in America. With all the fake horrors of the Halloween spirit, sadly. the real ones are always there too, but don’t worry, ghosts and zombies will be the only thing to fear this Halloween, even though a murder can happen anywhere.