Investigating Ed Gein: 10 Questions for Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza

Ed Gein: The Real Psycho is a new Shock Docs special that begins streaming on discovery+ on April 9. It features Steve Shippy from Haunting in the Heartland and Cindy Kaza from The Holzer Files investigating Ed Gein’s case, including a few locations his spirit may still roam in Plainfield, Wisconsin.

Is the Plainfield Ghoul responsible for some of the reports of paranormal activity around town? Or can some of it be attributed to his mom, Augusta?

That’s what Steve and Cindy were there to find out.

Luckily I had a chance to screen the episode before its release. Even luckier, I had a chance to talk with Steve and Cindy after watching it.

What was it like investigating Ed Gein and his heinous crimes?

That wasn’t one of the questions I asked. The Shock Docs special gives you a sense of that. However, I did have some specific questions for Steve and Cindy. (Even though it wasn’t my most well-spoken interview. I’ve embedded the episode below, but you can also listen wherever you get your podcasts from.)

So what did I ask them? These 10 questions:

1. Had they ever worked together before?

I thought Steve and Cindy worked really well together and made for a great pairing. Loved their chemistry. But then I wondered if I’d missed something. I don’t watch every paranormal show, and I didn’t think they’d ever worked together before, but maybe they had?

Nope. The first time they worked together was while investigating the Ed Gein case for this Shock Docs special.

2. Did they ever think they would investigate anything having to do with Ed Gein?

Steve said he never expected to have the opportunity to investigate the property where Ed Gein’s house once stood or any of the other places connected with him. He was well aware of the case and knew it influenced so many pop culture horror movies, but, no. He never thought he’d have any involvement like he did for this special.

Cindy said she also loves horror movies, but also never expected to be involved in such a project but when the opportunity presented itself, she was all in!

3. Were they expecting Ed’s mom to be so intense?

In the episode, the interaction they had with a spirit who may have been Augusta Gein frightened me way more than the idea of Ed. I wondered if they’d been prepared for that or if that had caught them off guard.

Cindy said she never knows what she’s going to step into when she does an investigation, but Ed’s mom’s presence was surprising —and terrifying. She explained how seeing how Augusta’s treatment of Ed, and how it turned him into a monster, was terrible.

That’s something she also alluded to in the Shock Docs special. She conveyed a lot of empathy for the boy Ed was and the abuse he endured at his mom’s hands, which Cindy feels sure helped mold him into the tormented monster he became.

Steve referenced Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho —which was apt since he calls himself the Hitchhock of the Paranormal! (But dangit! I didn’t think of that at the time or I would’ve applauded him then for working in a Hitchcock reference!)

He also said he wasn’t expecting Augusta to haunt their investigation, and that she added another disturbing layer to it all.

4. How do they shake off cases like these? Have they been able to shake this one off?

Cindy answered first. She said she wasn’t sure this is one she’ll be able to shake off. Because once you see the imagery she had, you can’t unsee it. She said this was for sure one of the craziest and definitely the most emotional cases she’s ever been involved with.

Steve said there are different ways to cleanse yourself after an intense investigation like this one, such as through faith. But he also agreed with Cindy that this will be a tough one to shake.

Not so much because he has her gift and saw what she did, but because he found explicit details and got to see things about the Ed Gein case that the public doesn’t know. It’s all disturbing and does require time to re-center and re-group.

5. Do they often have to deal with unexpected visitors in cemeteries like they did in this episode?

No one wanted to spoil this during the call, so I won’t give any spoilers here either. However, I will say this question was mostly directed to Steve. As Cindy put it, at this point of the investigation she was oblivious to what was going on.

Steve did say, though, that from time to time, yes. Unexpected visitors appear. There’s not much to do except what they did in this episode and be as respectful as possible.

6. Why didn’t Ed Gein just dig up his mom?

I wasn’t intimately acquainted with the Ed Gein case before watching this special. Of course I’d heard about the serial killer and was generally aware he’d inspired some horror movies, but I learned a few surprising things from Ed Gein: The Real Psycho. One of them was that he dug up a lot of his victims. I thought he’d killed them all.

But what was he really trying to do with their skin? He ended up using it in various ways, including creating a “meat suit.”

Some theorize he was trying to either recreate his mom, or create a way to “become” her. That’s something that comes up a lot in the episode. Every time it did, all I kept wondering was, “Why didn’t he just dig up his mom then?”

So I asked, and Steve said it was a good question, but no one really knows. Supposedly he tried, which Steve believes is more folklore than fact because Ed had successfully dug up other corpses.

Steve surmised a lot of things could’ve stopped him. Maybe Ed didn’t want to see his mom like that, or maybe that was too disrespectful and he feared her wrath? Who knows? But he certainly could’ve if he’d really wanted to, and Ed took the answer to that mystery with him to his grave.

7. Did they wish they had used a trigger item for the mom?

Steve and Cindy reminded me they did: the Bible!

(Oy! Totally had spaced that.)

8. Did they find the mound on Ed’s property?

One of the first places Steve and Cindy head at the start of the episode is to Ed Gein’s land for a daytime cursory visit. Right away, Cindy senses there’s some kind of a connection to a mound on the site.

It doesn’t really factor into the investigation after that, but I wondered what else they found out about it. Turns out there were mounds that dated back for some time on the property and historians confirmed they were burial mounds.

I wanted to ask if they felt any Native American energy might have influenced Ed or contributed to any of the other activity they experienced. However, I was having a hard time forming coherent sentences for some reason. I was afraid my question might come out wrong and be taken as disparaging so…I didn’t go there.

9. Cindy, does it ever surprise you when the equipment goes off?

Yes, it is surprising, but actually it’s more exciting. As she put it, even though paranormal investigators and mediumship fall under the same “paranormal umbrella,” they don’t always work together.

When equipment goes off, it’s exciting for her because someone’s validating what’s going on in her head and she loves that. Sometimes it can also scare her (maybe alarm would be a better word) because she knows what she’s seeing, feeling, hearing, and knowing, but it’s all internal. Getting that external validation is exciting.

However, when she heard the woman screaming through the machine? She admits that, yes. That was scary.

After I asked my final question, Steve backtracked to pipe up on this one. I felt bad because I assumed (something a person should never do, right?) that his reaction would’ve been much like any other investigator’s watching Cindy say, “Hey, something’s here,” and then the rem pod or the GeoPort goes off.

In one respect his reaction was what I expected, but he also appreciated having the chance to work with someone like Cindy because she picked up on a lot, and it all happened at the same time the equipment got active too. That’s rare and it was very exciting for him to witness and experience that.

10. Would you like to work together again and would you do another famous case or a not-so-famous one?

They both had the utmost respect for one another and said they would absolutely be down for working with each other again. However, they didn’t pinpoint any case in particular they might like to investigate together next.

I hope they will find another project because I thought they were a great match-up!

Listen to the Episode

For More Info

Visit discoveryplus.com.

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Follow Steve Shippy on Instagram. Follow Cindy Kaza on Twitter and Instagram.

Check-In

Whether you’ve seen the episode or not, what question(s) might have you asked Steve and Cindy about either Ed Gein or about in general investigating the spirit of a serial killer?