Zak Bagans of Ghost Adventures Takes Home Ed Gein’s Cauldron

Ghost Adventures star Zak Bagans put in the winning bid on the cauldron once used to hold human body parts by Wisconsin deviant Ed Gein.

An item believed to have been owned by Ed Gein hit the auction block in Wisconsin last weekend. The object was a rusty cauldron said to have been purchased from the Gein estate sale in 1958. A former neighbor named Hollis Brown saw the cauldron in a shed on the property while assisting police with cleanup in the wake of Gein’s November 16th, 1957 arrest.

It was filled with blood and human remains.

Related:

• Ed Gein’s Cauldron featured on Deadly Possessions
• Digging up Ed Gein in Plainfield, WI
• What happened to Ed Gein’s gravestone?

Following the auction, a member of the Sauk County Paranormal group was kind enough to drop by and give us an update. It turns out Zak Bagans, star of the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures, had his eye on the cauldron. Not surprisingly, he had the winning bid at $2,800.

I reached out to Bagans to talk about his purchase, but I guess Cult of Weird isn’t quite that cool yet. He told TMZ later that he thinks the cauldron will “make a nice conversation piece for guests” while on display in his home.

The Ed Gein cauldron bought by Zak Bagans

Skepticism Over the Cauldron’s Authenticity

Naturally, there has been some skepticism over the authenticity of the cauldron. In the comments of my original article, even a resident of Plainfield, where Gein lived and committed his bizarre acts, expressed doubt in the claims. Katy said “I live in the Plainfield area and I don’t believe for one minute this stuff belonged to gein. It’s a good story and a good way to make money. But the people in Plainfield don’t talk about or offer up artifacts.”

The cauldron’s previous owner, Dan McIntyre, whose grandmother claimed to have purchased the cauldron from the Gein estate sale in 1958, says “there will always be skeptics.” He doesn’t seem to let it bother him. It was his friend Hollis Brown who told him about helping Gein’s parents render hog fat in the cauldron in the years before he saw it filled with human remains in the shed.

McIntyre does, however, seem to be relieved to be rid of it. He believes it may be filled with a dark energy that went dormant while sitting covered in his garage. While preparing it for the auction, though, he thinks the evil was awakened. He blames the cauldron for a mysterious illness and disturbances of his electrical devices in the month leading up to the sale. He wonders if he should have kept the cauldron and planted flowers in it, let it be forgotten by time, rather then send that evil out into the world.

Besides the cauldron and a shovel, which were both won by Bagans, a pair of skis and other items that once belonged to Ed Gein were also sold at the auction.

Bagans is known for being a collector of macabre and presumably cursed objects. In 2014 he purchased a house in Gary, Indiana known as the “Portal to Hell” where claims of demonic activity made headlines in 2012. Later that year he reportedly put his Las Vegas home, complete with secret dungeon, up for sale after fleeing it two years earlier. He believed a demonic entity had attacked himself and his girlfriend after he brought home a human skull.