Horror-inspiring architecture in Waupaca’s backyard

WAUPACA – On one hand, Wisconsin has rolling hills, beautiful lakes and a serene landscape; however, on the other hand it is also a backdrop for some of horror history’s most gruesome stories.

Outside of Wisconsin being home to two of the most notorious killers of all time, Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, it was also the inspiration for the story of Norman Bates and Psycho.

Robert Bloch lived in Weyauwega, where he wrote Psycho, which was released in 1959, two years after Ed Gein was caught and arrested for his crimes.

Bloch was often asked if Gein had any kind of effect on the Norman Bates character.

“I did not use Ed Gein as a basis for Norman Bates at all; I used the circumstances, which were: somebody could live in a small town, where everybody knows everybody else’s business, and conduct a series of murders without anyone suspecting,” Bloch said during an interview with David Schow at the 1991 World Horror Convention.

But inspiration for the setting can be seen hidden in plain sight. Although Bloch never explicitly pointed to a specific piece of architecture as inspiration, fans of the horror writer have found two locations that seem to match the setting in Psycho.

The first was the Lakeshore Motel, a former roadside motel in Weyauwega.

The motel itself no longer exists, but the iconic neon sign was spared from destruction, still stands all by its lonesome just off U.S. Highway 10.

While Bloch may not have used Lakeshore Motel for specific inspiration, he used the idea of roadside motels as a creepy and isolating setting.

In his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, he noted the changing landscape of new roadside motels.

“The old-style hotel in the center of town was out; travelers now patronized the newly emerging motels springing up along the highways. Here was isolation, an atmosphere where a guest was merely a license plate and a transient entity,” Bloch stated.

Fans have also thought the Mumbrue-Penney House on Main Street in Waupaca looks curiously similar to the home in Psycho.

Unconfirmed rumors assert that Hitchcock sent a team to Plainfield first to look for inspiration for the Psycho mansion, not finding anything they went next to Waupaca, where they found the Mumbrue-Penney House.

Another unconfirmed rumor stated that Bloch drew Hitchcock a picture of what he thought the house in the movie should look like, which in turn was used to design the set.

The rumor of the connection started almost immediately after the Alfred Hitchcock movie adaptation was released.

The houses appear to be quite similar, but Bloch never confirmed the rumors in any interviews, nor did Hitchcock, who claimed the inspiration for the house in Psycho came from a painting titled House by the Railroad.

We know one fact to be certain, Bloch wrote his horror masterpiece while living in a quiet Wisconsin city at the time of the arrest of Ed Gein and it inspired an iconic piece of horror history.