Tell the truth: Have you ever been afraid of the Bogeyman? He is practically unanimous among the “monsters” of our childhood, alongside Cuca, Black-faced Ox and Bag Man. But did you know that the Bogeyman existed for "truth"?

Well, it's not the same in the stories where he hides under the bed of naughty children: the real one was an American serial killer, also called Gray Man, Wysteria Werewolf, Brooklyn Vampire and Moon Maniac. But who did? that guy?

Troubled childhood

Hamilton Fish was born in Washington DC, the capital of the United States, in 1870. Soon after, he changed his name to Albert, the same as his older brother, who died. Fish also became an orphan at an early age: his father was 75 when he was born, so he couldn't stand it long and was no longer alive when he began to get his atrocities ready.

Because of this, Fish spent much of his childhood in orphanages - he only moved back to his mother when she got a steady job. At the institution, he was greatly tortured but learned to endure and enjoy the pain.

After returning to live with his mother, however, Albert Fish did not have what we might call "normal childhood." At age 12, he was introduced by a boy to coprophagia - the act of eating feces. He also went to public restrooms to watch other boys change clothes.

Albert Fish: From Complicated Childhood to One of America's Most Feared Serial Killers

Prostitution and sadomasochism

In his youth, Fish began working with prostitution and raping young boys - he had a preference for children under 6 years of age. Near his 30th birthday, he accepted a marriage arranged by his mother and had six children with his wife. This, however, did not affect his sadism, which was getting worse and worse.

He quit prostitution and became a house painter. But when he visited a wax museum, he became obsessed with sexual mutilation. Kind of around that time he was arrested for theft, but didn't spend much time in jail.

Fish eventually met a 19-year-old boy, Thomas Kedden, with whom he had an extramarital relationship based on sadomasochism. Apparently young Kedden had mental problems. The culmination was when Fish was willing to kill his lover: he took him to an isolated farm, tortured him to the limit, cut off half of his penis, but gave up at the last hour to kill him. Instead, he gave Kedden $ 10 and left him right there.

The psychopath was arrested for theft, but was released shortly thereafter.

Hallucinations and self-mutilation

In 1917, Fish's wife abandoned him, and he began to develop some auditory hallucinations. In one of them, for example, he wrapped himself in a rug because the apostle St. John would have asked him to do so. He also began to self-mutilate - even with the help of his sons, who beat him with a racket full of nails. Their involvement in their perversions seems to have been limited to this.

One of the worst self-mutations seems to have been Albert Fish's wetting a ball of lighter fluid, stuffing it into his anus, and setting it on fire. In the emergency, 29 needles were also found stuck in his pelvis. At that time he still began to enjoy cannibalism - so much so that he often ate raw meat.

Psychopathic, Fish began to kidnap children, mostly black and / or mentally disabled, to torture, rape and eventually kill them and eat their meat. Worse, he really believed that it was God who asked him to do all this.

X-ray shows needles in serial killer pelvis

Arrest, trial and death

One of his victims was named Grace Budd, just 10 years old. Fish met her when he tried to hire her 18-year-old brother Edward, who was looking for a job in a newspaper ad. Willing to turn the boy into his next victim, Albert Fish changed his mind when he noticed that Edward was much bigger than he expected.

Except that Fish met the boy's sister, and within days of contacting him for the first time, he returned home and convinced the children's parents to let little Grace join him at a supposed birthday party for his niece. The girl was never seen again.

Police went hunting but only managed to capture him 6 years later, in 1934, when Fish himself sent an anonymous letter to Grace's parents detailing the entire process of torturing, murdering and ingesting the girl's body. In jail, he took on several murders but was tried only for the murder of Grace Budd.

The trial took place in 1935, and Albert Fish declared insanity. He was sentenced to death, even though the jury believed his madness - they thought it was irrelevant in the face of such cruelty. Fish was electrocuted in January 1936, and thus ended the story of one of the greatest child serial killers in US history.

Albert Fish was electrocuted in January 1936

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Did you know the story of the real Bogeyman?

* Posted on 10/27/2015