His name is Jame Gumb. He’s an introvert. He’s really into moths. He knows how to sew. And in my opinion, he is one of the scariest serial killers and villains in all of fiction.
Read on to find out what makes Jame Gumb (a.k.a. “Buffalo Bill”) one of the scariest fictional killers in literature.
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris wrote The Silence of the Lambs in 1988. It’s a sequel to his 1981 Red Dragon, the novel that introduced us to Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Both books (but especially the sequel) set a high-water mark for the psychological thriller and serial killer genres.
Even if you’ve never seen the movie or read the novels, you probably know about Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He is the former psychiatrist and serial killer who says things like: “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
But I don’t want to talk about Lecter.
I want to talk about a man named Jame Gumb, who later earns the nickname “Buffalo Bill.”
This deeply flawed character is a masterpiece of fiction writing. Author Thomas Harris describes his daily life, actions and thoughts in a way that brings him to life — with horrifying results.
We believe this character. While we abhor and detest his terrible acts, we can also understand the motivations behind those acts. And that is what makes Buffalo Bill one of the scariest fictional villains or killers in a novel.
Would you like to meet this terrifying yet fascinating character? Would you like to peek under the hood, find out what makes him tick?
Then take my hand. Leave the light behind. And walk with me, blindly, through the labyrinth-like basement of a house in Belvedere, Ohio…
Meet Jame Gumb (a.k.a. Buffalo Bill)
In The Silence of the Lambs, an imprisoned serial killer (Lecter) helps the FBI identify and locate another serial killer (Gumb) who is actively killing and skinning young women in various parts of the country.
Yes, I said “skinning.”
This little hobby of his is partly what makes Jame Gumb one of scariest fictional villains of all time. It’s also the source of his nickname, “Buffalo Bill.” The police named him that because of modus operandi. Jame Gumb likes to “skin his humps,” as FBI candidate Clarice Starling explains in the novel.
(Note: “Humps” in this context refers to buffalo. The real-life William “Buffalo Bill” Cody was a famous soldier, hunter and showman who reportedly killed and skinned more than 4,000 buffalo during the 1800s.)
Have you seen The Silence of the Lambs, the 1991 film adaptation? If so, you probably remember the Buffalo Bill character played by Ted Levine. Levine was brilliant in that role. He brought that character’s creepiness to life in an unforgettable way. (“It rubs the lotion on its skin.”)
But the Jame Gumb / Buffalo Bill in the novel is much scarier, and for one simple reason. We get inside his head. In the book, we get to explore the serial killer’s troubled psyche on a deeper and more disturbing level.
Related: 5 scariest horror movies ever
What Makes Him the Scariest Killer in Fiction
Let’s revisit the thesis of this article. Jame Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs is one of the scariest fictional villains and killers of all time. If not the scariest.
That’s a bold and subjective statement, I know. But I’m prepared to back it up. Allow me to reinforce this opinion with some supporting evidence from the novel.
Here are five reasons why I believe Jame Gumb / Buffalo Bill is the scariest villain and serial killer in fiction.
1. He had a troubled youth.
Jame Gumb was born wrong. In his own mind, at least. He believes he should’ve been born as a woman instead of a man.
Even his name is wrong. He was supposed to be named James Gumb, with an ‘s’ at the end. But an error on his birth certificate spelled it as “Jame.” Later in life, when he learned of this clerical error, Gumb insisted on being called “Jame.” It’s almost like he understood, from a young age, that he was born different and should have a name to match.
Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb became a child of the system. His mother, an aspiring actress in Los Angeles, sank into a pit of alcoholism and despair. So the L.A. County officials had to put Jame into foster care. For years, he was in and out of different foster homes, lacking the stability many of us take for granted.
Jame’s grandparents adopted him when he was 10. At the age of 12, he murdered those same grandparents.
Some people experience pain and instability at a young age, but are able to overcome it later in life. Buffalo Bill is not one of those people. His troubled youth did a number on him, from a psychological standpoint. And he only grew worse with age.
Much of his history is unknown to us, and rightfully so. It’s a novel, after all — a fictional tale, not a biography. We don’t need to know every detail of his past.
But Thomas Harris does provide enough backstory to help us understand why Gumb became what he is. (Or at least to approach that level of understanding. We don’t want to fully understand this character’s motivations, do we?)
Backstory adds depth and dimension to an already unsettling character, making him one of the scariest killers in fiction.
2. He is methodical and meticulous.
While he was in a psychiatric hospital for killing his grandparents (see #1 above), Jame Gumb learned how to sew. I mean he really learned to sew. He developed the kinds of tailoring skills that might have led to a good career, upon his release. Instead, he used those skills to create his “woman vest.”
This is just one example of his methodical nature, and partly what makes him the scariest fictional killer or villain. He takes his time. He hones his skills. He learns and studies and advances himself, through practice and determination.
We see this again with the moths. Jame Gumb breeds a certain kind of moth known as the Death’s head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos). Its common name comes from the human skull-shaped markings on its back. Gumb cares for these moths like a patient mother, nurturing them, creating the conditions they need to undergo metamorphosis.
Granted, he makes mistakes. In sewing and killing alike, Gumb sometimes stumbles. But he learns from those mistakes. He remembers them, files them away for future reference, so he can do better next time.
And thus, little by little, he perfects his grisly art.
3. He is highly motivated.
Jame Gumb was born a man but wants to be a woman. That alone is not frightening, of course. It’s perfectly acceptable. All people have a right to pursue the lives they feel they are destined to live.
But for the man dubbed Buffalo Bill, all normalcy ends there.
This is one darkly motivated individual. He will stop at nothing to undergo the transformation that is so important to him. He tried the traditional route, the surgical path. But the doctors turned him down because of his psychological profile.
For most people, that would be the end of the road. But not for Buffalo Bill. He is determined to see it through. So, when the direct route to his goal closes before him, he takes an indirect and highly disturbing detour.
Gumb displays a great deal of patience and persistence in this novel. He knows what he wants — or at least he thinks he does — and is prepared to go a long way to get it. Even if it takes years. Even if he has to kill a half-dozen people along the way. He will keep going.
In fiction, all main characters need motivations. This is true for heroes and villains alike. Motivations make fictional characters real. They help us understand their actions and outlooks. They can also make an already frightening character even more terrifying.
It is this combination of skills, motivation and persistence that makes Buffalo Bill one of the scariest fictional serial killers and villains of all time.
4. He gets a thrill from the hunt.
Sometimes, Jame Gumb is all business. We see this with his intricate “tailoring” process. He takes it seriously and doesn’t mess around.
Other times, he likes to have a little fun. And his idea of fun is pure horror in our eyes.
Early in his killing streak, before he got serious about this tailoring project, Gumb would stalk victims through his maze-like basement. He would turn off the lights, plunging the basement into total darkness. He would don night-vision goggles and use an infrared flashlight to follow them around in the dark, delighting in their blindness.
Here’s a passage from the novel that hints at his “playful” past:
“He walks quietly with his light into the oubliette room. He opens his mouth to quiet his breathing. He doesn’t want to spoil his mood with a lot of noise from the pit. The lenses of his goggles on their small protruding barrels look like crab eyes on stalks. Mr. Gumb knows the goggles aren’t the least bit attractive, but he has had some great times with them in the black basement, playing basement games.”
And speaking of that basement…
5. He has one scary-ass basement.
Basements are creepy in the best of times. Most of us can agree on that. There’s something about being in a rarely visited subterranean environment that makes our skin crawl.
But the typical basement is like a brightly colored kindergarten classroom, compared to the one beneath Buffalo Bill’s house. It’s huge, for one thing. Vast and sprawling. It has a lot of rooms and chambers, where unspeakable horrors have occurred.
Oh, and it has its own pit. It’s really just a well. But in the novel, it serves as a holding cell for victims — dark, dank and inescapable.
Here’s a passage from chapter 33 of The Silence of the Lambs, where it describes Jame Gumb’s basement:
“Room into room, Jame Gumb’s basement rambles like the maze that thwarts us in dreams. When he was still shy, lives and lives ago, Mr. Gumb took his pleasure in the rooms most hidden, far from the stairs. There are rooms in the farthest corners, rooms from other lives, that Gumb hasn’t opened in years. Some of them are still occupied, so to speak, though the sounds from behind the doors peaked and trailed off to silence long ago.”
The above passage hints at some of the “projects” he has done in the past. We get the sense that he has experimented in various ways, and that those experiments are stashed away in far corners of the warren-like basement. From time to time, he enters those spaces to sprinkle a little lime.
Here’s a continuation of the basement description:
“The levels of the floors vary from room to room by as much as a foot. There are thresholds to step over, lintels to duck. Loads are impossible to roll and difficult to drag. To march something ahead of you — it stumbling and crying, begging, banging its dazed head — is difficult, dangerous even.”
Note the language being used here, and how it depersonalizes living victims. You’re dragging a “load” behind you. You’re marching “something” ahead of you. Buffalo Bill thinks of his victims as things, not people. Maybe that makes it easier for him, when the time comes to harvest their skins.
When Truth Is Scarier Than Fiction
Mark Twain said that truth is stranger than fiction. Agreed. I would add to that by saying life is often scarier than fiction. Such is the case here.
Buffalo Bill is a scary villain, one of the scariest serial killers in all of fiction. But we know he’s not real. We know he was created by a writer named Thomas Harris.
To think there are real-life characters who exhibit some of his traits — now that’s truly terrifying.
When researching for The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris drew inspiration from real-life serial killers, murders and psychos. And he learned from one of the best — John Douglas.
John E. Douglas is the real-life, retired FBI agent who helped develop the Bureau’s criminal profiling program. Those are the folks who investigate crime scenes and other clues to create a profile of an unknown killer. He also wrote the intriguing book Mindhunter, which I recommend.
Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs, learned about serial killers by attending lectures given by John Douglas. Here’s how Douglas described it, in an interview for Salon.com:
“[Harris] would sit in on classes in my criminal psychology class at the FBI Academy … And then what he did was he took a composite. Hannibal Lecter does not really exist. There is no one, thank goodness, like him. I think it’s more scary that there are people like Buffalo Bill. He is a composite of three killers who Harris learned about in a lecture: Ted Bundy. A guy from Plainview, Wis., [Ed Gein] who killed a couple people. Dug up the graves of a couple more. And he’d skin them. And preserve the flesh in motor oil. Then he would slip them on himself. Face masks. He had half a dozen of them.”
The third killer in Thomas Harris’s “composite” was Gary Heidnik, who kidnapped and killed women, holding them prisoner in a pit in his basement. Thus, we have the pit in the basement of Buffalo Bill’s house, in The Silence of the Lambs. Art imitates life.
Jame Gumb. A deeply disturbed individual, and one of the scariest fictional serial killers of all time.