#Albert fish letter serial#
His time spent at the orphanage was a defining moment in his life, especially considering the appalling torture he experienced as a child is the common factor in the backgrounds of the majority of serial killers. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done and could not be reversed. When he was nine-years-old, his distraught mother showed up and brought him back into her custody. At the orphanage, he was beaten and whipped daily to the point that after suffering from the abuse for four straight years, he actually began to enjoy it. This is where psychologists believe the demons inside Fish began to awaken.
John’s Orphanage, located in D.C.’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood. Sadly, that same year, his mother abandoned him, dropping him off to live in St. At that time, he was only five-years-old, far from capable of grappling with the effects of losing a parent. Needless to say, Fish never received any treatment.īut the real story began when Fish’s father, who was a Potomac River boat captain, died in 1875. Fish himself was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which is a chronic condition requiring lifelong treatment for the delusions, disordered thinking and behavior, and abnormal interpretations of reality that accompany it. To put it lightly, their disorders could have filled an entire medical textbook. He committed murders so horrific that police initially couldn’t believe the details of his confessions.įish was born in 1870 in Washington, D.C., to a family who had a long history of serious mental illness. To say Fish was one of the most monstrous people who ever walked the earth would be an understatement. This assumption couldn’t have been further from the truth. It’s how he was able to escape detection for so long. The only difference here is that his appearance was unassuming, like that of a sweet, harmless grandfather whose lap you’d sit on for story time. Well, that’s exactly what Fish, who was also nicknamed the Brooklyn Vampire, the Gray Man, the Moon Manic and the Werewolf of Wysteria, did. When you envision the boogeyman, you probably think of someone sinister-looking roaming the streets late at night, or even during broad daylight, snatching up children and doing the unthinkable to them. The boogeyman isn’t just an urban legend, or that “thing” your mother warned you about as a child to deter you from coming home after the street lights went on, he was a very real man, and his name was Hamilton Howard “Albert” Fish. If anyone’s ever told you that the boogeyman wasn’t real, they were lying.