The Time I Thought I Understood Fear — Until I Met Buffalo Bill

I remember the first time I saw the documentary. I was in my early twenties, sitting cross-legged on a thrift-store couch in a shared apartment in Chicago, surrounded by books I hadn’t yet read and ideas I thought I understood. The screen flickered with grainy footage, interspersed with interviews, crime scene photos, and the kind of dramatic narration that makes you feel like you’re uncovering something dark and essential about humanity. The subject was Jame Gumb — better known as "Buffalo Bill" — and the more I watched, the more I felt a strange unease settle in my chest. Not because of the crimes themselves, which were horrifying but familiar in the way true crime media had made them feel almost routine. No, the discomfort came from somewhere else entirely: from the way he spoke, the way he described himself, the way he seemed almost... ordinary.

## The Mirror You Don’t Want to Look Into

I had always thought of monsters as outliers — people who lived on the fringes of society, easy to identify and easier to dismiss. But Gumb didn’t fit that mold. He had a job. He had friends. He rented an apartment. He shopped at Sears. He even tried to adopt a child. He didn’t wear his evil on his sleeve; he wore it in silence, behind a mask of normalcy. That realization shook me. I had spent years believing that if I could just learn to spot the signs, I could protect myself from the worst of humanity. But Gumb taught me that evil doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes, it just walks right past you.

## The Danger of Easy Narratives

At first, I fell into the trap of trying to explain him. I read psychological profiles, watched expert breakdowns, and scoured interviews with people who had known him casually. The temptation was to categorize him — to say he was a narcissist, a psychopath, a product of abuse, a failed artist. But none of it quite stuck. The more I tried to pin him down, the more he slipped through my fingers. I realized then that I was trying to make him fit into a story I could understand, a narrative that would let me feel safe again. But the truth is, people like Gumb resist clean explanations. They defy the neat boxes we try to put them in. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the real danger isn’t just in the monster, but in our desire to believe that we can fully understand him.

## The Complexity of Complicity

What haunted me most wasn’t just Gumb’s actions, but the way others responded to them. People in his life who noticed things were off — the smell in his apartment, the way he watched people, the way he asked strange questions — and yet said nothing. Not because they were evil, but because they were uncomfortable. Because they didn’t want to believe it. Because they didn’t want to get involved. I began to see how easy it is to look away, how human it is to hope that the worst thing isn’t the true thing. It made me question my own instincts. How often had I dismissed a feeling because it was inconvenient? How often had I told myself a story that made the world feel safer than it really was?

## The Limits of Empathy

One of the hardest shifts came when I started to feel something I wasn’t prepared for: a flicker of empathy. Not for his victims — that was immediate and visceral — but for Gumb himself. Not sympathy, not forgiveness, but a recognition that he was a person shaped by something deeply broken. I hated myself for that moment of understanding. I didn’t want to see him as anything other than a monster because that made it easier to separate myself from him. But the truth is, empathy is not a betrayal of the victims. It’s a recognition that evil is not born in a vacuum. It’s a product of something. And if we refuse to look at that something, we’re doomed to repeat it.

## Talking to the Darkness

I still don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what Gumb really thought, or why he did what he did. I only know that he changed the way I see the world — not by being a monster, but by making me realize that monsters don’t always look like what we expect. If anything, they often look like us. And maybe that’s the point of confronting people like him: not to find closure, but to challenge ourselves to be more honest, more observant, more willing to sit in the discomfort of ambiguity.

If you're curious — not in a morbid way, but in a human way — about how someone becomes who they become, I invite you to talk to Buffalo Bill on HoloDream. You won’t get easy answers. But you might get a chance to ask the questions most people are too afraid to voice.