Step1
Life
Darger spent much of his childhood in orphanages and institutions, finally running away to Chicago as a teenager. He spent the rest of his life working as a janitor in various Catholic hospitals, attending mass several times and day, prowling through garbage cans and hiding away in his one-room apartment, talking to himself and writing and illustrating lengthy and eccentric books. His work was discovered by his landlord shortly before his death. Since then his work has been exhibited around the world and has inspired several books, songs and a documentary.
Step2
“In the Realms of the Unreal”
“The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal,” coming in at over 15,000 pages, may well be the longest work of fiction written in the Roman alphabet. It has never been published in its entirety and it seems likely that no one has ever read the whole thing. Unfortunately the book has been broken up into separate pages and sold to public and private collections.
At one point in his life Darger possessed a copy of a newspaper photograph of a little girl who had been strangled. When he lost the photo he became frantic. Some critics have speculated that perhaps Darger himself murdered the girl, and indeed his work contains numerous examples of horrific violence to children, but there is no evidence he was a murderer or anything other than a disturbed loner.
At any rate, the murder and the loss of this picture inspired Darger to write “In the Realms of the Unreal,” which is the story of a war between seven plucky, clever and devoutly Christian sisters and an army of evil child-slavers called the Glandelinians. In the cliff-hanging style of the childrens' adventure novels of the day, the Vivians face many dangers, including capture and gruesome death. Adult ill-treatment of children is a common theme in the book, as is strangulation.
The Vivian girls are sometimes depicted naked, though with tiny penises; some analysts conclude that this may have been the result of Darger's ignorance of female anatomy. Darger was apparently celibate his entire life; his younger sister had been given up for adoption and he was terrified of the possibility that he might unknowingly commit incest with her.
The illustrations for the book are a combination of collages, photocopies and traced images painted in water colors. Darger collected thousands of pictures from the garbage--from children's books, newspapers and magazines--but altered them to suit his fantastic purposes.
Step3
Other works
Darger wrote a sequel to “In the Realms of the Unreal” called “Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago,” where the Vivians investigate a series of murders in a haunted house. “The History of My Life,” which is over 5,000 pages long, is both autobiography and an account of a tornado called “Sweetie Pie.”
Enthusiast 
