Probably one of the scariest men still alive is Charlie Manson who is spending his retirement years in Corcoran prison–not too far from where I’m living now.

Back when my family and I lived in Oxnard CA, Charlie was up in the hills with a bunch of young people. This was in the 60s during a time of major drug use. What’s so frightening about all this is at the time, is Charlie had complete control of these young people. They began by entering people’s homes and crawling around on the floor, even in bedrooms while people were sleeping.

This same bunch came into Oxnard to get food out of the garbage bins behind the grocery stores.

Of course, they went on to kill movie star Sharon Tate and four other people who were in their home and a couple named Bianco. They wrote words like PIG on the walls using the victims’ blood. The book, Helter Skelter, which was also made into a movie, tells all about what these sickos did.

Charlie and his followers holed up out on the desert, and after all these many years, the authorities are checking to see if there might be some bodies buried around their hideout.

There’s no doubt that Manson is crazy. What is hard to understand though, is why these young people were so mesmerized by him to the point of killing people by his direction.

Needless to say, while all this was going on, finding out that Charlie’s bunch had been living only a few miles away, certainly gave us the heebie-jeebies.

All sorts of weird things happened while we lived in that house in Oxnard. My husband spent three tours in Vietnam with the Seabees, and one New Years Eve while he was gone once, I babysat all the neighborhood kids along with my own five. Everyone was in the living room except for my three-year old son who was sleeping. All of a sudden he came running, “Mommy, a man is in my bedroom!” I grabbed a baseball bat and went charging into the bedroom, hollering, “I’m going to get you,” and arrived in time to see a man disappear out the sliding glass door. Don’t think I slept at all that night.

Whether that had anything to do with the Manson bunch I have no idea – but it was during the right time period.

Marilyn
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