Have you looked into the tragic accident and subsequent death of popular YTuber, The Desert Drifter? He was a desert explorer and self-identified Christian that was killed by a drunk driver in Grand Junction, CO. Driver’s name was Ragnar, and ran a red light, smashing into Andrew, Desert Drifter, who was taken off life support 3/3/25. Felt like a ritual to me, and feels energetically linked to the strange missing person and subsequent death of the college student in Boulder during the same time period.
Here is my June 2015 review of "Shadow Over Santa Susana."
It’s weird and a little synchronistic.
The other day, I was listening deeply to The Beatles “White Album” and I was taking in each chord, beat and lyric. And on this particular day I got as far as “Helter Skelter.”
Seconds after Ringo ends the song, yelling “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” I take off my headphones and turn off the recording, realizing I have to get going.
Shortly thereafter, I read the news – oh boy! – and learn that Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson (now 80 years old), had died. He also co-wrote the 1974 book Helter Skelter, about his investigation, arrest and prosecution of Manson and “The Family.”
Odd sync, I thought.
Back in 2009, Vincent Bugliosi was asked why the Manson murders case had endured for so long. Bugliosi responded: “The very name ‘Manson’ has become a metaphor for evil, and evil has its allure.”
Here we are, nearly 46 years later and Charles Manson still holds our attention almost as much as he did back when the Age of Aquarius started to curdle.
Way back in 2001 (over 30 years after the Tate-LaBianca murders occurred in August 1969), exceedingly hip“crackpot historian” and investigative writer Adam Gorightly (our faves!) wrote the best and most engaging Manson-related book I’ve run across – The Shadow Over Santa Susana.
We get the backstory. Charlie's sad tale of imprisonment and later hanging out with Hollywood celebrities and befriending the Beach Boys and other rockers of the era. Collecting acolytes, particularly women, along the way. They would do his bidding. The spawn of Spahn Ranch. Charlies' outlaw attitude was actually masquerading as "peace, love and communal hugs," he writes. A monster was coming into his own, and the Fab Four (or Fab Three, depending on where you fall on the whole "Paul is Dead" trip) helped trigger Manson's "actions," (?) leading up to 10050 Cielo Drive on August 9, 1969, right after the Beatles crossed that stygian Abbey Road, on their way to a funeral.
“Charlie felt that the Beatles were beaming subliminal messages that on a conscious level were unknown even to them,” writes Gorightly. “During the Tate-LaBianca trial, Manson was quoted: ‘I think it’s a subconscious thing. I don’t know whether they did it or not. But it’s there. It’s an association of the subconscious. This music is bringing on the revolution, the unorganized overthrow of the Establishment. The Beatles know in the sense that the subconscious knows.”
And if you haven’t noticed, Charlie is everywhere. The recent David Duchovny vehicle Aquarius, incorporates Manson into the plotline. Manson nearly married earlier this year to a far younger woman and alleged devotee. And this week, it was reported that a copy of the “White Album,” signed by Charlie and members of “The Family” was put up for sale, online, for $49,000!
And it makes sense. Charles Manson and the “White Album” are forever intertwined. As Gorightly notes, Tex Watson and other members of “The Family” say that Charlie (about whom “Helter Skelter” was written – Charlie, the Jesus figure “emerging from the bottomless pit”) was not as willing – later – to admit to his original and pure interpretation of the “White Album.”
“The most experimental piece on the “White Album” (officially titled The Beatles), ‘Revolution #9,” took on great significance to Manson, who equated it was Revelation 9” from the Bible, writes Gorightly. “Like Manson, the number nine held great significance in Lennon’s life. In numerology, nine is the final number, the last single digit and highest counting number before starting over again; the beginning and the end.”
“According to Tex Watson, in early 1969 Manson began ranting in his death trip lectures about The Process Church of the Final Judgment. Soon after, Charlie and other Manson Family members were wearing black capes and black-dyed clothing – just like their spiritual brethren. Of course – from the beginning of his three year odyssey with the Family – Charlie had always talked about death, but it was usually spiritual death he was rapping about: death of the ego." Death and black magic. Race war. Dune buggies of death created out of stolen Beetles. Beetles and Beatles.
But that changed to a “death is beautiful” and “death was Charlie’s trip,” as Tex Watson was quoted as saying. Tex and "Sexy Sadie" would be on their own death trip, stabbing Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate, 16 times. Polanski, Gorightly writes, told the Los Angeles Police Department that he considered degenerate folk-rocker "Papa" John Phillips as a suspect. "Monday, Monday" indeed ...
Gorightly’s research is vitally important to those willing to look behind the proverbial curtain and see – to quote Frank Zappa – the “left behinds of the great society” who were part of some greater MK-ULTRA-styled mind-control operation. Gorightly references the work of Carol Greene, whose book Test-Tube Murders: The Case of Charles Manson, and how the “Summer of Love” of 1967 was not spontaneous and that the Manson murders were “an exhaustively planned behavior modification experiment aimed at subverting the cultural and moral values of the 1960’s youth movement,” and how the seeds of MK-ULTRA “were planted by Nazi concentration camp experimentation during World War II.”
"No thought." That was Charlie's philosophy. And it worked for his killer zombie followers.
There is simply so much to The Shadow Over Santa Susana to go into here, dear readers. Just understand that Adam Gorightly has his ink-stained finger on the pulse of this bizarre body of evidence, like no other researcher I’ve come across. Ed Sanders’ The Family is good, dig, but Shadow is top shelf and required reading for conspiracy researchers and Manson mystery enthusiasts.
There is likely much we won’t know about regarding Charles Manson and what really went down. Shadow, I conclude, is the best place to start if you want the real dirt under the fingernails.
Great content, look forward to hearing the rest! I'm amazed people can watch these films, I just don't have the patience but I don't have a lot of patience for a lot of things. I truly value your perspective since you are approaching them with an open mind to see the themes and myths they are portraying. It helps me to unravel what we are dealing with now, especially since these people and events are still powerful symbols in our current culture but have grown "larger than life" as time goes forward and media keeps doing what it does.
I appreciate your point about how important it is to talk to the people that were there about what happened. I'm not surprised to hear how bad it was on the streets but the pervasive myth about how great it was has saturated our culture. The fact that it was commercialized so quickly speaks to the idea that it was (at least mostly) designed to be a spectacle to distract the whole world (from...?...white people and black people uniting against racism perhaps?) instead of an organic formation of art and culture. It certainly was good marketing for certain "things", no doubt.
Good ol' Gorightly. Read everything he's written (that I'm aware of). Check him out in the 2019 indie film "The Hill and The Hole" (based on Fritz Leiber's horror story). Weird stuff. Figure a lot of Secret Sunners would "dig it."
Sounds like the interview kept going, would love to hear the rest.
Yeah, I don't have the full recording on hand. I'll see if it's on a DVD or something.
Have you looked into the tragic accident and subsequent death of popular YTuber, The Desert Drifter? He was a desert explorer and self-identified Christian that was killed by a drunk driver in Grand Junction, CO. Driver’s name was Ragnar, and ran a red light, smashing into Andrew, Desert Drifter, who was taken off life support 3/3/25. Felt like a ritual to me, and feels energetically linked to the strange missing person and subsequent death of the college student in Boulder during the same time period.
The first I'm hearing of it. Sounds suspicious to me, Jennifer. I'll look into it.
Wow, Chris, you worked with Triumph on a comic book?
I did. And as hilarious as his stuff is, he's absolutely everything BUT hilarious in person. Very difficult to work with.
I would also like to hear the end of this. I do not get enough of AG or The Knowles, much less together.
Here is my June 2015 review of "Shadow Over Santa Susana."
It’s weird and a little synchronistic.
The other day, I was listening deeply to The Beatles “White Album” and I was taking in each chord, beat and lyric. And on this particular day I got as far as “Helter Skelter.”
Seconds after Ringo ends the song, yelling “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” I take off my headphones and turn off the recording, realizing I have to get going.
Shortly thereafter, I read the news – oh boy! – and learn that Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson (now 80 years old), had died. He also co-wrote the 1974 book Helter Skelter, about his investigation, arrest and prosecution of Manson and “The Family.”
Odd sync, I thought.
Back in 2009, Vincent Bugliosi was asked why the Manson murders case had endured for so long. Bugliosi responded: “The very name ‘Manson’ has become a metaphor for evil, and evil has its allure.”
Here we are, nearly 46 years later and Charles Manson still holds our attention almost as much as he did back when the Age of Aquarius started to curdle.
Way back in 2001 (over 30 years after the Tate-LaBianca murders occurred in August 1969), exceedingly hip“crackpot historian” and investigative writer Adam Gorightly (our faves!) wrote the best and most engaging Manson-related book I’ve run across – The Shadow Over Santa Susana.
We get the backstory. Charlie's sad tale of imprisonment and later hanging out with Hollywood celebrities and befriending the Beach Boys and other rockers of the era. Collecting acolytes, particularly women, along the way. They would do his bidding. The spawn of Spahn Ranch. Charlies' outlaw attitude was actually masquerading as "peace, love and communal hugs," he writes. A monster was coming into his own, and the Fab Four (or Fab Three, depending on where you fall on the whole "Paul is Dead" trip) helped trigger Manson's "actions," (?) leading up to 10050 Cielo Drive on August 9, 1969, right after the Beatles crossed that stygian Abbey Road, on their way to a funeral.
“Charlie felt that the Beatles were beaming subliminal messages that on a conscious level were unknown even to them,” writes Gorightly. “During the Tate-LaBianca trial, Manson was quoted: ‘I think it’s a subconscious thing. I don’t know whether they did it or not. But it’s there. It’s an association of the subconscious. This music is bringing on the revolution, the unorganized overthrow of the Establishment. The Beatles know in the sense that the subconscious knows.”
And if you haven’t noticed, Charlie is everywhere. The recent David Duchovny vehicle Aquarius, incorporates Manson into the plotline. Manson nearly married earlier this year to a far younger woman and alleged devotee. And this week, it was reported that a copy of the “White Album,” signed by Charlie and members of “The Family” was put up for sale, online, for $49,000!
And it makes sense. Charles Manson and the “White Album” are forever intertwined. As Gorightly notes, Tex Watson and other members of “The Family” say that Charlie (about whom “Helter Skelter” was written – Charlie, the Jesus figure “emerging from the bottomless pit”) was not as willing – later – to admit to his original and pure interpretation of the “White Album.”
“The most experimental piece on the “White Album” (officially titled The Beatles), ‘Revolution #9,” took on great significance to Manson, who equated it was Revelation 9” from the Bible, writes Gorightly. “Like Manson, the number nine held great significance in Lennon’s life. In numerology, nine is the final number, the last single digit and highest counting number before starting over again; the beginning and the end.”
“According to Tex Watson, in early 1969 Manson began ranting in his death trip lectures about The Process Church of the Final Judgment. Soon after, Charlie and other Manson Family members were wearing black capes and black-dyed clothing – just like their spiritual brethren. Of course – from the beginning of his three year odyssey with the Family – Charlie had always talked about death, but it was usually spiritual death he was rapping about: death of the ego." Death and black magic. Race war. Dune buggies of death created out of stolen Beetles. Beetles and Beatles.
But that changed to a “death is beautiful” and “death was Charlie’s trip,” as Tex Watson was quoted as saying. Tex and "Sexy Sadie" would be on their own death trip, stabbing Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate, 16 times. Polanski, Gorightly writes, told the Los Angeles Police Department that he considered degenerate folk-rocker "Papa" John Phillips as a suspect. "Monday, Monday" indeed ...
Gorightly’s research is vitally important to those willing to look behind the proverbial curtain and see – to quote Frank Zappa – the “left behinds of the great society” who were part of some greater MK-ULTRA-styled mind-control operation. Gorightly references the work of Carol Greene, whose book Test-Tube Murders: The Case of Charles Manson, and how the “Summer of Love” of 1967 was not spontaneous and that the Manson murders were “an exhaustively planned behavior modification experiment aimed at subverting the cultural and moral values of the 1960’s youth movement,” and how the seeds of MK-ULTRA “were planted by Nazi concentration camp experimentation during World War II.”
"No thought." That was Charlie's philosophy. And it worked for his killer zombie followers.
There is simply so much to The Shadow Over Santa Susana to go into here, dear readers. Just understand that Adam Gorightly has his ink-stained finger on the pulse of this bizarre body of evidence, like no other researcher I’ve come across. Ed Sanders’ The Family is good, dig, but Shadow is top shelf and required reading for conspiracy researchers and Manson mystery enthusiasts.
There is likely much we won’t know about regarding Charles Manson and what really went down. Shadow, I conclude, is the best place to start if you want the real dirt under the fingernails.
Great content, look forward to hearing the rest! I'm amazed people can watch these films, I just don't have the patience but I don't have a lot of patience for a lot of things. I truly value your perspective since you are approaching them with an open mind to see the themes and myths they are portraying. It helps me to unravel what we are dealing with now, especially since these people and events are still powerful symbols in our current culture but have grown "larger than life" as time goes forward and media keeps doing what it does.
I appreciate your point about how important it is to talk to the people that were there about what happened. I'm not surprised to hear how bad it was on the streets but the pervasive myth about how great it was has saturated our culture. The fact that it was commercialized so quickly speaks to the idea that it was (at least mostly) designed to be a spectacle to distract the whole world (from...?...white people and black people uniting against racism perhaps?) instead of an organic formation of art and culture. It certainly was good marketing for certain "things", no doubt.
Good ol' Gorightly. Read everything he's written (that I'm aware of). Check him out in the 2019 indie film "The Hill and The Hole" (based on Fritz Leiber's horror story). Weird stuff. Figure a lot of Secret Sunners would "dig it."
Hey now....