Oct 30 2009
The Scariest (True) Book to Read on Halloween
File photo of Sharon Tate
You see, no matter how much a fiction book, or movie, scares me…I know that it’s just fiction and didn’t—or couldn’t—really happen. The same cannot be said for the book Helter Skelter.
I have read Helter Skelter a handful of times—that’s as many times as I could bear to read it—and it always makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck and turns every groan of my house into a knife-yielding monster.
Helter Skelter is the true story of the Tate/LaBianca murders in 1979, murders that were committed by the followers of Charles Manson.
On August 8, 1979, the flower children turned psychopathic killers crept onto the estate that had been rented by actress Sharon Tate and her movie director husband, Roman Polanski. Sharon was 9 months pregnant and eagerly awaiting the birth of her first child.
Visiting Sharon that night was her former boyfriend, close friend, and famed hairdresser to the stars, Jay Sebring. Houseguests Voyteck Frykowski and Abigail Folger also was there that night, as they were staying with Sharon until Polanski returned from his film shooting abroad.
The band of killers—Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Susan Atkins—viciously murdered the occupants of 10050 Cielo Drive. The victims—including Sharon Tate, who pleaded for the life of her unborn child—received a combined total of over 100 stab wounds.
Even by today’s standards, this is a senseless, particularly gruesome crime…can you imagine what shockwaves it caused in 1969?
It still causes shockwaves, today.
