Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Putting the Cult in Occult

The 1968 Manson murders and the 1970 trial of the Manson family so shocked America that we couldn’t wait to get our hands on Helter Skelter, the 1974 book by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. The biggest best-selling true-crime book in history, its tale of life with Charlie was also a gift for horror novelists, providing a new and timely antagonist: the satanic cult. Until then, satanic covens met in basements or wooded glades, slapping at mosquitos who flew up their black robes. They marched around in circles, hailing Satan the way New Yorkers hail a cab, muttering curses and spells in barely remembered high school Latin.

But thanks to Helter Skelter, ritual murder became the highlight of the satanic social season. Consider Joy Fielding’s The Transformation (which she has since disowned), published only five years after Charles Manson was sentenced to death. In it, young actresses on the make fall under the influence of their great god Tony, who says things like, “To love your family, you must kill them.”He encourages his glamorous disciples to break into homes and poop on the carpets. At the book’s climax, he sends them to murder every other major character in a genuinely shocking Tate/LaBianca–style home invasion.

In Barney Parrish’s The Closed Circle thinly veiled versions of Robert Redford, Elizabeth Taylor, Ann-Margret, and Jackie Gleason pick up hitchhikers and murder them to praise Satan and stay famous. And they would have gotten away with it, too, if not for a darn psychic pursuing a “university-level” course in weaving who can tune into their telepathic wavelength. Cannibal cultists in upstate New York kidnap young women in The Sharing, and in The Sacrifice, fabulously wealthy elbow-patch types obtain extended lives via human sacrifice and are defeated only when a fanatically loyal Yale professor becomes enraged that they stole a book from the university library.

One thing all these books had in common, besides a fanatical devotion to the forces of darkness and a phobic fear of private clubs, was that their characters were as white as the driven snow. Why was Satan only bothering white people? Turns out he wasn’t.

Cults are inclusive. The Inner Circle worships the Aztec jaguar god, Tezcatlipoca. Credit 16