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** The Excluded Middle **
Greg Bishop, Editor
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“There are so many Manson books, good, bad, and worse, but Adam Gorightly checks in with the most comprehensive, hip and well-written history of Charlie's Lonely Souls Club Band since Ed Sanders' The Family.”
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“After a year or two of anticipation, Adam Gorightly's book The Shadow Over Santa Susana -- Black Magic, Mind Control and the 'Manson Family' Mythos is finally out. It traces the story of Charles Manson and the "Family", covering some new, conspiratorial ground and tries to puzzle together theories earlier launched by the severely misguided and spelling-challenged Bill Nelson and in Maury Terry's Manson vs. Son of Sam epic novel-like The Ultimate Evil. Gorightly seems to have less of a moral axe to grind, and is willing to search for possible truths from any available source, thus bringing together one of the most comprehensive Manson books ever written...”
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“The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control and the "Manson Family" Mythos, is more comprehensive on the topic of Charles Manson, with less subjective analysis--a spectrum that runs from Ed Sanders to Victor Bugliosi--than previous books on the subject. Author Adam Gorightly must be admired for taking the "information rich to the point of saturation" approach encouraged at Steamshovel as he tackles Manson's biography and the various elements, including mind control and Manson-as-societal mirror theories. The book has a "Who's Who" appendix of Family members, replete with photos, co-created with Shamus McFarland, that originally appeared as a work-in-progress in one of Steamshovel's Cyberculture volumes. It helps make this not only a comprehensive biography but a virtual encyclopedia of the Manson subculture.”
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** Michael Marinacci **
author of Mysterious California
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“The single greatest book about crazy Charlie and his hippie chicks!”
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** Dagobert's Revenge **
Tracy R. Twyman, Editor
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"With the single-mindedness of a trained bloodhound, Adam Gorightly seeks out and destroys the myth of Charles Manson as an unsophisticated hillbilly, showing us instead a mystical adept, a magician, a trickster, a hypnotist, an artist, a poet, an organized criminal, and a well-connected (though perhaps unwitting) intelligence agent. Having no axe to grind but a search for the truth, Gorightly reveals all. This is the Manson that has been purposely occulted from popular consciousness."
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** Clang Bang Clang **
Robert Lawson, Editor
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“The Shadow Over Santa Susana is a thoroughly researched and thought-provoking work. Filled with arcane information, various conspiracy theories and a balanced historical overview, it is sure to spark many heated discussions among Manson detractors and true believers alike. Perhaps it is only after three decades that the possibility that the Sharon Tate murders were something other than "helter skelter" inspired can be suggested seriously. If so, then this book is a much-needed step in the right direction.”
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** Tommy Udo **
Author of Charles Manson: Music, Mayhem, Murder
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“In his modern paranoid classic The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control And The ‘Manson Family’ Mythos, author Adam Gorightly links Manson to MK-ULTRA, Sirhan Sirhan (allegedly brainwashed assassin of Robert Kennedy), ‘Son of Sam’ David Berkowitz, Mark David Chapman (murderer of John Lennon) and John Hinckley Jr (Jody Foster obsessive who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan). Gorightly, seemingly having read every primary source, book and article on Manson ever written, demonstrates that Manson, rather than being the illiterate hillbilly he portrayed himself as, was a magickal adept, a brilliant if malicious and manipulative man. Gorightly too wades through conspiracy theories, allegations of mind control and arcane lore to draw a picture of Manson that is more complex and that draws alternative conclusions to those of Bugliosi, Sanders et al. Others have suggested that, in fact, the whole Summer of Love psychedelic schtick was just fall-out from the CIA and the military’s activities.”
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“For years I've had a gnawing feeling that there was more going on with the Charles Manson Tate/LaBianca murders than ever made it into the public consciousness. Now a book has been released that, more than any other before it, fits many of the pieces together in a case that still has us interested thirty years later.
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** Jaye C. Beldo aka The Lone Nutter **
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“In the much welcome exposé, The Shadow Over Santa Susana, Adam Gorightly brings the wayward and colorful Manson gaggle back to vivid, hallucinatory life in an informative and entertaining way...The book follows the trail of a nightmare arabesque conjured by Manson and his bus load of drug addled, statutory nymphs, bringing to light conspiratorial information that has laid dormant for several years."
(c) Jaye C. Beldo 2001”
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“This book digs up every truth, half-truth, and outright lie from all sides of the case. I never knew there were quite this many theories on why the world got Helter Skelter until now. Manson the Con, Manson the Folksinger, Manson the Pimp, Manson the Shaman - they're all here. Which one did it? Maybe none of them...”
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“I like to refer to Adam Gorightly's The Shadow Over Santa Susana as the cliff notes to all the Manson books. This book takes many of the different theories and stories and assembles them together in one easy to read volume, saving newcomers both time and money. The most unique section is near the end, when Gorightly writes a number of chapters on mind control and C.I.A. conspiracies, surely to be a big hit with conspiracy buffs.”
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** Ear Candy Magazine **
Ronnie Dannelly, editor
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“Where there was once a 'BIG 2' of necessary Manson books to read ("Helter Skelter" & "The Family"), I would now say there are a 'BIG 3' - I consider "Susana" necessary reading for any Manson studies.”
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** Russ Kick **
Editor of Everything You Know is Wrong:
The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies
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“A worthy addition to the Manson corpus, the encyclopedic The Shadow Over Santa Susana stands out in two respects. First, it offers a huge amount of info on Charles Manson and his followers, including a valuable appendix that catalogs every known Family member and his or her fate. Second, the book brings together some of the stranger strands in the whole affair, including mind control, Satanism, the Process Church, intelligence connections, drug gangs, Sirhan Sirhan (he and Manson were cell-neighbors in prison), and the theory that Manson was used as a patsy to discredit the counterculture.”
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