"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering
someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of
evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of
the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals
just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in
the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural
life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds.
Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage
runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of
family without referencing Manson and his "girls."
Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores
how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los
Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect
himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights
killing seven residents of Los Angeles--what we now know as the
"Tate-LaBianca murders--the Manson family has rarely slipped from the
American radar for long. From Emma Cline's The Girls to the recent TV
show Aquarius, the family continues to find an audience. What is it
about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author
Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and
compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence
from 1969 to the present.
