6 – Did Sharon Tate Predict her Own Murder?
In what was one of the most shocking murders of the 1960s, actress Sharon Tate was brutally slain by members of the Manson Family on August 9, 1969. She was just 26 years of age and seemingly had the world at her feet. The actress came to prominence with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in Valley of the Dolls. Tate was married to Roman Polanski, director of The Fearless Vampire Killers. Aside from the bloody nature of the murder, the other shocking aspect was the fact that Tate was just two weeks away from giving birth.
Back in 1967, a full two years before the murder, Tate was in a bedroom at her boyfriend’s house and had a terrible feeling of foreboding she found impossible to shake off. She was attempting to get to sleep when suddenly, a man entered the room. It was the house’s former owner, Paul Bern, a man who had committed suicide several years previously. Tate was terrified and ran out of the room and down the stairs. However, she was greeted with the hideous sight of a figure with its throat slashed. After taking a minute to compose herself, Tate had a drink but the apparitions of Bern and the ghostly victim remained.
Over the next few years, Tate became convinced that she was the victim on the stairs. While she told many people about the events of the evening, there was nothing anyone could do to save her. As intriguing as the story is, you can explain the first part. Tate would have known all about the story of Bern who killed himself in 1932 after the actress Jean Harlow left him. Tate was alone in the house and when she saw someone come into the bedroom, she describes him as looking like every description she had heard about Bern.
The terrified Tate ran out of the room and met the gruesome apparition at the bottom of the stairs; an incident that is harder to explain but perhaps she was hallucinating? It was the 1960s so there is every chance that Tate had consumed narcotics that could have altered her mental state. In 1969, she was stabbed to death by several Manson Family members and it is probable that she was hanged from a rafter in the living room. Her place of death was just one mile away from where she had seen the apparition in 1967.