Over the years, the crags above Chatsworth...

Over the years, the crags above Chatsworth Reservoir have been home to some of Southern California’s wildest and craziest guys.

The leader of a religious cult and eight of his followers died there in a dynamite blast set off by two jealous husbands. Later, Charles Manson slept there, taken in by some of the remaining members. The beauty of the three-mile-long canyon, its rosy sandstone formations honeycombed with caves, attracted a religious cult known as WKFL Fountain of the World--Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love--that built a monastery on the site in 1948.

The colony of 53 adults and children was led by Krishna Venta, a former Berkeley boilermaker who changed his name from Francis Pencovic--an assumed identity, he said. Instead, he claimed, he was brought into existence directly by God, without human parents, in a Himalayan valley.

“I may as well say it, I am Christ,” Venta announced in 1949 upon returning from a trip to Europe. That he was without a visible bellybutton might have clinched the matter for some--but evidently not for Pope Pius XII, who Venta said refused to meet with him.

The same year, after the performance of a Christmas Passion play, his followers--still in their costumes of cotton robes and bare feet--decided they would no longer wear shoes, or cut their hair, or dress in anything but long robes until the world was at peace.

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The core values of Venta’s faith were simple: universal love and equality, study and knowledge, and tolerance. He also taught that smoking is good for health, and mankind came to Earth in 12 rocket ships powered by cosmic energy.

The premise of Venta’s philosophy was contained in a chant: “Love one. Love ye one another. Love all. Serve ye one another.”

The followers who echoed this refrain came to be regarded as angels of mercy. They were volunteer firefighters who went as far as Bakersfield to battle flames. They aided earthquake and flood victims, helped out in homes when there was illness. When a plane crashed in the canyon, they helped carry out the dead. They maintained a food bank for the homeless and over the years the commune became a shelter for battered women and a rehabilitation center for alcoholics and drug addicts. A Times article dated March 28, 1953, called the group “a disaster aid order” whose “gowns have been flecked by burning cinders of many fires.”

A Ventura County fire department didn’t see it that way. In 1956, a fire captain refused to let any group members help fight fires farther than 200 yards from their monastery, even though other volunteers were called in to help.

He thought their long robes and bare feet were dangerous in fires. Even after cult members bought their own firefighting clothes, boots and equipment, firefighters were ordered to turn off the sirens when firetrucks left the station so sect members would not be alerted to a fire and follow the engines.

Venta other had other troubles with the authorities, including charges of writing bad checks and non-payment of child support.

Most of the group’s good deeds ended Dec. 10, 1958, when Brother Peter (Elzibah) Kamenoff and Brother Ralph (Jeroham) Muller, who believed that their leader was having sex with their wives, set off a bomb with 20 sticks of dynamite, killing Venta, themselves and six others. Venta had recently thrown Kamenoff and Muller out of the order for disloyalty. They left a two-hour tape-recording explaining their reasons, along with notes asking for forgiveness.

The explosion could be heard more than 20 miles away. The fire it touched off burned more than 150 acres. Surviving followers voiced the belief that, like Christ, Venta would rise from the dead. A few remained at the monastery; the rest moved to Alaska to join Venta’s widow, Mother Ruth.

In the 1960s, the few cult members remaining in the canyon fed and sheltered a homeless Charles Manson for three days. He had dropped in for a little spiritual renewal before moving over the hill, to the Spahn Movie Ranch in Chatsworth and to mayhem.

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The canyon’s notoriety resurfaced in 1974 when American Indian Movement activists Richard Mohawk and Paul Skyhorse, living on the group’s property, were acquitted of murdering a cabdriver and stuffing his body down a drainpipe.

In the 1970s, several members joined the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple and later died with 912 others in mass murder-suicides in Guyana in 1978. Other members went back to ordinary lives.

In property tax records, WKFL Fountain of the World is still listed as the owner of the Box Canyon monastery, even though it is also listed as being defunct. However, the buildings are leased to a private resident and property taxes are paid by Phil Shiver, a longtime canyon activist and resident.

Venta, who called himself “The Voice,” said he could help his followers gain knowledge on their journey of 4,304,272,100 years to the spiritual realm. His mortal self is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.