By Charlie Seemann
The legend of the “Char Man” was in wide circulation when I was a high
school student in the Ojai Valley, a small, quiet, mountain-ringed community about fourteen miles inland from Ventura, California. I have heard the story many times from my peers, and my version seems to be very typical. Here is the story as far as I remember it from high school days in 1963 or 1964.