Dolly Parton has never been shy about sharing her faith, but a recently revealed diary entry highlights just how seriously the country music legend takes the spiritual realm—especially when it comes to evil.

In a conversation dating back to 1981, Parton warned celebrity journalist Lawrence Grobel against interviewing notorious cult leader and convicted murderer Charles Manson, insisting the man carried a darkness that could spiritually corrupt him.

“I think he’d steal your soul,” Parton told Grobel, according to diary entries recently shared by the journalist with Vanity Fair. “I can’t even look at a picture of him.”

Grobel had been offered the opportunity to interview Manson—then one of the most infamous criminals in the world—but was torn over whether to accept. As a longtime friend and confidante, he turned to Parton for advice.

Her warning was swift and severe. “If you do that interview,” she said, “I know I wouldn’t want to have much to do with you.”

Parton, who has often described her spirituality as the foundation of her life and career, made it clear she believed Manson’s evil was more than just psychological—it was spiritual.

“You wouldn’t make a difference,” she told Grobel. “Just one minute with him could destroy all that we can be about. That’s how spirits work. You don’t tempt God with something like that.”

The “Jolene” singer described the situation as a spiritual battle. “This devil has come up between us,” she said, explaining that if Grobel went ahead with the interview, “you and I would be more like in a battle, and I’d be looking at you differently, because it would change you, and you may not even know it. The darkness is something not to get involved with.”

Ultimately, Grobel declined the interview, later crediting Parton with helping him make the decision. “No candy if I play with the devil,” he wrote in his diary.

Though Manson was not officially affiliated with Satanism, his public behavior often invoked demonic imagery. During his 1971 trial, he shaved his head and declared, “I am the devil, and the devil always has a bald head.” In a 1986 parole hearing, he referenced losing “devils and demons with the power of scorpions to torment.”

Grobel recalled that Parton seemed surprised he even had to think about whether to proceed with the interview. “That you even have to think about this concerns me,” she said, and afterward, he noted, she “kept her distance” from him.

Parton’s concerns were rooted in her deep and enduring faith. In a 2023 interview with Fox News Digital, she shared how she regularly prays for God to guide her relationships. “I always ask God to bless everything that I do and the people that I work with, to bring all the right things and right people into my life, and to take the wrong ones out,” she said.

“My spirituality has been a guiding light in my life,” she added. “It’s really been my strength, my creative energy, my spiritual energy—it’s kept me going all these years.”

Even today, Parton remains unapologetic about her beliefs. In a recent appearance on Khloé Kardashian’s Khloé in Wonder Land podcast, she said some people have told her not to speak so openly about her faith.

“I said, ‘Well, yes, I should,'” she told Kardashian. “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just telling you what makes me work, what I believe.”

For Parton, that belief includes an unshakable conviction that darkness is real and should not be taken lightly.