Charles Manson LIVES ... on in ink, now featured on the arm of a weirdo who made sure to get the mass murderer's burnt up particles poked deep into his own skin.
Get ready for a morbid body art tale -- 'cause that's exactly what this is. Artist Ryan Almighty tells TMZ that he recently gave one of Manson's longtime fanboys an arm tattoo for the ages -- which featured the real (dead) guy's leftover ashes from his cremation.
Ryan says a friend of his by the name of John Michael Jones -- who claims to have been one of Manson's pen pals before he died -- wanted to get a tat of the killer's face plastered on his arm, so Ryan did him a solid, and then did him one better ... throwing some of Manson's actual ashes into the ink, free of charge. Nice guy!!!!
We're told John drove up from Boston to Ryan's tattoo shop in rural New York -- where he parked it for 6 hours of needling. The ashes were mixed into the ink that Ryan used.
Check out the final product ... creepy AF, if ya ask us. Which is fitting, of course.
BTW, this ain't the first time Ryan's done some strange Manson art. He put together a blood painting of Manson last year (which also featured some of his ashes), which ended up in Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum in Las Vegas.
Not sure how much more of Manson's ashes this guy has stored away in his cupboards (or under his pillow) but something tells he'll have another "masterpiece" pop up down the line.