BURLINGTON, VT, Dec. 11 — It is not unusual these days in this city near Canada for some Vermonters to scan strangers’ foreheads for signs of a crudely engraved “X” between their eyebrows.

“You worry that a whole trail of cult people are going to walk into this town now,” grumbled Mary Paquette, wife of a former mayor. “California doesn’t want these people, and neither do we. Vermont doesn’t need any ‘X’ people.”

This city, proud of its free-thinkers, has been abuzz since it was revealed last week that Sandra Good, former surfer girl and devoted follower of California cult leader and mass killer Charles Manson, was paroled here after being released last Monday from a federal prison in West Virginia.

Still marked by an “X,” which Manson followers seared into their foreheads with red-hot bobby pins in 1969, Miss Good is living in a private home here under federal supervision.

Convicted in 1975 for conspiring to send death threats to corporate officials from her Sacramento apartment, Miss Good was the last Manson disciple to go to jail. A federal prosecutor said then that her sentencing was “a death of the so-called Manson family.”

Miss Good, 41, is the first of Manson’s most ardent supporters to be released from custody. The terms of her parole state that she is prohibited from returning to California and cannot visit Manson until 1990.

Manson, who often referred to himself as both Jesus Christ and the devil, is serving a life sentence at San Quentin for the 1969 ritual slaying of actress Sharon Tate, grocer Leno LaBianca and seven others.

Miss Good’s release, which caught state and local officials by surprise, has angered Vermont Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin, who criticized U.S. parole authorities.

“While by law we didn’t have to be notified, we should have been,” said Bob Sherman, executive assistant to Kunin. “It’s just a common courtesy. When you have someone of this notoriety come into your state, you want to know about it.”

Vermont police officials, after meeting with federal authorities, were promised that they will be kept informed of Miss Good’s status, Sherman said. While federal authorities refuse to make Miss Good’s address public, they say she has been a “model prisoner” and is not a threat to society.

“There has been no evidence of any problems with her,” said Joseph Krovisky, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice. “You must realize there have never been any big offenses in her past.”

Miss Good was sent to Vermont because federal officials were looking for “the appropriate setting” for her to live in, and eventually go to work and become accustomed to life outside prison, Krovisky said.

After an intensive lobbying effort by California lawmakers who wanted Miss Good kept east of the Rockies, federal officials determined that the best place for Miss Good was more than 3,000 miles from her home state.

“Her time was up and she had to go someplace,” Krovisky said. “And Vermont fit the special conditions set for her.”

But many who live in this city of 40,000 on the shores of Lake Champlain are wary of the woman who once threatened to kill the late Nelson Rockefeller when he was vice president, compiled a death wish-list of hundreds of corporate executives, lamented that she never carried out those threats and vowed to never leave prison before Manson, the man whom she often referred to lovingly as “my father.”

Burlington — known for its liberal attitude, the University of Vermont and as a place that elected a socialist mayor (current Mayor Bernard Sanders, in 1981) — is hardly embracing the prospect of harboring Miss Good.

“It’s not a big issue like the development of the waterfront, which has people really concerned here,” said Greg Guma, owner of a used-book store. “But you wonder when she is going to surface. Is she a flake? Is she an activist? Is she a Yuppie? What meetings will she attend?”

Miss Good, who through the years has courted publicity, has been uncharacteristically mum about her life in freedom.

Little is known about how she is spending her time in Burlington. According to some unofficial reports, Miss Good has been seen buying a newspaper from a rack outside a local newspaper office and eating lunch at a Pizza Hut.

“When she left, she told me to tell the media that she didn’t want to talk,” said David Helman, executive director of the federal Correctional Institution for Women at Alderson, W.Va., where Miss Good served most of her sentence.

Before coming to Vermont, Miss Good turned down an earlier opportunity for freedom.

Miss Good refused parole last spring after federal officials offered to place her in a halfway house in Camden, N.J., under condition that she couldn’t return to California or visit Manson followers.

Before choosing to remain in jail, Miss Good told interviewers in March that she had “too much anger” in her to leave prison.

“By staying inside where my family is, I keep myself outside of thought dedicated to money, power and approval,” she said. “I still feel the way I did the day I walked into prison. I don’t want out until (Manson) and Family get a fair trial. Charlie is inside and that’s where my soul, that’s where my love, lies. Inside.”

U.S. officials said this week that Miss Good would not say why she changed her mind and decided to accept parole.

“Didn’t tell me,” Helman said, adding that he didn’t know if Miss Good’s feelings about Manson had changed. “She is obviously satisfied with terms of her release.”

Miss Good, the daughter of a wealthy San Diego stockbroker, joined the Manson clan in the late 1960s and became one of his most outspoken and loyal supporters.

During Manson’s trial in 1970, Miss Good conducted curbside press conferences outside a courthouse in Los Angeles, glared at witnesses against Manson and, along with a dozen other followers, burned an “X” in her forehead in a macabre show of solidarity for Manson.

In 1975, Miss Good was rooming with fellow Manson cult member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme in Sacramento, Calif., when Fromme pointed a pistol at then-President Gerald Ford, who was making an appearance at a city park.

When federal authorities raided the women’s apartment, they found hundreds of threatening letters that Miss Good had written to executives of energy, lumber, and oil companies in which she accused them of polluting the environment.

After her conviction, Miss Good asked that she remain in prison for life but was sentenced instead to 15 years. She served almost a decade of that sentence.

Fromme is behind bars for life. And Miss Good, with memories of Manson planted deep in her mind, has a chance for a new beginning in a state that does not have a federal prison or a maximum-security facility.

“It’s not so much California against Vermont as it is politics,” said Joel Gardner, who runs a photography business in Burlington. “It’s the California politicians making California think their state is safer because its criminal is far away. It’s an ancient political ploy: Get the person who is trouble and send him far away.”

Added Gordon Paquette, mayor of Burlington from 1971 to 1981: “Yep, California sure pulled a fast one. I’d like to know how they did it because maybe we can do it, too. I know everybody wants to come to Vermont, but this is a bit much.”

By E.A. TORRIERO