Whoa- the same woman who wrote Go Ask Alice also wrote Jay’s Journal? I sense a pattern here. I picked up an excellent book debunking the “satanic panic” of the late 80’s/early 90’s in the US & UK. It’s called The Lure of the Sinister by Gareth J. Medway, and I highly recommend it. Medway refers to Jay’s Journal several times in the book and provides compelling evidence to indicate the entire ‘diary’ was a fabrication. He mentions that the ‘author’, (Beatrice Sparks, although he never specifically names her) spent a lot of time interviewing people who were at the time making claims to have been involved with satanic cults and cult-related crime. These people were later proven to be hoaxers or mentally unbalanced.
Go Ask Alice is a rather suspicious piece of work, any way you look at it. It is filled with foreshadowing and other literary devices that few people, especially a supposedly drugged-out teenager would use while keeping a daily journal. It is also very heavy-handed and reads like a public service announcement.
Jay’s Journal, which was passed around my high school in the early 90’s by well-meaning religious folk, is even more of a sham. It is more-or-less one of those “true haunting” books, which while purporting to be 100% non-fiction, is filled with lurid descriptions of supernatural events that just can’t seem to be scientifically documented by anyone anywhere ever. It is also heavily laced with Christian docrine and, dare I say it? propaganda.
This woman is getting less and less credible by the minute. If anyone can prove to me that Go Ask Alice is 100% true and can provide extensive documentation of this, I will personally eat every copy my public library possesses.