At io9, Esther Inglis-Arkell came up with ten real life "memoirs" that read like scifi and fantasy stories.
One title on the list:
Jay's Journal, by Beatrice Sparks
What fake memoir collection is complete without a little Satanism? Jay's Journal is the journal of a depressed youth who falls in with a Satanic cult. While some memoirs only delve into the depravity of the cult, this one brings in a full-on demon. 'Jay' is haunted by Raul, a demon he believes he called up, and eventually kills himself. This 
false memoir is based on real events. There are very strong allegations that Sparks took the diary of a teen who committed suicide because he was depressed, and who happened to have friends who dabbled (in a teenage way) in the occult, and spun it into a story about a kid involved with real Satanism. Sparks wrote another 'memoir,' Go Ask Alice, about a girl who died after she got into drugs. Each book starts out with a clean cut teenager encountering hippie-dippie philosophy. In one case it leads to a sort of Woodstock-hellscape of drug addiction and prostitution. In another, there is animal sacrifice, out-of-body experiences, and eventual hauntings. Both are considered to be more the author's version of a scared-straight story than based on actual fact. Unfortunately, the teenager that Jay's Journal was 'based on' was easily identified, and his family has been protesting the book ever since. This is one 'memoir' that the author should have published as fiction immediately.
Read about
the other entries on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
