When you’re the parent of a sad and lonely child, you don’t necessarily question things when suddenly an imaginary friend comes into the picture. The sight of your child happy is enough for you to even find yourself talking to this “friend.” But what happens if that imaginary friend is more than imaginary, and begins to lead your child down a dark road.
Laughing Jack was first introduced to the world on March 3, 2013 through the popular social media platform DeviantArt, by user SnuffBomb. In the post, SnuffBomb told the story of a five year old boy named James, who shares the stories of his encounters with Laughing Jack with his mother, whom she believes to be his imaginary friend. Jack is described as a clown with “long hair and a big swirly cone nose. He’s got long arms and baggy pants, with stripy socks, and he always smiles.”
The story is told from the perspective of James’ mother, who believes the imaginary friend is just a phase her son is going through, until she begins to have nightmares, set in a carnival-like atmosphere full of stuffed animals hanging from nooses, empty circus tents, mutilated children, and the sound of the song, “Pop Goes the Weasel” coming from a jack-in-the-box somewhere in the eerie park. Additionally, strange things begin to happen around the house and Jack is always to blame.
One morning they wake to find their dog, dead and hanging in the kitchen. When the police arrive, they find no signs of forced entry, and the culprit must have already been inside the house. The next night James’ mother hears the nightmarish laughter from her dreams coming from her son’s bedroom. She enters to find James nailed to the wall, his chest cut open and his organs hanging out. Jack makes his presence known, stepping out in front of the slain boy, and the mother lunges at him with a knife. Laughing Jack disappears as the blade is thrust through James’ lifeless body.
The mother is arrested and tried for the murder of her child, and is found to be insane.
There is no shortage of terrifying stories of Laughing Jack’s encounters online, but what is perhaps the scariest thing about this entity, is the 2015 case out of Elkhart Indiana.
On July 23, 2015, a 12 year old girl known only as “J.T.”, in Elkhart Indiana fatally stabbed her stepmother and cut her father before starting a fire in her bedroom of the family’s apartment. Her father, Edwin Torres, found her near the apartment’s front door, holding a knife and standing in an unusual manner. Her father told her they needed to leave or they would all die in the fire, but she told him to stay back and not come closer, her voice resembling that of a clown.
Court documents have stated that the girl, “heard voices and had an ‘alter ego’ in the months before the stabbing and begged her father for help.” She heard the voices of personalities “Star” and “Anna” and even went so far as to adopt their personas. She became obsessed with Laughing Jack, and began associating with him in both behavior and appearance. Doctors have diagnosed the girl as suffering from post-traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.
Leading up to the incident, J.T. had been searching online for how to hide from the police, how to make poison, sharpen knives, survive in the woods. She searched for a video of a stabbing, and even looked up the song, “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Immediately after her arrest, she was placed in a Goshen juvenile detention center where she saw a counselor and began taking medication, though she still pleaded for help. Her family, not concerned about the criminal charges, fought to get her transferred to a state mental hospital, after 16 different psychiatric facilities refused her.
As of April 2019, J.T. was still in custody, still receiving mental health. Her attorneys fought, and won, to keep her case in juvenile court, and the latest hearing was scheduled for April 24, 2019. Nothing further is known at this time.
While more and more stories of Laughing Jack continue to circulate online, each one creepier than the last, can we still think of these as “stories”? Do you think there’s a chance Laughing Jack is real, and is looking for another child like J.T. to obey his command?
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