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Beatrice Sparks, born Beatrice Ruby Mathews (January 15, 1917 – May 25, 2012) was an American writer and hoaxer. She was an alleged Mormon youth counselor; more famously, she became an author and serial con artist, known primarily for producing books purporting to be the "real diaries" of troubled teenagers. The books deal with topical issues such as drug abuse, Satanism, teenage pregnancy, and AIDS, and are presented as cautionary tales.
Although Sparks presented herself as merely the discoverer and editor of the diaries, records at the U.S. Copyright Office list her as the sole author for all but two of them, indicating that the books were fabricated and fictional. Her most famous work, 1971's Go Ask Alice (credited to "Anonymous") has sold nearly six million copies.
After WWII, the Sparks family lived a very comfortable existence for nearly twenty years in Los Angeles. Usually working as "Bee Sparks" (though sometimes using the pen-name "Susan LaVorn"), aspiring writer Beatrice contributed to circulars distributed by local businesses and to church publications, and worked briefly as a writer for a magazine run by Joseph Barbera. In her self-written author bios of the period, she claimed variously to have studied at Utah State Agricultural College, or to have studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Utah. Neither claim has any evidence to back it up.
In the early 1950's, she co-authored a play with Barbera called The Maid and the Martian, which ran in Los Angeles and was a moderate local success. (A pre-fame James Arness starred in one run of the play.) The play was eventually turned into the film Pajama Party in 1964, but after numerous changes to the idea and dialogue, Sparks' name was omitted from the film's credits.
Their kids having grown, Beatrice and LaVorn Sparks moved to a large mansion in Provo, Utah in 1964.
Beatrice Sparks had volunteered at a veteran's hospital in L.A., and continued her volunteer work at the Utah State Hospital in Provo. In later tellings by Sparks, she was a youth counselor at the hospital, as well as for a youth summer camp run on the campus of Brigham Young University -- this is where she alleges to have met the young woman who wrote the diaries that became Go Ask Alice. In fact, while it's possible she met a young woman there that was the inspiration for the book, her volunteer duties at the hospital and the summer camp were strictly administrative or organizational in nature, and did not include professional counseling.
When Go Ask Alice became a bestseller with several million copies sold, Sparks received substantial royalties, but as an aspiring author she was frustrated that her name was not on the book. In interviews conducted over the next few years, Sparks identified herself as the book's Editing and claimed that it consisted partly of the actual diary of a troubled teen, and partly of embellished events based on Sparks's experiences working with other teens. Sparks was unable to produce the original diary for critics,Ben Yagoda, Memoir: A History. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. and investigator Alleen Pace Nelson publicly questioned the book's veracity and verifiability. Later editions of the book contained the standard disclaimer: "This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental."
Her next book appeared just a year later, though its genesis stretches back a few years. In 1973, while Go Ask Alice was still enjoying widespread success, Marcella Barrett of Pleasant Grove, Utah approached Sparks about editing the journal of Barrett's deceased son Alden. Alden had suffered from depression and committed suicide at age 16 in 1971, and his mother felt that his story might help other at-risk teens. The result was Jay's Journal in 1979, which presents the purported diary of a teenage boy named Jay who was drawn into Satanism and then took his own life for ritualistic purposes. Barrett's family was horrified by the book, and despite the changed name, residents of Pleasant Grove quickly concluded that "Jay" was in fact Alden Barrett. Barrett's family insisted that he had never been involved with Satanism or the occult, and that Sparks had used only 21 entries from his true journal (none of which mentioned Satanism in any respect whatsoever) while the book contained 212 passages purporting to be from that same journal. Barrett's family also contended that Sparks fabricated stories of Satanic rituals for the book; Sparks responded that she got the extra material from letters and interviews with Alden's friends (no copies of which were ever offered by Sparks, or subsequently discovered by others.) Later investigators suggested that Sparks added claims of Satanism so Jay's Journal could receive a promotional boost from then-current social concerns about that topic; conversely, the book directly influenced the Satanic panic of the 1980s.
After a gap of over a decade after Jay's Journal was published, starting in 1994 Sparks began producing several more "real diaries", including It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager (dealing with AIDS), (gang violence), Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, A Pregnant Teenager, Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager (pupil seduced by teacher), (eating disorders), and Finding Katie: The Diary of Anonymous, A Teenager in Foster Care. In several of these later books, she inserted herself as a character: "Dr. Beatrice Sparks" (familiarly called "Dr. B" by her patients) was a world-renowned child/young adult therapist who worked with the diarists as they tackled their issues. The seemingly awestruck diarists would then proceed to write glowingly of Dr. B. in their diaries. None of these later works received anywhere near the amount of attention as Go Ask Alice or even Jay's Journal, and no proof was ever offered of their veracity, or indeed of the existence of any of the subjects. The alleged practice of "Dr. Sparks" was similarly undocumented.
Serious doubts about the provenance of the diaries and interviews that formed Sparks' work had been published as early as 1978, and the number of openly critical pieces only increased over the years, with Snopes denouncing Go Ask Alice as "manufactured hooey" in a 2003 article. In the 2022 book Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries, investigator Rick Emerson presented evidence that most – if not all – of Sparks's works were hoaxes, made up of fabricated prose that Sparks claimed to be copies of real diaries from (or interviews with) teenagers who never actually existed; and in the case of Jay's Journal, significantly altered and padded prose from Alden Barrett's true diary. As well, Emerson demonstrated that certain unusual or quirky phrases, oddly specific metaphors, and unlikely idiomatic expressions recur in different diaries – even though these diaries were ostensibly written by different people, sometimes decades apart. Emerson also noted that many of Sparks' books contained cover blurbs from doctors or therapists, lauding the book within. These blurbs were provided to the publisher by Sparks, and these doctors and therapists were shown by Emerson to be non-existent.
Emerson estimates that Go Ask Alice has sold nearly six million copies. The book has never fallen out of print since its initial publication in 1971.
Voices is alleged to be transcribed from interviews conducted by Sparks, rather than being an edited diary. She is listed as the work's author with the U.S. Copyright Office.
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