Rick Emerson - Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the Worlds Most Notorious Diaries

Contents

Praise for Unmask Alice

Deeply reported, deftly written, and laced with real moral outrage, Rick Emersons Unmask Alice shines withering light on some of Americas most treasured, yet nonsensical crusades. Starting with the story of Go Ask Alice, Emerson connects the War on Drugs to the Satanic Panic and reveals the real motivation of their most fervent crusaders: money and power.

Peter Ames Carlin,New York Times bestselling author of Bruce and Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros Records.

Unmask Alice is captivating... and reads like a mystery novel. It keeps you thinking about what has (and hasnt) changed in the last fifty years.

Heather Mayer, historian, author of Beyond the Rebel Girl

Unmask Alice is an eye-opening, shocking, and at times harrowing tale of deception, delusion, and exploitation. Veering from entertaining to stomach-turning to jaw-dropping, Unmask Alice is a must-read for any child of the 70s, 80s, or 90s. The truth will set you free, and will keep you turning the pages late into the night. If youve read Go Ask Alice, you have to read Unmask Alice.

Dan Gemeinhart, award-winning author of The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise and The Midnight Children

Rick Emersons fascinating book, Unmask Alice, reveals the unsavory truth about Beatrice Sparks and her influential publications, Go Ask Alice and Jays Journal. Emerson skillfully and credibly links Sparkss stubborn ambition to become recognized as an author to the destruction of lives and a period of Satanic worship hysteria.

Jana Brubaker, author of Text, Lies and Cataloging

Unmask
Alice

Unmask Alice copyright 2022 by Rick Emerson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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First E-Book Edition: June 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021057358

ISBN 9781637740422

eISBN 9781637740439

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For my sister, who taught me to read.

And for my mom, who taught me the rest.

Contents

The living, if falsely defamed, have recourse to the laws of defamation. But the dead, if falsely maligned, have no recourse among the living through those laws.

American Law Institute, Restatement (Second) of Torts 560 (1977)

Truth has to change hands only a few times to become fiction.

Pleasant Grove High School yearbook (1971), page 43

T here are two kinds of people in this world: people who skip ahead to see how it all turns outand people who take the ride, trusting that everything (or most things) will eventually be explained.

I understand the jump to the end compulsion, especially when so many books, podcasts, documentaries, and other deep dives promise to finally reveal The Whole! Shocking! Truth!... then sputter their way to a noncommittal shrug.

Arggh, the consumer seethes. I just wasted nine hours of my life to learn that the jurys still out on Bigfoot. Get burned often enough and the urge to fast-forward can feel overwhelming.

Theres another reason people skip ahead (or to the comments), and thats sourcing. At some point, even the most credulous reader can wonder, How does he know the car smelled vaguely of almonds? Or, How can he possibly say what the river looked like on January 3, 1970? At such moments, its tempting to rush to the internet, where someone is always waiting to answer your questions.

I wont order you to stay offline until you finish this book, and I wont begrudge the occasional doubt. (As youll soon see, blind faithin anythingis a bad idea.) That said, if you buckle in and let the story take the wheel, I think youll be glad you did. When its all over, Ill explain the sourcing, the background, the improbable detailseverything.

Until then, a few quick notes:

This is a true story. In a book of any length, errors are almost unavoidable, but to the best of my knowledge and ability, what follows is both accurate and morally honest. Any factual mistakes, even if they came from someone else, are ultimately my responsibility.

No dialogue is invented. If its in quotes, someone said it.

Inner monologues and paraphrased statements are italicized and come from diaries, written records, interviews, and other concrete research.

Journal entries, news blurbs, and the like are edited for clarity and brevity (i.e., to keep this book a manageable length), but Ive preserved their meaning and intent.

Thats it for now. See you on the other side.

Rick Emerson

In the twenty-first century, skip ahead takes many forms, including skim Wikipedia during breakfast and trust the headline on BuzzFeed.

Or in my case, D. B. Cooper. Youd think Id eventually stop falling for the have authorities finally found their man? gambit, but no. I bite, every single time.

Wednesday, November 6, 1996

T he grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria smells like perfume and coffee, and everyone is applauding.

At center stage, Toni Morrison receives a large bronze medal on a bright blue ribbon. Like the evenings other winners, Morrison will also get ten thousand dollars and (fingers crossed) a sales bump.

Its a perfect finale for the Forty-Sixth National Book Awards, the embodiment of their mission to celebrate the best of American literature.

I want to tell two little stories, Morrison says as the clapping fades. The first, I heard third- or fourth-hand...

As Morrison speaks, a green-eyed woman at table thirty-seven listens politely. Like Morrison, shes an author, but shes also one of five judges in a brand-new category: Young Peoples Literature. That award already happened, so now she just sits, waiting for things to wrap up.

For the woman at table thirty-seven, grousing would be easy. Shes sold more books than Toni Morrison. In fact, shes sold more books than all of the winners combined. Her second book is still moving a thousand copies a weekmore than four million so far. Not bad, considering it came out twenty-five years ago.

But no one asked her to speak tonight.

Thats how its always been. Ignored. Pushed aside. Deleted. Her biggest hit doesnt even have her name on it, for Petes sake.

The agents fault. Why did I listen to him?

No matter. Tonight is a victory, the payoff for decades of hustling.

Later, at the afterparty, shell need to be careful. Nothing about her college degrees, or her fascinating career as an adolescent psychologist. (