The Last Days of Jack Sparks (39 page)
Read The Last Days of Jack Sparks Online
Authors: Jason Arnopp
The Impostor Theory would admittedly explain
someone
having stayed in Hong Kong and Los Angeles hotels under the name Jack Sparks; the Hollywood Paranormals group having worked with
someone
who was never captured on film in any of their session footage; and Sherilyn Chastain having met
someone
who to this day she insists was Jack Sparks.
2
As I recently told the
Sun
newspaper and
Closer
magazine, the fact that I actually spoke to someone impersonating my brother has lent grist to the the Impostor Theory’s mill. After Jack’s agent Murray Chambers and I learned of Jack’s death, Murray alerted me to the fact that someone had been posting on Jack’s social media accounts since Halloween. Together, we fought to have all these accounts shut down and deleted. YouTube was the last site to comply. Cruel hoax phone calls from West Hollywood were then made to Murray and myself within minutes of each other on 18 November. Just as described in the book, a voice admittedly similar to Jack’s begged us for help. We both hung up in shock and disgust. On reflection, of course, we could have kept this impostor talking, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty.
Editor Eleanor Rosen and I elected to insert the segments of additional material between certain chapters for two reasons: (a) to provide extra value for those who bought this official book over the inferior torrent file; and (b) because some of these segments could be seen to track the impostor’s activities. But of course, you are at liberty to interpret the material as you choose. To each their own.
The last year has seen dramatic changes in my life. Defying all social media trolls, I became outspoken in urging the paranormally and religiously minded to turn to science. I also signed up for my TV debut as the host of a forthcoming documentary series for the Sky Living channel. I do not think of myself as a natural celebrity, but the opportunity was rather thrust upon me. By all accounts, I also seem to have shown aptitude for the work.
Entitled
Alistair Sparks Debunks the Devil
, the series sees me adopt my brother’s surname as a mark of my deepest love and in order to keep his name alive. It will also address some of the theories surrounding his demise. In the first episode, you will see the pilgrimage I made to West Hollywood’s Sunset Castle Hotel with Father Primo Di Stefano in tow. Regardless of what I believe, Jack seemed to fear that his spirit would end up trapped in the hotel’s boiler room for eternity. So as a gesture of respect, I had Father Di Stefano perform a simple rite intended to help Jack move on. It was a very profound, personal and private experience, which you can see in full in Episode One.
The recent release of Father Di Stefano’s book
The Devil’s Victims
triggered a great outcry among some of Jack’s fans. They felt Mr Di Stefano was ‘cashing in’ by appropriating the book title Jack had used in
Jack Sparks on the Supernatural
. Mr Di Stefano denies this, ‘in the strongest possible terms’, insisting he had planned to employ this title for years.
One passage of
The Devil’s Victims
has provoked shock and sorrow in Sherilyn Chastain and a portion of Jack’s followers, for reasons I reject. This passage documents our joint visit to the Sunset Castle and the days that followed. Perhaps if you buy into the supernatural, then this passage lends Jack’s story some form of coda, but it’s not my cup of tea. Still, in the spirit of giving something back to Jack’s fans, who have suffered such uncertain heartache, I shall include the passage here, by kind permission of Chiesa Books
.
As I knelt on that dirty floor in the middle of the hotel boiler room, I tried not to let the TV cameras affect my ritual. I commanded myself to focus only on the spirit of Mr Jack Sparks, whose soul I believed to have been kidnapped by that execrable fiend Satan and imprisoned here. Mr Sparks and I may have had our differences during the brief time I met him in life, but he is God’s child like any other, and so deserved saving.
Despite my concentration being momentarily broken by a highly frustrating incident when the producer asked if I could pause while one of the cameramen switched batteries, I successfully made contact with Mr Sparks’ essence.
Mr Sparks was melancholy at first, fearful that we might enrage his ‘master’. Then he became excited when I told him I had the power to set him free. I did just as I had promised and spent the rest of my time in Los Angeles feeling blessed for my ability to help people.
Then came the vision.
The most powerful vision I have suffered in three decades.
It struck a full week after the ritual, while I was walking across a cobbled square in Vatican City. It consumed me to such a degree that it was all I could see and hear. I was forced to stop dead in my tracks. Two onlookers phoned for an ambulance, fearing I had suffered a stroke or suchlike.
I beheld a distressed Jack Sparks, in his spirit form, drifting east through the sky from the Californian coast, across America. He struggled limply and tried to resist, but it was no good: some dark agency compelled him. This cast a terrible shadow upon my soul, because I knew I had failed. Rather than my ritual freeing Jack Sparks, it had merely prompted the Devil to relocate him.
As Jack Sparks flew east, his human spirit form disintegrated, until he resembled dark tempestuous smoke.
Overlaid on this image was a green clock face, its hands spinning forwards at speed, over and over again.
I saw Jack Sparks’ spirit stop on England’s east coast.
Then the clock face became red. Its hands spun backwards, back into the past, as unholy winds swept Mr Sparks further east, until I saw him crossing Asiatic waters . . .
Finally, all of these images faded away and I saw only one thing.
One new image. A cryptic sight that puzzles, intrigues and concerns me deeply to this day.
It was a small bright-red glass bottle with no lid, floating in the sea. The contents lost forever.
The last six months of filming have seen me interview people everywhere from Los Angeles to Waco to the Gaza strip to Lusaka to London to Rome. Now that all those air miles are behind me (until Series Two, one hopes) and my work on this book is done, I feel I have completed an emotional journey.
Perhaps because of all the strife surrounding my brother’s death, however, I found myself unable to fully grieve for Jacob until this very morning. While rifling through a box of our childhood photographs and playthings, I chanced upon a small wooden donkey. The kind you operate with your thumb. When I made that donkey’s legs crumple, I am not ashamed to say my face followed suit.
Despite my new-found media profile, I hope I can now focus on being a husband and father once again. In recent weeks, my wonderful daughters Xanna (nine years old) and Sophie (seven) have worried me somewhat. To my dismay, they read the pirated version of
Jack Sparks on the Supernatural
that was passed around between school friends. As a result of the book’s account of the cloakroom in this bungalow, both girls began to dream about seeing ‘Uncle Jack’ in there. Over the last few days, these distressing nightmares have bled into their perceived waking reality, as is so common in the young. The girls have made outlandish claims, such as having heard Uncle Jack laughing from inside the cloakroom. Patently, my children have been just as disturbed as Chloe and myself by this horrendous affair, but I am determined to restore calm to our home.
Despite the trauma of losing my brother, domestic life must go on, with all its reassuringly earthy chores. The refrigerator needs a new light bulb. The garage needs a clean. My family need and deserve my full attention once again.
I hope to see you over on Sky Living.
Until then, as I say on the show: keep it rational.
1
This text was missing the transcript of Sherilyn Chastain and Rebecca Lawson’s supposed ‘ego exorcism’ of Jack. However, because the ‘SherilynBexJackConvo.mp4’ audio file was also leaked, some devotees created their own inferior, typo-ridden ‘fan edit’ of the book, which added this material –
Alistair
.
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER2
In case you were unaware: Miss Chastain eventually made a full recovery after being assaulted in the Sunset Castle’s boiler room in the early hours of 20 November. Miss Chastain insists her prone body is depicted in the widely circulated YouTube video featured in the book, even though this is impossible. Tragically, of course, nurse Pio Accardo, Marc Howitz, Rebecca Lawson and all seven members of the Hollywood Paranormals were murdered in a manner broadly consistent with the descriptions in
Jack Sparks on the Supernatural.
The translator Antonino Bonelli did also commit suicide, seemingly in the wake of allegations of his incestuous paedophilia –
Alistair
.
While the majority of Jack’s media accounts have now been deleted out of respect after his untimely passing, at the request of his fans, we have left select parts of his site
www.jacksparks.co.uk
online as a place for his followers to share memories and theories about the events leading up to his death. Please feel free to visit and pay your respects.
This novel was fuelled by help from many people, not least my agent Oli Munson who believed wholeheartedly in this story from its birth as a mere paragraph, my editor Anna Jackson whose input, enthusiasm and trust has been utterly invaluable and everyone else in the wonderful Orbit team.
I’m hugely grateful to Sarah Lotz, John Higgs, Rebecca Levene, Esther Dickman, James Moran and William Gallagher for their reading, razor-sharp thoughts and encouragement. Big salutes go to Ian ‘Cat’ Vincent, without whom Sherilyn Chastain would be a far less convincing combat magician, and to Dijana Capan, without whom she’d be less convincingly Australian.
Other great and helpful folk: Dave Morris, Ray Zell, Oliver Johnson, Peter Brain Taylor, Daisy Campbell, Phill Barron, Benjamin Cook, Scott K. Andrews, Greg Taylor at the
Daily Grail
, Andrew Smith, Shardcore, Steven Barber, Natasha Von Lemke, Sparrow Morgan, Ian Richardson and everyone else on Facebook who fielded incessant questions about cars, MRI scans and other things I know nothing about.
A highly appreciative nod goes to A. R. G. Owen, Iris Owen and the other Toronto researchers who conducted 1972’s the Philip Experiment, which became the Harold Experiment for the purposes of this book. I would encourage any interested readers to hunt down their non-fiction account
Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis
(1976).
Last but definitely not least, massive respect to film-making legends Roger Corman, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick for agreeing to appear in this book as themselves. That still blows my mind.
Jason Arnopp
is a British author and scriptwriter. He has written official tie-in fiction for
Doctor Who
(BBC) and
Friday the 13th
(New Line Cinema), plus comedy for Radio 4. He wrote and executive-produced the 2011 Edinburgh Film Festival selection
Stormhouse
and script-edited Peter Mullan’s 2012 film
The Man Inside
. His background is in journalism: he has worked on titles such as
Heat
,
Q
,
The Word
,
Kerrang!
,
SFX
and
Doctor Who Magazine.
He has an official website at
JasonArnopp.com
and can be found on Twitter
@jasonarnopp
.
Find out more about Jason Arnopp and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at
www.orbitbooks.net
.
Did you always want to be an author?
This seems to be the case, because
Doctor Who
inspired me to write my own comic strips based on the show from the age of four. Yeah,
Doctor Who
has a lot to answer for. By the grand old age of twelve, I was writing and illustrating prose stories starring my own characters, which my very cool headmistress turned into bound books, then installed them in the school library. Looking back, that was the first real validation of my stuff: the kind of justification that us desperately needy writers all crave to enable us to crawl to our desks each morning. A few years later, rock journalism swept me off on a great big tangent for about a decade. But I suppose I was still telling stories.
What have been your most memorable moments as a journalist?
My favourite trip abroad was probably joining Manic Street Preachers on their Japanese tour in 1994. My favourite rock interview was a drunkenly fractious semi-confrontation with legendary metallers Pantera in a Baton Rouge beer garden. My favourite non-rock interview was
Doctor Who
legend Tom Baker in and around his Sussex home. In terms of memorable
moments
, though, I’ve received death threats; been surrounded by enraged, gun-wielding security guards in Vatican City; and found myself tangled up in a 1993 tabloid front cover story about a TV celebrity. I should probably tell you more about those things someday, on my blog.
How have you found it working on tie-in fiction for such popular shows and films like
Doctor Who
and
Friday the 13th
?
It’s great fun when you actually love the properties, as I do with both
Doctor Who
and
Friday the 13th
. You get to play with long-established and utterly iconic toys. The only real downside is that you’re only borrowing those toys and so there are certain things you obviously can’t do with them. That’s why it’s also great to create your own fictional toy-boxes, because then you have total freedom.