Joshua Reagan

A few months before Kaitlyn was born, I really wanted a way to share her with family and friends near and far.  It was before social networking sites were as popular or as easy to use as today.  I discovered Babyhomepages.net and Kaitlyn had a page.  I would update it just like a baby book and then share it.  My nieces had one, Matthew has one, I had started one for the first baby we miscarried and updated them often.

BHP (babyhomepages) was similar to a message board once you started posting.  You would see the pages other people created for their kids, and could leave comments.  It started friendships from one side of the world to another with people who had the same interests, kids of similar ages and who were going through many of the same trials as you were.

A couple of years ago, I had received a message that someone was using Kaitlyn's pictures as their own.  I didn't really pay much attention to it and didn't take it too seriously.

Over the last year, it's changed.  I've been contacted by numerous people with more information regarding the craziness this woman has created.

From the sources, I was able to gather that they were using the persona Joshua Regan.  A single father of now three girls and one little boy who passed away.  They had a facebook page and mostly found relationships on dating websites.  Their mother died in labor when Charlotte was born, and prior to the birth of each child, there was a different story as to mom's whereabouts.

Joshua Reagan was a woman.  Obviously sick in the head and from Florida.  I was able to track down their IP address and knew they were visiting the blog and the BHP sites.  I enjoy blogging and described why I started putting watermarks on my photos here.  I made the BHP sites private.  I, naively, assumed they were only getting the pictures from the blog.

Until I received a friend request on facebook followed by a message.  The messages included a photo.

Those first 4 photos were found only on one place: facebook.

The middle one of Matthew was also on facebook, but not directly on my page.  Rather on friends pages.  The next three were all on instagram and shared on facebook.

They all had facebook in common.  And I had over 475 friends.  So, I started deleting everyone that could have possibly been someone else.  Someone who could have been pretending.  Someone who could have actually been "Joshua Regan." 

After I deleted the first 10, the woman who had given me the photo said that "his" instagram page was going crazy and photos were being deleted.

I kept deleting.  I mean, to be honest, I didn't know who this person was that was messaging, or the people who had messaged me about it before.  All of them could have been the same person for all I know. 

I learned rather quickly that facebook is not a fan of you just deleting friends.  After about 50, it started glitching.  I ended up accidentally deleting many that I didn't need to.  I ended up getting down to closer to 150 friends.  Which, has made my newsfeed feel naked.

Throughout the time of unfriending, I continued to receive FB messages from the woman with photos of the texts she had received.

I removed the information shared by the person who shared them with me for a couple of reasons.  The main one being she talks about her kids, and I'm not sharing anyone's kids information.  And, it's not really necessary to get the creepy factor of what "Joshua Reagan" did.

 

I also received these:

I then received more texts after "Josh" was called out in regards to not being who he said he was:

 

He also sent a picture of his real daughter.  Who I thought about posting as well to find the true parents of, but have decided against.


This, according to "him", is his sister and her family:

Disgusting.  Right?

So, the next morning, I received this email (from carrie.mcguire@icloud.com):

 Hi my name is Carrie. I'm 27 years old and I am sending this because I want you to know that your blog about cat fishing is wrong. As a freshman in high school, I lost my little sister to leukemia. I got really depressed and started spiraling downhill. I started doing drugs and I was known at school as the gothic girl. There was a specific girl, holly, in my grade who used to be so cruel to me. So I went home one day and created Josh Reagan. I found pictures of a guy who was attractive on aol profiles back when that was our social media. I messaged her, and made her fall in love with this guy only to break up with her and break her heart. Cruel I know. But at that point it made her weaker than me and that's what I needed. So I became addicted. I came across your family when your oldest was a baby. On babyhomepages. My sister had one for her memory and I was just browsing and came across your family. I don't know why I did what I did from there on out. I did use your children's pictures. I don't know why. I don't really have answers. What I can tell you is I'm sorry. I'm done with it all, and I'm trying to get my life back where it needs to be. I no longer have a computer, I got rid of it. I'm in a program to help with Internet addiction and the first step is to apologize to the people you hurt with your addiction. I am very sorry for doing what I did. It was wrong, and stupid. I you have any questions you can email me back, but I want you to know I won't be doing it any longer. 



Sent from my iPhone
  


Obviously, this person has some serious mental illness issues.  I have absolutely no sympathy for them and I hope that they seriously stop what they are doing and realize how much it can hurt others.

I think it's another example of how we cannot control what happens to us in life, the only thing we can control is how we react.

If I accidentally unfriended you, and you're not a psycho, please friend request me.  :)  And be safe on the internet people!