RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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This article contains disturbing and sensitive material.
It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, as quietly majestic as Midwest summer mornings get.
The sun had been up for 50 minutes, rising through a blue sky and casting a golden glow over the many rows of tents at Electric Forest’s VIP camping area, called Good Life. The name felt apt as the leaves of the tall trees surrounding the area rustled in a way that made them appear to shimmer, heightening the dreamy afterglow formed by a long night of dancing and very little sleep.
The wind in the trees was the only sound as day spread over the festival and surrounding woods and farmlands of Rothbury, Michigan, which for most of the year has a population of less than 500. At one Good Life campsite, a few people continued the party, huddling on inflatable couches while the occasional sleepy-faced attendee walked by en route to the bathroom.
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In other words, the scene at the electronic music festival was normal and idyllic — until it wasn’t. When a cleaning crew entered the Good Life porta-potties for a scheduled morning cleaning at around 7:50 a.m. ET, a member of this team discovered the body of a dead newborn. (Women’s porta-potties in the Good Life area are in trailers that each contain five bathroom stalls and two sinks. There are several such bathroom trailers in Good Life camping, and it’s not currently clear in which trailer the body was found.)
The placenta and umbilical cord were still attached to the baby, the sex and race of which has not been made public. Authorities would later announce that the infant had been viable and born alive. The woman who’d given birth to the baby had slipped away from the scene, and her identity remains unknown.
Suddenly, a widely beloved electronic music festival became a crime scene, with the devastating news compounded by another death the following day, when the body of Electric Forest 2026 attendee Jerard Jackson, 28, was found in a wooded area near the festival site in what authorities say was an apparent suicide.
On Sunday morning, as investigators from the Michigan State Police arrived and attendees started asking questions, “we just stated that it was an ongoing investigation,” says Lt. Pat Agema, the public information officer for the Michigan State Police. “We didn’t want to put out what it was at that time.”
And so Electric Forest 2026 — which for the prior three days had been a swirl of music and whimsy for many of its roughly 40,000 attendees — continued under a veneer of normalcy as investigators began unraveling arguably one of the most disturbing incidents to ever happen at a major American music festival. As if in response, that evening a thunderstorm pierced a weekend of perfect weather and forced attendees to temporarily evacuate the site. While gates eventually reopened, the vibe had shifted towards somberness for those who knew what had happened. Many grappled with how to keep having fun, and if fun was still appropriate.
“You could feel a dark cloud settle over the final day around noon, when news of what had happened really started making its way into local media,” says a longtime Electric Forest goer who spoke to Billboard on the condition of anonymity. “At the same time, a lot of people simply weren’t aware. Many attendees were disconnected enough that it took time for the information to spread across the festival grounds. For some, it didn’t fully register until Sunday night — or even Monday after they had already left.”
On Sunday evening, Lt. Agema laid out the facts on X. “The Michigan State Police continue to investigate the discovery of a deceased neonate found Sunday morning in the camping area at the Electric Forest festival,” he wrote. “Investigators are asking for the public’s assistance. If you were in the area and observed anything unusual, or if you have information that you believe may be relevant, we encourage you to come forward. We appreciate the public’s cooperation and ask that people avoid speculation on social media out of respect for the investigation and those affected.”
By this time, social media had already exploded with speculation as Electric Forest regulars and people just learning about the event as the story broke internationally wondered not only what happened, but how something so horrifying even could. Commenters wondered if the situation was due to a cryptic pregnancy (which happens when a woman doesn’t realize she’s pregnant until she starts giving birth), or if the baby had been stillborn, grasping for scenarios that might make it make more sense. Nearly a month after the incident, many details are still unknown, and no arrests have been made.
For the days leading up to and during the festival, the @ElectricForest Instagram account posted images of fans dancing in the forest, pride flags waving, fireworks lighting the sky, headliners like GRiZ and Sammy Virji going for it onstage. The account’s final post of the weekend was a screenshot of the tweet from the State Police with a caption stating, “Forest Family, it causes us so much pain to have to share this difficult news with you. Michigan State Police continues to investigate this tragic event if you can assist in any way. HQ is heartbroken and knows that our Forest Family is as well.”
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Comments on this post were disabled, and nothing else has been posted to the account in the month since. Electric Forest organizers and staff — the festival is now co-presented...
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