{"id":615985,"date":"2026-04-30T21:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/615985\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T21:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:15:11","slug":"michael-jacksons-son-prince-says-late-singer-told-him-thriller-was-real-recalls-being-terrified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/615985\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jackson\u2019s Son Prince Says Late Singer Told Him \u2018Thriller\u2019 Was \u2018Real,\u2019 Recalls Being \u2018Terrified\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prince Jackson<\/a> is sharing a chilling childhood memory about his late, famous father, Michael Jackson<\/a>, and it\u2019s one that left him and his siblings genuinely frightened.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old recalled watching the King of Pop\u2019s iconic \u201cThriller\u201d music video as kids and believing every second of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerrified,\u201d Prince revealed of their reaction at the time during a recent appearance on Australia\u2019s Sunrise program on Channel Seven, according to the Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the iconic 1982 video, his dad famously turns into a werewolf and a zombie before dancing with the undead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told us that it was real,\u201d Prince added, \u201clike it wasn\u2019t special effects or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

MCA\/Universal<\/p>\n

Moments like that, Prince suggested, were part of his father\u2019s playful personality. \u201cHe just had a very childlike nature that was so much fun, always playing pranks on people and stuff,\u201d Prince added.<\/p>\n

Prince, who served as a producer on the biopic Michael<\/a>, reflected on growing up at his father\u2019s famed Neverland ranch, which doubled as an amusement park.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve learned that a lot of what I think is normal life is not normal life,\u201d he said, per the outlet.<\/p>\n

Still, he described his childhood as both magical and grounded, even amid the ranch\u2019s more surreal elements.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up at Neverland with my siblings and my father, for us, it was hanging out together as a family, but with the backdrop of elephants and giraffes walking in the background,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe spent a lot of time playing board games together, reading books, watching movies. It truly was, and is, magical. It felt like your own personal Disneyland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prince didn\u2019t hold back when describing his father, calling him an \u201cawesome\u201d dad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to have kids and, you know, take notes on what he did as a father, but he was always on our level in a way,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen he played with us, he played with us. You know, he got down, and he was playing with the toys and making up stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Mayer\/JTMPhotos, Int\u2019l. \/ MEGA<\/p>\n

Despite growing up with intense security as the child of a global superstar, Prince said efforts were made to ensure he still had a sense of normalcy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also see a lot of effort that was put to kind of mitigate that isolation,\u201d he said. \u201cI grew up in a big family, and so I have 40-plus cousins, and I see them as my siblings and my friends. And so I never felt lonely. But definitely a unique way to grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Jackson died in 2009, leaving behind three children, including Prince and daughter Paris Jackson, 28, with ex-wife Debbie Rowe. His youngest son, Bigi Jackson<\/a>, now 24, was born via an anonymous surrogate.<\/p>\n

The new musical biographical film Michael, which premiered in Los Angeles on April 20, stars his nephew Jaafar Jackson<\/a> in the lead role. The movie\u2019s timeline ends in 1988 and reportedly does not touch on the allegations of sexual abuse<\/a> that Michael faced \u2014 and repeatedly denied \u2014 before his death.<\/p>\n

This story Michael Jackson\u2019s Son Prince Says Late Singer Told Him \u2018Thriller\u2019 Was \u2018Real,\u2019 Recalls Being \u2018Terrified\u2019<\/a> first appeared on InTouch Weekly<\/a>. Add InTouch Weekly as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Jackson is sharing a chilling childhood memory about his late, famous father, Michael Jackson, and it\u2019s one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[152322,88,663,40555],"class_list":["post-615985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bigi-jackson","tag-entertainment","tag-jackson","tag-paris-jackson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}