A girl aged 12 who was found hanged in her bedroom had become obsessed with a teenage sub-culture known as “emo”, an inquest was told yesterday.

Rachel Jarvis, a fan of the band My Chemical Romance, died in January, a few days after making a new year’s resolution not to kill herself. She joins a growing list of children whose death has been linked to their involvement with the music and fashion of the angst-ridden cult, whose followers regularly talk of self-harming and suicide.

This month a 13-year-old boy, Sam Leeson, was found hanged in his bedroom in Gloucester. He had been bullied for his alternative dress and love of emo music. In May a coroner in Maidstone, Kent, ruled that the suicide of Hannah Bond, 13, another fan of My Chemical Romance, had “disturbing” emo overtones. She had earlier cut her wrists and discussed the “glamour” of hanging with other emo fans on the internet.

Emo is short for emotional hardcore. Its adherents – in Britain usually middle-class teenagers of both sexes – wear skinny black jeans, heavy, dark make-up and often dye their hair black.

Rachel, from Hull, was known to her family as a happy and friendly girl who performed well at school. Her form teacher described her as “wonderful . . . extremely mature for her age, very confident and bold”.

After her death it emerged that in the months before she was found hanged from her bedroom ceiling she had often visited an American emo website – her online name was Emos-rule – where young people spoke about depression, self-harm and killing themselves.

She had also kept a secret diary in which she recorded earlier suicide attempts. A statement from one of her close friends, a boy who cannot be named for legal reasons, was read to the hearing at Hull Coroner’s Court. He said that the pair had bonded over their shared passion for emo music and that Rachel had confided in him that she was going to cut herself.

“Other people used to say, ‘Don’t hang around with her because she’s weird and you will get depressed if you are around her,’ but I didn’t listen to them.”

Rachel’s mother, Maggie Jarvis, a former housing adviser, said that she had been about to give her two younger sons a bath and put them to bed and went to speak to her daughter about her playing loud music. “I went upstairs to ask her to turn it down otherwise they wouldn’t get to sleep. That’s when I found her,” she said.

Police investigating Rachel’s death found long-sleeved tops with blood stains at the wrists. They also found a diary with dark poetry and entries about eight earlier suicide attempts.

The coroner, Geoffrey Saul, recorded a narrative verdict in which he noted that “the suspension was at her own hand but the question of intent remains unclear”. He went on: “The evidence shows that she had talked to friends of hers about self harm but it doesn’t seem that they were strong statements of immediate intention.”

This month fans gathered outside the Daily Mail’s offices in London to protest at reports suggesting that emo music encouraged suicide.

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