UPDATE: 2018:
It has been 4 years since I originally answered this question. Back then plain strings in quotes were not valid JSON. As of today, it is being accepted as a valid JSON.
The following is kept for people to see what the error used to be earlier:
Parsing a simple string gives:
Parse error on line 1:
"morpheus"
^
Expecting '{', '['
indicating that it needs to be an object or an array.
TIP: To validate JSON strings and see what works and what does not, try using http://jsonlint.com
