json_decode does not work on WordPress

I tried to parse your JSON into this and got an error that you have bad escaped characters (backslash must be escaped).

Taking into account Vinod Dalvi’s comment, the definition of json_encode in WordPress is wrapped by function_exists(). I guess if you have PHP version of 5.2 or above (which I think you have, because you can use json_decode outside WordPress), the WordPress defined json_decode() won’t be used.