TheHaunted - Immersive literary website
Hello everyone!
My name is Jimmy and I am working on a passion project that I started in college during a Literary Publishing course from UWT (GO HUSKIES!)
I've always been fascinated by the paranormal, and paranormal, horror, and fantasy fiction, but I haven't seen many well built professional platforms that offer well written user submitted works. There were a few that were buried deep within the Googles, but they seems like old Xanga and Myspace era sites with odd hard to read font and page owner rants. To quote my real job boss "Barf".
What we would like to offer, is a classy, yet still creepy, professional platform for the paranormal community to submit original works such as paintings, graphic designs, short stories, and web comics. The goal isn't just to feature fiction, but we're hoping at some point to add a member's premium portal which will also feature actual paranormal research, including sound clips and video footage. That's the long term goal though...
For now, as we try to build a community, we will focus specifically on short stories and any user submitted art that fits the goals of TheHaunted
We decided to publish our unfinished website so we can at least work on getting feedback and start getting the feel for uploading. If you would like to take a look, please visit us at
Our Mission statement is still a work in progress, but this is the current version:
Our Mission here at TheHaunted is to provide a professional and supportive atmosphere for all ghouls and haunts to share our passion for the literary and art works that center in the realm of the paranormal. We don't want to be just some website to read stories, we want to foster a thriving community for those who also share a love for fiction and non fiction.
What is TheHaunted?
TheHaunted is an immersive storytelling website that focuses on a micro niche branch of fiction called paranormal fiction.
The current goal of TheHaunted is to bring paranormal, fantasy, and horror fiction to life through theatrical audio readings, as well as joining beautiful paranormal graphics with stories. Though we are also open to sharing creative nonfiction and other forms of art.
Presently, the staff is responsible for ghostwriting (no pun intended) the short stories. As the community grows, TheHaunted will also feature some user submitted works of art, including stories.
The website will be ran by a few characters, whom are portrated by TheHaunted Staff. These characters will run the show, not the authors.
It's definitely a weird concept, but we believe the use of these characters will help foster a strong immersive atmosphere.
Who are the 'characters' running TheHaunted?
Excellent question!
So far we have four distinct characters, though the fourth is kind of useless.
Our cast consists of the following:
Eep Spectre - Main author and narrator. A very quaint and diminutive spirit who traverses the afterlife collecting the stories of the dead.
Alastor Glione - Secondary Author, and editor. A minor demon who gave up his demonic essence to be born into a human body. He is loud, obnoxious, self centered and absolutely enjoys terrorizing the readers and creating commotions much to the chagrin our our third unfortunate soul. He typically only writes about himself, however, he will sometimes share the macabre tales of tortured and unfortunate souls.
The Medium - Editor in chief, diviner of souls, and the mouth of the dead. Not much is known about our third unfortunate soul accept that they are human, and are working very hard to keep their true identity a secret. We really don't know much about The Medium aside from the fact that they are responsible for transporting Eep and Alastor to the mortal plane.
Ungh - Corporate zombie. He really doesn't do anything for the team. Honestly... We don't know why we keep him around. He ate Pete last week... Complete liability
Are you interested yet?
So far, we have the preliminary website created, though we would love to hire an actual designer. The website will be published so our colleagues can help review and critique
Next items on our list is to turn our brand into an LLC, and start working toward nonprofit status.
We're also working on accumulating enough short stories for a slow rollout of 1-3 stories a month. We want to present quality works, however; this is our first venture so we will be working within our networks to make sure all work is reviewed by fellow experts in the writing field
Things we could absolutely use right now to get started:
A Wix subscription so we can tie our website to our domain, and begin offering downloads. We will likely try to pair up with a Patreon site too. Wix currently has an offer available for premium services at 240$ for the first year. They also have a 50% off deal for the first three years. Our main creative mind will likely pay that out of pocket, but it will take time for him to afford that even with his second job.
Audio Equipment - We are relying on people we know who work in video and audio editing to suggest the proper equipment.
Shoutout to Lucas from Sweetwater who suggested we use Audacity (a free post production editing service), and recommended investing in a good standalone microphone, and interface rather than going for a USB micophone.
The recommended microphone, interface, and soundproofing are in the links below:
Electro-Voice RE20
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RE20--electro-voice-re20-broadcast-microphone-with-variable-d
Bundle: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RE20Pack--electro-voice-re20-broadcast-microphone-with-stand-cable-and-cloudlifter
Alternative options that would work, but won't be as crisp
RE-320 Microphone:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RE320--electro-voice-re320-dynamic-vocal-and-instrument-microphone
RE-320 Bundle with Cable, stand, etc:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RE320BCPk--electro-voice-re320-broadcast-bundle
Audio Interface:
Presonus Audiobox - comes with free recording software Studio One Artist:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/AudioBox25--presonus-audiobox-usb-96-usb-audio-interface-25th-anniversary-edition
Soundproofing kit:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/London8Bk--primacoustic-london-8-black
Eventually we will also need a computer capable of rendering graphics and large audio files. For now we will use the creator's family computer.
Those are the more immediate needs for the admin side of this project. We estimate around 5000-6000$ would be enough to get the project started. That's excluding what I will be directly contributing (outside of writing, editing, reviewing user-submitted stories).
Every little bit helps! Even helpful advice!
