October 6, 1999

by Steve Baldwin

Welcome back to your favorite monthly dose of stinking, smoldering, and ruinated digital effluvia. I apologize for the fact that Ghost Sites' dead site count is a bit short this month - it's not that plenty of sites aren't dying, it's just that with a mild case of West Nile Fever, I'm too weary and weak to serve up more than a handful of them at a time. Provided that a full recovery is in store for our Skeleton Crew, we'll be back in November with a cart full of corpses, so please keep your Dead Site tips flowing in through the Ghost-o-Meter!

In other news, Disobey.com's creator Morbus has informed me of a new site being released on Halloween. If it follows the path Disobey has taken in the past, it's sure to be an excellent addition to its shaky waters. You can grab a sneak peek at http://www.disobey.com/horror/.

Dr. Frederick Lenz, AKA "Rama", was the leader of a cult which ensnared several prominent members of the mid-90's techno elite (now known as the digirati). Before he died by his own hand in 1998, Lenz had amassed a considerable list of achievements: he was a world-class snowboarder, a black-belt in karate, a best-selling author, the producer of 12 New Age rock albums, and even a Senior Systems Architect. (now, that last one takes talent!)

Lenz, in other words, was a real Tech Guru, not your garden variety Macarishi. Before things went terribly wrong for him, he put up this Web site, which has remained unchanged for many months. It's a very ghostly place, but less sinister than the famous Heaven's Gate site, many copies of which still litter the Internet. At least Lenz, for all his faults, wasn't fool enough to try to take his followers with him.

Thanks to Courtland Shafer for finding this site.

Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum

This sad, rusty site once functioned as a somewhat unsystematic guide to gadgetry - electronic gizmos and mechanical whatnots intended to "remind us of the child we once were". A product of General Media Communications (the publisher of Penthouse), this lavishly-illustrated site appears to have been killed shortly after its launch: only a handful of products were reviewed before its last update occurred in October of 1998.

Much to my own personal discredit, I've been personally involved in several ill-fated "gadget-oriented" sites (the most notorious being Time Warner's doomed "Gizmo"), so I know why Gadget News must have been such an appealing idea to someone on Guccione's staff. Running a site devoted to useless technology sounds like fun (one tends to wind up with drawers full of doo-dads that are too worthless to return to the vendor), but in practice, doing so is a real grind after the novelty runs thin. Worse, gadgetry-based sites inherently lack editorial focus worthy of attracting more than a handful of readers (yes, VCR remote controls, portable translators and hand-buzzers are all "gadgets", but does it necessarily follow that these disparate devices belong in the same category? Nope.)

Anyway, thanks to Caldara for pointing out this rusty bucket of bitrot - it brings back a lot of screamingly traumatic memories.

Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum

It took the Lord a mere seven days to set this whole mess into motion, so why is Jesus.com still "under development" 22 months after its last update? And why is Christ.org similarly bereft of refreshment, with the only adornment visible to human eyes a "This Domain for Sale" sign?

Now look - I'm a sinner that many righteous people would probably consider beyond any possible redemption. But isn't maintaining a site in Jesus's name, and either failing to update it, or worse, trying to make a quick buck off of it through a domain name sale a form of Blasphemy - perhaps even an Abomination?

If Jesus shows up January 1, and dials in, I'm sure he'll forgive us all, turn the other cheek, and surf on. But I'm not so sure that his Dad will feel so charitable (and one good lightning bolt aimed squarely at Network Solutions would be enough to put an end to all this nonsense forever).

Thanks to strupp for this Ghost Site tip.

Sites are Dead, but May Rise Again

This small mp3 music site (which seems to have been hastily constructed by a teenager) died this September for reasons which the site builder recounts in detail:

"all of a sudden the entire funpoint network disappeared from the face of the planet. That's right, it no longer exists. All of my files? Gone. I fortunately got a chance to back up most of it, but that does me little good when I have nowhere to upload them!"

Welcome to homelessness, 21st Century-style. I feel sorry for you, kid - I've been down so low in my life that I've had to resort to Geocities for a warm bed to ease me through the cold, cruel night, and advise you to do the same.

Now stop crying and finish your homework, will you?

Site is Dead, but Well Preserved