Ancient Web: Frightbytes Built a Clickable Haunted House in 1998

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A haunted house does not need physical walls. In 1998, someone could build one from linked pages, scary pictures, looping sounds, and a warning that the next click might lead somewhere unpleasant.

Enter Frightbytes Virtual Hauntings.

Frightbytes credits M. Buck and identifies itself as haunting the web since 1998. The homepage's 2026 footer celebrates its twenty-eighth year online. It invites visitors into Salems Marsh, a fictional place populated by supernatural threats, gloomy rooms, and decisions that influence what happens next.

The visitor is part of the story

The main navigation is divided between evil fun, stories, horror graphics, and miscellaneous dark things. Under stories are The Dead of Night, The House, Carnival of Terror, Zombie Invasion, Salems Marsh Asylum, The Haunted Inn, and Purgatory. The homepage describes many of these as illustrated text adventures with branching paths and multiple endings.

Elsewhere the visitor is offered a Halloween personality test, mazes, spooky animated GIFs, fortune telling, a collection of unusual superstitions, and an archive of reported ghost stories. Those latter items belong to folklore and entertainment; their presence is no proof of supernatural events.

The homepage still warns about autoplaying audio and invites visitors to start the sound manually if their browser blocks it. That detail captures a transition in web design: sites once expected sound and animation to spring into life automatically, while modern browsers increasingly restrict such behavior.

Frightbytes also has its own ongoing fiction. The introductory copy speaks in the voice of a sinister host, mockingly addressing visitors who dare to enter. Near the bottom, a memorial remembers two pets, Space Dog and Josie. Even on a fictional haunted estate, a personal homepage occasionally shows the person behind the curtains.

Some story links are no longer reliably displayed by text-only readers, and it would be wrong to claim every branching path has been tested. The readable menu nevertheless preserves what the site offered and how visitors were meant to explore.

This is a particularly vivid old-web survival: one author making a Halloween attraction out of ordinary HTML navigation, rather than a video or a social-media post.

Browse Frightbytes' stories and horror graphics.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.