Before Facebook was big, smaller communities could gather online using Content Management Systems. For some reason, I found Drupal.
Karilyn and I decided to create an online community for teenage ghost hunters. We called it the Teen Paranormal Adventure Club (TPAC). In retrospect, this wasn’t a great name. However, the original idea was strong.
We seeded the site with day-in-the-life posts from several characters Karilyn created. Saige could talk to ghosts. Her mom had died in a car accident. She lived in a hotel with her brother, Chandler, and her dad. Spider was one of her friends.
We eventually had many posts from these characters and several others. People could find the site online, become members, and comment on the posts. We got a group of actors involved so that we could include profile pictures for the characters. We even started shooting a series of short movies about these characters!
One day, Saige got an email from a Producer at MTV. The Producer thought Saige was real. Karilyn let the Producer know that Saige was a fictional character. Her family and friends were fictional characters too.
What happened next was amazing. For two years, the Producer optioned the material Karilyn had created. The Producer wanted to make a TV series on MTV about these characters.
It was an exciting time. Eventually, upper management changed at MTV and they decided to go in a different direction.
Still, we had been discovered!
Leave a Reply