Experiment 002
Haunted Autocomplete
Start typing and a ghost offers to finish your sentences. At first it’s helpful. The more you write, and the more of its words you accept, the stranger it gets, until it starts writing on its own.
How Haunted Autocomplete works
The ghost is a Markov chain, one of the oldest tricks in text prediction. It has read two small collections of sentences: ordinary everyday writing like diary entries, meeting notes and grocery lists, and a darker set written by something living in the walls.
For every pair of words, it remembers which words came next and how often. When you pause, it looks at your last two words, rolls weighted dice, and offers the most likely continuation as faint ghost text. Press Tab to accept it.
At first it only draws from the ordinary sentences. As you write more, the haunting level on the EMF meter rises and the ghost starts mixing in the dark collection. The panel called “What the ghost is thinking” shows the real odds it’s choosing between, word by word.
Why autocomplete feels like it reads your mind
The keyboard on your phone, the search box that finishes your question, and large AI language models all do a version of the same job: predict the next word from the words before it. This ghost does it with simple word counts and a few thousand words of text. Modern AI models use huge neural networks trained on enormous amounts of writing, so their guesses are far better, but the basic idea is the same.
That’s also why it gets creepy so easily. Change what the model has read and you change what it says. Feed it haunted sentences, and your grocery list starts to need more salt.
Things to try
- Tap Dear diary, and keep pressing Tab. See how many words it takes before the diary turns on you.
- Stop typing for a few seconds once the meter reads Uneasy. The ghost will finish your sentence for you.
- Write about your home, your family or the morning, and watch the séance log for words that quietly change.
- Switch to Unhinged for a fast haunting, or Mild for a slow, subtle one.
The stages of a haunting
- Helpful: normal suggestions, like any autocomplete.
- Off: suggestions drift toward odd words.
- Uneasy: the ghost types on its own when you pause.
- Haunted: words you already wrote start changing.
- Possessed: it signs your page.
Frequently asked questions
Is this real AI?
It’s a real text-prediction model, just a very small one. It uses a Markov chain built from word-pair counts rather than a neural network, which keeps it fast, private and easy to understand.
Does it save or send what I type?
No. Everything runs in your browser. Your writing is never uploaded, stored or sent anywhere, and it’s gone when you close the page.
Why did a word I typed change?
Once the meter reaches Haunted, the ghost occasionally swaps one of your words for a darker one, such as “happy” for “hollow”. The séance log records every change it makes.
How do I make it stop?
Press “Exorcise the text box” to reset the haunting level to zero, or choose Mild for a slower haunting. Clear removes all the text.
Is it too scary for kids?
It’s spooky, not gory. The ghost writes eerie, campfire-story lines like “your reflection waved first.” There’s no violence or graphic content.
Does it work on phones?
Yes. There’s no Tab key on a phone keyboard, so use the “Accept ghost text” button under the writing area instead.