Artist Statement

For my final project in my Writing for Digital Media class, I decided to revise my location-based narrative. My location-based narrative was a story about personal experiences using an Ouija board. I was asked to create a location-base narrative around Halloween, so a spooky story seemed perfect. I put the story on Instagram. I use Instagram more than I use anything else which is why I chose this platform. I will always be able to access my story. I won't lose it because I followed the account that my story is on from my personal account, so I won't lose it. I posted the pictures of each location that we used the Ouija board at. It told a linear story of our experiences with the Ouija board one summer. After receiving some tips, I decided to revise the entire story for my final project.

My friends and I have always had a fascination with scary stuff. The thrill of being scared is fun. There are many haunted locations around my hometown. It always becomes a topic of conversation: it doesn't matter who you are with. My family and friends will sit around and talk about any paranormal experiences that they have had. I don’t know if it was just in my hometown, but everyone in my high school had tried to use an Ouija board at some point. Everyone loved the scary things.

For my story, I wanted there to be a creepy and scary tone to it. I think the scariest stories are the ones that are based on true events. To make the story remain as scary as possible, I kept all details true except for ones that would invade my friends' privacy. I didn’t post pictures of their houses, and I changed their names: everything else is true. All of the events in the story took place a few years ago. When I look back on it now, I think that it was extremely disrespectful to use an Ouija board at graveyards. I don’t like the idea of it, and I understand how some people could get upset about it. This is part of the reason why I chose not to include real names.

I also wanted to add all of documentation of each night that we were using the Ouija board. We have pictures, videos, screenshots, messages and more from all of our Ouija board experiences. I thought it was important to include it as "proof." Part of me wants everyone to believe our story. My friends and I spent an entire summer going to different haunted locations with an Ouija board, so we had plenty of documentation and proof. We also had a group message and we would talk about what happened and send pictures to each other. Thanks to iTunes backup, I have every message on my phone from the passed five years, so I didn't lose any of it.

To extend the Instagram page further, I decided to create multiple Instagram pages. It was a lot of work to create a bunch of Instagram pages. I had to make an email for every account. that I made. On top of that, my Instagram app wouldn't let me add anymore accounts, so I have to log in and out of each account anytime that I needed to edit the profile or comment on a picture. It was a lot. I created an Instagram pages for each of the characters: Chloe, Megan, Chelsey, Susan, Sterling, Mike, Jake and Tyler. Each character represents one of my friends who was involved in the experiences. I asked my friends to send me a paragraph of what they remembers from each night. I also asked them to send me any pictures or videos that they had from that night. I uploaded their documentation to their account.

I also made each account interact with each other. I went back and forth commenting on different posts exactly how my friends actually would. I wanted to show each character's personality through the page to make it more real. I think I did a fantastic job. I had each one of my friends look over it to make sure they approve. They all said that each post and comment represents them perfectly, if they disagreed I deleted it and posted what they actually wanted to say.

I decided to make an instructions and rules Instagram page as well. I made this choice for many reasons. Understanding the rules to an Ouija board is important for my story to make sense because the reason why things went wrong when we were using an Ouija board is because we were breaking the rules. Also, a lot of people do not know how an Ouija board works. My friends and I were constantly looking up how to use an Ouija board when we first started using it. If my readers wanted to understand how it works, I wanted them to have an easy way to find out, so I made more Instagram pages to explain it.

I used Photoshop to edit my pictures. I was not familiar with Photoshop, so I watched a couple videos on YouTube to help me out. I wanted to make all my pictures look creepy, so I learned how to make the pictures look like they were all taken in the dark. It was also a long process to edit all of the pictures. I had to mess with the temperatures in the pictures to make them look like they were taken at night. In total, I had 11 accounts, over 70 pictures, over 5 videos, and over 300 comments between all of my pages.

It is a creative non-fiction story. It is location-based, nonlinear, hypertext, collaborative, and interactive. On Instagram, I tagged each location in the pictures. The story can be read or viewed in anyway that the reader wants. I think that this also made it interactive because the reader can click around on different Hashtags and names to take them to different parts of the story. The main story page is in every accounts bio, so it is easy to get directed back to the main page. I connected posts with hashtags. I made some of my Hashtags unique, so only the related pictures in my story would appear, and I made some of my Hashtags more broadly used so that it would connect my story to other stories. I asked all of the people involved to collaborate with me and give me their version of the story, and I displayed that on their ‘fake’ Instagram account.

My inspiration from this project came from a webpage full of Ouija board stories. I found it one day when I was trying to research and understand what happened to us. It was full of a bunch of Ouija board experiences and stories. I loved the idea of putting our story out there, so between that website and Halloween time - my story was born. I am excited for when the next person asks me about one of the haunted locations that I have been too or asks to hear my paranormal stories because I am going to direct them straight to my Ouija Story Instagram page. I also hope to find a way to revise the page a second time and make it so that more people can add to it. Scary stories are so fun and interesting especially when they are occurring in your hometown. I want everyone to be a part of documenting our scary paranormal town. My story is called Ouija Board In A Small Town.