I’ve been busy the last couple days trying to get Creepy Cleveland re-established and back online. I’m editing posts, reformatting stories and hacking away at the old website so I can integrate it with the new site. During this time I’ve googled (yes, I’m allowed to use google as a verb – I used the Google Search Engine!) Creepy Cleveland a few times to see what’s already out there. Wow. There are quite a few Creepy Clevelands out there. In case you’re confused about your search results, let me try to clear things up a little:
http://erielink.com/~reddeath/CreepyCle.html – this is where Creepy Cleveland was born. (See archive.org’s cache of the Original Creepy Cleveland) Erielink was a gracious host, but after my 56k modem ate itself, I moved to DSL and Creepy Cleveland had to go with me. This address might still pop up on the internet once in a while. (Mostly because of this.)
http://otherworlds.homeip.net/creepy/ – Short lived, but a great experience. A site visitor, Mark Budnick offered to give me hosting space on his server! While never charging me, he put up with some heavy duty traffic during Halloween season of 2002. Mark rules.
http://creepycleveland.neopages.net – This was kind of a long story. In mid October, 2002, while trying to get off of Mark’s server, I started looking for a new host, I found Neopages. They were unique in the fact that they offered free hosting, with a catch. You must have an established page already and be willing to put your page up for a vote by the current members. They stress originality and style. Well…I figured I’d give it a shot and entered an application. After getting beat up by some of the critiques, I figured I didn’t have a chance. Then – lo and behold – I got accepted!! See archive.org’s screenshot. Unfortunately, the community within Neopages bred some contempt from hackers. The entire host got hacked. Many pages were lost and had to be restored from backup. A couple months later, the server the site was hosted on got hosed. Bad luck? Indeed. Creepy Cleveland was in limbo.
https://creepycleveland.net – Until now, this is the most recent version of Creepy Cleveland. After the neopages fiasco, I did have the site back on neopages for a short time, but I knew I needed to look into something more permanent. About this time I started having a hard time keeping Creepy Cleveland updated and interesting. After thinking it over for a long time I made the decision to shut it down. I was afraid the final move lost too many visitors and traffic to the site ground to a halt. I posted a message to the few people that managed to keep track of the site address, zipped up the files and closed the door.
A few months later I got an email from a fan asking if I’d like for him to host the site. Halloween 2005 was coming up and I had received a few emails from people asking if I was ever going to come back. Hmmm…. somebody else host Creepy Cleveland? Again? After thinking it over, I thought the site would do more good online than rotting on my backup hard drive. Billy Meade took over hosting and has kept the page available until now. Billy rules too.
http://creepycleveland.blogspot.com – The latest and (hopefully) greatest incarnation of Creepy Cleveland. Born on Halloween 2006, I’ve turned the stories (which were by far the most popular part of the site) over to a blog format. I’m hoping it will make questions and comments on the stories easier to make, answer and follow. The backed up version of the old site is getting a slow makeover in the hopes of becoming and back-end host to all the old content, new investigations, and file storage. If you care to rummage through the mess, check out the Creepy Cleveland Archive.
So there you have it. Practically every version of Creepy Cleveland that’s out there, in one form or another. I’ve already sent an email to Billy asking him to post a redirection link on creepycleveland.net and I’m hoping to talk him into letting me grab the domain once it expires.
A final piece of advice, if I may offer it, is to bookmark http://go.to/creepycleveland. Unless that redirection service goes down, that address will always point to the correct address.
UPDATE 2009: I’m dropping the Blogger address (http://creepycleveland.blogspot.com). I’ve secured creepycleveland.net and am redirecting all traffic to that address.
