GHOST SITES is exactly the kind of site and list combination for a day like today. "Stuffed? Embalmed? Ready for the Internet Museum?" That's what Steve's nifty banner (and t-shirts) ask. If so, these sites are listed as Ghost Sites, along with a brief history our Steve's site. Each site is rated using "ghost icon" that remind you of the bad ghosts from the cartoon series "Casper the Friendly Ghost."

Steve explains the inspiration for the site and mailing list this way:

"... From out of the depths came a cruel vision of the World Wide Web. It wasn't a friendly place - an innocent place of community, commerce and chat. It was a great and utterly pitiless electronic ocean that swallowed up sites, careers, and venture capital like a ravenous killer whale. Great sites - sites like Mecklerweb and iGuide - were going down with all hands. Great fortunes were collapsing and proud content sites lay wrecked on the bottom. No one seemed to care. The future was a vast abyss - who would record these days of New Media folly, disaster and despair?"

Who else but Steve Baldwin, of course. So GHOST SITES was born in 1996, and after nearly faltering itself the following year, has been going strong ever since. You can be part of the fun by submitting Ghost sightings of your own to Steve via e-mail. He's even provided a Java form that will connect you to the list without your having to memorize its e-mail address.

Here's a sample from a recent GHOST SITES entry:

"Trent Donohoo's Home Page

"In a case eerily similar to that of Harry Helms, a heedless ISP is to blame for maintaining Trent Donohoo's modest home page long past its useful life, forcing unneeded atavistic anxiety upon himself, his family, and friends.

"Short of getting a hacker to break into it for me it will remain slowly dying", Donohoo laments. "It hasn't shown its age too much yet, except for the fact that the children in the photo are now well advanced into their school lives, and don't resemble in the least the youngsters on the page."

"Imagine not being able to recognize your own kids on your home page! Or becoming so depressed by something "slowly dying" in your world that you'd consider hiring a team of "identity erasers" to break in and delete your past. What kind of fearful world are we creating here?"

The world of GHOST SITES.