Somewhere down a back alley of the Geocities Tokyo neighborhood there is a shrine. If you have ever been to Japan you will know that shrines are as common as mailboxes and convenience stores. You will find them in various sizes and gradations of awesomeness, but they're always a welcome interruption from the screaming ads and shops helping you get rid of your money. I stumbled upon Haleysan's shrine on one of my walks through Geocities Tokyo, sitting quietly between Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z fanpages. Haleysan's shrine would rank on the higher levels of the awesomeness scale. As far as 90s personal website design goes, this page can certainly be described as beautiful. Clearly a lot of time and love went into paging this page. The first thing you notice is the button that reads "In Loving Memory of Haley Lynn Hansen". However, further down the page it is Haley who introduces herself as your tourguide to all things Japan. At first glance this website looks like a guide for people who are interested in Japan. It features pages about famous tourist attractions like Mount Fuji and Himeji Castle, but also covers several Japanese festival such as Obon and Otsukimi. It contains lots of pictures as well as very detailed explanations about sightseeing spots. However, as you spend more time on Haleysan's website, you learn that it is not Haley who created this page, but her mourning fiancé.
If you click the "In Loving Memory of Haley Lynn Hansen" button you will arrive at a Memorial page for Haley written by a guy named Michael David Kelly. Michael explains that he had met Haley only a couple of months before she died. They met in the summer of 1996 on a chatbox called "The Chathouse" and hit if off instantly. The Chathouse is said to be one of the first chatbox websites on the internet. It seems to have peaked in its popularity around late nineties. They claim to have had millions of hits per day and over 200.000 registered users. The Chathouse was divided into different sections and rooms, such as The 1st Floor, the East Wing, the West Wing and the Flipside. The East Wing, for example, was dedicated to role playing. One of the rooms in The East Wing was called "The Castle" where people indulged in their medieval fantasies. The castle had a message board on Tapatalk which is still online today and gives you a good impression of the sort of role playing action that went down here. What's interesting is how most chatrooms on The Chathouse have limited capacity, usually 20 people per room. This would provide a cosy, communal atmosphere, where users would feel the safety to talk personal stuff among other regular users.
In spite of the popularity of The Chathouse I was unable to find any mentions in mainstream media of this site. The best resource for learning more about the Chathouse is the Internet Archive. The site has been archived hundreds of times between 1998 and 2009, making it easy to see how it changed over the years. In 1996 The Chathouse was bought by Channel 1 Communications, a web services company from Cambridge, MA. After that the site became more commercialized. A 1998 copy of the homepage displays a lot more advertisements, the addition of certain features for paid subscribers and a link to a 'mall'. Clicking this link will lead you to the Channel 1 mall, which is really just a list of buttons to a few online shops. One of the stores is the Channel 1 Store where one could buy a Chathouse subscription among other things.
At the same time, efforts were being made to strengthen the sense of community among the Chathouse users, often called Chatters. The Family Tree page looks like a very early example of a list of user profiles, like what we would become the standard in later sites like MySpace and Facebook. However, you could only be listed here if you were a subscriber. In 2000 a Forum function was added, which seems superfluous. 2001 saw the addition of shockwave games "you can play while chatting", as well as an E-Zine, which was made by Chatters from different sections and rooms with the purpose of bringing the users together. The zine was only released during 2001 and 2002. After 2000, the Chathouse's popularity dwindled as people moved to social media sites. In 2009, owner Channel 1 communications, decided to pull the plug for good. A former user made a blog post mentioning the end of Chathouse and it became a sort of memorial page in its own right. There are 150 comments under the post where people share their stories and memories of their time on the Chathouse which was heartwarming to read. Interestingly, the most recent comment only mentions "It's Back". In 2024, a group of nostalgics decided to recreate the Chathouse in its original style. You can visit the new Chathouse here, but you will find it to be empty. Like a zombie version of its former self.
Haley Lynn Hansen, was only 25 years old at the time of her death. Originally from the United States, she grew up in Seattle and had been living in Japan for the last three years. She lived in the city of Yokosuka, nearby Yokohama, which is well known for having a US naval base. Haley worked as an English teacher in Japan, but for whatever reason started checking into The Chathouse over the summer of 1996. Here she met Michael among other online friends. Michael fell head over heels in love with Haley and within a month he proposed her to marry him. Haley, to his delight, said yes. They made plans to start living together and Haley agreed to move to Canada, Michael was anxiously waiting to meet Haley in person.
On the night of november 3rd 1996, Haley was out on a road trip with three friends in the Hiroshima area. Tragedy struck when their car was hit head-on by a drunk driver and Haley, according to Michael's statement, died instantly in the crash. Her friend Yumiko, who was driving, died shortly after. The two friends sitting in the back did survive the crash but suffered permanent physical and mental damage. I tried to find more information on this car crash, but I could not find anything. My best bet for any news articles on this story would be the Japan Times archive, which is available digitally but only for companies and institutions and sadly not for individuals. If anyone happens to have access to the Japan Times archive through their University network, you may want to look for articles written around november 4th 1996 or a few days later.
Go back to the main page and scroll down and you will see a button to view Haleysan's guestbook. The questbook has not been archived on the Internet Archive but you can view it on Oocities. The guestbook has been signed a couple of times, twice by Michael. Some visitors enjoyed the page for its information on Japan, while others had a connection to either Haley or Michael and came to the page for mourning their loved one. When you scroll down to the original comment made by Michael, you will see the addition of a link to his own personal page called Metalhead's Forge.
Michael's website was located in the CollegePark neighborhood of Geocities. It contains a lot of personal information about Michael and his life up until that point, as well as several pages dedicated to the topic of traumatic brain injury. Michael's life had seen plently of struggle. Born in july of 1969, he was 27 years old when Haley died in the car crash. This site seems to have been made about half a year after the incident. Michael explains on his personal info page that he himself was involved in a motorcycle accident about a year before Haley's death. He crashed into a rock while drink driving and suffered a head injury.
Michael further explains that his childhood had been fairly normal up until his teens. He was adopted, but says he never felt he unusual about it as a child and saw his adoptive parents as his only parents. When he was a teenager he moved to Kitimat with his family, a small town of roughly 8000 people in British Columbia, Canada. Here Michael struggled to make friends and soon enough started drinking. His grades started slipping and Michael started skipping school until he eventually was expelled. Michael's life around that time revolved aroung partying, drinking and drugs and he was spending money impulsively. The rest of his personal story was not archived, but on other pages we learn a bit more about Michael after his accident. The page called Brain Injuries describes how after his accident his prognosis was bad and doctors said he might remain in a vegetative state, but against odds he made a full recovery. It's interesting how Michael's attitude changed after the incident. He started taking full responsibility for his actions and no longer wishes to call the motorcycle crash an accident, as it happened because of his own decision to drive intoxicated. He shares links and information about Traumatic Brain Injuries, but also about the dangers of drunk driving. I can only assume, but I imagine the fact that Haley died because of a drunk driver was a huge factor in this change of attitude.
On a page called My Education, we read how Michael has been trying to turn his life around after the motorcycle incident by going back to school. He was trying to get his high school diploma and he looks to have taken an interest in computers and web design. He started making his own web graphics and made a page full of tips and tricks for Paint Shop Pro 4. Seeing Michael working hard to get his life back on track was very wholesome. He almost lost his life and then he lost his fiancé and that could have easily dragged him down further mentally, but in reality the opposite happened.
After visiting Michael's personal website it helped me understand better why Haleysan's shrine was made. At first it felt a bit strange to visit this page, written by Michael from the perspective of Haley. It is clear to me now that Michael was devastated by Haley's death, but was trying to find a positive outlet for his grief. He did that by creating a beatiful website with his recently aqcuired Photoshop skills. The following quote is just one example of how he loved and admired Haley.
Haley very much touched my life in so many ways, it was because of her that I once again felt happiness and love, she was a very special woman who thanks to the power of the internet was able to help so many people through hard times and bring a warm smile to all she talked to. There is not a day that goes by that thoughts of her are not foremost in my mind and luckily I have now become good friends with Haley's best friend in Japan through who I am still discovering how special of a woman Haley Lynn Hansen really is. Her heart is pure and warm. Haley accepted everyone into her life as a friend, never judging or looking down upon, just accepting people as they were and seeing the good in everyone. Now that she has been called up to heaven, the world is shined on that much brighter and we all have a special gaurdian angel watching over us.
Haley and Michael's relationship was nipped in the bud. They never had the chance to get into an argument, to develop a bond of trust where you reveal your quirks and flaws to one another. It was over before it started. In those exciting first months of a new romance when Michael could only see Haley as an angel, she became one.
