While we were all stuck inside trying to survive a global pandemic, I launched a small novelty business venture called Phantom Letter.
Phantom Letter was a SaaS (spooking as a service) product that let you send a one-of-a-kind, handwritten letter to a friend or loved one...from the ghost who claimed to be living in their house.
Basically, I wanted to try and add some adventure and mystery to one of the few things we got to do each day: grabbing the mail.
After some "user testing" (sending letters to loved ones of friends who were volunteered as tributes), I settled upon the style you see above: thick Sharpie scrawlings, heavy cardstock paper, plain white envelopes with no return address.
Over the course of two months, I sent about 100 unique letters to 38 unique states. I was even featured in Product Hunt's weekly newsletter, which caused a surge in traffic that left me with a particularly sore hand one week.
Oh, also, I didn't get sued by anyone. 👻
The landing page is offline now because I was too lazy to pay for another year of hosting, but this was the vibe:
