Haunted Séance: An Offline AI Experience Where the Machine Talks Back
This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine 👻 Haunted Séance: An Offline AI Experience Where the Machine Talks Back What I Built Haunted Séance is an interactive, privacy-first horror experience inspired by the idea of a ghost in the machine. I
Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Ghost in the Machine Submission 👻🌼
This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine
Haunted Séance is an interactive, privacy-first horror experience inspired by the idea of a ghost in the machine.
I wanted to build something beyond a conventional horror website—an experience that combines open-weight AI, interactive storytelling, procedural audio, digital remembrance, and physical hardware.
The project brings together four main experiences:
The experience also includes procedural horror audio, heartbeat effects, spectral whispers, jump scares, CRT effects, and an Arduino-powered LED matrix.
🔗 Live Demo: https://haunted-seance.onrender.com/
💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/shettysaikumar20/haunted-seance
The AI component supports Google's open-weight Gemma 2 (gemma2:2b) through local inference using Ollama.
For hardware integration, I used the Arduino UNO Q, combining its Linux-based Qualcomm QRB2210 processor, STM32U585 microcontroller, and built-in 8×13 LED matrix through Bridge RPC.
The LED matrix displays four patterns: skull, eye, cross, and marigold.
Deployment is configured through Render's render.yaml Blueprint, with dynamic port handling and static asset delivery.
This project explores four important ideas:
Open innovation made it possible to combine AI, browser technologies, local storage, and physical hardware into one creative experience.
The project involved AI-assisted development and experimentation with open-weight models and hardware integration.
A machine doesn't need to imitate someone we have lost to help us preserve their memory.
I wanted to explore the boundary between technology, remembrance, and the unknown—creating an experience where the machine can tell stories, preserve memories, and respond without claiming to bring anyone back.
Sometimes, the most unsettling thing isn't what the machine knows.
It's when the machine starts talking back. 👁️