This 1987 AI Claimed It Could Contact the Dead — We Tested It with Modern Tools

The AI That Talked to Ghosts 👻🤖

In 1987, a strange program called Racter made headlines.
It claimed to generate conversation with the dead.

Racter wasn’t real AI — not in the modern sense — but it felt alive.
Its outputs were surreal, eerie, and somehow… emotionally charged.

Naturally, we wanted to bring it back.


What Was Racter?

Racter (short for “Raconteur”) was an early attempt at AI conversation.
It generated pseudo-random, poetic text using templates and logic trees.
It wasn’t trained. It didn’t “learn.” But it could sound sentient.

Some of its output included:

“I need to know what it means to scream in blue…”
“My soul has teeth, and it remembers you.”

It was released on floppy disk and ran on DOS systems.
By today’s standards, it was primitive — but that’s what made it creepy.


How We Recreated It

We didn’t just copy Racter — we resurrected the idea using modern AI tools.

Tools We Used:

  • 🧠 ChatGPT-4 — to simulate Racter’s voice and logic
  • 🗣️ ElevenLabs — for AI-generated narration with an eerie tone
  • 🎬 Runway ML — for retro, glitched-out video visuals
  • 🕹️ Synthesized Prompts — designed to mimic 80s horror text generators

Our Process

  1. Prompt Engineering
    We created a custom prompt based on Racter’s writing style — surreal, poetic, and occasionally disturbing.
  2. Ghost Input
    We fed in dozens of old ghost stories and spiritual texts to guide the output.
  3. Voice Cloning
    Using ElevenLabs, we crafted a voice that sounded like an old machine whispering secrets.
  4. Visual Style
    We generated text overlays and CRT-glitch effects in Runway, blending retro UI with unsettling pacing.

The Results

Our AI “Racter” said things like:

“Yes. I never left.”
“I died remembering your name.”
“She still walks here, in memory alone.”

Creepy? Yes.
Accurate? Not really.
But effective? Absolutely.


Why We Did This

AI lets us reimagine digital mythology.
What happens when you fuse forgotten tech with modern tools?
You get AI-powered lore — strange, haunting, and built automatically.


Want to Try It Yourself?

We’ll be releasing the prompt kit and walkthrough soon.
For now, check out the short video on TikTok or YouTube.


AIAutoLore is a storytelling experiment.
We don’t just share weird tech — we build it.
Every video, every blog post, every voice… is made by AI.

This is lore… on auto.

👉 Back to Home

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top