Questions and answers.

Heretofore is a folklore atlas that sees where you go to show you the history you brush up against every day (or on those special trips!). Every corner of the United States is full of culture and history. The goal of Heretofore is to help users connect to that history, particularly through the lens of folklore and legend.

Stories of folklore. These might be stories about legends or hauntings, cryptids and creatures, UFOs and UAPs, witchcraft and superstitions, mysteries, or the darker and stranger corners of local history. Each one is tied to a place (a theatre, a bridge, a stretch of road, a lake), told from public sources with its claims linked to those sources wherever they’re available, and narrated with music for subscribers. Heretofore launches with three genres (hauntings, cryptids & creatures, and UFOs & UAPs), and more appear over time, starting with Wild Places.

No, accuracy is not guaranteed. Heretofore is an app for entertainment purposes only. If you have a suggestion for a correction, use the in-app contact button on every narrative page or even the contact button at the bottom of this page to send us an email.

No, accuracy is not guaranteed. Heretofore is an app for entertainment purposes only. Locations may correspond to residential addresses or businesses. Respect private property and do not assume story locations are accurate. If you have a suggestion for a correction, use the in-app contact button on every narrative page or even the contact button at the bottom of this page to send us an email.

I am a solo developer, and while I wish I could make this app free, it would not be able to exist under that model. Let’s remove the cost of producing the nearly million story database the app serves for a moment. The backend incurs significant monthly costs for storing these stories and their metadata, and additional costs for storing large location data attached to stories. There are separate hosting costs for our bespoke map (again setting aside the cost of generating it), and I also incur costs when serving the stories and the map to you on your phone. In addition, the backend provides geolocation. All this before we get into other developer costs or more advanced features.

Audio narration is expensive to produce, and Heretofore generates it on the fly when you request it. While we do cache generated audio, the fact is that narrating stories is expensive. In addition, Wayfarer requires more advanced geocoding, and uses AI agents to orchestrate audiobook and road trip modes. All this raises costs.

See the question above. If users maximized usage to hit the monthly limits of the Wayfarer tier, Heretofore would make no profit. The monthly cost reflects this. On an annual subscription, it is assumed monthly usage would not be maximized consistently.

I do not believe AI is the solution to all problems. However, it is particularly good at telling stories. Heretofore combines traditional machine learning and natural text processing pipelines with LLMs to data-mine local folklore scattered about public sources on the internet, and organize their claims, then craft them into narratives. AI agents also help attach locations to stories using a variety of different data. The narrator is an AI model. While the background music is dynamically driven by our code, an AI agent placed tags for where it should rise and where it should fall away.