First there was the Hanso Foundation site (www.thehansofoundation.org). Tried a few things on that site and found the newsletter login, where the mysterious Persephone took over the screen and asked for a password.

Then there was the TV ad (same as the one that's on the site), which aired during the May 3 episode of Lost , and which gave out the Hanso Foundation phone number (1-877-HANSORG). Called that number a whole lot and listened to interesting voice mail messages from and for various executives. (You can hear recordings of all the options here courtesy of TheLostExperience.com.) Some of these messages indicate that Hanso is in some kind of legal mess about some "Korean offshore project," and someone has doubts about "Sri Lanka." During one voice mail, a woman says, "Where is Alvar Hanso? Who's running this place, anyway?" Mittelwerk leaves a message for McIntyre that says something about renaming an "accelerated remote viewing facility." Also, all the execs seem to be gone for a couple of weeks. About once every four or five calls, if you pick option 1, Persephone breaks in to the information message and says this:
"Don't listen to their lies. This is Persephone. I don't have much time, none of us do. If you want to know the truth about the Hanso Foundation -- the real story -- then remember: A line pulled tight enough will always snap under the breaking strain. Use that password on the web site: breakingstrain. They're coming!"

Back to the Hanso site, newsletter page. Type in a user name (any name is fine) and hit "next." Persephone writes you a message, asking "can you read this." Click your cursor into the box where you entered your name and type "yes," then hit enter. Persephone will then ask for the password. Putting in the password logs you in. A message comes up that says:

Last login: unknown
Welcome to Dharma
Persephone: You are logged in now
Persephone: Check it out and check back for updates
Persephone: Gotta go, see you later
User Persephone logged out

Then there's a flash of Joop the orangutan, and then it's back to the regular newsletter sign-in page. If you try typing in your name again, it gives you this message:

Welcome back
No new messages
bye, bye

---

After you're logged in, if you go to Joop's Corner and click to send him a message, then actually type something and hit send in the message field, you'll be taken to a weird bacteria looking thing with several circles in it. Click the circles that are highlighted, connecting them, and then you'll get to the first letter.

This is a letter that is from Jacques Maillot, Director General of a group called the Global Welfare Consortium in Switzerland. The letter is to a Dr. Roderick Johnson at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and also CCs two guys at the Hanso Foundation — Peter Thompson (VP and General Counsel) and Hugh McIntyre (VP and Communications Director). The letter basically says that the Hanso Foundation is doing some primate experiments in Tanzania and that there has been an outbreak of "meningococcal disease" there, near Hanso's "experimental station in Zanzibar," and that the outbreak has "successfully breached the simian/homo sapiens barrier." Maillot urges the CDC guy, Dr. Johnson, to inspect the Hanso facility and stop them if what they're doing is causing the outbreak.

The next letter that comes up is also to Dr. Johnson at the CDC, and it's from... Peter Thompson — the VP from Hanso. Except now HE is the "Acting Director General" at what's now called the Global Health Consortium. Thompson basically apologizes to Johnson for the "alarmist tone" of Maillot's letter, and calls Maillot the "former director." Once you're done with the letter and click on the signature, a red circle appears around Thompson's name, and a woman's voice comes up, with accompanying red-letter handwriting, saying "The Hanso Foundation: Setting world speed records for subverting authority."

Then it's back to Joop, where the "live web cam" shot of him looks very weird and sometimes has a dark superimposed image of a man's face over it. This face seems to be the guy in the picture on the Mental Health page. After logging in, Joop also has some scratchy "Persephone style" lines scribbled over his face.

---

Also on the Hanso site, under Active Projects, then Worldwide Wellness and Prevention Development program, then World Map, you can find a "hidden" facility marked on the map (near Florida). Info comes up for that facility that has some number codes in it. The numbers, when translated to the English alphabet, spell out "MISSING ORGANS." Not sure yet what that means or connects to, although some have pointed out the potential connection to John Locke on the show and the organ he donated to his father. (Again, the ARG probably won't directly tie in to show characters, but I'm noting this here so people will stop pointing it out. We got it, thanks.)

---

On May 5, a memo was posted to the home page of the Hanso site (PDF format). It refers to disruptions on the site (presumably, they're talking about Persephone), assuring users it's no big deal. (HA). Hidden in that PDF is a link to a new, hidden part of the site: persephone.thehansofoundation.org. Presumably, this page is to contain direct communications from Persephone, encoded. The page initially contained just a string of numbers. When run through a Rot13 decrypt, then reversed, with some letters substituted, the message seemed to say:
"Log in at THF.org May 1 This is safe for now."

This was a bit confusing as there actually IS a site THF.org that is real and has no connection to the game. Apparently the game builders (or, I mean, PERSEPHONE) were too lazy to encode the whole long URL for TheHansoFoundation.org so they shorthanded. Whoops. Anyway, it's not clear what this message means, and there's some disagreement about whether the message has been correctly translated. May 1 or May 6, or possibly May 8? And could the word "safe" be taken as a possible password? (See below for more developments on this.)

The PDF memo also gives out a phone number and e-mail from Communciations Director Hugh McIntyre. Some people left pages, voice mails and e-mails to see if he would respond with anything helpful. (That's when "Fake-Hugh" made his appearance on the scene.) Nothing provably legit has come from Hugh as of now.
(Note: Some people reported getting e-mails back from Hugh on the weekend of May 13-14 if they included certain keywords in their e-mails to him -- like Gary Troup, Joop, Bad Twin, interview, etc. However, nobody connected with this blog managed to get such an e-mail response, so we can't confirm that report.)

---

On May 7, a new message appeared on the persephone.thehansofoundation.org page. Translated into ASCII characters, it reads:
HAS WIN HOST PC IN NIL URGE.
8, not 1 and 6.

First part is a word scramble, which was unscrambled into many many different sentences. The assumed correct anagram is: WHO IS RUNNING THIS PLACE ANYWAY? The second part seems to indicate that the previous clue on the persephone page meant May 8, not the 1st or 6th. Thus, this message seems to refer to what comes next -- what happened on May 8.

---

On May 8, a new update appeared on the site. [NOTE: If you have not gone through the previous steps of logging on to the newsletter page and so on, subsequent updates may not appear for you. Also note that you should be going to www.thehansofoundation.org -- if you leave off the www part, things don't work.] On the Executive Bios page, the date under the picture of Alvar Hanso (Oct. 28, 2003) was hotlinked. Clicking on it causes a gray static-y box to appear around the picture, and the picture zooms in to Alvar’s face. Handwritten words (presumably Persephone’s) come up that say “Notice the grainy far away picture?”

Clicking on that brings up a second message: “It doesn’t match anyone else?” and the date of the picture is circled multiple times. Clicking on THAT zooms the picture back out and opens up a new screen with a world map. The map starts pinpointing locations and setting out dates. They are: LONDON – 14.06.2000 (note these dates are European style, so that date would be June 14, 2000)
COPENHAGEN – 12.11.2000
PARIS – 23.02.2001
GENEVA – 12.07.2001
ROMA – 18.09.2001
COPENHAGEN 01.01.2001
MADRID 31.12.2002
And at one point, the line tracking these travels seems to go completely off the map (into outer space??) before returning to track a few more points.

Then Persephone starts typing a message to you. It says:
This is the last record I found of any public appearance of Alvar Hanso. The man hasn’t been seen in public since 2002!!!

Clicking on that message leads you to a page that has big bold words that alternate between saying “Is he hiding?” and “Who is running this place anyway?” while in the background a voice (same voice that was on the voice mail at 877-HANSORG) says “Where is Alvar Hanso? Who’s running this place, anyway?” Below that are these words: “ALVAR HANSO WAS NEVER THERE.”

Then a green bleeping dot appears on a black screen, giving out a Morse code message. It has been translated variously as SAFER, SAFE G and SAFE 9.

This seems to repeat the “safe” word mentioned in Persephone’s original message on the persephone.thehansofoundation.org page, but it's still not clear what this means or what we're supposed to do with it.

---

On May 9, we got a new clue. The Hanso Foundation commercial was aired again on ABC, reportedly during the broadcast of the bird flu movie. This time, the commercial had the phone number AND a URL (and a tag that said it was "Paid for by Sprite" - yuck). The URL was Sublymonal.com. This URL is also linked from the Hanso site -- if you are on the site in the 4th, 8th, 15th, 16th, 23rd or 42nd minute of the hour, the clock at the top will change to say "OB:EY" (yes, as in "obey your thirst," gag), and if you click on that, it takes you to Sublymonal.com. (Note that the clock works off your system clock, so if you don't want to wait for it to be that minute, you can just change your computer clock.)

(Note: This Sprite/Lymon thing is not a clue. It's paid promotional advertising within the game. Which we're not happy about, but did give us something to laugh about.)

When you go to Sublymonal.com, the word "Obey" is there again, plus a bunch of TV screens in a circle. You click on them until they turn green -- the number of clicks needed for each TV corresponds to the mysterious Lost numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42). When you've done that, it takes you to a page that says "Sublymonal message unlocked." And above that there's another TV screen that has a wavy line and flashes the message "Code" and then "Heir Apparent." There's a link below the "message unlocked" part, and if you click on that, it takes you to the Executive Bios page of the site. If you click on Dr. Thomas Mittelwerk's bio page, you'll see an entry box in the middle of his bio. Enter the code "Heir Apparent" there. (Speculation: The "heir apparent" seems to tie in to the fact that his bio says Alvar Hanso hand-picked him to work at the Foundation when he - Mittelwerk - was only 18. So if Alvar's gone missing, Mittelwerk is apparently his successor.)

When you enter the code, a black hole appears on the screen, and eventually you see an image of a room, and then a woman in a hospital gown appears in a doorway, facing away from you. Click on her and she turns around, and then you zoom in on her face. Next thing you see is a document with a head-shaped silhouette cast over it. It's some kind of database printout from CalTech (Mittelwerk's school according to his bio), and the words "Tuition and fee schedule" are underlined in red. Click that.

A message appears at the top, handwritten (probably indicating it's Persephone writing): "Caltech has no record of this guy in their alumni database! He's never made a tuition payment. does he even have a college degree? Why does he call himself a "Doctor"? of what? Who is this clown?" A woman's voice speaks the last two lines along with the writing. The the screen kind of flickers and it takes you back to the bio page.

Also on the page are some other names and two areas that are shaded out with red and blue boxes. Wily readers have uncovered hidden messages beneath those shaded areas, and they seem to say:

Gary Troup knows too much.
He must be silenced.

That's the first official in-game reference to Gary Troup, so that's good evidence that the Bad Twin stuff is really part of the game, not just a clever promotional tie-in.

---

On May 16, a look at the source code of the Hanso site revealed a new URL: www.djdan.am This site is regarded as "officially in-game" because it was found via the Hanso site.

This is supposed to be the site of a talk-radio DJ who tells "the truth" about conspiracies and government secrets and stuff. Important finds on the site so far:
• The podcast mentions Alvar Hanso and says he is in deep-freeze in the Hanso labs in Arizona. (It also says he is NOT in outer space on the Mir space station, but that is an interesting mention given Hanso's trip "off the map" in the May 8 track of his known public appearances.) The podcast also mention Persephone and says that thanks to her, we know the truth. (We wish.)
• The "Eyes on the Man" section has three progressively close-up shots of Alvar (same pic that's on the Hanso site) and a link back to the Hanso site.
• The "ConspiraSpy of the Month" page has a picture of the shark with the Dharma logo that sharp-eyed viewers spotted on Lost during the episode where Michael and Sawyer are on the raft pieces.
• The "Mythic Beastie sighting" page has a picture of a Mapinguari (rare giant sloth thingy). Doug and I have seen this creature connected to the show before.

---

Also on May 16, a new message appeared on the persephone.thehansofoundation.org page:
115 116 97 110 100 98 121
This is straight ASCII text, no tricky stuff. It translates to simply: "standby."

---

On May 17, the Electromagnetic Research Initiative page (under Active Projects) on the Hanso site changed. The date under the picture changed to October 62, 9291. Some X/Y coordinates appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the picture that tracked the movements of your mouse. The numbers in the caption's date translate to coordinates (629 and 291), and if you position your mouse at those coordinates, it's directly in the center of the graph that's just to the right of the picture. Then you get a hotlink. Click it and the screen bubbles, and a little compass icon appears. Click that and it takes you to: www.letyourcompassguideyou.com.

This site features a big compass you can twirl around (with the Hanso logo in the middle). The title of this page in the browser window is in Latin: "Permissum Vestri Complector Rector Vos," which I believe just means "Let your compass guide you."

When you twirl the compass around for a while, a parchment page appears in the background in flashes. It gives some compass points, and if you click on the area where the 108 appears (it's a bit off to the right at about 4 o'clock), you'll link over to something new. (108 being the sum of all the mysterious Lost numbers added together as well as the number the clock resets to when they enter the numbers in the computer in the show.) Note that the parchment also has this on it: "DI9FFTR731," which seems to be connected to Dharma Industries and was spotted on Dharma products seen on Lost.

A black box comes up on the screen with green type in it. It says "The Hanso Foundation" at the top and some computery stuff, then asks:
Are you one of the good ones? Y,N
If you type in N, it just takes you back to the Hanso site. If you answer Y, it says "Thank you and Namaste" and then takes you to www.letyourcompassguideyou.com/usr/, which says that "This system is for the use of authorized users only" and that anyone using it will have their actions "monitored and recorded."

Beneath that is a list of folders. All but two of them give you an "Access forbidden!" message when you click on them. The two you can click on are hmcintyr/ and pthompso/. There's a lot to look through in each of these folders, including some Jeep product placement (gag), but the main thing you can find is a password to use on the Hanso site. Three ways to find it that I'm aware of:

1) In the pthompso/ folder, click on mail, then INBOX. In the message that appears, you'll see these two lines:
X-IMAP: 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001101 01101111 01110101 01110100 01101000 00100000 01010000 01101001 01100101 01100011 01100101
URL:http://www.adcott.net/binary/
The first line is a string of binary letters, and the second line is a place to go to translate the binary into English. When you do that, it gives you the password: The Mouth Piece.

2) In the hmcintyr/ folder, click on mail and then 139191991471518711419.jpg. That brings up an old-fashioned-looking Jeep ad. If you look closely down by the statue of Buddha, the words "The Mouth Piece" can be seen. (Incidentally, the numbers 139191991471518711419 translate to "MISSING ORGANS." Hmm... that again.)

3) Also in the hmcintyr/ folder, click on mail, then CJ7_HATCH.MOV. That launches a TV commercial for Jeep (also looks old-fashioned). At the end, there's a Dharma logo and above it these letters: OCHE ME UTEP HIT. You can unscramble those to spell (ta da!) The Mouth Piece.

So, now you have The Mouth Piece password. Back to the Hanso site, Executive Bios page, and suddenly Hugh McIntyre's picture is missing -- just a big question mark there. Click on that, and you get Hugh's bio, but now there's a login box that says "Please login for press releases." Type in the password there. The screen starts melting and the words "Deeply committed to family values" in Hugh's bio are highlighted. Click there. That launches a black page/blinding lights thing.

Then Persephone types to you: "Hey, look what I've found" and then it says "Loading LONDON_capture 05/17/2006." A video starts playing in the middle of the screen of a young woman in sunglasses, and you hear Hugh's voice say "No, I just can't make it home. The, uh, the conference went another day. Tell Megan that I... [unintelligible]." The video shows Hugh and the young woman clearly canoodling, and Persephone types: THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE SOMEONE'S WIFE OF FIFTEEN YEARS! MR. FAMILY VALUES INDEED!

The video repeats on a loop until you click it, and then things start falling from the top of the screen -- Visa cards, diamonds, pills, some documents. You can click the documents and see that they're bills for posh things like jewelry and spa treatments and luxury hotels. Then after a while Persephone says: "Gotta go, see you soon" and you're taken back to the Executive Bios page.

Also on May 17, the Hanso commercial played again during Lost and this time featured a "paid for by Jeep" tag and the www.letyourcompassguideyou.com URL at the end.

---

On May 18, a new message appeared on the persephone page:
106 103 157 162 235 45 122 202 39 122 26 39 162 218 222 151 42 39 142 87 168 186
These numbers are too high to be ASCII-translated, so it was kind of a stumper. Some smartypants folks figured out how to translate it with Base64, to make this:
amedoustesonehonotrelyonjleoug==
It took some noodling to undo that anagram, but if you de-scramble and take out the ==, you get this:
a mouse does not rely on jugt one hole

And then if you change the G to an S (assuming it's a coding error), it's simply:
"a mouse does not rely on just one hole"
Which is a quote from an old Roman named Plautus, and which some people have reported seeing on the blast door on the show.
So, perhaps this was a message to look further afield for info instead of just relying on the Hanso site. But some enterprising folks tried this URL:
http://hole2.thehansofoundation.org
and got a weird picture of a man's face with parts missing.
Still no idea what that's all about.

---

On May 19, the page for Peter Thompson under Executive Bios started flashing a stream of letters across the picture of Thompson. Slowed down, these spelled out "SURVIVOR GUILT." Then clever readers spotted a hidden text entry box right under Thompson's picture and typed in the words there.

Some black smoke-like stuff fills the screen, and then you see some documents. You can click on three places -- one says "NUCLEAR," one says "Tobacco," and one says "Globoco Oil."

Clicking NUCLEAR makes Persphone write this:
2003 was in the process of making sure the citizens of Southern Georgia got their glow-on by bullyragging the local courts into ignoring widespread protests against a nuclear power plant when he was struck by cancer -- Looks like Alvar Hanso saved the wrong guy!

Clicking under that fades the screen out, and you get an image of a nuclear plant smoking in the background. Faintly in the foreground you can see the shoulders of a guy in a lab coat. Not sure if it's the guy from the Lost orientation videos or what. Clicking takes you back to the documents.

Clicking Tobacco makes Persephone write this:
1994 Defended the Williamsburg Tobacco Company against a class action suit on behalf of cancer victims: set a new precedent for corporate vindictiveness by countersuing and driving over 40 plaintiffs into bankruptcy!

Click under that and the screen fades to show what looks like a tobacco field. Some words flash by in the background, too fast to read, and faintly behind you can see the same lab coat guy image from the first one. Then back to the documents.

Clicking on Globoco Oil makes Persephone write:
1998 defended Globoco Oil... and successfully made the world safe for chemical polluters and dumpers of carcinogenic industrial waste in the Florida panhandle -- the incidence of cancer in the affected areas has grown by 75%!

Fade to black and then a picture of polluted water. Something flashing here again, but can't make it out. Lab coat guy is there again. Clicking back to documents, and now Persephone writes: I work for criminals. Always have, always will.

So we know Thompson is a jerk lawyer with bad karma, and he got cancer but Alvar somehow cured him, and that Persephone apparently works for the Hanso Foundation.

---

On May 24, just in time for the (U.S.) season finale of Lost, a new link appeared on the Hanso site, at the bottom down near the RSS feed link. It just said "Careers," and it linked to HansoCareers.com. Also that day, the RSS feed changed to say that the Jacob Vanderfield page (under Board of Directors) had been updated.

That night, the Hanso commercial aired during the show with a "paid for by Monster.com" tag and a reference to HansoCareers.com.

This site has a lot of text about the Hanso Foundation, the usual "better tomorrow" blah blah, and some job categories and locations. But no matter what you select, you get the same five jobs: Personal Assistant, Organ Courier, Art Therapist/Psychologist, Simian Veterinarian, Anger Management Director. The job descriptions are interesting, but what's important is that there are some grayed-out letters in each job description. Pulling all the letters out and yields this:
n s l u t m I e m A y a
Unscrambling them yields this:
Inmate Asylum

So there's a new password, and it was a logical conclusion that it could be used on Jacob Vanderfield's page, since his page was updated. And sure enough, hidden beneath each job description is a link to the Executive Bios page, pointing the way. You can use Inmate Asylum as a password on Vanderfield's page -- just leave the Login field empty and put the password in to the password field. That makes Vanderfield and Lawrence Peck's pictures go all staticky. And then if you click again the screen goes white, and then Persephone types:
These guys know a thing or two about the betterment of society... check this.

The screen shows a shot of an office building, big glass windows. Persephone types:
Houston. 05-24-1986

The shot zooms in and the window explodes, papers and stuff flying out. Shot freezes, and there are some pictures you can click on.

Clicking the top one brings up a pic of some guy with his back turned being led away in handcuffs by police. Persephone types:
Lawrence Peck was sentenced to 8 years for insider trading, which he subsidized through a retirement fund for a health care union. And as if stealing money from nurses wasn't enough, he also got two years for perjury and obstruction of justice!

Clicking the second picture brings up a pic of a different guy being stuffed into a van by a guy with "Sheriff" on his back. Persephone types:
Check Vanderfield out: he was sentenced to four years for taking bribes from a Chinese cigarette smuggling synicate.

Then there's a document on the right you can click. Clicking it brings up some "Bench Charge Sheets" with the charges against Vanderfield and Peck on them. Some words are blacked out. Click again and Persephone types:
But just a couple of months later...

And a new pic appears -- click it and you see a shot of one of the guys walking out of jail. Persephone types: Vanderfield wound up serving only 6 months in a federal country club. .. Maybe Peter Thompson was his attorney?

A second picture, lower, is of Peck leaving jail. Persephone types:
Peter Thompson was on the case and Peck got off with 18 months in a federal minimum security facility.

Then a final document that says "NASDAQ PRINT" on it -- click that and see a sheet about Peck, many words blacked out, but it confirms what Persephone said about Peck's sentence and time served, and about Thompson being his attorney.
Click again and it's back to the main site.

---

On May 25, the Sublymonal.com site was updated. It had a lot of TV screens flashing various images (including Lymon!) with an entry box in the middle. The screen would periodically flash code words at you, which you could enter into the box. Each one brought up a little something you could view -- mostly promotional items like CDs and Nike shoes and little funny things like the "whatthe?" videos. If you entered a code that wasn't given to you, mostly it would say: "Code: Denied." But crafty readers found a couple that worked.

Typing in "Persephone" brought up some info about the Greek mythological Persephone -- nothing new here, I don't think, so just go read up on Persephone if you need background. The only thing important is that typing that in brings up an image in one of the TVs of a plane with the number 108 on it. And if you look at the source code, there's a message that says: "Look on the plane. Namaste. P"

So, you type in 108, and the screen goes black, and you start hearing another podcast from DJ Dan. This podcast basically talks about how college students are being forced to work on classified electromagnetic "superweapons." One student in particular says they were working on making a magnetic pulse strong enough to knock a space-borne body out of orbit -- like, say, the moon. Eek. The student also says the project appears to be funded by the Hanso Foundation (which has offices in the Widmore Corporation building). DJ Dan says his broadcast of the interview has caused the program to lose its funding. He shut down the man!

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On May 30, the Hanso site updated -- the Mathematical Forecasting Initiative page (under Active Projects) had a new map on it -- the MFI Forecast Map. Clicking on it bings up a world map with several icons on it -- a little man figure (for population), a needle (Health), an oil barrel (for oil consumption), and a dollar sign (Economy). Several countries have their information completed, but three countries -- the U.S., Sudan and Italy -- have info missing. The missing info could be found by Googling. It is:
U.S. -- GDP Per captita 2005 est. -- the answer is $42,000
Sudan -- Population growth rate 2006 est -- the answer is 2.55%
Italy -- Death rate 2006 est -- the answer is 10.4 / 1000

Fill in all this info and a little circle appears below India. Before you click it, though, wave your mouse around over Russia and you'll find a hidden link. If you click it, a little pop-up appears on the map with backwards text on it. It says: "She was an employee of the foundation." (meaning Persephone?)

Anyway, back to the little circle. Click it and you see a document that's a memo from Peter Thompson to "Minister of the Interior Mugato"
Subject: Population Model. All words are blacked out except these:

crucial that we do not appear to be complicit in your use of our population model to predict the growth of your tribal enemies -- especially if you intend on using our predictions to launch a pre-emptive strike. We must have plausible deniability.

Persephone writes: The Hanso Foundation -- starting wars so you don't have to.

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On May 31, the Persephone.thehansofoundation.org page updated – it said “+1.” Clever folks figured out that meant to look for a new “hole” page, since the last one was hole2.thehansofoundation.org – so hole3.thehansofoundation.org was found. There was another weird picture of parts of a man’s face. Some people reported identifying the words “Save me” hidden in the picture. Go here to thelostexperienceclues site to read more about that.

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On June 1, a new DJ Dan podcast was found via the Jeep “Let your compass guide you” site (Dan’s site had a link back to that site). It made you go through finding the 108 thing again; this time, instead of “are you one of the good ones,” it asks “Do you believe?” and you say Y.

Inside the folder list, there’s a new one – well, it was there before, but not accessible before. Now it is – it’s owelles. (Shout-out to Orson?) Inside there are two links. One is a link to a DJDan video podcast on YouTube. The other is a seemingly mysterious link with these numbers and letters:
"B/0/0/G/10/5/5/16/3/15/13/16/1/19/19"
which translates to “2006 Jeep Compass,” which is the lame product placement of the week.

In the podcast, DJ Dan gets accused of being a “corporate sellout” because he’s got banner ads for Sprite and stuff on his site. He defends Sprite and says he likes Lymon and got his job from Monster.com and loves his Jeep. In the video, the words “sell out” flash over the images.

He also says he moves around and broadcasts from the road from various secret locations, plus a lot of blah blah blah about not letting the man control you with scary science.

---

On June 2, a link we’d previously noticed -- the word "miracle" -- on the Worldwide Wellness and Prevention Development Program page (under Press Release) on the Hanso site became active. Before, it was clicky, but didn’t do anything. Now it started bringing up a text box for a password.

Intense scrutiny of the man’s-face picture that was on the hole 3 page uncovered the letters D2O. Reader Khaos explained that:
“D2O is referencing deuterium oxide, which is more commonly (used very loosely) known as "heavy water"
So the password was heavy water. If you put that in, you got a new Persephone communication.

Persephone says:
Free hospitals for the third world?
Wow! That's nifty...
Ever wonder what the foundation does in these hospitals?

Then you see an old-school microfilm machine, and there are knobs at the bottom you can use to scroll around. You’re looking at a couple of newspaper articles from the Cape Town Inquisitor. The first one reports some mysterious goings-on at a hospital that’s funded by Hanso, including an “illegal organ harvest program” (missing organs, anyone?). A lot of stuff is XXX’d out. There’s also a picture of a blindfolded woman doing a psychological test. The second article is a retraction of the first one – not that the organ thing didn’t happen, but that the Hanso Foundation is not associated with that hospital (anymore). It’s also obvious that the Cape Town Inquisitor is now “A Hanso Group Publication.” Stealthy, not so much.

Next to the microfilm machine there’s a phone with a blinking light. If you click on it you’ll hear a message for Persephone from a guy who says he works at the Inquisitor, and that the Hanso people bought the paper the same day the article came out, and they made him do the retraction. He says it’s all true and that he did some digging and the same thing happened a year ago at another Hanso hospital. He’s afraid he’s going to lose his job, or worse – he says the reporter that did the other story died “in a car crash.” At the end he nervously says he has to go.

Also, after a while some people saw the words “Persephone, if you can read this, I know who you are!” Eek!

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On June 6, the Institute for Genomic Advancement page on the Hanso site changed – the word “disease” was clickable. Clicking it brought up this message from Persephone:
Maybe it's cuz I'm on no sleep...
Having trouble breaking through...
I'm gonna need more time.

And then a countdown clock showed up counting down to about 20 hours away. This was apparently just a stall to keep us waiting for more info.

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Later on June 6, a new Hanso Foundation commercial played on TV with the given Web site www.retrieversoftruth.com. This was somewhat mystifying at first as there was no obvious product placement. The site itself shows info about golden Labrador dogs and info about a man named Wally Bole (whose picture looks funky and badly Photoshopped). There’s a box to sign up for the newsletter, so everyone did that. That resulted in an e-mail from Dr. Bole where he told a story about a mysterious encounter he had at a hotel. Prominently featured in the story was a porter who told him about a secret word.

Using the word “porter” in the newsletter sign-up spot (after having really signed up) and clicking Go (sometimes two or three times if needed) takes you to the secret site that is hidden behind the dog-centric site.

This is a message board ostensibly created by employees of Verizon (ah HA, here’s the product placement) discussing how Hanso is getting involved with them and they’re freaked out, how Mittelwerk himself has been on the premises and they are wigging. So they’ve created this board to secretly communicate about it all.

One of the message threads is titled “The gospel according to The DSL.” In this post, iobiSeeingYou mentions a new web site -- www.richerdeeperbroader.com. Hidden in the source code of this (Verizon) site was the word “parthenogenesis.” This word, which basically means reproduction without a male, tied in to some of the discussions going on in the same discussion thread. So clearly parthenogenesis was to be a password somewhere.

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On June 7, the countdown clock on the Institute for Genomic Advancement page went away. The pictures of cells at the top of the site were kind of jiggly-looking, and if you rolled over them, the words “Retrievers of Truth” popped up – letting us know this page was connected to that site.

Under the picture of people looking at a module, a hidden text box was found. After some failed attempts at passwords (retrievers, porter, etc.) it was discovered that the password here was the aforementioned “parthenogenesis.”

This led to another Persephone presentation. Not a lot of commentary here – just a succession of images. A man standing in a forest. A big rock in the water. And washed up on the shore – a shark with the Dharma logo on it.

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On June 8, there was a new DJ Dan podcast – this one found on Dan’s site directly. Lots of talk about genetic engineering, but the main revelations here are from a caller who talks about diving the Great Barrier Reef and finding a shark with a “tattoo” on it (ties in nicely with the show and the last Persephone reveal) and that Dan gets a call from an scary-sounding guy who warns that he will face retaliation if he keeps taking shots at the Hanso Foundation. The guy clearly knows exactly where Dan is even though he has taken pains to keep his location secret and mobile. Dan says he’s not backing down.

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On June 12, the Persephone page updated with more numbers, which translated to “+1 timeless together.” The plus-one led us to hole4.thehansofoundation.org, where there was another picture of a man’s face. The important thing turned out to be the file name of each man’s-face picture (which were q9als2002, t9agen75 and u8egnce86). Take out all the numbers/date (timeless) and put all the letters together (together) and de-scramble, and you get “light sequence again.”

About this time it was also noted that the Hanso RSS feed said the Mental Health Appeal page was updated. In fact, it was the same Vik Institute “inquire” text entry box that we’d been noticing and wondering about for a long time. Entering “light sequence again” there brought up a new presentation.

First, there’s a crumpled-up-and-straightened-out letter to Mittelwerk from someone named Armand Zander who is apparently director of the Vik Institute. Read the letter here. Zander is basically complaining that crazy secret stuff is going on in his institute (funded by Hanso) that he knows nothing about – doctors he doesn’t know coming and going mysteriously, “twenty of [his] autistic savant patients [being] administered secret proprietary memory tests,” and a “secret ward containing patients whose illness is unknown to the hospital's director.” He basically says Mittelwerk better tell him what’s up or he’s quitting.

Clicking the letter makes it fall away, and then you see a weird old-style computer with five big colored buttons on it. The screen types:

I will now play a sequence of symbols.
You will have to remember this sequence and play it back once I finish.
Get an extra Apollo Bar from your instructor if you manage to remember more than 42 turns.
Ready?

It’s basically a rip-off of the old game Simon – the computer gives you a colored symbol, you repeat it back. Then it gives you that same symbol again, plus another one. You push the buttons to repeat the pattern back, again and again. When you get to a turn that corresponds with one of the Lost numbers, you get a new word revealed, and if you get to 42 turns, you see this:

Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications (DHARMA)

By the way, “heuristics” seems to refer to a type of teaching where the student learns by piecing together info and solving clues, etc. – basically what we’re doing. So those who said we might be part of a “DHARMA experiment” ourselves in playing this game may not be far off the mark.

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On June 13, DJ Dan’s podcast page had an icon at the bottom that looked like a radio tower, and it was linked to a page on the Hanso site that had one of those horrible “magic eye” pictures you’re supposed to stare THROUGH or something to see the pictures. I am apparently genetically unable to see these stupid pictures, so I left it to others to figure out that hidden in the picture was the word “conspira.” (Apparently you also have to adjust the picture’s colors and contrast and stuff to see it.)

Meanwhile, the Hanso RSS indicated the Electromagnetic project page was updated. Once there, the aurora borealis picture was clicky. Clicking it makes Persephone type:
This is Persephone...
Want to know more about this "Crucial Force?"
What's the magic word?

You type in “conspiraspies” – hinted from the “conspira” above and of course always mentioned in DJ Dan’s podcasts as what he calls his listeners.

That brings up a letter and some pictures.

The letter is from Hoo-Gon Choi, clearly part of the Korean government (let’s assume N. Korea). He’s telling Mittelwerk that Hanso’s “off-shore research station” (also referred to as the “offshore antenna”) is causing disruptions of telecommunications infrastructure, navigational systems, access to satellites, etc., plus deformed fish, aberrant changes in wildlife and so on. He’s basically saying his government betters are getting upset and question-y, and he can’t hold them off forever.

One picture shows a big tall antenna in the ocean which you can click on to watch a video.

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Also on June 13, there was a new DJ Dan podcast – this one found on the Retrievers of Truth message boards (in the entry Too legit to quit). Direct link is here.

In this one DJ Dan says the Hanso Foundation is involved in mind control and was forcefully ejected from the Congo in 1992. He mentions the Korean offshore project antenna thing. He (or rather a caller) talks about nano technology, as in micro robots that swarm around (captured and controlled by an electromagnetic field) and do cool stuff (and also evil killing stuff). Hey, nanites have been Doug’s pet Lost theory from the beginning!

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On June 16, there was a new DJ Dan podcast. This was found by noticing that on his podcast page, one of the icons at the bottom (that looks like the electromagnetic page stuff) had the tiny words BIG D on it. Clicking that icon took you to the sublymonal.com site, so it only made sense to type “bigd” in to the entry box. That brought up the podcast, in which Dan talks about what Persephone revealed about the Vik Institute and Armand Zander’s letter to Mittelwerk about how he doesn’t know what’s going on with the “secret proprietary memory tests.”

Then he gets a call from a Wise Stoner who posits the theory about the memory tests being used by Hanso Foundation to tests autistic savants to find out if they can do massive data calculations (for, say, “nuclear fusion”) in their heads so there’s no documentation, no record.

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Also on June 16 – and much more significantly – the Persephone page was updated. This time, for the first time, instead of a string of numbers, we got an image. It showed the following objects on a table (desk? Hanso's desk?): a recorder, an envelope, a card, a lipstick, an umbrella, scissors, and an eraser. Taking the first letter of each of those objects gave you a password: recluse.

That password was usable on the Hanso site, on the Life Extension project page. On that page, the word "mortality" was clickable and brought up a text entry box. Typing "recluse" into it brought up a Persephone presentation.

First comes a letter from Eliza Vasquez, M.D. to "Signor Hanso." It basically talks about how Hanso was checked into a hospital in Madrid three months ago, and Dr. Vasquez took some of his blood, and she is FREAKED and has been trying to get in touch with him, to no avail. See a copy of the letter here.

Then next thing was three boxes that showed video feeds. One is of Alvar Hanso's parking space (empty, people occasionally pass in front of it) at the Hanso Foundation in Copenhagen. One is of Hanso's desk (has stuff on it, but no one is sitting there). The third is of an elevator that is apparently for Alvar's private use (again, people pass by, no one uses it). Time ticks by and if you click the boxes it fast-forwards a few months -- all still the same except each time you fast-forward another item is gone from Hanso's desk until it's finally empty. Then when you click again Persephone starts to write -- more "Where is Alvar Hanso" stuff. (If you want to watch, someone has made of a copy of what comes next here.

Up pop a series of boxes that say:

IS HE A RECLUSE OR IS HE A PRISONER?
WHY WOULD HE ALLOW SUCH EVIL THINGS
TO BE DONE IN HIS NAME?

DISTURBING, ISN’T IT?
AND THERE’S MORE.
SO MUCH MORE. I CAN HELP
CONNECT THE DOTS...

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE REST?
THEN ENTER THE NAME OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE VIK INSTITUTE...
ARMAND...?

And the up pops a box for you to type this info in. We got this name in the letter this guy wrote to Mittelwerk that Persephone showed us earlier, and he was also mentioned in a DJ Dan podcast just prior to this hack. The name to type in was "Zander." If you did that, Persephone typed:

COOL. THANKS. SORRY FOR ALL THE CLOAK AND DAGGER.
BUT I GOTTA BE CAREFUL WHO I TRUST...

I THINK MITTELWERK IS THE KEY TO ALL THIS --
I NEED TO FIND OUT WHAT HE IS UP TO WITH ALL OF THESE PROGRAMS --
I’M GONNA

And then the screen kind of goes crazy, flicking lots of images by, and then it goes black, and the words "NOBODY IS SAFE" pop up, and then the Hanso logo, but in red against the black screen (very devilish looking). And then this message appears:

The Hanso Foundation site has been hacked by malicious infiltrators seeking to blemish the good work of many dedicated researchers. Until a legal investigation is completed, the site will no longer be accessible to the public. Namaste.

And then the site is down. For the first day, you could get on a different computer and watch again, but after that, even if you had missed the hack, the site was down, inaccessible, and all back-end ways to watch the presentation on the site were taken down, too.

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And with that, I’m “shutting down” this file. I will continue to update the game as it goes along, but since we’re reaching a turning point here, I’m going to start a new file to continue the updates from this point on. This file will still be here for backward reference. Please don't post comments here -- check the "act 2" game so far file, or just go to the main blog page for the latest developments.

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Miscellaneous developments:

• Hugh McIntyre did appear on Jimmy Kimmel's show on May 24. Click here to read about what he said, and click here to watch the clip.

• Some newspapers had an ad on May 8 or 9 from the Hanso Foundation about the Bad Twin book. You can see it here.

• Doing a whois registration search on www.thehansofoundation.org reveals that the site is actually registered to The Hanso Foundation. Thorough! There's a Denmark address given (same out that's given out at the HANSORG phone number) and two e-mail addresses: info@thehansofoundation.org and (weirdly) mexicanlunch@hotmail.com. E-mails to these two addresses haven't yielded any response.

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Other topics:

• Background on Gary Troup: He is supposed to be the author of the book Bad Twin and also a victim of Oceanic flight 815. Seven (of nine) video clips have been found on various web sites that show Gary giving an interview to Laird Granger on Book Talk. Gary has some connection to the Hanso Foundation in that he apparently wrote about them and Alvar Hanso. His first book, The Valenzetti Equation, is "mysteriously out of print" and impossible to find. It's about a mathematician named Enzo Valenzetti. (Note: Just because they've mentioned Valenzetti here does not mean the Valenzetti Foundation site is really in-game.) And yes, Sawyer was reading the Bad Twin manuscript on the May 3 episode of Lost. You can see Gary's official site here. Also, the Hanso site does have a press release about Gary Troup on its site, and several people have remarked on the date being 12/05/06 -- which looks like a date in the future. But actually, I think this is just European date format, which they've used elsewhere on the site -- because this press release was posted on May 12, 2006. So... that's not a clue.

• There are several other sites that seem to be connected to the game or to the Hanso Foundation, but these haven't been proven to be actually in-game (as opposed to sites built by fans). Besides those mentioned in my previous post on this topic, the sites emri.perception.net and www.widmoregroup.com seem to qualify as "fan" sites. We have linked up all the "questionable" sites noted so far on the right-hand nav bar. I would take any info gleaned from these sites with a few grains of salt -- this is very possibly just the result of other players getting creative and trying to cloud the waters/mess with our heads. On this blog, we try to document and follow closely only those developments that seem to be officially "in-game" -- found on the Hanso site or something it links to.

• The site oceanic-air.com is a "real" site (owned by ABC) and it does have hidden messages on it, but at this time there's no evidence it is connected to the Lost Experience game. This site has been up for more than a year (I wrote about it here on May 31, 2005) with all the hidden stuff, so I kind of doubt it's got anything to do with the new game. But anything's possible.