During the summer of 1988, I was at a surplus close-out store and found a 300 baud modem for my Commodore SX-64. I scooped it up and ran home. I heard rumors about these things called BBS’s and now I was going to find out what they were. One of the first places I called was something called Omaha Citinet. It was basically a boring place. I later heard a rumor that it was owned by the local newspaper and they were hoping to turn it into a electronic version of their newspaper for people to subscribe to (but more on that later). Like I said, it was a boring place, but there was one thing that caught my eye, it was something called CHAT. However the problem was, there was never anyone in CHAT. I later learned that it was only a few days old and no one had heard of it yet. Over the next few weeks, I kept calling back and slowly people started showing up. I made lots of friends on-line and meet many of them socially. There was a Halloween party, a Christmas party (that is still an annual tradition among my closest computer friends), a New Years Eve party, camping trips, pajama parties. It was a fun time.

By now, I had adopted the nom de plume of JESTER. The owners of Citinet were complaining that people weren’t using the system properly. All they were doing was chatting and tying up all the phone lines. They should be taking advantage of the other options of the system and logging off. They never caught on to what a powerful tool CHAT is. To help make the rest of Citinet interesting, I volunteered to host a section call THE FUNHOUSE. It was an area dedicated to FUN. We had on-going stories, games (anybody remember GOTCHA!?), silly surveys and other stuff and nonsense. Even though THE FUNHOUSE became a very popular section of CITINET, it still did not give the owners the results they wanted and they closed Citinet down.

Now I had many friends on CITINET and didn’t want to lose contact with them, so I offered to start a BBS up where we could keep in contact. On March 10, 1991, The FUNHOUSE BBS went into effect. It was run on a Commodore SX-64 with no hard drive. The whole thing was on a 5.5 floppy disc. After 3 weeks in existence, the floppy was full and the system crashed.

I soon realized that there was no way I could run a BBS on my little commodore and I couldn’t afford a new computer. I sent the word out to my computer friends that if the Funhouse was to stay in existence, I was going to need help and they came through. Brahma brought over an XT with a 40 meg hard drive, Action supplied a 2400 baud modem and Maverick loaned me a monitor. DangerMouse and Daystar showed up to install WWIV BBS software. After a few ‘Bama Slammers, the Funhouse was up and running. The new FUNHOUSE went into effect on April 1, 1991 (seems kinda appropriate). With the birth of the new system, I took a new name. I was now known as Captain Marvel.

Over the next year and a half, many hardware changes happened. When Maverick needed his monitor back, Cthulu loaned us another. When Cthulu’s monitor went out EZ & Prefect loaned us one. When the XT bit the dust, EZ & Prefect came through with another computer. Finally in December of 92, finances allowed us to purchase our own computer to run the Funhouse on. A Packard Bell Legend 650X (translation: a 386).

More changes came as the years went by. A license for the source code to WWIV was purchased that allowed us to make personal modifications to the Funhouse. I say us, but all the work was done by PREFECT.

THE FUNHOUSE joined a local network that consisted of two other WWIV BBSs, The MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF LEVANIA and THE GLORIFIED ANSWERING MACHINE. We also were a part of the worldwide network WWIVNET.

Many good things happened over the almost 7 years the FUNHOUSE ran, but one of the best happened in early 92. Seems there was this gentleman named RIGEL, who through a happy set of circumstances, starred E-mailing a lady named STAR They then meet face to face and in January of 92, on the FUNHOUSE, RIGEL asked STAR for her hand in marriage. She accepted, they are still very happily married and a couple of my closest friends.

But all good things must come to an end and so it is with the FUNHOUSE. On November 30, 1997, it was announced that due financial reasons and a lack of callers, the FUNHOUSE would be shutting down. It’s last day of operation was January 1, 1998. But here now, preserved for eternity, are the final statistics of THE FUNHOUSE.

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