Stage 1
The first stage of the game centred around the "official"
Hanso Foundation website and involved players in discovering clues hidden within the site left by a hacker known only at the time as
Persephone. These clues cast into doubt and raised questions of the Foundation's innocent claims of benevolence toward the human race, and introduced other characters in the game. This stage of the game was promoted by
Hanso Foundation Commercials airing on ABC, Channel 7, and Channel 4, as well as cosponsorship deals with Sprite, Jeep, Verizon, and Monster.com. Additionally, a conspiracy-minded radio host
DJ Dan joined
Persephone's fight against Hanso.
A tie-in novel,
Bad Twin, was published in May 2006 under the fictitious author
Gary Troup, who (in the show) was aboard
Oceanic Flight 815 and whose manuscript was discovered by
Hurley, read by
Sawyer, and burned (at least partially) by
Jack. Video interviews with Troup were scattered across the web, containing references to Troup's out-of-print "nonfiction" book
The Valenzetti Equation. The exact relationship of the novel's story to that of
Lost isn't clear, but the timing of the book's publication, as well as the 'scavenger hunt' sensibility of the interview clips, suggests that Troup and
Bad Twin were another piece of the Lost Experience puzzle.
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The second stage of the game began with the shutdown of
thehansofoundation.org in response to Persephone's hacking. A URL hidden in the sourcecode of the site forwarded players to the blog of
Rachel Blake, a seemingly innocuous journal concerning her travels around Europe. However, when entering a secret code into the blog, another site was revealed: Rachel's real site, http:stophanso.rachelblake.com. This site featured a video blog of her attempts to discover the truth about the Hanso Foundation's operations, and expose their sinister deeds by tracking down the executives in Europe, especially mastermind
Thomas Werner Mittelwerk.
Through the course of the stage, players learnt that
Rachel Blake and
Persephone were one and the same. Players also found that the Foundation, now under the sole management of "Dr."
Mittelwerk, was involved in suspicious activities in Iceland, using their
Vik Institute to secretly run the
Valenzetti Equation using a group of autistic savants.
Blake followed Mittelwerk to Italy, where he boarded the container transport
Helgus Antonius, bound for
Sri Lanka. Blake was assisted by
Darla Taft, a Hanso associate who discovered some of their questionable dealings. She and her lover
Hugh McIntyre were killed, presumably on Mittelwerk's orders, but left Rachel instructions on how to follow Mittelwerk to Sri Lanka with the assistance of the mysterious
Malik.
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The third stage of the game was announced at San Diego Comic Con during the
Lost Q&A pannel where
Rachel Blake stood up and accused the show's creators of conspiring with the
Hanso Foundation. Near the end of her irate speech she intstructed for all who "want the truth" to go to
hansoexposed.com.
Stage 3 was based around piecing together of the
video Blake filmed while in Sri Lanka that was to "tear the Hanso Foundation apart." The video showed
Mittelwerk talking to a small group of people, announcing his and the Foundation's plans, presumably for the
Spider Protocol. In the course of his speech,
Mittelwerk showed an orientation video from 1975 narrated by
Alvar Hanso, explaining the origins and purpose of the
DHARMA Initiative, the
Valenzetti Equation, and the
island. Blake had gone into temporary hiding, placing
glyphs online, in advertisements, and via podcasts to find each of the 70 parts of the video that, when arranged in the right order, showed the video in its entirety. The final glyph was found on September 8, 2006, making the video complete.
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Stage 4 was the
whereisalvar.com Apollo Bar hunt. This stage overlapped with Stage 3. The stage began on August 23 and ended on September 18.
Related Articles Stage 5
Stage 5 was the finale of the Lost Experience. It came in the form of a
DJ Dan podcast and a
final video from
Rachel Blake on September 24. The video showed
Alvar Hanso talking to Rachel. He revealed that he was her father, that
Mittelwerk was keeping him prisoner and was behind all the atrocities.
This press release confirms this.