(Continued...)

Cisneros acknowledges that her sister enjoyed MyDeathSpace because it was uncensored and members could speak freely about taboo subjects. But, she counters, "With my freedom of speech, I would like to say that MyDeathSpace is currently a mockery of our lost loved ones, and I wish the site moderators would delete the thread on my sister, as I have already requested."

Mike Patterson, the site's owner and co-creator, has not complied with Cisneros's request. "Apparently, she didn't realize how much her sister enjoyed the website," he wrote in an e-mail. Patterson pointed out that among her many pro-DeathSpace posts, Danielle had written that she would haunt anyone who messed with her profile posthumously. Reason enough to stay the course.

For Trish Gordon, who personally submitted her friend Lizz to the site, the tragedy provided a surprising sense of camaraderie with her fellow MyDeathSpacers. She even detected a sense of reverence in their responses, unusual for a site where overdoses haven't received the kindest treatment. (Comments about other drug deaths include "just another dumb ass dead from drugs sorry don't feel bad for her" and "American youth continues to become more and more stupid by the day.") When it came to Lizz, Gordon says the MyDeathSpace peanut gallery was softer, gentler. "It was some sort of, let's all stand behind one of our own."

"MyDeathSpace is currently a mockery of our lost loved ones, and I wish the site moderators would delete the thread on my sister""I know that Lizz wouldn't want to be another faceless name. When you go to her site you get a sense of who she was, her tongue-in-cheek humor," says Gordon of her decision to honor Seholm's wishes even as she braced herself for off-color comments. "I think it's ignorant of people to think that we die and we don't talk about it."

Patterson, who started his site as a small LiveJournal community, admits that the recent demise of two members is a little "freaky," but death at MyDeathSpace is just a statistical probability. "Now we're pushing 5,000 members. It's only a matter of time."

In addition to its large membership, the site gets between 10,000 and 20,000 unique visitors a day, according to Patterson, and has been covered by dozens of news organizations, many of which seem to mischaracterize MyDeathSpace. The New York Times equated it with Legacy.com, a typically well-mannered "in memory of" site, apparently overlooking the prevalence of poop jokes, cartoon skulls, and bikini model dating advertisements on MyDeathSpace. Other outlets describe it as a horrifying example of soullessness at the Internet's margins. A pointed headline in The New York Sun reads, "Morbid Website Makes Amusement of Online Profiles Left Behind By The Dead."

But for all the interest in the site and its membership, no one seemed to foresee the obvious—that some MyDeathSpacers, like the objects of their fascination, would inevitability forget to buckle up, drink too much, neglect to look both ways, or simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They, too, would leave behind unfortunate background designs, dated profile songs, unapproved comments, and creepy coincidences.

The MyDeathspace forums in particular provide an eerie artifact unique to the Internet age—a brutally honest public record of young people's preoccupation with death, there for the living to pore over once the poster is gone.

Patterson isn't concerned about a MyDeathSpace curse. After all, he says, most of the deaths on the site, including the deaths of Toal and Seholm—were completely preventable. No dates with destiny, just poor decision-making.

Says Patterson, displaying his site's trademark sensitivity: "It's not that I'm unsympathetic, but it's—you know—duh. You're asking for it."

On the plus side, MyDeathSpace has now graduated from macabre entertainment to public service vehicle. After hearing of the deaths, at least one scared-straight member wrote, "Ever since I've been on MDS I won't even drive after having one beer, and I've totally stopped hanging out on train tracks, huffing keyboard cleaner, doing heroin, and hanging out with emos."

And one of the site's regular users, appropriately named "Morbid Curiosity," dispensed what might be the best advice: "Don't write anything that could foreshadow your death on MySpace."

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