Megan West(erby)

Are you ready to be dead?

The Talking Dead is a collaborative storytelling event taking place over the Halloween weekend of 2010. Ghosts and spirits of the dead will haunt Twitter, Foursquare and other social networks of their ghastly choosing. If you want to play, here’s what to do:

* Pick a character you would like to play. They can be anyone, as long as they’re dead. We expect most players to choose famous people, but if you’d like to animate the spirit of a plumber from Philadelphia, go right ahead.

* Once you know who you want to play, create accounts for that character on Twitter, Foursquare, and whatever other networks you’d like to use.

* Follow @thetalkingdead on Twitter. This account will guide you through the weekend with story prompts and suggestions.

* On Saturday, @thetalkingdead will tweet to you when your ghostly presence has manifested in the world. From that point on, you will control the actions of your ghost.

* Use Twitter to describe what your ghostly shenanigans. Check in to the places you haunt on Foursquare. Post pictures on Flickr, make videos for YouTube — whatever your fiendish little imaginations can devise.

* Forward links to all of your creations to your character’s Twitter account, and tag everything with the hashtag #talkingdead

* You are the talking dead — so make sure to converse with your fellow spirits. What spooky mayhem can you concoct together?

Everything that is tagged with #talkingdead will be archived on this site. Our story will run though Sunday evening, when we’ll conclude with a few surprises. So please, jooooooooooiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnn usssssssssssssss.