Their story, told by everyone who knew them
Send one link. Everyone who knew them gets interviewed — real questions, asked one at a time, that follow what they actually say. No app, no account, two minutes each. We weave every answer into a single biography you can keep, print, and pass on.
Takes about five minutes to set up.
- Contributors need no account
- No limit on contributors
- One payment, no subscription
Everyone remembers something different
His workmates knew a version of him his children never met. Her sister remembers the years before the photos start. Those stories don't survive on their own — they live in ten different heads and get told once at a wake, then lost.
Story Lantern collects them while you still can, and puts them in one place.
Four steps, one afternoon
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Create the memorial
Add their name, a photo, and the years. That's the whole setup.
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Share one link
Text it, email it, put it in the funeral notice. Anyone with the link can contribute.
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Everyone gets interviewed
They tap the link and get asked a question. They answer out loud. The next question follows from what they just said — not a list they work through, a conversation that goes somewhere. Two minutes is plenty. Works on any phone, no app, no account.
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You get a biography
We write down every answer and arrange the memories into one continuous story — childhood through to the end.
Anyone can ask twenty questions. The skill is in the twenty-first.
Ask someone what their mother was like and you'll get kind, generous, always there for everyone. True, and it tells you nothing. It's what you'd write on a card.
Story Lantern asks the question after that one.
What did she do for work?
She ran the office at the timber yard for about twenty years. Everyone there was terrified of her.
Terrified of her how?
Ha — not in a bad way. She'd been there longer than any of the blokes and she knew exactly what everything cost. If someone tried to pull a fast one on the invoices she'd have them in the office in about four minutes flat. But she'd also lend them money if they were short. Both things were true.
Do you remember the office? What was it like in there?
Green filing cabinets. Terrible little heater. It always smelled like cigarettes and cut pine…
Three questions in, you have a person. That doesn't happen with a form.
And it knows what everyone else has said
If four people have already told the story of the wedding, the fifth doesn't get asked about the wedding. They get asked about the years before the photos start, or the job nobody in the family knew much about, or what he was like at twenty-five.
It also knows who it's talking to. His sister gets asked about the childhood house. His workmate gets asked about the same decade from the other side of it. His daughter gets asked what he told her about it, years later.
Later on, it isn't collecting memories any more. It's filling gaps.
Nobody has to be a good storyteller
This is the part that matters for the people you're nervous about inviting. Contributors don't need to know what to say, prepare anything, or be any good at talking about feelings. They answer a question, then another one. The interview does the work.
And anything they'd rather not answer, they skip — one tap, no explanation, and it won't be asked again.
Not a wall of clips. A book.
Most memorial sites hand you a pile of comments. Story Lantern gives you a written biography with a beginning, a middle and an end — built from what people actually said, with the memory behind every passage kept alongside it.
Read the whole thing, print it, or send it to someone who couldn't be there.
What the AI does, and what it doesn't
Being straight about this matters more than the feature does.
- The AI conducts the interview.
- It chooses the questions, and it chooses them based on what the person just said and what everyone else has already covered. That's the part that makes the stories specific instead of generic.
- The AI writes the connective tissue.
- It writes down every answer, puts the memories in order, groups the ones that belong together, and joins them into something that reads as one piece.
- The AI does not invent memories.
- Every fact, name, date and detail comes from something a real person said out loud. Nothing is embellished, guessed at, or filled in. You can read the memory behind any passage.
- You have the final say.
- You approve every memory before it appears in the biography, and you can leave anything out.
“Will my family actually do this?”
The honest answer is: some will, some won't — but this is about as easy as an ask gets. No download. No sign-up. They tap a link, hold the phone, and talk for two minutes. People who would never write a paragraph will happily tell a story.
It's yours, and you can take it with you
A memorial should outlast the company that hosts it. So:
- Download the full biography as a PDF, and every memory as a text file, whenever you want.
- You own the content. We don't claim any rights over it.
- Delete the memorial and everything in it goes with it. We hold it for thirty days first, in case the deletion was a mistake, and then it's gone for good.
- If Story Lantern ever shuts down, we'll give you 90 days' notice and an export of everything before anything is switched off.
One payment. Everyone you want to invite.
A memorial costs A$499, paid once. There's no subscription, and no cap on how many people you invite — a life shouldn't be metered.
Contributors never pay anything, and never need an account.
Questions people ask
Do contributors need an account?
No. They tap the link and talk. That's it.
How long should a memory be?
One to three minutes per answer works best. A single story beats a summary of a whole life — we'll stitch the wider picture together from everyone's pieces.
How many questions will I be asked?
As many as you want to answer. Most people do three to five and stop, which is plenty. You can leave and come back to the same link later.
What if I don't want to answer something?
Skip it. Tap skip and you'll get a different question — you'll never be pushed on anything, and the family never sees that you skipped.
Can I write my questions instead of using the AI's?
Yes. Add your own in the memorial's settings and they'll be worked into the interview where they fit, alongside the questions it writes itself.
Does everyone get asked the same things?
No. Questions are chosen for you, based on what you've said and what other people have already covered. Nobody has to sit through the same twenty prompts, and the same story doesn't get told five times.
What if someone shares something the family shouldn't see?
You review everything. Nothing appears in the biography until you approve it.
Can I use this for someone who's still alive?
Yes, and it's one of the better reasons to. Ask the questions while they can still answer them.
Who can see the memorial?
Only the people you send the link to.
Start while the stories are still around
One payment, everyone you want to invite, and about five minutes to set up.