My Immortal is possibly the most well-known fan-fiction on the web, as well as the most mysterious. A goth-teen Mary Sue take on Harry Potter, the piece came to notoriety immediately upon it's release for it's wild in-fiction inaccuracies, over-the-top dramatics, hilarious misspellings, and general untethering from any anchor point in reality a reasonable reader might have. First posted in serialization to FanFiction.net starting in March of 2006 by Tara Gilesbie, the work attracted near unanimous and gleeful ridicule, to the impassioned defense of it's author. She regularly posted chapters, along with fiery diatribes against her detractors, and one chapter written by someone who hacked her account, until July 5th, 2007, when her posts stopped abruptly, leaving the story unfinished.
Not much is known about Tara Gilesbie, if even that is her real name, or gender. Several of her posts seem to indicate that she lived in South Africa, although that has never been confirmed. No verified photos of her exist, or of anyone who helped her write her story. In 2017, someone claiming to be the author wrote a book under contract with Macmillan Publishers, but was subsequently outed as a fraud, and the book was never published.
And that's where the story ends. Or, that's where the author's story ends. Since the original was taken down, My Immortal has been republished many times across the internet, and has an active community of scholars performing textual analysis on the piece. Some editions focus on preserving the original formatting of the forum where it was posted, others provide additional context. This edition focuses on accessibility, readability, and a gothic aesthetic to put you in the mood.
Here then, is My Immortal.