Web site continues story of ‘Lost’ Oceanic Airlines

What it is: Oceanic-air.com is a Web site put together by the good folks at Touchstone Television. It’s meant to look like a booking site for the fictitious Oceanic Airlines featured in the hit ABC series “Lost.”

What it’s all about: At a glance, this site looks like merely a clever placeholder for those folks curious enough to try out the URL. There’s a message from the company president explaining how the airline has shut down in the wake of the tragedy of Flight 815 (the ill-fated flight carrying our favorite castaways). There are nonfunctional flight-booking links. And several pages appear to be broken or removed.

But a host of secrets are hidden throughout the site. Hover and click your mouse over that message from the president, and you’ll see some overlapping text. If you copy it out of the site and paste it into a document file, you’ll see messages from a couple of crash survivors. Then click on the “track flight” link, type in 815 and you’ll find some departure and planned arrival info. If you click various spots on that page, a very interesting seating chart for the flight will load.

I’ll leave it to you to find the other secrets hidden in the site – with just one hint. If you find Jack Shepard in the seating chart, watch the bottom of the page. It just might lead you to an entirely different site.

Why we like it: Frankly, the season finale of “Lost” left me feeling a little frustrated. I’d expected and hoped for more definitive resolutions to some of the mysteries raised all season long. Instead, we got a boatload of new questions and few answers.

Can those answers be found at Oceanic-air.com and the paths it leads to? Not really. In fact, you might just find yourself with even more questions (yes, that’s possible) after venturing into this online mystery. But the experience can raise some fascinating new possibilities and ideas about what might happen (or be happening) on the show, and that’s just too much fun to pass up. I may be annoyed with the show for stringing me along so endlessly with little payoff, but the stringing is done so skillfully that I can’t seem to let go.

And if all this online puzzle solving doesn’t appeal to you, there is a concrete way to get information. Click the “Island Insider” link on Oceanic-air.com, and you’ll find a way to sign up for special e-mails “directly from the ‘Lost’ writing team.”

I can’t wait to see what new questions pop up in my inbox.