The terms, in plain words.

Heretofore is an atlas of local folklore made by Corvie, LLC. These terms cover the Heretofore app for iOS and this site. By using either, you agree to them. What we do with information about you is on its own page, Where your location goes.

• What Heretofore is
• Using the app
• Plans and subscriptions
• The stories
• Out in the world
• Your Library and Passport
• What is ours and what is theirs
• Suggestions you send us
• Changes and availability
• Governing law
• No warranty, limited liability
• Writing to us

What Heretofore is

Heretofore finds and tells stories near a place, from a catalog we research and write ahead of time: hauntings, legends, cryptids, saucers, wild places and more. Find a Story selects an eligible story within your radius. Explore as you go remembers stories you pass and collects them when connected, subject to your plan. Offline finds wait in Pending finds; they are not yet unlocked stories. Drive with road trip mode and a host narrates the way. Sit still with audiobook mode and the narrator takes you from town to town. Turn on browse mode and every cloud lifts at once, each story standing with its title for you to tap. Every story is told from sources and, wherever they are available, notes that say what kind of account each claim rests on, and may be narrated with music. Confirmed collections go to your Library, and your Folklore Passport keeps score.

Heretofore does not research new stories on request. What lies under the clouds is what the catalog holds, and the catalog grows on its own schedule.

Using the app

• Heretofore is for your personal, non-commercial use.
• There is no separate sign-up form. Heretofore verifies the App Store account and device to associate credits, purchases and Library access with an account on our server. Your phone keeps local Library copies and locks them if the App Store account changes. Your saved Library works without iCloud. Optional iCloud Sync shares Library membership, favorites, progress and badges between devices using the same App Store and iCloud accounts. Credits remain shared through our server independently of sync. The privacy page explains what is stored.
• Heretofore is not for children under 13. If you are old enough for it but not yet old enough to agree to these terms where you live, a parent or guardian must agree for you, and a subscription is theirs to buy and manage.
• The app is downloaded through Apple’s App Store, and Apple’s terms for the App Store apply to the download and to anything you buy in it, alongside these.
• Please do not script, scrape, bulk-download or otherwise automate the app or its services, interfere with them, take them apart, pass them off as your own, or try to have the narrator voice anything but what the app asks it to.
• Your plan’s allowances apply across your verified devices. Explorer and Wayfarer include unlimited story collection; this does not permit automated or bulk extraction. Search-radius limits, request pacing and temporary preparation limits protect service availability. The app explains when a request must wait or cannot proceed.
• We may suspend an installation that breaks these terms.

Plans and subscriptions

Heretofore’s launch plans include five free stories a month and a one-time, one-month welcome trial for eligible accounts. Explorer lifts the clouds and the limits on collecting, and Wayfarer adds narration, road trips and audiobook mode. The plans table on the front page describes the launch offer:

• Free never expires and includes five new story collections each month. The welcome trial starts automatically on your first eligible verified use on Free, within one calendar month of your original App Store download, as verified by Apple. It is offered once per Apple account, subject to account and device eligibility checks; reinstalling does not restart it. Once activated, it lasts a full calendar month. First use after the eligibility window receives Free without the trial. It asks for no card, makes no automatic charge and does not turn into a subscription. At the end you return to Free unless you have chosen a paid plan.
• The trial’s five extra collections are added to your Free monthly allowance. Its five individual narrations, three road trips and three audiobook sets are separate allowances. Using one up stops only that benefit; unused allowances and features such as browse mode and the watercolor atlas remain available until the month ends. Each trip or set includes up to five narrated stories without using your individual collection or narration allowance. Every story collected during the trial, including in trips and sets, stays in your Library to read.
• The trial’s narration limits apply whether a recording is new or already available. Playing the same story again does not use another narration or another story slot in that session. The trial’s allowances are granted once and expire at the end of its month.
• Subscribing does not restart the trial. Explorer retains unused trial benefits until the original expiry. Wayfarer uses its own 300-recording allowance without adding five trial narrations.
• Explorer and Wayfarer are individual subscriptions bought through Apple’s App Store, by the month or by the year; Family Sharing is not included. The price shown in the App Store when you buy is the price you pay; it may differ by country and include tax. Apple charges your Apple account, and your receipt comes from Apple. A subscription belongs to your Apple account, not to a phone. Restore Purchases checks that account’s purchases; Restore Library brings back its available collected stories. Neither action refills credits or restores a deleted account’s Library.
• A subscription renews itself at the end of each period unless you cancel it at least 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel it in your Apple account’s subscription settings. Canceling stops the next renewal and keeps the plan until the period you paid for runs out. Deleting your Heretofore account does not cancel Apple billing. Refunds are Apple’s to decide, under Apple’s terms; we cannot issue them.
• Online collection and pending finds: collecting a new story and downloading its text require a connection. Previously downloaded stories and unlocked recordings remain usable offline. A pending find does not reserve a credit, guarantee future availability or automatically consume a later month’s allowance. If its allowance period changes or cannot be verified, you must choose to collect it using your current balance.
• Monthly allowances refresh each month: five new collections on Free, narration of five stories on Explorer, and up to 300 newly generated story recordings on Wayfarer. Explorer and Wayfarer receive their narration allowance every month even when paid yearly. Explorer’s five-story allowance applies whether a recording is new or already available. Replays do not use another narration, and unused monthly allowances do not carry over.
• Free’s monthly reset follows the anniversary of first verified use. Monthly subscriptions reset with each verified Apple billing period; annual subscriptions receive monthly allowances measured from their annual billing start. An upgrade to Wayfarer starts a fresh allowance when Apple completes it. Restores and pending plan changes do not refill allowances.
• Wayfarer’s 300 is shared across individual narration, road trips and audiobook mode. Hearing a recording already made for another user does not count toward it. A new recording successfully prepared ahead of its turn on a road trip or in a set counts as one. Prepared stories also use trial session slots and stay in your Library if you skip them or end early.
• Unlocked narration remains available to replay and download again after a monthly allowance, trial or subscription expires, while the story remains available. If we publish an official correction or replacement for a story whose narration you already unlocked, its current narration is included without another story credit, narration credit or session slot. This does not grant arbitrary replacement voices or recordings.
• When a subscription ends, you return to Free’s monthly allowance. Your collected stories remain available to read while the catalog holds them, earned progress stays earned, and unlocked narration follows the replay and update rules above. The features of the paid plan require a current subscription or an unexpired trial.
• We may change prices and what the plans include. A price change reaches you through the App Store before it applies to a renewal, and you can cancel before it does. If we end a plan partway through a period you have paid for, cancel it in your Apple settings so it does not renew, and ask Apple for a refund of what is left.
• There is nothing else to buy. The app sells nothing outside Apple’s App Store.

The stories

• Folklore is folklore. A story is told from the sources we found. Where a story has notes, they say what kind of account each claim rests on, whether a documented account, a reported experience or a folklore account, and what each source does for it: supports the detail, records the account, adds a qualification or offers a different one. A source may document an account without establishing that it happened. A story’s location comes from its sources and may be approximate. We do not promise that any story is accurate, complete or current, and nothing in Heretofore is advice.
• The stories are made with AI. Our pipeline reads public sources, pulls out the claims it can trace to a source, and language models write them up as a telling. The narrator’s voice is a synthetic copy of one of our own, made with Inworld, and the words the road trip host and the audiobook narrator say between stories are written live by a language model from the facts of your trip or set. AI makes mistakes. Heretofore is for entertainment and should not be taken as fact; if you need accuracy, open the story’s sources and notes and follow the sources yourself.
• A location is a best-effort match from public sources and map data. Some stories cover a broad area; when a pin is shown, it gives the story a map reference, and that spot may not be where the events happened. A location may identify a business or a private residence. It is provided as context, not an invitation to visit.
• Going to see a place is your own choice. Respect private property, closed grounds, local laws and your own safety. Heretofore does not grant access to anywhere, and a story about a place is not a reason to enter it. A story never asks you to do anything at a place; if one seems to, don’t.
• Stories change. A telling may be corrected as better sources turn up, merged with a duplicate, or withdrawn after a later review. We serve one current official story, and updates replace it in your Library. Previously unlocked narration includes narration of an official update. A withdrawn story may become unavailable; earned progress is preserved.
• Tell us when something is wrong, and we will look.

Out in the world

• On a road trip, drive as you normally would and let your usual navigation app give the directions. Heretofore gives none. Start the trip before you set off, let it run, and use your car’s or your headphones’ controls to pause and play. Do not read the app or handle the phone while driving; it is built to be heard, not watched. What the host says about how far off the next story is, and on which side, is an estimate. Stop safely before you touch the phone.
• Explore as you go uses your location in the background, which costs battery, and matches stories to the ground you cover. Watch where you are going, not the clouds.
• Narration and the host are for listening while you are free to listen.

Your Library and Passport

• The stories you collect are yours to come back to and to read while available in the catalog; a narration already on your phone keeps playing, and new ones come as your plan allows. The app keeps your Library on the device and verifies ownership with our server. Optional iCloud Sync shares membership and removals, favorites, reading/listening progress, badges and Passport details. Audio downloads, walked ground, pending finds and the current resumable listening session remain on each device. Turning sync off leaves its existing cloud copy in place. Clearing local copies is separate from account deletion and Apple subscription cancellation; the privacy page explains account controls, deletion and retention.
• Passport badges count the stories you have collected in each place, by each story’s main genre, not visits you have made. A badge you have earned stays yours, with its date. As the catalog grows, it can fall behind until you collect the stories that came since. Finish every genre in a place and the place earns a seal.
• The passport number, signature and marks are decorative and generated by the app. Passport details can sync through your private iCloud account if you enable Library sync.

What is ours and what is theirs

• The app, this site, the tellings and their notes, the narration recordings, the host’s and narrator’s words, the badges and seals, the companions, the lanterns, the clouds, the watercolor painted over the base map, the app icons and cover art, and the music and sound beds belong to Corvie, LLC. Some were made for Heretofore with generative tools, the music among them. The narrator’s voice is a synthetic copy of one of our own, made with Inworld and used with its owner’s blessing, and its recordings are ours. You may use them within the app and this site for your own enjoyment, and not copy, redistribute, sell or publish them elsewhere, or use them to train a machine-learning model, without our permission.
• Map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, used under the Open Database License. The map is organized by the OpenMapTiles schema, licensed CC BY 4.0, a license that covers the schema and not Heretofore. The watercolor wash textures are © 2014 Stamen Design, used under the ISC license. A story’s place on the map was matched through LocationIQ, from OpenStreetMap data, and each story’s small print carries that credit. Land cover is from the USGS National Land Cover Database, and the world map at the smallest scales from Natural Earth, both public domain. The base map in the app is Apple Maps, under Apple’s notice beside its mark.
• The type is IM Fell English, digitized by Igino Marini and used under the SIL Open Font License. The demonstration map on this site is drawn with MapLibre GL JS, used under its own license.
• The sources a story cites belong to their publishers. A story links to them, and what you find there is theirs.
• The folklore itself belongs to no one. The places, the people and the tales are their communities’ own; what is ours is the telling.

Suggestions you send us

We love hearing about a story we have not heard. If you write to us with a suggestion, a correction or a tale, you let us use it in Heretofore without owing you anything for it, and you confirm it is yours to share.

Changes and availability

The catalog grows and changes, and so does the app. We may change, pause or end any part of Heretofore, including a plan, and on a given day what this site shows may run ahead of, or behind, what the app does. We will post changes to these terms on this page with the date they take effect; if you keep using Heretofore after that date, the new terms apply.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and any dispute over them or over Heretofore is heard in the courts of Pennsylvania, unless the law where you live says otherwise.

No warranty, limited liability

Heretofore is provided as it is and as it is available, without warranties of any kind, to the extent the law allows. To the same extent, Corvie, LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising from your use of Heretofore, from a story or a location in it, or from anywhere it leads you, and its total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid for Heretofore in the twelve months before the claim, if anything. Nothing here limits rights the law gives you that cannot be limited.

Writing to us

Questions about these terms, corrections to a story, or a tale we should hear: write to us.

Updated October 31, 2026

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