LiveMove the cursor slowly, then click for a puff of mist
The prompt
Create a cursor trail effect that leaves pale ghostly mist, for a true hauntings podcast called The Hollow Hour. Background is a radial gradient from #2a2350 at the bottom to #0b0918, with a crescent moon top right and a black SVG silhouette of a house with one flickering yellow (#ffd98a) window along the bottom. Centre the label "The Hollow Hour, season four" in mint (#b9f3e4), the headline "Some houses remember" in a large italic serif (98px), a short line about a lighthouse keeper's logbook and a glass pill play button with a round mint icon, "Play episode 41" and "38 min", which toggles to pause with three bouncing equaliser bars. On a full-screen canvas with screen blending, the pointer drops soft mist puffs along its path, up to five per frame and 420 in total. Each puff is a pre-rendered radial sprite in mint or lilac (#c9b6ff), grows from about 15px to 130px, rises, sways sideways and fades over one to two seconds with additive blending at low opacity, so the text stays readable. A click or tap releases a burst of 34 puffs. After 2.6s idle the wisp wanders by itself in a slow loop. For reduced motion, draw one faint still veil.
Written by Informeek Studio to recreate this design. Prompts are not deterministic: running it again gives a similar result, not an identical one.
Use it in three steps
Copy the prompt with the button above.
Paste it into your tool, such as v0, Lovable, Bolt or Claude.
Make it yours by changing the show name, the moon and the mist colours.
About this cursor trail effect
This cursor trail effect leaves mist instead of dots. As the pointer moves, soft puffs of mint and lilac drift off it, swell, rise and sway before fading, so the trail looks like breath on a cold night. Move slowly and it gathers into a long wisp; flick the mouse and it tears into ribbons. A click lets out one bigger puff.
The setting does half the work: a midnight podcast page with a crescent moon, a house on the horizon with one window flickering, and an italic serif headline. The mist is drawn with additive light at low strength, so even where it piles up the words above it stay readable.
Why the prompt works
It uses pre-rendered sprites, one soft circle per colour stamped hundreds of times, which is far cheaper than drawing gradients every frame.
It caps the trail, five puffs per frame and 420 in total, so slow phones stay smooth.
It describes how each puff lives, growing, rising, swaying and fading over one to two seconds.
It keeps the page alive on touch with an idle wander and a tap burst.
Where to use it
Podcasts, horror and mystery fiction, Halloween campaigns and night time events. Keep it to one dark hero section rather than the whole site.
The prompt is shared under CC BY 4.0. Reuse it freely, including commercially, with a credit linking back to this page.
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