By Guardian staff reporter
Publication Date: 2026-02-28 10:00:00
On August 7th, Kate Fox received a phone call that turned her life upside down. A coroner said her husband, Joe Ceccanti – who had been missing for several hours – jumped from a railroad overpass and died. He was 48.
Fox couldn’t believe it. Ceccanti has neither suffered from depression in the past nor is he suicidal – he is the “most hopeful person” she has ever known. According to witness accounts later shared with Fox, Ceccanti actually smiled just before he jumped and shouted, “I’m great!” to the signalmen below when they asked him if he was okay.
But Ceccanti had dissolved. In the days before his death, he was picked up from a strange farm and taken to a crisis center because of erratic behavior. He had told anyone who would listen that he could hear and feel a painful “atmospheric electricity.”
He had also recently stopped using ChatGPT.
Ceccanti had been communicating with OpenAI’s chatbot for several years. He initially used it as…
