Aman who set up a website carrying stories from all sides of the Northern conflict has received hate mail from people objecting to accounts from the perpetrators of violence appearing beside those of victims.

Sharedtroubles.net is the brainchild of Stephen Todd, a Coleraine architect who established the site seven months ago after his children quizzed him about the Troubles.

So far it has amassed 150 stories from republicans, loyalists, ex-security service members and civilians affected by the conflict. Margaret Thatcher's account of the Brighton bomb appears, as do contributions from Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison.

"Potentially, we could have a bomber with their account of planting a device and how they felt when it exploded, alongside the account of someone injured or bereaved in that blast," Todd says.

"Some people find that unacceptable and I've received hate mail. However, most people have been supportive. Apart from removing swear words or libellous material, people's stories appear unedited. The site is unique. It has no political slant or message."

Todd's idea began when driving past Ballykelly, Co Derry, where 11 British soldiers and six women died in an INLA bomb at the Droppin Well pub in 1982. "I told my son and daughter, aged 10 and eight, that the attack had happened during the Troubles and they said, 'what are the Troubles, daddy?'

"Back home, I went on the internet to find material to explain, but the focus was on politics, not people. I thought there should be space online for human stories of the conflict. It can help educate the younger generation."

Todd, 41, a Protestant married to a Catholic, consulted Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was killed in the Omagh bomb. "I didn't know Michael but I admired him from watching him on TV. He thought it a great idea so I ploughed ahead."

However, Todd said the Real IRA's Massereene attack had "a chill effect" on the willingness of those from a unionist background to come forward with their stories.

The diversity of stories is impressive. "My name is Colin Demet. I deserted the British army two weeks after Bloody Sunday," writes one ex-soldier. "I was stationed in Ardoyne at the age of 17."

Demet recalls deserting the military base and minutes later being captured by IRA men who voted on whether he live or die: "The vote was in my favour by one." He was smuggled to Dublin, then returned to his family in England. He later handed himself into the authorities and received seven years' imprisonment for desertion.

Another story is from Jennifer Doonan, whose sister Mabel, a young prison officer, was injured in a 1979 IRA gun attack. "She was confined to a wheelchair for 30 years. No early release for this prisoner," Jennifer writes. Unable to work, Mabel rescued dogs that nobody wanted from an animal sanctuary. A favourite was a blind King Charles spaniel. Mabel died earlier this year.

Another story is from Patricia McBride, one of the North's victims' commissioners, whose brother Anton, an IRA member, was shot dead by the SAS in 1984. McBride remembers attending his funeral, aged 14: "I was so proud of my brothers – their dignity, their courage, their refusal to concede. The three saluting by the grave, and the one beneath the clay."

Ann from Armagh remembers RUC officers crying as they embraced her in her farmyard with news that her policeman husband had been killed. On hearing the sobbing, her two children, who had been playing in the hayshed, ran out and clung to her legs ."We stood in our lonely huddle," she writes.

Eilish from Fermanagh recounts the IRA's murder of her nephew: "He was 18 years of age. I'd just bought him a pair of Doc Marten boots. They took the laces from the boots and tied him up with them before making him kneel on the road where he was shot dead."

Ex-detective Jonty Brown recalls a house raid in north Belfast when a UDR member sported a loyalist tattoo as a nationalist was arrested: "I told the corporal to pull his shirt sleeve down or leave the house. He smirked at me, 'Does it offend you or the Fenian?'"

A British soldier remembers arresting a woman in Martin McGuinness's street in Derry: "Her family elected to do battle in true Irish fashion and who could blame them?"

Another soldier recalls passing IRA men in the street: "They gave you the look and you look back at them, right into their eyes. It was like saying, 'We're here now, ready to play'."

He still sees himself, armed and crouched down, at a Belfast street corner: "I have to say, I miss it in some sick way, miss the mates, miss what we had."