Spirit Week 2025: Scavenger Hunt

🌙 The Hunt Begins... 🌙

Welcome back, Slightly Sinister members and enthusiasts! It’s time to kick off Spirit Week with an adventure into the unknown. This year, you’re tracking down a mysterious creature said to drain the life from its victims. None other than the legendary CHUPACABRA.

This photo-based scavenger hunt will take you into the creepy corners of your town, where strange sightings and local legends just might turn out to be true. Your mission: complete the list below, document your findings with photographic “evidence,” and submit your proof before the hunt ends on the last day of Spirit Week (by midnight Saturday, February 22nd CST)

🕵️‍♀️ How to Participate:

• Complete as many of the seven scavenger hunt challenges as you can before midnight Saturday, February 22nd CST.

• Print out and use the provided Academy Wisp (attached to this post) in your photos to prove authenticity. We don’t want old tourist pics from the internet! 😂 Participants in past scavenger hunts have printed and cut out the wisp to take along on their journey. See examples below:

• Post your findings and claim your points in ONE of the following ways:

  • Posting in the slightlysinister.org Spirit Week forum and tagging it with #scavengerhunt2025 

  • in the Slightly Sinister Discord "Scavenger Hunt" chat channel. https://discord.gg/eJNHmPJVDv

  • For people wanting to keep your hunt private, but still collect points, you can email me directly at sarah@slightlysinister.org please make your email subject heading: "Scavenger Hunt 2025"

• Every participant enrolled in the Academy of Crafts tier will receive one point for their Crafting Guild for each scavenger point item.

• Children of the Corn tier subscriber's points will go towards meeting their collective crafting point goal to win another additional perk at the end of the year.

• Public participants will earn points that they can gift to the Crafting Guild of their choice. Public participants please dictate the Crafting Guild you want to award your points to with each scavenger hunt item. You may bounce back and forth between a Guild and their rivals.

  • For information on the four Crafting Guilds of the Slightly Sinister Academy of Crafts, you can watch this video https://youtu.be/L9PZx471Qoc

• Spirit Week point tallies will be tabulated and announced a week after the conclusion of festivities.

📸 The Chupacabra’s Trail: Your Scavenger Hunt Checklist

🐐 1) Farmyard Crime Scene – The Chupacabra is infamous for attacking livestock. Visit a farm, petting zoo, or rural area and document where the strangest creature attack could have occurred. +1 Bonus point for finding real farm animals to "interview." 🐄🐓 (possible total: 2 points)

🌉 2) Bridge the Unknown – Many cryptid sightings occur near bridges, rivers, or swamps. Find a spooky, old, or eerie bridge in your town and snap a photo where the Chupacabra might be lurking. 1+ Bonus point if the bridge has local lore, strange graffiti, or a weird history. 🌫️ (possible total: 2 points)

🌮 3) Feeding Time! – The Chupacabra has… questionable taste. Your mission: find the strangest dish your town has to offer. Snap a photo of the menu description and earn +1 bonus point if you order it and photograph the dish! Whether it’s deep-fried, pickled, or completely unidentifiable, let’s see how daring your taste buds are. 👀🍽️ (possible total: 2 points)

🗣️ 4) The Local Lorekeeper – Cryptids are real… just ask the right people. Find someone in your town who has a cryptid encounter story (Bigfoot, Mothman, Jersey Devil—any of them count). It could be a friend, a relative, or even a stranger willing to share a tale. Write up their account of the sighting and submit it along with their photo (if they agree) or a picture of where it happened! 🕵️‍♀️ (possible total: 1 point)

🦴 5) Cryptid Evidence at the Oddities Shop – Hunters rely on proof. Find a taxidermy shop, oddities store, or natural history exhibit that sells (or displays) bones, fossils, or preserved creatures. Could these remains belong to an unknown beast? Take a photo of the most suspicious specimen you find. 💀 (possible total: 1 point)

🐕 6) Chupacabra Trap: Lure the Beast – If you had to capture a Chupacabra, what kind of trap would you set? Using household items, design and build a Chupacabra trap—but here's the catch: a beloved pet must be the "bait." (Don't worry, no real cryptids will be harmed!) Snap a photo of your pet in the "trap" looking as convincing as possible. (possible total: 1 point)

🏚️ 7) The Oldest Haunt – The Chupacabra has been around for decades… maybe even centuries. Find the oldest building in your town and document its history, eerie details, or cryptid potential. Is it haunted, abandoned, or just unsettling? Snap a photo and tell us why this might be a perfect hiding spot for something ancient and unknown. 🏚️👀 (possible total: 1 point)

🔮 Bonus Challenge (Optional!): "The Final Transmission" +2 points total

If you had to send one last message to warn future cryptid hunters, what would it be? Earn 1 bonus point for the following two items:

• Create a final "cryptid warning" in any format: handwritten, carved in dirt, recorded as a voice memo, anything.

• Snap a photo of your warning in the wild: on a sticky-note in a coffee shop, scrawled on a foggy window, spelled out in twigs—get creative!

💀 Earn an additional +1 Bonus Point: If you capture someone outside the context of the scavenger hunt questioning its meaning. 😉

🖋️ Final Notes:

• Be safe and respectful while on your hunt: no trespassing or disturbing real-life chupacabras (if you find one, run).

• Creativity is encouraged! If you can’t find an exact match, get clever with angles, storytelling, props, etc.

• While points can only be earned during Spirit Week, feel free to revisit this or previous scavenger hunts just for fun!

We can’t wait to see what strange things you uncover… 😈 Happy hunting!