The Halloween Alphabet Digital Scavenger Hunt

 

Welcome to your assignment for the 2022 Halloween season!

If this were a Mission Impossible mission brief, it would have been delivered by a hooded figure in a wooden box, locked with padlock caked in rust.  The figure would have procured a skeleton key, shaped like a skeleton, and popped the lock with a quick turn of its wrist.  

Inside:  a black envelope with a bright orange wax seal of a smiling jack o’ lantern.  When you cracked the wax and slid out the aged paper, it would have decreed the activity below in a scrawled calligraphy that seemed precise but oddly rushed.

But instead, it’s delivered to the palm of your hand or desktop while you sit in your sweatpants... the ones with the hole in the butt that you really should get rid of, but they’re just so damn comfy.

Where was I?

ASSIGNMENT!  RIGHT!  

Here's a fun activity that you can do this Halloween season anytime or anywhere:  a digital alphabet scavenger hunt.

This was adopted from something I read in the book The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker (which is a fantastic read), and I added a digital spin and, of course, a Halloween twist.

It works like this:  you collect the letters of the alphabet by taking pictures of them with your digital phone.   

RULES: 

1. Must be in order. (Can’t skip X because you found an awesome Z.) 
2. Each letter must be from a new source.  (You can't be at the sign for ZZyzx, California and snag X, Y, and Z.) 
3. Letters all need to be spooky.  (I'll leave some room for interpretation here.  You can either seek out those 'dripping blood' and 'monster' fonts, or the letters can come from a spooky place:  a gravestone, or the historical sign for the Headless Horseman's Bridge, etc.) 
   
4. You have to have a time limit.  (Whatever works for you.  One day.  One Week.  The month of October.)
5. Post when your success when you're done.  (I'd love to see how you did on social media, or link in the comments below.)
   

The great thing about this is that it can be done alone, with your friends, with your kids, with your grandparents.  Doesn't matter.  

It's also a great way to fill the time if you're in line at a haunted hayride, shopping for Halloween wares, out for a job, etc.  Keep your collection in a folder on your phone and do a screengrab to immortalize the collection.

That's it.  Ready?  Set?  GO!