For the last six months, my girlfriend and I have been helping to solve the disappearance of a troubled teen who was last seen heading into the Black Hills Forest of Burkittsville, Maryland. Each month, we'd wait in anticipation for the latest package delivery from Rosemary Kent, the mother of said teen who was looking for all the help she could get when local authorities proved too inept or disinterested to solve the case. Those packages became increasingly disturbing. What started as mundane evidence, like copies of documents and tourist maps with hand-written notes, soon gave over to carved wooden totems, coded notes scrawled by a madman, and pictures, audio recordings, and even video evidence of some truly supernatural phenomena. And then, after months of waiting and untold mysteries solved, the case came to a close in a fitting, satisfying, and pitch-perfect way.

If you're a fan of the Blair Witch franchise, a lot of this lore should sound at least somewhat familiar to you. The case in question was an original one cooked up by the Hunt A Killer team and the fine folks over at Lionsgate who wanted to build an original mystery game around their signature spooky property. It was a match made in heaven (or, you know, the other place.) Hunt A Killer's incredibly imaginative and creative kits, mailed out to subscribers each month over six-month long arcs, pair perfectly well with the haunted history of The Blair Witch. There's enough evidence and content in each box to give you everything you need to know to solve the next step in the case and help Rosemary take another step forward, even if you aren't well-versed in all things Blair Witch. If you are, however, then you get the bonus enjoyment of Easter eggs and references scattered throughout the story. And everyone involved will get the satisfaction of solving the case, even if it doesn't ultimately end the way you think it will...

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While the Hunt A Killer x Blair Witch crossover easily could have been a surface-level tie-in to a popular property, the unique aspects of each brand really work together well here: Hunt A Killer delivers thoughtful, themed, mixed-media kits for a hands-on approach to sleuthing. There's something very cool, even if it's in an old-fashioned kind of way, about getting a package and opening its contents, either rifling through them quickly to see what's arrived or slowly and meticulously setting them all aside to make sure everything's accounted for. (And you'll want to do just that, because a clue may be hiding in plain sight or somewhere completely unexpected.) Blair Witch, of course, came to fame during the early "found footage" era of cinema but has since come into its own mythology. Now, players everywhere get to be a part of that story by solving the Hunt A Killer case... but be warned, the title terror might just be on to you, too, detective.

Image via Hunt a Killer, Lionsgate

It suffices to say that the last six months have been rough in the real world for just about everybody. The Hunt A Killer x Blair Witch boxes were, oddly enough, a bright spot for us in those dark times. Sure, we combed through the contents as early in the day as possible, and yes, we tried to crack the codes and read the reports and listen to the next hair-raising clue before the sun went down because this story was creepy AF. But like a scary movie you love to watch over and over, or a horror novel you keep coming back to, the experience was worth the risk of having the bejeezus scared out of us.

Now that the mystery is solved and the Kent Family has everything they asked of us (in the most Blair Witch way possible), we still have our little archive of documents and tchotchkes from the Hunt A Killer team. Some we can use, like the beanie with the school logo or the ever-useful blacklight pen or even the handy folder for organizing said documents. Some, like the little fetish dolls made of twigs or the carved wooden totem or the small piece of a log with markings burned into it, are going to be hard to explain to friends who come over. But there's something to the idea of keeping all of the content together, perhaps for someone new to reopen the case in the months or years ahead, perhaps to revisit ourselves and see if we missed something. Or maybe it's just the idea of marking it all "Case Closed" as a way to keep us safe, to keep the same fate that befell the Kent Family from happening to us...

But don't let that scare you away from checking out Hunt A Killer and their incredible compositions for both the mystery and horror genres. In an increasingly digital and online world, their well-paced, hands-on, and in-depth mysteries provide a welcome escape from the glow of our screens, even if their compelling stories keep you up until all hours of the night trying to solve them. It's an experience you won't soon forget, and one I highly recommend.

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