So the app is called “The Hunt Klub: Hunt your friends!”. First off, do not download it. This is not a joke, this is not a dare. Do not fucking look for it or download it. You’ve been warned. I wish I had someone to tell me that before this all got started.
A week before Christmas, I was starting to pack up for the holiday when my roommate came in and started talking to me. The dorms were supposed to be cleared out by the following morning, and I was only half paying attention to him as I tried to make sure I didn’t forget anything I’d need during my two weeks back home.
Then he was sticking his phone in my face, apparently repeating stuff he was trying to tell me about this great new ARG game he had started playing. How I needed to get it. I just said yeah and went on packing, and it wasn’t until I was looking at my phone at home two days later that I noticed he had already downloaded the app on the phone for me.
It was called “The Hunt Klub: Hunt your friends!” and had a picture of a stick figure in crosshairs. At first glance it looked kind of dumb, but I was already getting bored sitting around my parents’ house, so I decided to see what was supposedly so great about it.
The way the app works is this.
You create an account and log in, at which point you are taken to a tutorial that explains the rules of the game. There are three kinds of players in Hunt Klub: Deer, Bears, and Hunters. Everyone starts as a Level 1 Deer. You can advance up to a Level 10 Deer by avoiding being successfully “hunted”.
The tutorial explains the progression system like this:
Deer try to avoid being hunted down and killed. Bears try to hunt and kill Deer while avoiding being killed by Hunters. Hunters hunt Deer and Bears, as well as other Hunters.
You must be a Level 10 Deer to become a Bear. You level up by surviving, and as you level up, a Bear or Hunter must get closer and closer to you before their hunt will be considered successful.
You must be a Level 10 Bear to become a Hunter. You level up by surviving and killing Deer, and as you level up, hunters will begin having to hunt you multiple times before you are counted as successfully hunted.
Your goal as the Hunter is to outlast everyone else on your journey to the ultimate reward.
To initiate a hunt as a Bear or Hunter, go to your hunt map and identify your prey. Then physically go to where they are. When you are close enough, the “Hunt Complete” button will light up and you can click it to confirm your kill. The killed player will then respawn after 8 hours and will lose a level as penalty.
The basic idea is the game puts you in a competition against other people with the app. If you’re a Deer, you get warnings when a Bear or Hunter is getting closer to you. This gives you a chance to get away, or if you’re a higher level Deer with a small radius for them to kill you, just hide well until they give up. If you’re a Bear, you get access to a map that shows you all the Deer players in your area. You also get a warning when Hunters get close. If you’re a Hunter, you see Deer and Bears, but not the other Hunters. Hunters can, however, still be hunted by each other, but without the assistance of any map or warning system.
It all sounded very fun, if a little dorky. Still, stuff like that lives and dies by having lots of people playing it, and I’d never heard of it before. When I went to the “Local Wildlife” menu, however, I saw over twenty people listed just in my hometown. One of them was even an old friend of mine from high school.
So over the next few days, I started playing. It was slower going at first, but still fun. I almost got caught by someone at a grocery store, and then they followed me while I was driving until I managed to either lose them or they gave up. Two days later, I got hunted down waiting at a fast food drive-thru. I hadn’t gotten my food yet, so I actually left the line and went inside to try and hide in the bathroom. Within just a couple of minutes, a cute high school girl stuck her head in the bathroom and tapped her phone with a laugh. I felt my phone buzz in my hand as a picture of a cartoon deer with Xs for eyes flashed across my screen.
Eight hours later, I was back at it. I was a Level 8 Deer at that point, and by Christmas Day I graduated to Bear. Now the shit was going to get real.
I went to Madison the following day, and as I suspected, there were dozens of Deer throughout the city. I spent most of the day tracking them down, and it was a bloodbath. The best one was a guy in the back of a coffee shop. He must have been sixty, and when I got him, his face turned beet red. I usually said something like “Hi” or “Got you” to people, but not him. I left him to sulk before he threw his coffee at me.
The day before New Years’ Eve, I got a call from the college. They told me that my roommate Tom was dead. They said they couldn’t give any details, but they wanted me to know before I came back to the dorm the following week. I numbly thanked them and hung up the phone.
Tom wasn’t my best friend or anything, but he was a good guy. The idea of him just being “gone” seemed impossible. I went home that afternoon and tried to get my mind off of it, but for the next couple of days I didn’t touch The Hunt Klub. When I finally did log back in, I saw I had survived long enough to reach Level 10 and become a Hunter. This was made into a much bigger deal than going from Deer to Bear, including a special prompt asking if I was sure I was ready to become a Hunter. Rolling my eyes, I clicked yes and sat the phone down.
The next day my mother told me she had more bad news. A friend of mine from high school, Jackson Linder, had been found dead overnight. From what she was hearing, they thought it was a suicide, but no one was sure yet. When she saw my expression, she came forward and gave me a hug, trying to comfort me. She thought I was upset about him dying, and I was, but that wasn’t the only reason. He was also the second person I knew that used the Hunt Klub app.
I went to my bedroom and opened the Local Wildlife section of the app. When I had first looked at that list of names, Jackson had a little Bear icon next to his name. Just a few days ago, it had changed to a crosshair symbol that represented a Hunter.
Now, the symbol was a little cartoon tombstone.
After that, I deleted the app from my phone immediately. I tried to find anyone talking about the app on the internet, but there was nothing. Not like nothing bad, like literally nothing at all. Then, at nearly 1 in the morning, I found a forum thread on an obscure website. The post had been made less than an hour earlier by someone who was trying to ask people about the game. They were saying that once they got to Hunter, they started having weird stuff happen, like someone was fucking with them. But what was really freaking them out was that their brother had a friend who had apparently gone missing since they started playing the game.
I had barely finished reading the post when the website went down. I spent five minutes refreshing before it came back up, and when it did, the post was gone like it had never happened.
I came back to school last week, and aside from the constant reminder that Tom was gone when I looked over at his empty bed, life was getting back closer to normal. I was still worried about the app, of course, but it seemed like deleting it had done the trick. At least until I was attacked two nights ago.
I was leaving a late chemistry lab when someone jumped me in the parking garage. They had a knife, but I managed to shove them down long enough to get into my car. I was afraid of him coming at me again, so I backed up quickly to get out of there.
The police said it was clearly self-defense. The security cameras showed him attack me, and that when he was trying to get up, he had stumbled behind my car enough to get run down. It wasn't until they were done with me that I looked at my phone. When I did, I saw the game was back on my home screen and I had a notification. My hand shaking, I opened it.
Congratulations on your first kill. You have unlocked The Dark Path! You may play the game normally against Deer and Bears, but against other Hunters, the game is real and the only way to progress is to kill.
Your kill has given you a week of immunity. Any Hunter who kills you during the next week will receive no credit. After the week is up, you have two weeks to obtain a other kill or recruit five more people to the game. Each kill or recruitment of five gives you a week of immunity.
Your journey on The Dark Path comes with certain perks. Such as information about your fellow Hunters. Go to the new tab to check it out.
Bear in mind that this game is not a joke or a prank. If you attempt to contact law enforcement, you will find all proof of the app will be wiped from your phone and you will be placed on the Kill List. Similarly, if you fail to fulfill your obligations every two weeks, you will be placed on the Kill List.
Placement on the Kill List means that all other Hunters get to see your location at all times. If this does not resolve the issue on its own, a member of our customer service department will visit you for final resolution.
Be warned that your location and actions are not being ascertained only from your phone or tablet. Feel free to attempt to “unplug" or go “off-the-grid", but know you are only wasting valuable time that you could be hunting.
Most of all, try to have fun with it. You are just beginning down The Dark Path, and it has much more to give if you can stay on it long enough, including your life.
Happy Hunting!
I numbly flipped to the new tab labeled “The Hunt Klub", and saw a list of almost thirty people scattered across Wisconsin. Clicking on a name brought up a picture of the person, their home address, their phone number and email, and their game stats, including whether they were currently immune or not.
I saw I was on the list too.
My week of immunity is almost up, and I haven't decided what I'm going to do. But whatever comes next, I wanted to get out a warning while I can.
Do not search out the app. I don't know if it can even be found through traditional means, but don’t try. Do not accept referral emails or let other people have access to your phone. Do not assume that this isn't already widespread just because you can't find people talking about it. I hope by posting about it as I have, where I have, this post will stay up, but I don't know.
Finally, if you ignore all of this, if you have to see for yourself if it really exists or if think there's nothing to it beyond a game, at least do me a favor.
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