We had heard about the ARG meetup from Cristin (as always). We met in Chicago a few hours before we were supposed to be there. There was a countdown on the site with two coordinates - one in New York City and one in Chicago. We met at Chicago at the time that it said on the site at the coordinates and there were all sorts of other people mulling about.

Suddenly, a few people with “Gotham City News” sidebags showed up to pass out newspapers, pins, Citizens for Batman T-shirts, and keychains. Following that, four or so pizza boxes were given out (with Pizza, of course), each one had directions in it. Elise and I hung back because we thought they were just passing out more T-shirts which people were going equally wild over. Suddenly, this guy goes bolting past by himself screaming “run south! RUN SOUTH”.

While we were running with him, he was telling us the directions to our next objective - find a lockbox by a citizens for batman sticker. I looked behind me and there were about a hundred or so people in the same shirt sprinting after us. I screamed “run faster”, half-jokingly, and we sprinted to the next objective. We found the lockbox, the guy with the code unlocked this little combination safe, and we sprinted off to our next objective, a park a little further south.

From there, we were directed to find a hidden CB radio. There were two men there, both of which I thought were potential actors but turned out to be homeless people. The droves of people behind us finally caught up and joined the search for the radio. Meanwhile, another team was on their way back to the park from another objective in which they recovered a sheet of paper that held an anagram on it. Turns out, it was a sort of bat and we looked it up on my friend’s phone.

We transmitted the answer to the riddle on the hand radio (which some guy had found somewhere - I wasn’t really around for that part in all of the chaos) and the bat signal was SUPPOSED to suddenly shine on the Sears tower - unfortunately, it was way too light to see it, so it sort of failed until about 10:00 PM when it finally showed up. Overall, it was worth it for the insane scavenger hunt and the awesome amount of swag as well as the sight of the bat-signal on the Sears tower while driving away on the highway, but the conclusion was a little unsatisfying because of the bugs. There were hundreds left waiting for more, and when we finally left the crowd had dwindled to something around 10.

Photo taken from Orthodexy’s Flickr. Hope she doesn’t mind. I would’ve had my own photos, but I stupidly left my camera at home. Next time, I’ll be prepared.