With the kids out of town and Friday the 13th upon us, we found it to be the perfect time to break out a game we found at the thrift store months ago – a Murder Mystery Party. After a check to make sure all the contents were there, we started inviting friends to attend a murder mystery party at our house:
Dear Name of Character Here,
Hart’s untimely death casts suspicion on us all. The police report has already been filed (see enclosed). We must meet quickly in order to solve the murder and clear our good names.
Hosted By:
on Friday, June 13 at 6:00pm
Please RSVP by Wednesday, June 11
Please bring a dish to share – no poison
We sent this email to each guest along with the police report detailing the homicide. We began with our game night regulars, then when some of them couldn’t make it, we tried to cast accordingly. The casting, by the way, just happened to work out perfectly. Originally, we were going to have to make a male character female, but once we switched some things around based on which guests were coming, it all worked out. And in retrospect, the swapping male for female thing would not have worked well at all! My husband and I were originally going to be the married couple, but those characters were a few decades older than us, and the characters we did end up playing had a secret infatuation with each other, so we were both pleased to discover this in the course of the game. Unfortunately, when my turn came to come up with a ‘formal accusation’, evidence dictated that I point my finger at my husband, aka, secret crush, but that’s how you play the game. Each guest came in costume and character and stayed that way for the roughly 3 hours we played the game. All in all, a lot of fun, and we’ve already had several people who were disappointed that they couldn’t make it. So, we’ll have to scour the thrift stores and / or the intenet in hopes of finding another one of these Murder Mystery games to play… providing we can get all (almost 4!) kids out of the house for an evening again… hmmm, that might be the REAL mystery!
Thanks for blogging about your murder mystery experience. I played this exact same murder dinner once before and thought it was absolutely great … I wonder if you could please post the exact name of the game and the name of the company that makes it? I am eager to find out if there are more in the series because I’m sure they would be just as entertaining! Thanks.
Hi Frank, thanks for visiting and leaving a comment! The game I was referring to in this post was a Murder Mystery Party game, and this particular episode is called “Intrigue at Sparkling Water” by Jan Sosa and Henry Sosa. We also have a few other brands of murder mystery games; there’s How to Host a Murder and Murder Ala Carte… We also had an All My Children one, but we have it to a friend to host. We picked up all the ones we have at the Goodwill and other thrift stores, they’re usually a few bucks. Well worth it, as long as you check for all the pieces. Our second murder mystery experience didn’t go so well; it had a cassette tape, and you listen to little tidbits from the tape to give you clues. But the tape just blurted out who the murderer was when we weren’t ready yet!!! Same thing happened on an episode of The Office, if you watch that show – it was hilarious! So I guess I would recommend trying one without a cassette tape, but either way, they’re lots of fun!! Good luck!
Hi taylhis, thanks so much for the response! This is exactly what I wanted to know 🙂 Thank you, and best wishes to you and your family! Keep up the awesome blogging 🙂