The First Party
Theme: Surprise Murder Mystery
Location: In-law’s Wisconsin home
Costume: Andy Warhol’s drug-induced hallucination
(to compliment lover’s Andy Warhol costume)
To offer some background: my husband’s family owns a home with a small forest on a lake near a tiny town in the middle-of-nowhere, Wisconsin. Obviously this remote, woodsy location is perfect for Halloween parties. The year before, the women who became my crazy mother-in-law and my crazy aunt-in-law threw a road rally Halloween party, which involved car-fulls of friends, friends of friends, locals, and family members running around town and the backwoods searching for the answers to various clues. Incredible fun was had by all. The following year, my (then) lover and I decided to co-plan a party with his parents at their Wisconsin home. The theme we chose this year was: Surprise Murder Mystery.
It will take much effort to unearth that script, so I am not going to re-print it here. It was far too involved anyway to be worth copying. Instead I’ll just offer highlights.
Good ideas we had:
1) We used the element of surprise. We started out the party by telling guests we were having another road rally. We told everyone they had to walk down to the end of the long, winding driveway in order to open their first clues (we even distributed sealed envelopes supposedly containing road rally clues). As we walked down the driveway we were met my a ‘local police officer’ (friend of the family) who drove up with his lights blazing, sirens wailing, saying he was there to investigate a missing person’s report. He shone his flashlight around and there, in the bushes, was a dead scientologist (we found a copy of Dianetics at the thrift store and planted it with the stuffed dummy). The officer then announced that he was now investigating a murder and everyone at the scene was a suspect – so we all had to return to the house.
This went over very well with the guests. Everyone was surprised to see the officer pull up and seemed to enjoy the change of events. This was a great start to the party, in my opinion.
2) We killed a lot of people. I firmly believe everyone has a little drama queen or king inside of them and wants an excuse to let them reign for a few moments. While some folks were assigned specific tasks, we also offered a couple ‘massive death scenes’ lots of people could participate in. These instructions were all placed in a hat and anyone who wanted to was allowed to draw from the hat. For example, one of the clues was ‘when acr serves the cake she made, take a piece, then fall over dead from poisoning.’ When the time came I boasted very loudly about the cake I had baked, while my lover and his mother criticized my baking ability. Then, a few people went into lovely dramatic fits and threw themselves dead upon the floor. If nothing else, it was a great comic moment.
Note: the rules of our game allowed dead members to continue playing, they just had to wear a sign denoting they were ‘dead’ or ‘terminated’ or ‘deceased’ or ‘expired’ etc.
3) We had a specific prize. The person who correctly guessed both the murderer and the reason for the murders won a ‘how to throw a murder mystery party’ game, and the prize money (all participants were charged $5 to play). We actually had a tie, so one person won the prize money and the other won the game. I learned having an actual prize offers a good way to wrap-up the festivities, and gives the winner/s a nice memento.
4) We covered a lot of ground. Halloween parties should be active and involve (if possible) both indoor and outdoor locations or events. People are in costume! Let them get up and move around and be silly together. No one wants to spend the night dressed as Dracula sitting in the living room like a lump.
A few not-so-good-ideas, and what we learned:
1) Don’t have too much going on. We had approximately 8-10 specific deaths in addition to the massive death scenes. There was way too much action, and it was extremely confusing. Even those of us who planned the mystery were at times confused as to the proper course of events. Although people told us they had fun, I think we ‘lost’ a lot of people after death #3 or 4. In addition, we had a lot of red herrings that many people didn’t even catch, due to the amount of action occurring. While the massive death scenes were fun and funny, the high number of specific murders was not a great idea.
We learned the valuable lesson of KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
2) Don’t overuse props and technology. Among the props we used were a videotape (of me, baking the cake), a gun, an ax, blood pellets, a bloody rock, tarot cards, a dummy, etc etc etc. Again, many people missed some of these things, the blood pellets didn’t burst, the blood on the rock was invisible in the dark, the tarot deck was incorrectly shuffled so it was hard to find the death card, and I think the videotape just plain confused people.
Again, Keep It Simple, Stupid.
3) Keep a sense of humor and perspective. Some of our corpses laughed. Our murderess did not jump up and scream, “I just want to be left alone!!!!!!” on cue. Many people wondered what the hell my costume was instead of paying attention to the instructions (which were overwritten and not necessary anyway). As a party planner, you can not get upset that your masterpiece isn’t being received as the adrenaline-filled extravaganza you expected it to be. Smile, laugh, and get on with it.
4) Do NOT involve the planners directly in the action. It takes at least two people to run any large party event. You need to answer questions, review rules, and keep track of the schedule. It’s difficult to do that when you’re lying in the middle of the woods waiting for everyone to find you with your skull bashed in. As much fun as it is to play a corpse, as a planner you don’t have that luxury. Let someone else do it.
In summary, it was a fun party, and a great experience planning it. However, it will not go down in history as one of the all time great Halloween events, and that is fine. I learned, and people had fun in spite of the mishaps.
Posted by acr at November 9, 2003 07:00 AM | TrackBack