2003 party
Theme: On-site Scavenger Hunt; “The Night We Killed the Party Guests”
Location: Family House-on-a-Farm in Wisconsin
Costumes: Sid & Nancy
We were up in Wisconsin for a family event when someone asked my husband and I when our next [WI] Halloween party would be. We decided to throw one that year. Members of my husband’s family wanted to co-host, so we decided to hold the party at his sister’s farmhouse. Her house sits on 5 acres and includes outbuildings such as a horse barn and an enormous storage shed.
The idea:
Invitations were sent out detailing the sad story of a beautiful princess whose crazy family killed people every Halloween. Guests were invited to come to the beautiful princess’ castle but told to beware the shed – for her family were waiting to lure people inside and then do them in. Guests were helpfully provided with a specific time and date for their demise.
Since we had people in two different locations both wanting to host the party, I divided the tasks down the middle. My husband’s family was responsible for general preparations such as food etc, and also for designing a maze in the storage shed. The idea was that if guests could not successfully complete the maze, they would “die.” My husband and I created an on-site scavenger hunt, which took the idea of a road rally but instead kept all of the action in one location, i.e. his sister’s farmland. We all decided to share the expense of the party equally, and communicated via email regarding what everyone needed to provide.
The execution of the idea, and the guests:
Right away, my husband’s family decided it would be prohibitively difficult and expensive to construct a maze in the shed. So they came up with a very creative idea: only a corner of the shed would be ‘mazed off’ with an old pool cover and a tarp. Guests would run into the inside of the tarp where they would then sit down and be directed to complete a cartoon maze copied out of a game book. Of course, anyone who didn’t complete the maze correctly ‘died.’
In order to get into the maze in the first place, guests had to complete a series of clues – this was the road rally part of the game. To compete, guests were divided into teams. Each team had to successfully solve 9 riddles. If a team member solved a riddle, then another member of their team advanced to the next clue – if they failed, they ‘died.’ Dying was the equivalent of losing a turn – the team member could continue to play but they themselves could not volunteer to solve a riddle until all other members of their team had already taken a turn. Teams had to keep track of how many deaths they had. The grand prize went to the team who first solved the maze, and a second place prize went to the team with the least amount of deaths.
Clues were designed to have teams running all over the large yard. One clue sent guests scurrying down to the mailbox, another to the horse barn, and another behind the house to the apple orchard. Following are some of my favorite clues:
Clue #1
Name Numerology
First off, please notice that in the yard there are nine pumpkins, each with a number 1-9 on it. The object of this clue is to add up all of the letters in your name so they equal one single digit number. Use the chart and the example below to guide you. After you have calculated the single digit numerological value of your name, then go to the pumpkin with the corresponding number and grab the next clue.
Note: in order to make the game more interesting, some of these pumpkins/numbers WILL kill you. So, if you are killed, the next player in your team has to figure out the numerological value of their name, and try a different pumpkin. Good luck.
Clue #2
The next clue is under the gargoyle in the driveway.
As you can see, there are 2 gargoyles in the driveway.
You have a 50/50 chance of guessing the right gargoyle. Good luck!
If you guess incorrectly, then you die and the next player on your team has to try and solve this clue.
Hint: If it takes you more than two turns to solve this clue, then you’ve had too much to drink.
Clue #3
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s house fell on the wicked witch of the _________.
We have the remains of 4 wicked witches around the yard, North, South, East, and West.
The correct answer to the above will move your team on to the next clue.
The wrong answer will kill you, and another team member needs to try and figure it out.
Hint: If it takes you more than 4 turns to solve this clue, then you’ve REALLY had too much to drink.
Clue #9
In the front yard, there are gravestones for four famous scary characters, Godzilla, Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy.
Let’s say you are in Transylvania, on your way home from robbing the great pyramid in Egypt of all its cursed treasure. It’s lunchtime, and you’ve sent your faithful servant Franz to the local pub to get some sausages and blood pudding for lunch.
Little do you know, Franz has stolen the Egyptian treasure from you, and plans to run away to America to make his fortune. Suddenly, the local villagers begin running in a panic . . . screaming about a large green monster which is destroying the forest just a few miles away. At the same moment, you feel a cold chill run down your spine, like something evil has found you . . . your pulse quickens, and terrified you turn around and see . . .
Who or what do you see? More importantly, who or what do you NOT see? The next clue is hidden behind the gravestone of the creature LEAST likely to attack you. If you don’t answer this correctly, certain death awaits. Then one of your other team members gets to try their hand at solving this clue.
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And so on. Guests seemed to have a really good time trying to solve these clues, and we received feedback for literally weeks afterwards telling us what a wonderful party it had been. I am eager to try and adapt this idea for my own home one of these years, but obviously this kind of game works better when you have a large area in which to run around.
What we learned:
1) Invest in a home printer. This party took a LOT of work. Not only did we have to gather props for each clue, I also needed to create several copies of rules, instructions, and envelopes. The envelopes were one of the biggest time investments, because for each clue I needed 4 envelopes (one for each team) holding the next clue, and at least an additional 4 envelopes saying “No, you are dead” in case a team member guessed the incorrect answer. For clues #3 and #9, where there were 3 possible wrong answers, I needed 12 wrong-answer envelopes just to be safe (and one team even took 5 guesses to figure out clue #9). Since our home printer wasn’t working I wrote out all of the envelopes by hand, and wore out a sharpie. During the game most of our envelopes got rained on or crumpled, so they can not be reused.
2) Try to anticipate everything that can go wrong, and have an answer for it. Luckily, we did, and had an answer for all the different questions.
3) Explain the rules 3 or 4 times. Circulate amongst the teams and make sure the rules are being followed. One of the guests took ALL the answer envelopes for one of the clues, thus leaving other teams without any correct answer envelopes. We had to replace the missing envelopes without giving away the correct answer. Luckily we caught the error pretty quickly so no harm was done.
4) Grossly overestimate the time it will take to set-up. That’s all I’m saying.
5) No one in rural Wisconsin knows who Sid and Nancy are. As near as people could figure, I was dressed like Madonna.
In summary, this was probably the best Halloween party we ever had. I think it’s the sort of thing anyone could plan; you just need to use a lot of imagination. And be very organized (we had about 40 guests and if I hadn’t been hyper-prepared things could have quickly become chaotic). Given the amount of work it took, however, I think I could only organize a party like this every other year. So, in 2004, we put the guests to work.