Hosting A Murder Mystery Party

Once upon a very long time ago, I went to a holiday club that was based on the Cludo board game.  We literally went around interviewing Mr Green in the Ball Room and Mrs White in the Kitchen, keeping a look out for candlesticks and daggers.

It was magical.

Ever since then I have been dying (pun intended) to host my very own Murder Mystery party and finally my wish came true for our end of year Christmas function.  Thankfully they had watched enough Big Bang Theory to be excited about it too.

The idea was set and I was excited.  Until I had to sit down and figure out how on Earth to do it all.  When my friend mentioned that she’d been to a party hosted by Be Part Of The Mystery I was sold.  I got in touch with Lente about our group dynamics (we’d be at least 10 people) and she recommended a few options including The Masked Massacre and The Big Apple – Shaken Not Stirred, but because our office is basically its own soapy, we bought the On A Slippery Soap as our mystery for the evening.

Basically throughout the course of the evening the Detective (usually the host of the party) leads the guests through the mystery, slowly unraveling the plot with each one of the three courses.  At the end of the evening the murderer is accused and fun is had by all.  Make sure the Detective knows what’s going on though, let’s just say that our Detective Visagie (or rather my business partner Jan) wouldn’t make it as a cop.

Each guest is assigned their own character a week before the party and they get their little packs with information about their character to read through.  They also get a cheat sheet of information to divulge at each one of the three courses.  The more you get into character and embrace it, the better.  You also get little props that heavily add to the game dynamic – so funny to watch them all being whipped out.

One of our main problems with hosting such a “big” party (17 guests to sit down at the same table to be able to hear all of the plot twists and details).  It meant that due to the size we’d have to have it outside.  To combat this we hired a Bedouin tent from Strech Inc.  They were amazing – well priced and so organised.  They even gave us extra chairs, tables and lights because they were in the bakkie and wouldn’t be used again for the weekend.  AMAZING!

The stage was set but we needed something to eat for the main course (without having to make it ourselves and potentially killing everyone with food poisoning).  So I made a bread and cheeseboard for starters, then we ordered pizzas, pastas and salads from Eat Out The Box (our regular Friday night pizza stop) with ice cream for dessert.  Low key but lekker.  The food arrived on time and it was hot and delish – as usual.

We had a ball of an evening.

I might have watched far too many episodes of Dexter and such, because no one even suspected I was the murderer.  Not even my husband.  Ha!  Take that as a warning.