A Murder Mystery Halloween Party

Throwing a Murder Mystery Halloween party will leave your guests dying to get there to see what the mystery is all about, thrilled to participate in solving the mystery, and talking about your party for months and years afterwards.

If you want your home to be “the place to be” this Halloween, read on for some great ideas for a fun (and safe) murder mystery party for kids and adults alike.

Where

At your home – as you’ll see, a party like this may involve decorating several of the rooms in your home, or you can confine it to your basement or family/great room. If the weather is warm enough (even if cool), you can have at least some of the party on your patio or deck or back yard too. If your guests will include kids, having the party right around dinner time is perfect as it will be getting (or already) dark then, but won’t be so late that the kids are losing it.

Invitations

The important part of the invitation is that it introduces your guests to what the party theme and tone will be. You can go silly, as with Clue, or serious, as with a crime from real life or a Law and Order episode (with some details changed to make the solution a surprise of course). You can do famous cases or make something up from scratch. Regardless, your invitation gives the guest an idea of what to expect when they come to your party. Personally, I love the idea of a Costume Ball Mystery – that way everyone can wear whatever costume they want and not feel out of place.

Costumes

While you can have a specific theme for your party, such as Cinderella or Dead Celebrities, or Monsters, you can also just leave it up to your guests to drew up in whatever they want. Either way, costumes should be expected!

Favors

Favor ideas (that are suitable for both kids and adults) can be polaroid mug shots of each guest, anything that glows in the dark (necklaces, sticks, wands, etc.), small bags of candy (maybe made to look like crime scene tape), fingerprint dust (candy), sketches of the suspects, small pads of paper (for taking crime scene notes), nail files, fake police badges, flashlights, handcuffs, whistles, etc. For kids, matchbox police cars too.

Decorations

Here is where the fun is! You’ll need to decorate your house as though a crime was committed. If kids will be around, you’ll need to have any gory stuff you want to include in a room where they will not be or avoid it altogether. It doesn’t have to be bloody to be thrilling!

First, general decorations for the food and mingling area:

-> Black, orange, and metallic balloons and streamers would look great, especially if you have the balloons filled with helium and allow them to float on the ceiling with long ribbons on them. This gives a surreal kind of feeling with dim light.

-> Of course the light should be dim. There are all kinds of halloween lighting, including black lights, cauldron lights, candles, etc. (This is for the food/mingling area; the lighting in your crime scene will vary depending on the crime you want to present.)

-> Candles on the main table as a centerpiece are great -if you use candles, be sure that kids can’t get to them. There are some really neat dripping blood candles. Or you can display carved pumpkins.

-> Tableware could be black, orange, metallic, or in a nice Halloween pattern.

As for the rest of the house, you might want to only decorate one room, or several, depending on the crime story you decide to use or create. Here are some ideas:

-> Put crime scene tape across your front door. (Make sure it is easy for people to lift up to get in and put back for other guests.

-> In the bathroom, write a cryptic clue in lipstick on the mirror. Put a fake dead body in the bathtub with fake blood all over him (If kids are coming, you might want to skip this!) To make him, you can stuff clothes with hay or wadded up paper and use a stuffed mask for the head. You can use ketchup for blood.

-> Use glow in the dark tape to create a figure outline on a floor, or put bits and pieces on the walls to try to give the impression of spattered blood lit up with infrared light.

-> Create a room in which things are overturned and broken and where it looks like a big struggle/fight has taken place.

-> If kids will participate, you should probably use a “Clue” game theme and leave clues all over the house that are more kid-friendly than fake dead bodies and such.

Either way, if you want to make a game out of it, the idea is to make it so guests can devise their own theories as to exactly what happened, so you’ll need a “police officer” or other person of authority to read off the stats of the crime and background information to guests as they view the crime scene room(s). (Or, you can include this information on your invitations!)

You can create it so that there is a definite guilty person, or you can just have people create theories and select the best one to be the winner. Alternatively, you don’t have to require that guests solve the crime but just use the crime scene as part of your decorating theme.

Food

There are so many Halloween themed food ideas that I can’t even begin to crack the surface of what is available, from haunted house cakes to spiderweb cookies to brain-shaped jello molds to “finger” foods (little hot dogs), etc. Just use your imagination or search online for “halloween recipes.”

As for crime-scene related ideas, pretty much any recipes that have human parts (fingers, bones, brain, eyeballs, etc.) and anything bloody. Also, police-type ideas include coffee and doughnuts (no offense meant to our people in blue!), badge shaped cookies or cake, and foods that are easy to eat on the way to a crime scene, like sandwiches and wraps.

Don’t forget Halloween drinks! A cauldron of fruit punch, or a punch bowl of any iced drink that is good for everyone. Be sure to have basics: coffee, soda, iced tea, and if your guests like, beer and wine.

Cake

For a Halloween party, a cake is not mandatory, but if you want to have one, there are lots of online ideas for Halloween. I couldn’t find a crime scene style cake, but a badge or handcuff shape would be cool.

Games

Of course, your mystery can be a game and you can also have Halloween oriented games too, including bobbing for apples, candy or treasure hunt, pumpkin carving, etc. When I throw parties for kids, having several games planned is great, but for a more adult party, just socializing seems to be what my guests tend to want to do for the most part.

Entertainment

You’ll probably want to have some Halloween spooky music CDs. Since the crime scene will take some time, you might want to have a stereo with music rather than live entertainment. But it’s completely up to you and what your guests would enjoy the most. I wonder if there’s a CD with theme songs from crime drama TV shows anywhere? Or if you have a police scanner or even have a crime show on TV or on DVD playing, like a season of Law and Order or CSI.

There are endless ideas for having a crime scene Halloween party – as I mentioned, you could set it up like an actual crime scene or set it up like a Clue mystery. You could also create a Scooby Doo mystery or a mystery involving Halloween-type creatures like ghosts, werewolves, vampires, etc. It’s all dependent on what type of Halloween crime party you want to have.

Cheryl Williams runs the Party Planning Ideas website, http://www.party-planning-ideas.com, your resource for ideas for all facets of your party planning.

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