17704

Murder Mystery Party -14yr- Papa Johns Delivery

March 2008

Laura in Centreville, Virginia, USA

Honorable Mention

My best friend was turning fourteen and wasn't planning anything special for her birthday, so I got permission from her mom to throw her a surprise party!  I decided to make it a murder mystery theme. 

INVITATIONS: For the invitations, I wrote the party details in code and included a decoder with them.  Then, I sent them to all of the birthday girl's friends, but not to her.  I called her mom on the phone to let her know when to be there. 

DECORATIONS: Our house is kind of Victorian looking on the inside, so I decorated it to look like an old mansion.  All of the decorations were either black, gold, or silver.  I set the dining room table with our nice dishes and a fancy table cloth as if we were going to be having a formal dinner. 

PARTY TIME: Everyone except the birthday girl arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon.  On our kitchen table, I had laid out a blank white t-shirt and a bunch of colored sharpies.  While we were waiting, we all wrote a birthday note to her on the shirt and signed it.  Then, at 4:50, my friend arrived.  Her mom had told her that they were going to the mall, and they needed to drop something off at our house on the way there.  When the car pulled up, we all hid behind the dining room table (it is right neat the front door) and waited for her to come in.  Then, we all jumped out and yelled Surprise!"  She went hysterical!  If you throw this party and some were puzzles we had to decipher to find out where to go. 

Finally the clues led us to one of our telephones.  There was a number next to it (my dad's cellphone#) and a note telling us to call it and request "the loot" to whoever answers.  My dad disguised his voice so that no one knew it was him and said that he would deliver it as soon as possible.  Then he hung up.  The next minute the door bell rang.  It was my dad with some boxes of pizza!  While we were doing the hunt he had secretly gone out to Papa John's and picked some up.  Our call was his cue to ring the bell.  After we finished laughing we ate dinner at the dining room table.  The nice dishes and table cloth was a funny contrast to the pizza and soda we ate. 

By the time we finished eating it was getting quite dark so we played a really fun game called Murderer in the Dark.  This is how you play.  You take as many playing cards from the deck as there are people.  One is a jack and one is a queen.  The rest are just numbers.  Then you shuffle the cards and hand one to each person.  Nobody reveals the card they got except for the one who got the jack.  That person is the detective.  The one who got the queen is the murderer and the rest are the victims. 

After the detective tells who he is he leaves the room and closes the door behind him.  Then you turn off the lights in the room (the room needs to be really dark then) and everyone left in the room walks around and shakes hands with random people.  It needs to be dark so you don't know who's hand you are shaking.  Some time during the hand shaking process the murderer tickles someone's hand.  That person then counts silently to five and screams and falls over.  That person is now "dead". 

Upon hearing the scream the detective comes back to the room and turns back on the lights.  All the people except for the dead person must line up against the wall.  The detective can then question each person by asking questions like "Where were you when the person screamed?" and must try to decide who the murderer was.  Here is the catch.  Everyone MUST tell the truth except for the murderer. 

Once the detective finds out who the murderer was you reshuffle the cards and start a new round.  Make sure you remove any breakable objects in the room before playing this game.  Then we took a break for cake.  We all gathered in the dining room again and my mom brought out a covered platter covered in question marks and other mystery stuff.  But when my friend lifted up the top there was no cake there!  There was just a sign that read: "Oh no!  The cake has disappeared!  To find it play hot or cold until you reach it."  My friend did it with my mom and eventually found it in one of the kitchen cabinets. 

After the cake my friend opened presents then we all watched one of the old Nancy Drew movies from the 70's.  Then all the guests were picked up by there moms.  But my friend's mom dropped off some sleep over stuff and she stayed the night at my house. 

She told me it was the best party she had ever had!"

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