DIY Haunted 1920's Party (Murder Mystery)

Though this is our third annual party, this is the second we will post on this blog. Even if we could find the information (it's hiding somewhere in packed boxes) , I'm not sure we'd publish it because it has so many flaws. However year 5 will be the same theme to celebrate 5 years. So not this years party but the year after. We've been gradually improving our methods and strategies for how the parties will run and so far this is what we've come up with.

Just a forewarning! This Post contains links to content intended for mature audiences and may contain some of the following themes: drugs, sex, crime, alcohol abuse, mental illness, ect.

Basic Information: After several months of planning and MANY changes to clues and story line we eventually came up with a story driven by a lesbian couple in the 1920s. You can find the ever updated rules on this page. This particular party was designed for two female hosts, Scarlet and Peach, but we included John as well by having him be the ghost of a caretaker. He ended up serving drinks and feeding our guests as well as helping supervise the party and take guesses. I have to say having him around for that role proved to be very helpful, but it's not necessary. And just in case you were wondering this party was written for 11 guests and IS SET IN MODERN TIMES so the hosts are ghosts.

Setting: We dressed up the community room with cobwebs, spiders and vintage decorations like chandeliers, I made mine with paper and string pearls but there are SEVERAL tutorials online to take inspiration from. I also chose to use flowers from hobby lobby that were brown in antique style vases we bought for less than $2 a piece at goodwill. I suggest using a coupon on waiting for a sale at a craft store to buy the flowers. Unfortunately many of the props and decorations did not make their way into happening as we moved several times but I have a few sketches of some inspiration for DIYs I was planning that I highly suggest if you have the time/ ability to do so.

We also used my laptop to play a 1920's track that I purchased on itunes. Just a side note. I opted to make a simple invitation using a strip of dark patterned paper and layering information printed on white printer paper in the center under where I embossed "You're Invited" in gold at the top of the paper layered on black card stock. I included a small card with their character bio, RSVP information and dress code.

Dinner: This year we opted to rent our chairs, dishware and black linens. We also had balloons for the "open bar" which we served mock-tails, You can locate all of our concoctions and on this page. For dinner we chose this crock-pot minestrone soup recipe and bought potato rolls from the supermarket which we heated up 10 minutes before the guests arrived.
We also served apitizered which consisted of tiny sandwiches using sourdough and white bread and my chicken salad recipe as well as cheese cubes.

Writing and Details: I've also included pdfs of our survey we handed out after the party, the new and improved guess sheet and the party story which we based all of our clues off of and the character bios we sent out with the invitations.

And since we didn't put the answer on the clue page here it is:

Who: Mrs. Peacock
Motive: Mental Illness, thinks Peach is possessing Scarlet
Method:Strangulation (with a silk scarf)

Also pertaining to the page of clues, I have them numbered on my own personal print ous in the order I have them typed. They are sorted by type # 1-10 are alibi clues, # 11-16 are method/how clues and #17-30 are motive clues and #31-53 are other clues that either mislead or confirm other things.

The revealing clue #s are as follows Alibi, #10, 43 How, #11 Motive, #22,33

Another change is that we filmed a movie that depiceted what originally happened back in 1920 that our modern day guests had to solve. However this movie was made for personal use only and can't be posted so I suggest you film your own OR read aloud a legend of sorts to get your guests interested.

I considered re-writing the original version of the story which was intended to be hosted by John and I but I decided instead to post what I ended up using as we are already hard at work on this years party and I need to clean out my planner and file box. I decided to keep this post shorter by dividing it up into seperate pages for you to look at so you can find things easier, hopefully this makes it a little easier to use. I hope you enjoy and please let us know if you try this out, we love to hear from you!

Until next time,

John and Courtney aka Plum and Peach

DIY Cop Party Props

I think My favorite thing about doing parties is props. I love seeing how many ways we can personalize our them to make the best experience possible. Aside from DIY invitations and thank yous here is what we did to make our cop party more realistic.

Name badges: This one is one of my favorites. The best part about these is that they work for party favors as well.

  What You Need:

- Blue, Light Yellow, Gold, and Silver Cardstock (I had this at home but you can buy it for less than $0.99 per sheet)

-No heat/machine laminating paper ($6.99 at Joanns Fabric and Craft Store, sometimes you can find half off coupons in the Sunday paper.) OR if you have a laminating machine use that

- Craft Glue

- Black Silky Cord (Around $3 or $4 at craft store)

                                             - Lanyard Hooks (I bought mine in this assorted pack for $5)

                                            - Hole Punch, Scissors, Fine tip sharpie

1. Measure out blue (or desired color) card stock We cut ours 3 inches tall and 2.5 inches wide.

Next find a picture of a police badge clip art online with an easily traceable shape. We cut ours to be just under 2 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall. Print it out and trace it onto some sturdier card stock to be a template. Trace the template onto the back of the silver and gold card stock and cut out.

We then cut out the name pieces like this:

Our top one (for the title) is about 1.5 inches wide by 1 centimeter tall and the bottom one (for the name) is about and inch wide by 2 centimeters tall. We positioned them with the top curving down like a frown and the bottom curving up like a smile. Write the corresponding names and titles on them and glue them to the metallic cardstock. They don't stick super well so you will want to carefully laminate them. If you are using the non machine paper, place the badges carefully on the paper with the backing off. Try to lay them as straight as possible. Leave half an inch of space on either side to make sure the laminate can stick to the second piece. Leave 1 inch on top to have room for the hole. Place the second piece of laminating paper on top as straight as possible. we used a ruler and pushed down as we laid the second piece on top to avoid air bubbles. You may need two people for this.

Once everything is laminated, cut out your badges leaving a little space on either side so it stays laminated. Leave 3/4 of an inch on top and punch a hole through the center of the left over laminate. Add your lanyard hook then string the black cord through it. I made the cords around 2 1/2 feet long since they were for adults. We used a sliding knot to make it adjustable. I used this tutorial to learn how.



Mugshot Background: This one was a huge hit with our guests. Last year was the first time we did a photo booth area. This was super easy to make, it was just really time-consuming

What You Need:

- 4 cardstock poster boards (I believe these we either 2 for $1 or $1 each at the Dollar Tree)

-A couple Sharpies (I would buy some cheap ones since I ran at least 2 out of ink)

-A Ruler/ yardstick

- Masking Tape

                                            - White Out

1. Tape All four pieces or cardstock together to make one big sheet.

2. Take the height of your tallest guest and add 6 inches. Out tallest guest is around 6 feet. So we went 6' 6" for out top height. From that inch height (6' 6" inches for us) measure down to the next foot marking each inch on the side of the poster. This will be the bottom of your inch mark. Make a thicker line (leaving a big space for the number) for the foot mark. Continue down to 3 or 4 feet (wherever you run out of paper). We went down to 3 feet since our shortest guest was under 5 feet tall. Keep in mind that the thicker lines are an inch thick on ours so the top of the line for example would be 5' 1" and the bottom on the line would be 5' 0".

3. Use the ruler or yardstick to draw straight lines across the poster. I recommend marking each side then drawing the line straight across to make sure it was straight.. I actually did the left half of the poster first then drew the lines on the right half to keep things even.

4. If you mess up any of the lines (and trust me I did) go back and use white out to fix it/ Make sure you leave space on the left side of the poster without lines at each foot mark. I chose to cut out big numbers from cardstock and glue them onto the space. You could also draw them on.

5. The last thing I did for our photo shoot was the board that I'm holding int he above picture. I simply cut out the letters and numbers on white cardstock and glued them to a piece of black cardstock. The numbers I picked were actually just the date of the party. 10/24/14

Masking tape body outline: I don't have a picture of this but I'm sure you get the idea. Basically we couldn't use chalk where we were at but we had some masking tape. So John laid half on the ground and leaning on the pool table in the position we wanted our imaginary victim to have died. I then taped around him with the masking tape and we had our body outline. For an added touch I had some window clings that looked like blood spatter from the dollar tree so we placed those around the outline.

*Just on a side note if you have electronics for music or your camera you can make little tents by folding paper in half and writing "Evidence Please Do Not Touch" on them. We did this for our laptop so people wouldn't mess with my playlist and for my little camera. We also had some evidence markers from a kit with numbers on them and they were plastic but you could just fold yellow cardstock and make cut outs of numbers.

So that's all I have for this one. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments!

until next time,

John and Courtney

DIY Cop Clue Party "On The Scene" Inspriation and Everything you need!

 
Two years ago we threw our first annual Clue Party.  It was really just based off the 1980's movie and the board game, but since this was a new thing for our group of friends, it was still exciting. The next year we had to bump it up a notch. We decided to go with a crime scene theme, all of our friends would work as cops or investigators and they would figure out which one of them "murdered" their "associate".

Photo from DIY Mugshot Photobooth

When we did our first party, we established a system for how everyone would figure out "who dunnit". We took notecards and wrote "clues" and then hid them in envelopes around the room for our guests to find. This year we went with the same system but the envelopes and notecards look different. However we had to make one crucial change.

Hiding the clues for the first party was a two minute process and a month long clean up. We literally found clues a month later. When discussing clues this year we came up with the following system:

We numbered the clues and made a master list (not shown). This list had everything from which clue was what number to where each number was hidden in the room. We also enforced a rule about putting the clues back exactly how the guests found them.

We disguised our Master list by calling it a master notebook and making it look similar to the ones we passed out to our guests. In the notebook we also included our opening and closing speeches, a list of all the guests and thier assigned aliases, and a place to write how many guesses each guest had made.

Every year we assign aliases, character bios, and alibis. We keep track of these things and write clues to confirm their alibis...or not confirm the "killer's". These alibis are sent to the corresponding guests with the invitations on notecards, as well as recorded in our master notebook.

Finished invitations with rough drafts of alibis and bios.

This is a system we find works well. You can find the attached page of clues here. We wrote these for 10 guests plus the two hosts. Drugs and sex are mentioned, for children we would advise changing these things. However these were written for a very specific group of young adults. Unfortunately I don't have the bios for everyone anymore but it shouldn't be hard to come up with something based off of the alibi clues. If you really can't come up with anything email us and we will track it down for you from our files which are not with me currently.

For props and such we tend to DIY a lot of things. We did buy some crime scene tape and evidence markers (not shown) at a Halloween store, but for the most personalized experience we choose to make most things. It also usually costs less. For instructions on what you see below and a couple more ideas check out our Cop Party DIYs

DIY Laminate Badges

Unfinished DIY Mugshot Background

 
You can also find a list of rules here. These are what we found works best to keep the party going for a decent amount of time.

If you have any additional questions or would like more information on this years clue party feel free to email us at our contact email or comment below. We will do our best to track down some more of the info. We apologize for not having the answer to the mystery posted, we have it on file and will post it here pretty soon.

We recommend explaining the rules to everyone as they come in, it makes it easier not to break character from that point forward. We do this every Halloween, so this is from the 2014 clue party. We will post 2015's party after it's conclusion so our guests can't cheat...not that we think they would.

 

Until Next Time, 

John and Courtney