How to create a murder mystery dinner party.
- Julie R. Neidlinger
- Mar 27
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 10
This is the story of a mystery dinner party I threw in 2014, and wrote about a few months later.
In 2014 a friend had invited a few of us to a murder mystery dinner party held at the old governor’s mansion here in Bismarck. It was around the time of Halloween, and my friend and I arrived with the sun firmly set and with a live bat flapping about on the sidewalk in the damp leaves.
From there, things got worse.
The friend I arrived with ended up being the murder “victim” and I, being introverted and disinclined to meet or talk to new people, was abandoned halfway through the event due to his untimely death.
As with most murder mystery dinner parties, the murder mystery party at the governor’s mansion had a theme: the Wild West frontier of North Dakota. We were encouraged to dress in costumes to fit the theme. We were also given characters with detailed role descriptions and instructions on what we had to say to other characters. Essentially, these kinds of murder mystery dinner parties are live-action theatrical performances in which the cast, sans the audience, tries to figure out the who and why of the murder.
This was very awkward.
But I like the idea of solving a mystery with other people, so I decided to throw a murder mystery dinner party for my friend’s birthday that would be different, completely rid of the elements that made me uncomfortable.
I decided I would create a murder mystery dinner party on my own.
Create A Murder Mystery Dinner Party: Deciding How The Game Would Work
Before creating any of the clues, I had worked out the game in my head and in my Leuchtturm notebook beforehand.
1. The Engine: A mix of location clues and murder clues.
To avoid the complex character descriptions and requirements (which often fails when a guest doesn’t show, as did happen at the aforementioned party), I decided that there would be two kinds of clues and that this would be an active mystery instead of an acting mystery.
One set of clues would be location clues and have blue labels. These blue location clues would lead the group to different locations to find the second kind of clues, the red-labeled murder clues. At each location, the group would collect murder clues, which included 1) items of interest and 2) clue cards.
The items of interest were things like faux photos, maps, and other ephemera that fit the story and contained both real clues and red herrings.
The clue cards came in three varieties:
Death Cards: They tell you if someone died.
Scene Cards: They tell you what is happening.
Quote Cards: They tell you what someone said.
The clue cards helped me avoid relying on or forcing participants to memorize a character bio and recite specific lines to ensure the information was known. Both the clue cards and the items of interest would all be used to help solve the murder.
Essentially, they were solving two mysteries: the location of clues and the murder. They were literally hunting for clues.
Images © Julie R. Neidlinger. All rights reserved.
2. The Framework: An overall theme to tell the story.
I wanted a theme so that the story of the game and the visual appearance of the clues would make sense. I didn’t require anyone to dress up or act according to the theme, though.
I decided to use Edgar Allen Poe as the “narrator” of the event, so all notes and invitations were signed with the mysterious “E,” whose identity they would figure out during the game.
I used the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None as the story of the event. This required rewriting the nursery rhyme in Christie’s novel to fit the group and reworking the names and some of the deaths to fit the puzzle I was creating.
3. The Game Rules: Work together, but win on your own.
The rules of the game were simple. As a group, they should work together to solve the location clues and focus on collecting all of the murder clues. However, they were to solve the murder on their own.
I created a “book box” with envelopes and instructions to collect all of the clues, instructing the players to not spend time on the murder clues until all of the location clues had brought them back to home base. Then, they could all sit down, put the murder clues in a pile, and work out the solution to the murder mystery on their own. They were to each write down who they thought the murderer was on a slip of paper, and those who got it correct would win.
4. The Anticipation: Making sure everyone is coming and excited.
I invited people to the party informally first, asking if they could commit to that date and that if they weren’t sure, I needed to know. It is imperative that everyone comes and that it’s clear this isn’t an event they can cancel if something better comes along.
Once I had firm commitments, I sent out mysterious themed paper invitations in the mail. They were signed by the mysterious “E” and had the image of a raven, which would be used at the party. The raven was a hand-carved linoleum print/stamp.
Each guest was given a character name. I based them on the characters in the Christie story, adjusting them to fit the gender of the guest, as well as trying to tweak them enough that a Google search wouldn’t give away the plot.
The Night Of The Murder Mystery Dinner Party
The guests arrived, and I instructed them not to discuss the mystery, their character names, or anything else.
We all sat down at the table, which, though not terribly fancy, had a kind of theme going. And, important to gameplay were the scrolls at each plate. They had the character’s name and a summation of the character. If you are familiar with Christie’s story, you’ll know that the characters were nefarious themselves.
The guests were told not to open their scrolls until instructed and to keep dinner conversation casual and not about the mystery or any speculation of what was in store for them.
Once it was clear we were all finished with dinner, I quietly held up a piece of paper that said, “I’m Dead.” The game was about to start.
I had the guests open the character scrolls and read them aloud. I then handed the Murder Mystery Dinner Party box to my friend and instructed him to open it. There was an envelope inside that said, “Read This First!” It contained a letter from E, the narrator of the event, and the same person who sent them their invitations a few weeks earlier.
This letter outlined the rules of the event and explained how to play the game. It also allowed them one free “help” call to me if they were stuck figuring out a clue, but only one. The first location clue was included in the murder box to get things started. It was hidden beneath a dining room chair. The next clue marks the beginning of the real location clue challenges.
I created a map that was actually of the living room downstairs, but it resembled a traditional island-and-sea treasure map. It led to the next location, a piece of art with a ship in it. Two sofas, a table with a lamp (the sun), an electric fireplace (the fire pit), the TV (bluffs of insanity), and the bookshelves (cliffs of knowledge).
At the ship art location, they found the next clue and a murder clue packet. This location clue was going to take them out of the house and to Barnes and Noble (Noble Barn, a barn “fit for kings”) to find a specific book. That book was needed to crack the code for the next location.
This location clue proved to be the most difficult, and while they didn’t exactly crack the code fully, they didn’t use up their free help (though they did text me to tell me they were struggling with it). With part of the code cracked and a few other hints, they managed to figure out that the next location was my friend’s mailbox.
The location clue found in the mailbox was a small blue folio with the word “ENT” on the cover. Inside was a pop-up tree and a riddle.
Lord of the Rings fans knew what an Ent was right away and that they were looking for a big tree of some sort.
In Bismarck, there is a street in the “suburbs” with a giant cottonwood tree in the middle of it where the road splits around it. Early that morning, I had tied a small plastic bag with the next clue at the base of the caution sign next to that tree. The group quickly figured this out.
At the tree, the group found a location clue that pointed to a raven bust that I had on top of a bookcase in the living room. I had turned a light on behind it earlier, so if anyone was noticing as they were trying to find the ship clue, they would have seen the raven silhouette clearly against the light. My friend also remembered this bust.
The clue under the raven bust pointed to my copy of Christie’s And Then There Were None on the corner bookshelf of the same room.
In the book was the final location clue, announcing that the game was over and instructing them to return upstairs and focus on solving the murder mystery itself.
Let’s take a look at the murder mystery clues that they had to work with now that you’ve seen the location clues. (To see them in more detail, purchase the PDF with the detailed clues.)
The first clue cards had a blank death card (no one new died). There was information on the quote and scene card, as well as the revamped version of the nursery rhyme, which hinted at what was coming.
The next clue showed a map of the island the group was on, according to the story. There was also a possible new murder.
The next clue showed a black and white photograph of another murder, plus a cryptic looking chart on vellum paper. There were also the usual clue cards.
For the next clue, there was another black-and-white photograph of yet another murder. A scrap of paper with a sketch and some numbers hinted at possible suspects, and the clue cards provided extra information.
By now, the guests are realizing that they are dropping like flies. Despite being “dead,” though, they were to continue playing the game. The next clue revealed another death, another photograph, and the helpful clue cards.
The next set of clues brought a blueprint of the manor house they were staying in on the island and some film negatives. The clue cards were helpful, as usual.
The final set of murder clues included the usual clue cards and a label from a bottle of poison. At this point, all of the guests had been “murdered.” Who dunnit?
Before I reveal it, let’s take a peek behind the scenes again.
While the guests were out of the house solving clues, I cleaned up the dinner dishes and food and readied the birthday cake I had made (I purposefully sent them out of the house for this reason).
When the group returned, they poured over the clues, wrote down their suspicions about who they thought the murderer was, and had birthday cake. I then revealed the murderer and the winner.
Did anyone get it right?
Nope.
Once the ballots were in, there was a final note from E to read.
It could also have been E., the narrator, though no one thought of that. He was present through the entire mystery via narration.
But the murderer? It was, after all, me.
As you know from the Christie story, the murderer was one of the murdered, faking his initial death. Interestingly, no one read my character scroll. I certainly couldn’t because I was “dead”, but it might have been helpful to their case if someone had. They would have discovered I was a character who punished others with death (a “hanging judge”). That, combined with the first stanza of the poem in clue one (“red herring”) would have given them something to consider.
Everyone received a little gift, anyway.
I had a great time creating this party. I wanted to give the gift of a fun memory to my friend for his birthday and to those who attended. I think the group had fun.
You Can Do This, Too.
A few people suggested that I “put it online” and make it something people can download and use on their own, but that wouldn’t work for what I’ve created in this instance. The clues were specific to locations here.
You, however, could make your own murder mystery dinner.
You can see how I did it. You can see what mechanisms I used to get people to solve the mystery. You could create this on your own.
It doesn’t need to be this elaborate (I tend to go overboard). Simply come up with a mystery on your own, or base it on a book or short story, and then construct location and mystery clues around it for your guests.
