How me and my friend threw a surprise murder mystery at Friendsgiving:

Friendsgiving this year was a riot! My friend and cohost Wendy and I decided to mix things up a bit. This was completely unintentional. The murder mystery was supposed to be a Halloween-themed event, however, I was busy planning other events for RED. so my personal event plans were taking a backseat. Then we thought why not incorporate a surprise death at our Friendsgiving party - Glass Onion style.

The plan was simple, and let me be clear, the plan was simple. In actuality, the reality was way more complicated and chaotic. I was going to use my peanut allergy to our advantage. Most of my friends knew that I had a peanut allergy and even more helpful is that they would often forget and I would have to ask if something had peanuts in the food they were offering. One of my friends Ali, even tried to unknowingly kill me just days before when he offered me pizza with some nuts on it. It was just realistic enough to work.

We were going to stage an allergic reaction that led to me dying just after all the guest were finishing their meals. Oh, and the meals! The only thing we told our guests was to “bring a dish that started with the first letter of their name”. This was of course for two reasons: Me and Wendy had no time to prepare a full spread this year and it added a fun element to see what the guests would bring. One guest Marcelo brought Modelo and another guest Kenny brought a full KFC spread.

Back to the plan. So after everyone had some dessert I was supposed to eat a cookie and pretend that I was having an allergic attack. I would take some Benadryl and appear to be fine but then suddenly pass out. People would freak out (hopefully) but not for long because my cohost would swoop in and announce that we were having a murder mystery party! Each guest would get their premade character sheet and have to solve my murder before the killer strikes again!

There was only one problem.. well there were multiple problems: I may have faked my death too well and my cohost was taking her sweet time swooping in, some of the guests were out of the room when the first faking my own death happened and we had to do it again!, some of the guests we had planned to be there could not make it, some of the guests with important clues needed to leave early. It was a hot mess.

In the end, what we had was a hilariously curated game. Me and Wendy had made all the character personas that day once we got the confirmed list of guests. It was so much fun making characters based on what we knew about our guests and it was hilarious to watch everyone get into their characters.

In the end, the guests were able to identify the murderer, but to everyone's surprise, there were two culprits! It's safe to say that we love a twist ending. Although the event was not perfect, it was incredibly personal to our friend group. We believe that our guests left the party feeling more connected to each other and thoroughly enjoyed the wild ride. What more could we ask for?