How do you throw a Halloween party safely during a pandemic? Jeepers! Looks like we’ve got a mystery on our hands!

Being an incorrigible planner, early in the summer I was already working on a backup strategy for our annual Halloween party in the event the pandemic was still causing commotion in October, even though the idea seemed ludicrous at the time. If COVID was still rampant, squishing 100 people inside our house would be a nightmare in a non-Elm-Street way. In an a-ha moment, I realized the easiest means of keeping attendees away from each other was literally separate them. The perfect way to do that? A Scooby-Doo-style mystery that would lead them to different spots in the area. However, for this scheme to happen, first I needed a mystery.

I wanted my mystery’s storyline to have tangible and interactive elements. Of course, a creepy cemetery had to be involved along with a man in a mask. I began doing local historical research and discovered an abundant supply of bizarre facts. It turns out, Utah was as wild as the rest of the Wild West back in the 1800s with murders and peculiar happenings aplenty.

I overlayed a foundation of the factually uncanny with a fabricated case of my own making, with a little help from Jason. In total, the mystery, which I named The Specter of Sulphur Springs, involved nine stops. One of these, the Hutchings Museum, was reserved in totality just for us.

We hired five exceptional actors to portray suspects and present clues. These topnotch artists were only available due to the closure of institutes like Disneyland and the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Clues came in the form of puzzle boxes, handwritten notes, newspaper clippings, interrogations, and even candy. Obtaining them required dexterity, brainpower, and sometimes fancy footwork.

Jason and I set up operations in our yard during the event to feed, equip, and inform families before they began their quests. In order to maintain separation, we assigned arrival slots to attendees at 15-minute intervals. These slots began at 1:00 p.m. By the time we got all groups on their way, Jason and I only had about 10 minutes to reorganize before units started arriving back from their adventures. Basically, Jason and I were outside assisting groups from 1:00 p.m. until exactly 7:16 p.m. Luckily, the weather was ideal. The next day, a storm came through dropping the mid-sixties down to a high of 36 and a low of 15. Jinkies!

Theme-appropriate fare was offered via the Donut Kabobs food truck and subs from Jimmy John’s, 72 subs in total. Additionally, we supplied 48 bags of chips, 36 cookies, 30 bags of nuts, 24 Pocky sticks, 24 fruit sticks, and dozens of chilled drinks. Like, you can’t solve a mystery on an empty stomach.

We topped tables in our garage with prizes and party favors and only opened the garage door to expose “Champions’ Corner” when distributing these. The kids loved the grand reveal.

Yes, we still held our costume and horrorable movie contests but with substantial modifications so they could be completed entirely online. Between those changes and the other altered aspects of the event, the necessary instructions, to-dos, and to-don’t were so complicated we decided to make a short film to cover all of them rather than resolve an endless stream of questions and confusion.

How did planning this affair compare to our usual party responsibilities? More creatively intimidating and logistically challenging but less time-consuming. Writing a storyline, producing character backstories, forming clues, and devising puzzling ways for those clues to be acquired both daunted and enthused me. While I handled the majority of those endeavors, Jason set up a website system to direct groups through the hunt. There were 120 items on our to-do list this year. That’s a new record, but without most of the decorating, the to-dos were less arduous.

With the uncertainties of COVID, we were expecting our usual guest count of around 100 to drop to about 50-60. With the timeslots, we couldn’t accommodate more than about 65; we were gambling on the accuracy of our guess. Fortunately, our estimate was correct. Our attendees totaled 53, so we had enough openings for all.

What did we not estimate right? The mystery proceeded smoothly with one hiccup: we miscalculated the quickness of our solvers. It took groups much longer to decipher clues than we anticipated. I guess when you already know the answer, it takes a lot less time to come up with the answer.

Friends and family, thank you for joining us for a groovy non-gathering gathering! If only all of 2020’s cases could be solved with just a bit of taffy, a couple sweet dance moves, a few observations, and some meddling kids.

This year, Jason and I planned our 20^th Halloween party together. After two decades, even unexpected blasts couldn’t undermine our eternal rest. Here’s how we made our crypt doors extra creaky.

Our theme this time was Disney’s Haunted Mansion, which is celebrating its 50^th anniversary in Disneyland this year. The décor, crafts, and party favors were all geared toward this morbid motif. Even our catering, San Diablo Churros, was a nod to the ride. There is, after all, a churro stand right outside the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland.

As usual, our preparations for this event started early in the fall. We began working on our 81-item to-do list sometime in August. A portion of our prizes, decorations, and costume accessories arrived by mail. In total, we received 54 packages filled with party supplies. You’re welcome UPS.

As with any large event, our party is always accompanied by unforeseen complications that have to be handled at the last minute. This year, they came in a bluster. We bought a 10×15 tent to house the catering and provide extra room for our guests. We rented space heaters to keep this area cozy and borrowed tables to make it perfect for chowing. But our tent endeavors were ill-fated. The wind picked up to 24 MPH with gusts over 36 MPH just hours before our party commenced. No canvas was holding that at bay. We had to disassemble the tent about an hour before the party and move San Diablo Churros into our already crowded kitchen. The graveyard Jason had cleverly constructed in the backyard didn’t get appreciated due to those gusts… or stay entirely upright.

Since the weather impeded most attendees from venturing into our yard, the body count inside our house exceeded any previous year by a dozen or two. Although not quite 999 happy haunts, somehow we fit over 100 humans in our home. I wouldn’t say there was room for one more though.

It was my turn to choose our costumes this year. I decided to go with something theme-related, and Jason and I came as the Dutch boy and girl from the It’s a Small World ride. Our costumes were a little heavy on both ends. My wig incorporated nearly a full pound of yarn, and our clunky wooden shoes felt as solid as tree trunks. We were committed to our costumes though, so we wore those shoes all night. Incidentally, I would not recommend hosting a party stretched over two entire floors of a house while wearing wooden clogs. My right foot was swollen on top for days despite my makeshift fabric wraps, and two of my toes are still healing from the arboreal rubbing they received. At least our cheery costumes provided colorful contrast to the stark monochromatic motif. Jason even convinced forty or fifty of our attendees to sing “It’s a Small World” to me. Maybe because it’s a world of laughter.

There were five craft options this year including portrait chamber bookmarks, ghostly couture bracelets and earrings, and spiderweb wreaths. Thankfully, craft ideas befitting our theme were rather scarce, which saved me from an insufferable but irresistible craft overload.

The party favors required less assembly this year, but buying and putting over 90 of them together still felt like it might take me until the afterlife. Did they all hitchhike to new homes? All but one of the kid bags were taken, but about 20 adult/teenager favors remained. Why so many extras? I had no idea which options would be most popular, so I filled a few supplemental coffins.

We had more help this year than ever. What a difference it made! With four decorating sessions and two undecorating ones, putting up and putting away everything was much more manageable and fun. Plus, an adult volunteered for kitchen duty during the event and several helped tidy up the sticky scourge afterward. To all our helpers, thank you! Your assistance not only sped up the process tremendously but bolstered our expired spirits.

Despite the meddling wind, our party was a swinging wake after all. The Haunted Mansion can accommodate 2,100 guests per hour. Our mansion, apparently, can accommodate 100 guests per evening. That’s more than we thought. And the smell of churros lingered long after the stickiness subsided. I guess that’s about as much as you can hope for with any hosting undertaking.