Not a game for nervous, excitable children

November 29, 2024 12:42 AM

More elaborately-staged murder parties without published rulesets preceded it, but "Murder in the Dark" was a parlor game where three or four players took on the roles of victim, murderer, and detective(s) while the remaining players were generally just themselves as they all acted out a pretend murder--usually in the dark, and sometimes with an "Assassin"-like procedure--followed by an investigation in which the detective(s) asked questions and made accusations with the goal of discovering which player among them was the murderer (or in some variants, who among them will have been the murderer retrospectively). from Murder in the Dark: light roleplaying and social deduction from the 1930s to the 1980s [via MeFi Projects]
posted by chavenet (9 comments total)

Fun read!
We played a version of this a lot when I was a child. It began indoors as one of the versions described in the article, and mostly for the children. but then one of those glorious summer nights of the 1970s, an uncle invented an outdoor version, where we walked in opposite directions around the house. There was no screaming, my war-damaged grandparents hated that. Instead the murderer could "kill" and hide people walking in the opposite direction by winking at them, and pointing where to hide. The other players would eventually realize that people were missing, and could then ring the bell to stop the game and start the detective work. My grandmother was the gamemaster, and she could change the directions of everyone, so it was more complicated.
This is a very fond memory. The summer night was beautiful like in a Bergman movie, the smells and sounds were beautiful, and I think one thing that made it very special was that the adults participated in the game, so it was the whole family and whatever friends were there who played along for an hour or two after dinner most nights.
posted by mumimor at 1:37 AM on November 29 [15 favorites]

Whoa, it's a treat to see this get posted! Yesterday's follow-up post digs further into those elaborately-staged mystery LARPs, ca. 1929-1930: "Murder Party: elaborate LARPing, Soirées-Enquête, Jubensha, and Neysa McMein." I don't know if Neysa McMein's name will ring a bell for everyone, but out of curiosity, I asked a few people today if they recognize her name or her work, and typically it's a very big yes for her work. Anyway, she invented the specific murder mystery LARPs that yielded the general term for them in French: "murder party."
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:38 AM on November 29 [2 favorites]

Oh, I thought Murder in the Dark was just a Young Ones joke…
posted by ElasticParrot at 2:17 AM on November 29 [4 favorites]

Oh wow this was a game I played a bit when younger, I remember it being slightly chaotic and involving a lot of giggling from myself and fellow children. Also lots of stumbling over furniture in the dark...
posted by Cannon Fodder at 6:23 AM on November 29 [3 favorites]

Mentioned at the end, one of Atwood's best short pieces:

If you like, you can play games with this game. You can say: the murderer is the writer, the detective is the reader, the victim is the book. Or perhaps, the murderer is the writer, the detective is the critic, and the victim is the reader.

posted by ovvl at 6:52 AM on November 29 [2 favorites]

Wow, I never realized that this was a published thing. As a nervous little kid in the 1970s, it was the kind of thing I heard rumoured as played at older kids' parties, and thus too sophisticated and scary for me. Even though I was never cool/old enough to play it, I knew the rules as Rupert Grayson's 1930 retelling.

(Grayson's own life was one of those "you couldn't make it up" interesting tales)
posted by scruss at 7:06 AM on November 29 [2 favorites]

Yeah that was played at parties when I was a kid (1950s) and it freaked me out horribly. Not fun AT ALL for me. Mind, I still can't watch horror movies; even had to leave Alien.
posted by anadem at 12:18 PM on November 29 [4 favorites]

Wink Murder was a staple of my fundy Christian girls' group, I'd completely forgotten about it. Now my 13 year old and her friends play Werewolf! Fun read, thanks so much for posting!
posted by goo at 3:58 AM on November 30 [2 favorites]

I remember playing it and always finding it a bit confusing, just like I do with Mafia / One Night Werewolf / etc, in that I'm not sure what to do during it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:33 AM on December 1 [2 favorites]