Not every Christmas party features death with dinner, but the P.J. Ahern Home will soon host such an occasion.
The P.J. Ahern Home and Texarkana Museums System provide guests with a Merry Murder Mystery Dinner from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 22.
Not only is murder involved, but the evening revolves around an ugly Christmas sweater party. It's a modern setting, explains Jamie Simmons, TMS curator, where a mock murder is committed at the shindig.
"Since this is a modern setting, we're just encouraging people to wear their tackiest holiday gear," Simmons said. Guests will vote on the best ugly Christmas sweater, too, so they should don their weirdest apparel for the theme.
Once attendees purchase a ticket, they will be assigned a character to play and given a character packet that includes information on what to do at the party.
"Most characters will have a specific mission to complete," Simmons said. Or they will have information to give during the course of the dinner party. Part of their assignment is to also sift through the clues and discover the murderer.
That murderer is one of the guests. "We assign that randomly," Simmons said. Also, the murdered party won't know they're the victim until the party, too. Once killed, they still participate, just as the ghost of this person.
"For the victim, that can open up a lot of opportunity to ham it up, as well," Simmons said, noting the victim often has the most fun of all. The TMS has hosted several of these murder mystery dinners with different themes. More are on the way for 2019.
"This is the latest in a series of murder mysteries that we're going to do," Simmons said.
Because of the size of the P.J. Ahern Home, tickets are limited.
(Tickets: $40 for non-TMS members, $35 for members; couples are $75 or $70. The registration deadline is Thursday. Get tickets at the event page or P.J. Ahern page on Facebook, or visit TexarkanaMuseums.org. More info: 903-793-4831. The P.J. Ahern Home is located at 403 Laurel St. in Texarkana, Ark.)