The Library’s Murder Mystery Fall 2017: Harry Potter

The library’s Murder Mystery event, which happened on Friday, October the 13^th, generated a lot of enthusiasm as the theme was Harry Potter! This year celebrates the 20^th anniversary of this beloved series and the library wanted to do its part in acknowledging such a literary achievement.

Leading up to the main event, the library hosted several “spirit” week events. On Monday there was a sorting ceremony where students took a “test” to find out what house they were in and then got to take a cupcake with the corresponding colored icing. Tuesday was a DVD-to-Go event so students could brush up on their Harry Potter knowledge as Wednesday was trivia night. Four teams battled it out with almost perfect scores, but one was victorious and won a set Harry Potter bookmarks. Thursday night was craft night and students got to make their own wands and owls that were carrying messages for our soon to be Hogwarts students.

Before craft night took place Amanda Sullivan’s student workers, Katherine Gaitens and Quinn Ostendarp, had been making crafts of their own. Quinn created posters for the display cases along with the trivia night decorations and questions. Katherine and Quinn also searched Pinterest for food and decorating ideas. What resulted from the searches were floating candles above a feast of snake sandwiches and a vegetable tray that was made into an owl thanks to our dining services. A dementor also haunted our second floor and on the main floor students could pay respects to Dobby, a free elf, thanks to a tombstone and bouquet of socks created by Katherine. Katherine also created letters from Hogwarts, with wax seals, that could be found floating downstairs in the children’s section. We could tell the students were thrilled with the decorations not only because they told us but we could hear them occasionally screaming followed by “wows and cools.” A special thanks has to go out to Rick McBane who helped with the hanging of the candles, letters, and dementor. Some of the decorations are still up if you want to stop by and take a look.

After the clues were laid out and the decorations hung, the students entered the library through a 9 ¾ Train Platform created from some paper and painted bricks. As they grabbed their flashlights and made their way to the snacks and poison, I mean drink, tables they started to interact with Harry, Ron, Hermione, Tonks, Snape, Fenrir Greyback, Professor McGonagall, Bellatrix and Rita Skeeter. Ms. Skeeter who interviewing everyone to try and get the scoop. Little did she know that the biggest one of her career was going to happen in a matter of minutes with the murder of Ron Weasley! Once Ron, literally, screamed bloody murder the lights went out and the students raced around the library following the clues to solve who committed the murder, with what and how, and where it happened.

When the student gathered back downstairs the host of the evening, was ready to hear their guesses. The first group who finished missed who the murderer was, but the second group got it when they announced that it was Bellatrix! The team got to pick from several prizes laid out on the table. There were mugs that reveal the Marauder’s Map when hot liquid is poured in them, handmade bookmarks that are worthy of an ancient spell book, and necklaces with Meredith’s longitude and latitude coordinates. Most of the winners went for the mugs once the map was revealed. After the prizes were awarded a group picture was taken and the mischief was managed on another murder mystery!