Once Upon a Murder

This interactive mystery includes: instructions on how to play; extension activities; a setup story; list of characters and detailed character descriptions; character worksheets and a detective checklist! Below is the setup story and an example of a character description.

The Story…

Thank goodness you have arrived quickly, detective! I know we all live in Fairy Tale Land, but an actual murder, not just a literary one? This is just too real for any of us. You may not know this, but once a year, all the fairytale characters across the land gather here for FairyCon. We attend workshops, classes, lectures, go to concerts, eat great food, and dance until the sun comes up. It’s a time of joy, so you can imagine how shocked everyone was with the mysterious death of Goldilocks. It happened inside of a “The New Me: Writing My Own Story” workshop that was actually taught by Goldie. The workshop had been going as planned: chairs in a circle around the speaker, donuts, coffee, juice, bragging, and sharing. The workshop was supposed to help the not so popular character Fairy Tale Land find their voices and tell the world that they were just misunderstood. Just as everyone was about to be released for a bread and jam break, it happened. Goldilocks took one bit of her jelly-filled donut, gasped, and dropped to the ground – lights out. She’s still in there, covered in jelly with everyone who might have killed her still there. Good luck on this one, fairy tale gumshoe. It a pretty nasty crew waiting for you.

Character Description Example

Big, Bad Wolf: Huffing and puffing is just who you are. It shows you express yourself. Other people think of anger and rage as a bad thing, but you just see it as being very… open. Open to eating old grannies, open to blowing houses down, and open to finally being able to tell your side of the story. And there she is, the little golden-haired snitch who turned you in. How were you to know that she had been in the kitchen trying the breakfast breads that Little Red brought to her Grandmother as you went in to…just talk with granny. I guess she and the woodsman were good friends, and she just “happened” to tell him about the incident she observed. You did five years hard fairy tale time because of her, and she will pay one way or another. This workshop is just the kind of moment you need.