The game is afoot!

Anyone who ever wanted to be Sherlock Homes or Sam Spade can come to the SIUC Student Center Ballrooms Thursday and get a chance to be a real detective for a night, a programming council member says.

The Student Programming Council Performing Arts Committee is sponsoring an interactive murder mystery titled Murder on the Haunted Campus at 8 p.m. Thursday.

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Twelve members of the audience will be randomly selected to participate in the program by the St. Louis Upstage Productions, who are performing the show.

Duane Berkland, director of the performing arts at SIUC, said the rest of the audience will participate in the mystery by questioning the twelve audience members in the show to determine which of the twelve is the pretend murder culprit.

The St. Louis Upstage Productions is a company that does interactive theater, he said. The actors from the company do two or three characters a piece. Some of the characters are the psychotic butler, a whinny fiancee and a powerful man on the board of directors.

Berkland said a pumpkin carving competition will take place before the mystery.

The first 30 people to arrive will receive a free pumpkin so they can be in the pumpkin carving contest, Berkland said. The winner of the contest will receive $25.

He said there also will be a $25 prize for the best costume and another $25 for the audience member who solves the murder.

We are going to have one prize for the one who guesses the murderer, because they have to explain why that person committed the murder, Berkland said.

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He said that questionnaires will be provided to fill out while interviewing the suspects.

He said other prizes to be given away will include food certificates from Papa Johns, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King.

The seating will be limited to 150 people and the price of admission will be $3.