Ye olde Arrow-Heart Murder Mystery set for Saturday, Nov. 9

The annual Arrow-Heart Murder Mystery fundraiser is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 9, with doors opening at 6 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. 

 Food will be prepared by Weiser’s own Cook Shack On 7th.

 Tickets are $40 per person and can be purchased by calling Linda at (208) 550-1614 or Jim Pike and Co. at (208) 549-0646 or visit Billie DeYoung at 5 W. Commercial St. Tickets are still available.

 To be held at the Weiser Vendome Events Center, this year’s theme is set around medieval times.

 Steve Fenske, the nonprofit’s CEO and Program Director, said he plans to dress like King Arthur and even began growing a beard over a month ago to more closely resemble the character.

 “It’s going to be a jousting event for a wedding couple,” he told the Signal American last week, providing a small hint of the plot.

 Several community volunteers will put on a brief play where, of course, someone ends up dead and a murder mystery unfolds.

 Guests, seated at tables, are tasked with putting their heads together to reveal the perpetrator. The table that figures it out first wins a prize.

 “The city is going to let us into the Vendome Friday to decorate the place,” Fenske said. “I’m building a fake guillotine and a pillory. We’ll have the entryway decorated like a castle and a dungeon will be in there, too. It’s definitely going to be a castle effect.”

 Guillotines are self-explanatory, but some may not make the connection between the term “pillory” and pictures of public punishment hundreds of years ago. 

 “The guillotine was used for executions, but a pillory was used for minor offenses,” Fenske explained. “Back in the day, if you committed a minor offense, like cheating on your wife or something like that, they put your head and your hands in this block of wood. They secured you in that and people could come by and throw things at you.”

 Fenske has spent the last 10 years helping to build the Arrow-Heart Adventure Camps program into what it is today.

 Participants, between the ages of 12 and 15, are taken on a series of outdoor adventures where Fenske and his crew of volunteer coaches help build a foundation of principles that help kids build self-esteem and improve academic performance.

 Arrow-Heart, at its core, is a leadership mentoring program designed to teach kids what Fenske calls the “six C’s,” comprising the virtue building traits of compassion, courage, commitment, character, communication and critical thinking.

 Funds raised at the Murder Mystery fundraiser benefit the program’s wide range of outdoor adventures. For more information, call (208) 550-1755 or visit the Arrow-Heart Adventure Camps Facebook page.