University Board hosted a masquerade murder mystery event Thursday in the Martin Luther King Jr., University Union 7th St. Underground. The event started at 6 p.m.  

Suggested by the name, the event allowed students to be amongst each other and solve a mystery of who the killer was. 

Ashton Jade, played by Abigail McBride, a freshman psychology major, was murdered at knifepoint at the Masquerade Murder Mystery.  

Jade was a news reporter for CBC News and was described as a gregarious reporter willing to do anything for the station.  It was noted that one should not trust Jade with their secrets.  

For the event, every person that signed up got a character who they had to dress up and act as. Players, including McBride, then had to go through three rounds to determine who the victim was and who killed the victim.  

McBride, who starts on a different University Board committee next week, said she was excited to come to the event after seeing the poster by the food court and scanning the QR code on it.  

“It’s the first time I’ve come to an event alone, but it was kind of cool because I’ve met a lot of people and now, I have new friends,” McBride said. 

Drew Golden, cousin of Ashton Jade, was the murderer. Golden was played by Gabby Weber, a junior psychology major. Golden was a stagehand.  

Weber was originally supposed to play scuba instructor Avery Lemon, a different character than what she ended up playing. Weber made the character switch because not enough people attended the event.  

Neither Weber nor McBride had any idea that they would be the murderer victim pair. During the event, before the pair found this out, they started poking fun at the other characters, not realizing it would lead to one of them getting murdered.  

In the first round, before they figured it out, Weber’s character and McBride’s character started making fun of each other and tried to get other characters to be moles for them, which Weber described as fun.  

“Oh no, we just went at it,” Weber said. “We just started going at it. I don’t even know her. We just started yelling at each other. It was a good time.” 

Weber said that she knew her character would probably murder the pair’s grandfather, but not McBride’s character at all.  

Many characters throughout the duration of the event decided to form alliances or try to figure out who the murderer was in teams. People started suspecting that Weber’s character was going to murder someone but did not know who.  

“I didn’t think I was going to murder her,” Weber said. “I knew I was going to end up probably murdering my grandfather. But I didn’t think I was going to murder her at all.” 

Maddie Colby, a freshman undeclared major, played Reese Cerulean. 

Colby describes Cerulean as an entrepreneur who was “kind of mean. [The email the actors received] said that she was quick tempered and very powerful and very manipulative.” Colby also described playing Cerulean as something out of her comfort zone.  

Colby found out about the event by following University Board on Instagram.  

“I follow the University Board on Instagram and I saw the post about it,” Colby said. “So, I just signed up right away, because I like this kind of thing.” 

After it was discovered who the murderer was, people could win prizes and take photos with friends at a photo booth.  

 Katja Benz can be reached at 581-2812 or at kkzbenz@eiu.edu.