In an ongoing effort to revitalize downtown Ravenna as an attractive destination, the Horseshoe Diner is partnering with the Ravenna Area Chamber of Commerce to hold a Murder Mystery Dinner in the first floor of the Buckeye Mall, which also houses the Horseshoe Diner, at 250 West Main Street on Feb. 14 at 6 p.m.
“We are in this to support the Chamber,” Owner Woodie Goodnight told The Weekly Villager on Jan. 8. “We have a bar that the Chamber is running and there will be a dinner there. There are all kind of things that people can come and participate in. We are here to support the Chamber with our fundraiser.”
The Horseshoe Dinner will welcome performers from the Murder Mystery Company, an event planning company that hosts public murder mystery shows. The MMC will perform a live-action murder mystery with a 1920s theme.
Goodnight said that the murder mystery will be based on the love story of a couple that are from rival mob families and on the day of the wedding, a murder will occur, and it will be up to the audience to figure out who the culprit is.
“What will happen is during the dinner, the cast will go from table to table and pick out people to participate in the murder and after the whole thing is laid out, each table will compete against all others to solve the murder,” he noted.
He added that the performers will invite members of the audience to participate in the show at different times.
According to Goodnight, he was inspired to have the Horseshoe Diner host a Murder Mystery-themed dinner as a throwback to the Murder Mystery dinners that the Carousel Dinner Theatre used to host during the 1970s and 1980s.
“They brought busloads of people in here for day events and Phyllis Diller was here, Buddy Hackett was here,” he said. “I am not saying we are going to do that but with the type of murder mystery that we are bringing in, I think we will start a trend of having events in the Hall throughout the year.”
He learned from a friend of his that the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge hosted a Murder Mystery Dinner last year and approached the Ravenna Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director with the idea of forming a partnership to hold a fundraiser for the RACC.
“I give Woodie a lot of credit and kudos for the fact that he did bring this idea to the Chamber, which also goes to show that the Chamber is open to different ideas as long as we are moving forward in a positive direction,” Cline said. “I would say it is something that we are getting off the ground at the beginning of this year for the simple fact of why not? Let’s do it, let’s have fun.”
In addition to hosting a live-action murder mystery, the Horseshoe Diner will also offer a cash bar courtesy of the RACC, a photo booth and a 50-50 raffle, with the money raised from the raffle to be distributed to the Ravenna Scholarship Fund.
As far as Goodnight was concerned, hosting a Murder Mystery Dinner is a nice throwback to the good old times in an effort to start bringing more visitors to downtown Ravenna.
“The Horseshoe Diner itself is a throwback,” he said. “It was an old diner that used to be in Ravenna that we at least tried to revive the name. I am amazed at people that come into the diner and says to me ‘I ate at the Horseshoe Diner’, my mother worked at the Horseshoe Diner’, ‘my relative worked at the Horseshoe Diner’. I think it is not just me, it is a lot of people in town trying to do the throwback thing right now.”
Cline said that the Murder Mystery Diner is hopefully the first of many fundraising events that the Horseshoe Diner and RACC will be partnering to host in the next several years. Goodnight added that the two plan to at least hold two big fundraising events annually and that the Murder Mystery Dinner can potentially become a rediscovered tradition of Ravenna.
“I was born and raised in Rootstown,” he said. “I spent 10 years in the police department here in town and I want to see Ravenna come back to the way that it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s with people bustling, no empty storefronts. That is what I want to see from Ravenna, and I think Ryann and I share that same vision.”
