A Halloween murder mystery dinner at The Grand

If you are still hunting for a Halloween plan that is a bit more considered than a standard party, there is a murder mystery dinner worth knowing about. The Ghost of Frighton Rock is a themed evening that pairs a murder mystery play with a full meal, and it comes with a bit of local first: it is being billed as Brighton's first themed Halloween musical, written by the company Pier Pressure. It is the sort of night that works as a group booking, a date, or a way to do Halloween without ending up at the same old pub.

The setting is half the draw. The show takes place at The Grand Hotel, the big Victorian landmark on the seafront at 97-99 King's Road. It is an independently owned building with a fair bit of history behind it, erected in 1864 by architect Robert Lewis Roumieu, and it is easy to see why a ghost story lands well there. The original hotel had 300 rooms and was the tallest building in Brighton, and the construction was no small feat: 3.5 million bricks, 12,560 cubic feet of stone, 450 tons of wrought and cast iron, 23,500 cubic feet of wood and 30 miles of flooring. Today it carries on as a working hotel with 205 redesigned rooms across seven floors, all built around a grand central staircase, and it doubles as a venue for everything from conferences to weddings, so it is well used to hosting a room full of people.

Because it is a dinner show, the evening is built around the meal as much as the mystery, which is what makes it a decent alternative to a night of pub-hopping. The Grand has a wide range of dining options, from finger buffets to fine dining, and it pulls from local and seasonal ingredients, so the food is not an afterthought. If you are coming from out of town, the hotel is about 35 minutes from Gatwick Airport and an hour from London Victoria by train, which makes it an easy reach for a one-off evening.

It is worth noting that this is part of a wider Halloween line-up across the area, so if you want to build a bigger weekend around it, you have options. The Alchemist's Dead Man's Ball runs on Saturday 25 October at The British Engineerium in Hove, and Quizzy McQuizface puts on a Halloween special the next day at The Ancient Mariner, also in Hove, for a couple of pounds a head. Closer to the date, The Whispering Imp stages Something Spooky This Way Comes at Pelham House in Lewes, and Komedia Brighton runs both Joe Black's Kleines Kabarett and the WREX Halloween party. The Ghost of Frighton Rock sits right in the middle of that, combining a meal, a play and a bit of Brighton seafront history in one go.