On the nights of October 22 and 23, 2026, the Fargo Masonic Center at 1405 3rd Street North will run an evening that moves in three acts: a dinner, a murder mystery, and then a walk through the building's darker corners in search of its resident ghosts. The center bills the whole thing as "Dinner, Play, Paranormal," and the schedule runs from 6 to 11 p.m. each night.
The structure is simple and a la carte. Dinner is $10. The play, "Death on the Orient Express," is $20 and can be paid at the door. The paranormal tour is $20. Dinner and the tour both require reserved tickets, which are arranged by emailing [email protected] or calling (701) 235-7875. Only the play is open to walk-ups.
That the Masons would stage a murder mystery is not surprising. That they would then lead strangers into the basement looking for ghosts is a little more unexpected, and it is the part of the evening with the deepest local roots.
The Fargo Masonic Center has been running paranormal tours for several years now, and it has developed a house style. A 2024 listing for "Paranormal Tour - Masonic Style" described four tours across two nights, in groups of ten, each running two hours, restricted to guests 18 and older, at $25 a head, with tickets purchased from the office manager, D, via PayPal or Venmo. The pitch was disarmingly plain: "Come and take a look at our Masonic ghost family." The center's own events page still lists "Paranormal Tours Masonic Style" among the building's regular happenings, alongside trunk-or-treats, Easter egg hunts, Boy Scout recruitment days, graduation open houses, and picnics on the lawn.
The building those tours explore was built in 1970, according to the Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce, and it is a busy house. It is home to four Masonic lodges -- Shiloh, Sunrise, East Gate, and Daylight -- along with appendant bodies including the Scottish Rite, the York Rite, and the Order of the Eastern Star. The center's website also notes that the Scottish Rite Language Center operates there as a free speech clinic for children ages two to seven, and that the Eastern Star is a group of women and men who, in the center's words, learn to be good citizens by practicing love and service.
Shiloh Lodge is the thread that ties the 1970 building to the city's earliest years. According to the lodge's own history, the first substantial Masonic building in Fargo stood at 11 South 8th Street, a structure better remembered as the Dakota Business College; it was built by Masons and served as Shiloh's home from 1884 until 1890. The lodge leased the third story of a downtown commercial building from 1885 to 1889, in a space arranged with the help of architect Charles N. Daniels and Andrew McHench, Fargo's first superintendent of schools. Masonry in Fargo, in other words, predates the current center by nearly a century -- which is one reason a ghost tour in a 1970 building is a slightly odd proposition, and part of what makes it fun. Whatever is rattling around up there is not a Victorian founder. It is something the lodge has decided to make a tradition of anyway.
And it is a tradition with a sense of humor. The 2024 tours sold themselves on the phrase "Masonic ghost family" -- not a single specter but a household of them. The center's events page treats the tours as one item on a long list of ways the public uses the building, wedged between wedding prep and car washes, which is roughly the right register: a fraternal hall that has decided it is also a venue, and is game for almost anything.
The play fits that same instinct. "Death on the Orient Express" is the sort of parlor-scale murder mystery that suits a lodge hall -- a closed room, a cast of suspects, an audience close enough to see the tells. At $20 and payable at the door, it is the most accessible piece of the night, and the one you can decide on at the last minute.
Practically speaking, the evening rewards planning. The dinner and the tour are the two pieces that require reservations, and the tour in particular has historically been run in small groups -- ten at a time in 2024 -- so the capacity is limited by design rather than by the size of the room. Anyone hoping to do all three should email early rather than assume a seat will be there on the night. The building's own listings put the whole run at 6 to 11 p.m. on both October 22 and 23.
What the center is selling, in the end, is not really a haunted house. It is an old fraternal building on 3rd Street North opening itself up for a night -- feeding people, putting on a show, and then turning off the lights and taking them downstairs to meet the family. Tickets and details are available through the Fargo Masonic Center at [email protected] or (701) 235-7875.