Photo by Edward Kimmel.

Tuesday morning seemed like a normal day. A little cooler than usual for D.C. in June, perhaps, but no one would have suspected what was coming …

A true crime festival! (*cue the minimalist music*)

Brightest Young Things announced that it will be organizing Death Becomes Us, a weekend-long exploration of the “intersection of true crime and pop culture’s fascination with it,” says Svetlana Legetic, the group’s cofounder.

The new venture comes out of conversations the BYT team had about their future. “We were discussing how much, of all the things we do, Bentzen Ball is the one we love the most,” says Legetic, referencing the days-long comedy festival that the media and events company curates with comedian Tig Notaro. “What else is out there that we love to talk about in the office besides comedy?”

That’s when Jenn Tisdale, who heads up marketing and promotions, wrote a note on a napkin and silently passed it across the desk. It read: “True crime festival?”

The team enthusiastically got on the case.

Last Podcast On The Left, Buzzfeed Unsolved, and ​How Did This Get Made – (A Very Special) True Crime Edition are already on board, according to Legetic. They’re in talks with services like Netflix and Amazon to discuss potentially premiering new streaming and film true crime content, and hoping to get authors like David Grann to join. In total, they’re expecting between six and eight shows, and they’ll roll out their next slew of performers after July 4. The team is open to suggestions, too.

In addition to question-and-answer sessions with creators, BYT is mulling other ways of making the event interactive. “Maybe we’ll have a mystery to solve over the course of the weekend,” says Legetic. In the ramp-up to the festival, they’re hoping to have warm-up events to get people in the dark-and-stormy-night kind of mood.

While people can buy tickets to the individual shows, BYT has released 100 festival passes for $101. “At the speed it’s moving, those will sell out in two days if not sooner,” says Legetic.

She says that Death Becomes Us will be one of the country’s first true crime festivals. “There are some conventions, but we didn’t want to do a convention with booths and tchotchke.”

Death Becomes Us will take place the weekend of November 3-4 at the Lisner Auditorium.

“It’s happening the weekend after Bentzen Ball, which is kind of insane,” says Legetic. “We’re just going to die after those two weekends and hopefully we’ll recover for the holidays.”