Some news first:
If you’re in Australia, make sure to watch the homecoming parade for the Olympians, on channel nine, Monday the 20th. I’ll be in it, dressed as Big Ben. And sorry I haven’t updated in a while. I got distracted by a shiny thing and the next thing you know I was in Tunisia!
I’m posting this mainly to show off, but read on and maybe you’ll pick up some great prank ideas!
1. I’d like to say that this one is a classic, but I can’t because I’m a genius and come up with this all on my own. But it is one that anybody can do. This one made its debut when I was in a Catholic high school, in my second year (I am not a Christian). I snuck into the school late at night and made my way to the toilets- a place I avoided like the plague during school hours. This is what happened the next day:
Friend: “Oh my god, the worst thing happened to me on the toilet.”
Me: “I don’t even want to know.”
Friend: “Yeah, but just listen. I went for the toilet paper and there wasn’t any.”
Me: “That happens to everyone, all the time.”
Friend: “Ssh. On the little cardboard tube it said ‘where is your god now?’”
Me: “That’s pretty good.”
Friend: “Anyway I asked the person in the next stall for some toilet paper, and the same thing had happened for all the other stalls. Whoever did this is in sooo much trouble when the police dust for prints.”
Me: “What?”
From then on I always wore rubber gloves for my pranks. I no longer go to a Catholic high school.
2. Now this is a simple one that just about anybody can do. All you have to do is locate your friend’s address book and replace all the numbers that are written in pencil (it doesn’t work for pens, since white-out is too obvious). Depending on how nice you are, you may wish to take pictures of the unaltered pages so that once the prank is over your friend can call the right person.
A lot of people write fake numbers in, and that’s ok, but you can go so much further depending on how daring you are. You can switch the numbers, so that when they try to call their financial adviser they end up talking to their mother. Or, you can give them real numbers of people they’ve never met (I can’t recommend this one however. There was so much blood last time). Better yet, each number you replace can be the number of a different fancy shoe emporium. Hilarious!
3. This is one I do a lot. I even have a book documenting all the times I did this to someone, or someone did this to me. It isn’t really a conventional prank, since you don’t actually trick anyone, but still, it’s fun. Basically you steal something from a friend and set up a series of clues for them to follow in order to get it back. The first time I did this was in high school, so pretty much just basic stuff: clues concealed in library books, lockers, garbage bins etcetera, but I’ve gotten more advanced over the years, hiding clues behind tapestries in medieval castles, high security prisons, that sort of thing.
One of the most important things to consider when doing this is who your opponent is. When I started this, my opponent was Tick, who close followers of my blog may have noticed in some of the comments. I chose Tick because I knew she would enjoy the challenge, but instead something even better happened. Within a couple of days she had prepared a retaliatory set of clues and stole my hackysack (this kind of prank has since been referred to as an “operation”). A year later we had a club for doing these operations, as well as similar Machiavellian sports, such as fake murder mysteries to solve and some more traditional pranks. We call ourselves the Order of Chaos (Lola Small, who also can be found in the comments, is in it too). If you wish to start your own branch of the Order of Chaos, feel free. I only ask that you’re honest about where you got the idea. And if it works out well, I’d love to hear about it! You can detail your chapter’s adventures in the comments section. Maybe we could join up and expand the Order! That would be awesome.
4. Ok, I’ve never actually done this one, but this is an absolutely true story about a prank pulled by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes. To five of his friends, he sent out five anonymous letters, each saying “We are discovered. Flee immediately.” One of his friends (who I will call Rex because I can’t be bothered researching this) was never seen again. I like to think that one of two things happened:
Thing 1-
Rex: (sighs) “Doyle’s up to his tricks again, dear.”
Rex’s wife who may or may not have existed: “Well what is it this time?”
Rex: “He’s sent me this letter saying ‘we are discovered, flee immediately.’ Obviously trying to get a reaction. Apparently Angus got one too. And Robert.”
Wife: “Well why don’t you do something about it this time?”
Rex: “Do you know I think I will. Pack your bags, dear. I think this will be the last time our acclaimed author friend will play a prank.”
And they were never to be seen or heard from again.
Thing 2-
Rex: “Hurry dear. We have at last received word from the Council of Six. We are in incredible danger! Pack your bags, it would seem Lady Washington has at last revealed the secret of our organisation. It is imperative that we leave before the ninjas arrive and steal the hallowed Monkey Amathyst!”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is now my new favourite thing ever.
5. This one I call extreme knock and run. It puts an exciting twist on an old classic. Basically, you invite a friend over to your house after school or work or what have you. Just make sure this particular friend doesn’t know where you live. As you walk with them from the bus station (or other) to your house you mention to them that you have to go around the back and give the dog some water before you go in, and hand them a ring of keys. Tell them to let themselves in, and if it’s locked then they can try all the keys (you aren’t sure which one it is). Then leave them at the door of a random house and sneak away when they’re fumbling with keys that don’t fit the door. Here’s the point system:
0 points: they don’t fall for it.
5 points: they try all the keys and then figure out you’re gone.
10 points: the door is open, and they’re in a stranger’s house.
15 points: the stranger is home, but they understand. After all, you’ve done this to them before.
20 points: the stranger freaks and kicks them out.
50 points: the stranger lets them in because they think it was their son/daughter/husband/wife/mother/father/life-partner/housemate who invited them.
100 points: your friend is lured into the friendly neighbourhood dominatrix’s secret sex dungeon and will likely never again see the light of day.
I don’t have many friends anymore.
6. Now the idea behind this prank is that you create a secret about yourself that is so intriguing that your victims will drop everything and fall ass-backwards into trying to solve a fabricated mystery. The beauty of this is that you can be creative; make your own secret organisation, pretend to be someway involved in a brutal murder, or something else of that nature. This is done best in partnership with a friend. Pass secret messages between each other, speak in hushed tones, talk in code, anything you can think of to draw in gullible bystanders.
Personally I favour the secret society gambit. People actually try to fall for this one. I mean, who hasn’t dreamed of discovering a secret society? No-one is who. In conjunction with my friend Mike (who is available for parties as a drag queen, by the way) I once tricked another friend into thinking I had joined the “Grogory’s Greusomes Group,” a club who specialised in jewel theft and pornographic pastries. Oh man, I will never forget her face as she tried to explain that she had been duped to the angry police officers who she had tipped to raid the back room of a naughty bakery. She doesn’t talk much to me anymore, not since I bailed her out of prison.
7. This is a hard one to pull. I could only do it because I had a friend I knew would react in a certain way, and even then there was a good chance it wouldn’t work. Anyway I had this friend who was really into those hypnosis shows. Me and some other people, over the course of a few weeks, convinced her that she could actually hypnotise people. One day she had someone in a “trance,” and we asked her if she had the power to make them throw themselves down a flight of stairs (we were sitting at the top of one at the time.) She said no, of course not, it’s impossible to hypnotise someone into destroying themselves. Then to prove it she asked the person to throw themselves down the stairs. The person got up and walked to the stairs, turned around and fell backwards. Everyone screamed, but then the person grabbed the railing and stopped themselves. The self-made “hypnotist” was totally freaked out.
Like I said, you can only really do this if you have a gullible friend who knows a lot about hypnosis. Still, it was a laugh. And there are heaps of other prank ideas that involve fake hypnotism (or real hypnotism, if you know how.) Just whatever you do, don’t try to pull this one on someone who really can hypnotise you. To this day, I still believe I’m Lady Gaga whenever I hear the phrase “I hated the book The Little Prince,” but that almost never happens.
8. Have you ever tricked a friend into committing themselves to an insane asylum? I tell you, it is fantastic. Just messing with their everyday appliances starts to get them wondering about their own sanity. Rewiring their alarm clock radio so that it does the opposite of what it is meant to is always a good way to go, so is getting them an old calendar that says it’s for 2012. These simple tricks ensure that your victim will have a slightly different view of reality to everyone else. That’s when you begin the clincher. Trick all of your victim’s friends in to thinking that they actually are insane, and believe themselves to be a fighter pilot from WWII. Then watch as the victim tries to work out why exactly everyone is speaking in old-timey slang and calling them “private.”
Keep a careful score of how many people you manage to toss in the looney bin. I’m up to three right now. I feel like it could be more, but I’m just so busy trying to find the frozen corpse of Walt Disney. For a stiff, that guy sure is elusive. My favourite trick in this prank is making fake diary entries for my victim in their hand writing, detailing the movements of every single person that enters their house and which household items they touched, and then giving the diary entries to the doctors. Who knows? One day this prank could be the story that you keep telling your grandkids over and over again, followed by that joke you know about the schizophrenic fireman and the duck.
9. Okay, so there is no way of knowing if this one was a complete success. But anyway, this one time I tricked somebody into thinking they were destined to be Evil Overlord of the World. I did it like this: disguised as a mild-mannered peddler of sweets and chocolates I quietly observed primary school children until I found one who met my requirements. He was a loner, prone to a bit of violence now and again, and highly gullible. Once I had my victim, I learnt the route he took to get to his house every day. When I had everything set up, I hid behind a corner dressed in a torn black singlet, cargo pants and bandana. I also had this Star Wars collectable laser gun. When he came near I started to create banging noises and bright lights, which then stopped as I stepped out from around the corner. Then I held my gun to his head.
“Don’t scream,” I said. He was flipping the hell out. “Don’t try using your tricks on me, I’m here to kill you so that you don’t enslave humanity in a couple of decades, Lord Terror.”
“Please don’t shoot, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said. I ignored him and held the gun closer.
“I- I can’t do it! I can’t shoot a child, even if he does turn out to be evil!”
He looked like he was starting to get it.
“Listen, Lor- I mean, kid. Just don’t be evil and nobody will have to know about this. I have to go now.”
I ran back around the corner and set off my smoke pellets, disappearing into a manhole below.
I still check up on that kid now and then. He owns three private islands, two of which have lairs inside active volcanoes, though to my knowledge he hasn’t taken to the name “Lord Terror.”
Oh yeah, and I’m no longer allowed within fifty metres of schools and playgrounds in the state of New York.
10. This is one of my favourites, but I don’t think I’d ever do it again because I’m terrified of zombies. One time I snuck into a private hospital disguised as a volunteer. Inside, I switched disguises to look like a doctor and lightly anesthetised the entire leprosy ward, so that they could walk but not perform tasks that required fine-tuning, such as playing Nintendo or forming words. Then I set off the emergency alarm to cause panic and get them out of their ward. I quickly left, but not before wrapping bio-hazard warning tape around the perimeter of the hospital.
The results were so funny. This prank sent the entirety of Lichtenstein into a state of total panic. Hey, I’m not judging. I’d be freaked out too if I thought my country was the site of the zombie outbreak. I would love to tell you that the news reports were hilarious, but I don’t speak German so I don’t know. Yeah, they make doctor’s wear their ID now.
Happy Pranking!
chaoticathebutterfly 