Are These Real-Life Pranks or Just Urban Legends?

[Ivan Seeking]

Best stories? I have two; I was the victim in both cases.

When I was about 12 year of age we had a neighbor who came by one day with a large cage that contained an "Australian Mongoose". The cage had two sections; One section had a wood frame covered with heavy gauge screen, and the other was completely enclosed and made of plywood. We couldn't see the entire animal but the tail was visible as the mongoose slept in the enclosed section. Deep scratches, at least 1/4" deep, were visible all over the wood cage. Chicken bones were seen broken and splintered and lying all over the cage. He said that he fed it whole chickens. This thing was so fast and so dangerous that if it were to get out we might all be mauled within seconds. It kills so many people each year in Australia...and on and on until, just when he had us convinced this was the most dangerous animal known to man, the top of the cage flew open and the thing came right at me and hit me in the chest.

We were standing in the garage at the time. I was literally on top of the washing machine and heading for the rafters before I realized that nothing was attacking me. The phony fox tail was lying on the floor. The spring loaded trap door of the cage had a hook attached that threw the tail when a secret latch was released. My dad told me later that he really thought I was dead. I really did as well.


When I first started in the mobile Cat Scan Business, I was given the business. A couple of techs came running over with an X-Ray of a penis that had a broken bone inside. They were both quite excited and swearing that this poor guy had become so sexually "involved" that he actually broke his penis bone! I'm saying things like, but...I didn't think...now wait...there's a bone! OMG! Before the scam was over there were two techs, a nurse, and a radiologist all telling me that this was genuine broken penis bone - very rare indeed. I couldn't believe my eyes!

An old X-Ray trick: Take some PlayDoe, shape it like a penis, overlay a broken chicken bone, carefully place in position and shoot. No depth perception to worry about.

I love this stuff; as long as it isn't mean and it doesn't go too far. Unlike Tsu who swore for years that what I saw as orange she saw as red. But that's another story.

 

[holly]

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
hee hee hee
That's hilarious. Are you a bit gullible?
I like to play practical jokes on people. This is giving me some new ideas.

 

[Gokul43201]

Ivan,

I really like that yellow, grinning icon at the end of your post.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

now don't even start.

 

[Moonbear]

LOL! Yeah, where did you find that yellow icon? I think it's much better than the green one.

One of the folks I used to work with played a joke on some students. They were incubating eggs for something...I don't recall what exactly...4-H project or something like that. So, she went in and did an old trick of injecting the eggs with food coloring...red and blue. When the chicks hatched, instead of being fuzzy, yellow chicks, they were pink and blue. I suppose she could have told them that's how you tell the sex of the chicks, but she didn't, instead, when the students were standing there completely confused of why they had chicks in colors other than yellow, she explained to them that of course they are different colors. They did want to raise certain breeds, right? The pink one was of course a Rhode Island Red, and she names some other "blue" breed for the blue one. The yellow chicks are just ordinary farm chickens, but if you raise fancy chickens, the chicks are all sorts of colors :-)

Wish I had gotten to see that (just heard about it...she was known for being a practical joker).

I'm not particularly good at pulling off practical jokes myself, I can't keep a straight face long enough...sigh.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Oh come on! There must be more of you. :tongue2: :tongue2: :tongue2:

Moonbear, that's a classic! :rofl:

 

[Gokul43201]

This is a real oldie...from several years ago :

There was this real gullible friend of mine who was extremely paranoid about the condition of his skin. He used to avoid the sun like the plague (this was in India, where there's a whole lotta sun) amongst other weird things. Anyways, one day, a bunch of friends and I convinced this dude that you could get excessively tanned by irradiating yourself with the IR from a TV remote control (clicker). He bought that H,L & S.

The next hour or so saw 'the dude' running for his life with a bunch of clicker wielding hitmen in hot pursuit !

EDIT : Just realized Ivan has a thing against the use of the word 'dude'. Too late now !

 

[Ivan Seeking]

EDIT : Just realized Ivan has a thing against the use of the word 'dude'. Too late now !

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

You're killing me dude.

 

[The Bob]

The best one I can think of, at the moment, is when I joined the Army Cadet Force. My bandmaster is also a good friend and he is always making people believe lies. This time he told the whole band I was the Hampshire Boxing Champion. I didn't know he had said this at the time but people were either avoiding me or sort of moving the conversation onto boxing. It is amazing how he was able to manipulate all of us. Not really that good but still.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[jimmy p]

Reminds me of a cruel practical joke I committed in the Army Cadet Force as well. We had some dude (haha Ivan) who got hyper on drinking fizzy drinks... and I mean HYPER. Anyway after about an hour of chasing after the bugger as he ran around the camp we were a little annoyed so we waited till he settled down to sleep and tied him to the bed. Then we set off the fire alarm and were screaming at him to get moving, and he was struggling like hell and shouting "I'm paralysed! help!" We turned off the alarm once he started praying to the 3rd God he knew.

Man we got in so much trouble the next day, but it was worth it.

 

[Xasuke]

..

"praying to the third God he knew"

Hah! I can't stop laughing!
Faith suddenly falls in any God you know when you need help!

 

[Evo]

I used to be a serious worrier. Early one morning my (then) husband woke me up and asked me where my car was. I told him it was in the driveway. He told me it was gone.

I ran outside, and sure enough, no car. He had taken my keys while I was asleep and moved my car down the block.

He confessed right before I called the police.

Then there was the time I was in the shower and he threw a bucket of snow on me.

 

[Moonbear]

Evo, first, congrats on your promotion...I see a dandy new banner above your bushy tail!

Okay, now back to the business of practical jokes. Your post reminded me of some other jokes perpetrated out on our research farm. The farm manager loves to play jokes. He got one student by moving his car while he was busy doing an experiment. The student headed out to the parking area, tired after a long day of experiments, so definitely prone to fuzzy thinking, and upon not seeing his car, went back inside to tell the farm manager his car was missing. The manager then asked if the student had gotten a farm parking permit (no such thing) and of course the student said no, he didn't know he needed a permit to park there, at which time the manager told him that his car must have been towed then. Nothing to do but walk back to campus. On his way out to the gate, there was his car, right in the middle of the pasture :rofl:

I got one of the other students during a late night experiment...she had the shift after mine and when she arrived, I told her to be careful, someone had seen a rat somewhere in the building and the farm manager had set a few traps around, so try not to step in them or anything. I then had a sound-activated halloween gag toy of a rubber rat in a trap that wiggled and sort of jumped around placed under the bench in the lab where I knew she'd be headed...as soon as she closed the door, the sound of the door triggered the toy and she nearly hit the ceiling jumping at that. Of course we kept that one going all night...each shift got their turn.

We had a lot of sound/motion activated things like that...the farm manager had a whole collection. See, the farm got pretty spooky at night when you'd have to walk around in almost pitch black darkness out to the farthest barns, so you already were sure Freddy Kruger was going to jump out from behind something, so it was really easy to scare people by lining the path with things that would go bump in the night. It was a great setting for Halloween parties!

Oh, and we also found an old clock that depending which way you plugged it into an outlet would run forward or backward, so we had some fun with plugging in the clock so it ran backward...again, when you're already spooked from being alone at a pitch black farm, walking inside to see a clock running backward can really freak you out (none of these things would have worked in another setting).

I know there were other things, but I can't recall them now. That farm manager was always "initiating" the new students with jokes like that.

 

[Evo]

Evo, first, congrats on your promotion...I see a dandy new banner above your bushy tail!

Thank you. No one was more surprised than me.

Okay, now back to the business of practical jokes. Your post reminded me of some other jokes perpetrated out on our research farm.

Those are hysterical. I think the jokes work best when there is an element of fear.

 

[The Bob]

...committed in the Army Cadet Force as well.

I think Jimmyp is going to know what I mean more than anyone.

We decided on night that we were going to tie someone to their bed, while in Pirbright barracks (near Deepcut). It turned out we chose the C/Sgt at the time. Anyway we tied him up and left apples around his bed and put shaving foam on his face. Now he was a none worrying type so when he awoke he simply tried to stand up, failed and then somehow managed to get up with the bed (the barracks beds or piece of metal with springs) and jump out the room. He was shocked, we were shocked and I went to bed. Fortunate that because the RSM came in the backdoor of the room we were in minutes later. :rofl:

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[The Bob]

"praying to the third God he knew"

Hah! I can't stop laughing!
Faith suddenly falls in any God you know when you need help!

I thought the same. Should be one (as there is only one but perseved differently).

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[BobG]

Car jokes are always funny.

At one place I used to work, two of the day shift workers pulled into the parking lot one morning and noticed there empty parking spots on both sides of the one of the mid shift workers. They both decided to park so close to the mid shift worker's car that he would be unable to open his doors when he came out from work.

The mid shift worker wasn't quite perturbed enough to make it worth going back in two be beg the day shift guys to move their cars. Instead, he opened his hatch back, crawled all the way to the front seat, and drove on home.

He wound up getting the last laugh. Both of the day shift workers wound up with parking tickets for parking over the lines.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well shoot, I had hoped for more practical jokers. I really thought this thread would take off.

I will add one more story from Tsu. The funny part will become clear in the end. Since Tsu wouldn't tell the story I will do my best for an accurate accounting.

A woman visits the hospital for a routine treadmill test. When she met her nurse the woman was carrying some kind of vase. When the nurse asked what it was and the woman replied, "its my husband"; now obviously deceased. Apparently this poor woman carried her husband’s ashes where ever she went. She carefully placed the urn on the treadmill and started the test. At some point the doctor entered the room and the nurse explained the purpose of the urn to the doctor.

A little later, with the treadmill running, the nurse was checking the woman’s heart rate and such when the nurse bumped the urn and spilled the ashes of the dearly departed all over the carpet. The woman began to shriek and panic. The doctor rushed over in a vein attempt to comfort the woman who was screaming "pick up my husband". "Get my husband out of the carpet", and similar demands for her hubby to be saved. The doctor franticly begins to scrape the ashes onto a piece of paper when the nurse comes in with a vacuum and starts to suck up the ashes. At this point woman screams with even greater intensity, "not the vacuum!" "Get a broom and a dustpan!".

By now the poor doctor is nearly in a panic himself, right up until the woman proclaims that she is really the mother of the doctor's good friend - another doctor at the hospital: The nurse was in on it, the urn contained regular old ashes, and a hidden camera taped the entire episode. Tsu and I saw the tape. It was hilarious!

 

[balkan]

i have made a couple of quite elaborated april fools... but i'll just settle for one of them, as i don't have time to sit here and write all day

a few years back, when i was living in a single room appartment shared with two of my friends amongst others, i got an ingenious idea:
first me and my buddy from one of the other appartments got access to the third friends appartment, with the eager help from his little brother... we found his financial papers, and letters from his case attourney (also known as state councelor) and we copied them...
now this isn't funny without background history:

The guy had moved to our town from another city a few years back, after having suffered bankrupcy in his firm... so he owed a lot of money to the state department in the city he used to live in... now after having lived in our town for a while, he decided to move his financial problems over to that state department aswell, but the transfer was still pending due to his councelor being on vacation...

now, we forged his councelors signature and wrote a very convinsing letter, that his dept was due to be reconstructed, and those belongings that he didn't need to uphold a basic standard of living were to be auctioned, effective immediately... we made it a perfect copy of the state department letters and we even forged an envelope
furthermore, we found a law firm dealing with mortgage and dept reduction and forged a letter from them as well...(i believe the IRS deals with that in the US? we have a quite unique system using independant law firms, so i have no idea what it is called in english...)
the law firm letter was an apology for the necessary auction, along with a hand written reciept for the things they had "collected" which had rediculously low expected sales values besides every object... also noted was, that the cost for the moving crew (we had found a legitimate company for that aswell) wouldn't be deducted from the money earned in auction...

now it was timed so perfectly, that he was leaving to visit his mother in the days around april the 1st, but one of his friends had borrowed the appartment on the 30'th "cause he wanted to play counter strike online overnight on his computer" which at that time stood in friend #3's apartment so that they could play LAN (of course, we had called and arranged for this with his friend...)

now, at nigth on the 30'th we emtied his room for everything that "wasn't necessary to uphold living standards"... including his suits, small sculptures, his coat rack and similar, both computers, leaving behind the two forged letters and the reciept with a detailed list of what had been taken and what they expected it could go for in an auction
his friend left on the same evening as arranged, with the door open so that friend #3 could get back in, the next morning (cause conveniently his little brother had borrowed the spare key a few days before )

so when he got in the next morning at about 7:45 AM, he found everything had been removed at 7:00 AM
at about 8:30 i checked in on him, asking what all the rubble around 7:00 had been about, and i pretended to be extremely shocked about what had happened... he was so upset he couldn't even sit down, and the state department opened at 10:30 so he had to run around like that for a couple of hours...
so we woke friend #2 up to ask him if he had heard anything, and he nodded with morning eyes, that yeah, he had checked what it was, and that a van from some moving company had stood outside, so he asked if someone we knew were moving, and friend #3 told him the story...
we checked both the law firm and the moving company on friend #2's computer, which just got friend #3 ever more upset... he kept babbling about having talked to another councelor than the one being on vacation just a week earlier, and that this councelor had convinced him that there wouldn't be any trouble... but now his real councelor was back and now it was all just screwed up, and how could they DO this and soforth... (you can imagine how hard it was to keep the face straight)
furthermore, he was too afraid to call his friend and tell him his computer had been taken by the government, cause his friend was twice his size and had quite a temper, so once in a while he altered his constant speach to include the fact that "cris was going to ****ing kill him" and "****, **** ****!"...
so the next two hours we watched him walk around in circles like that, building up anger and frustration and fear, and when the clock finally was 10:30, he took the papers and ran down to the state department as fast as he could... naturally, me and friend #2 fell to the floor and cracked up laughing till our stomachs hurt...

we phoned him, just as he had begun his fit at the desc clerk in the lobby, shouting APRIL FOOLS, as loud as we could... it took us three "april fools" before he understood what was going on... and moreso: it took him 5 minutes to get down to the state department, but 25 minutes to get back, because he was so pissed and walked around kicking **** and seeking revenge of some sort...
when he got home though, he had to admit, that was the most sensationally evil and ingenious prank he had ever heard about...

 

[Moonbear]

Wow! That's pure evil! :rofl: :rofl:

Remind me to never get on your bad side, I'd hate to think what you could do if you didn't like someone! :surprise:

I can't think of any more practical jokes, just pranks. Things like wrapping a fellow student's desk along with everything on it in plastic wrap (in grad school, all the students were packed into one "office" which looked more like a converted attic space on the top floor of a musty old building, and this seemed to inspire trouble). Or, we'd just switch two people's desks so they'd walk in and be confused about why their desk was suddenly on the other side of the room. Things that seemed funnier at the time than they sound now.

 

[The Bob]

Balkan that is just rude and horrid. Good plan though. May have to try it. :rofl:

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[BobG]

I can think of another cruel joke my father-in-law played on one of his coworkers.

His coworker had bifocals - the old kind where the two different lenses went all the way across. My father-in-law carefully put scotch tape across the lenses, lining up each piece with the line separating the two different lenses. He waited a few days and the worker didn't say anything, so he added another layer. Still nothing, so a few days later he adds another layer. Still nothing, so he adds yet another layer.

Finally, the coworker is absent for a couple of hours and when he comes back to the office he is mad as hell. He finally went to an eye doctor to see if he could find out why his eyesight was deteriorating so fast. When his eye tests showed he still needed the same prescription, the doctor checked his glasses to see if they really matched the prescription and discovered the tape.

 

[balkan]

I can think of another cruel joke my father-in-law played on one of his coworkers.

His coworker had bifocals - the old kind where the two different lenses went all the way across. My father-in-law carefully put scotch tape across the lenses, lining up each piece with the line separating the two different lenses. He waited a few days and the worker didn't say anything, so he added another layer. Still nothing, so a few days later he adds another layer. Still nothing, so he adds yet another layer.

Finally, the coworker is absent for a couple of hours and when he comes back to the office he is mad as hell. He finally went to an eye doctor to see if he could find out why his eyesight was deteriorating so fast. When his eye tests showed he still needed the same prescription, the doctor checked his glasses to see if they really matched the prescription and discovered the tape.

hehehe :D I'm going to have to try this out :D

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I once walked up to our electric fence - about 4000 volts - and grabbed and held on to it. The fence pulses about once every second, and of course with 4000 volts and a fair bit of current, a body can't help but sieze with each pulse; as I did. Tsu was standing next to me and started insisting that I let go. I managed to blurt out one word at a time...THIS...IS...FUN... - in time with the pulses. Tsu started yelling at me to LET GO! ...NO...I...LIKE...THIS... I said. When she started looking worried I pointed out the the fence was unplugged.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here is a classic that is easy and highly effective; especially if people have been drinking alcohol! :rofl:

If someone has a can of beer or pop, when they're not looking, take a tack and poke a hole in the side of the can just below the opening on top - about an inch down so the person's lip won't touch the hole. Each time the person drinks they will think that they're just being sloppy as the liquid dribbles down their chin. :rofl:

I pulled this on one guy who was so drunk that he never did figure it out. He just kept wiping his chin and shirt. I had to leave the room. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

[Math Is Hard]

I pulled this on one guy who was so drunk that he never did figure it out. He just kept wiping his chin and shirt. I had to leave the room. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

This is why I never get hammered with physicists!

 

[Gokul43201]

For a second there, I thought that was going to be a huge let down to all the single guys on PF.

sometimes I read 'with' as 'by'...my bad.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

For some reason Ian's dog thread made me think of this.

Some years ago I helped put on a Summer Space Camp for the Cub Scouts. So as to make a long story short...after it was over I drove through town with a human-like robot tied up in the back of my pickup truck; screaming for help!

"Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped! Help! Help!" He had a camera head that I could aim at bystanders.

Some of the looks that I got... :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

[matthyaouw]

I have quite a simple one planned at the moment. You've probably heard it 1000 times already, but never mind.
At the first decent snowfall this year, I'm going to make myself a nice little snowball, put it in my freezer and some time around June or July, smack my brother in the back of the head with it.
After my months of waiting, I'll probably either miss or find out its recrystalised into something the weight and consistency of a stone, and have to rethink my plan, but I still think its worth a try.