Hoax Museum Blog: Pranks

Protection Package Senior Prank — It's prom time, and parents of seniors at Newfield High School all received a letter in the mail offering their child a free 'protection package' comprised of condoms and lubricant to help them celebrate the night in a fun, but safe, way. The letter was a prank, and a very successful one if judged by how much it managed to annoy school authorities. The School Superintendent fumed that the prank demonstrated "inexcusable and reckless behavior that diminishes every student in the senior class." I'm pretty sure that's exactly the reaction the pranksters were hoping for.
Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004.   Comments (2)

A Cat Named Killer — Digging through my harddrive, I came across this news item I saved at some time in the past and then forgot about. So here it is:

A classified ad was placed in a New Zealand newspaper in July 2001. It read,

"Where is Killer? We are missing our fat, furry, friendly cat. Killer is a marmalade-coloured tabby cat with a heart of gold and a hearty appetite. He's probably gone to your house to eat your food! If you've seen Killer please let us know. He has a missing right eye, a ripped ear, a limp, a scar down his spine. Please call Jim or June, or John or Joe."

Something about the description of Killer caught people's fancy, and soon hundreds of people were calling the number listed at the bottom of the ad. Some of them claimed they had seen Killer. Others just wanted to learn more about the battle-scarred feline and maybe help find him. Unfortunately Killer wasn't real. He had been invented by a group of co-workers playing a joke on a new employee. His phone reportedly rang all day.
Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004.   Comments (0)

Senior Prank Time — It's senior prank time. Students at North Penn High School observed the tradition by sticking 35,000 plastic forks into the school lawn. Over at Niles North High School, they put their school up for sale on eBay, though most of the bids seemed to come from teachers in on the joke. I searched for the auction itself, but unfortunately it looks like eBay has removed it from the site.


Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004.   Comments (0)

Fake Bullet Holes — image How to look tougher than you really are. Decorate your car with fake bullet holes. They look pretty realistic, at least in the picture. I wonder how good they look close up.
Posted: Thu May 13, 2004.   Comments (5)


Lion on the Loose in Gahanna? — Residents of Gahanna, Ohio have worriedly been following reports about a lion loose in their vicinity. Police have fanned out to search for the creature, but with no luck. Now some are beginning to suspect that the lion sightings were just a prank, perhaps engineered by local college seniors. Ohio is, of course, no stranger to non-existent wild beasts on the loose. Those with a long memory might remember the Paulding County Hyena that terrorized people back in 1858. But the greatest escaped-animal prank of all time was the Central Park Zoo Escape of 1874. On the other hand, the Gahanna Lion might suddenly turn up. Here in Southern California we have to deal with mountain lions wandering around all the time. (Thanks, Rita)
Posted: Wed May 05, 2004.   Comments (3)

The Rogue Employee Tin — For almost a century Huntley & Palmers biscuit tins have been seen on the tea tables of well-to-do Brits. What few of those Brits realized is that the tins contained a surprise... not in the biscuits themselves, but in the illustration on the outside of the tin. Apparently a rogue employee, early in the twentieth century, hid various sexually explicit scenes in the illustrations. For instance, a tin now up for sale at Lawrences Auctioneers in Somerset shows two dogs having sex in the flowerbed, if you look very carefully. Reuters has rather pruriently prudishly blurred the cover of the tin in the picture accompanying their article, so you can't see the dogs, but luckily Lawrences' itself has a picture of the tin, in which you can just see the dogs. They're in the flowerbed on the right-hand side.


Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004.   Comments (24)

ID Sniper Rifle — The ID Sniper Rifle is a high-powered rifle, produced by Empire North, that supposedly can implant a GPS-microchip into a person, allowing the military to track them wherever they go in the world. Here's the description from Empire North's website: The microchip will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage, and only a very small amount of physical pain to the target. It will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. Given the low-tech feel of Empire North's website, I'd have to say this is a hoax. Plus, is it really possible to hit someone from a long-distance with a microchip and a) have the microchip survive the impact, and b) have the person only feel a small prick? Seems unlikely. Also check out the company's other product, Juju, the Citizen Eye, a device that allows you to photograph suspicious-looking people and beam the images directly to the Department of Homeland Security. This seems like obvious satire. The weird thing is that Empire North is listed as one of the international exhibitors at the 2002 China Police Technology Conference. Somehow whoever created this website must have conned their way into getting listed as one of the conference's exhibitors. (Thanks to 'Saints' for the link)
Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2004.   Comments (6)

Thorax Cake — Apparently this was made for a pumpkin carving party (Halloween, I assume), but it would work great as an April Fool's Day food prank as well. It's easily one of the most disgusting food creations I've ever seen, and yet it's just cake. (via Sore Eyes)
Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004.   Comments (6)

Restaurant Strip-Search Hoax — According to the Wall Street Journal a strange prank is becoming a real problem for restaurants throughout America. A phone prankster calls up a restaurant, pretending to a police officer, and asks the manager of the restaurant to strip search the store's employees. The reason given is usually that the police are searching for stolen money or drugs. And time after time the store managers comply with the request. I've seen cases of this prank reported in the news before, and I assumed they were unrelated to each other. But police suspect that all the cases might be the work of one guy, operating out of North Florida. Tom Briggs, of the National Food Service Security Council, notes that "Whoever this caller is must be a hell of a good con man... You'd think nobody would fall for this." Numerous restaurant chains have fallen victim to the prank, including Burger King, Wendy's, and Applebee's.
Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004.   Comments (2)

Egg Prank — image I've seen post-its, tinfoil, and packing foam before, but eggs are definitely a new one (scroll down to see the story). (via BoingBoing)
Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004.   Comments (0)

Post-It Prank — image It's not quite as elaborate as the foil prank that got a huge amount of publicity two months ago, but it's good nevertheless. Damon arrived at his office on Monday morning to discover that over the weekend his co-workers had covered everything in his office with post-its.
Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004.   Comments (0)

Garden Ornaments Mystery — image They're popping up all over the place in Acle: huddled under bus shelters, lined up at the bank. They're garden ornaments (gnomes, Grecian figures, etc.), and no one knows who or what is responsible for their mysterious movements. Let's hope it's not Travelocity.
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004.   Comments (0)

Foil Prank — foilMan leaves town and returns home to find everything in his apartment covered in tinfoil, everything except one lone book titled Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends.
Update: The Black Table has posted an interview with the guy who actually dreamed up and carried out the foil prank, Lucas Trerice.
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004.   Comments (0)

Office Prank — priceless April Fool's Day Office Prank. "Priceless."
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004.   Comments (0)

MIT Honors the Wright Brothers — A couple of days ago a replica of the Wright Brothers' plane refused to fly. But nevertheless, the plane still managed to make a successful landing on top of MIT's Great Dome.
Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2003.   Comments (0)

The Pizza Delivery Prank — Back in college I dated a girl who once ordered a stack of pizzas to my room as a practical joke. I can't really remember what I did when the pizza delivery guy showed up at my door, but I think that I just told him I hadn't ordered the pizzas, and he went away. But that's not what happened when this pizza guy was told he had the wrong address.

Fake Sheik — The Roanoke Times reports on a fake sheik who duped some Richmond residents back in 1978.
Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003.   Comments (1)

The Great Octopus Mystery — As a joke, a Peoria woman puts a baby octopus in her boyfriend's toilet. Her boyfriend gets home, finds an octopus in his toilet, and assumes it must have crawled there from out of the sewer. He calls the local paper and the city is soon caught up in the 'Great Octopus Mystery' until the girlfriend calls up and sheepishly confesses.
Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003.   Comments (1)

Worlds busiest hoax caller — I would say that this kid has issues. He's been charged with making thousands of hoax phone calls to emergency services in Scotland. 3000 alone just in the past few weeks, and thousands more during previous months. In one day alone he made over 300 calls. And he's only twelve. I guess PlayStation doesn't do it for him.
Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003.   Comments (0)

Student Prank Goes Bad — I'm making a mental note to myself: the next time I'm at a party in China, I won't strap fake genitals to myself, dance obscenely, and throw scraps of papers pulled from my underwear at the audience. Three Japanese students attending school in China made the mistake of doing this and have sparked massive anti-Japanese demonstrations throughout the country.
Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003.   Comments (0)

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