Hoax Museum Blog: Pranks

Did college students fool President Bush into giving the Shocker? — Here's the claim, with accompanying picture:




True? I don't think so. Yes, there is a hand gesture known as the Shocker. And yes, that's Bush with the ASU Track Team displaying a gesture that resembles the shocker. But everyone (well, almost everyone) in the picture has their index and middle finger spaced apart, which makes the gesture "the pitchfork," which is the sign of the ASU Sun Devils.

Students told aliens have landed — Strange "educational" stunts perpetrated by school authorities appear to be a growing trend. We had:

1) The Fake Attack at an Elementary School. (Students were told there was a gunman loose in the area in order to teach them how to respond in case a gunman ever really was loose in the area.)

2) Your classmate has died -- but not really. (Students were told that one of their classmates had died in a drunk-driving accident in order to teach them about the evils of drunk driving.)

But a stunt recently played on kids at Edgware school goes to the top of the list for weirdness. The Harrow Observer reports:

Eye of Sauron Prank — Pranksters at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently added the Eye of Sauron to the McFarland Memorial Bell Tower. The tower looks like it was designed to host it. The Daily Illini reports that those responsible for placing the Eye on the tower remain unknown.

Mystery Coffin — A woman walking her dog in the Welsh countryside recently found an empty coffin sitting in the middle of a field. The coffin had a note in it: "Jump in, you're next."

No one knows who put the coffin there, but the likely suspects are local students since it's freshman week and there have been other pranks in the region, such as "a tree full of knickers and a young driver sticky taped into his car." Link: North Wales Chronicle

A Prank Renaissance — The Wall Street Journal's Ellen Gamerman has written an article about the resurgent popularity of pranks. But the pranks aren't aimed at making fun of anything. Instead, their only goal seems to be to introduce an element of the surreal into everyday life. Examples include:

• "Freezing" events: people pose like statues in public places.
• going pantless in subways
• staging impromptu musicals in malls
• pretending to be zombies and roaming city streets
• crowds of people dancing to music no one else can hear.
• identical twins on subways mirroring each other's actions

Not everyone is taken with the new pranks. Old-school prankster Joey Skaggs is paraphrased as saying, "the stunts lack a subversive, anti-establishment edge. Because of that, people are less likely to stop and think about what they're seeing -- or even care. 'The bar's been really lowered,' he says. 'There's a lot of junk out there calling itself pranks.'"

And then there's the inevitable attempt by corporations to co-opt the trend. For instance, Mr. Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere, was hired by Taco Bell to stage a "freeze" in one of its restaurants:

Confused Prankster — MSNBC reported a case a few days ago of a confused prankster. A delivery woman showed up outside the house of Joe Biden with a pizza:


What "Chris" apparently failed to understand is that if you've paid for the pizza, it's not a prank to send it to someone's house. It's then a gift. I'm happy to accept all free pizzas people want to send me.

Related posts:
• Pizza Delivery Prank Goes Wrong.

Art Object Prank — Small, round, orange stickers are appearing on objects all over downtown Appleton, Wisconsin. The stickers are stamped with the phrase "art object" and a price (ranging from one cent to $10,000). They're appearing on park benches, fire hydrants, store windows, etc. No one seems to know who's responsible for the stickers or what their purpose is. From the Appleton Post-Crescent:

26 Cheerleaders Squeeze into Elevator — Police responded to an emergency call to find 26 cheerleaders stuffed inside an elevator:


The fad of telephone booth stuffing (which this stunt evidently was inspired by) peaked in 1959 in the States. It was followed a few years later by a fad for stuffing people into Volkswagens. (Info from the Bad Fads Museum.) I didn't know kids today still did stuff like that. They're lucky it didn't end up as a case file on the Darwin Awards.

$1000 iPhone App Does Nothing — Customers at Apple's online iPhone store recently had the opportunity to buy a program called "I Am Rich." True to its name, it cost $999.99.

The program, created by Armin Heinrich, a German software developer, displayed a large red ruby on the iPhone's screen. And that's it. Nothing else. The product description read:


Eight people actually purchased the program before Apple removed it from the site. One of them complained that he bought it thinking it was a joke, only to discover a charge for $999.99 on his credit card.

This program walks the fine line between a prank and a scam. The concept is kind of funny, but Heinrich is apparently keeping the money that people paid. I wouldn't find that funny if it was my money.

Pantyhose Corner — For more than two years someone has been dumping pantyhose near Geneseo Circle in Milford, Massachusetts. Residents report that new pantyhose appear three to four times per week. One day (the record, I assume) there were 43 pairs. From bostonchannel.com:


I wonder if this is, in any way, related to Shoe Corner in Hanover Township, New Jersey -- the place where shoes keep mysteriously getting dumped?

Georgia Monkey Hoax of 1953 — Back in July 1953 three pranksters left the hairless/tailless body of a monkey lying in the middle of a Georgia highway. When a policeman came along, they told him it was the body of an extraterrestrial that they had accidentally run over. Its friends had escaped moments before in a spacecraft. The prank managed to make national headlines. (I describe it in greater detail in the Hoax Archive.)

MSNBC has an article (with picture) about the Great Monkey Hoax. The occasion for it is a visit by an AP reporter to the museum of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, where the body of the monkey is still preserved.

Seven years ago, when I was writing the book version of The Museum of Hoaxes, I spent some time on the phone trying to track down this monkey. I had heard that the GBI still had it, but I wanted to confirm the info.

I eventually reached a woman who worked in the archives of the GBI and asked her if they still had the hairless monkey. I explained the history of the prank to her, but she had no clue what I was going on about. From her tone of voice she evidently thought I was playing a prank on her. She swore to me that the GBI had no such monkey. Looks like she was wrong. They do still have it!

Farting iPhones — You've just shelled out a couple hundred bucks for a new iPhone, and now you're paying outrageous monthly service charges in addition to that. So what can you do to show off your new status symbol? How about make it fart?

DoApp has introduced a whoopie cushion app for the iPhone:


But isn't the point of the prank to make it sound like someone else just farted? If you install this on your iPhone and play it during a meeting, everyone's going to be looking at you.

Faceless Aliens — This has already been posted in the forum, but I've received too many emails about it to ignore it. "Faceless aliens" have been spotted attending various high-profile events in the UK, including Wimbledon and the Harrods summer sale. The "aliens" are people wearing masks. So why are they doing this? According to the Mail Online, theories include:


I'm putting my money on a viral marketing campaign, but for what, I don't know. Maybe the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, coming out in December, which stars Keanu Reeves as an expressionless alien? (Some would say Keanu Reeves has played an expressionless alien in every movie he's ever been in.) But that's just a wild guess. And the problem with that theory is it doesn't explain why the faceless aliens are appearing specifically in the UK.

Update: So it was a viral campaign for Lotus Eagle. Mystery solved before I even posted about it.

Horse at School — I'm not sure if this is a prank, or just a case of bizarre willfulness. Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut warned a father and daughter not to bring their horse to school. They brought it anyway, so the school has charged them with breach of peace. From nbc30.com:


It would be a prank to lock a cow or some other animal inside a school building. But in this case it seems like the father and daughter just really wanted to show off their horse. One hundred years ago it would have been quite normal to ride your horse to school.

High school prank gets pranked — Nyack High School seniors claim their prank got pranked. Their intended prank was to remove all the desks and chairs from the classrooms and line them up in the field behind the school in the shape of a giant "2008." The principal had given them permission to do this. But during the night someone rearranged the desks into the shape of a penis. From lohud.com:


Of course, the paper just had to interview a student named Cummings for this story.

Creating gigantic representations of the male anatomy on hillsides or in fields is a tradition that goes back thousands (maybe even tens of thousands) of years. The Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorchester is the most famous example of this. It's interesting how, despite the school administration's effort to impose a neutered form of the prank on the students, the old ways reassert themselves. Human nature just doesn't change much.

Surprisingly, I can't find any pictures of the Nyack penis. I felt sure the media would come through with one.

Update: Got a picture! (Thanks, Nyacker)

Mooning Mishap — Big Gary writes: "Don't we see this story about 2 or 3 times a year? Only the country and the broken object causing the injury change." From Yahoo! News:


Here in Southern California we have the annual "Mooning of Amtrak" tradition. Every year patrons of the Mugs Away Tavern in Laguna Niguel set aside a day to moon passing Amtrak trains. This has been going on for almost 30 years. It'll occur this year on July 12. I've never heard of any injuries occurring at this event, but I'm sure someone doing something stupid will get hurt eventually.

Scorched Crotch Prank — If you need a reminder of the human race's capacity for stupidity, consider this story, from SanLuisObispo.com:


I'm labeling this a "prank gone wrong," though I can't imagine how it could have gone right. Pillers looks just like I imagined he would in his mugshot.

Altered Yearbook Photos — When students at McKinney High School recently received copies of their yearbook, they noticed that many of their photos had been altered. From dallasnews.com:


I'm pretty sure the school's photo guidelines didn't specify digitally disrobing students. Sounds more like there's a rogue employee at Lifetouch Studios. (via J-Walk)

SpongeBob Vandalism — A chimney is all that remains of the cabin that used to be the home of the manager of the Forest Service tree nursery in Pike Forest. It's considered a historically significant remain. That didn't stop pranksters from refashioning it, with the help of some paint, into a monument to SpongeBob Squarepants. From gazette.com:

Panic Buy Carrots — On May 15th thousands of people around the world went to their local grocery store to panic buy carrots. They were members of the facebook group called "On May 15th 2008, everybody needs to go out and panic buy carrots." From northernnews.com:


The group created a website: http://www.panicbuyers.co.nr/. It's now almost a week later, and some members of the group are talking about whether May 15th should be turned into an annual Panic Buy Carrots Day. Others are trying to figure out what to do with all the carrots they bought. My vote would be carrot cake. Lots of it.