Prank Ideas

Scary prank ideas to pull on your friends and family. Use these tricks to terrify everyone you know and you’ll have them shivering and screaming with fright.

1. Grudge Girl in the Ceiling

2. Ring Girl in the Ceiling

3. Hidden Doll

When I was moving out of the house, I decided to leave a little present for the next tenants to find.

4. Face in a Jar

Take a picture of your mushed-up face. Print it out. Put it in a jar filled with water.

5. Clown in the Drain

6. Invisible Children

In the winter, take children’s clothes and dip them in water. Then, hold them in place until they freeze. Hey presto! Instant creepy “invisible children”.

7. Scary Clown Under the Bed

Years of child therapy in 3… 2… 1..

8. Body Bag

Whenever I’m putting out the rubbish, I like to make it look as if there’s a dead body inside.

9. Scary Peephole Prank

10. Cardboard Gollum

11. Stalker Footprints

After it snows, leave a suspicious trail of footprints in the snow.

12. Scary Eyes in the Night

Take the tubes from old toilet paperrolls and cut out eyes in them. Then, place glow sticks inside and hang them from trees in the garden. At night, the scary eyes will freak out anyone passing by.

13. Spiders on Toilet Paper

14. Hang in There

I made a dummy and hung him from my roof, but 2 days later I had to take him down. People kept coming screaming up to my house trying to help him. One old lady grabbed a ladder and climbed all the way up to the roof before she realized it was fake.

15. Message on the Mirror

Write a message on the mirror with your finger. When someone takes a shower, the mirror will fog up with steam and the message will be visible.

16. Corpses in the Bed

Before I check out of a hotel, I always rearranged the blankets and pillows to make some fake corpses.

17. Alien in the Hallway

My roommate made a 10 ft tall alien out of black paper and put it at the end of the hallway. He thought it would be funny for me to wake up and see it. I’m sure that, once I change my underwear, I’ll see the humor in it.

18. Alien in the Hallway

I live with 2 girls who are afraid of their own shadows. On April Fool’s Day, I stuffed some old clothes to make this guy and left him lying on their bathroom floor.

19. Baby in the Skylight

20. Bloody Shower

Unscrew the shower head. Pour red Kool-Aid powder in the shower head. Screw the shower head back on. When someone turns the water on, they’ll get a bloody surprise!

21. Scary Toilet Seat Cover

22. Creepy Old Man Prank

I bought a creepy mask, stuffed some old clothes, put this together and left it for my roommate to find…

23. Window Peeper

24. Handprint in the Snow

25. Man Behind the Door

Leave a cardboard cut-out behind a bathroom door so that people only see it when they look in the mirror.

26. Chicken Wire Ghost

You can bend chicken-wire into the shape of a ghost, then leave it standing in place.

27. Man in a Porta-Potty

Stand under the toilet in an outhouse. Close the lid. When people come to use the toilet, fun ensues.

28. The Ultimate Scary Prank

Cut yourself in half, pull out your guts and wait about a month until you’ve decomposed nicely. Then, drag yourself into an elevator and lie there on the floor. Just think of the look on someone’s face when they find you. They’ll be so freaked out!

The Ouija Board Prank

My sister’s best friend was staying the night in our house, so my friends and I came up with a great prank idea to scare her. We told her we were going to have a seance that evening in the living room. To ratchet up the tension, we kept discussing how we were going to try and contact a demon and it got to the point where it was really creeping her out.

While she was in my sister’s bedroom, we quickly set everything up. There was a light switch in the living room that kept flickering, so we turned it on and placed a ouija board on the floor beneath it. Then, we all sat in a circle, placed our hands on the planchette and acted like we were possessed.

When my sister and her friend walked into the room, they found us sitting motionless in a circle, under a flickering light, with blank stares on our faces and a dead look in our eyes. It looked like there was some evil force controlling us.

As soon as she laid eyes on us, my sister’s friend flipped out and ran back to the bedroom, screaming and crying. The girl later went on to become a very religious and devout Christian and I still wonder if our little prank had anything to do with it.

Old Man Mask

I remember something that happened when I was 12. My grandfather went to the store and I was home alone with my sister who was 11. I was in the bathroom and when I came out and my sister had put an old man mask on her hand and held it around the door opposite the bathroom, and turned it around to make it look like a old guy looking into the room. I don’t think I have ever screamed louder. I yelled so loudly I even scared her.

The Black Glove

When my mom and her sister were little, they were out playing in the woods one day, when they came across a giant black glove lying in the leaves. My mom told her sister the back glove was going come and get her in her sleep. Then, she got my grandpa’s work gloves and put them in her sister’s bed at night. My aunt was so freaked out.

Korean Suicide Prank

On April Fools Day in 2014, a class of students in Korea decided to play a prank on their teacher. The students wrote a message in chalk on the blackboard. It read: “Teacher, it was too hard.” Then, they opened all the windows and lined their shoes up neatly on the windowsill. When the teacher came in, she found the classroom empty. When she read the message on the blackboard and saw the shoes lined up on the windowsill, she was horrified. She looked out the window and saw all of her students lying on the ground 3 stories below, pretending to be dead. The teacher began to freak out, but then the students revealed that it was all just a trick.

The Hanging Baby

My sister had a baby doll and she brought it everywhere with her. It was annoying because she treated it like it was a real baby and talked to it and called herself “Mommy”. So, my brother and I decided to pull a prank on her.

We went to the store and bought a miniature plastic chair, some rope and some fake blood. We set it all up and waited for my sister to come home. She walked through the front door, went straight upstairs and when she opened her bedroom door, we heard the most blood-curdling screams you’ve ever heard in your life.

We had tied a noose around the baby doll’s neck and hung it from the ceiling fan. Then, we had turned the fan on, so it was slowly swinging around in a circle and put the knocked over plastic chair underneath it with a suicide note written in fake blood. The note was in a childish scrawl and it read: “Mommy yelled at me. She doesn’t love me. Goodbye Mommy.”

The Welder’s Mask

My mom used to love all those paranormal reality TV shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. She never missed an episode. I wanted to pull a prank on her, so I bought a scary-looking mask at a party store. It looked like a cross between a welder’s mask and a hockey mask and it had spikes and fake blood all over it. It was the type of thing Jason Voorhees would wear to church on Sundays.

That night, I texted my mom and told her I was at my friend’s house. Then, I hid in the basement and waited for her to get home from work. When my mom came in, she sat down on the sofa and turned on Ghost Adventures. I crept quietly up the stairs, wearing my mask and a black cloak. I crawled up behind the sofa and just when she was least expecting it, I jumped up and screamed in her face, “OPEN WIDE!!!”

She completely lost it and flipped out. At first, I couldn’t breathe because I was laughing so hard and then I couldn’t breathe because she was trying to strangle me. But it was worth it to see the look on her face.

The Ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer

When I was 9 years old, my older brother and my cousins told me they were going to have a seance. They took me down to the basement and turned off the lights. Then, they told me we were going to contact the ghost of a dead serial killer.

They said his name was Jeffrey Dahmer and he had killed hundreds of young boys, chopped up their bodies and ate their remains. I had no idea who Jeffrey Dahmer was, but it freaked me out.

They had a bucket filled with water and they all joined hands started chanting and calling Jeffery Dahmer to show himself in the water. They started counting down and repeating his name over and over. When the counting finished, they told me to look in the water.

When I nervously leaned over and peered into the bucket, they suddenly splashed the water all over my face. I screamed in terror and ran up the basement stairs like a bat out of hell, their laughter still ringing in my ears.

Facebook Prank

Somehow, all of my friends decided to pull an elaborate prank on me on Facebook. They all changed their names to my name and all used my pictures as their profile picture. I woke up one morning and logged into my Facebook account only to find that my list of friends were all just… ME.

They’re Here

When I was in high school, I sometimes had to babysit the neighbor’s kids. They had a boy and a girl. One night, the little girl told me she was scared to go to bed because she kept hearing voices. She never wanted to go to sleep and she would always come up with some excuse to avoid having to go to bed, so I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying.

But she kept begging me to believe her, so I decided to humor her and went into her room to listen. I didn’t hear a thing. She kept insisting there were voices, so I told her I would lay in bed with her until she fell asleep. After she dozed off, I actually started to hear voices. I felt all the blood rush out of me and I was shaking.

The voices were coming from down the hall. It sounded like they were coming from her brother’s room. I was so scared I didn’t know what to do. I went to his bedroom door and knocked.

The voices stopped instantly and I heard the little boy crying. I opened the door and he was lying face down on the bed. In a way, I was relieved because I thought he was just missing his parents. I decided the whispering voices I heard must have been just my imagination. I leaned over the bed and asked him what was wrong.

The little boy rolled over, looked me straight in the eye and hissed, “They’re here!”

All of a sudden, the closet door behind me slammed open and I heard blood-curdling screams. I didn’t turn around, I just threw myself on the little boy, covering his body with mine in a desperate attempt to protect him. I thought someone was in the house and they were going to kill us all.

I was so scared I was crying and begging and pleading and screaming, “Please! Take anything you want! Just don’t hurt the kids!”

Then I realized that everyone was laughing, including the little boy. I turned around and saw two of my friends standing in the doorway, grinning at me. They had set up this whole prank and got the two kids in on it as well. I went from being out of my mind with terror to being out of my mind with rage.