A good prank can lift anyone’s spirits, but sometimes pranks can get way out of hand. You just never know when someone has reached their breaking point, or if the intended outcome will be thwarted by a crazier consequence. Here, pranksters share the heart-stopping moment a prank got way out of hand.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
Shoot Now, Ask Questions Later
“My family has always played pranks on each other. Some pranks were executed better than others, but it always resulted in a good laugh from all of us.
Once my brother and I made it to high school, our pranks got more elaborate and downright horrid.
Late one night, while staying over at my grandmother’s house, we were struck with the brilliant idea of our best performance yet.
‘Hey, let’s stage a break-in!‘
Now my grandmother was always a good sport, especially as she made it up there in age. Sometimes she was a little tricky to get, so we thought the plan was the ultimate prank to get her good.
So my brother crept outside and began banging on the front door. I scurried to Grammy’s room and woke her, pretending to be terrified.
‘Grammy, I think someone’s outside!’
‘Huh?’ My grandmother shot straight up, matching my terror. She then shushed me and listened to the sound effects of my brother banging on the front door and window off to the side.
We both panicked before she sprung from her sheets. I watched as she marched to her closet and started frantically shuffling around. Seeing her trembling in fear should have made me realize how horrible the prank was. I could have stopped it. But I held back laughter as my grandmother slashed through clothes and junk.
Finally, I asked her, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m getting my gun!’ My grandmother hollered.
‘Wait what?!’ My voice cracked.
Sure enough, my grandmother whipped out a handgun and stormed toward the front door.
I rushed behind her, trying to grab her. Suddenly, fear, real fear, started to settle in.
‘No, we’re just kidding!’ I screamed. ‘No, please!’
‘No, you’re not!’ My grandmother pushed me and kept heading toward the door. She was determined to protect herself, me, her house.
‘It’s a prank! It’s a prank!’ I kept screaming. ‘No, grammy!’
My grandmother wouldn’t believe me. She kept pulling away from me to get to the front door. ‘No, it’s not! Let me go before they get in!’
My brother was still playfully banging on the door. My grandmother could detect most of our pranks, but this was one she couldn’t believe.
When I finally got her to stop, I yelled through the door and told my brother to get away. Confused, he simply opened the door, saw our grandmother with the gun, and froze.
When my grandmother saw it truly was a prank, she was so shaken up she started crying on the spot. It was a joke gone way too far.
It was at that moment that my grandmother discovered she could sleep through her front door opening and closing, and being banged on. Our ‘prank’ truly unsettled her.
However, what scared her most of all was that she could have shot her own grandson.
Her father, who fought in WWII, gave her the gun when she was younger. He taught her that if someone was trying to break into her home, she was not to wait but to shoot first. My grandmother believed she’d come close to killing her grandkid by being moments away from firing in the dark.
My brother and I couldn’t apologize enough.
My grandmother still tells people what us ‘little stinkers’ did to her that night. She also still pranks us and gets major kicks out of doing so.
But we’ve had our fill of pranking her. We only plan pleasant surprises nowadays, like mailing her cupcakes and taking her to the cinema — where she puts salt in our cokes and holes in our straws.
I love her.”
Who’s To Blame?
“I’ll never forget my best prank gone wrong. I was about six weeks into Army basic training. One night I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to get up and walk around. I found some guys talking quietly. A short while later, another guy came out of the shower to powder his feet.
Out of nowhere, I said, ‘We should cover some dudes in baby powder and it will be funny when they wake up.’
It was a dumb idea, I know. The guy powdering his feet flashed a smile and said, ‘Let’s do it. Have you ever heard of a powder bomb?’
I hadn’t at the time, but the two of us got some paper towels from the latrine and lightly dampened it. Then we poured a bunch of powder into the center. We then balled up the paper towels and ran some more water over top.
Once we were finished, the guy whispered, ‘Watch this.’
He snuck up behind one of the other guys talking and nailed him in the back of the head. His hair was covered in baby powder. All of us started snickering and did a terrible job of keeping quiet. I became infatuated with the ‘powder bomb’ and attempted to make one of my own.
The one I made wasn’t as great as the first one. Once I was finished, I tried to fling it at my sleeping battle buddy. The paper towel got him right in the forehead, but it didn’t explode.
As we started giggling again, my battle buddy woke up and freaked out after feeling something on his face. Unfortunately, his first instinct was to grab the balled-up paper towel and chuck it across the room.
To our horror, he ended up hitting a fire sprinkler on the roof.
The damn thing exploded and powder went everywhere, setting off the sprinkler system and fire alarms.
Our barracks were part of a huge compound that included everyone in my company. Fire alarms were going off throughout the entire compound. Guys started scrambling outside.
‘I am so screwed,’ I kept saying in my head. The entire company ran outside to formation. The Drill Sergeant was barking orders as more and more people started piling out of the building. Then, the fire department showed up and ran into the wrong building.
I was so terrified I started biting the inside of my lip. The other guys involved looked just as petrified as I was, but none of us said a word. Ten minutes later, the first responders ran out of the building and proceeded to enter our barracks. After that, a couple of them walked over to our Drill Sergeant on duty and told him something before leaving.
Apparently, the fire department told the Drill Sergeant that someone in the female barracks was powdering their feet near the sprinkler system. The fire department had gotten the barrack numbers mixed up which put all the blame on the females.
We weren’t supposed to be up at night doing ANYTHING. So, the Drill Sergeant marched over to the females and demanded to know who was responsible for tripping the alarm. Everyone could tell that none of them genuinely knew what was going on.
Nobody from my barracks stepped forward, which resulted in the females getting smoked for an hour that night.
I felt terrible, but looking back, I should have said something.
However, I was already on everyone’s radar for screwing around too much. I would have probably gotten re-cycled if I came clean, or worse.
Oh well.”
You’ve Got Mail
“When I was younger, my best friend and I became rather enamored with smashing mailboxes for fun. Of course, we didn’t realize the serious trouble we could have gotten into. Since my best friend was a year younger and didn’t have his license, I was always the designated driver for our adventures, while he was in charge of destroying property.
One night, I pulled up beside a mailbox that caught my eye. I stopped the car and my friend climbed out, bat in hand. Instead of just smashing the mailbox, he noticed that the post was loose in the ground, so he uprooted the entire thing and launched it onto the road.
He then jumped back into the car and I sped off. We were cackling like a bunch of hyenas as we drove away into the night. Boy were we stupid.
An hour later, we got tired of cruising around and causing havoc. We started blaring music and headed back to our neighborhood. Suddenly I had a moment of realization.
I looked over at my friend and said, ‘Hey, isn’t this the same road we-‘
I didn’t get to finish my question. My tires screeched as I slammed on the brakes going sixty miles an hour. My headlights revealed the same damn mailbox my friend threw earlier. There was no hope of stopping or swerving and I barely had time to react.
BAM!
I ran right over the mailbox. I instantly felt sick to my stomach because the post the mailbox was attached to was no little metal pipe. It was a friggin’ 4×4 wood post. I pulled over, certain that I bent a wheel on the car.
I started wondering how I was going to explain the damage to my dad. I got out in the dark, trembling as I held up a flashlight. I took a deep breath and shined the light on the front of my car.
By some miracle, there was no damage to the car at all.
My friend got out and gave me a playful shove as he laughed again. I too let out a shaky laugh as we both got back in the car.
I wish I could tell you we called it a night after the scare.
But no, because that’s what young teenagers did.”
Hit The Ground Running
“A friend of mine said things were quiet at work, so out of boredom, a couple of guys went to the store and bought an air horn.
They rigged it underneath an office chair belonging to one of the only female workers in the office.
Once she returned to her desk, she plopped down and nearly jumped out of her skin. Everyone in the office was dying of laughter, but the female employee was far from amused.
In fact, she complained by sending an email to HR detailing the ‘horrible’ events that took place. In the email, she exaggerated that one of the pranksters blasted the can right next to her ear and that she was now in severe pain. The employee then claimed she had a perforated and torn eardrum, had lost her balance skills, and was now deaf in one ear.
Yes. You read that right.
Of course, HR couldn’t take the incident lightly. Her claims resulted in the coworker losing his job, and the female employee got a three-hundred thousand dollar payout.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Six months later, the female employee and her partner had an overseas holiday going SCUBA diving….
Now, if anyone had truly gone through any of the injuries she claimed, flying would be tough and would be near impossible.
Skeptical, one of my friend’s buddies involved in the incident did some digging and found out the female employee had worked in fraud before, and so had her partner….
Everyone was stunned when they realized what really went down.
Talk about taking advantage.”