Don’t be afraid to enjoy the trick side of Halloween too. Do you want to make a good scare or create havoc this time of year? Halloween pranks are a time honored tradition and should be welcomed in the spirit of the holiday.
However, there are a couple things to keep in mind when planning your Halloween pranks.
→ It’s never funny to destroy someones property without their permission.
→ Don’t put someone’s well-being in jeopardy during Halloween pranks.
Keep in mind who you are pranking and consider whether they will consider a Halloween prank funny or not. Basically, you want to use common sense and find some harmless Halloween pranks to pull on friends and family. Here are some pranking ideas to get you started!
Bathroom Halloween Pranks
• Mirror Messages
When you are at friend’s homes around Halloween, write scary or funny messages on their bathroom mirror with isopropyl rubbing alcohol. This is the kind of alcohol you buy at Walgreens or CVS for about a dollar. Put alcohol on your finger and use your finger to write a message. Then breathe on the mirror to fog it up and see your words. Don’t wipe it dry or your message will get wiped away.
When your friend takes a shower, the mirrors in the bathroom will fog up and display what you wrote. Scary Halloween pranks are a tradition so scary messages like I’m watching you, I see you! or Help, I’m trapped in here! are good too.
You can also write a funny message like You’ve lost weight or Looking good Jeremy!
• Cockroach Invasion
One of the most terrifying Halloween pranks you can pull is to fake a cockroach infestation. Ok, I might have overstated this because it really freaks me out.
It might not be the most terrifying, but it should be in your top ten list of Halloween pranks.
This prank involves taking fake cockroaches and placing them all over the bathroom walls, cabinets, and ceiling.
This prank looks really cool if you have a heating vent in the bathroom because you can make it look like the cockroaches are swarming in from the vent. You can also make roaches swarm the inside of the refrigerator.
A good way to get fake cockroaches to stick well is by using removable mounting putty.
• Bloody Shower
These Halloween pranks can be done using either fake blood, kool-aid powder or even Easter egg coloring. This prank will make a blast of “bloody” water to scare your friend or family member. It’s fairly simple to do.
You just unscrew the shower head and pour your kool aid powder or fake blood in the part with the shower head faucet. (You want to unscrew the shower head farthest away from the wall and put the coloring in there.)
Make sure to screw the shower head back on tightly and have the faucet facing in the shower. Otherwise you can end up with “bloody” water all over the bathroom floor.
Refrigerator Halloween Pranks
• Fake Mice Prank
This is one of those Halloween pranks that may lead to broken eggs all over your kitchen floor. For this prank you take little fake mice and put them in the empty slots in your egg carton. Then put the eggs back in the refrigerator and wait for someone to get hungry.
• Severed Hand Prank
Refrigerator Halloween pranks are always fun and this one is no different. You simply attach a severed hand to the handle of your milk carton and place it in the refrigerator for someone to find.
• Frozen Bugs
This is a good Halloween prank for school age kids. You put bugs, spiders or any other creepy crawly into the ice cube tray. Next, add water and freeze. You can serve them to the kids or to your family at dinner. It’s more dramatic if you don’t say anything about the bugs and act like everything is normal.
Halloween Pranks for Trick or Treating
• Sit N Scare
Dress up as zombie, scarecrow, monster or other Halloween decor and sit in a chair on your porch or walkway. Stay still so you look like an inanimate object while kids come to the door and then quickly stand up. Or put the candy bowl on your lap, and raise your arms or say trick or treat when they go to grab candy.
• Trick AND Treat
Put a fake plastic poop in your treat bowl to freak out the kids this Halloween.
• Who’s That Guy?
Dress up in a costume that covers most of your body or at least makes you very difficult to recognize. Preferably, a scary costume. Find a group of trick or treaters and casually join their group.
You can stay silent and watch while they try to figure out whose friend you are. This one is more fun if you actually know the trick or treaters in real life.
Food Halloween Pranks
• Chocolate Covered Brussel Sprouts
This Halloween prank requires a little bit of cooking know how. You chop the stem off the brussel sprouts, rinse them and then prepare a chocolate coating. The goal is to make them look like truffles or another round shaped chocolate candy. After cooling in the refrigerator you can leave them out on a counter as a bitter surprise for anyone who tries them.
• Caramel Wrapped Veggie
This Halloween prank doesn’t require as many cooking skills as the brussel sprouts prank. For this one you take a tomato, bell pepper, or other semi-soft, round vegetable and cover it in caramel apple covering. You can purchase pre-made caramel wrap from the grocery store. Put a stick into it and serve.
Onions have also been used, but be careful because onions can be hard when bitten into raw. I also recommend having an actual caramel apple ready to give the person you pranked, they will be pretty disappointed.
• Finger Hot Dogs Prank
Take a hot dog and cut it in half both vertically and horizontally. It will now be in four pieces that all look similar. Take a hot dog piece and put the flat side down on a cutting board. This will be the “finger.” Next slice a fingernail shaped sliver from the top of the rounded edge. This will be the “fingernail bed.” Slide a “fake nail” into the fingernail bed using pieces of onion and then cut shallow straight lines across the top of the hot dog.
These will be finger wrinkles that you see on a human hand. The last step is to sprinkle fake blood around the cutting board, finger and knife to finish off your Halloween prank. Check out How to Make Fake Blood at Home here.
Another version of this Halloween prank is done by placing a store bought severed finger on the cutting board. You can place it next to a hard food item that requires strong cutting. Pranks can be done by using a kitchen knife with carrots or a butcher knife with meat.
Next apply fake blood or even ketchup on the finger and knife. You can even add some blood splatter to your carrots if you want.
Classic Halloween Pranks
• Ding Dong Ditch
You can always stick to the classics with a game of ding dong ditch. This is the age old tradition of ringing a friends doorbell and then running away. Nowadays a lot of people have cameras and the Ring video doorbell, so wearing a Halloween mask is a good idea to keep up the suspense.
• Toilet Papering (Rolling)
Another one of the classic Halloween pranks is Toilet Papering a friend or neighbor’s house. However, whether this is considered a prank or vandalism will depend on where you live.
For example, many areas of the East Coast consider toilet papering to be disrespectful and participants will get in a lot of trouble for it. In some parts of the West Coast rolling a house can be considered all in good fun. In fact, some schools will TP each other or even their own campus to celebrate a sports victory.
If you do toilet paper a home, consider showing up the next day with your friends to help clean it up. This is not an uncommon practice nowadays and it keeps it all in good fun.
No Egging Allowed
Egging is one of the classic Halloween pranks that is no longer acceptable to do. In most areas egging will always be considered vandalism. Eggs can severely damage vehicle paint and cause other unintentional injuries.
If you do decide to pull some Halloween pranks and cause mischief this year, leave the eggs at home.
Fun Halloween Pranks
• Redecorating
Move a friend or neighbor’s Halloween decorations and jack-o-lantern around to different places in their yard. This is one of the better Halloween pranks to do at your own home or to family members.
• Changing Teams
Good Halloween pranks to play on friends or family members is to switch out their sports team gear for Halloween decorations or rival team gear. Don’t touch any expensive sports collectibles for this prank. Focus on switching out stuffed animals, banners, flags and other low cost fan gear.
Creature Halloween Pranks
• Flying Creatures
This Halloween prank is only good for owners of a drone. You can use the drone to fly a Halloween monster around and prank your friends and trick-or-treaters. Drones are very cool for making flying ghosts, clowns, reapers and other monsters.
For quadcopter style drones, put a ghost or other monster costume over the drone with the four motor pods sticking out on each side. For hexacopters and other style drones, attach your monster to hang below the drone using fishing line.
These drone Halloween pranks can be a lot of fun. However, don’t use your drone monster to distract drivers or upset traffic.
• Glowing Eyes
This is one of the easier DIY style Halloween pranks. Take the cardboard inside of toilet paper rolls and cut out eye shapes in each one. Then put glow sticks in each one and put them in different bushes or trees to scare friends, family and neighbors.
Depending on the strength of the glow stick, you may need to tape off the ends of the roll with duct tape to block any excess light. You can also use paper towel rolls for this Halloween prank.
• Craft Paper Intruder
This is one of the scarier Halloween pranks to play on friends and family. You take black crafting paper and cut out a tall, thin human figure. Next attach it to a wall at the end of a dark hallway and make sure there is a small amount of light nearby.
This makes it look like there is a shadowy outline of a person standing at the end of the hall. This is a simple but scary Halloween prank.
• Peeping Tom Halloween Pranks
There are a couple different versions of this prank. The first is to get a creepy peeper head and attach it outside a window to scare your friends or family.
There is even a clown version to really freak out your friends since the white face is so visible. The creepy peepers are three dimensional heads so they are good for pranking in both daylight and nighttime.
The second version of this prank is a lower cost option that involves just printing out a creepy clown or other face and sticking it to the outside of a window.
This version of the Halloween prank works better at night and in smaller rooms like the bathroom.
• DIY Translucent Ghosts
You can make your own ghostly holiday decorations using just packing tape this year. This Halloween prank is easy to make and can really pop with a few portable led lights.
You can make awesome objects like arms coming out of the ground, a ghost lady in a dress, a child ghost or anything else you can think of. Here’s how it works:
If you are making a ghost you can use a mannequin, dress form, a friend, yourself, or other human shaped objects.
• First wrap your friend with tape keeping the sticky side of the tape facing out.
• Next add a second layer of tape with the sticky side facing down.
• Then add up to a total of four or five layers of tape to make the figure stronger and more durable.
• Remove the tape by carefully cutting a straight line down the back, or any other places it’s needed.
• Loosen the tape and peel or pull it off your friend.
• Close all the places you cut and re-tape them together until your ghost creature is complete.
Don’t use a person’s head for making the head shape because they will have trouble breathing while wrapped in tape.
You can wrap one part of your friend at a time and then carefully remove each portion by cutting a straight line through the tape. Loosen the tape and pull it off each section and then tape the cutts back together.
After all the pieces are removed from your friend, you can tape them all back together into the shape of your ghost.
Adding LED lights inside and placing this in your family or friends back yard is one of the creepier Halloween pranks you can pull.
Check out this video to see exactly how to make a packing tape ghost with lights.
Interested in more Halloween topics? Check these out:
• Games for a Kids Halloween Party