http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41355592
A local US police department has urged people not to call 911 after reports that a man had been crushed by a garage door.
The supposed victim in Greene County, Tennessee, turned out to be a scarily realistic, early Halloween decoration. The department said it had received calls about a "suspicious person lying in a driveway with bloody handprints on the garage". Officers investigated, only to find it was a puppet stuffed with straw.
Greene County TN Sheriff's Department wrote on Facebook: "ATTENTION EVERYONE!!! For those of you driving on Chuckey Pike in Greene County: THIS IS A HALLOWEEN DECORATION! Do NOT call 911 reporting a dead body. Instead, congratulate the homeowner on a great display."
[Okay, Soylentils, what is your best Halloween prank? --Ed.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:13PM (3 children)
> [Okay, Soylentils, what is your best Halloween prank? --Ed.]
And extremely important
You wait until it is Halloween.
That first, simple step seems to be too much for so many people today.
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:50PM
You do it at the right time. That's very, very important. You don't do it in May, like that sick woman .@KathyGriffin. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with what she did. Still very hard for my children. Let me tell you, my scariest Halloween was last year. Because the election was rigged so #CrookedHillary could win! 🇺🇸
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday September 25 2017, @06:27AM (1 child)
Sorry, no. You should have your Christmas decorations up the next day, and there should be some time for people to view the effort you made with your Halloween decorations. Hell, stores have been selling halloween supplies for a month already.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday September 25 2017, @06:17PM
You seem to have a stray comma in the middle of "Hell stores." It changes the meaning.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:38PM (2 children)
Hit man finds perfect place to drop bodies that won't be reported as being halloween decorations.
Whar about the owner of the place, you say?
Third one on the left, the one with the severed throat.
SmCPUtbh fam
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @12:05AM (1 child)
Then said "you can sleep on the side of the road if you want to, but don't look like you're dead
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @12:33AM
Welcome to the Hotel California.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday September 25 2017, @01:02AM (1 child)
The house I grew up in in the 70's had a light pole across the street. One day when I was in my mid-teens we made a dummy out of a halloween mask, shirt, pants, shoes, and a lot of newspaper. We hung this sucker from the light pole. Spent a good 30 minutes in hiding laughing at the rubes who slowed down, pointed and drove away.
After 30 minutes to an hour later we walked to the local 7/11, a 10 minute walk. When we got back the hanging dummy was gone, people who stayed behind said a cop had driven up, cut the dummy down, tossed it into the trunk, and left.
It was not an original idea. A month or so before a friend in high school made a similar dummy and put it on the side of a busy road, making it look like the dummy had been hit by a car.
I had more fun in the 70's without drugs than I should have. Don't get me started on what I did with drugs :)
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @09:37PM
Should that explain your nick then?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 25 2017, @02:06AM (12 children)
The Greene County TN Sheriff's Department acted like proper adults here, instead of getting all worked up about "safety" and throwing a wobbly.
Good to see.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @03:12AM (11 children)
Well, what else could he do? No actual crime was omitted, other than a public display of bad taste.
What would you sentence that jerk to, a tongue-lashing from mom?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @03:14AM
I meant Omitted, not committed. Oh, hell leave it that way, it reads ok that way too.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:15AM (3 children)
Relatedly, how did the clowns from that moral panic fare last year?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:30AM (1 child)
Maybe it was just viral marketing for that movie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:43AM
Or that campaign.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday September 25 2017, @06:20PM
When is the next Moral Panic Fair, by the way? Should be October, right?
Oh, I must have misread that...
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:45AM
He could say "This is not okay™" and then monologued about the relationship between cultural appropriation and the triggering of college students with internet PTSD.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:51AM
Here's an example that happened over here in Denmark:
Back when the old MIR space station was scheduled to fall into the ocean, some pranksters wrote "MIR" in permanent marker on some pieces of an old xerox machine and dumped them in the front yard of some elderly couple. The elderly couple, having heard the news about the falling space station, panicked and called the police, telling them that a piece of MIR had landed in their front yard.
The responsible thing to do would have been to send out a patrol car to check, with an officer who knows how stuff tends to look after heating to several thousand degrees during atmospheric reentry (i.e. melted, charred black).
Instead the police called up the military, and they - trusting the police to do their work - sent out an entire hazmat unit from a base several hours away. The whole operation cost a ton of money, just to have the hazmat guys figure out that someone dumped a few pieces of an old xerox machine.
In the end they threatened to bill the pranksters - though they didn't know who they were, so nothing came of that - rather than reprimanding the police for calling in military support without spending ten minutes to check the facts.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 25 2017, @12:00PM (2 children)
Zoning violation? This comes up occasionally where I live, mostly WRT people leaving their christmas stuff up until Valentines Day or so. At least where I live there's the excuse that you hung that junk up on a snowless windless 40 degree november day, and after christmas its like -10 and a foot of snow until melting time traditionally around Valentines Day, so people are like "F it" they'll wait till the snow melts.
My best build (no involvement from zoning commission BTW) was a giant as hell PVC pipe and leaf bag (are giant leaf bags still a thing?) spider on my roof. I also mounted two light sockets with red light bulbs and that was pretty cool until the first rain and I got paranoid about plugging it in with it either being wet or water damaged. Despite black paint the accumulated UV exposure was shattering legs. Overall the build was kinda a failure, I spent money on threaded PVC adapters so I could reuse it but UV or whatever was shattering the painted legs. Yet it did look cool for a year. The mechanical design was based two ropes and two partially filled sandbags hanging down the other side of the roof to balance, also I cheated and the main pipe manifold for the legs was tie straps and a small "precision drilled" plywood board. PVC in those lengths is "floppy" and I worried about that but it made the legs look more real, maybe, or maybe it just helped fatigue failure set in. I had a few people stop and take pictures of my giant roof spider with glowing eyes, but I did not make the news. I wouldn't do it again but I would suggest doing it once. Hollywood is infinitely uncreative and sooner or later they'll redo "Leiningen and the Ants" and putting a couple car size ants on my house roof would be kind cool...
Halloween is more of a carpenters holiday anyway. With some scrap plywood and my table saw I could turn out at least a couple prop-grade coffins per hour, for example, stakes thru the heart of vampires, wood fake tombstones, simple plywood monster cutouts nicely painted, etc.
Someday we'll have a shitty Hollywood remake of Dune, and I'm trying to figure out the best tech to make a decorative sandworm, aside from genetic modification to make a real sandworm, obviously. Canvas over stud grade 2x4 wood and lots of paint?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday September 25 2017, @08:40PM (1 child)
Nah, just some cloth and a sewing machine [instructables.com] or some basic baking supplies [kitchenoverlord.com].
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:01PM
Disappointing, I expected something more spice-like, perhaps psychoactive weed.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 25 2017, @09:56PM
Since when has that prevented Police form threatening action against people?
Not committing a crime has no bearing on whether you will be punished. [forbes.com]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday September 25 2017, @05:38AM (1 child)
My favorite was just answering the door in costume. Have the house dimly lit, best with flickering candles. A dark, deeply hooded robe. A chainmail coif - backwards - so that the face was just a gray mass in the shadows (you could see and breathe fine).
Freaked out more than a few kids...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Monday September 25 2017, @10:10AM
When I was a kid, a favorite was attaching a string to a large tin can in the manner of which one would make a tin-can "telephone": you know, drill or punch a tiny hole in the center of the bottom, thread string through, and knot the string so it can't pull out. Only this time, run the string out the mouth of the can, not the rear.
The object is to hide the can, mouth facing forward, toward your prey, from behind.
Wax the string with pine rosin. It makes the string vibrate like all getout when you stretch it and let it slip between your thumb and finger. The vibrations feed the bottom of the tin can and makes a very unusual sounding roar.
You mount the can in a bush, tree, or other hiding place so that you can get your prey between you and your can. While you are fumbling around for the candy ( maybe drop some on purpose ), and while your prey is distracted, reach around to the string you have hidden, pinch it and let it slide.
I seriously believe some youngun's left our house with crap in their pants.
( No, I did not come up with it... it was my Dad's prank! ).
He had several wham-dingers he pulled off as a kid... one involved a pumpkin, an old hog's head ( a real one, no less! ), a bunch of fur, some kerosene, an old timey church, a chimney, some baling wire, and a hell-and-brimstone preacher with a bunch of believers - who got took in along with the rest of the church, making a hasty exodus.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 25 2017, @05:38AM (4 children)
If they found a fake body on my property, they just might start looking around, and find some of the real bodies.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:40AM
Protip: Use your neighbors' property for storage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @03:58PM (2 children)
Extra Protip: When posting about bodies lying around the house, post ananymously!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)
Self Protip: get a better spell checker.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Monday September 25 2017, @11:30PM
Misplelings are part of being ananymous.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:49AM (1 child)
Remember when beta was first previewed in October? Yeah. That's it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:47PM
Meh, Fuck Beta
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:49PM
when i was a kid i was riding with my uncle and aunt on halloween around dusk and we came upon an underpass and saw a decapitated dummy hanging from the top. my aunt gasped and said something like "what a sick joke" or "it's just somebody making a sick joke". when we passed underneath i looked up and it was dripping blood. someone had evidently killed and decapitated a homeless person for the hell of it. when keepin' it real goes wrong: halloween edition.