When I was around 12, I went to a youth camp for a few weeks in the summer. At the time I lived in coastal mountains along the western U.S., so when you went to camp, you generally ended up surrounded by Redwood Trees, poison oak and a ubiquitous amount of ferns. Among the Redwoods, that tend to grow in fairy rings (granted they are HUGE fairy rings), there isn't much vegetation at all, so lacking cabins that's were you rolled out your sleeping bag. You left your stuff there during the day and went to do camp activities. This camp was literally in the middle of nowhere and the possibility of someone taking your stuff was extremely low which was good. On the down side it also left your stuff wide open for practical jokes.
As a rule, I do not pull pranks on people. I hate it when someone does it to me, and I refuse to pull some stupid crap at someone else's expense. I have only broken this rule twice and only because both people seriously had it coming. In one case, the person was pulling pranks that were destroying people's things and not everyone can just say,"Oh well, I can just replace this $200 Nikes. No biggy." I was not pleased when she destroyed my shoes next. Granted some of the pranks were fairly harmless and although extremely annoying, were sort of funny. But what this particular girl was doing, was not. In the second case, the person just kept going on and on about how he was the best practical joker at his workplace and no one could pull anything over on him. I finally lost my temper with the bragging after three weeks of repeatedly telling him that he should stop now. Then one night he made me think there was an intruder in the house, and scared the hell out of me. He thought it was hysterical.
I decided to traumatize him.
I observed him for a while to see what made him leave a load in his shorts.
I waited to see what really screwed with him psychologically.
... and then I put something together that made him scream in terror for a few minutes.
Yes. I'm an evil bastard.
Simply because I don't think any of it is funny.
This is revenge.
When Halloween rolled around, I discovered he was jumpy during horror films, which was something of a surprise. Horror films are something I really enjoy, and I understand what causes the unease. Isolation of the main character. Removal of the ability to see well. A lack of knowledge of your surroundings. And possibly most insidious is the aberration of familiar surroundings, ie, everything looks normal but as you look closer everything is made of tiny blinking eyeballs. Vsauce gives an excellent explanation of "creepy"and I suggest a viewing. Often it is the things that are creepy that freak us out the most, because it doesn't fit comfortably into the categories of 'stand and fight' or 'run like hell'. It's just ... wrong. The braggart tended to flip out over small things that were out of place. Something that looked like one thing.. and turned out to be something else. So.. following a Halloween party, in which he had leant me a resuscitator Annie doll to use as a prop, I set up the prank. He told me to just leave the doll in his room because he'd be gone at work for a few days. ... which was what I'd been waiting for. I took the doll down to his room after he'd left, stuck her under the covers of his bed and then used some pillows to make it look like there was someone in his bed, facing away from the door. I then put a pirate mask with a hideous face over the face of the doll... the thing about this mask was, from behind it had very realistic looking luxurious blond hair, so from the door way, it appeared a very curvy blond had decided to take up residence in his bed to welcome him home.
It had been two months since he'd pulled his 'prank' on me, and I hadn't retaliated, so his guard was well down.
I wasn't there when he got home, but his housemate told me she was in the kitchen when she heard a shriek of pure terror and a giant crash. Apparently he'd gotten home, found the 'blond' in his bed and thought I'd just been goofing off with the doll...he had not expected the face when he pulled the covers back, and screamed at the top of his lungs, and leapt backwards through the closed closet door.
He demolished the door.
i felt sorry about the door.
He stopped bragging about pranks around me, and never pulled one on me again. He said I was likely to give him a heart attack with my retaliations.
As for the girl at camp.... she was much easier to stop, although I think I may have gone over the top. She had already been warned several times to stop intentionally destroying people's property by the camp Moms and she just kept doing it. Her pranks had a lot of kids upset and in tears. And she'd just laugh at them. When she filled my shoes with a combination of shaving cream and cheese whiz (cheese whiz can eat through cement, and it does very bad things to sneakers) I had had it. During my free time in the middle of the week, I went around collecting slugs. Big ones ranging in size from 5 to 8 inches long and put them at the very bottom of her sleeping bag before bedtime. Her sleeping bag was one of those mummy sacks. Difficult to get into and impossible to get out of if you are panicking. It took two camp Moms several minutes to get her out of it and she went home the next day.
I held a small funeral for the slugs that died that day in order to teach her a lesson.
They were heroes.
*sighs*
I suppose this makes me sound like a total psychopath.
I'm not. I just really really hate practical jokes.
