Like so many things in my life, I fell into practical jokes by accident. And they didn’t start out being as sick and twisted as the two I told you about in the posts below… well, not quite.

It began when Chris and Andy , my two best friends, and I were about 13 years old. We were hanging out one evening in the fort we had built under the redwood tree in Chris’s front yard. There were these two girls that lived on our street. They were sisters and the oldest was our age, her sister a few years younger. They showed up at the fort and we were all just talking, and the older of the two began to tell us that her younger sister was acting crazy lately. This must have been near the time the Exorcist movie came out… yup… I just Googled it, and it came out in 1973, so there you go. My friends and I were still at the age where the only way we interacted with girls was messing with them. So having seen a movie about demonic possession, we just decided to try to scare the girls a little. By the time they left, we had them both convinced that the younger sister was possessed.

We were going to let it go at that and forget all about it. But as we talked, we came up with the idea that we should milk this for a few days. So we started brainstorming for ideas. Andy came up with the idea of trying to stage an exorcism. So we got a cross from somewhere, and a bible, and figured that we would just chant some fake Latin and have a little fun the next day. But this is where my imagination kicked in. This was when I realized that there was a dark side to practical jokes, and I had a knack for finding it. This was also when I first began realizing that I don’t have those filters, that radar that tells people when they have gone one step too far and crossed the line.

It isn’t cruelty. I just like a challenge to my creativity. So I just kept adding elements. First, I thought that we could get some of those sparklers people use on the Fourth of July, scrape the burning stuff off the wire, crumble it up, and then pour it out in a pentagram. Then we could burn that while we did our little exorcism performance. Harmless enough, right? If I had stopped there…

But then I had to go remember the book. I had this little paper book of magic tricks. The best one in the book was a way to make a table float while you held a séance. The trick is simple but clever. You just need two people who are in on the gag, four wooden or plastic rulers and some duct tape and a small card table. Before the guests arrive, you make little loops of the duct tape, and use the loops to hold the four rulers under the table, two on each side and across from each other. Oh, you also need to have the two people who are pulling the prank wear long-sleeved shirts and button the sleeves. I won’t spoil the surprise of how this works yet, but you can probably guess.

The next day we showed up at the girl’s house and told them to come with us. Then we took them to the fort and did our little exorcism routine. The burning pentagram, the fake latin, some totally not holy holy water, lots of waving the bible and cross around. Man, we set the mood. But we told them that the demon was too strong. The exorcism had failed. So we would have to have a séance to talk to the spirit and find out what was troubling it. We headed off down to my house where we had prepared everything in advance. There is a little storage hallway in the basement of my parent’s house that doubled as my dad’s darkroom. We had the card table, with the rulers hidden under it, ready with four chairs. Chris was supposed to stand by the door to shut off the lights and keep guard.

Here is the trick of the floating table. As soon as the lights go off, the two pranksters reach under the table quickly and pull the rulers half way out. Then you jam the other half into your sleeves with your palms facing down. This is actually sort of tricky because you can do the first one with your free hand, but the second one is harder. Make sure they are close together. Then you can twist your other hand enough to make it happen. Good thing we had practiced first. If you do this quickly and quietly, you just lay your hands on the table and tell the two unknowing victims to reach out and take the hands of the person on either side. Then you tell them to put their feet on top of the feet closest to them. You see where I am going with this? They are holding the hands of you and your accomplice, and their feet are resting on your feet, so they know that you aren’t just picking up the table with your knees or your hands. But you and your buddy across from you can lift the table with your little ruler forklifts because the sleeves keep the rulers up against your forearms.

So we sat, and we began to call out to the spirit. And this is where my little brother Sid came in. Because we had him hiding back around the corner where we keep the Christmas stuff. He began to moan and shake some car tire chains. While he was doing this, Andy and I began to shake the table. Lightly at first, but soon we were banging it up and down like a bucking bronco. And the whole time Sid was wailing away louder and louder and the chains were shaking harder and harder and now Chris and Andy and I started to act really scared, saying we were all doomed. The girls were freaking out by now as you can imagine. Andy and I threw the table right over our heads and it crashed to the floor. We got up and ran to the door, and this is where Chris put his foot in front of the door while all three of us pretended to try pulling it open. We yelled that the ghost was holding the door closed. It was still almost pitch black, and the girls were screaming like crazy.

This is when my mom began pounding on the other side of the door asking what was going on. We turned on the lights and opened the door and the two sisters just ran past my mother, screaming at the top of their lungs. Oh man, if it makes you feel any better we got in some serious trouble. There were groundings and chores and… stuff… We had to apologize to the sisters and their parents. But I blame, at least partially, that stupid Exorcist movie for putting the idea in our heads… and my magic book… and myself, to be honest.

I am still friends with those girls to this day, and they didn’t stay mad at us for long. But I still feel bad about what we did, and whenever I see either of the sisters, I still apologize.

Yet one small part of my brain was drawn to the strange power to terrify people. Maybe that is why there are people who write horror books and make horror movies. It is a strangely compelling power.

But I was 13, so don’t hate me.