Last Halloween I decided to be fun. Bought a motion-activated scream mask and rigged it in the bushes near my door to jump out at trick-or-treaters. You know, spooky fun.
Everything went great for like 45 minutes. Then this tiny kid, like maybe 4, walks up in a dinosaur costume.
He reaches for the candy and the mask activates with a BAM! scream and red lights flashing.
The kid screams, throws the entire bowl of candy at the bush, then BOLTS. Full-speed. Into the street. His mom caught him, thank god, but the poor kid was sobbing and yelling “THE BUSH IS ALIVE.”
I took the mask down immediately. His mom was cool about it but I felt awful.
Every time I see a bush now, I feel judged.
TL;DR: Scared a toddler with a Halloween prank. He thought the bush was alive and fled into the street. I am now the villain in a child’s origin story.
Comments
I always thought giving out a 50/50 mix of chocolate coated raisins / chocolate coated rabbit poo is totally keeping with the spirit of trick or treat.
Origin story of Officer Doofy Gilmore.
Nah, the little guy should’ve been properly prepared. If you go out on Halloween and expect not to be scared, that’s on you (or his mom, in this case).
NTAH. my favorite Halloween thing to do would be to ladle out hot chicken soup or hot chili & cheese into the kids goodie bag.
It’s healthier than candy and something their parents can approve of. At least after they stop screaming as it burns through the bottom of their bag onto their shoes.
Congrats, you’re now the neighborhood’s bush demon. Kid’s probably in therapy, and you’ve got a lifelong enemy in a toddler. Halloween wins again.
It’s Halloween. The kids walk up and say “trick or treat.” At some point, they’re going to get tricked and scared. There’s no reason to have taken it down just because a kid got scared during a scary holiday. I had a neighbor who would wear a scarecrow outfit with a bowl of candy on his lap while in a chair on his porch. Any time a kid would walk up and take a couple of pieces, he would jump up a bit or move just enough to scare them. It’s part of the fun.
We were super into building sketchy zip lines years before they were a thing. And the whole neighborhood was built on extremely steep hills. One year for Halloween we built an almost invisible zip line all the way down the block and constructed a old sheet ghost with a almost dead flashlight in it so it would just faintly glow and add enough heft to give the ghost some momentum. Well despite the ridiculously steep angle of the street and the flashlight, the ghost just kept getting stuck. So we wired a brick inside of it. And it went better but still ended up getting stuck. Naturally another brick. And then another. Now we had a fully armored battering ghost that was sure to make it over the heads of all the tricker treaters while dimly glowing.
So we gave it one last test run….
By now the ghost was so heavy on its nearly invisible zip line that where it started 20′ or more up in the air, line stretch ended up with it at eye level mid run, and hurtling.
Cue the return home after a hard day casting judgement in the downtown federal courthouse, our friendly and highly esteemed neighborhood judge, who rounded the corner and barely had time to scream and throw up his arms before the ghost discharged its bricks through his windshield.
We were all completely concealed and could have denied everything….well nah.
But still we to a kid marched out, saw he was okay explained about the need for ballast and apologized profusely.
And he laughed. He laughed(probably in nde shock) like it was the funniest thing that ever happened to him.
None of us got in trouble either.
70’s were crazy….
Bruh I nearly laughed at ‘Every time I see a bush now, I feel judged‘
Congrats, first halloween post of the year
That poor kid’s gonna be 30, flinch at a hedge, and whisper, “It’s the bush…” You didn’t just celebrate Halloweenyou gave someone their villain origin story 💀