10 hilariously unsuccessful Halloween escapades

1. “Suicide bomber” causes panic & evacuation

Belonging firmly under the banner of “badly-conceived Halloween costumes” comes a story all the way from Norway. All it needed was one idiot dressed up as a suicide bomber to incite panic: returning from the costume party, said idiot decided to dump the ‘bomb’ part of his costume in somebody’s car outside a dormitory in Bergen, Norway’s 2nd largest city. The car’s owner quickly reported it to authorities, and soon the local area was filled with bomb squad helicopters, which had flown 185 miles from Oslo to investigate the suspicious package, evacuating the dormitory and surrounding area in the process. When the hapless faux-terrorist heard on the news that his ‘bomb’ was causing such a ruckus, he promptly called the police to explain. There’s an emergency call that could go wrong pretty quickly...

2. Halloween pranks gone wrong 1: don’t try to spook out tough guys

One of the most common pranks out there is also one of the simplest – the spook out. Present your victim with a seemingly innocuous situation, and just when they’re not expecting it, jump out and scream in an attempt to scare them shitless. One little tip, though – unless you like hospital food, don’t try it out on these guys – those are some lightning-fast ‘sucker-punch-him-in-the-face’ reflexes if ever I saw them.

3. Bill Maher’s “hilarious” Halloween costume

Yet another poorly thought out costume, Bill Maher attended several Halloween parties in 2006 dressed as Steve Irwin, less than 2 months after the beloved Crocodile Hunter’s death, complete with a stingray’s stinger protruding from his bloody chest.

Whether his costume was a tactless homage to Irwin or just a testament to Maher’s infinite tastelessness was made clear a week later, when Bill refused to apologise in the face of widespread public criticism, justifying himself with “You want me to apologise for making a joke? Who do you think I am, John Kerry?”. No, Bill, we know who you are. It’s just that ‘jokes’ are meant to be funny.

4. “This brandy’s to die for...”

This one’s an old one, but there are still many who fervently make claim to its legitimacy. When a Scottish couple moved into an old castle, they set to work moving out the ancient remnants of its former tenants. Soon only one thing remained – a large barrel of brandy in the cellar. While they both tried to get rid of it, they found the barrel too heavy to move, and opted for a smarter tactic: invite their friends round for a Halloween-come-housewarming party and serve their guests the brandy, draining the barrel and making it easier to dispose of.

The party was a success, the brandy went down a treat, and the next day the couple tried to move the barrel again, but still found that it wouldn’t budge. Annoyed, they decided to ‘get medieval’ on the barrel, sawing the top into smaller pieces and eventually cutting away the cover... only to find a dead body inside, which had been preserved for God knows how long by the brandy in the cask – the brandy that they and their friends had been happily quaffing the evening before. Ew.

5. Halloween pranks gone wrong 2: office spook out backfires

Yet another spook out video, featuring 2 young American office workers who obviously have nothing better to do than try to scare their boss by having one of them hide in a box and jump out wearing a scary mask. The video even shows them rehearsing the prank, but something tells me they didn’t quite put in the practice required for the hoax to go off without a hitch. Watch out for the prankster in the background who ends up falling on the floor and rolling around laughing when the jack-in-the-box impression goes awry...

6. Ill-advised mayor’s Halloween legacy

Nothing quite like a tale from the archives of Halloween stupidity. In the town of Milton, Washington, local legend Kenneth “Catsup” Simmons was famed for being able to hold his breath for several minutes, as well as eat bananas, drink, and write whilst underwater. While today these might not be considered particularly good traits for a politician, nevertheless Simmons was elected mayor of the small town in 1938, and first made headlines by engineering the election of a mule to Republican Precinct Committeeman.

However, it wasn’t until Halloween 1939 when the self-billed “human fish” showed his true prank potential, hiring the town’s biggest and most wayward troublemakers to serve as special policemen for one night. This backfired when some twenty boys from a nearby rival town showed up in Milton to challenge the newly-appointed police force, prompting a brawl that ended with one of the aggressors being hospitalised by the nozzle of a fire hose.

It’s scary even to imagine what would happen if such a stunt was attempted today...

7. Even Führer can’t overrule Halloween cancellation

More than 60 years after his death, Hitler is still causing a stir. When Walter Petryk, 17, showed up to his Brooklyn high school last year dressed for Halloween as everybody’s least favourite Austrian fascist dictator, unsurprisingly there was a bit of backlash about it, from both the school’s staff and student body.

The resulting uproar has caused Leon M. Goldstein High School’s principal, Joseph Zaza, to cancel Halloween this year in order to avoid similar controversy – stating that such costumes are “disruptive to the educational process”, and that the school is totally within their rights to ban costumes on the premises.

Responsible for the ban, Petryk has called it “ridiculous” and is encouraging fellow students to turn up in costume anyway and risk a 10-day suspension.

Personally, given that the theme of Halloween is ‘scary’, I can’t think of many better costume ideas than a universally-hated, xenophobic, mass-murdering despot. Go figure...

8. Awful, awful Halloween costumes

I’ll bet that 99% of people have no idea as to the origins of Halloween, and that’s probably what has helped contribute to the gradual watering down of Halloween costumes to include, well, anything and everything. As overdone as zombie, vampire and Satan outfits may be, it seems no excuse to dress up as a hot dog, a toilet, or even just a bad pun, such as "hung like a horse" or "holy shit", both pictured left.

While dressing yourself up in utterly unrelated attire is bad enough, there are some amongst us who unfortunately enjoy inflicting their costume ideas on their children – I mean, there’s needless cruelty, there’s unnecessary unkindness, and then there’s dressing your baby up like a peanut. I ask you.

9. You really shouldn’t have egged him on

Here’s a story from my friend Tom, of East Sheen, London, who assures me this tale of seasonal woe is 100 percent true:

“I was about 11 years old, and after pretty fruitless trick-or-treating the previous year, I was determined to make up for it this Halloween. I prepared ahead, and 2 weeks before Halloween I found a pack of 12 rotten eggs in the fridge, pierced a tiny hole into each egg, and hid them in the airing cupboard. 2 weeks later I dug them out and carefully put them in my bag for the evening’s festivities.

A friend and I had been trick-or-treating for several hours and had received a bountiful harvest – all treats, and not one trick: my bag was getting heavy from all the sweets and other munchies we’d been given. However, with all my preparation I was desperate to test out the really rotten eggs, so was looking forward to giving out a trick. As soon as the next door opened up, we knew what we were in for. When given the choice of “trick or treat”, a grumpy looking middle-aged man, obviously not in the spirit of Halloween, immediately replied “trick”. Knowing what we had in store, we asked him if he was sure, to which he replied “Do your worst”.

We retreated to his front gate as he remained on his front porch, obviously curious as to what we were going to do. I pulled out an egg, and, aiming for the closed door behind him, threw it as hard as I could. Unfortunately my aim was a little off, and the egg hit him square in the face. All I remember after that was 5 seconds of disbelieving silence, a bloodcurdling scream, and then being chased down the road.

We ran for our lives, still laughing uncontrollably at the unintended bullseye, and eventually got away. We figured that was a good time to go home, and while we were walking back I decided to look in my bag to see what would be fuelling my sugar high that night, and I almost vomited after opening up my rucksack. The remaining eggs had all broken in my bag during the chase, and in the excitement I hadn’t noticed the ungodly smell. Not only did I have to throw away all the candy as well as the bag, but for the next week or so at school and at home I smelled like the devil’s anus, no matter how many showers I took. Nobody would come near me.

The smell was unreal. Just thinking about it again makes me gag.”

Ugh. Thanks for that, Tom.

10. Halloween pranks gone wrong 3: man has to tap out after prank on wife backfires painfully

This video has quickly become part of internet folklore since it was first shown, and rightly so – it’s hilarious. One Halloween, deciding to play the old “elastic band around the valve” trick on his wife so when she turns on the tap she gets sprayed with water, this hapless fool sets up the camera to show him preparing the prank. While he rigs the tap successfully, he forgets that he’s just sprayed water all over the floor, and the whole thing backfires horribly, way before his wife has even arrived home. After some uncontrollable whinging and two broken teeth, something tells me he might not be so fond of practical jokes from now on...