[via Break.com]
A 73 year old guest spending the night at a Motel 6 in Spartanburg, South Carolina trashed his room when an incoming call told him to help “free a trapped midget” locked inside a neighboring room. The caller warned him that he was being watched by secret surveillance cameras.
The caller then instructed the hotel guest to throw the TV out the window, after smashing it with a toilet seat. They then asked him to break through the wall into the next room.
The man followed all the instructions, thinking he was helping release the midget, and assist the cops. When a manager went to check the room after noise complaints, they confronted the motel guest in his trashed room.
Amazingly, this is not the first time a prankster has pulled a trick like this, we wrote about similar pranks last year. Apparently, a group called pranknet is behind the calls.
When police arrived, other motel guests told them that they had received similar calls, but did not fall for the prank, so the jokers kept calling other rooms until they got a hold of someone who had some compassion for midgets.
Bottom line – if someone calls your hotel or motel room with a story that sounds too weird to believe, it is probably someone hoping you’ll trash your room “just for fun”.
The motel is not pressing charges, as it became obvious the man had been tricked. A video with the 911 distress calls from the front desk can be found here.
There is a dangerous new prank sweeping the nation – one that can cause thousands of dollars in damage to hotel rooms.
Let me say right away that I love pranks, I’ve pulled quite a few of them myself, but what is happening in these hotels takes things way too far, and could seriously injure someone.
Imagine getting a phone call in your hotel room from someone claiming to be from the front desk.
The employee informs you that there is a major gas leak, and you are told to throw the toilet tank out the hotel room window You are then then told to break through a wall using a lamp.
Then the caller instructs you to throw the mattress out the window to catch your fall when you jump out of it.
It all happened in a matter of minutes, until the hotel manager knocked on the door to address a noise complaint. $5000 in damages later, it turns out it was all a joke, pulled off by people that could be anywhere in the country.
Hotel owners are being warned to be aware of this new phenomenon, but in many cases the damage has already been done – $50,000 in damages to an Arkansas hotel as part of a “fire alarm test”, $10,000 in Alabama after a guest was told to activate the sprinklers in order to put out a non existent fire. Or how about the Nebraska hotel where an employee asked a trucker to drive through the lobby as that was apparently the only way to silence the fire alarm he had just set off.
Let it be a warning to hotel staff and guests – be alert for anything suspicious as normally would, but don’t fall for phone calls demanding that you do things that don’t seem right. If there is a gas leak, it won’t help anyone if you trash the room. If someone calls your hotel room with weird demands, and claims to be from the front desk – hang up and call the front desk yourself.
A friend and I were looking through a few Improv Everywhere videos, the folks who created Frozen Grand Central, and loved this one so much we watched it twice and then showed it to others.
For anyone who has ever eaten in a food court anywhere in the world, imagine what it might be like if folks broke out into song, but not just any song–one that fit the location and the situation. This particular food court is in a shopping mall in Los Angeles.
One of the details I liked about this effort is the diversity of the entertainers, as well as, the audience members who had no idea what exactly was taking place as they chewed their food.
I loved the woman with the “baby.”
Can I get a napkin, please?
I suppose everyone gets around to pondering this timeless question: what would happen if you stuffed a vibrator (turned on, for good measure) down your pants and then tried to go through security at the airport?
Well, here’s the answer you’ve been waiting for. John Hargrave, the cheeky trouble-maker who hacked the Super Bowl, found that it’s surprisingly easy to do. I won’t ruin the blow-by-blow account, which is here.
For an added bonus, if you’re a frequent driver on the Massachusetts Turnpike, John has found out that those toll-booths don’t really make you pay. This funny prank (in which at one point he tapes two pictures of the rapper 50 Cent to pay for a $1.00 toll) is here.