I never did any prank calls (well, hardly ever), but a childhood friend swore to me :rolleyes: that he once called a little old lady, identified himself as a phone company lineman, and told her he was going to be just down the street, checking her line. However, he explained, during the test there would be much more electricity going through the line than usual, so she shouldn’t answer when her phone rang, or he’d be electrocuted. The little old lady, rather baffled, agreed not to answer her phone until he knocked on her door with the all-clear. So he called her several times in the next ten minutes, and she dutifully didn’t answer. Then he waited half an hour, and screamed in “agony” when she forgetfully picked up the phone.
I got a call from a kid a few years ago. He was quite young:
Him: Um, uh, um (whispered directions in the background) um yeah, is uh your refrigerator running?
I figured what the heck, as long as he doesn’t make it a habit:
Me: Yes, it is.
Him: you better go catch it! (lots of giggling, someone telling him to hang up! hang up! in the back ground.)
It was so poorly done that it made me kinda laugh too.
For a brief period, I’d recruit for the YGLA. These calls weren’t random; they were all to people I knew were uptight.
So I’d go into this spiel about the troubles and dangers facing youngsters nowadays, and as a Decent Citizen, they MUST TAKE ACTION (I have a really deep voice, so I can sound kind of authoritative). At the end…
“Well, if you join the Young Grasssmokers League of America NOW, you can recieve…”
When I was fifteen (back before residential conference calling) I spoojed two phone lines, an amplifier, an answering machine, and a light switch together in such a way that I could connect two places and record their confusion.
I stuck to connecting similar-sounding delivery places. (Eg; “Little Billy’s Pizza” and “Little Johnny’s Pizza”.)
This ended up being more amusing than you’d think, because in most cases both parties were:[ul][li]Not great communicators.[]At work and obliged to be courteous.[]Utterly sure the other party was a freaking moron.[/ul][/li]
Hmm, I still have those recordings, I should knock something up and put them on YouTube or summat.
I have over 100 prank phone calls that my friends and I used to do recorded on my computer. I’d be happy to share them if anyone’s interested. Some of them are quite good, if I do say so myself. Some highlights included:
-convincing a Toy-r-us manager that I had just run over my son, while he was driving Power-Wheels and that I now wanted the Power-Wheels replaced under warranty.
-convincing an AT&T customer service rep. that my friend was speaking with one of those voice box things, like Stephen Hawking, and having him die on the phone.
-getting the manager of Gateway call-center to like us enough that he gave us his wife’s phone number to prank. We convinced her that her dog was about to be put down because it bit the principle of the school she worked at.
-keeping a Blockbuster employee on the line for like 20 minutes while he searched for movies like “Ernest Kills a Cop” and the 1984 Special Olympics footage.
And many more. In a way its really cool because I have a part of my youth saved digitally.
Oh and I forgot one more, which I did with some people at work once. First one guy called and told the prank’s victim that he was a detective calling to have the victim come in for questioning concerning a robbery. A few minutes later, a second guy I worked with (the one who actually knew the victim of this prank) called the guy, “Dude you’ve gotta help me get out of the state. I just robbed some old lady!” The guy was furious, “And you gave her my name!?” When he revealed a few minutes that it had been a prank, the guy was so relieved because he was about to head down to the precinct and turn himself in.
I have a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book at home that actually mentions Mr Gotobed in a section on unusual names.
Believe it or not.
Years ago I had a group of friends who would prank “Arthur Finger” who had been silly enough to put his full name in the phone book. They called Arthur on and off for some years, usually when they were drunk. Recently I was talking to a friend about prank calls and mentioned old Arthur Finger. Turns out, friend was related to Arthur.
Did he give you the… well, you know.
He was too busy laughing.
This isn’t really a prank call, but it was funny.
Our friend used to call up and ask to speak to one of the dogs. She had a great array of silly accents, so anytime someone with a funny accent called for one of the dogs, we would answer back as if we were that dog.
One day a caller with an accent called and asked to speak to “Reuben,” who was one of the dogs. My SO assumed it was the friend and launched into a “Woof! Dis is da Reuben and I’m havin a grrrrrrrrrrreat day!” and so on and so on. After listening to “dog speak” for a bit the caller finally asked for a Reuben X, who was a person.
Turns out it was a random wrong number dialing and the caller was trying to reach a Reuben who played for the San Diego Chargers. We laughed for hours.
Another thing I did on the phone as a kid involved a telescope. I had a friend who lived a ways from a 7-11 store, up on a hill. But there was a direct line of sight, and he had a telescope. So, we got the telephone number of the payphone in front of the 7-11, and then trained the telescope on the front of the store.
When someone parked in front of the store, we called the payphone, so it would start ringing as they went by. Usually people just ignored it. But some actually answered it. This is what I said:
“Hello. I’m sorry to bother you, but could you please go into the store and find out how much a bag of Dorritos costs?”
Of course, most people just said “sorry” and hung up, but some actually responded. Here are some cases I remember:
Case #1
ME: Could you please do me a favor and find out the price of a bag of Dorritos?
SHOPPER: Uh, okay. Hold on….
[pause; he actually goes in and checks]
SHOPPER: It’s 79 cents.
ME: Is that regular, or nacho cheese?
SHOPPER: Hold on, I’ll go check.
Case #2
ME: Could you please find out the price of a bag of Dorritos?
SHOPPER: Well, okay…Wait. What size do you want?
ME: The cheapest one they have. I don’t have much money.
Case #3
ME: Could you please find out the price of a bag of Dorritos?
SHOPPER: Wait….
[Through the telescope, we see that he doesn’t actually go into the store. He just waits for a moment by the phone.]
SHOPPER: Fifty cents.
ME: Oh, come on. I know you didn’t really check. Could you just go into the store and get the real price?
SHOPPER: Go **** yourself!
Case #4
[We see through the telescope that one of the 7-11 clerks is taking a cigarette break near the pay phone, so we dial.]
ME: Hello. I’m sorry to interrupt your break, but could you please do me a favor and –
7-11 CLERK: Look, please stop calling this phone. It’s a public phone and people need to use it.
ME: Okay. But could you tell me how much a large Slurpee is?
My cousin got a job as a call-taker at a pizza place. Needless to say, there were a few odd requests that summer (it was funny because he was nervous and therefore did not have his wits about him).
From what i remember…
- Corn-on-the-crach pizza (interpreted as Corn-on-the-crabs sandwich
) - Cabbage patch pizza
- Weiner pizza (response: ‘we have hamburger pizza but not weiner pizza’)
- Sour patch pizza
All of these orders were run by the chef in straight-faced manner 
I later got a job at that same place and noticed a post-it note with my father’s name and our address. I inquisitively asked the owner what it was for and he started ranting about prank calls. Luckily the last name was spelled wrong and he didn’t make the connection. That post-it quickly disappeared 
I used to call people named Tracy and ask to talk to Dick.
I did that one twice on a family of religious zealots who lived out in the boonies near where I grew up. The second time I got papa, who started bellowing about hellfire and persecution and the Devil and kept it up for maybe five minutes before I hung up on him.
A friend and I spent many-a-night using online soundboards to prank (our favorite was the Jack Black soundboard). I’d have one phone, he’d have one phone (one of us would be in charge of clicking the phrase so it’d play), and one would be placed near a computer speaker. Since the soundboard consisted of Jack Black ordering food or talking about food we would call fast food restaurants. I remember White Castle getting very, very angry at us because they did not have chicken nuggets and an Asian man from an Oriental restaurant cursing at us.
We also called those numbers on infomercials selling really bad exercise equipment and argued with the people about how I wouldn’t ever buy their device. Not exactly a prank, but it provided us with entertainment.
I have two. At the end of my 5th grade year, my band director retired, so for some reason my BFF and I decided it would be the funniest thing ever to prank call him. I was nominated as the caller, but we had to rehearse it first so I didn’t bust up laughing. We decided that we would pose at calling from the FDA and warn him that some common food was poison. Except to make it sound more official, I decided I should say the full name, as in, “I’m Mandy Simmons from the Food and Drug Administration.”
Well, BFF just about died laughing. I mean, everyone knows it’s the Food and Drink Administration. What was I, stupid?
You can see where this is going: prank totally fizzled.
The other one was actually done on me, and I totally fell for it. I live alone with my boyfriend in a not-so-nice neighborhood. The other night he was out late at his friend’s; I went to bed at my regular time. I was woken up at 2:00 a.m. by some horrible explosion, followed by gunshots and shouting, followed by a swarm of ghetto birds.
Trying to be brave but in fact narrowly avoiding wetting myself, I went outside to see what the problem was. Couldn’t see anything. Just spooky noises in the night. So, for the first time in over a decade of being together, I called my boyfriend and asked him to come home because I was afraid to be by myself.
He was really concerned: “What’s going on? What’s the problem? Describe what’s happening right now. Where are you in the house? What do you see?”
I was at the back door and started describing what I saw to the east. He interrupted me in an urgent tone and said, “ARE YOU SURE THERE’S NO ONE AT THE FRONT DOOR?”
Door: BING-BONG
Me: OMFG there’s someone at the door
Door: BING-BONG BING-BONG
Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Boyfriend: enters the front door and collapses, laughing
Stupid dumbhead had just been pulling up in front of the house when I called, saw there was no danger about, and milked the call for all it was worth. When I started talking to him again 3 days later I agreed it was a very funny prank.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time!