Cards
Here's a brilliant one if you want to freak someone out. We did this to a guy at university. We'll call him Matt (not his real name) for the purposes of this tale.

For this, you need a deck of cards. A Svengali deck - these are the decks of cards used by stage magicians. They have a certain property - about half the cards are ordinary ones, mixed suit and number. The other half are slightly different. Firstly, they are *all* the same card - in our case it was the ten of hearts. Secondly, the identical cards are slightly shorter. Not enough to be visually noticeable, only about 1.5mm. This means that when you have the cards one way up and flick through them, they all appear different, but turn the deck upside down and do the same, they all appear identical. Because each time, your finger catches on the taller normal cards.

We did a seance. Atmosphere with incense, candles and a couple of nice alcoholic drinks, to increase the gullibility. Began it by asking the spirits "Should you ever want to give us a sign... please give us this card". And 'randomly' picked out the ten of hearts.

Each member in turn asked "Do you want to speak to me?". A random card was dealt, and shuffled back into the pack once it had been seen, two tens of hearts would give the game away. And when it got to Matt, he got the Ten of Hearts. Clearly the spirit wanted to speak to him. He was slightly creeped out, but went along with it. And he started asking the spirit some yes/no questions. And every time it was a yes, he got the ten of hearts. We played it up, all looking nervous. Three of us were saying things like "No, this is weird, let's stop it". And the other three were saying "We can't stop now!".

One of us started asking the questions instead of Matt, who was looking a little white and shaky. He'd stopped talking, poor guy. She got the ten of hearts for all the yes answers, and random cards for the no answers. Give her credit, she played the role magnificently, shaking a bit and stuttering. And then she dropped the bomb...

"Is one of us going to die soon?"

Ten of hearts. Return it to the pack.

"Today?"

Ten of hearts. Return it to the pack.

"Who?"

Card dealt to everyone. Matt gets the ten. He looks like he's going to piss himself.

"How?"

And on cue, the lightswitch was flicked, and we all screamed. Someone grabbed Matt's ankle.

It took a good minute to calm him down after that. We showed him the cards - all of them. The output of vile language was something to behold before he started laughing.
(calamarain just invented dehydrated water, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 18:53, 1 reply)

Brilliant
I'm pretty sure I have a Svengali deck lying around somewhere, I'll have to go find it.
(icassu, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 19:48, closed)