Mirror-ghost candid camera prank

This clip -- from some sort of Japanese candid camera show -- shows a guy having the bejeezus scared out of him by a woman dressed as a ghost hiding behind a half-silvered mirror.

Japanese ghost prank (via Super Punch)

• [hyljelyhje]

  And what if he had used one of those chairs to bash the ghosts skulls open? I guess candid cameras must have some kind of safeguards for their employees.
  On the other hand, I really would like to see a CC bloopreel where angry victims go nuts .

  • [Abdul Alhazred]

    I’ve always wondered about that too. And also how they coax a release signature out of people who have been subjected to something that makes them look foolish. You’d think it’d be harder to “be a good sport” when you know that not only did they mess with you, they want to show it to the world.

• [bingowings85]

  Little Girl Scares Hotel Guests ~ youtube :)

• [febryle]

  Does his sweatshirt say “Skull Shit?”

  • [adamrice]

    His shirt does indeed say “skull shit”

  • [blindidiotgod]

    Yes, it totally does. I want one!

  • [blindidiotgod]

    Here you go: http://www.darkplot.com/shopping/skullshit/index.html

• [semiotix]

  I’ve always wondered about that too. And also how they coax a release signature out of people who have been subjected to something that makes them look foolish.

  I’m sure a few hundred bucks is dangled in front of the victim’s face, which in most cases probably does make it “worth it.” There’s nothing especially humiliating about being scared like that. If he’s like most people, this guy gets a great story out of it and probably held an episode-viewing party at his house. Whereas if they’d tricked him into doing something shifty or sleazy, almost no amount of money would have been enough. 

  There’s a US show on these days where they stage some kind of horrible-but-awkward scene (a customer screams at a waitress, a lecherous older man gets a suspiciously young-looking girl falling-down drunk, a guy steals money from a tip jar every time a barista turns her back) and there are hidden cameras and microphones trained on all the bystanders to see whether or how they’ll intervene.

  The whole idea horrifies me–it just seems gratuitously cruel. I’ve never actually watched the show, but I’d love to know how they get THOSE people to sign the release, since obviously some number of them just do the human thing and put their heads down, praying for the situation to resolve itself. Maybe they don’t and it’s all blurred over.

  • [garyg2]

    There was a UK show, ‘Balls of Steel’, where various ‘pranks’ were pulled on the unsuspecting public include this classic segment:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxlTO09FqnA

    What the clip doesn’t show is that the guy was in audience laughing it up, rolling his eyes, obviously a little embarrassed but still, y’know, there!

    Has he no shame?! :)

    But this clip was from ‘Panic Face’? Yes, home of the immortal guy-goes-for-job-interview-gets-caught-in-gunfight clip:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taoLE-fMUZ0

    • [Nathan Hornby]

      The difference between Panic Face and Balls of Steel is that Panic Face is good.

      • [garyg2]

        Oh you’re probably right, only seen odd clips of Panic Face and BoS was woefully inconsistent. I mean Dirty Sanchez ffs…

    • [Nathan Hornby]

      That sniper attack one is really something else – must have psychologically scarred him for life, and yet it still fills me with joy – it was brilliant.  I’m not even sure why; frankly it frightens me a little.

• [Nathan Hornby]

  The bit where she came through the wall was inspired.  I had a huge grin all the way through that.

  People getting scared is almost as funny as people falling over.

• [TimmoWarner]

  I didn’t really think this was all that great until they came through the walls.

  That’s the extra attention to detail that made it worth it!

• [yupgiboy]

  This is from a show called “Panic Face”. Absolutely brilliant.

• [frankieboy]

  Alan Funt would be jumpin’ through the walls if he could see this. Things are so amped up anymore.

• [Mitchell Glaser]

  There is an old Candid Camera episode where a bunch of eight year old schoolkids are given aptitude tests, then one at a time are led into a room with a counselor who proceeds to tell them that they are best suited for a career of manual labor. I always thought that was unimaginably cruel.

  • [taras]

    Sure it wasn’t 15 year olds?

    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19960824&id=4KQkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=DacFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1504,4631240

• [Art]

  That would have given me a heart attack!!!

• [Steve Hoefer]

  The “victims” in Japanese TV shows are entertainers of some sort, typically comedians. (In fact it’s very rare to see an actual “person off the street” even on a game show where they don’t scare the skull shit out of you.) These entertainers are already under contract to the TV network and have already signed away all of their rights to privacy and not being subjected to crazy ass stuff.

  They’re budget variety entertainers, so getting a guy to a mysterious warehouse and sitting down in front of a giant 1-way mirror to put on his own makeup wouldn’t have been suspicious.  Not to say he expected it, he certainly didn’t. But it says in his contract that they can do stuff like this to ‘em.

• [awjt]

  OK, let’s be honest; that’s fuckin scary and would scare the SHIT out of me.

• [Rephlex]

  Just for a bit of reference regarding Japanese “Ghosts”. The Japanese motif of a Ghost is far different than the Western “Casper” variant of Spook.

  It took me a while to grasp that when I was there. Basically, its a woman with a white dress and long black hair. Which is the reason why this poor sap is absolutely terrified. The term in Japanese is Yurei. The History behind it is quite unusual actually, but so are all of the Japanese Spirit stories, which makes them all that more amusing and when alone in a Bamboo forest, kind of scary.

• [Chentzilla]

  Ah, those Japanese and their paper houses!