Just last night I helped a friend dupe a substantial slice of online Harry Potter fandom into believing three pages of the forthcoming book had been leaked and posted to the internet.

OMG, I almost forgot.... Back in '99, I was tracing my then-hubby's family history on ancestry.com. A distant cousin of his, whom he had never met, had compiled and posted a considerable amount of genealogical info, but she sounded kind of anal and prissy... So, we sent this poor cousin a terribly misspelled e-mail pretending to be a relative who was about to get out of prison and needed a place to start over, and since "blud is thiker then watter," why not camp out at her place for a while? She totally freaked out and e-mailed the entire extended family with a warning about this soon-to-be ex-con trying to insinuate himself into their lives.

Remember this guy from "Gregg's hompage?" We wrote, "Here is my pitcher so you can see I am nomral."

Her husband is a cop and knew right away that it was a prank, but he let her stew about it for a week until we 'fessed up. This prank is now part of his family's, er, oral tradition.

That's hilarious! Well played.

APRIL FOOLS!

I was staying as a guest with my friends, and their son "Sprout" was about 8 at the time.

We were sitting at the counter in the kitchen, having breakfast. Breakfast was eggs and waffles.

Sprout started it by giving me the old "loose-saltshaker-top" gag and ruining my eggs. Harumph.

Minutes later, Sprout had eaten half his food when he left the table to retrieve his homework from his bedroom.

Seizing my opportunity, I poured a fresh dollop of maple syrup onto his plate next to the food, and mixed in as much salt as I could dissolve.

Sprout returns, sees the fresh syrup. Since dad usually doles out the syrup: "Thanks for the syrup, dad!"

Big forkful of waffle...

Swab it in the syrup...
.
.
AAAAAUUUUGGHHHH!

I once used a magnet and a diamante stud to convince a snotty receptionist at the law firm where I worked that I'd got my nose pierced. I let my boss in on the joke and he wound her up to the point where she was phoning the partners at our head office to spread the 'news'.

She was even bitchier to me after that, but I didn't care because it was worth it to see her face when I took the stud off the side of my nose.

Heh. "Snotty" receptionist + fake nose ring. Perfect.

THis is one of my favorites. It was played by a friend of mine who does a lot of trades in his business. He was getting married and his fiance went off to the Pastry shop to order the cake and she and the baker really hit it off coming up with disturbing ideas for the groom's cake, etcetera. They made an appointment to finalize everything the next week.
Later my friend calls the baker to say, "I'm just calling everybody I have trades with to let them know that there is this woman going around town saying we are engaged and I don't know her."
"OMG she was just here!" and they went on about it.
Well the week goes by and of course the fiance keeps the appointment. Apparently the look on the baker's face as she walked to the door was a sight to behold. My friend was there to enjoy the joke.