My halloween prank was a wonderful success. I stuffed the speaker and camera in the pumpkin at lunchtime on the 31st, adjusted all the sound levels so that the scream the pumpkin emitted would be sufficiently bloodcurdling, and rigged up the laptop just inside the window for observation purposes. We ended up not making the video visible to our visitors, as we didn’t feel like dragging the TV over to the window, but did enjoy watching the reactions captured as people triggered the scream ourselves. My favorite response was one teen in an alien mask who walked toward the door, turned toward the camera when the scream was triggered, and just left.

And to borrow a riff from Dave Barry, I think “The Screaming Electric Pumpkins” would make a great band name.