Watch a Fake Psychic's Eye-Popping 'Ouija' Prank
You’ve (hopefully) never seen eyes quite like these before. In a crazy, sure-to-be-viral new clip, visitors to a New York City fortune-teller shriek in terror as a psychic’s eyes pop out of her head. But that’s not all! There’s also an invisible force playing with an Ouija board, not to mention a ghastly ghost girl who rises out of the floorboards.
But don’t worry: There are no real ghosts involved in the video (at least, we don’t think there were). The psychic video is actually the latest work from Thinkmodo, the viral-marketing masterminds behind last year’s epic Carrie-themed coffee shop prank and the Devil’s Due-inspired Satan-spawn-in-a-stroller gag. “Ouija Psychic Terror” was produced to promote the upcoming horror movie Ouija, in theaters Oct. 24, and you can watch the clip above on Yahoo Movies.
The latest put-on was arranged like so: A chalkboard was set up outside of a “new” psychic parlor in Brooklyn, advertising free readings to lure customers inside. Inside, they’re met by “Yolanda,” an Ouija board-using medium who greets the hapless victims with an ominous-sounding claim: “I’m feeling a strong presence with you.” The board spells out R-U-N, Yolanda’s eyes do their voodoo (as she yells out the instruction), and the shrieking begins. And all this happens before Ghost Girl emerges from the underworld.
Little do they know that Thinkmodo had carefully orchestrated the whole frightening experience. After an extensive scouting search, the marketing agency found a wine store in the Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn that offered access to two adjoining spaces. “One [of the spaces] we converted into a psychic parlor, and the other into our hidden-camera control room,” Thinkmodo co-founder Michael Krivicka explains to Yahoo Movies. “Inside the psychic parlor, we built a floor with a two-foot crawl space below, enabling us to hide a ‘dead body’ stunt woman underneath. It took four days to build out the space, and [an additional] two days to dress it to look like a psychic parlor.” All told, the production crew installed six hidden cameras to capture every possible angle.
Yolanda is played by Jalisa Thompson, an Atlantic City native who won the “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Annual Great Face Off” in 2006, and went on to work at her hometown’s Ripley’s museum for five years, also winning the contest again in 2011.
Krivicka said about 80 people came through the makeshift parlor over the course of the two-day shoot. “The whole idea was to surprise and scare people, but also [to get] them to sign releases afterwards. That was not a problem. It’s pretty hard not to appreciate all the cool things we did to make the whole effect, which we explained immediately to the subjects after the surprise.”
As with any of these pranks, their terror is our glee. The bit gets funnier and funnier as men and women alike (no children, thankfully) get the living daylights scared out of them. One woman even darts back halfway through the shop before her chair gives in.
One of the marks may have even saw it coming: “You sure you ain’t gonna unlock something that we just can’t get back into the box?” he asks before the R-U-N F-U-N begins. Sounds like someone’s seen too many movies.
