I’ve recently been working on a prank of sorts for Halloween. I’ve been building some software that will use a video camera hidden in a pumpkin to trigger a loud, scary scream when people walk up to the door. It will then capture 5 seconds of their reaction and display that video repeatedly so they can see how silly they looked. It should be a lot of fun.

It’ll also have an ambient audio track running to lend atmosphere. I’m going to throw something together on the synth, but the kids and I spent some time playing with a sound editor last night creating spooky sounds which will be randomly laid over the ambient track. I have one really evil sounding back masking snippet that, when you play it backwards, says “Go to church! Say your prayers! Tithe! Tithe!” The kids thought it frightfully amusing to hear their own voices pitch-shifted. My only concern now is putting in an override so I can spare the adorable 2 year olds being frightened.