Corning (Halloween Prank)

This is the first time I've ever seen the word 'Corning' written/typed. It seems kinda weird now that I look at it.

I'm curious if anyone else ever did this as a kid. I had never heard of it before moving to a small southern Indiana town at age 12. When October rolled around, this was just a normal thing for kids to do. There wasn't anything else to do, aside from sitting around hanging out.

Basically, we would steal ears of corn out of a cornfield. then shuck them and put all the kernels in a bag. Later after it got dark & throughout the evening, we would throw handfulls of it at people's houses (usually whichever part of the house had the biggest/most windows). In that small town, finding the corn was extremely easy. From any point in the town, if you walk a mile (or less) in any direction, you're standing in a corn field.

Honestly, I never really thought much about what it was actually like for the people in the houses. I just knew that I liked the rush that came from running away after they came out and yelled at us. The ironic part was that anyone who gave us any angry reaction were the people who were most likely gonna get it again a couple days later. Most people would just turn on their outside lights. The best response from the 'victims' point of view would have been to do absolutely nothing at all. If they didn't come outside, and didn't turn on/off any lights, then that wasn't fun for us.

I'll admit this was pretty stupid and dangerous, but there were a couple times when we did it to people in cars. That definitely made it much more likely for us to get a reaction. Sometimes you'd get someone who would actually stop and get out and come after us. Luckily, we never caused any accidents. Also luckily, we were never caught by people who got out of their car to chase after us.

There were only 2 times when I was on the receiving end. Once at home, and once driving in my car. I knew what it was right after it happened, but for a split second it did scare the crap out of me. It was much louder than I could have ever imagined. 4, 5, 6, etc.. kids each throwing a handful or two of corn at the same time = a whole bunch of hard kernels making loud taps/pecks on your window at a time when you are definitely not expecting it.

Any house that didn't have many lights on, but you could see that they had a TV on, was obviously a prime target. You hope they're watching a horror movie at the time.

I assume kids no longer do it nowadays, but I really don't know. Honestly, I wouldn't mind it though. I still like a good scare.

a reply to: BrokenCircles

When I was a kid we lived in Delaware. The night b/f Halloween was well established as "Mischief Night" in my neighborhood. Rolls of toilet paper thrown high up into trees, ring doorbells and run, moving yard stuff around, etc. What bratty kids we were, lol. Nobody ever got the cops called on them for vandalism tho. It was kinda expected as a tradition, although creative home-owners DID dole out punishments, however... like a cold power-stream of water from a hose nozzle on us, or sudden burst of a loud sound to scare the bejesus out of us!

It was all in good fun, but lord knows why our parents let us do it, and why for the most part, neighbors tolerated it. Then, the next night we'd knock on these people's door for candy? Like, WTH? LOL

a reply to: BrokenCircles

Never heard of “Corning”, probably because we didn’t have any cornfields within 10 miles of my house when growing up.
But we did many other pranks as kids, the basic ones like soaping windows and toilet papering trees or egging houses we did many times around Halloween and Devil’s Night.
One of the greatest pranks we ever did was we took a lead fishing sinker and fishing line and we would tape the line to the bottom of someone’s screen door on the aluminum part so the sinker would hang down.
Then we would sit in the bushes and pull the string so the sinker would bang against the metal part of the door like someone was knocking.
They would come to the door and look, then as soon as they went back in, pull the string again…after 5-6 times they would be flipping out and we would be laughing our asses off.
I know it was juvenile malarkey but I still laugh now thinking about the reactions of some of the people.
You couldn’t get away with that stuff now with all the video doorbells.
Good times.

a reply to: new_here

It was all in good fun, but lord knows why our parents let us do it,

My parents weren't ok with it. They caught me with a plastic grocery sack half-filled with kernels of corn, and they took it away from me. Kinda made me mad. dammit lol. It wasn't exactly easy. It took a little bit of time and work to get that corn ready to go.

I didn't understand why they had a problem with it though. Unlike toilet paper or eggs, the corn doesn't really leave much of a visible mess the next day. Squirrels and whatever other critters will take care of cleaning it up.

All they really accomplished was preventing me from bringing any of the corn home. I just had to hide it somewhere else before I went home.




eta: I just remembered... I think part of the reason my parents had a problem with it was because it actually was stolen corn. So yeah, I suppose that is kinda understandable.

a reply to: RazorV66

That's a good one, the sinker knocking on the door. Never heard/thought of that one before.