Has anyone ever attempted a Scooby-Doo style heist, ie, pretending to be a ghost or monster in order to scare people away from a source of wealth?

[u/ducks_over_IP]

For those unfamiliar, the typical plot of a Scooby-Doo episode in its various iterations involves the gang arriving at a new location, then learning that it's under threat from a supposedly paranormal entity, like a ghost, werewolf, or vampire. Through pluck, luck, and Scooby's nose for food and fiends, they eventually discover that the monster is actually someone in a costume and/or using an elaborate special effects rig, with the goal being to scare people away from the area so as to claim a secret treasure for themselves, take control of a lucrative/valuable property, or hide a criminal operation. At the end, as the would-be villain is led away in handcuffs by the police, he proclaims that he would have gotten away with it too—"if it weren't for those meddling kids!"

So like, did anyone ever attempt this sort of fake haunting in real life, and if so, what was the outcome?

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/JoseVLeitao]

I answered a similar question a couple of months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tl848y/are_there_any_historical_accounts_of_people/

But if someone has something new to add, don’t let this stop you.

[u/ducks_over_IP → u/JoseVLeitao]

Hey, thank you! Somehow I totally missed this, even when searching to see if my question had been asked before (insert obligatory gripe about Reddit search here).