Sara Marberry

I can’t remember why I bought this rubber piggy mask 28 years ago. I think I wanted to use it to joke around with my family and scare people when we were together at my parents’ house on Lake Bloomington in Central Illinois.

You know, like putting on the piggy mask and lying down in someone’s bed or knocking on the front door.

After I pranked my brother-in-law Bruce and we had a good laugh, he put on the mask and snuck up on his four-year-old daughter Jordan.

“Oink, oink,” he said, his voice muffled by the plastic mask.

Jordan took one look at him and let out a piercing, terrified scream and went running down the stairs looking for her mother.

Startled by her reaction, Bruce took off the mask and tried to show Jordan that it was really only him. But she wouldn’t have any of it. She was really scared. 

After that, I put the piggy mask away for a while.

The last person to wear it was my husband Richard, who decided one Halloween to answer the door with it on to scare trick-or-treaters. A few of them screamed. But none ran away.