A group of teen girls accidentally pranked their entire town with creepy red “It” balloons

With Halloween just around the corner and so many great horror movies hitting theaters, it’s the perfect time to come up with a few pranks to scare your friends…or your entire town. And inspired by Stephen King’s “It,” these teen girls executed the ultimate red balloon prank. On September 5th, police in Lilitz, Pennsylvania, shared a couple photos to their Facebook page of lone red balloons tied to sewer grates across their small town — a signature move from Pennywise (played by Bill Skarsgård), the clown in “It.”

Luckily for the small town and its citizens, this wasn’t the work of a devious killer clown, but rather a local group of brilliant teenage girls looking to spook their friends. Peyton Reiff, the mastermind behind the whole operation, took to social media to set the record straight about the creepy red balloon sightings.

We tried to trick our friends but ended up scaring America! #redballoonlititz 🎈 pic.twitter.com/hbLSCxv6GV

— Peyton Reiff (@PeytonReiff) September 5, 2017

As proof, Peyton posted pictures of the group mid-prank.

“Our plan was to tie red balloons to sewer drains around our [friends] from school houses to geek them out since the new IT movie is coming out this Friday and we knew kids from our school would know about this! We ended up going back to giant and getting 10 more red balloons and tying them all over town.” Petyon wrote on Facebook.

The girls soon realized that their prank had been noticed by the local police department (the cops admitted they were “completely terrified”…LOL). The girls said they didn’t intend to scare the whole world, let alone the police, but they are glad everyone got a laugh out of it. The cops were good sports about it too (though requested the pranks be stopped to prevent things from getting out of control).

Can you imagine seeing red balloons showing up all over your town with no explanation? #NightmaresForever.