A group of neighborhood kids have a story for life after a man decided to scare them away from his property in the best way.
Music producer and audio engineer Stephen Kane lives in Huntsville, Alabama, and has a large collection of “unusual instruments,” including an Aztec Death Whistle.
First discovered during an excavation of an Aztec temple, the mysterious instrument is in the shape of a skull and makes a wind-like sound, according to a report in peer-reviewed The World of Music.
But larger reproductions take the form of a loud, terrifying shriek—and this was exactly what Kane had in his roster when he noticed a group of kids hanging out outside his property in the lead-up to Halloween.
“I was working on music and had gotten an alert on my Ring doorbell,” Kane explained to Newsweek.
“There were kids hanging around, which isn’t unusual, and really doesn’t bother me. My neighborhood is very active and unique. With Halloween approaching and having the Death Whistle nearby, I had the idea of scaring them.”
He went on: “I took the whistle to the back yard and faced in a direction so the sound from the whistle would reflect off of the side of my neighbor’s house and towards the street for maximum volume.”
The moment Kane used the whistle to give the kids a fright has now gone viral, after he shared the Ring video footage to his Instagram account, @sprkane, on October 30.
Boasting over 5.3 million views and 300,000 likes, the video shows a group of what appears to be young teenagers hanging out just outside Kane’s driveway, just talking to one another.
He wrote in the caption: “POV: Kids hanging out in your front yard but you own an Aztec Death Whistle. *grabs whistle and goes to backyard*.”
The quiet night is then absolutely shattered by a loud, long, terrifying shrieking sound—Kane blowing the whistle—and after first standing completely still with shock, the boys then begin shouting and swearing, with some nervous laughter added in, and they take off down the street.
“Got them with the death whistle,” Kane laughed in the caption, and Instagram users responded in their droves, as one wrote: “That day, an urban legend [began]. Those kids are going to be ‘ghost hunting’ for years.”
“Nah that’s hilarious. They probably talked about it all night, you gave them a great story,” another agreed.
Others wanted a whistle of their own, with one asking: “I wonder if I could get one of these as a car horn…”
Kane told Newsweek he watched the footage with friends before sharing it to social media, and had “no idea” it would go viral—but “it was really exciting” when it did.
As to some commenters complaining he shouldn’t have scared the kids, he clarified he is not a grumpy old man “with a fist waving in the air screaming ‘get off my lawn!’ It was simply a prank.”
He added that he hasn’t seen the kids come back to his property since that night, but “I’m sure a new neighborhood myth, legend, rumor, etc. has emerged.”
And he added: “If it was me as a kid, I will have told this story a million times growing up, especially having friends to confirm my story!”
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