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Wacky Halloween laws: Don’t be a priest and leave the silly string at home

A priest (C) looks on before the arrival of Pope Francis for a mass at St Peter's Square in the Vatican October 27, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi (VATICAN - Tags: RELIGION TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Residents of Los Angeles better leave those cans of silly string at home tonight, unless they want their Halloween trick to be a hefty $1,000 fine.

Boing Boing posted a photo this week of a stern sign warning against the possession, use, sale or distribution of the dangerously fun substance known as silly string on Halloween.

"$1,000 fine" silly string prohibited 12:00 a.m. October 31 to 12:00 noon November 1st," the sign on Hollywood Blvd. says in caps lock red lettering. The bylaw originates from 2004, when LA city council decided Oct. 31 silly string celebrations in Hollywood had become, well, silly, costing more than $200,000 to clean up each year.

A Los Angeles Police Department release from 2004 explains:

On a typical Halloween night, up to 100,000 people come to Hollywood Boulevard in search of something to do. Given the lack of a formal event, hundreds of illegal vendors flock to the street and sell Silly String which then becomes the sole source of entertainment for the night.

When the party was over, city service workers were left to clean up the mess.

[ Related: Woman to hand out letters, not candy to overweight kids on Halloween ]

Hollywood's silly string ban is among a number of other surprising Halloween laws the trick-or-treaters best follow lest they have a run in with police while dressed as a ghoul. For example, it's illegal to pose as a priest in Alabama, or wear a mask in public without a sheriff's permit in Walnut Creek, California, according to LawInfo.

For the past few years, Belleville, Illinois has banned anyone older than 14 from knocking on doors and asking for free candy, while in Dublin, Georgia, it's illegal to wear a mask, hood or anything that disguises your identity unless you're under the age of 16.

Canada's Criminal Code has a century-old law against pretending to be a witch or a sorcerer, though the law certainly isn't intended to target six-year-olds with Harry Potter wands.

"Every one who fraudulently pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction," states section 365(a) of the code.

Last year, authorities charged a Spanish-language newspaper publisher under the code for pretending he was a "healer." He was after money, not free candy.