It’s no secret that joining a Fraternity or Sorority will most likely involve an initiation period where new recruits (called pledges) must be “hazed” by the existing members to prove their loyalty to the organization. These hazing rituals can range from mild and silly to extreme and downright dangerous.
Over the years there have been accounts of hazing that were so horrible, college students have been hurt or sometimes killed during the process.
These are some of the most outrageous, scary, and horrifying hazing rituals actually performed by Frats and Sororities to initiate their misfortune pledges.
1. The Crab Boil
My cousin was a brother of Pi Kappa Alpha at Tulane University and they did some really messed up sh** to their pledges.
One of the rituals was called the crab boil, where they took boiling water mixed with pepper spray and seafood seasoning and poured it all over them.
They would use hotter water as the night went on. Some of the guys had 3rd-degree burns and one kid was put in the hospital for the rest of the semester.
2. Snowy Leap-Frog
My Frat does this thing to the winter pledges where they choose the coldest day of the year and they have everyone strip down to their boxers and flip flops, and they lead us around the city for literally hours.
The worst thing is we can’t even walk normally, we have to leap like frogs the whole time. By the end of it, none of us could feel our entire lower halves.
We didn’t even care about the humiliation because we were just freezing and in pain.
3. Onion Sprints
One morning all of my pledge brothers and I got a text telling us not to eat anything all day because we were having a “special dinner activity” that evening.
That night they took us to the school track and brought alone a truck full of gallons of milk and raw onions.
Each of us had to chug a full gallon of milk and eat 3 onions, and then run around the track until they said stop. If we puked we’d have to chug another gallon and eat 3 more onions.
4. Buried In Garbage
I pledged a really “prestigious” sorority at my school, so I thought the hazing wouldn’t be so bad.
One night they made all of us sit in the middle of the floor in our bras and panties, while all of the sisters and a ton of frat guys stood around us.
They all had buckets of garbage and paint and old food that they threw on us while everyone laughed.
Afterward, they wouldn’t let us leave until we cleaned it all up.
5. Beer Boarding
I wasn’t supposed to be in the Frat house when this was taking place (I was friends with one of the brothers so I was in his room when it went down).
They tied the pledges to the radiators and pipes down in the basement, and water-boarded them with a keg of beer.
It was really scary, one kid passed out and had to be revived (and when he woke up they made him do it again to “complete” the task).
6. Body Labeling
We had this one “sisterhood bonding activity” (yes that’s actually what they were called) where we had to line up in our underwear and let eat of the sisters take a turn labeling our bodies with whatever flaws they saw (flat chest, love handles, pimples, etc.).
Then they threw a party for all of Greek Life and we had to walk around with sharpies asking people if they had anything else to add.
7. Deadly Cocktails
My school had a horrible incident where one of the fraternities made their pledges drink a cocktail of different liquors and crushed up pills while quizzing them on their organization’s history.
Every answer they got wrong, they had to take a shot of it.
One guy ended up with alcohol poisoning in his blood and he died in the hospital. They shut down the Frat and arrested some of the brothers too.
8. Lost In The Woods
I was in TKE (Tau Kappa Epsilon) and when I was a Junior they added this new ritual where they blindfolded the pledges, took their phones and wallets and drove them deep into the woods.
They made them do a bunch of push-ups and then quietly snuck away and drove back to campus.
They had to find their way back without money or phones, and we drove them at least 30 minutes out.
9. Early Bird Gets The Worm
My frat had this massive beer pong with multiple hoses so many people could bong a continuous pour.
The pledges would have to dig up bugs and worms and each round they would all have to bong a beer with one of the bugs in it.
Whoever swallowed the bug would be “exempt” from the paddling that immediately followed each round. It was really brutal.
10. Bruises For Sisterhood
A lot of Frats and Sororities have paddling, but usually it’s a few light taps. The year I pledged my Sorority, we had this evil Pledge Mom who literally enjoyed torturing us (I swear she was a psychopath).
She hd the sisters paddle our back legs until they were literally purple with bruises. None of us could sit down properly for a week.
11. Caged Pledges
This one fraternity on my campus (Sigma Pi) got into a lot of trouble when some photos were leaked from hazing their pledges.
I had a friend who was a pledge (he ended up quitting before initiation) and he said they would torture them in all kinds of ways.
One of which included locking them in really tiny cages for hours and kicking them.
12. Life Of The Party
When I pledged my Fraternity, during the first week they threw a huge party and told us that we would be the “entertainment”.
They blindfolded us, and made us strip down to our boxes, sit on the floor, and link arms the whole night, in shifts.
While out on the floor people would spill stuff on us and step on us and yell things at us, and we had to just sit there and take it.
13. Rounded Up
My Sorority would do something called a “round-up” where they would literally round all of us up like cattle, blind-folded with our hands tied behind our backs, into a small, dark basement at one of the satellite houses.
Once we were in there they would usually scream at us or push us around or make us take shots.
Once they had some of the Frat guys come in and make us do some pretty embarrassing exercises.
14. The Basement Shower
My brother’s Frat house had this creepy shower room in their basement that looked like an old school gym locker room.
They would take the pledges down there and tie them to a plastic chair and sit them under the shower for hours while grilling them with questions.
If they answered anything incorrectly, they’d literally throw salami on them and not let them shower in an actual shower after it was over.
15. Greek Olympics
My School’s Greek Life held these “Greek Olympic Games” during Hell Week and made all of the pledges participate as part of their hazing.
We crawled through mud, did wheelbarrow races in our underwear, ate moldy food, and used our bodies as sports equipment.
To be honest, while it was humiliating, it was also kind of fun at the same time. It definitely could have been worse.
16. Drink ‘Til You Puke
A few years ago my friend went to pledge Sigma Chi at the University of Central Florida and he said that the hazing there was too intense.
It came out a year later (and he’d already quit before being initiated) that the Fraternity was shut down after allegations of forcing pledges to chug until they puked and filming the whole thing.
17. Powder Pyramid
While I was pledging my Frat I never really had to do anything super embarrassing or painful, which I was thankful for, but we did have to do some things that were kind of strange.
For example, the brothers ambushed us one day with tons of baby powder and just started flinging bags of it at us. Then we had to climb into a pyramid and take a picture.
It was tough because we kept falling but we had to take a successful picture before we were allowed to go shower.
18. Party Clowns
My Sorority was a really good time, but we definitely had a lot of hazing compared to the other Sororities at my university.
A lot of it was just making us dress up all crazy and ugly and go to parties like that.
It wasn’t too bad because I had my pledge sisters with me the whole time, so we were able to laugh about it. But we honestly looked horrendous.
19. Mud Skippers
One of the hazing events (that they called “sister bonding” was having to strip down to our underwear and lay out in the mud while sisters would scream questions at us and kick mud into our faces if we answered them incorrectly.
We were out there in the rain for literally hours and it was pretty cold too. I absolutely hated that day, it felt like a year.
20. Getting Paddled
My Fraternity wasn’t creative when it came to hazing, but the brothers were definitely violent.
Their idea of a “hazing event” was just lining us up and finding any opportunity to beat the crap out of us.
Whether it was by over-exercising us until we passed out, making us fist fight each other, or just the classic beating us with wooden paddles. I ended up leaving before initiation, it was really stupid.
