Paris is burning! Or at least we suspect her ears are!

Earlier this week Paris Hilton became the talk of the town when a death-defying plane crash prank video began circulating the Interwebs. The vid shows Paris believing she is plummeting to her death while being a passenger on a plane -- and then it turned out it was all an elaborate ruse put on by an Egyptian prank show. GOTCHA!

Only instead of finding it funny, everyone everywhere felt sorry for the damsel in distress -- but TMZ is reporting that Paris knew about the prank before and got a pretty pay day to fake her fears. The site is claiming the celebutante got somewhere in the million dollar range!

TMZ says it has a contract from the Egyptian production company, which reads, “We will act as if something is going wrong and ask all passengers to jump off the plane!!! Of course everyone will panic, we'll be having skydivers in disguise with us on board. We will monitor the funny reactions from our celebrity guest when they fear jumping off the plane."

Yesterday, out photogs caught the blonde beauty, wearing a shirt with her face on it OF COURSE, as she headed into a salon in Beverly Hills. When we asked about her televised nose dive, she said it was "so scary."

Whatever happened -- we have to admit, Paris makes great TV!