The Clowns

*INCLUDES PICTURES DON’T READ IF YOU’RE SCARED OF CLOWNS*

This one goes out to Nicole.

So this one is less of an urban legend and more of a true tale.

Let’s go back to 2016 in South Carolina. It’s the middle of August and reports were being made that clowns were creeping in the woods outside of a town called Greenville. Some kids reported seeing clowns in the woods that were making weird noises and whispering. This was just the beginning.

The clown epidemic spread like wild fire across the country. A man in Kentucky was arrested after he was caught hiding in the woods while dressed up as a clown. A woman in Alabama called the police after seeing a clown in the Walmart parking lot. A teen in New York was chased out of the subway by a clown. Schools across the country were shutting down due to clown sightings. Videos of clowns lurking on the sides of roads during the night surfaced the Internet. Stories of all kinds of clown related experiences were popping up. Everyone wanted to know, “Why is this happening?”

Well, some believe that it started out as a publicity stunt for the up and coming remake of the famous Stephen King movie IT. These people think that the original clown sightings were all apart of a staged stunt to gain more publicity for the movie, but that things got out of hand when all of the sudden unplanned clown sightings were happening. However, no one knows the real reasoning behind these mysterious clowns.

These clowns, while not typically physically violent, were very psychologically violent. Many cases reported that the clowns tried to lure kids into the woods with candy or money or the promise of having fun. Other reports were of threats made by the clowns saying that they were going to harm a school full of children when they were let out for recess or after school. This is what caused many schools to close down for a day or so.

So while the clowns themselves weren’t all too dangerous, the people they were trying to scare were. In many videos posted on the Internet of clown encounters, the people would often get physical with the clowns. In one video a group of guys were in a car on the road, stopped, and facing a clown. It would appear that they encountered one on their drive. The clown was just staring at them and wouldn’t move no matter what they did. So the driver got out of his car and grabbed a bat from his trunk and started to chase the clown and hit him with the bat. (No one knows if these videos are fake or not) In another incident, a man in Pennsylvania stabbed a teen wearing a clown mask to death.

So here we are 3 years after the clown epidemic and we still aren’t entirely sure what caused this. However, this will stick with everyone who was around to witness it in its prime. And it will surely stick with those who were unfortunate enough to encounter one of these clowns.

2 thoughts on “The Clowns”

  1. What a weird time 2016 was. I never understood where people got the free time to dress like clowns and stand around just to hope that someone would see them and get scared.

    I feel like one of the motivations of those who dressed like clowns was to go viral on social media. Usually the videos that were posted had thousands of views and retweets on twitter and had everyone talking. I can’t help but think that this was an incentive for people to ride the trend of dressing like a clown. If the clown sightings were to raise publicity for the movie IT, I would say it definitely worked. However, there was definitely some unintended outcomes once people unrelated to the publicity stunt started to dress like a clown.

    Luckily, I never personally had an experience with a clown. I’m not a very intimidating looking guy, nor am I very strong, so I am glad that I didn’t have to act like I could beat up a stranger because I 100% can’t.

  2. Hey Larsen!

    I nearly forgot about this super weird time when everyone was so freaked out about the clowns. I can’t believe it was three years ago! Anyway, I’m really curious as to why the whole thing started. Who was the first clown who started it all, and why did people think it was a good idea to get aboard on the whole situation? 2016 was really an unusual time.

    But anyway, I remember my dad coming home from work one day (he’s the Chief of Police at SUNY Cortland College) talking about how he had to issue a warning to the whole campus because someone reported that they had seen a clown. The things he has to deal with at the college has gotten more absurd everyday it seems.

    Super interesting blog though!

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