Jan. 14, 2026
373: The Killer Clown Hoax
Strange sightings instilled panic throughout the nation in 2016.
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WEBVTT
00:00.031 --> 00:01.663
[SPEAKER_00]: Send in the clowns.
00:02.287 --> 00:03.053
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.
00:03.335 --> 00:04.101
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib.
00:04.524 --> 00:05.974
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is Ghost Town.
00:20.855 --> 00:31.514
[SPEAKER_00]: In early August of 2016, photographs surface of a stringed figure wandering the streets of downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin, and what looked like some kind of office park plaza.
00:32.536 --> 00:42.373
[SPEAKER_00]: The images showed a figure dressed in baggy clown clothes, with a bright white painted face, dark eyes, and red mouth, holding four black balloons.
00:42.860 --> 00:52.355
[SPEAKER_00]: As you might imagine, the photos brought up many questions, and, as the pictures circulated, in wider communities, those questions became a sense of panic.
00:53.216 --> 01:01.729
[SPEAKER_00]: The photos would soon be outed as a promotional method for a short film, but after the film was released, the clown kept appearing.
01:01.709 --> 01:14.342
[SPEAKER_00]: In forests, on school grounds, looming over sidewalks of rural neighborhoods and suburbs, figures and clown masks, clown suits, and paint were being seen at alarming rates all over the world.
01:15.164 --> 01:16.748
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone wanted to know.
01:16.728 --> 01:17.489
[SPEAKER_00]: Who were they?
01:18.049 --> 01:18.710
[SPEAKER_00]: What were they?
01:19.290 --> 01:20.171
[SPEAKER_00]: And what did they want?
01:21.212 --> 01:46.515
[SPEAKER_00]: With so many questions, the public's reaction to this bizarre phenomenon went to extremely dark places, including coercion, threats, stalking, and even murder.
01:47.761 --> 01:51.467
[SPEAKER_00]: The chaos really began three years before in North Hampton, England.
01:51.968 --> 02:01.362
[SPEAKER_00]: In the fall of 2013, a clown that bore a striking resemblance to Stephen King's character Pennywise in the classic horror novel, It, began appearing.
02:01.963 --> 02:09.094
[SPEAKER_00]: It stood motionless, often clutching balloons, waving or staring at passerby's and sometimes saying, beep, beep.
02:09.074 --> 02:14.645
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, a catchphrase from the clown, soon people began taking photos of the clown all over the city.
02:15.166 --> 02:20.196
[SPEAKER_00]: At the National Lift Tower, posing an Elm Street in a town square or at a lake.
02:20.898 --> 02:30.036
[SPEAKER_00]: These photos gained traction online and on Friday the 13th, 2013, an anonymous Facebook page was set up called Spot North Hampton's clown.
02:30.016 --> 02:39.111
[SPEAKER_00]: Featuring a collection of the photos witnesses had taken, as the page's popularity grew at the author teased where the clown redecks to peer by posting cryptic riddles.
02:39.732 --> 02:48.587
[SPEAKER_00]: The author told a local paper anonymously, quote, I just want to amuse people, most people enjoy being a bit freaked out, then they laugh about it afterwards.
02:49.849 --> 02:53.475
[SPEAKER_00]: A string of fake online profiles emerged that also claimed to be the clown,
02:53.455 --> 02:55.178
[SPEAKER_00]: or wanting to out the clown.
02:55.800 --> 03:02.933
[SPEAKER_00]: The clown even had a vigilante rival called the clown catcher, who launched an online campaign to try to track the clown down.
03:03.795 --> 03:11.650
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, however, the clown was outed as 22-year-old North Hampton University student and budding filmmaker Alex Powell.
03:11.630 --> 03:20.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Powell said to a journalist at the mirror, quote, I am the clown, but I've been trying to keep it as mysterious as possible to be discreet so people didn't find out.
03:21.284 --> 03:29.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Together with his friends, Elliott Simpson and Lukubanski, Powell admitted he was using the clown appearances to drive traffic to his Facebook page.
03:29.315 --> 03:32.384
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, he also sold North Hampton clown merch.
03:33.326 --> 03:44.337
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, in March 2014, YouTuber Mateo Moroni from Parugia racked up hundreds of millions of views by dressing up as an evil clown and terrifying unsuspecting pedestrians.
03:44.317 --> 04:00.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Far away from Perugia Italy, in October of that same year, a clown with colorful balloons was seen wandering around Wasco, California, so much that it was called the Wasco clown, with eerie photos of the clown being posted regularly on social media.
04:00.112 --> 04:02.717
[SPEAKER_00]: The identity of the Wasco clown was never found.
04:03.799 --> 04:12.597
[SPEAKER_00]: In July of 2015, a person in clown attire was spotted scaling the gate of Chicago's Rose Hill Cemetery late at night, and interacting with passerby's.
04:13.338 --> 04:21.715
[SPEAKER_00]: Julia Graham, a woman who was driving by the cemetery with her husband that night, said that they saw the clown running toward the main gate around 10pm.
04:21.695 --> 04:25.855
[SPEAKER_00]: quote, when we get closer, we realize it's a clown, which is super weird, she said.
04:25.875 --> 04:30.557
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this was somebody putting forth a lot of effort and being really weird.
04:31.685 --> 04:37.730
[SPEAKER_00]: Others saw the clown recorded it stopping, looking toward them, and slowly waving hello before running off.
04:38.371 --> 04:41.093
[SPEAKER_00]: The identity of this clown was also never discovered.
04:41.994 --> 04:59.970
[SPEAKER_00]: So now here we are, in August of 2016, was at this point that dimly lit photographs of a creepy clown wandering the streets of downtown Green Bay, with black balloons started showing up everywhere online, and people were both creeped out as you might imagine,
04:59.950 --> 05:08.665
[SPEAKER_00]: The photos were shared tens of thousands of times, with people all over the world wondering just what the hell was going on with this incredibly creepy clown about town.
05:08.705 --> 05:16.018
[SPEAKER_00]: Adding to the mystery was the appearance of a new Facebook page called Gags, which named the clown Gags the clown.
05:15.998 --> 05:25.255
[SPEAKER_00]: In a week and a half, the page had more than 50,000 likes, and news outlets began covering gags the clown as far as Ireland, Germany, and Brazil.
05:25.996 --> 05:34.311
[SPEAKER_00]: But this clown would not remain a mystery, and would that same month be unmasked as Adam Krauss, a UW Green Bay film student.
05:34.291 --> 05:44.886
[SPEAKER_00]: Kraves admitted he was the admin of the Facebook page, and that Gags was the title of an upcoming short film he wrote, produced and directed, called, of course, and also, Gags.
05:45.767 --> 05:52.116
[SPEAKER_00]: The film came out that month, and as you can probably tell, had a very successful marketing campaign to say the least.
05:52.937 --> 05:53.377
[SPEAKER_00]: The film?
05:53.437 --> 05:58.965
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't quite as successful, but Gags was only the beginning.
05:58.945 --> 06:04.990
[SPEAKER_00]: In late August, other clowns appeared, and they were getting bolter and more violent.
06:06.033 --> 06:07.434
[SPEAKER_00]: more after this break.
06:08.555 --> 06:13.219
[SPEAKER_00]: In late August 2016, another clown was seen in Greenville County, South Carolina.
06:13.760 --> 06:21.827
[SPEAKER_00]: With Adam Kraus and his filmmaking friends officially retired from public clowning, you'd think that sightings would have slowed down, but they didn't.
06:22.788 --> 06:24.309
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, quite the opposite.
06:24.990 --> 06:27.592
[SPEAKER_00]: In Greenville specifically, sightings became prevalent.
06:28.313 --> 06:36.040
[SPEAKER_00]: A woman walking home late one night told the sheriff's office that she had seen, a quote,
06:36.020 --> 06:41.268
[SPEAKER_00]: Another woman set her son at her clanging chains and a banging noise at his front door.
06:42.049 --> 06:52.143
[SPEAKER_00]: Children told authorities they had been approached by clowns, who, according to the New York Times, who did a lot of coverage on this, were offering them money to follow them into the woods.
06:53.225 --> 07:03.580
[SPEAKER_00]: The clowns wanted extra deputies patrolling the area and prompted property managers to distribute flyers that warned children against walking in the woods alone at night.
07:03.560 --> 07:09.276
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, a clown was cited in Winston Salem, North Carolina, offering treats to children.
07:09.717 --> 07:11.623
[SPEAKER_00]: The clown fled when police arrived.
07:12.445 --> 07:18.582
[SPEAKER_00]: So many more sightings followed that the Winston Salem Sheriff issued a statement saying, quote,
07:18.562 --> 07:25.471
[SPEAKER_00]: It's illegal, it's dangerous, it's inappropriate, and it's creating community concerns so it needs to stop.
07:26.212 --> 07:27.715
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, it didn't.
07:28.476 --> 07:40.452
[SPEAKER_00]: On September 30, 2016, a woman was attacked by a man dressed as a clown in redding Ohio, prompting an investigation and schools to be closed for the rest of the day out of concern for the safety of students.
07:40.432 --> 07:59.156
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, the mysterious clown presence became a contagion, with sightings claimed in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, where reports of two people wearing, quote, clown-like clothes were driving around in a pickup truck, scaring teens and children.
07:59.757 --> 08:05.224
[SPEAKER_00]: Clowns were also peeping into women's windows and additionally infiltrating college campuses.
08:05.204 --> 08:15.040
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the New York Times, the clown sightings resulted in at least 12 arrests across the United States and one death, also in Pennsylvania.
08:15.962 --> 08:22.032
[SPEAKER_00]: In redding, a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in an altercation with a prowler who was wearing a clown mask.
08:22.771 --> 08:26.058
[SPEAKER_00]: and let me emphasize that that's all just in the United States.
08:26.619 --> 08:30.688
[SPEAKER_00]: Further incidents were reported in Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
08:30.728 --> 08:39.126
[SPEAKER_00]: British communities were described as quote horrified and a pressure had been placed in police resources to curb cloud activity and public reaction.
08:40.051 --> 08:47.525
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon, what was at first prevalent international and viral clown activity became a full-blown cultural phenomenon.
08:48.186 --> 08:59.207
[SPEAKER_00]: Clown suits blew up the shelves, and some stores refused to sell clown paraphernalia at all, including, and maybe most notably, target, a big move when you think this happened around Halloween.
08:59.187 --> 09:06.120
[SPEAKER_00]: Employees of theme parks were instructed to remove any horror costumes that make up before leaving work, so as to not scare others.
09:06.861 --> 09:09.947
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, professional clowns feared the end of their livelihoods.
09:10.769 --> 09:20.166
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the world clown association president Randy Christensen took a stance on the matter, speaking about the damaging trend of people dressing up as clowns.
09:20.146 --> 09:29.937
[SPEAKER_00]: On October 12, the Russian embassy in London issued a warning to Russian and British citizens because of the clowns' care, as did the Fiji and police the day after.
09:30.811 --> 09:41.226
[SPEAKER_00]: Approximately two weeks before that, however, rolling stone or at a piece on September 29, 2016, called Killer Clowns, inside the terrifying hoax sweeping America.
09:41.266 --> 09:53.865
[SPEAKER_00]: If that gives you any idea of this phenomenon spread in public reaction, I mean, even McDonald's decided that Ronald McDonald's would quote, keep a lower profile as a result of the incidents.
09:53.845 --> 10:05.598
[SPEAKER_00]: Back October 25, 2016, several news outlets were reporting on an alleged clown initiated purge, or attack, which supposedly was to take place on Halloween eve of 2016.
10:07.160 --> 10:18.773
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the day of, no attack occurred, though many Americans decided to go arm-to-all-truck retreating to protect their children from loose clowns, now this was mostly in Florida.
10:18.753 --> 10:28.022
[SPEAKER_00]: One Florida family lived the nightmare the world was spiraling about, when, on Halloween, the family was attacked by approximately 20 people in clown masks.
10:28.923 --> 10:33.167
[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, no fatalities were had, but also no arrests were made.
10:34.128 --> 10:42.657
[SPEAKER_00]: The great clown panic died down after Halloween of 2016, but continued to bubble up around certain films, viral videos, and cultural moments.
10:43.277 --> 10:47.241
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, the it reboots from 2017 and 2019.
10:47.221 --> 10:56.783
[SPEAKER_00]: But all of it begs the question, why are so many people compelled to dress as clowns over say vampires or zombies or, I don't know, giraffes?
10:57.665 --> 11:05.162
[SPEAKER_00]: Many experts have hypothesized about this, including David G. Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
11:05.142 --> 11:12.134
[SPEAKER_00]: He attributed the epidemic of sightings to quote Mass hysteria as people spheres and feelings fed on one another.
11:12.956 --> 11:25.378
[SPEAKER_00]: Jason D. C. Cat and Associate Professor of Psychology at Western New England University suggested another motive for the outbreak, and need for people to feel connected to a news event that had garnered national headlines.
11:25.358 --> 11:35.332
[SPEAKER_00]: quote, since the event appears to be difficult to verify, the claim that one had had such an encounter is easier to make, and relatively free from the risk of being called out as a fraud, he said.
11:35.372 --> 11:44.504
[SPEAKER_00]: So, low risk of being called out for lying and the benefit of positive attention for reporting such a claim may motivate some people to lie.
11:44.544 --> 11:54.538
[SPEAKER_00]: All of these theories about why people do it, or why they lie about it, beg the question, why do these clowns fascinate and freak people out at all?
11:54.518 --> 12:02.711
[SPEAKER_00]: In a Rolling Stone piece about the phenomenon, CryptoZool just more in Coleman explain the situation and what she called the Phantom Clown Theory.
12:02.752 --> 12:09.743
[SPEAKER_00]: Coleman's Phantom Clown Theory is rooted in the quote, primal dread that so many children experience in their presence.
12:09.723 --> 12:20.214
[SPEAKER_00]: Steve Schlauzmann, a child psychiatrist who teaches a course on the psychology of horror films at Harvard University, also believes something more deeply sociological as that work.
12:20.234 --> 12:29.544
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, humans are built to recognize patterns from an early age, and a clowns exaggerated human features set off a primal warning bell for within our crocodile brains.
12:30.165 --> 12:35.291
[SPEAKER_00]: It has this kind of capacity to grab you emotionally before it grabs you cognitively, he continues.
12:36.051 --> 12:36.692
[SPEAKER_00]: He says,
12:36.672 --> 12:43.945
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the key to making something viral online, actually, to make people emotionally engaged before they're intellectually engaged.
12:44.907 --> 12:53.061
[SPEAKER_00]: In his years researching the things that scare us, Dr. Schlausman has also uncovered another truism that feeds into the great clown panic of 2016.
12:53.041 --> 12:56.568
[SPEAKER_00]: Horror is almost never about the thing that's scary.
12:57.229 --> 13:00.215
[SPEAKER_00]: The horror unravels once terrified people respond.
13:01.177 --> 13:15.285
[SPEAKER_00]: When a local Floridian takes his gun out and fires at what he perceives as an evil-looking clown is not that different from people going out with their pitchforks into the woods after Frankenstein's monster he said, adding, it never ends well.
00:00.031 --> 00:01.663
[SPEAKER_00]: Send in the clowns.
00:02.287 --> 00:03.053
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.
00:03.335 --> 00:04.101
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib.
00:04.524 --> 00:05.974
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is Ghost Town.
00:20.855 --> 00:31.514
[SPEAKER_00]: In early August of 2016, photographs surface of a stringed figure wandering the streets of downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin, and what looked like some kind of office park plaza.
00:32.536 --> 00:42.373
[SPEAKER_00]: The images showed a figure dressed in baggy clown clothes, with a bright white painted face, dark eyes, and red mouth, holding four black balloons.
00:42.860 --> 00:52.355
[SPEAKER_00]: As you might imagine, the photos brought up many questions, and, as the pictures circulated, in wider communities, those questions became a sense of panic.
00:53.216 --> 01:01.729
[SPEAKER_00]: The photos would soon be outed as a promotional method for a short film, but after the film was released, the clown kept appearing.
01:01.709 --> 01:14.342
[SPEAKER_00]: In forests, on school grounds, looming over sidewalks of rural neighborhoods and suburbs, figures and clown masks, clown suits, and paint were being seen at alarming rates all over the world.
01:15.164 --> 01:16.748
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone wanted to know.
01:16.728 --> 01:17.489
[SPEAKER_00]: Who were they?
01:18.049 --> 01:18.710
[SPEAKER_00]: What were they?
01:19.290 --> 01:20.171
[SPEAKER_00]: And what did they want?
01:21.212 --> 01:46.515
[SPEAKER_00]: With so many questions, the public's reaction to this bizarre phenomenon went to extremely dark places, including coercion, threats, stalking, and even murder.
01:47.761 --> 01:51.467
[SPEAKER_00]: The chaos really began three years before in North Hampton, England.
01:51.968 --> 02:01.362
[SPEAKER_00]: In the fall of 2013, a clown that bore a striking resemblance to Stephen King's character Pennywise in the classic horror novel, It, began appearing.
02:01.963 --> 02:09.094
[SPEAKER_00]: It stood motionless, often clutching balloons, waving or staring at passerby's and sometimes saying, beep, beep.
02:09.074 --> 02:14.645
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, a catchphrase from the clown, soon people began taking photos of the clown all over the city.
02:15.166 --> 02:20.196
[SPEAKER_00]: At the National Lift Tower, posing an Elm Street in a town square or at a lake.
02:20.898 --> 02:30.036
[SPEAKER_00]: These photos gained traction online and on Friday the 13th, 2013, an anonymous Facebook page was set up called Spot North Hampton's clown.
02:30.016 --> 02:39.111
[SPEAKER_00]: Featuring a collection of the photos witnesses had taken, as the page's popularity grew at the author teased where the clown redecks to peer by posting cryptic riddles.
02:39.732 --> 02:48.587
[SPEAKER_00]: The author told a local paper anonymously, quote, I just want to amuse people, most people enjoy being a bit freaked out, then they laugh about it afterwards.
02:49.849 --> 02:53.475
[SPEAKER_00]: A string of fake online profiles emerged that also claimed to be the clown,
02:53.455 --> 02:55.178
[SPEAKER_00]: or wanting to out the clown.
02:55.800 --> 03:02.933
[SPEAKER_00]: The clown even had a vigilante rival called the clown catcher, who launched an online campaign to try to track the clown down.
03:03.795 --> 03:11.650
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, however, the clown was outed as 22-year-old North Hampton University student and budding filmmaker Alex Powell.
03:11.630 --> 03:20.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Powell said to a journalist at the mirror, quote, I am the clown, but I've been trying to keep it as mysterious as possible to be discreet so people didn't find out.
03:21.284 --> 03:29.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Together with his friends, Elliott Simpson and Lukubanski, Powell admitted he was using the clown appearances to drive traffic to his Facebook page.
03:29.315 --> 03:32.384
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, he also sold North Hampton clown merch.
03:33.326 --> 03:44.337
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, in March 2014, YouTuber Mateo Moroni from Parugia racked up hundreds of millions of views by dressing up as an evil clown and terrifying unsuspecting pedestrians.
03:44.317 --> 04:00.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Far away from Perugia Italy, in October of that same year, a clown with colorful balloons was seen wandering around Wasco, California, so much that it was called the Wasco clown, with eerie photos of the clown being posted regularly on social media.
04:00.112 --> 04:02.717
[SPEAKER_00]: The identity of the Wasco clown was never found.
04:03.799 --> 04:12.597
[SPEAKER_00]: In July of 2015, a person in clown attire was spotted scaling the gate of Chicago's Rose Hill Cemetery late at night, and interacting with passerby's.
04:13.338 --> 04:21.715
[SPEAKER_00]: Julia Graham, a woman who was driving by the cemetery with her husband that night, said that they saw the clown running toward the main gate around 10pm.
04:21.695 --> 04:25.855
[SPEAKER_00]: quote, when we get closer, we realize it's a clown, which is super weird, she said.
04:25.875 --> 04:30.557
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this was somebody putting forth a lot of effort and being really weird.
04:31.685 --> 04:37.730
[SPEAKER_00]: Others saw the clown recorded it stopping, looking toward them, and slowly waving hello before running off.
04:38.371 --> 04:41.093
[SPEAKER_00]: The identity of this clown was also never discovered.
04:41.994 --> 04:59.970
[SPEAKER_00]: So now here we are, in August of 2016, was at this point that dimly lit photographs of a creepy clown wandering the streets of downtown Green Bay, with black balloons started showing up everywhere online, and people were both creeped out as you might imagine,
04:59.950 --> 05:08.665
[SPEAKER_00]: The photos were shared tens of thousands of times, with people all over the world wondering just what the hell was going on with this incredibly creepy clown about town.
05:08.705 --> 05:16.018
[SPEAKER_00]: Adding to the mystery was the appearance of a new Facebook page called Gags, which named the clown Gags the clown.
05:15.998 --> 05:25.255
[SPEAKER_00]: In a week and a half, the page had more than 50,000 likes, and news outlets began covering gags the clown as far as Ireland, Germany, and Brazil.
05:25.996 --> 05:34.311
[SPEAKER_00]: But this clown would not remain a mystery, and would that same month be unmasked as Adam Krauss, a UW Green Bay film student.
05:34.291 --> 05:44.886
[SPEAKER_00]: Kraves admitted he was the admin of the Facebook page, and that Gags was the title of an upcoming short film he wrote, produced and directed, called, of course, and also, Gags.
05:45.767 --> 05:52.116
[SPEAKER_00]: The film came out that month, and as you can probably tell, had a very successful marketing campaign to say the least.
05:52.937 --> 05:53.377
[SPEAKER_00]: The film?
05:53.437 --> 05:58.965
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't quite as successful, but Gags was only the beginning.
05:58.945 --> 06:04.990
[SPEAKER_00]: In late August, other clowns appeared, and they were getting bolter and more violent.
06:06.033 --> 06:07.434
[SPEAKER_00]: more after this break.
06:08.555 --> 06:13.219
[SPEAKER_00]: In late August 2016, another clown was seen in Greenville County, South Carolina.
06:13.760 --> 06:21.827
[SPEAKER_00]: With Adam Kraus and his filmmaking friends officially retired from public clowning, you'd think that sightings would have slowed down, but they didn't.
06:22.788 --> 06:24.309
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, quite the opposite.
06:24.990 --> 06:27.592
[SPEAKER_00]: In Greenville specifically, sightings became prevalent.
06:28.313 --> 06:36.040
[SPEAKER_00]: A woman walking home late one night told the sheriff's office that she had seen, a quote,
06:36.020 --> 06:41.268
[SPEAKER_00]: Another woman set her son at her clanging chains and a banging noise at his front door.
06:42.049 --> 06:52.143
[SPEAKER_00]: Children told authorities they had been approached by clowns, who, according to the New York Times, who did a lot of coverage on this, were offering them money to follow them into the woods.
06:53.225 --> 07:03.580
[SPEAKER_00]: The clowns wanted extra deputies patrolling the area and prompted property managers to distribute flyers that warned children against walking in the woods alone at night.
07:03.560 --> 07:09.276
[SPEAKER_00]: Similarly, a clown was cited in Winston Salem, North Carolina, offering treats to children.
07:09.717 --> 07:11.623
[SPEAKER_00]: The clown fled when police arrived.
07:12.445 --> 07:18.582
[SPEAKER_00]: So many more sightings followed that the Winston Salem Sheriff issued a statement saying, quote,
07:18.562 --> 07:25.471
[SPEAKER_00]: It's illegal, it's dangerous, it's inappropriate, and it's creating community concerns so it needs to stop.
07:26.212 --> 07:27.715
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, it didn't.
07:28.476 --> 07:40.452
[SPEAKER_00]: On September 30, 2016, a woman was attacked by a man dressed as a clown in redding Ohio, prompting an investigation and schools to be closed for the rest of the day out of concern for the safety of students.
07:40.432 --> 07:59.156
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, the mysterious clown presence became a contagion, with sightings claimed in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, where reports of two people wearing, quote, clown-like clothes were driving around in a pickup truck, scaring teens and children.
07:59.757 --> 08:05.224
[SPEAKER_00]: Clowns were also peeping into women's windows and additionally infiltrating college campuses.
08:05.204 --> 08:15.040
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the New York Times, the clown sightings resulted in at least 12 arrests across the United States and one death, also in Pennsylvania.
08:15.962 --> 08:22.032
[SPEAKER_00]: In redding, a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in an altercation with a prowler who was wearing a clown mask.
08:22.771 --> 08:26.058
[SPEAKER_00]: and let me emphasize that that's all just in the United States.
08:26.619 --> 08:30.688
[SPEAKER_00]: Further incidents were reported in Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
08:30.728 --> 08:39.126
[SPEAKER_00]: British communities were described as quote horrified and a pressure had been placed in police resources to curb cloud activity and public reaction.
08:40.051 --> 08:47.525
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon, what was at first prevalent international and viral clown activity became a full-blown cultural phenomenon.
08:48.186 --> 08:59.207
[SPEAKER_00]: Clown suits blew up the shelves, and some stores refused to sell clown paraphernalia at all, including, and maybe most notably, target, a big move when you think this happened around Halloween.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Employees of theme parks were instructed to remove any horror costumes that make up before leaving work, so as to not scare others.
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[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, professional clowns feared the end of their livelihoods.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even the world clown association president Randy Christensen took a stance on the matter, speaking about the damaging trend of people dressing up as clowns.
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[SPEAKER_00]: On October 12, the Russian embassy in London issued a warning to Russian and British citizens because of the clowns' care, as did the Fiji and police the day after.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Approximately two weeks before that, however, rolling stone or at a piece on September 29, 2016, called Killer Clowns, inside the terrifying hoax sweeping America.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If that gives you any idea of this phenomenon spread in public reaction, I mean, even McDonald's decided that Ronald McDonald's would quote, keep a lower profile as a result of the incidents.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Back October 25, 2016, several news outlets were reporting on an alleged clown initiated purge, or attack, which supposedly was to take place on Halloween eve of 2016.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But on the day of, no attack occurred, though many Americans decided to go arm-to-all-truck retreating to protect their children from loose clowns, now this was mostly in Florida.
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[SPEAKER_00]: One Florida family lived the nightmare the world was spiraling about, when, on Halloween, the family was attacked by approximately 20 people in clown masks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, no fatalities were had, but also no arrests were made.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The great clown panic died down after Halloween of 2016, but continued to bubble up around certain films, viral videos, and cultural moments.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For example, the it reboots from 2017 and 2019.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But all of it begs the question, why are so many people compelled to dress as clowns over say vampires or zombies or, I don't know, giraffes?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Many experts have hypothesized about this, including David G. Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He attributed the epidemic of sightings to quote Mass hysteria as people spheres and feelings fed on one another.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jason D. C. Cat and Associate Professor of Psychology at Western New England University suggested another motive for the outbreak, and need for people to feel connected to a news event that had garnered national headlines.
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[SPEAKER_00]: quote, since the event appears to be difficult to verify, the claim that one had had such an encounter is easier to make, and relatively free from the risk of being called out as a fraud, he said.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, low risk of being called out for lying and the benefit of positive attention for reporting such a claim may motivate some people to lie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All of these theories about why people do it, or why they lie about it, beg the question, why do these clowns fascinate and freak people out at all?
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[SPEAKER_00]: In a Rolling Stone piece about the phenomenon, CryptoZool just more in Coleman explain the situation and what she called the Phantom Clown Theory.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Coleman's Phantom Clown Theory is rooted in the quote, primal dread that so many children experience in their presence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Steve Schlauzmann, a child psychiatrist who teaches a course on the psychology of horror films at Harvard University, also believes something more deeply sociological as that work.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, humans are built to recognize patterns from an early age, and a clowns exaggerated human features set off a primal warning bell for within our crocodile brains.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It has this kind of capacity to grab you emotionally before it grabs you cognitively, he continues.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He says,
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the key to making something viral online, actually, to make people emotionally engaged before they're intellectually engaged.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In his years researching the things that scare us, Dr. Schlausman has also uncovered another truism that feeds into the great clown panic of 2016.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Horror is almost never about the thing that's scary.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The horror unravels once terrified people respond.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When a local Floridian takes his gun out and fires at what he perceives as an evil-looking clown is not that different from people going out with their pitchforks into the woods after Frankenstein's monster he said, adding, it never ends well.
