I hate clowns.

If you happen to don face paint and entertain children’s parties that’s all good, but you won’t find me chatting with you at the snack table afterwards.

You can blame the move It for that fear, which is where that horrible picture up top comes from. With a remake in the pipeline a whole new generation can ready themselves for this irrational fear – or is it really that irrational?

There’s been a recent wave of odd clown-related behaviour across the U.S., and it’s even reached the esteemed (web) pages of the New York Times:

First there were the reports in Greenville County [South Carolina] of creepy clowns offering children money to come into the woods. There was also the mysterious late-night sighting of a clown waving under a streetlight.

That caused alarm and prompted the police to increase patrols where the costumed figures had been spotted.

Now, two weeks later and 180 miles away, separate tales of clowns trying to lure children into wooded areas in Winston-Salem, [North Carolina], have set off concerns in that city.

Professional clowns aren’t happy, which is fair considering the fact that some weirdos are dragging their craft’s name through the mud, and some are blaming the media for fanning the flames with unwarranted coverage.

That being said, law enforcement have had their hands full. More on those incidents briefly mentioned above:

The Winston-Salem Police Department said officers responded to a call around 8:30 p.m. on Sunday of a person dressed in a clown costume offering treats to children. The person was seen by two children and heard, but not seen, by an adult, according to a police report.

The report said the person, a man wearing white overalls, white gloves and red shoes, with red bushy hair, a white face and a red nose, fled once officers arrived…

I imagine the scene looking something like this:

Back to the police reports:

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the police in Greenville said they had responded to four clown sightings in late August. On Aug. 29, a boy reported that two people dressed as clowns were standing near an apartment complex. The next day, a woman called to say she saw two others close to a playground at the complex, the police said.

On Aug. 31, a boy spotted a person dressed in black, wearing a clown mask and walking toward the backyard of a home. On the same day, a 45-year-old woman said that a middle-age man, wearing clownlike face makeup and red hair, “was standing outside the laundromat, and stared at her as she exited,” the report said.

As of yet no one has actually reported the clowns doing anything illegal, because acting a little creepy and offering sweets to laaities isn’t criminalised.

I’m not too sure what to make of it all, but just to further escalate clown-based fears here’s a trailer for a creepy movie released back in June:

No thanks.

[source:newyorktimes]