The Creepy Clown Sightings of 2016

Happy Halloween, everyone! It's officially Halloween season here at YesterYear, and we're going to start the spooky season with a bit of panic and mass hysteria! 

I've always loved Halloween decorations, as long as they're cartoonish.  Things like cute, happy, smiling pumpkins or adorable little ghosts and witches.  I never liked anything too creepy or over-the-top gory, and most of the decor you see available now at Home Depot or Spirit Halloween (read more about Spirit here) just downright gives me the heebie-jeebies.  I guess that's the point, though, right?  It IS Halloween, after all.

I love the special Halloween snacks and limited-edition items that are released for Halloween.  My daughter and I love getting the newest Monster Mash cereal and hunting for exclusives or limited-time items.  She's already caught the collector's bug, and I enjoy sharing my "retro" interests.  

Also, we've made it a point, nearly every year since my daughter was born, to attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kindom.  Emphasis on the "not-so-scary" part.  That party is genuinely "not-so-scary," and it's even great for a four-year-old (and a grown man with the scare level of a four-year-old.)  

Personally, I don't think it's good for anyone's mental state to be inundated with such gory, terrifying things, but to each their own.  I'm not gonna stop ya if that's what you like.

In my head, the decor at this party is the perfect amount of "cute-spooky" for Halloween.

The autumnal decor inspired by Hollywood-inspired images of the "perfect Halloween" is what I enjoy about the season.  Nostalgic images of high school "Fall Balls" or suburban communities with well-lit streets littered with trick-or-treaters amidst silly-looking scarecrows and decorative dried corn fill my brain with glorious imagery.  Throw in bright orange pumpkins amidst a palate of browns and yellows... Chef's kiss!  Perfection!

However, I have always held myself back from enjoying the full spectrum of Halloween.  The blood and guts horror movies and the late-night mischief-making aren't my scenes.  

Mostly, as I've mentioned a few times on this site, as a kid, I had a fear of being out late in the dark instilled in me from a young age.  Why is that?  I'm not sure, but I know it was something taught by my parents that nothing good ever comes from being out of the house when it's dark outside.  Stranger Danger and evil cults doing evil things in the woods were a panic back then, too, and I was better off inside at night.

Evil cults in the woods?  If you grew up in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, you've undoubtedly heard of the satanic panic.  

My original plan today was to discuss the mass hysteria (and the terrifying reality) of the Satanic Panic, but after getting into it, I had a few thoughts.  It's such a broad topic that it would be hard to put into somewhat entertaining words.  Everything from movies, music, literature, toys, television, and even food fell victim to boycotts because of perceived occult symbols, characters, and people.

Second, I just don't like talking about this topic.  As I've explained, I'm sort of squeamish, and I stay away from horror movies, especially anything with demonic possession or the like.  I don't like being exposed to that sort of thing, and after being raised in a religious home, I never did.  Now, when my own family attends church each week, I'm reminded why I don't enjoy glorifying or discussing the topic.  

Plus, I sleep much better without that sort of stuff floating around in my head.

If you're so inclined, our friend Karen Flieger wrote a great article about the topic a few years ago at The Retro Network.

In any event, when debating even starting on the original concept, a memory popped into my head that I thought we'd all like instead.  I remembered it happening at least 15 or 20 years ago, so I felt comfortable putting it on my "retro" website.  When I looked it up, it was a news story from 2016.  Crazy enough, that's already EIGHT years ago, but 2016 seems like a lifetime ago and yesterday all at the same time. 

Going back in time, I was playing at my neighbor's house one afternoon when we were maybe five or six, and this neighbor had a significantly older brother.  The brother, let's call him Ted, was either already graduated or just about to graduate high school when we were just starting elementary school.  When we played at his house, we had to ask Ted to use his room to play video games because the television in his room was where the game systems were.  He hardly ever said no, and this day was no different.  He moved to the living room, and after a while, we grew bored of the games and moved on to something new.  We had to pass through the living room to leave his bedroom, where we couldn't help but see what he was watching.

It seemed interesting, and I could tell it was a movie for "grown-ups," but it looked safe enough for my five-year-old eyes. There were teenagers at the movie theater, a lot of popcorn floating around, circus tents, and fun carnival music.  Ted over there was laughing, so what could go wrong?

Oh, look, a clown!  It had... sharp teeth and scary-looking eyes... 

WHAT?!  THE CLOWN JUST ATE SOMEONE!  

I was terrified and went home immediately.  Years later, when I was trying to figure out what that scary clown movie from my childhood was, I "Asked Jeeves" (remember that?) about scary clown movies, and I found out that he had been watching Killer Klowns from Outer Space.  

By the way, Ask Jeeves still exists today. They've dropped the "Jeeves" part, but I had to look it up, since nobody actually uses it.

I've since seen Killer Klowns about 20 times, and it's always on my Halloween watch list.  It's one of those (pop) corny movies that are "so bad it's good."  It's what I'd consider "fun-scary."  To a young kid back then, or even today, it's absolutely terrifying.  I couldn't look at a clown for years.  I hadn't even been scared by Pennywise from Steven King's "IT" or a real-life clown from a birthday party... it was the laughably cartoonish rubber masks or puppets used in Killer Klowns that went wild in my imagination and nightmares.

In 2016, nearly 30 years after the movie was released, clowns began appearing everywhere.  Videos and photos of these clowns appeared in papers, on the evening news, and especially made the rounds on social media.  

These clowns would appear in random dark places that a clown wouldn't usually be in.  They'd appear behind a group of people in a parking lot at night or off to the side of a baseball field while kids finished an evening's little league game.  These clowns were just straight creepy and would often stand still and stare.  Occasionally, some would wave slowly, while others started chasing children or jumped out at people to surprise them before slowly backing off, smiling weirdly.  

People began to grow worried, and the hysteria spread. 

The first recorded sighting of this craze was in 2013 in Northampton, England.  It eventually turned out the clown was the work of a local filmmaker using the clown appearances to drive traffic to their film's Facebook page.  Of course, it took a while for this news to make the rounds, and more and more people grew wary of clowns.

In March 2014, the people behind the YouTube channel "DM Pranks" began dressing up as evil-looking clowns to terrify unsuspecting people for video content.  His videos began racking up hundreds of thousands of views, causing a rash of copycat clown sightings by others seeking to "go viral" as well.  These sightings centered around Wasco, California, in October 2014, and subsequent sightings that Halloween season were initially dubbed "Wasco Clowns."  The relatively new yet rapidly growing use of social media and smartphones helped spread these images of creepy clowns faster than ever before.  

About the same time, a documentary called "Killer Legends" was released, with a segment called "Why Are Clowns Scary?"  It explored the clown panics that swept the nation in 1991 and 2008, linking clowns to the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, "The Satanic Panic," and "The Stranger Danger Panic" that had previously run rampant.

John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and rapist convicted of the murders of 33 boys and young men in Cook County, Illinois, between 1972 and 1978.  He was well known in his community (before the arrest) as Pogo the Clown, who would appear at children's parties and fundraising events.  When he was arrested, he allegedly told police officers that "Clowns can get away with murder." 

Clowns have never been straightforwardly funny, especially if you think of some of the more well-known clowns, like the Joker in Batman or Steven King's Pennywise.  The killer-clown allusion is grounded in a much deeper reality, though.  Psychology and criminology professors often point to the fear of clowns, known as coulrophobia, as the reason the clown sightings quickly spread.  

Psychologists frequently say the fear of clowns is somewhat understandable because even if they aren't serial killers, just being a clown is already slightly creepy to the human brain.  In his history book titled "Bad Clowns," Benjamin Radford says, "It's misleading to ask when clowns turned bad.  They were never really good."  He cites Joseph Campbell's classic myth analysis, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," saying, "The casting of the antagonist, the representative of evil, in the role of the clown.  Devils - both the lowly thickheads and the sharp, clever deceivers - are ALWAYS clowns."  

He describes how clowns deliberately exaggerate and cover the human face with paint to make them appear "less human."  A group of psychologists interviewed about the 2016 clown sightings said that when a small child is first learning about the world they've been born into, the exaggerated features are incredibly frightening.  It makes them question what they have only just understood to be normal.  We as adults understand that a clown's behavior is meant to be funny, but an undeveloped brain views it as odd and scary.  

They go on to point out that even as adults, clowns' behavior is the opposite of normal everyday discourse.  For example, at a circus, if a clown runs up to someone to dump a bucket of water on their head, that's just not normal.  Then, when the water turns out to be paper confetti, that's still not normal behavior and is considered confusing to the subconscious.  Radford sums it up that "the contemporary relevance of killer clowns through John Wayne Gacy taps into this broader cultural coulrophobia."  

In March 2015, clown sightings in seemingly random places began appearing on the East Coast, with the earliest recorded sightings on Staten Island in New York.  

In July 2015, a person in clown attire was spotted late one night scaling the gates at Rosehill Cemetary near Chicago, Illinois.  In the video, the clown entered the cemetery and turned slowly to face the residents, filming from their home across the street.  He then waved slowly before running into the dark wooded area and was never seen again.  Police investigated the sighting, and no arrests were made.  They also said they could not prove the video was a hoax, sparking fears that it was real.  You can watch the video below.

In August 2016, clown sightings exploded across America. The New York Times traced the phenomenon back to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Greenville County, South Carolina, both pretty odd places for a giant hoax to start up nearly simultaneously.   

In South Carolina, word quickly spread that the clowns were trying to lure children into the woods with money or candy.  Other clown sightings reported odd scenarios of clowns loitering in random public places at night, like street corners or parking lots.  In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a clown was found to be offering candy and other treats to children on the street in broad daylight but fled the scene when an adult called the police.  

Things began to go viral when creepy pictures of a clown standing in a vacant parking lot in downtown Green Bay surfaced.  Mass hysteria swept the town over the next few days as people on Facebook and other social media began circulating the photos, each claiming, without photographic evidence, to have seen other clowns or heard of others who did.  Police quickly began an investigation to calm the city, claiming to have found no trace of the clown in the photos or any other clown wandering the city.

The image of "Gags the Clown" from Green Bay, Wisconsin, that started the craze 

In the following days, news outlets around the country discussed the pictures, including Fox News, CNN, NBC, ABC, USA Today, and the New York Post. The discussions in nationwide media sources fueled a national if not global, panic over clowns.

In the panic, many likely missed that the Green Bay clown had been outed as a clown named "Gags" who took part in a publicity stunt for a Wisconsin filmmaker. The film "Gags" was released in 2018 and had a very small run in theaters in 2019.  

That didn't stop the hysteria, though.  Numerous other incidents likely copycat pranksters (and some real creeps, I'm sure), began popping up all over the globe.  By October, incidents were reported as far as Canada, the United Kingdom, and even Australia.  

According to the New York Times, while many were just hoaxes performed by people seeking attention, a handful of incidents resulted in arrests.  In Alabama, seven people faced felony charges of making terroristic threats connected to the clown activity.  Clown sightings resulted in at least 12 arrests and one death in Pennsylvania.  In Reading, Pennsylvania, a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed during an incident that occurred with a prowler wearing a clown mask.  However, it eventually came out that the stabbing victim was the one wearing the clown mask and was also allegedly not the "intended victim" when the interaction started.    

Despite news of arrests, the incidents continued to stack up.  Hundreds of students in Pennsylvania at Penn State swarmed the campus streets while they carried out a massive clown hunt.  While it was mostly a party atmosphere, a large group of rowdy, slightly inebriated (allegedly), hormone-filled young adults can get out of hand quickly.  Reports of clown sightings at Michigan State created a similar event on that campus closer to Halloween.

The frenzy reached a point that the Obama White House Press Secretary was asked about the phenomenon and commented, "I don't know that the President has been briefed on this particular situation, but obviously, this is a situation that local law enforcement authorities take quite seriously."  

A Connecticut school district banned clown costumes as a "symbol of terror" after an armed clown hoax temporarily put Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusets, on lockdown.  

In England, reports of clown attacks terrorizing children left the country in a panic.  The British NSPCC (National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children) reported that the Childline counselors received hundreds "if not thousands" of calls from children worried about the clowns.  

Countless posts on social media received much attention from worried parents, inquisitive teenagers, and frightened citizens.  The World Clown Association's Randy Christensen took a stance against the trend of dressing up as clowns to frighten people as it began to affect clown-related businesses like birthday parties or other acts.  It got to such levels that even McDonald's had Ronald McDonald take a step out of the limelight for a while so they would not be associated with anything nefarious.  

On October 12th, the Russian Embassy in London warned Russian citizens living in England to be aware of clown sightings and avoid clowns.  The next day, the government of Fiji warned people against participating in any "clown activity" and that anyone found doing so would be severely responded to.

Several other governments acted in response.  New Zealand began banning clown costumes from store shelves, while several towns and school districts in the United States placed a blanket ban on coming to school dressed in a clown costume or any mask.  Target pulled clown masks from its website and stores due to the scare, and the village of Memramcook, New Brunswick, Canada, politely asked residents to not dress up as clowns for Halloween or any other time.  

By the 25th of October, several internet news outlets, and even some local television news channels, reported that an alleged clown-initiated "attack" or "purge" was being planned for Halloween.  By "purge," they referenced the 2013 dystopian horror movie "The Purge" starring Ethan Hawke.  

No attacks or "purge" was ever reported, but a family from Florida was attacked on Halloween night by a group of approximately 20 "teens" in clown and The Purge (movie) masks.  No arrests were made. 

That Halloween, newspapers in Florida began reporting that parents decided to carry a firearm when taking their children trick-or-treating, just in case any threatening clowns should appear.  I'd be willing to bet the same people carry firearms routinely anyway.  

In the end, the clown sightings faded away once Halloween was over.  The news found something new to cover, and that was seemingly the last of the clown sightings... for now.

I can't think of what happened during the first week of November 2016 that took all the news media's attention and focus, can you?  

Aaron Balic, the author of "The Psychodynamics of Social Networking," suggests that the strong fear and anger about the clown sightings was from what we half-remember from childhood that contributes to the present phenomenon.  He likens it to what historically was seen in small groups of people, like the Salem witch trials.  The rise in social media enables a crowd mentality to be extended among large swaths of people like never before.  Balic points out that the closer the "contagion event" comes to something that hits deep on a psychological or emotional level, the more likely it is to run rampant, especially so many people's childhood fear of clowns.   

Looking back on these clown sightings from nearly ten years ago, it's clear that these incidents really happened, whether they were pranksters committing a hoax, people just following a social media trend, or genuinely insane people intent on harming others.  In any event, they tapped into a deep-seated collective fear that blended the lines between urban legend and reality.  

For now, the clowns have retreated into the shadows, but the memory of that unsettling Autumn and Halloween of 2016 reminds us how quickly fear and panic spread in our new, constantly connected lives. 

The clowns may be gone, but there's always the fear of the unknown and the bizarre waiting for the next frenzy.