In the early hours of a warm summer’s day in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a dark parking lot under a bridge was unsettled by an eerie visitor.  

Dressed in a tattered clown outfit, complete with white face paint and caricature features, the stranger clasped four balloons as he stared into the distance, then walked off.

Captured on CCTV at 2am, the grainy black and white photos of the sinister character soon went viral on Facebook, and were picked up by news outlets Fox News and USA Today, as they tried to fathom the goings on of that day in August 2016.  

At the time, the only gleanable information was the clown’s name: Gags. 

As theories spun out of control, days later it was revealed to be an elaborate marketing stunt for the short indie horror film, Gags The Clown.

By the time the movie bombed when it was finally released in 2018, the stunt had already sparked a wave of social contagion with ‘killer clowns’ sightings up and down America – and beyond.  

Children across several states reported being approached by scary looking clowns trying to lure them into the woods, while in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one clown was seen offering children treats before being chased by police. 

While for many it was seen as a scary but harmless prank, as the creepy trend swept the streets, in Pennsylvania, it took a tragic turn.

After an altercation to do with a clown mask, 16-year-old, Christian Torres was fatally stabbed. Avery Valentin-Bair, 29, was imprisoned for his murder. 

With things getting out of hand, the creator of OG killer clown, Pennywise, even called for calm.

Posting on the then-Twitter in October 2016, author Stephen King wrote: ‘Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria—most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh.’ 

However, it was too late, as ‘killer clown’ mania had truly taken hold, with copycat sightings also being reported here in the UK.

One ten-year-old child was chased by a man dressed as a clown and armed with a baseball bat, through a public park in Kidlington, Oxfordshire.

On another occasion, Thames Valley Police were called to 14 incidents within 24 hours in Bracknell, Milton Keynes, Abingdon and Chesham. 

In County Durham, four children were followed to school by a clown armed with a realistic plastic machete, and soon local authorities were calling for a ban on clown costumes for Halloween.

One concerned mother, Charlene Paterson, told the BBC: ‘It’s general fear, not just in her [daughter] but in all of her friends and everybody else in the high school. 

‘Who’s behind the masks? You don’t know. Nobody knows. 

‘You don’t know if it’s a 15-year-old that’s looking for a giggle or a 30-year-old man who’s looking to do something far, far different.’ 
 
Dr. Cecilia Sayad is a senior lecturer in film at the University of Kent, who has a PhD in Cinema Studies from NYU. Her research intos the relationship between horror films and reality, reveals why the idea of ‘killer clowns’ strike fear into many of us.

‘The main reason horror-film clowns are scary is, of course, because they perform evil act. Art, from the movie franchise, Terrifier, for instance, is outrageously and disgustingly violent.

‘The question is why creators choose to make their monsters clown-like.’ 

Dr. Sayad says that many horror film writers and directors draw on childhood fears.

‘At the circus, clown numbers used to involve slapstick comedy that were often quite violent: the cartoonish falls, the water pistols, the smacking of each other can be perceived as scary, rather than entertaining.’

‘But clowns are also figures that are hard to categorise: they are adult-sized but behave like children. Their bodies are human-like, but their exaggerated features are rather unnatural, even fantastic.  

‘They get hurt, but don’t seem to feel pain. They correspond to some description of monsters: creatures that refuse to sit within a clearcut category.  

‘They might be sad or even angry, but their mouths are frozen in a larger-than-life smile.

‘These contradictions make clowns hard to pin down, and that is something we usually find unsettling, sometimes horrifying.’ 

When 19-year-old Kenny Ojuederie dressed up as a clown and wielded a chainsaw at people at Brunel University in Uxbridge for a Youtube prank in October 2016, he was arrested and given a penalty notice.

Less than six months later, the UK saw its first clown jail sentence in 2017, after 18-year-old Michael March wore a mask and brandished a foot-long axe at a pregnant woman in South Shields as a Halloween ‘prank’, causing her to throw a brick at him in fear. 

The teenager was jailed for six months and admitted to the court that he accepted his actions were ‘foolish and reckless’.

Commander Julian Bennett from the Met Police said: ‘We are currently assessing a small number of reported ‘killer clown’ incidents in London, three of which meet the threshold of a criminal offence. 

‘Our primary responsibility is identifying and investigating those incidents where a criminal offence has occurred.

‘However, anti-social behaviour can leave people feeling scared, anxious and intimidated and I would urge those who are causing fear and alarm to carefully consider the impact their actions have on others.’ 

Five years on from the phenomenon, the sleepy Scottish village of Skelmorlie got it’s own sinister clown in 2021, which appeared at Halloween and has seemingly taunting locals almost every year since.

Leaving red balloons in his wake, in videos uploaded to Facebook under the name of Cole Deimos, the clown poses on dark streets wearing a Pennywise costume, ‘daring’ the police to find them while leaving cryptic clues for residents.

With a population of just 2,000 people, the clown’s antics have left villagers divided with some feeling genuinely terrifed, and others branding his antics ‘eccentric’ and fun.

Meanwhile, in America, yet another tragedy is unfolding.

Earlier this month, Illinois State Police arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection to a fatal stabbing of an elderly man in East St. Louis.

Less than three hours earlier, the teenager, dressed in a baggy black and red clown outfit, had approached a Ring camera at a nearby home, whispering at the lens: ‘I’m looking for you’.

While the ‘killer clown’ phenomenon may have started life as a creative and unique way to promote a movie in the Youtube era, the reality is, what followed since has been truly horrifying.

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