February 25, 2025 • 50 mins
It began in August -- five photographs of what appeared to be a sinister figure dressed as a clown loitering in a Green Bay, Wisconsin parking lot went viral. Eight days later, a local filmmaker admitted this was just an attempt to garner PR for an upcoming indie film... but the clowns kept coming. In the space of just a few months numerous people around the world reported being attacked or stalked by clowns. So what exactly was going on?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So conspiracy realists, welcome to tonight's classic episode. We talked,
I think, in a couple of shows over these many
years about something called chlorophobia, which is a huge, a
huge fear in the post gacy environment of the Western world,
the fear of clowns.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Those clowns are scary, y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, yeah, and like you know, pop cultucture hasn't really
given them a break at least the clowning profession, which
once was a reputable field, and now you know, folks
that are clowning for a living have all this chlorophobia
stuff to deal with with, like movies like It and
then of course the hugely popular remake of It.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Oh yeah, and this particular incident that we are going
to be discussing or I guess maybe time frame, time
period where there were just there seemed to be clowns everywhere.
I think it's a great exploration of our previous discussions. Well,
I guess the post this happening, but previous to this
moment in time right now, about how social media really
(01:06):
was changing everything. Right, this is twenty nineteen October right
at the end, right around Halloween actually, and there were
so many videos of clowns just hanging out, purported to
be just wandering around.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, not doing professional clowning, just sort of lingering at
the edge of a roadside or a forest or copes
of trees. It all began in August in twenty sixteen,
when five photographs of what appeared to be a suspicious
clown were discovered, and these photographs took place in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(01:43):
But as you said, Matt, this is more than just
an exploration of some creepy people in unusual dress. This
is an exploration of the social media world in which
we now reside. Ye, all right, let's roll it.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Eho.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It's me No, they call me Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck.
At most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
It is the most wonderful time of the year. If
you're listening to this episode, as it comes out today,
Conspiracy Realist, Happy Halloween.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, the Spookables are all around you.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Spookables, Yes, that like lunchables.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
That's what my son calls them.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Really, that's a great name, and it's a little bit.
I like how it has a little bit more edge
than something being simply spooky. Right, you've probably heard that
spoopy spoopy. It's like cute spooky.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Oh nice. Yeah, he's into the real, real deal, legit
spookable stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I don't know if I told you guys, I've been
watching like R rated eighties horror movies with my ten
year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, no, it's fine. It's just like, mainly we watched
the first two Child's Play movies because they're just hilarious.
They're only rated R because of some slightly bad language.
But like she kids at her school used those words
and she knows not to use them and mixed company.
But we've had a really good time. And last night
after she went to bed, I watched My Bloody Valentine.
(03:48):
Have you seen this? It's about a crazed miner in Ontario, Canada,
and it's the most Canadian horror movie.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I've ever seen in my life as in m like minors, minors,
coal miners.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And I actually get in a conversation met with with
your wife a few weeks or a month or so back,
where I was thinking, I've got some books that I
think Matt's kid will love. The word I think I
told you this. She told me, I was worried that
maybe because I don't know what kids read, I was
worried that maybe the books would be like too scary,
(04:23):
you know, like scary stories telling the dark. Probably want
to wait a few years on that one or something
or amphegory. But her reply was he already has so
many books.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, he certainly does.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well let him know, let him know when, well, you guys,
let me know when it is appropriate to send them
the creepy stuff. Because I think when we're kids, we
all have this fascination to one degree or another with
things that scare us, right, with things that make our
heartbeat race, things that make us mistake a pile of
(04:56):
clothes in the dark for an evil figure crouching clothes
to the bed. And one of the biggest, surprisingly common
fears in the Western world is something called col roaphobia.
That's a word for the day that means the fear
of clowns. This is a pretty recent word, it comes
about in the nineteen nineties, but it describes a long standing,
(05:20):
arguably ancient unease that is doubtlessly familiar to many of
our fellow listeners. Clowns are a little bit different here
in the US because we live in a post gay
sy environment. John Wayne Gacy, the notorious, infamous serial murderer
who also had a reputation or an alternate identity as
(05:44):
a clown. This affected the cultural zeitgeist in a number
of ways, and it has consequences, ripple effects that remain
with us today. Matt, you and I I believe, were
at was it the Museum of Crime or Murder in DC.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, and we saw actual Pogo the clown suits.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Which was his alter ego. Oh and at the Museum
of Death in Hollywood they have several of his paintings
that he did of himself as a clown, and his
shoes are there as well.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And this this calls to mind another episode we did
on the controversy surrounding serial killer memorabilia and art, which
you know, I listened back to a while ago, and
I gotta say objectively, not that bad.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Not bad at all. I can't remember who I heard
say this, gosh, and then this is this. I think
it's an interesting point though, the idea that killers should
not be publicized, their identity should not be publicized, because
then it allows them to profit off of their crimes.
I think that's an interesting concept.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Especially in cases of terrorism where someone simply wants to
be a martyr for a cause. But back to clowns.
So because US, at least partially because of John Wayne Gacy,
but probably because of some other long standing, hardwired psychological
quirks in our brains, People from all walks of life,
(07:11):
especially here in these United States, are pretty comfortable nowadays
being upfront and transparent about their fear of or distrust
of clowns. People have no problem saying I don't like clowns,
I'm not going to see it, et cetera, et cetera.
This is a cultural phenomenon. It's not necessarily a global attitude,
and a lot of other countries clowns are these beloved
(07:33):
figures of fun and festivity, Like in Central America, you
know the parade is really poppin' when a gang of
clowns comes in. I don't know what the group name
for clowns is. You know how there's like a parliament
of owls and unkindness of ravens, clowns, a murder of clowns,
a car of clowns, a honk of clowns. I like
murder of clowns. So here in the US, the fear
(07:57):
of clowns eventually, too long ago, reached a boiling point.
It became a national and then international panic. Here are
the facts. Our story today starts on August first, twenty sixteen,
in Green Bay, Wisconsin, five photos of what appeared to
(08:19):
be a creepy clown surfaced. This clown was wandering, literally
wandering around a parking lot under a bridge somewhere in
Green Bay, and this went viral thanks to the Internet.
We can only conjecture that it must have been a
slow news cycle, because the pictures got national media attention.
(08:40):
Fox News was all over at USA Today was all
over it. Eventually The New York Times was writing about this.
Shortly after August fifth. A Facebook page pertaining to the
pictures or purporting to pertain to the picture's surface, and
they said the name of this clown is Gags. Gag. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well yeah, and it wasn't just any clown. It looked
to be someone who was purposefully trying to be creepy,
right because the character, this person whoever, was wearing all
of this makeup and everything. It wasn't like your cutesy
clown makeup. There were some there's an edge to it
(09:23):
that appeared to be sinister in some way. And I
believe it was what the character was holding balloons.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yes, yeah, nah, not your vibe. Huh, that's not a
lick you're going for. Yeah, it's a very good point, Matt.
It was purposely done up like a scary Halloween clown,
you know what I mean, not like a fun welcome
to McDonald's clown, which I would argue was also still
(09:51):
pretty creepy. Here's what happens. Numerous pundits speculate on this story,
and because the is not very much in the way
of solid factual reporting here, there's just not much to
the story other than these five creepy pictures and a
Facebook page. At this point, pundits are going wild. They're saying,
(10:15):
what's going on here? Is this a childish prank? Is
this alone unhinged lunatic? Is this part of something larger.
We'll get back to that, but first, here's Carol with
the weather, that kind of stuff or is it an
attempt at gorilla marketing? And it turned out it turned
out that our story gets sewed up in a pretty
(10:37):
i would say, relieving way.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So eight days later, a filmmaker by the name of
Adam Krause actually came forward and revealed that this was
nothing but a marketing stunt. He and his crew were
actually filming a short piece called Gags the Clown and
Bloody Disgusting, which is a horror blog quoted Kraus as saying,
we filmed the short and secret and released photos of
(11:01):
the sightings quote quote because I wanted to convince my
town that there was a creepy clown wandering the streets
late at night. We released the pictures August first, twenty sixteen,
and it blew up from that point on. It went
viral very quickly. I announced that it was just a
short film eight days later, but that didn't stop the
craze from kicking into high gear. What do you guys think,
(11:21):
Is this a form of terrorism like it? Should there
be some burden of responsibility on individual like this? That
is doing something that is legitimately terrorizing a town.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
There's not a way to make it illegal.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I was gonna say. According to Captain Kevin Warwick
Wryh of the Green Bay Police Department where this was
first occurring, where gags made the appearances and the Facebook
group started and everything, he said, this person is not
breaking the law. He can walk in a clown costume
anywhere he wants.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You can't call it like menacing or something like that.
What point had something become menacing? I know that's a crime.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
If someone's loitering, or if someone is giving the reasonable
if there's reasonable suspicion or that they would be about
to commit a crime, right, So, and that's tough to
prosecute one. I don't want to lose this part though,
because Kraus did say this is for my film.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, after it's like known or whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like every time we see
a red meat headline in the news, only to see
it corrected on page thirty two of the next issue
of the paper, or thrown in at the very end
and find print on a website for a broadcast news show.
(12:42):
People just don't care about their attractions and there we go.
All's well, that ends well, right, This wasn't the first
time viral marketing had fooled unsuspecting denizens of the Internet
or the media. Shout out to Blair Witch Project, which
I think is one of the most famous recent examples.
But those clown sightings did not stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(13:07):
In fact, they escalated kind of the way that you
know one like one of my favorite songs in the
Hall of Mountain King escalates du Da Dada.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And things really did get weirder after that because it
inspired not it inspired people, but it also made those
creative juices flow about what could I do that would
be even creepier.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So we're going to pause here for our usual ad break.
This one is a little different today because Matt, you
and I were thinking about this. We're talking about this
great clown panic, but one of today's sponsors is addressing
a more personal panic that occurs to a lot of
(13:50):
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Speaker 2 (13:52):
Right, you know, Ben, we've been talking about people panicking
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Speaker 1 (14:11):
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Speaker 2 (14:28):
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(14:50):
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Speaker 1 (15:00):
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Speaker 2 (15:31):
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Now let's get back to those clowns.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Here's where it gets crazy. That's right. Clown sightings began
to pop up all around the country, and they were
unrelated to the short film from Wisconsin. The next widely
reported creepy clown sightings occurred in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, on August twenty first, twenty sixteen, there was an
alleged clown sighting in Greenville at the Fleetwood Manor apartment complex.
When I was originally reading this, I was really wishing
it was at the Fleetwood Mac concert. That would have
been cool. But no, in this complex, children reported witnessing
clowns or a group of clowns. A murder of clowns.
Is that we decided on a gaggle of clowns attempting
(17:06):
to whisper or talk to the children. Now, that's got
to be not cool, right, that's come on, that's.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, it's it's so it's so strange because at this
point the the image and the role of a clown
has been relegated to things like children's parties. Still that
that's where you will maybe find a clown, or maybe
at the circus or the rodeo, maybe a swingers club
(17:34):
or my basement, but wherever it is.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Well, But culturally we've like flipped the script where now
I think people first and foremost think of clowns as
creepy demon child eaters as opposed to you know, friendly
child performers.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
We do.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
But again, like, if you you can go online right
now and hire a clown to do a children's party,
that is one of the main things you can do.
So if there are clowns out in let's say, in
a part complex somewhere talking to kids, if you're not
aware of some kids party that's happening, maybe that's all
it is. I'm just saying it's it's tough because it
(18:11):
also creeps me out personally, and I wouldn't like it
if my son was there and saw some clowns that
were trying to whisper to him.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah, well, he's the thing of what they were whispering.
And the children told their parents are the clowns who,
by the way, were set up with these flashing green
laser lights. They told the children that they lived in
an abandoned house in the woods near a small lake.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
As you do. Uh huh, small talk conversation.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
See, that's where it becomes terrifying, right.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And the police did investigate, and they did find a
trail in the nearby woods, and the trail did lead
to a house. There was a small lake by the house.
But at this point, no evidence of clowns or any
evidence of clown paraphernalia was ever found. So there wasn't
even a bottle of seltzer or anything.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
That is so funny to me, no evidence of clowns
was discovered.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
I love or paraphernalia.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I love that the notion of clown paraphernag like.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
There's one size sixteen shoe, Yeah, just on the trail.
And this is strange because it's we we have to
think of the children and the complex, and then we
have to think of their families too. What do you
do when the police throw up their hands and say, well,
we we couldn't find any clowns or clown paraphernalia.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, but we will be patrolling I guess for the
next couple days.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
We'll keep an eye out. South Carolina, though, is far
from a unique case. Over the next few months, reports
of creepy, suspicious sketch clowns popped up in every single
US state and Puerto Rico as well. The Guardian was
following this story. They had some great articles on this.
(19:58):
They describe it thustly. They say clowns began to terrorize
children and sometimes attack people, while commentators spoke of panic
and hysteria. In Pennsylvania, a teenager was reported to have
been murdered by someone in a clown mask, although police
later said it was the victim who had the mask.
So still, in this time of panic, just having a
(20:18):
clown mask in play during the crime is enough for
this to be lumped into lumped into the same phenomenon
of reporting.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, and you can see here where if something goes
viral enough anywhere in the world and it gets shared
enough on let's say international social media or internationally accessible
social media, it's kind of what we've been talking about.
You can see where people will think, oh, well, how
do I make a post or something, or how do
I make something happen in my local town that's also
(20:51):
going to get me or this famous through my post,
because it really did go fully international after that.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, that's the thing. The spark was lit all in
all people in eighteen. Different countries other than the US
started reporting clown sightings over the course of twenty sixteen,
and these were You know, it's weird because we know
the panic in the US has a discrete start date.
It's August first, twenty sixteen, but we also see some
(21:23):
preceding attacks or similar instances in Europe. In twenty thirteen,
there was a creepy clown sited in Northampton, England, and
these sightings occurred in the town for two months September
and October. They were also the work of filmmakers. But
(21:44):
the stuff that we see happening after the US panic
catches fire internationally. This stuff is genuine, like crime in
Ontario and Canada, people dressed up as clowns and were
chasing children and when they got dismissed from school, and
then someone dressed as a clown was chasing down a
(22:06):
group of people in Chile with a baseball bat. People
started using clown makeup and clown mask as a go
to disguise in their criminal endeavors.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, I was reading a story about in Norway people
were reporting that they would see weapon wielding clowns chasing
cars and stuff and apparently it really did catch on
in a couple of places in Scandinavia.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, in Sweden and October twelfth there was someone dressed
as a clown who stabbed a teenage boy with a knife,
and there were some other stabbings across the world. Luckily
these appeared to be isolated incidents. Here's the thing, though,
the international community reacted pretty strongly to this. There was
(22:55):
a protest held by professional clowns in a Rio Grande
dus Soul in Brazil. And here I believe it's time
for us to make a note. In the interest of fairness,
we have to say hashtag not all clowns. There's a
huge industry of people who work professionally as clowns, you know,
(23:19):
in circus trained academy, dellate trained. And these folks have
no interest in committing crimes, you know what I mean.
And they certainly don't want to be saddled with the
stereotype that they want to say. You know, it's a
job for them. They're not going to dress up and
wait in the woods to clown at children in the dark.
(23:40):
That would be like us waiting waiting in the woods
and then podcasting people hopefully less scary way more nerdy.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, I mean no, you're right. It's a it's a
profession and in a lot of times, in a lot
of cases of passion for the individual. And there's a
quote here from this article in sputneknews dot com and
it says this trend has a really unpleasant impact on
us as professionals of this art. I and my colleagues
in this state appear at various events, for example, at
birthday celebrations, and when we go out in the street
(24:10):
or arrive at these celebrations, people are looking at us strangely,
and you can imagine how that would affect you. And
it goes on to say this has started to affect me.
Customers are canceling work, replacing clowns with something else. This
is one of the oldest professions in the world. Our
goal is to bring joy to everybody, from babies to
one hundred year olds.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And this is only one example of a larger global response.
On October twelfth of twenty sixteen, the Russian Embassy in
London put out an official warning to UK citizens and
Russians alike because of the clown scare. So a country
state department said, okay, if you're here in London watch
(24:55):
Out for clowns.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think of what it's akin to,
like an orange alert watch out for smog kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Oh yeah, we need a clown watch.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
The terror watch that we have while there.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Like, how many honks is it? You know, watch out?
London is a four honk city, So out of context,
that probably sounds very strange, but it's it's a good question.
You know. This reached state actor level, and then also
private industry responded. There were shops in New Zealand that
stopped selling clown costumes or banned it. Many schools banned
(25:35):
clown costumes or just yeah clown like stuff too, right, Yeah,
and this also remember this is twenty sixteen, so this
occurs hand in hand with public recognition of the music
fan base, right the insane clown posse fans known as
juggalos Yes, who also, by the way, did not have
(25:58):
a big part in this, because again hashtag not all clowns.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So in October though, this starts to also hit one
of the most popular clowns in the United States, Ronald
McDonald is sent to the bench by his fast food
owners because the heat got to him, he had to
get a low profile was too hot for Ron, so
he left the public eye for a little while because
(26:26):
the last thing McDonald's wanted to be associated with was,
you know, being bad in any way for children, other than,
of course the food at McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Hey, they've changed their game a little bit.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Come on, and those fries still, man, they're great.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
And honestly, as weird as it sounds, those chicken mcnugs,
I'm telling you.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
You think it's nostalgia, No it's not.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Part of you is still there now.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I think they upped their game or something because we
were very do isn't to get right. I'm not promoting
McDonald's right now, I promise you. I'm just saying I
tried one of their chicken McNuggets so that I did
remember as a child not enjoying. But then they are
much better now, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Well, you know what, Matt, maybe I should give it.
I should give it another shot. I read a really
interesting essay about the shape of those McNuggets there. You know,
their their specific shapes and how they're created. But I'll
still try it. Also, Target pulled clown mask from all
their stores and from their website, and people started to
(27:34):
look at this in a critical analytical way. They said, Okay,
these reports don't actually have much in common. They're occurring
in various parts of the world that are very different
from one another. They're often not every time, but often
it appears there's no real law that was broken. It's
(27:55):
just someone being creepy. In most cases amounted to something like, hey,
there's a suspicious person or group of people dressed in
a way that makes me uncomfortable. And another common trope
was that these clowns appeared to be, as you said,
no menacing people, and in many cases they were reported
as giving chase, although sometimes the victims would change their
(28:18):
story and say, I thought this clown was gonna chase me.
It was just standing there.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
But there's a ton of YouTube prank videos. Yeah, creepy
clowns chasing people like.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
A lot, and those are for humor, right, they're for humor.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
But at the time, I'm assuming the person featured has
to sign a release afterwards or something like that to
be featured.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
But several of those the faces of the victims are
so they didn't get permission. I would just say that
that is illegal.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
That strikes me as illegal.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
That is a form of terrorism in a way, if
you were going to scare someone out of their wits
by dressing up as creepily as you can, setting up
a camera and then chasing somebody while they are in
fear for their life.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
And some people can see that as humorous, but we
have to remember those folks who are being chased, or
those folks who are being menaced, are genuinely frightened. You know,
they're terrified.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
And I would say, if you find that funny, maybe
do some reevaluating.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
That's all.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Well, we can't emphasize this enough. There really were people
dressed as clowns, and they really were stalking and in
some cases attacking folks across the planet. By October twenty fifth,
twenty sixteen, a little more than three years ago exactly now,
as you're listening to this news pundits were so deep
(29:45):
in this story that they started reporting and alleged to
get this clown led purge or large scale attacks set
to take place on Halloween. What's interesting about this kind
of news story is that it really doesn't take much
for something to be alleged. It could be an anonymous
(30:07):
tip to the news station that has no follow up,
So it could literally be anyone calling it's incredibly unethical.
But it could also be someone from the news station
who was like, we need some hot for Saturday. So
luckily there were no documented wide scale purges. However, on
(30:31):
October thirty, first Halloween twenty sixteen, a family in you
guessed at, Florida was attacked in mass by a group
of people dressed as clowns wearing clown mask. They were
attacked by about twenty people.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That's insane. Allegedly, they were checking their car right when
this happened was like eleven pm at night. Then all
of a sudden, these people show up.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah. Look, you know we all have we all have
a pretty good fortitude stats. You know, if we're D
and D characters, we don't scare particularly easy. But even
for us, getting run up on by twenty people, trust
a clowns, that's a lot. That's a lot, especially if
(31:21):
they are if they are armed blades or with you know,
blunt objects or god forbid guns.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Well, yeah, I mean one of the people. Okay, So
let's just talk about that. It was a it was
a group of people in a car. I think it
was five people in a car, maybe more, and they
like hit something in the car. Right, they're in their truck.
They're in this big truck. They hit something in the truck.
They got out to check out what it was. They
got As they exited their vehicle to check on everything,
(31:51):
they get attacked by a bunch of people wearing masks,
some of them clown asked. Some of them appear to
be what they would call purge masks. One of the
victims got stabbed in the head and another one got
hit in the head with a hockey stick. It was
a real brutal attack, that is this is just an
awful thing that occurred. And apparently one of the one
(32:11):
of the victims, one of the people who got attacked,
recognized some team that was a part of the.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Group, right yeah. Jeff Brown, who is one of the victims,
said that the group of clowns had a knife, hockey sticks, clubs, bats,
and he was He said they were probably just looking
for anyone who would get stopped at the light. And
he said they was able to lift one of the
masks of a team off in the struggle and recognize
(32:37):
the kid as a kid from his neighborhood. As far
as we know, no arrest were made, at least at
the time of the stories reporting, so we don't know
what happened with that. But we bring this example here
to emphasize that unlikes the Unlike some other outbreaks of
(32:58):
hysteria or global panics, there were genuine crimes happening here.
There were people conspiring to dress up as clowns and
attack maybe random people, maybe people that they had their
eye on for one reason or another. So these sightings
were real. But what exactly was happening. We'll attempt to
answer that after a word from our sponsors. Okay, so
(33:28):
was the I'll say it, I'll take the bullet on
this one. Was this actually some sort of I can't
believe I'm saying this clown conspiracy to upset the status
quo in some way through random acts of violence?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, like a Project Mayhem type thing, but with clowns maybe?
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah? Maybe? I mean, was this perhaps some sort of
Juggalo esque protest. Again, as far as we know, the
Juggalo community was not involved with this panic, but you
know what I mean, Like, was it some sort of
thing that got spun into a different narrative by the media,
or was this just another example of mass hysteria like
(34:15):
the satanic panic, you know, like as we learned in
our recent True True Detective episode, which is still either
my least or my most favorite title recently, as we
learned there there's often more to the story than we
see reported in the news. To answer our question about
(34:36):
this phenomenon, it's actually best for us to begin from
a folklore angle. There's a guy named Benjamin Radford go
Benz who is the author of a book called Bad Clowns,
and in his work, Radford busts some myths that we
have about clowning in the modern day. Specifically, he writes,
it is misleading to ask when clowns turned bad, they
(34:58):
were never real good, because although the word chorophobia comes
about in the nineties, the thing is clowns have been
around forever in myth and folklore, in unrelated cultures. People
who had never met before they had things like clowns,
but they were often antagonistic. They were deceivers, they were tricksters.
(35:20):
They were associated with entering the edge of the edge
of civilization, speaking hidden truths. They were associated with infernal
powers at times, and Let's also consider Alex Pentlands, author
of a book called Social Physics, How Good Ideas Spread.
(35:40):
He says the clown phenomenon is in some ways just
the standard craze. He compares it actually to planking. You
guys remember planking.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, that's when you delay flat on a thing, right.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, And I walked in our old office one time.
I walked into our rec room and I learned about
planking because as least as an exercise, because I saw
about fifteen or more of our colleagues, not speaking, just
laying on the floor, propped on their elbows, and I
(36:13):
didn't know what to do. But I stood there for
a second. No one said anything, no one looked at me,
and so I decided the most prudent move was to
walk out backwards, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Definitely keep an eye on everyone.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
It was like a flash mob type phenomenon for a while.
Whe people would like plank on different things, like a
cabinet or something, and you'd walk in. It was an
episode of the Office about it. Hm hmm, that's that's
all I got on planking.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Well, yeah, but it just speaks to a larger thing
when it's kind of what I was saying earlier, when
there's a trending phenomena like that, it is in our
nature to want to be a part of the group,
and you know, glom onto it in a way or
show your uniqueness by doing this thing in a way
that only you would do or could do. And you know,
(37:02):
we're we're just basically comparing that, And it's kind of
what Pentland is doing here saying that this is what
the clown thing was. It was another ice bucket challenge.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Right right. But he also said this fad, this clown
sighting craze also hit upon a deeply buried cultural meme.
He said, children are scared of clowns, so this gives
it more virality than another thing like an ice bucket challenge.
Not you know, more people were probably terrified of clowns
(37:36):
than are of ice buckets.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Did you hear that the ice bucket challenge is a
conspiracy theory about it?
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I did, Yeah, yeah, yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
There's a say I think it was just this one
kind of fringy writer Selina Owen's on a world Net
daily accusing it of being some sort of satanic ritual
tricking people into I don't know, exactly. The logic is there,
But you can you can you can call anything. Any
of these viral phenomenon could be construed to some sort
of mass ritual, right, I mean that's sort of what
(38:03):
it is. Is people glom onto it and they recreate it,
like the flash mobs versus the creepy clowns versus the planking,
any of that kind of stuff. You could look at
as some sort of weird collective, unconscious kind of like dance.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I don't know, anything can be a ritual, and anything
could be a satanic ritual, you know, if you have
the right attitude about it. Isn't magic all about intentionality
in theory? That's a callback to uh, what was that
our magic debate on Harmontown. Yeah, So with this in mind,
(38:39):
when we look at it from a folkloric perspective, we
see another salient point. Also from the Guardian, again they
cover this like four or five different times, and they
said they also attributed part of the panic to the
ways in which it was described by print and broadcast media.
(39:00):
They said, consider how charged the vocabulary of the reports
will be when you hear this on your evening news.
They don't say someone saw a clown. They refer to
these things as sightings. Yeah, the same way you would
say someone cited there was a UFO sighting or a
locknest sighting, And it mythologizes these human beings when really
(39:24):
they're just people in costumes.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and they can do it wherever they want as
long as they're not hurting anybody.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
And then the idea. Okay, So the Mirror over in
the UK reports this, you know, in the early days
of the panic spreading to the United Kingdom, they say,
quote in one of their headlines, creepy clowns approach girls
walking to school and terrifying UK craze was this was
(39:54):
a variant of the first sentence in the article, because
the first sentence in the article in the or says
two schoolgirls were approached by two creepy clowns yesterday as
the terrifying American craze hits the UK. It's true that
it was already quote American craze, but the headline calling
it a terrifying UK craze wasn't true because there had
(40:18):
only been a couple of incidents. Yeah, how many incidents
make a craze? Right? Like when when does a hill
become a mountain kind of question.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Right after it's a mole hill, right, it goes straight
from mole hill to mountain.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
And what's the size of a heap? You know what
I mean. Yeah, there's linguistic ambiguity there, But it also
could be kind of a self fulfilling prophecy to call
this thing a craze before it happens. I mean, you know,
if Paul Mission controlled Decan and I go to Applebee's
after this, and then we start calling it the new
Applebee's craze that's sweeping the nation, would more people be
(40:54):
likely to go because they want to To your point, Matt,
be part of the conversation.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I think you're right. I think you might have to
add in a few more people. If you've got like
five posts that said the new Applebee's craze, I think
you've got something going there.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Not an advertisement for Applebee's, right, nor McDonald's nor McDonald's.
But in this case, what we see, what we see
very quickly is the clown stuff itself is exactly as
we described. It's sort of a viral phenomenon that to
(41:34):
your point, no people glombed onto sometimes to assist in
the execution of crimes they were already probably planning to do.
In other cases, it was people who said, we want
to prank some folks. But when we look into the
psychological causes, the socio political environment and soil in which
(41:56):
this thing exists and grows, then we see there's more
to the story. We've talked about this before, and this
is probably just my own crippling cynicism. But anytime I
see something that is not terrible go viral, I assume
that it's being pushed to cover up some real horrific,
terrible thing happening.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
I don't think you're far off, Ben, you know, so, No, No,
although it is hard to predict virality, I will say that, yeah,
you know the intentions, it may be that, but it's
like no one can guarantee a viral smash. Otherwise, you know,
they'd be hiring those people left and right.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
So I've got a theory about this whole thing that
I want to present to you guys, all right, laid
on me. Okay, here are the facts of Matt's theory.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
This we call the section Matt's facts.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yes, sure, this is the These are Matt's facts. So
we've got the gags the clown incident that occurs when
is it October? Is it October or is it September
twenty sixteen?
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Though right, the first one occurs in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
August first, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
So that's August early August twenty six, twenty sixteen. Then
almost a year later, a year and a month later,
the remake of Stephen King's It comes out, a major
Hollywood production with massive marketing arms behind it. Okay, it
(43:23):
would be beneficial for the people making it to reignite
people's fear of clowns.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Well, you know about the phony clown protest, Right, the
phony clown protest was phony. According to Vanity Fair, a
clown rally against the IT movie was actually a publicity
stunt for the IT movie. The new IT adaptations have
probably been causing problems for real life clowns, whose businesses
have allegedly suffered as a whole new generation of kids
(43:54):
sour to Bozo's of the world, so it was hardly
surprised when clowns planned to gather and rally against It
in New York. It turns out, however, that the rally
was a fake, nothing more than a publicity stun in
promotion of the very movie it claimed to be raging against.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
See. So this is what I'm saying, you guys, What
if this entire thing, starting with gags and the short
film or whatever was occurring, there was all away to
get clowns back into our zeitgeist immediately the forefront of
our minds, so that it would come out and we
would have to go see it.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
That's interesting. I don't I'm honest. I'm gonna be honest
with you, man, I don't know if I'm one hundred
percent on board with it, because it feels like when
real acts of violence started to occur, the company or
studio involved would want to distance themselves.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Well, that's why they never admitted to doing it. That's
why they never admitted to starting the whole craze. See.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Okay, so there on a we didn't start the fire y.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yeah, they went, oh, oh, somebody got stabbed in the head.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
We're out, and we're out. Nobody say anything until the
trailer releases. I mean maybe maybe perhaps I will say though,
because I know I'm sounding a bit conspiratorial here and
it is just my opinion, I will say that now
more than ever to steal the line from Fox News.
Yet again, it is now more than ever, it is
(45:15):
surprisingly easy for some people to influence virality and to
determine which stories are seen. If anyone listening believes that
Mark Zuckerberg cannot literally ping someone at Facebook and say
kill this story and promote this one, then you are
being offensively naive like that. Because there's so few people
(45:40):
who control the faucets of information at this point, then
clearly it could happen. I'm not saying it does. I'm
not saying this is a case in which that occurs.
But I'm saying the reality is there, and to think
otherwise is at this point to be wilfully ignorant of
the reality.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah. No, I would agree. There are a lot of
levers to be pulled within the realms of social media
in places where you can post things and then have
them become viral.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Or what if met? What if? What if you're right
and you're even more right than the original theory? What
if this all dating back to twenty sixteen. Arguably twenty
thirteen was just one long viral lead up to the
Yaquing Phoenix Joker film.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
Or maybe there's clown film collusion maybe all of the
studios that have on their slates of content clown content,
they've all gotten together to perpetrate this conspiracy against the American.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Public CFC Clown Film Collusion.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it was Stephen King himself in
the gags, the clown costume.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Now he doesn't leave his manner, Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
And then it was Joe Hill himself.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
And it's tough to tell the difference. You know, if
you just saw those guys walk it down the street,
Joe Hill, do us look like a young Stephen King?
Does he really? Yes?
Speaker 3 (47:02):
I've never seen it very.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Much physically, Yeah, yeah, very very much.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
That's unfortunate. What Stephen King is a funny looking dude?
Always want to You don't think so?
Speaker 2 (47:11):
What a handsome devil Stephen King? You're kidding me, I don't,
I don't.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
I think Stephen King himself would acknowledge that he's a
funny looking dude. Have you seen Creep Show or he
plays the weird guy?
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah? Yeah, but uh, but I think he tells great stories.
Shout out to by the way, that's right, Shout out
to Rob.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
I just got a free trial to shut her.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Oh it's great.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Just so I can watch, So I can watch creep
shreap show, and I'm very much excited to do so.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Report back if you can't, Let's know what you think
when you see it. I will. Indeed, this leads us
to a question that we can't really answer today, A
couple of questions, and one of them is this, does
the access to aubiquitous information give us more of an
ability to think critically about things? Or does it give
us more of an opportunity to spread and transmit our
(48:02):
own fears to other populations?
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Well, it's both, right, depends on how you use it
and how you handle it, how you comport yourself in
this our internet age.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
But which of those two, I agree? Which of those
two do we see happening more often? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Unfortunately, I think it's the latter. Right.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. But we still have
hope for the future. Right, And we know that outbreaks
of widespread public hysteria are surprisingly common in the historical record.
We've got this great book about it that I lug
around sometimes. And if this odd story about the Great
Clown Panic of twenty sixteen, as The Guardian called it,
(48:42):
if this odd story leads us to anything. It's one
crucial question, what new panic looms on the horizon, And
that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
It's right let us know what you think. You can
reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
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If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 5 (49:25):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
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Speaker 3 (49:30):
Be aware, yet not afraid.
Speaker 5 (49:32):
Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
So conspiracy realists, welcome to tonight's classic episode. We talked,
I think, in a couple of shows over these many
years about something called chlorophobia, which is a huge, a
huge fear in the post gacy environment of the Western world,
the fear of clowns.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Those clowns are scary, y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, yeah, and like you know, pop cultucture hasn't really
given them a break at least the clowning profession, which
once was a reputable field, and now you know, folks
that are clowning for a living have all this chlorophobia
stuff to deal with with, like movies like It and
then of course the hugely popular remake of It.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Oh yeah, and this particular incident that we are going
to be discussing or I guess maybe time frame, time
period where there were just there seemed to be clowns everywhere.
I think it's a great exploration of our previous discussions. Well,
I guess the post this happening, but previous to this
moment in time right now, about how social media really
(01:06):
was changing everything. Right, this is twenty nineteen October right
at the end, right around Halloween actually, and there were
so many videos of clowns just hanging out, purported to
be just wandering around.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, not doing professional clowning, just sort of lingering at
the edge of a roadside or a forest or copes
of trees. It all began in August in twenty sixteen,
when five photographs of what appeared to be a suspicious
clown were discovered, and these photographs took place in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(01:43):
But as you said, Matt, this is more than just
an exploration of some creepy people in unusual dress. This
is an exploration of the social media world in which
we now reside. Ye, all right, let's roll it.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Eho.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It's me No, they call me Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck.
At most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
It is the most wonderful time of the year. If
you're listening to this episode, as it comes out today,
Conspiracy Realist, Happy Halloween.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, the Spookables are all around you.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Spookables, Yes, that like lunchables.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
That's what my son calls them.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Really, that's a great name, and it's a little bit.
I like how it has a little bit more edge
than something being simply spooky. Right, you've probably heard that
spoopy spoopy. It's like cute spooky.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Oh nice. Yeah, he's into the real, real deal, legit
spookable stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I don't know if I told you guys, I've been
watching like R rated eighties horror movies with my ten
year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, no, it's fine. It's just like, mainly we watched
the first two Child's Play movies because they're just hilarious.
They're only rated R because of some slightly bad language.
But like she kids at her school used those words
and she knows not to use them and mixed company.
But we've had a really good time. And last night
after she went to bed, I watched My Bloody Valentine.
(03:48):
Have you seen this? It's about a crazed miner in Ontario, Canada,
and it's the most Canadian horror movie.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I've ever seen in my life as in m like minors, minors,
coal miners.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And I actually get in a conversation met with with
your wife a few weeks or a month or so back,
where I was thinking, I've got some books that I
think Matt's kid will love. The word I think I
told you this. She told me, I was worried that
maybe because I don't know what kids read, I was
worried that maybe the books would be like too scary,
(04:23):
you know, like scary stories telling the dark. Probably want
to wait a few years on that one or something
or amphegory. But her reply was he already has so
many books.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, he certainly does.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well let him know, let him know when, well, you guys,
let me know when it is appropriate to send them
the creepy stuff. Because I think when we're kids, we
all have this fascination to one degree or another with
things that scare us, right, with things that make our
heartbeat race, things that make us mistake a pile of
(04:56):
clothes in the dark for an evil figure crouching clothes
to the bed. And one of the biggest, surprisingly common
fears in the Western world is something called col roaphobia.
That's a word for the day that means the fear
of clowns. This is a pretty recent word, it comes
about in the nineteen nineties, but it describes a long standing,
(05:20):
arguably ancient unease that is doubtlessly familiar to many of
our fellow listeners. Clowns are a little bit different here
in the US because we live in a post gay
sy environment. John Wayne Gacy, the notorious, infamous serial murderer
who also had a reputation or an alternate identity as
(05:44):
a clown. This affected the cultural zeitgeist in a number
of ways, and it has consequences, ripple effects that remain
with us today. Matt, you and I I believe, were
at was it the Museum of Crime or Murder in DC.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, and we saw actual Pogo the clown suits.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Which was his alter ego. Oh and at the Museum
of Death in Hollywood they have several of his paintings
that he did of himself as a clown, and his
shoes are there as well.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And this this calls to mind another episode we did
on the controversy surrounding serial killer memorabilia and art, which
you know, I listened back to a while ago, and
I gotta say objectively, not that bad.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Not bad at all. I can't remember who I heard
say this, gosh, and then this is this. I think
it's an interesting point though, the idea that killers should
not be publicized, their identity should not be publicized, because
then it allows them to profit off of their crimes.
I think that's an interesting concept.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Especially in cases of terrorism where someone simply wants to
be a martyr for a cause. But back to clowns.
So because US, at least partially because of John Wayne Gacy,
but probably because of some other long standing, hardwired psychological
quirks in our brains, People from all walks of life,
(07:11):
especially here in these United States, are pretty comfortable nowadays
being upfront and transparent about their fear of or distrust
of clowns. People have no problem saying I don't like clowns,
I'm not going to see it, et cetera, et cetera.
This is a cultural phenomenon. It's not necessarily a global attitude,
and a lot of other countries clowns are these beloved
(07:33):
figures of fun and festivity, Like in Central America, you
know the parade is really poppin' when a gang of
clowns comes in. I don't know what the group name
for clowns is. You know how there's like a parliament
of owls and unkindness of ravens, clowns, a murder of clowns,
a car of clowns, a honk of clowns. I like
murder of clowns. So here in the US, the fear
(07:57):
of clowns eventually, too long ago, reached a boiling point.
It became a national and then international panic. Here are
the facts. Our story today starts on August first, twenty sixteen,
in Green Bay, Wisconsin, five photos of what appeared to
(08:19):
be a creepy clown surfaced. This clown was wandering, literally
wandering around a parking lot under a bridge somewhere in
Green Bay, and this went viral thanks to the Internet.
We can only conjecture that it must have been a
slow news cycle, because the pictures got national media attention.
(08:40):
Fox News was all over at USA Today was all
over it. Eventually The New York Times was writing about this.
Shortly after August fifth. A Facebook page pertaining to the
pictures or purporting to pertain to the picture's surface, and
they said the name of this clown is Gags. Gag. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well yeah, and it wasn't just any clown. It looked
to be someone who was purposefully trying to be creepy,
right because the character, this person whoever, was wearing all
of this makeup and everything. It wasn't like your cutesy
clown makeup. There were some there's an edge to it
(09:23):
that appeared to be sinister in some way. And I
believe it was what the character was holding balloons.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yes, yeah, nah, not your vibe. Huh, that's not a
lick you're going for. Yeah, it's a very good point, Matt.
It was purposely done up like a scary Halloween clown,
you know what I mean, not like a fun welcome
to McDonald's clown, which I would argue was also still
(09:51):
pretty creepy. Here's what happens. Numerous pundits speculate on this story,
and because the is not very much in the way
of solid factual reporting here, there's just not much to
the story other than these five creepy pictures and a
Facebook page. At this point, pundits are going wild. They're saying,
(10:15):
what's going on here? Is this a childish prank? Is
this alone unhinged lunatic? Is this part of something larger.
We'll get back to that, but first, here's Carol with
the weather, that kind of stuff or is it an
attempt at gorilla marketing? And it turned out it turned
out that our story gets sewed up in a pretty
(10:37):
i would say, relieving way.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So eight days later, a filmmaker by the name of
Adam Krause actually came forward and revealed that this was
nothing but a marketing stunt. He and his crew were
actually filming a short piece called Gags the Clown and
Bloody Disgusting, which is a horror blog quoted Kraus as saying,
we filmed the short and secret and released photos of
(11:01):
the sightings quote quote because I wanted to convince my
town that there was a creepy clown wandering the streets
late at night. We released the pictures August first, twenty sixteen,
and it blew up from that point on. It went
viral very quickly. I announced that it was just a
short film eight days later, but that didn't stop the
craze from kicking into high gear. What do you guys think,
(11:21):
Is this a form of terrorism like it? Should there
be some burden of responsibility on individual like this? That
is doing something that is legitimately terrorizing a town.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
There's not a way to make it illegal.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I was gonna say. According to Captain Kevin Warwick
Wryh of the Green Bay Police Department where this was
first occurring, where gags made the appearances and the Facebook
group started and everything, he said, this person is not
breaking the law. He can walk in a clown costume
anywhere he wants.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You can't call it like menacing or something like that.
What point had something become menacing? I know that's a crime.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
If someone's loitering, or if someone is giving the reasonable
if there's reasonable suspicion or that they would be about
to commit a crime, right, So, and that's tough to
prosecute one. I don't want to lose this part though,
because Kraus did say this is for my film.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, after it's like known or whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like every time we see
a red meat headline in the news, only to see
it corrected on page thirty two of the next issue
of the paper, or thrown in at the very end
and find print on a website for a broadcast news show.
(12:42):
People just don't care about their attractions and there we go.
All's well, that ends well, right, This wasn't the first
time viral marketing had fooled unsuspecting denizens of the Internet
or the media. Shout out to Blair Witch Project, which
I think is one of the most famous recent examples.
But those clown sightings did not stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(13:07):
In fact, they escalated kind of the way that you
know one like one of my favorite songs in the
Hall of Mountain King escalates du Da Dada.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And things really did get weirder after that because it
inspired not it inspired people, but it also made those
creative juices flow about what could I do that would
be even creepier.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So we're going to pause here for our usual ad break.
This one is a little different today because Matt, you
and I were thinking about this. We're talking about this
great clown panic, but one of today's sponsors is addressing
a more personal panic that occurs to a lot of
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Speaker 2 (13:52):
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Speaker 2 (15:31):
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Now let's get back to those clowns.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Here's where it gets crazy. That's right. Clown sightings began
to pop up all around the country, and they were
unrelated to the short film from Wisconsin. The next widely
reported creepy clown sightings occurred in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, on August twenty first, twenty sixteen, there was an
alleged clown sighting in Greenville at the Fleetwood Manor apartment complex.
When I was originally reading this, I was really wishing
it was at the Fleetwood Mac concert. That would have
been cool. But no, in this complex, children reported witnessing
clowns or a group of clowns. A murder of clowns.
Is that we decided on a gaggle of clowns attempting
(17:06):
to whisper or talk to the children. Now, that's got
to be not cool, right, that's come on, that's.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, it's it's so it's so strange because at this
point the the image and the role of a clown
has been relegated to things like children's parties. Still that
that's where you will maybe find a clown, or maybe
at the circus or the rodeo, maybe a swingers club
(17:34):
or my basement, but wherever it is.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Well, But culturally we've like flipped the script where now
I think people first and foremost think of clowns as
creepy demon child eaters as opposed to you know, friendly
child performers.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
We do.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
But again, like, if you you can go online right
now and hire a clown to do a children's party,
that is one of the main things you can do.
So if there are clowns out in let's say, in
a part complex somewhere talking to kids, if you're not
aware of some kids party that's happening, maybe that's all
it is. I'm just saying it's it's tough because it
(18:11):
also creeps me out personally, and I wouldn't like it
if my son was there and saw some clowns that
were trying to whisper to him.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Yeah, well, he's the thing of what they were whispering.
And the children told their parents are the clowns who,
by the way, were set up with these flashing green
laser lights. They told the children that they lived in
an abandoned house in the woods near a small lake.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
As you do. Uh huh, small talk conversation.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
See, that's where it becomes terrifying, right.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And the police did investigate, and they did find a
trail in the nearby woods, and the trail did lead
to a house. There was a small lake by the house.
But at this point, no evidence of clowns or any
evidence of clown paraphernalia was ever found. So there wasn't
even a bottle of seltzer or anything.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
That is so funny to me, no evidence of clowns
was discovered.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
I love or paraphernalia.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I love that the notion of clown paraphernag like.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
There's one size sixteen shoe, Yeah, just on the trail.
And this is strange because it's we we have to
think of the children and the complex, and then we
have to think of their families too. What do you
do when the police throw up their hands and say, well,
we we couldn't find any clowns or clown paraphernalia.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, but we will be patrolling I guess for the
next couple days.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
We'll keep an eye out. South Carolina, though, is far
from a unique case. Over the next few months, reports
of creepy, suspicious sketch clowns popped up in every single
US state and Puerto Rico as well. The Guardian was
following this story. They had some great articles on this.
(19:58):
They describe it thustly. They say clowns began to terrorize
children and sometimes attack people, while commentators spoke of panic
and hysteria. In Pennsylvania, a teenager was reported to have
been murdered by someone in a clown mask, although police
later said it was the victim who had the mask.
So still, in this time of panic, just having a
(20:18):
clown mask in play during the crime is enough for
this to be lumped into lumped into the same phenomenon
of reporting.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, and you can see here where if something goes
viral enough anywhere in the world and it gets shared
enough on let's say international social media or internationally accessible
social media, it's kind of what we've been talking about.
You can see where people will think, oh, well, how
do I make a post or something, or how do
I make something happen in my local town that's also
(20:51):
going to get me or this famous through my post,
because it really did go fully international after that.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, that's the thing. The spark was lit all in
all people in eighteen. Different countries other than the US
started reporting clown sightings over the course of twenty sixteen,
and these were You know, it's weird because we know
the panic in the US has a discrete start date.
It's August first, twenty sixteen, but we also see some
(21:23):
preceding attacks or similar instances in Europe. In twenty thirteen,
there was a creepy clown sited in Northampton, England, and
these sightings occurred in the town for two months September
and October. They were also the work of filmmakers. But
(21:44):
the stuff that we see happening after the US panic
catches fire internationally. This stuff is genuine, like crime in
Ontario and Canada, people dressed up as clowns and were
chasing children and when they got dismissed from school, and
then someone dressed as a clown was chasing down a
(22:06):
group of people in Chile with a baseball bat. People
started using clown makeup and clown mask as a go
to disguise in their criminal endeavors.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, I was reading a story about in Norway people
were reporting that they would see weapon wielding clowns chasing
cars and stuff and apparently it really did catch on
in a couple of places in Scandinavia.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, in Sweden and October twelfth there was someone dressed
as a clown who stabbed a teenage boy with a knife,
and there were some other stabbings across the world. Luckily
these appeared to be isolated incidents. Here's the thing, though,
the international community reacted pretty strongly to this. There was
(22:55):
a protest held by professional clowns in a Rio Grande
dus Soul in Brazil. And here I believe it's time
for us to make a note. In the interest of fairness,
we have to say hashtag not all clowns. There's a
huge industry of people who work professionally as clowns, you know,
(23:19):
in circus trained academy, dellate trained. And these folks have
no interest in committing crimes, you know what I mean.
And they certainly don't want to be saddled with the
stereotype that they want to say. You know, it's a
job for them. They're not going to dress up and
wait in the woods to clown at children in the dark.
(23:40):
That would be like us waiting waiting in the woods
and then podcasting people hopefully less scary way more nerdy.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, I mean no, you're right. It's a it's a
profession and in a lot of times, in a lot
of cases of passion for the individual. And there's a
quote here from this article in sputneknews dot com and
it says this trend has a really unpleasant impact on
us as professionals of this art. I and my colleagues
in this state appear at various events, for example, at
birthday celebrations, and when we go out in the street
(24:10):
or arrive at these celebrations, people are looking at us strangely,
and you can imagine how that would affect you. And
it goes on to say this has started to affect me.
Customers are canceling work, replacing clowns with something else. This
is one of the oldest professions in the world. Our
goal is to bring joy to everybody, from babies to
one hundred year olds.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And this is only one example of a larger global response.
On October twelfth of twenty sixteen, the Russian Embassy in
London put out an official warning to UK citizens and
Russians alike because of the clown scare. So a country
state department said, okay, if you're here in London watch
(24:55):
Out for clowns.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think of what it's akin to,
like an orange alert watch out for smog kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Oh yeah, we need a clown watch.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
The terror watch that we have while there.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Like, how many honks is it? You know, watch out?
London is a four honk city, So out of context,
that probably sounds very strange, but it's it's a good question.
You know. This reached state actor level, and then also
private industry responded. There were shops in New Zealand that
stopped selling clown costumes or banned it. Many schools banned
(25:35):
clown costumes or just yeah clown like stuff too, right, Yeah,
and this also remember this is twenty sixteen, so this
occurs hand in hand with public recognition of the music
fan base, right the insane clown posse fans known as
juggalos Yes, who also, by the way, did not have
(25:58):
a big part in this, because again hashtag not all clowns.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So in October though, this starts to also hit one
of the most popular clowns in the United States, Ronald
McDonald is sent to the bench by his fast food
owners because the heat got to him, he had to
get a low profile was too hot for Ron, so
he left the public eye for a little while because
(26:26):
the last thing McDonald's wanted to be associated with was,
you know, being bad in any way for children, other than,
of course the food at McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Hey, they've changed their game a little bit.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Come on, and those fries still, man, they're great.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
And honestly, as weird as it sounds, those chicken mcnugs,
I'm telling you.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
You think it's nostalgia, No it's not.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Part of you is still there now.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I think they upped their game or something because we
were very do isn't to get right. I'm not promoting
McDonald's right now, I promise you. I'm just saying I
tried one of their chicken McNuggets so that I did
remember as a child not enjoying. But then they are
much better now, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Well, you know what, Matt, maybe I should give it.
I should give it another shot. I read a really
interesting essay about the shape of those McNuggets there. You know,
their their specific shapes and how they're created. But I'll
still try it. Also, Target pulled clown mask from all
their stores and from their website, and people started to
(27:34):
look at this in a critical analytical way. They said, Okay,
these reports don't actually have much in common. They're occurring
in various parts of the world that are very different
from one another. They're often not every time, but often
it appears there's no real law that was broken. It's
(27:55):
just someone being creepy. In most cases amounted to something like, hey,
there's a suspicious person or group of people dressed in
a way that makes me uncomfortable. And another common trope
was that these clowns appeared to be, as you said,
no menacing people, and in many cases they were reported
as giving chase, although sometimes the victims would change their
(28:18):
story and say, I thought this clown was gonna chase me.
It was just standing there.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
But there's a ton of YouTube prank videos. Yeah, creepy
clowns chasing people like.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
A lot, and those are for humor, right, they're for humor.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
But at the time, I'm assuming the person featured has
to sign a release afterwards or something like that to
be featured.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
But several of those the faces of the victims are
so they didn't get permission. I would just say that
that is illegal.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
That strikes me as illegal.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
That is a form of terrorism in a way, if
you were going to scare someone out of their wits
by dressing up as creepily as you can, setting up
a camera and then chasing somebody while they are in
fear for their life.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
And some people can see that as humorous, but we
have to remember those folks who are being chased, or
those folks who are being menaced, are genuinely frightened. You know,
they're terrified.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
And I would say, if you find that funny, maybe
do some reevaluating.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
That's all.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Well, we can't emphasize this enough. There really were people
dressed as clowns, and they really were stalking and in
some cases attacking folks across the planet. By October twenty fifth,
twenty sixteen, a little more than three years ago exactly now,
as you're listening to this news pundits were so deep
(29:45):
in this story that they started reporting and alleged to
get this clown led purge or large scale attacks set
to take place on Halloween. What's interesting about this kind
of news story is that it really doesn't take much
for something to be alleged. It could be an anonymous
(30:07):
tip to the news station that has no follow up,
So it could literally be anyone calling it's incredibly unethical.
But it could also be someone from the news station
who was like, we need some hot for Saturday. So
luckily there were no documented wide scale purges. However, on
(30:31):
October thirty, first Halloween twenty sixteen, a family in you
guessed at, Florida was attacked in mass by a group
of people dressed as clowns wearing clown mask. They were
attacked by about twenty people.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That's insane. Allegedly, they were checking their car right when
this happened was like eleven pm at night. Then all
of a sudden, these people show up.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah. Look, you know we all have we all have
a pretty good fortitude stats. You know, if we're D
and D characters, we don't scare particularly easy. But even
for us, getting run up on by twenty people, trust
a clowns, that's a lot. That's a lot, especially if
(31:21):
they are if they are armed blades or with you know,
blunt objects or god forbid guns.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Well, yeah, I mean one of the people. Okay, So
let's just talk about that. It was a it was
a group of people in a car. I think it
was five people in a car, maybe more, and they
like hit something in the car. Right, they're in their truck.
They're in this big truck. They hit something in the truck.
They got out to check out what it was. They
got As they exited their vehicle to check on everything,
(31:51):
they get attacked by a bunch of people wearing masks,
some of them clown asked. Some of them appear to
be what they would call purge masks. One of the
victims got stabbed in the head and another one got
hit in the head with a hockey stick. It was
a real brutal attack, that is this is just an
awful thing that occurred. And apparently one of the one
(32:11):
of the victims, one of the people who got attacked,
recognized some team that was a part of the.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Group, right yeah. Jeff Brown, who is one of the victims,
said that the group of clowns had a knife, hockey sticks, clubs, bats,
and he was He said they were probably just looking
for anyone who would get stopped at the light. And
he said they was able to lift one of the
masks of a team off in the struggle and recognize
(32:37):
the kid as a kid from his neighborhood. As far
as we know, no arrest were made, at least at
the time of the stories reporting, so we don't know
what happened with that. But we bring this example here
to emphasize that unlikes the Unlike some other outbreaks of
(32:58):
hysteria or global panics, there were genuine crimes happening here.
There were people conspiring to dress up as clowns and
attack maybe random people, maybe people that they had their
eye on for one reason or another. So these sightings
were real. But what exactly was happening. We'll attempt to
answer that after a word from our sponsors. Okay, so
(33:28):
was the I'll say it, I'll take the bullet on
this one. Was this actually some sort of I can't
believe I'm saying this clown conspiracy to upset the status
quo in some way through random acts of violence?
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, like a Project Mayhem type thing, but with clowns maybe?
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah? Maybe? I mean, was this perhaps some sort of
Juggalo esque protest. Again, as far as we know, the
Juggalo community was not involved with this panic, but you
know what I mean, Like, was it some sort of
thing that got spun into a different narrative by the media,
or was this just another example of mass hysteria like
(34:15):
the satanic panic, you know, like as we learned in
our recent True True Detective episode, which is still either
my least or my most favorite title recently, as we
learned there there's often more to the story than we
see reported in the news. To answer our question about
(34:36):
this phenomenon, it's actually best for us to begin from
a folklore angle. There's a guy named Benjamin Radford go
Benz who is the author of a book called Bad Clowns,
and in his work, Radford busts some myths that we
have about clowning in the modern day. Specifically, he writes,
it is misleading to ask when clowns turned bad, they
(34:58):
were never real good, because although the word chorophobia comes
about in the nineties, the thing is clowns have been
around forever in myth and folklore, in unrelated cultures. People
who had never met before they had things like clowns,
but they were often antagonistic. They were deceivers, they were tricksters.
(35:20):
They were associated with entering the edge of the edge
of civilization, speaking hidden truths. They were associated with infernal
powers at times, and Let's also consider Alex Pentlands, author
of a book called Social Physics, How Good Ideas Spread.
(35:40):
He says the clown phenomenon is in some ways just
the standard craze. He compares it actually to planking. You
guys remember planking.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, that's when you delay flat on a thing, right.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, And I walked in our old office one time.
I walked into our rec room and I learned about
planking because as least as an exercise, because I saw
about fifteen or more of our colleagues, not speaking, just
laying on the floor, propped on their elbows, and I
(36:13):
didn't know what to do. But I stood there for
a second. No one said anything, no one looked at me,
and so I decided the most prudent move was to
walk out backwards, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Definitely keep an eye on everyone.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
It was like a flash mob type phenomenon for a while.
Whe people would like plank on different things, like a
cabinet or something, and you'd walk in. It was an
episode of the Office about it. Hm hmm, that's that's
all I got on planking.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Well, yeah, but it just speaks to a larger thing
when it's kind of what I was saying earlier, when
there's a trending phenomena like that, it is in our
nature to want to be a part of the group,
and you know, glom onto it in a way or
show your uniqueness by doing this thing in a way
that only you would do or could do. And you know,
(37:02):
we're we're just basically comparing that, And it's kind of
what Pentland is doing here saying that this is what
the clown thing was. It was another ice bucket challenge.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Right right. But he also said this fad, this clown
sighting craze also hit upon a deeply buried cultural meme.
He said, children are scared of clowns, so this gives
it more virality than another thing like an ice bucket challenge.
Not you know, more people were probably terrified of clowns
(37:36):
than are of ice buckets.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Did you hear that the ice bucket challenge is a
conspiracy theory about it?
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I did, Yeah, yeah, yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
There's a say I think it was just this one
kind of fringy writer Selina Owen's on a world Net
daily accusing it of being some sort of satanic ritual
tricking people into I don't know, exactly. The logic is there,
But you can you can you can call anything. Any
of these viral phenomenon could be construed to some sort
of mass ritual, right, I mean that's sort of what
(38:03):
it is. Is people glom onto it and they recreate it,
like the flash mobs versus the creepy clowns versus the planking,
any of that kind of stuff. You could look at
as some sort of weird collective, unconscious kind of like dance.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I don't know, anything can be a ritual, and anything
could be a satanic ritual, you know, if you have
the right attitude about it. Isn't magic all about intentionality
in theory? That's a callback to uh, what was that
our magic debate on Harmontown. Yeah, So with this in mind,
(38:39):
when we look at it from a folkloric perspective, we
see another salient point. Also from the Guardian, again they
cover this like four or five different times, and they
said they also attributed part of the panic to the
ways in which it was described by print and broadcast media.
(39:00):
They said, consider how charged the vocabulary of the reports
will be when you hear this on your evening news.
They don't say someone saw a clown. They refer to
these things as sightings. Yeah, the same way you would
say someone cited there was a UFO sighting or a
locknest sighting, And it mythologizes these human beings when really
(39:24):
they're just people in costumes.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and they can do it wherever they want as
long as they're not hurting anybody.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
And then the idea. Okay, So the Mirror over in
the UK reports this, you know, in the early days
of the panic spreading to the United Kingdom, they say,
quote in one of their headlines, creepy clowns approach girls
walking to school and terrifying UK craze was this was
(39:54):
a variant of the first sentence in the article, because
the first sentence in the article in the or says
two schoolgirls were approached by two creepy clowns yesterday as
the terrifying American craze hits the UK. It's true that
it was already quote American craze, but the headline calling
it a terrifying UK craze wasn't true because there had
(40:18):
only been a couple of incidents. Yeah, how many incidents
make a craze? Right? Like when when does a hill
become a mountain kind of question.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Right after it's a mole hill, right, it goes straight
from mole hill to mountain.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
And what's the size of a heap? You know what
I mean. Yeah, there's linguistic ambiguity there, But it also
could be kind of a self fulfilling prophecy to call
this thing a craze before it happens. I mean, you know,
if Paul Mission controlled Decan and I go to Applebee's
after this, and then we start calling it the new
Applebee's craze that's sweeping the nation, would more people be
(40:54):
likely to go because they want to To your point, Matt,
be part of the conversation.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I think you're right. I think you might have to
add in a few more people. If you've got like
five posts that said the new Applebee's craze, I think
you've got something going there.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Not an advertisement for Applebee's, right, nor McDonald's nor McDonald's.
But in this case, what we see, what we see
very quickly is the clown stuff itself is exactly as
we described. It's sort of a viral phenomenon that to
(41:34):
your point, no people glombed onto sometimes to assist in
the execution of crimes they were already probably planning to do.
In other cases, it was people who said, we want
to prank some folks. But when we look into the
psychological causes, the socio political environment and soil in which
(41:56):
this thing exists and grows, then we see there's more
to the story. We've talked about this before, and this
is probably just my own crippling cynicism. But anytime I
see something that is not terrible go viral, I assume
that it's being pushed to cover up some real horrific,
terrible thing happening.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
I don't think you're far off, Ben, you know, so, No, No,
although it is hard to predict virality, I will say that, yeah,
you know the intentions, it may be that, but it's
like no one can guarantee a viral smash. Otherwise, you know,
they'd be hiring those people left and right.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
So I've got a theory about this whole thing that
I want to present to you guys, all right, laid
on me. Okay, here are the facts of Matt's theory.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
This we call the section Matt's facts.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yes, sure, this is the These are Matt's facts. So
we've got the gags the clown incident that occurs when
is it October? Is it October or is it September
twenty sixteen?
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Though right, the first one occurs in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
August first, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
So that's August early August twenty six, twenty sixteen. Then
almost a year later, a year and a month later,
the remake of Stephen King's It comes out, a major
Hollywood production with massive marketing arms behind it. Okay, it
(43:23):
would be beneficial for the people making it to reignite
people's fear of clowns.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Well, you know about the phony clown protest, Right, the
phony clown protest was phony. According to Vanity Fair, a
clown rally against the IT movie was actually a publicity
stunt for the IT movie. The new IT adaptations have
probably been causing problems for real life clowns, whose businesses
have allegedly suffered as a whole new generation of kids
(43:54):
sour to Bozo's of the world, so it was hardly
surprised when clowns planned to gather and rally against It
in New York. It turns out, however, that the rally
was a fake, nothing more than a publicity stun in
promotion of the very movie it claimed to be raging against.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
See. So this is what I'm saying, you guys, What
if this entire thing, starting with gags and the short
film or whatever was occurring, there was all away to
get clowns back into our zeitgeist immediately the forefront of
our minds, so that it would come out and we
would have to go see it.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
That's interesting. I don't I'm honest. I'm gonna be honest
with you, man, I don't know if I'm one hundred
percent on board with it, because it feels like when
real acts of violence started to occur, the company or
studio involved would want to distance themselves.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Well, that's why they never admitted to doing it. That's
why they never admitted to starting the whole craze. See.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Okay, so there on a we didn't start the fire y.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yeah, they went, oh, oh, somebody got stabbed in the head.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
We're out, and we're out. Nobody say anything until the
trailer releases. I mean maybe maybe perhaps I will say though,
because I know I'm sounding a bit conspiratorial here and
it is just my opinion, I will say that now
more than ever to steal the line from Fox News.
Yet again, it is now more than ever, it is
(45:15):
surprisingly easy for some people to influence virality and to
determine which stories are seen. If anyone listening believes that
Mark Zuckerberg cannot literally ping someone at Facebook and say
kill this story and promote this one, then you are
being offensively naive like that. Because there's so few people
(45:40):
who control the faucets of information at this point, then
clearly it could happen. I'm not saying it does. I'm
not saying this is a case in which that occurs.
But I'm saying the reality is there, and to think
otherwise is at this point to be wilfully ignorant of
the reality.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah. No, I would agree. There are a lot of
levers to be pulled within the realms of social media
in places where you can post things and then have
them become viral.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Or what if met? What if? What if you're right
and you're even more right than the original theory? What
if this all dating back to twenty sixteen. Arguably twenty
thirteen was just one long viral lead up to the
Yaquing Phoenix Joker film.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
Or maybe there's clown film collusion maybe all of the
studios that have on their slates of content clown content,
they've all gotten together to perpetrate this conspiracy against the American.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Public CFC Clown Film Collusion.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it was Stephen King himself in
the gags, the clown costume.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Now he doesn't leave his manner, Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
And then it was Joe Hill himself.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
And it's tough to tell the difference. You know, if
you just saw those guys walk it down the street,
Joe Hill, do us look like a young Stephen King?
Does he really? Yes?
Speaker 3 (47:02):
I've never seen it very.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Much physically, Yeah, yeah, very very much.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
That's unfortunate. What Stephen King is a funny looking dude?
Always want to You don't think so?
Speaker 2 (47:11):
What a handsome devil Stephen King? You're kidding me, I don't,
I don't.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
I think Stephen King himself would acknowledge that he's a
funny looking dude. Have you seen Creep Show or he
plays the weird guy?
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah? Yeah, but uh, but I think he tells great stories.
Shout out to by the way, that's right, Shout out
to Rob.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
I just got a free trial to shut her.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Oh it's great.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Just so I can watch, So I can watch creep
shreap show, and I'm very much excited to do so.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Report back if you can't, Let's know what you think
when you see it. I will. Indeed, this leads us
to a question that we can't really answer today, A
couple of questions, and one of them is this, does
the access to aubiquitous information give us more of an
ability to think critically about things? Or does it give
us more of an opportunity to spread and transmit our
(48:02):
own fears to other populations?
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Well, it's both, right, depends on how you use it
and how you handle it, how you comport yourself in
this our internet age.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
But which of those two, I agree? Which of those
two do we see happening more often? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Unfortunately, I think it's the latter. Right.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. But we still have
hope for the future. Right, And we know that outbreaks
of widespread public hysteria are surprisingly common in the historical record.
We've got this great book about it that I lug
around sometimes. And if this odd story about the Great
Clown Panic of twenty sixteen, as The Guardian called it,
(48:42):
if this odd story leads us to anything. It's one
crucial question, what new panic looms on the horizon, And
that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
It's right let us know what you think. You can
reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
three STDWYTK. That's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
correspondence we receive.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Be aware, yet not afraid.
Speaker 5 (49:32):
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Speaker 2 (49:55):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
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