August 9, 2025 • 26 mins
“... to date, there are no confirmed reports of any clowns actually abducting, harming, or killing kids… There just aren’t. There are zero.”
Do you remember when there were a bunch of clown sightings a few years back? It seemed like every week brought new reports of creepy clowns lurking at the edge of woods, roaming neighborhoods, and leering from parking lots. They waved at startled onlookers, chased kids with knives, or whispered from the tree line... at least, that's what people said.
People flooded 911 lines with calls about these boogeymen in big shoes, yet concrete evidence was scarce. It was a bizarre social media-fueled hysteria that spread across dozens of states and even overseas, equal parts absurd and unsettling...
Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan
Additional research & writing by Ira Rai
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
Do you remember when there were a bunch of clown sightings a few years back? It seemed like every week brought new reports of creepy clowns lurking at the edge of woods, roaming neighborhoods, and leering from parking lots. They waved at startled onlookers, chased kids with knives, or whispered from the tree line... at least, that's what people said.
People flooded 911 lines with calls about these boogeymen in big shoes, yet concrete evidence was scarce. It was a bizarre social media-fueled hysteria that spread across dozens of states and even overseas, equal parts absurd and unsettling...
Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan
Additional research & writing by Ira Rai
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot Org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence. Of course,
I thought he was telling it that an time I
suld go in the house and you know, we're got
to talk about this one again. And then the next
day there was like thirty kids come up to me
(00:45):
and say, Miss down and Miss Donald, there's clowns in
the woods.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
There's clowns in the woods.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
My child was with me, so I knew that they
had to say something. Do you remember when there were
a bunch of clown sightings a few years back? It
seemed like every week brought new reports of creepy clowns
lurking at the edge of woods, roaming neighborhoods, and leering
from parking lots. They waved its, startled onlookers, chased kids
with knives, or whispered from the tree line. At least
(01:11):
that's what people said. People flooded nine one one lines
with calls about these boogeymen in big shoes, yet concrete
evidence was hard to find. It was a bizarre, social
media fueled hysteria that spread across dozens of states and
even overseas, equal parts absurd and unsettling. This is the
story of that phantom clown phenomenon. For as long as
(01:38):
there has been laughter, there have been clowns. Clown like
characters date back thousands of years, from ancient jesters who
satirized kings to the circus clowns of the nineteenth century
with painted faces and oversized clothes. Traditionally, clowns were figures
of fun and folly, given license to poke fun at
the powerful as long as their antics stated entertaining. But
(02:01):
there has always been an undercurrent of ambivalence. The clown's
painted grin can be too wide, its antics too unpredictable.
Psychologist Frank McAndrew notes of historical gestures they provided a
safety valve for letting off steam, but only as long
as their value as entertainers outweighed the discomfort they caused
(02:21):
the higher ups. In other words, clowns have always walked
a fine line between hilarity and disturbance. The idea of
the ethel clown is not a purely modern twist. Trickster
clowns and harlequins, and folklore often had a dark or
chaotic side, but in American culture, the creepy clown truly
found its foothold in the late twentieth century. A turning
(02:44):
point came in the late nineteen seventies with serial killer
John Wayne Gacy, infamously nicknamed the Killer Clown. Gaycy had
performed at children's parties as Pogo the clown, painting a
big smile on his face, all the while secretly murdering
at least thirty three young men in burying them under
his house. When Gaysey's crimes came to light in nineteen
(03:04):
seventy eight, the public was horrified. The clown, a symbol
of innocent fun, was suddenly intertwined with dangerous psychopathology in
the American psyche. As one account put it, the connection
between clowns and dangerous psychopathic behavior became forever fixed in
the collective unconscious of Americans. It's no coincidence that at
(03:25):
around the same time clowns began surfacing as outright horror
villains in pop culture, from the malevolent Pennywise in Stephen
King's It in nineteen eighty six to the Joker's ever
more sinister portrayals in the Batman series. By the nineteen eighties,
many people were developing colophobia in a rational fear of clowns.
(03:46):
A two thousand and eight survey in England even found
that most children disliked clowns, suggesting that the friendly circus
clown had already lost its charm. Clowns, once trusted to
make us laugh, coming suspect. Not long after Gaysey's case,
(04:07):
an non hysteria broke out that would mark the first
major evil clown scare. It began in May nineteen eighty one.
In Boston, Massachusetts. On May sixth, the police received a
strange report one or two men wearing clown outfits had
been seen driving a van full of candy near an
elementary school, allegedly trying to lure children. The very next
(04:28):
day brought another report a clown sighting in a local park,
with one detail making it even more grotesque. This clown
was said to be naked from the waist down. Soon,
children and other Boston neighborhoods were telling parents and teachers
about scary clowns and vans. The Boston Public schools were
alarmed enough to issue a memo warning students to stay
(04:49):
away from strangers, especially ones dressed as clowns. The local
media ran a headline pupils warned of clowns as parents
held tight to their children. What made these reports especially
perplexing was that police could find no actual clowns. Boston
police logged over twenty clown related calls to nine one one,
(05:09):
yet not a single adult, not a civilian, not a
police officer, ever laid eyes on those figures. We've had
over twenty calls, but no adult or police officer has
ever seen a clown, one frustrated police spokesman said at
the time, calling it a sick joke if someone was
indeed behind it. The clowns seemed to be phantoms reported
(05:29):
by frightened children, then vanishing without a trace. One person
who took note of this phenomenon was Lauren Coleman, a
researcher of urban legends and other strange phenomena and today
considered an authority on mysterious clowns. In nineteen eighty one,
Coleman was working in Massachusetts and began collecting these odd reports.
He soon coined the term phantom clowns to describe this phenomenon.
(05:54):
As Coleman later explained, phantom clowns are usually very specific.
There's a clown often seen in a van, kids being
approached and telling adults, and then the clowns never being caught.
The pattern in Boston fit this to a tea and
it wasn't just Boston. As Coleman spread the word to
a network of colleagues around the country, he started hearing
(06:14):
of similar incidents elsewhere. Recalled. I started getting copies of
local news clippings from Cleveland, from both Kansas cities. I
really started tracking that this was a nationwide phenomenon. The
spring of nineteen eighty one actually saw a wave of
phantom clown sightings from Massachusetts to Missouri. In Kansas City,
for example, dozens of kids claimed a knife wielding clown
(06:37):
and a yellow van was lurking around schools. Similar reports
popped up in Omaha, Denver, and Pennsylvania, almost always clowns
driving vans attempting to entice or scare children. Authorities were baffled.
In city after city police came up empty handed. A
Boston Globe follow up article theorized that the clowns existed
(06:59):
mostly in the minds of children, a kind of collective
delusion or rumor that spread through schools. The idea of
sinister clowns had become an urban myth that kids half
believed and adults fully feared. The Chicago newspaper, reporting on
a similar scare in nineteen ninety one, noted how clown
rumors were reaching near mythic proportions, tumbling out from different
(07:22):
parts of the city, like clowns falling out of a volkswagon.
It was almost comical, yet the anxiety it caused was real.
No children were ever harmed in these incidents, and no
clowns were ever caught, but the phantom clown was now
firmly entrenched in American lore. The clown sightings of nineteen
(07:43):
eighty one died down as mysteriously as they began. In
their wake. However, the image of the creepy clown only
grew stronger. During the nineteen eighties and nineties. Popular culture
continued to churn out sinister clowns in books, movies, and
TV shows. Children whispered urban legends about clowns doing terrible things.
One famous tale that was spread online involved a clown
(08:06):
statue that turned out to be a murderous intruder in disguise.
Horror filmmakers tapped into colorphobia with films like Poltergeist in
nineteen eighty two, where a demonic toy clown attacks a child,
and It in nineteen ninety, which imprinted Tim Curry's grinning
razor toothed pennywise onto a generation of nightmare plagued viewers.
By the two thousands, clowns wore a Halloween horror staple,
(08:29):
due in no small part to the insane clown posse
who cleverly mixed horror with clowns. Surveys began confirming what
many felt intuitively that a lot of people find clowns disturbing.
In an unusual twenty sixteen study on the nature of creepiness,
clowns ranked number one among the creepiest occupations, topping even
(08:50):
funeral directors and taxidermist those who literally dealt with death.
There's just something about that painted smile and hidden face
that gives us goosebumps. Meanwhile, the phantom clown phenomenon never
fully went away. It only went quiet.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
For a little while.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Lauren Coleman noticed a pattern. These scares tended to recur
in cycles, often flaring up during times of general anxiety.
There was a spate of clown sightings in Chicago in
two thousand eight, for example, which he linked to that
year's tense election season. Coleman theorized that frightening clowns serve
as a kind of cultural distraction. He described a copycat effect,
(09:29):
stating suicide clusters, school shootings, terrorist attacks, and phantom clowns
are all driven from one incident to another by the
media reporting on them. When the news is dire, say
during a contentious political campaign or social uncertainty, an audible
story like creepy clowns can snowball into mass fascination. Coleman continues,
(09:50):
the media concentrates on campaign so much. If any incidental
story comes along, it becomes wall to wall news, almost
as if they needed distraction from the ugliness. And once
the media spotlight shines on a clown siding, more copycats
tend to appear a self perpetuating clown carousel. By the
twenty tens, a new ingredient fueled the fire. Social media
(10:14):
pranksters realized that Dressing up as a creepy clown was
an easy way to spark a reaction, and now they
could share the scares online for instant viral fame. In
twenty thirteen, residents of Northampton, England, kept spotting a mysterious
clown in white face and ruffled collar holding balloons on
random street corners. Photos of the Northampton clown went viral
(10:35):
on Facebook. It turned out to be nothing more than
a publicity stunt by local filmmakers, but it proved the
inter night's appetite for clown scares. The following year, a
YouTube prankster in Italy garnered millions of views with staged
videos of an evil clown startling unsuspecting pedestrians. That same year,
twenty fourteen, there were reports of a Wassco clown haunting
(10:56):
a small town in California at night, and creepy clown
siding were documented in Staten Island, all apparently pranks or
art projects that took on a life of their own.
These stalker clowns, as researchers call them, were real people
dressing up as clowns to deliberately frighten others, often without
breaking any law. According to folklorist Benjamin Radford, who has
(11:18):
studied this trend, the appeal of the stalker clown is simple.
It is a low risk, high reward stunt because it's
virtually guaranteed to make local or national news. In other words,
by the mid twenty tens, creepy clowns were a ready
made viral sensation. The Internet just expedited that process. All
(11:49):
of these threads, urban legends, pop culture tropes, copycat pranks,
and viral memes came together in one perfect storm in
twenty sixteen. Late that reports emerged that creepy clowns were
roaming the streets of South Carolina. On August twenty first,
twenty sixteen, police in Greenville County investigated claims that a
(12:10):
clown with a white painted face tried to lure children
into the dark woods near an apartment complex. Children said
clowns offered them money to follow, and one woman reported
seeing a clown with a blinking red nose lurking by
a dumpster at two thirty am, waving at her before disappearing.
Within days, more sightings sprang up. A clown reportedly peering
(12:31):
from the woods in North Carolina, clanging chains and offering treats.
A teenager in Ohio chased down the street by a
knife wielding clown in a mask. By early September, the
trickle of clown reports had become a flood. Eerie clown
sidings were being reported in state after state, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Pennsylvania,
New York, Florida, you name it, and it did not
(12:53):
stop at the US border. As the weeks went on,
the creepy clown waves spread to Canada, than to the UK,
hey and Australia. By October, what began as a local
oddity in the Carolinas morphed into a full blown international
clown panic.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
There are concerns tonight that these creepy clowns and threats
online will continue to grow.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
A woman claimed she was attacked by a man in
a clown suit just this morning.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
It seems as if a new report of a threatening
clown pops up by the hour.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
The police have their hands full with these possible sightings.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The clown reportedly appeared inside these woods this week.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
A fourteen year old in California was arrested when he
threatened a middle and high school on an Instagram page
called Fontana's Killer Clowns. We've heard that people are going
to show up on campus, but we haven't seen anything.
Police say the team wanted to scare people and gained
social media followers. Police in Connecticut dealt with a similar
social media threat targeting several schools in the New Haven area.
(13:51):
While they dismissed it as a hoax, they're still taking
it seriously.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
At this time, we were considering this to be nothing
more than a prank and harassed meant fueled by social
media upcoming Halloween. Working with the police department on our
own security team, we have no evidence that there is
a credible threat to students or schools in the district.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Description is going to be a blue hat, blue curly hair,
focus on it, bring those colored outfits.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
It appears to have been much more than a scare.
Near San Francisco on Wednesday, a mother says she fought
off a person dressed as a clown who grabbed her
one year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I thought he was going to kiss her hand. Instead,
he pulled her arm literally, so I caught her arm
back and I kicked him right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
They had that tree backdale.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
The phenomenon started in late August, when children in South
Carolina reported seeing a clown beckoning them into the woods,
but those sightings were never confirmed. The clown scare was
even brought up at a White House press briefing this week.
So I'm wondering if the President's aware of this phenomenon
and the White House wants to say anything to discourage
these types of friends.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, I don't know that the President has been briefed
on this particular situation.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Some are so upset by the perceived threats they're ready
to take the law into their own hands.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
While it's funny to talk about it, people were genuinely spooked.
Social media amplified each rumor, each grainy cell phone photo
or anecdote of a menacing clown, fueling a sense that
dangerous clowns were everywhere. In reality, many incidents turned out
to be nothing more than hoaxes or pranks, but distinguishing
rumour from reality became difficult. In the frenzy, police forces
(15:32):
and school officials had no choice but to take the
report seriously at first. Across multiple states, schools went into
lockdown or sent warnings to parents due to clown sightings
or threats. In late September, for instance, a high school
in Ohio was closed for a day after a woman
said she was attacked by a man in a clown suit,
Although her story later unraveled. Law enforcement grew increasingly frustrated
(15:55):
as the print calls and false alarms mounted. One county
sheriff in Virginia reminded the public that it's a felony
for an adult to wear a mask in public and
terrorized the community. In another town, police flyers warned civilians
that if they saw clowns and felt threatened, they had
the right to defend themselves, effectively giving vigilante permission to
(16:16):
confront anyone in a clown costume. The hysteria began edging
into the absurd. In some places, angry mobs did arm
themselves to hunt supposed clowns. College students at Penn State
even formed a massive clown hunting rally one night, chasing
rumors of clowns on campus. As one writer equipped, suddenly,
(16:36):
officers were running around towns looking for clowns. Their work
life soundtrack less base and a lot more slide whistle.
Hard numbers are difficult to pin down, but by October
of twenty sixteen, there were reports of clown encounters in
at least thirty nine US states and eighteen other countries.
Police continued to state that no evidence of actual clown
(16:58):
attackers had ever materialized. There were no clowns caught, no
definitive photographs, not even as one reporter noted a stray
red nose or a strand of blue hair left behind.
Yet the fear was enough to spur real consequences. At
least twelve people were arrested across the US in clown
related incidents, mostly pranksters making false reports or menacing threats
(17:22):
while donning clown garb. Tragically, in one case in Pennsylvania,
a sixteen year old boy was stabbed to death during
a confrontation that apparently began over someone wearing a clown mask.
The clown craze also wreaked havoc on the real clown community.
Yes there is one professional clowns. Birthday party performers Circus
(17:42):
clowns saw their livelihood under attack as schools and parents
began canceling all clown appearances. The panic even grew so
intense that McDonald's, the restaurant chain, temporarily benched its mascot Ronald,
keeping the famous clown character out of the public eye.
So as to not alarm anyone. One sociologist remarked during
(18:02):
the twenty sixteen scare, it's a bad time to be
a professional clown. No one felt this more deeply than
clowns themselves. The World Clown Association or WCA, representing legitimate clowns,
publicly condemned the creepy clown craze. WCA president Randy Christensen
(18:23):
pleaded with the public to understand that the troublemakers were impostors,
not real clowns. Whoever is doing this crazy stuff is
not a clown. Christiensen emphasized in a video message, this
is somebody that's trying to use a good, clean, wholesome
art form and then distorting it. This is not clowning.
This person is not a clown. Real clowns, he insisted,
(18:44):
are about bringing joy and laughter, not fear. Even said
I wonder if this wave doesn't have to do with
the current state of our country, hinting that a national
anxiety was seeping out in strange ways. Other clown organizations
launched campaigns like clown Lives Matter to restore the good
name of clowns, though, as you can imagine, with limited success.
(19:06):
Amid the panic. Even Stephen King, the man who had
arguably done more than anyone to scare people with clowns,
weighed in to calm the waters. He tweeted in October
twenty sixteen, Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria.
Most of them are good. Cheer up the kiddies make
people laugh. When the creator of Pennywise is telling everyone
to take it easy on clowns, you know that things
(19:29):
have probably gotten out of hand. So why was this happening?
How did a wave of spooky clown rumors manage to
captivate and terrorize so many people from all over the planet.
In hindsight, analysts see the twenty sixteen killer clown craze
(19:52):
as a perfect storm of psychological trickers and social contagion.
Fear of clowns was already pretty ingrained in our culture,
As psychologists point out, it's largely because clowns are ambiguous.
Clowns wear makeup and disguises that hide their true identities
and feelings, explains psychologist doctor Rommy Nader, who studies colorophobia.
(20:13):
That ambiguity, the smiling face that might not be truly smiling,
leaves us constantly on guard. Clowns are mischievous by nature.
We never quite know if we're about to get a
friendly joke or a pie of the face. This uncertainty
is exactly what gives people the creeps. Our mind's race
to imagine what might be behind the mask. In twenty sixteen,
(20:35):
those imaginings ran wild. The twenty sixteen clown panic had
two distinct elements feeding each other. As Benjamin Radford explains,
there were stalker clowns, the real individuals dressing up to
scare people and posted on Facebook or YouTube. And then
there were phantom clowns, the rumored, possibly imagined clowns that
(20:55):
children and some adults wore they saw lurking in the shadows.
The stalker clowns generated creepy images and incidents that went viral,
which in turn primed the public to suspect any clownish
site in the corner of their eye might be real.
Once the idea of evil clowns was in the air,
suggestible minds, especially children, did the rest. It's a classic
(21:17):
feedback loop of mass hysteria. Fear fuels rumors, rumors fuel
more fear. These sorts of creepy clown reports are perfectly
suited for going viral and are specifically intended to do so,
Radford notes, pointing to how quickly the story is spread
on social media. A single Facebook post or blurry snapchat
of a clown could ricochet around the world in just
(21:39):
a few hours, sparkling copycats in the next town over
before the first incident was even investigated, and investigators, they
might authorities kept turning up nothing concrete. As Radford emphasized,
to date, there are no confirmed reports of any clowns
actually abducting, harming, or killing kids. There just aren't. There
are zero. In effect, the two tenty sixteen clown scare
(22:01):
was a folklore outbreak, a modern day boogeyman tail that
people half believed, amplified by the connectivity of the Internet
and the perennial creepiness of clowns. By the end of
(22:23):
twenty sixteen, the clown sightings had largely fizzled out, just
as Radford and other experts predicted. It turned out to
be a short lived contagion of copycats and mass hallucinations,
a viral prank that ran its course once Halloween passed
and media interest moved on. There was no killer clown mastermind,
no clown cult, no underground ring of child snatching clowns
(22:46):
or anything like that. When the dust settled, what remained
was essentially an urban legend and a lot of embarrassing
nine one one calls the evil clowns melted back into
the woods of our imagination, leaving no bodies behind, only
our collective goosebumps. Yet the unease lingers the evil clown
phenomenon tapped into something primal, the idea that beneath a
(23:09):
silly costume can lurk true malevolence. It forced us to
wonder if the figures meant to make us laugh could
ever really be trusted. In the end, it was all
just clowning around, a series of hoaxes and tall tales
that got out of hand. But it never felt like
a joke while it lasted. Perhaps that's the final twist
in this circus. We found ourselves afraid of essentially nothing.
(23:32):
That might be the darkest punchline of all The clowns
may be gone, but the memory of those painted smiles
and the shadows still manages to send a shiver down
the spine. And if another wave of creepy clowns ever
comes capering out of the darkness. Well, we'll remember and
we'll be watching. But until such a time, the story
of the Phantom clown phenomenon remains kind of unresolved. Thanks
(24:23):
for listening, everyone. I originally planned on making this a
bonus episode of the pod for Patreon, but it just
seemed too fun. After the recent Butcher Baker series and
the general state of things everywhere, I thought we could
use some good old creepy clowns. But while you're here,
you should go check out the podcast Patreon at patreon
dot com slash Unresolved Pod. I just recently released the
(24:46):
third episode of the BTK series that I've been working
on for a while now, and the fourth and final
episode will be out very soon. I've also got another
unique bonus episode of Unresolved coming out very soon about
Glene Maxwell, the child sex trafficker, potentially being a notorious
moderator over on Reddit. Sounds crazy, right, Well, go become
(25:07):
a patron and you'll hear all about it as soon
as it comes out. But anyhow, that's enough for me.
I'll be back with another new episode next week, so
until then, stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll talk to
you all soon. Bye.
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot Org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence. Of course,
I thought he was telling it that an time I
suld go in the house and you know, we're got
to talk about this one again. And then the next
day there was like thirty kids come up to me
(00:45):
and say, Miss down and Miss Donald, there's clowns in
the woods.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
There's clowns in the woods.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
My child was with me, so I knew that they
had to say something. Do you remember when there were
a bunch of clown sightings a few years back? It
seemed like every week brought new reports of creepy clowns
lurking at the edge of woods, roaming neighborhoods, and leering
from parking lots. They waved its, startled onlookers, chased kids
with knives, or whispered from the tree line. At least
(01:11):
that's what people said. People flooded nine one one lines
with calls about these boogeymen in big shoes, yet concrete
evidence was hard to find. It was a bizarre, social
media fueled hysteria that spread across dozens of states and
even overseas, equal parts absurd and unsettling. This is the
story of that phantom clown phenomenon. For as long as
(01:38):
there has been laughter, there have been clowns. Clown like
characters date back thousands of years, from ancient jesters who
satirized kings to the circus clowns of the nineteenth century
with painted faces and oversized clothes. Traditionally, clowns were figures
of fun and folly, given license to poke fun at
the powerful as long as their antics stated entertaining. But
(02:01):
there has always been an undercurrent of ambivalence. The clown's
painted grin can be too wide, its antics too unpredictable.
Psychologist Frank McAndrew notes of historical gestures they provided a
safety valve for letting off steam, but only as long
as their value as entertainers outweighed the discomfort they caused
(02:21):
the higher ups. In other words, clowns have always walked
a fine line between hilarity and disturbance. The idea of
the ethel clown is not a purely modern twist. Trickster
clowns and harlequins, and folklore often had a dark or
chaotic side, but in American culture, the creepy clown truly
found its foothold in the late twentieth century. A turning
(02:44):
point came in the late nineteen seventies with serial killer
John Wayne Gacy, infamously nicknamed the Killer Clown. Gaycy had
performed at children's parties as Pogo the clown, painting a
big smile on his face, all the while secretly murdering
at least thirty three young men in burying them under
his house. When Gaysey's crimes came to light in nineteen
(03:04):
seventy eight, the public was horrified. The clown, a symbol
of innocent fun, was suddenly intertwined with dangerous psychopathology in
the American psyche. As one account put it, the connection
between clowns and dangerous psychopathic behavior became forever fixed in
the collective unconscious of Americans. It's no coincidence that at
(03:25):
around the same time clowns began surfacing as outright horror
villains in pop culture, from the malevolent Pennywise in Stephen
King's It in nineteen eighty six to the Joker's ever
more sinister portrayals in the Batman series. By the nineteen eighties,
many people were developing colophobia in a rational fear of clowns.
(03:46):
A two thousand and eight survey in England even found
that most children disliked clowns, suggesting that the friendly circus
clown had already lost its charm. Clowns, once trusted to
make us laugh, coming suspect. Not long after Gaysey's case,
(04:07):
an non hysteria broke out that would mark the first
major evil clown scare. It began in May nineteen eighty one.
In Boston, Massachusetts. On May sixth, the police received a
strange report one or two men wearing clown outfits had
been seen driving a van full of candy near an
elementary school, allegedly trying to lure children. The very next
(04:28):
day brought another report a clown sighting in a local park,
with one detail making it even more grotesque. This clown
was said to be naked from the waist down. Soon,
children and other Boston neighborhoods were telling parents and teachers
about scary clowns and vans. The Boston Public schools were
alarmed enough to issue a memo warning students to stay
(04:49):
away from strangers, especially ones dressed as clowns. The local
media ran a headline pupils warned of clowns as parents
held tight to their children. What made these reports especially
perplexing was that police could find no actual clowns. Boston
police logged over twenty clown related calls to nine one one,
(05:09):
yet not a single adult, not a civilian, not a
police officer, ever laid eyes on those figures. We've had
over twenty calls, but no adult or police officer has
ever seen a clown, one frustrated police spokesman said at
the time, calling it a sick joke if someone was
indeed behind it. The clowns seemed to be phantoms reported
(05:29):
by frightened children, then vanishing without a trace. One person
who took note of this phenomenon was Lauren Coleman, a
researcher of urban legends and other strange phenomena and today
considered an authority on mysterious clowns. In nineteen eighty one,
Coleman was working in Massachusetts and began collecting these odd reports.
He soon coined the term phantom clowns to describe this phenomenon.
(05:54):
As Coleman later explained, phantom clowns are usually very specific.
There's a clown often seen in a van, kids being
approached and telling adults, and then the clowns never being caught.
The pattern in Boston fit this to a tea and
it wasn't just Boston. As Coleman spread the word to
a network of colleagues around the country, he started hearing
(06:14):
of similar incidents elsewhere. Recalled. I started getting copies of
local news clippings from Cleveland, from both Kansas cities. I
really started tracking that this was a nationwide phenomenon. The
spring of nineteen eighty one actually saw a wave of
phantom clown sightings from Massachusetts to Missouri. In Kansas City,
for example, dozens of kids claimed a knife wielding clown
(06:37):
and a yellow van was lurking around schools. Similar reports
popped up in Omaha, Denver, and Pennsylvania, almost always clowns
driving vans attempting to entice or scare children. Authorities were baffled.
In city after city police came up empty handed. A
Boston Globe follow up article theorized that the clowns existed
(06:59):
mostly in the minds of children, a kind of collective
delusion or rumor that spread through schools. The idea of
sinister clowns had become an urban myth that kids half
believed and adults fully feared. The Chicago newspaper, reporting on
a similar scare in nineteen ninety one, noted how clown
rumors were reaching near mythic proportions, tumbling out from different
(07:22):
parts of the city, like clowns falling out of a volkswagon.
It was almost comical, yet the anxiety it caused was real.
No children were ever harmed in these incidents, and no
clowns were ever caught, but the phantom clown was now
firmly entrenched in American lore. The clown sightings of nineteen
(07:43):
eighty one died down as mysteriously as they began. In
their wake. However, the image of the creepy clown only
grew stronger. During the nineteen eighties and nineties. Popular culture
continued to churn out sinister clowns in books, movies, and
TV shows. Children whispered urban legends about clowns doing terrible things.
One famous tale that was spread online involved a clown
(08:06):
statue that turned out to be a murderous intruder in disguise.
Horror filmmakers tapped into colorphobia with films like Poltergeist in
nineteen eighty two, where a demonic toy clown attacks a child,
and It in nineteen ninety, which imprinted Tim Curry's grinning
razor toothed pennywise onto a generation of nightmare plagued viewers.
By the two thousands, clowns wore a Halloween horror staple,
(08:29):
due in no small part to the insane clown posse
who cleverly mixed horror with clowns. Surveys began confirming what
many felt intuitively that a lot of people find clowns disturbing.
In an unusual twenty sixteen study on the nature of creepiness,
clowns ranked number one among the creepiest occupations, topping even
(08:50):
funeral directors and taxidermist those who literally dealt with death.
There's just something about that painted smile and hidden face
that gives us goosebumps. Meanwhile, the phantom clown phenomenon never
fully went away. It only went quiet.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
For a little while.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Lauren Coleman noticed a pattern. These scares tended to recur
in cycles, often flaring up during times of general anxiety.
There was a spate of clown sightings in Chicago in
two thousand eight, for example, which he linked to that
year's tense election season. Coleman theorized that frightening clowns serve
as a kind of cultural distraction. He described a copycat effect,
(09:29):
stating suicide clusters, school shootings, terrorist attacks, and phantom clowns
are all driven from one incident to another by the
media reporting on them. When the news is dire, say
during a contentious political campaign or social uncertainty, an audible
story like creepy clowns can snowball into mass fascination. Coleman continues,
(09:50):
the media concentrates on campaign so much. If any incidental
story comes along, it becomes wall to wall news, almost
as if they needed distraction from the ugliness. And once
the media spotlight shines on a clown siding, more copycats
tend to appear a self perpetuating clown carousel. By the
twenty tens, a new ingredient fueled the fire. Social media
(10:14):
pranksters realized that Dressing up as a creepy clown was
an easy way to spark a reaction, and now they
could share the scares online for instant viral fame. In
twenty thirteen, residents of Northampton, England, kept spotting a mysterious
clown in white face and ruffled collar holding balloons on
random street corners. Photos of the Northampton clown went viral
(10:35):
on Facebook. It turned out to be nothing more than
a publicity stunt by local filmmakers, but it proved the
inter night's appetite for clown scares. The following year, a
YouTube prankster in Italy garnered millions of views with staged
videos of an evil clown startling unsuspecting pedestrians. That same year,
twenty fourteen, there were reports of a Wassco clown haunting
(10:56):
a small town in California at night, and creepy clown
siding were documented in Staten Island, all apparently pranks or
art projects that took on a life of their own.
These stalker clowns, as researchers call them, were real people
dressing up as clowns to deliberately frighten others, often without
breaking any law. According to folklorist Benjamin Radford, who has
(11:18):
studied this trend, the appeal of the stalker clown is simple.
It is a low risk, high reward stunt because it's
virtually guaranteed to make local or national news. In other words,
by the mid twenty tens, creepy clowns were a ready
made viral sensation. The Internet just expedited that process. All
(11:49):
of these threads, urban legends, pop culture tropes, copycat pranks,
and viral memes came together in one perfect storm in
twenty sixteen. Late that reports emerged that creepy clowns were
roaming the streets of South Carolina. On August twenty first,
twenty sixteen, police in Greenville County investigated claims that a
(12:10):
clown with a white painted face tried to lure children
into the dark woods near an apartment complex. Children said
clowns offered them money to follow, and one woman reported
seeing a clown with a blinking red nose lurking by
a dumpster at two thirty am, waving at her before disappearing.
Within days, more sightings sprang up. A clown reportedly peering
(12:31):
from the woods in North Carolina, clanging chains and offering treats.
A teenager in Ohio chased down the street by a
knife wielding clown in a mask. By early September, the
trickle of clown reports had become a flood. Eerie clown
sidings were being reported in state after state, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Pennsylvania,
New York, Florida, you name it, and it did not
(12:53):
stop at the US border. As the weeks went on,
the creepy clown waves spread to Canada, than to the UK,
hey and Australia. By October, what began as a local
oddity in the Carolinas morphed into a full blown international
clown panic.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
There are concerns tonight that these creepy clowns and threats
online will continue to grow.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
A woman claimed she was attacked by a man in
a clown suit just this morning.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
It seems as if a new report of a threatening
clown pops up by the hour.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
The police have their hands full with these possible sightings.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The clown reportedly appeared inside these woods this week.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
A fourteen year old in California was arrested when he
threatened a middle and high school on an Instagram page
called Fontana's Killer Clowns. We've heard that people are going
to show up on campus, but we haven't seen anything.
Police say the team wanted to scare people and gained
social media followers. Police in Connecticut dealt with a similar
social media threat targeting several schools in the New Haven area.
(13:51):
While they dismissed it as a hoax, they're still taking
it seriously.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
At this time, we were considering this to be nothing
more than a prank and harassed meant fueled by social
media upcoming Halloween. Working with the police department on our
own security team, we have no evidence that there is
a credible threat to students or schools in the district.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Description is going to be a blue hat, blue curly hair,
focus on it, bring those colored outfits.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
It appears to have been much more than a scare.
Near San Francisco on Wednesday, a mother says she fought
off a person dressed as a clown who grabbed her
one year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I thought he was going to kiss her hand. Instead,
he pulled her arm literally, so I caught her arm
back and I kicked him right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
They had that tree backdale.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
The phenomenon started in late August, when children in South
Carolina reported seeing a clown beckoning them into the woods,
but those sightings were never confirmed. The clown scare was
even brought up at a White House press briefing this week.
So I'm wondering if the President's aware of this phenomenon
and the White House wants to say anything to discourage
these types of friends.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, I don't know that the President has been briefed
on this particular situation.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Some are so upset by the perceived threats they're ready
to take the law into their own hands.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
While it's funny to talk about it, people were genuinely spooked.
Social media amplified each rumor, each grainy cell phone photo
or anecdote of a menacing clown, fueling a sense that
dangerous clowns were everywhere. In reality, many incidents turned out
to be nothing more than hoaxes or pranks, but distinguishing
rumour from reality became difficult. In the frenzy, police forces
(15:32):
and school officials had no choice but to take the
report seriously at first. Across multiple states, schools went into
lockdown or sent warnings to parents due to clown sightings
or threats. In late September, for instance, a high school
in Ohio was closed for a day after a woman
said she was attacked by a man in a clown suit,
Although her story later unraveled. Law enforcement grew increasingly frustrated
(15:55):
as the print calls and false alarms mounted. One county
sheriff in Virginia reminded the public that it's a felony
for an adult to wear a mask in public and
terrorized the community. In another town, police flyers warned civilians
that if they saw clowns and felt threatened, they had
the right to defend themselves, effectively giving vigilante permission to
(16:16):
confront anyone in a clown costume. The hysteria began edging
into the absurd. In some places, angry mobs did arm
themselves to hunt supposed clowns. College students at Penn State
even formed a massive clown hunting rally one night, chasing
rumors of clowns on campus. As one writer equipped, suddenly,
(16:36):
officers were running around towns looking for clowns. Their work
life soundtrack less base and a lot more slide whistle.
Hard numbers are difficult to pin down, but by October
of twenty sixteen, there were reports of clown encounters in
at least thirty nine US states and eighteen other countries.
Police continued to state that no evidence of actual clown
(16:58):
attackers had ever materialized. There were no clowns caught, no
definitive photographs, not even as one reporter noted a stray
red nose or a strand of blue hair left behind.
Yet the fear was enough to spur real consequences. At
least twelve people were arrested across the US in clown
related incidents, mostly pranksters making false reports or menacing threats
(17:22):
while donning clown garb. Tragically, in one case in Pennsylvania,
a sixteen year old boy was stabbed to death during
a confrontation that apparently began over someone wearing a clown mask.
The clown craze also wreaked havoc on the real clown community.
Yes there is one professional clowns. Birthday party performers Circus
(17:42):
clowns saw their livelihood under attack as schools and parents
began canceling all clown appearances. The panic even grew so
intense that McDonald's, the restaurant chain, temporarily benched its mascot Ronald,
keeping the famous clown character out of the public eye.
So as to not alarm anyone. One sociologist remarked during
(18:02):
the twenty sixteen scare, it's a bad time to be
a professional clown. No one felt this more deeply than
clowns themselves. The World Clown Association or WCA, representing legitimate clowns,
publicly condemned the creepy clown craze. WCA president Randy Christensen
(18:23):
pleaded with the public to understand that the troublemakers were impostors,
not real clowns. Whoever is doing this crazy stuff is
not a clown. Christiensen emphasized in a video message, this
is somebody that's trying to use a good, clean, wholesome
art form and then distorting it. This is not clowning.
This person is not a clown. Real clowns, he insisted,
(18:44):
are about bringing joy and laughter, not fear. Even said
I wonder if this wave doesn't have to do with
the current state of our country, hinting that a national
anxiety was seeping out in strange ways. Other clown organizations
launched campaigns like clown Lives Matter to restore the good
name of clowns, though, as you can imagine, with limited success.
(19:06):
Amid the panic. Even Stephen King, the man who had
arguably done more than anyone to scare people with clowns,
weighed in to calm the waters. He tweeted in October
twenty sixteen, Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria.
Most of them are good. Cheer up the kiddies make
people laugh. When the creator of Pennywise is telling everyone
to take it easy on clowns, you know that things
(19:29):
have probably gotten out of hand. So why was this happening?
How did a wave of spooky clown rumors manage to
captivate and terrorize so many people from all over the planet.
In hindsight, analysts see the twenty sixteen killer clown craze
(19:52):
as a perfect storm of psychological trickers and social contagion.
Fear of clowns was already pretty ingrained in our culture,
As psychologists point out, it's largely because clowns are ambiguous.
Clowns wear makeup and disguises that hide their true identities
and feelings, explains psychologist doctor Rommy Nader, who studies colorophobia.
(20:13):
That ambiguity, the smiling face that might not be truly smiling,
leaves us constantly on guard. Clowns are mischievous by nature.
We never quite know if we're about to get a
friendly joke or a pie of the face. This uncertainty
is exactly what gives people the creeps. Our mind's race
to imagine what might be behind the mask. In twenty sixteen,
(20:35):
those imaginings ran wild. The twenty sixteen clown panic had
two distinct elements feeding each other. As Benjamin Radford explains,
there were stalker clowns, the real individuals dressing up to
scare people and posted on Facebook or YouTube. And then
there were phantom clowns, the rumored, possibly imagined clowns that
(20:55):
children and some adults wore they saw lurking in the shadows.
The stalker clowns generated creepy images and incidents that went viral,
which in turn primed the public to suspect any clownish
site in the corner of their eye might be real.
Once the idea of evil clowns was in the air,
suggestible minds, especially children, did the rest. It's a classic
(21:17):
feedback loop of mass hysteria. Fear fuels rumors, rumors fuel
more fear. These sorts of creepy clown reports are perfectly
suited for going viral and are specifically intended to do so,
Radford notes, pointing to how quickly the story is spread
on social media. A single Facebook post or blurry snapchat
of a clown could ricochet around the world in just
(21:39):
a few hours, sparkling copycats in the next town over
before the first incident was even investigated, and investigators, they
might authorities kept turning up nothing concrete. As Radford emphasized,
to date, there are no confirmed reports of any clowns
actually abducting, harming, or killing kids. There just aren't. There
are zero. In effect, the two tenty sixteen clown scare
(22:01):
was a folklore outbreak, a modern day boogeyman tail that
people half believed, amplified by the connectivity of the Internet
and the perennial creepiness of clowns. By the end of
(22:23):
twenty sixteen, the clown sightings had largely fizzled out, just
as Radford and other experts predicted. It turned out to
be a short lived contagion of copycats and mass hallucinations,
a viral prank that ran its course once Halloween passed
and media interest moved on. There was no killer clown mastermind,
no clown cult, no underground ring of child snatching clowns
(22:46):
or anything like that. When the dust settled, what remained
was essentially an urban legend and a lot of embarrassing
nine one one calls the evil clowns melted back into
the woods of our imagination, leaving no bodies behind, only
our collective goosebumps. Yet the unease lingers the evil clown
phenomenon tapped into something primal, the idea that beneath a
(23:09):
silly costume can lurk true malevolence. It forced us to
wonder if the figures meant to make us laugh could
ever really be trusted. In the end, it was all
just clowning around, a series of hoaxes and tall tales
that got out of hand. But it never felt like
a joke while it lasted. Perhaps that's the final twist
in this circus. We found ourselves afraid of essentially nothing.
(23:32):
That might be the darkest punchline of all The clowns
may be gone, but the memory of those painted smiles
and the shadows still manages to send a shiver down
the spine. And if another wave of creepy clowns ever
comes capering out of the darkness. Well, we'll remember and
we'll be watching. But until such a time, the story
of the Phantom clown phenomenon remains kind of unresolved. Thanks
(24:23):
for listening, everyone. I originally planned on making this a
bonus episode of the pod for Patreon, but it just
seemed too fun. After the recent Butcher Baker series and
the general state of things everywhere, I thought we could
use some good old creepy clowns. But while you're here,
you should go check out the podcast Patreon at patreon
dot com slash Unresolved Pod. I just recently released the
(24:46):
third episode of the BTK series that I've been working
on for a while now, and the fourth and final
episode will be out very soon. I've also got another
unique bonus episode of Unresolved coming out very soon about
Glene Maxwell, the child sex trafficker, potentially being a notorious
moderator over on Reddit. Sounds crazy, right, Well, go become
(25:07):
a patron and you'll hear all about it as soon
as it comes out. But anyhow, that's enough for me.
I'll be back with another new episode next week, so
until then, stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll talk to
you all soon. Bye.
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