To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.

      Deep Thoughts
      by Jack Handey

      There is an interesting section on "phantom clowns" in Loren Coleman's 1983 book, Mysterious America. According to Coleman, during the early 1980s the United States played host to a "malevolent clown" flap which started on the East Coast, but quickly spread as far west as Kansas City and to nearly all points in between. The story is undeniably weird and there appears to be elements to it that would easily fit within the "supernatural pardigm" (if such a thing exists). It is, therefore, fully appropriate to this endeavor. We humbly submit for your approval the strange story of the Evil Clowns:


      Send Out the Clowns

      In March, 1981, Graceland Cemetery in Mineral Point, Wisconsin was the scene of weird activity which may or may not have been the precursor to similar events in other parts of the country. A phantom, dubbed "the vampire" by locals, had been spotted numerous times lurking among the headstones in the graveyard, at least once by a police officer who described it as "a huge person with a white-painted face."

      Two months later, in May, children in Boston, Massachusettes began to independently report weird encounters with men dressed as clowns attempting to lure them into the vans they were driving. (One report concerned an individual in clown makeup without benefit of trousers driving a black van. Conspicuous, to be sure, yet he was never caught.) Reports of this kind became so numerous, in fact, that soon local newspapers, the police department, and the School Committee were openly discussing the problem. When reports began coming in from virtually all parts of the city, the police department actually issued a "clown warning" and the Boston Public School District quickly followed suit.

      On May 5, in the Boston suburb of Brookline, two clown men were seen trying to lure children into an older model black van with a broken headlight, ladders on the sides, and no hubcaps. Despite the excellent description of the van, the relatively small area concerned, and the fact that the vehicle police were searching for was being driven by men sporting outlandish clown outfits, it could not be located.

      Within a week clown reports were coming in from all parts of the Greater Boston Area. Group hysteria became a popular explanation, but the bulk of the reports were coming from five to seven year olds who, in all liklihood, had not been following the news.


      Kansas City, Here They Come

      It is possible, though highly unlikely, that the people of Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas were following the Boston clown episodes when their own rash of clown-sightings erupted. May 22 saw an enormous amount of evil clown activity in both cities. The first report filed that day concerned a clown in a yellow van who wielded a knife at six separate elementary schools in the area, yet somehow managed to elude police.

      Reports of nefarious clown activity continued to pour in from all parts of both cities throughout the day. One clown was chased from a schoolyard to the sanctuary of another (or the same?) yellow van by a group of children. (It is either ironic or significant, Coleman points out, that this particular clown was wearing a black shirt with the image of "the devil" emblazoned on it. The origin of the modern clown in white-face evolved from the manner in which Satan was portrayed in the Miracle Plays of the middle ages.)

      Soon clown reports were coming in from all parts of the US; from Omaha to Denver to Pittsburgh. (The Pittsburgh reports concerned someone --or something-- in a pink and white bunny outfit running amok in Allegheny Cemetery.) A clown sighted in Terrace Village, Pennsylvania, was hunted by police, police dogs, and over 100 volunteers and was never found.

      The clown flap of 1981 eventually petered out, but was folllowed by brief episodes in Phoenix in 1985 and in New Jersey in 1991 (almost exactly ten years after the initial events). Emminent folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand relegates the entire Evil Clown phenomenon to the status of urban legend and suggests that it may be derivative of such age-old myths as the Pied Piper of Hamelin. However even Brunvand concedes that "exactly how such ancient legends can keep recurring in the form of scare stories told by American youngsters is hard to explain."