===TRANSCRIPT START===

Hey, everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this week, we're gonna explore one of humankind's most base fears. Once you scrape away all the things that scare us about modern life, once you take away plane crashes and cyber attacks and nuclear weapons, there are still those fears that send a chill down the spine of every human. Fear of the dark, for one, fear of drowning, fear of starving to death. But I think there's one fear that supersedes even those. I'm not sure if it's baked into our genetics, like memories of creatures that hunted us in the past or something even worse. Maybe there's a supernatural component to this fear, something that reminds us of unexplored worlds and regions beyond our own. In any case, I'm pretty confident that everyone has faced or will face this fear at some point in their lives. For some unlucky people, it may be the very last fear they ever face. In fact, I'm kind of worried that the subject is so disturbing that people might just turn the episode off when I say what it is. So I guess I'll just say it. Today, we're talking about clowns. What are we?

Scared. Now it is time for Time for Scared All The Time.

Hey everybody, welcome back. We're excited to jump into this episode today. We've got some really weird clown stuff to talk about, some really creepy stories and strange information. But first, as always, just a little bit of housekeeping. Thanks so much for listening to our galaxy-sized space episode. Yeah, we weren't sure if we were going to lose you guys with that one, but it seems like y'all loved it. So we will continue occasionally in the future to do Megalong episodes when the material calls for it. And as we're approaching the end of the year, we just wanted to... What's the word I'm looking for, Ed? Make a demand? We want to make a demand? No.

Make a further suggestion as we do every week that like, hey, it's pretty cool to see that our numbers stay consistent or go up every week. And that we know it's a huge part because of the sharing and talking about it that you guys do. So if you can just keep doing that, that would be great.

Yeah. Rate, review, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and tell your friends. We've got a month or so coming up of people going to be on vacation. They're going to be flying. They're going to be driving. And if they need some material to listen to, let them know. Scared All The Time's got their back. You know, they can stream us wherever they want. And let's see the ripples spread a little bit because you guys have been great. It's been so fun on Facebook. It's been so fun on Instagram. We just want to keep that growing and keep building this place for everyone to be weird and wacky.

Yeah. So anyway, keep up the good work. We promise to if you promise to. And I guess without further ado, let's paint up our faces, get some wacky hair on, squeeze a horn.

And bozo till we clown.

And bozo till we clown.

So I suspect Ed might immediately contradict me and say he's actually not afraid of clowns. So Ed, the floor is yours.

No, I am. I 100% am. I'm trying to think back to like, I don't remember if I ever went to a birthday party or anything where there was a clown. I think I just maybe grew up around people who knew better. But I don't know. Killer Clowns from Outer Space was like a thing that was on a lot on cable that was scary when I was young. But more importantly is Pee Wee Herman. Like when he's trying to save all those animals in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and they show the fucking scary clowns over and over. For me, that was like a big formative, I don't like clowns scene.

Yeah, I actually think Pee Wee Herman is sort of on my list of, you know, I didn't have a particular clown I was afraid of. And in fact, I'll say, I admit, clowns are not as high on my own fear tier as I maybe insinuated they are at the beginning.

I think they're pretty... It's a context thing and it so often happens later with the fear tier. But I'm telling you right now, if either of us were in the street at like midnight, and there was a clown standing on the fucking yellow lines of the road, there's no version of that where you're not reaching for your keys and running to get away.

Yes, you're right. Context for the fear tier is very important. I do have a few deep, dark memories of clowns really scaring the shit out of me. The first is Pennywise, no surprise, but not from the actual mini series. I never saw the mini series until I was older, but I don't remember why this was the case. But one of my earliest memories is of walking into a mall with my mom, when I probably was like three or four. And there were these two really lifelike statues that in hindsight, maybe they were like fiberglass or something. And one was Freddy Krueger and one was Pennywise holding balloons. And they didn't like move or make noise or anything. And I don't know what they were doing in a mall even in Central Pennsylvania, but they scared the shit out of me.

I think that there's just been virgins with money forever. And so anywhere there's commerce, you're going to get some virgins with money want this shit. So it probably was like a horror store or like a hot topic adjacent. You know, you can get a fucking get a shirt with the goonies on it there.

Yeah. But so outside of that, I didn't really face down too many clowns. My friends also never had clowns at their birthday parties. I don't think I ever went to the circus. I did. There's a family legend holds that when I was like five or six, that I ran screaming from a Halloween parade when someone arrived dressed as Pee Wee Herman, and that I was very, very afraid of really Pee Wee Herman.

I loved Pee Wee Herman. I fucking lived for Pee Wee's Playhouse. I watched that shit religiously. If I saw Pee Wee Herman, I'd be like, hell yeah. But if I saw a clown, I mean, that's different altogether. I'm surprised that you, I thought you were going to say you saw a clown and you were scared.

No, no, no. Well, I think at first I would say I sort of remember this happening, and I don't know that it was Pee Wee that scared me so much as like they had the big talking chair with the tongue and the teeth.

Cherry. Their name is Cherry, yes.

Cherry. And I thought it was going to eat me, which I think was maybe more what I was afraid of than Pee Wee. But I do think like Pee Wee is clown adjacent and there is something very uncanny valley about grown man acting like a child.

I guess. You know, I still think he got done dirty. I don't think he should have gotten in trouble.

Oh, for sure. And I love him now, but as a kid, it was just one of those things like, you know, like there was something scary or uncomfortable about like someone who straddles the line between adult and child like that.

That's so funny to me because I, yeah, for me, he was on par with like Mr. Rogers, not in terms of attitude or tone or anything, but I felt equally safe with both of those people.

Interesting. I felt very safe with Mr. Rogers. I did not feel safe with Pee Wee.

I think Pee Wee maybe in a lot of ways mirrored my crazy ADD brain better than some other stuff did maybe. I felt more at home in the chaos.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. I hear that. I mean, I love once I got old enough. I loved Pee Wee, but just as a kid, I didn't. I also had a very negative reaction as a kid to another clown adjacent figure or set of figures, the costumed candy characters at Hershey Park where I grew up. There was like a chocolate bar and a Reese's Cup and a Hershey's Kiss. And they're just constantly like they have these big eyes and like the painted on smile. And I remember being uncomfortable around those. I think anything that like didn't express a variety of emotion maybe scared me. Like Pee Wee was always like, woohoo! And the kisses in the Hershey bar were always like big smiles and big eyes. And like something about that just rigid happiness maybe frightened me.

You need all mascots and children, television performers. You need to see them on their smoke breaks. Like you just need to see them depressingly by the machine that runs the Ferris wheel just ripping on a fucking dart.

Yeah, just be like, they don't fucking pay me enough for this shit. And then I'm like, yeah, all right. Now you sound like my dad.

Oh my God. Another scary clown I'm just remembering now, my uncle was like an avid comic collector, which kind of fueled my comic collection. But he used to have stuff from Zippy the Clown. Are you familiar with Zippy? He's got that big long cone head.

Yep.

And it's really creepy in like that underground comic style of animation that fucking, I just remembered being like they had some Zippy thing that I was like freaked out by.

Yeah, I know exactly who you're talking about. I feel like it was sort of an underground counterculture. Like there's one or two other adults in my life who have had like Zippy stuff and I feel like it was from when they were like hippies or whatever growing up. That was like a thing. But yeah, Zippy, real uncomfortable.

Yeah, well, we'll put Zippy in the show notes. Oh, wait a minute. I'm not even sure he's a clown. I don't know why I associate Zippy with a clown. I think he's just a pinhead who has a bow on his head.

Oh, yeah, what's the bow?

Zippy the pinhead is a fictional character who is the protagonist of the comic strip Zippy. He almost always wears a yellow clown suit with large red polka dots and puffy white clown shoes. So yeah, we can all understand why I thought this guy was a clown.

There's a lot of different clowns to be afraid of.

A shorter list might be, what are the clowns to not be afraid of? Do you want to make this a one minute episode?

The big question, I think, to try to answer first, though, is why people are afraid of clowns. And there's a bunch of reasons, some of which are cultural and many of which are actually psychological. According to a recent study in Frontiers of Psychology that examined the causes and impacts of cool cholera phobia.

Yeah, that sounds like a word you didn't just make up.

Co-u-l-r-o phobia.

Is that Latin for clown fear?

Yeah, it's fear of clowns.

So basically, just say clownophobia.

According to a recent study in Frontiers of Psychology that examined the causes and impacts of clownophobia, the key drivers of a fear of clowns are uncertainty of harmful intent, media influences, and unpredictability of behavior. Various features of clowns' appearances also produce a negative experience and a sense of...

It's so holy shit. That's an amazing list because the things you're afraid of on that list are everything that make up a clown. They purposely act in a way where you kind of can't tell what they're going to do. Then they famously do a bunch of unpredictable things. And when they show up places, regardless of car size, they show up with like a fucking gang of them. So yeah, if they were not wearing clown outfits, you'd just be like, what the fuck is about to go down right now?

Well, clowns are one of those things where one clown is scary. More than one clown is even more scary.

Yeah, that's the peewee of it all. That's the peewee movie.

A bunch of studies phrase it different ways, but basically what it all boils down to is that a clown's exaggerated appearance makes it hard for our reptile brains to ascertain if this thing in front of us is friend or foe. So the painted on smile and the eye makeup tells us we're safe and this character is friendly, but we know that those details are lies. We know that they don't necessarily reflect the mood of the person wearing the costume.

Yeah, no, it's that harsh smell of booze that reflects.

Yeah, well, it almost feels like a Doth protest too much kind of thing. Like if you're portraying yourself as that goofy and happy and harmless, what's going on beneath the surface there?

I don't think it helps that, you know, it's generational fear of you shake these people's hands, they're going to get a shock, you look in their flower, you're going to get a water spray. Like they don't provide a safe atmosphere.

Yeah, that's the unexpected aspect. You don't know what a clown is going to do next and in a slightly exaggerated, scary way, maybe they'll pull a knife. Maybe it's the Joker and he has smilex in his flower and you're going to die with a smile on your face. But that's part of why there's an appeal to the stereotype of the sad clown, because there's an instant dramatic contrast between the painted on happy face and like you said, the smell of booze or the sunken eyes and stubble or scratchy voice of the depressed or scary loser portraying the clown. But what's really interesting about the stereotype of the depressed or scary loser portraying the clown is that that has been around for more than 100 years.

Well, I mean, we work in the arts. Is that that surprising? There's no money to be made in this fucking field. So if you're in as kind of deep into the arts as clownery, I imagine you just broke all the fucking time. So you're riding the rails until there's cars and then you're hitchhiking.

Well, now, but there's a level to the depressed clown stereotype.

I'm saying in my mind, I'm saying it's two prong. In my mind, he's depressed because he's broke because of the profession he's chosen. And then the second prong is if you have to put on a happy face all fucking day, then you're not going to maybe be happy when you're not working. You've exuded so much energy making everyone else happy. Look, I get it. This is my life.

Well, there's also, I think, the even more direct connection is that it's not the drain of putting on a happy face. It's that depressed people often are the biggest jokers. They put on a happy face and they're really a mess inside.

Six of one, a half a dozen of the other.

You know the Pagliacci joke?

No, I don't even know. The only word I understood in that sentence was joke.

You've never heard clown goes to a doctor?

No, I don't know.

Okay, so there's this old joke that's like a guy goes to a doctor. He says, doctor, I'm terribly depressed. You got to do something to help me. And the doctor says, well, the circus is in town tonight. You could go see Pagliacci, the clown. That'll chew you up. And he says, but doctor, I am Pagliacci. You've never heard that joke?

No, but I mean, I don't feel like I was missing anything by now hearing it.

No, it's not an incredible joke, but it's like it is a joke that has been around forever and kind of cuts to the core of the idea of the sad clown. But my point is that that joke got its start in the early 1800s. But it didn't become about Pagliacci until 1892, when there was this Italian tragic comic clown opera called Pagliacci, which is Pagliacci is the Italian word for clown, and that premiered in 1892. But before that, the same joke existed, but it was about a different clown. It was about a guy named Joseph Grimaldi. Now, according to an article that I found in the Smithsonian magazine, Grimaldi was the first recognizable ancestor of the modern clown. His clowning was based in the theatrical tradition instead of circuses, which we'll kind of get into the difference between those later. But he was so famous that he's the reason why clowns are sometimes still called Joey's, because this guy's name was Joseph Grimaldi. And sometimes in the theater world, clowns are called Joey's. And in his day, in the early 1800s, Joseph Grimaldi was basically as famous as anyone in the world has ever been. From what I read, I don't think he quite started the idea of celebrity culture, but he was one of the earliest entertainment celebrities as we would think of them today. Like he was so famous that some people have quoted a full eighth of London's population had seen Grimaldi on stage at some point.

What?

Yeah.

It wasn't like you turned on the television, you had to go see him.

Yeah. He was like famous, famous. He was a really big deal. And he changed what it meant to be a clown. Now, brief side note, the history of both the Grimaldi family and clowning are sort of intertwined. Grimaldi's great grandfather was an amateur performer in Italy in a Commedia dell'arte troupe, which were basically these like early improv comedy troops that featured stock characters like Rich Old Ben and their lovers and their servants. And Grimaldi's great grandfather immigrated in the 1730s from Italy to London. And he brought the whole family with him and continued to perform in these troops. So there was the legacy of performance and comedy in Grimaldi's background. Now, at the same time as Commedia dell'arte came to London, a new stock character was added. One of the traditional characters was known as the Zany, the Z-A-N-N-I, which is the origin of the word zany. So you can imagine what this character was like. They were basically pretty off the wall, pretty goofy, a little bit of a screw loose. They were kind of a trickster servant type character, which is different than Grimaldi. Yes. Well, that's so there were the Zany's first. And then as Commedia dell'arte worked its way through Europe, another character was added in contrast to the usually more kind of urbane Zany. They added this character called a clown, who was usually an oaf or a drunk bumpkin, someone from the country who would wear ragged clothes. And they were a comedy character like the Zany, but they represented the more like rural farming communities where Commedia dell'arte was kind of working its way through to give them someone to relate to.

Oh, thanks so much, said the people from the country. Thanks for giving us a mirror image of ourselves as you see us. Why don't you keep moving the fucking carnival down the road, huh?

Well, the only makeup that these original clowns would sometimes wear was they would put rouge on their cheeks to portray themselves as like flush and drunk. That was the makeup that they would wear.

Yeah, I think it's also the makeup they imbibed.

Yeah, well, and then Grimaldi came along. So these clowns were invented. They were these bumpkins that wore ragged clothes. And then Grimaldi came along. And he, from the time he was a toddler, was involved in the circus. And from what I saw, he had some fame as a very young clown. But then as he got older, he decided, like, fuck this clown being just part of the troupe. The clown should be the whole show. So he was the first one to put on big, crazy, colorful costumes. He was the first one to paint his face completely white with spots of red on the cheeks. And eventually he would add a blue mohawk, which in early London days was like a real, like, oh, this guy's a real lunatic. He's got a blue mohawk. Watch out.

I can't even imagine what, like, crowds must have thought of a blue mohawk. For real, like, it's just, because blue is not anywhere in nature, right? So that is like a fully unnatural color. And then you have an unnatural haircut.

Yeah.

And your face is insane.

And he would do all kinds of things. Like he did a lot of physical comedy. He did a lot of satire.

Did a lot of the audience.

He did a lot of the audience, I'm sure. He had comic impressions and like big, ribald songs that were, I guess, at the time, probably pretty, you know, he was like the Adam Sandler of his day. The kids had to sneak listening to Grimaldi. He even had a couple of catchphrases. One of which was, I assume he would say kind of at the beginning of the show, he would say, here we are again to the audience. And then his other catchphrase was, shall I? Which he would ask the audience, like while he was considering some kind of new clown.

Murdering a child.

Yeah, he drags a kid on stage. But see, exactly, that's where you go. When you think, when you hear a clown saying, shall I? It's creepy. And this is where I think Pee Wee Herman kind of comes back into the conversation a little bit, because many people who have written about Grimaldi describe his clown character as not quite a boy, but not quite a man. One writer put it as a temporally non-specific man child, which is what Pee Wee is. So I think it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, fuck. Yeah, so it's not androgynous. It's just if there was a word for, like we have androgynous for you can't tell if it's a man or a woman, I guess is what that word means. But what's the word for if you can't tell if it's a boy or an adult or a child or an adult? Do we have a word for that in the English language?

Jailbait.

That's, I guess you're right. Fuck. Okay, well, yeah, he was that. He was that.

He was that. But, and people fucking loved him. But, wouldn't you know it, Grimaldi was miserable. Because like many successful entertainers, he grew up with a tyrannical stage father. He was prone to depression. And unlike many successful entertainers, his first wife died during childbirth, and his surviving son was an alcoholic clown who drank himself to death by age 31.

It's the Shia LaBeouf story.

Yeah. Grimaldi was also in constant pain from all the violent slapstick. And all of this sort of sad clown stuff was well known enough by the public that he even used to make a joke on stage where he would go, I am grim all day, but I make you laugh at night.

Wow, that is... And then everyone, I'm sure everyone laughed, and then he just died a little bit more inside.

Yeah, I mean, I do also love that this is the state of comedy in the 1800s was, like, a play on words of the comic's last name.

I mean, I'm a pun fan through and through, but yeah, I mean, I think it was therapy through puns was what he was doing.

But I mean, this would be like if Chris Rock went on stage and was like...

Got slapped.

Hey, I was gonna say, it would be like if Chris Rock got on stage, it was just like, yeah, you know what? I'm Chris, and I rock. Like, that's the level of joke that I am grim all day, but make you laugh at night.

I guess it would be like Dane Cook went on stage, and he was like, my name is Dane, and I don't know how to cook.

There you go. That's a little bit worse.

They're both so bad.

Well, maybe because he was actually secretly very bad at this, Grimaldi died penniless and alcoholic in 1837. The coroner wrote his death up as died by the visitation of God.

I'm sorry, what?

I feel like, sounds like also how Mary got pregnant. What is it?

But like, did he also just go to a clown dressed like a doctor? Like, that's not a thing.

I don't know if that was maybe a way that like old age was referred to in medical, like death certificates at the time or maybe...

Was this technically Dickensian era London?

Well, yes, because...

Okay, so it's like you have two options. You died from what you said or from a chimney fucking cleaning accident. So...

Yeah, those are the only two deaths recognized at the time.

Well, they just had two stamps at the doctor's office. They had to choose one or the other. I mean, I guess if you had a little money coming in, you could have a lamp lighting accident stamp, but you basically just had to use one of the two.

It's funny that you say Dickensian, because wouldn't you know it, guess who was in charge of editing Grimaldi's memoirs?

Tiny Tim.

Charles Dickens.

Okay, that makes more sense. One was a fictional character.

Yeah, but yeah, Charles Dickens was in charge of editing his memoirs. Dickens had already written about fucked up clowns in one of his previous works, The Pickwick Papers. In it, Dickens described a dying clown as having a bloated body and shrunken legs, glassy eyes contrasting fearfully with the thick white paint with which the face was besmeared, the grotesquely ornamented head trembling with paralysis and the long skinny hands rubbed with white chalk. And depending on who you ask...

He wrote this in the Pickwick diaries or he wrote this in his fucking memoir?

No, he wrote this in the Pickwick papers, but depending on who you ask, the clown that he is describing may have actually been based on Grimaldi's real life son who drank himself to death at a young age.

Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. Okay, but I didn't know if he was like, Hey, Chuck, I hired you to work on my memoirs with me. And is this how you see me? Like, this is insane pages you turned in. He's like, no, no, no, that's for something else. That's for something else.

That's for the biography I'm writing of your son. You're better.

I wrote your description as well painted, clean and not scary at all.

Yeah. Dickens took the story of Grimaldi's tragic life and really leaned into it in the resulting book Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. It painted a picture of a man who suffered immensely for each laugh he collected on stage. And unfortunately for the cultural tradition of clowns, this version of Grimaldi's memoirs was massively popular and really launched the perception of clowns as dark figures who mask their pain with humor.

And alcohol.

And tons of alcohol.

And pills. Because it sounds like they're unhappy, and they're self-medicating with drinking, and then they're actually medicating with pain pills because they're fucking falling into a stack of chairs and shit to make you laugh.

Some historians actually point to the idea of clowns as safe clean figures of children's entertainment to be a relatively modern take on the idea of clowning. Because while Grimaldi represented clowns of the theatrical tradition, circus clowns were also really sketchy figures back in the day. According to an article on Snopes, PT. Barnum himself once noted that part of the appeal of circuses, quote, consisted of the clowns' vulgar jests, emphasized with still more vulgar and suggestive gestures. At the time, clowns also subverted gender norms with many appearing in drag and sometimes exaggerating the female figure with cartoonishly big fake breasts.

Here's what I will say about America this year, United States. We are not a complete historian of comedy, but it really feels like we didn't fucking grab onto that with both hands the way that the Commonwealth did. It felt like we found women to be funny here. We didn't always have, like, you watch Kids in the Hall and it's like, oh, they're in dresses again. You watch fucking all of the British shows. Oh, they're in dresses again. Let's find some funny ladies. And I'm not saying it's completely absent in America. I'm just saying that the idea of a guy wearing a dress is the joke. I just felt like I didn't see it as much here as when I started watching, you know, stuff abroad.

Well, I mean, some like it hot definitely fell in that tradition.

Well, some like it hot had a story that required it.

True, true. The joke wasn't, hey, look, it's a guy dressed as a lady.

Yeah, it wasn't just how hilarious is it that Tony Curtis is in a dress? And don't get me wrong, I'm sure some advertising was absolutely laid out that way. But it's like they witnessed a mob murder and then they needed to go on the run. And kind of the only way out of that situation was to disguise themselves.

Well, at the same time that clowns were subverting gender norms to their big giant titties, they also had circuses that featured a separate tent that contained what was called a cooch show, where male patrons were invited to watch women dance and strip for a fee. So basically, circuses had strip clubs that they called cooch shows.

Okay, the audience, what they can't see was my face to the words cooch show. Yeah, my face was... I was taken aback by the name of that show. Because a peep show works fine. You don't have to be graphic like that. You don't have to write that on the side of your fucking hastily put up tent.

A woman, a circus historian named Janet Davis, noted that some of these performances included clowns in drag, playing, quote, gender-bending pranks on dumbfounded men who expected to see nude women. And in what was sort of a... I love it.

I love it...

.an unspoken thing, Davis also notes that in some cooch show performances, gay clowns had sexual encounters with male audience members during and after anonymously crowded scenes.

I fucking love it. I fucking love it. It just means that, like, if some audience members knew that this is maybe a place you can come and see some dick you long for and just be like, oh, I was tricked! I was tricked into seeing all this dick! But it's kind of like a little wink and a smile, like, you kind of know what this tent's for.

Exactly. Well, you would go... There's a great pitch a tent joke in there somewhere.

Yeah, this is the tent to come and do and pitch a tent. Not that hard. No pun intended.

It was actually PT. Barnum's idea to try to clean up the circus, to make it a more family-friendly thing and make more money off of it, which he obviously did quite successfully.

Ah, PT. Barnum, Connecticut's own. What a monstrous human being, but God, did he know how to make a dollar.

Hire the poorest people in the country and teach them how to eat a live chicken. What?

Okay, well, speaking of people he hired, so like the circus is different than a carnival, but both are traveling. And I feel like, especially pre-internet, you know, who's joining the circus? Runaways, people who are potentially running from the law, people who are running from their families, people who are running from a problem. And you know, you find a found family in this ragtag group of non-judgmental people because they're working a circus or a carnival. And yeah, I can see how maybe a stigma might arise, potentially very founded. And this is not a safe group of people to bring your family around.

Well, yeah.

And so PT Barnum might go like, hey, are you sick and tired of the circus coming to town? And then like, all your daughters are pregnant, all your sons are gay, all your fucking, all your jewelry has been taken. That's not going to happen at PT Barnum, right?

No, exactly.

It's a three ring circus. And these three rings are, I actually don't know what the three rings are, a purity ring, a fucking whatever ring. And the third ring is the ring you get to keep when no one robs you.

Well, so you kind of had these two kind of strains of clown. You had the theatrical clown that kind of came to a head with Grimaldi and became super famous. And Grimaldi developed like the look of the clown that would become famous. And then you had these circus clowns who seem like they were basically either like strippers or con men who would travel around the country on a train. And at some point, PT. Barnum kind of combined that Grimaldi image of the clown with the white and red face and the crazy hair with a safer clown comedy act and kind of invented what we think of as clowns today. And I don't want to say, I couldn't find in my research, you know, if PT. Barnum actually is the one who said, aha, I will create the look of Bozo the clown by doing this, but that's essentially-

No, he probably didn't. I mean, he bought Ringling Brothers and stuff too. If anything, he stole it from somebody. I know he did say, a sucker is born every day. So like, that is all you need to know about him.

Every minute.

I'm sorry. Yes. I wasn't as ambitious as him in my quote. So yeah, I'm sure he did. Probably, if it wasn't his idea, he probably found a way to make it a popular thing. You ever see all those whales he burned up in his New York show?

What? He burned up whales? A whales in water?

The building the aquarium was in burned out.

But then the whales probably suffocated. They didn't burn because like the water all got out. Then they just died laying on the ground probably. Although maybe they caught fire.

Just Google sometime PT Barnum, New York whales or whatever. There's some crazy PT Barnum shit.

According to historians.org, as fire consumed PT Barnum's American Museum in the summer of 1865, the salt water in the whale's tank started boiling. Someone broke its glass wall in hopes that the cascading water would quench the flames. But instead, the tube blew the whales plunge to the street below as the building began to collapse. The quote, boiled whales lay rotting for several days on Broadway.

So after the circus clown became the popular clown figure, the theatrical clown sort of died out. Although I would argue that the lineage of the theatrical clown eventually evolved into silent film stars, and then physically dexterous screen actors like Peter Sellers or Jackie Chan or Dick Van Dyke.

I mean, Buster Keaton and Harpo Marx were essentially clowns.

Well, yeah, that's what I said. The lineage evolved into silent film stars, and then into...

Charlie Chaplin and yeah, Buster Keaton were silent, and then yeah, Harpo would have had sound, but he didn't choose to speak.

I don't want to profile these guys too much, but I would say I know at least Jackie Chan and Jim Carrey share a lot of that early pain and trauma that seems essential to forming clowns at a young age.

Well, Jackie Chan was in the Peking Opera, which is very different than Carrey just being a Canadian rubber face. That was essentially a mixture of Chinese opera and kind of weirdly elements of what would be Cirque du Soleil. I mean, like it was very physical.

Yeah, and he was also like, he was getting his ass beat working at the Peking Opera.

But what I'm saying is, what he was involved in is weirdly more reminiscent to or similar to this Dickensian era stuff than other people of his generation. It was like an ancient art form that they were doing over there. You probably would have gone to see the Peking Opera and it maybe not have been too dissimilar than something you would have seen a hundred years earlier on the same stage. Where if you tried to bring Grimaldi to fucking Lincoln Center right now, first off, no one would go unless it was an actual time traveler. As I even saw that Cirque du Soleil's numbers are down, as they should be, it's fucking weird. But clowns are not a huge draw, is what I'm getting at.

Right, clowns in the face-painted theatrical or circus sense are no longer huge draws, but the evolution of their art forms, I think, still exist and are still huge draws. But in any case, in the middle of the 20th century, circus clowns were super popular. There were birthday party clowns and characters like Bozo, the clown who represented the mainstream portrayal of clowns and they were beloved by children all over the world.

Bozo the clown is objectively scary. I think that people liked clowns in the mid-20th century because the rest of their time was occupied with if a nuclear bomb is dropped, do I have to run under my desk? Like, it seemed like a clown is maybe their only moment of joy. We're talking ventriloquists, we're talking weird marionette puppets, and we're talking terrifying clowns like Bozo brought joy to the hearts of 1940s, 50s America. I'm not surprised at all that we had a fucking loss in Vietnam and then a whole counterculture started up right after that.

Well, folks, Ed's going out on a limb here connecting Vietnam to the proliferation of birthday party clowns in the 40s and 50s. But yeah, there was this resurgence of clowns in the 20th century and they were beloved by children all over the world. But you know who else loved clowns, Ed?

I bet you it's a super awesome person.

John Wayne Gacy.

Wrong again.

John Wayne Gacy loved clowns. And this could be a whole other podcast, but I do think in terms of the idea of the dark or the scary clown, there's really, I think, pre and post John Wayne Gacy. You could say yes, Grimaldi obviously had this public meltdown. He was an alcoholic. He died penniless and everything. And Dickens wrote the book that kind of solidified that. And The Joker did exist at this point in a couple of different forms. But really, John Wayne Gacy, I think, is the reason that clowns have become sort of frightening figures in the latter half of the 20s.

Now, remind the people in our audience who John Wayne Gacy is.

Yeah, so John Wayne Gacy, Google him.

Well, why not? We want them to keep coming back to us for their information.

Much has been written about John Wayne Gacy. But the important thing here is that he was a serial killer who raped and murdered 33 boys in Cook County, Illinois before he got caught. Relevant to this podcast, he was also a local businessman and sort of like low-level politician who would dress as Pogo the Clown at children's birthday parties and political fundraisers. So while there is no evidence that Gacy actually committed any of his horrific crimes while dressed as Pogo, that detail and the fact that there is multiple photos of this vicious serial killer dressed as a fairly creepy looking clown to begin with became part of the headlines and it really, I think, permanently altered the place of the clown in the cultural landscape.

What year was John Wayne Gacy's being prolific?

So he was caught in 78.

Oh, wow. So it really does kind of tie in to like it wouldn't be written much long after that.

Yeah, it came out in September 86. And it also didn't help that John Wayne Gacy started painting really nightmarish pictures of clowns while he was in prison. So there's not only pictures of John Wayne Gacy in the clown suit, but there's really frightening paintings he made. And actually, if you ever visit the Museum of Death in Los Angeles, they have a couple Gacy originals there. And I don't know if anyone like Stephen King or anyone has actually come out and said that they were inspired by John Wayne Gacy when they thought of monstrous or serial killing clowns. But the dots, you know, they're not really that hard to connect. Like, even if Stephen King doesn't think of the idea that Pennywise is connected to John Wayne Gacy, the coverage of Gacy as a clown was so omnipresent in the early 80s that I'm sure it got in there somewhere, you know?

Oh, which clown that assaults children? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Like, it's probably in there somewhere.

Also, this I learned while researching this episode, John Wayne Gacy isn't the first clown who killed somebody. There was actually a famous French clown who lived around the same time of Grimaldi who beat a kid to death in the street for insulting him. He beat the kid to death with his cane, and then he beat the case.

You're saying he got away with it?

He got away with it.

Well, it's either because of two things. One, he was famous enough to get away with it. We all know how that goes. Or two, the kid was trying to take his baguette or something, which is probably a punishable by death offense in France.

I think it might have been option one, because the kid, I don't think, tried to take his baguette or his wine or his cheese. I think he was just making fun of him, and the clown lashed out with his cane and beat the kid with the cane, and the kid died, and then, yeah, he skated. He was not imprisoned, and we have no evidence that he killed anyone after that. So he was a one-time clown murderer, but yeah, a lot of troubled clowns. A lot of troubled clowns.

Just give him a wide berth. If you think they look like an idiot, don't say anything. You might get beaten to death by a fucking... Now, here's the thing. Was he just walking down the street, and he had a cane? Was he in his clown costume? Was it just man known as short-tempered the clown beat boy today? Or was it like he was on stage, and some kid's like, you suck, and threw a tomato at him, and then he lost it. We'll never know. Lost the time.

Yeah, I don't know if he was wearing his... He definitely had his walking cane, because that's what he took this kid's life with.

Well, that means he was just out for a cruise. No one goes for a walk in those giant shoes.

Probably not. Probably not. So, with that sort of history, it's no wonder people are afraid of clowns. But I wondered how many people are afraid of clowns. So then I googled how many people are afraid of clowns. And according to a 2016 Vox article that I'm going to be pulling from here, lots of people are afraid of clowns. 42% of Americans responded as being at least somewhat afraid of clowns. And one out of every three Americans between 18 and 29 admitted to a case of coolophobia or clownphobia.

Yeah, clownphobia. Thank you.

And I don't know if they just admitted to it or if they had to be diagnosed or if a clown dressed as a doctor diagnosed them. Yeah.

What was the diagnosis he gave earlier? Touched by God or whatever?

Death by visitation of God.

Yeah. So it means a Vox article. It's probably the first thing that came up when you Google it. Like, it was just a man in the street interview. It's just like, hey, you there. Are you afraid of clowns? I think so. I highly doubt it was. Yeah. Like, I don't think there was a diagnosis involved. I think it was just asking people, are you afraid of clowns? I would bet. And I'm surprised the number is as low as it is. I thought it was going to be a hundred percent of people.

According to the same Vox poll, clowns were the second most common American fear, coming in just under...

After sharks.

No, the first most common American fear was that old standard government corruption.

Oh, well, you said 2016?

Yes, this is 2016.

I would say if you asked people in, let's say, 2000, fuck it, if you asked people in 1999, let's go back to when everything was great, you asked people in 1999, I think you're going to get number one fear of public speaking, number two fear clowns, number three fear sharks. Like, I don't think the government would have even been there, but, you know, in this modern era, last decade or so, yeah, I could see it encroaching. But John Wayne Gacy and the book It and media like that and Pee Wee Herman and what have you, it's kind of similar to the shark in Jaws situation where it's like, like, if there was a clown week on Discovery Channel, and the whole week is dedicated to the fact that like, clowns, we promise, are good for the environment and they're actually not scary, people would still be like, no, no, I'm terrified. Where like sharks, you know, that book did, I'm sure we're gonna do sharks at some point, but I don't think Peter Benchley set out to let shark fin soup be unregulated for as long as it was, you know, but it created a level of fear that is insane and we're definitely gonna do sharks, all that. But I'm glad I brought this up now though, because now I'm dreaming of a clown week. Like I want to see clown week like shark week on Discovery Channel.

C-Span should have clown week and it would be every week. So clowns were the most second common American fear coming in just under government corruption and ahead of terrorist attacks, climate change and dying. Plain old dying. It's also so strange to me because I feel like, yes, clowns come in ahead of dying, but dying is the thing that most people are afraid clowns will make them do.

Yeah, but I think if you see a clown, that's coming faster, is basically what they're saying.

That's what I mean. So technically, if you're afraid of terrorist attack, you're afraid of dying in a terrorist attack. I don't know why they put dying on the list of things to be afraid of.

Well, I just can't believe how correct I was. I'm now willing to bet, again, all the money I don't have, that if I went and looked up a things people are most afraid of from 1999, it's not going to have terrorists, the government and climate change in it above clowns or near clowns. And it just shows like, holy shit, how things have changed. In the 1950s, people trusted the government. They didn't think about climate change and they never heard of a terrorist. And clowns were beloved. And now clowns are right in the goddamn same list. So that's crazy.

Yes. Well, and what starts to get really crazy, so you have to remember, and I'll get into this in a minute, but 2016 was the year that people started seeing clowns all over the country. And so this poll also asks if various police or government forces should get involved to stop the great clown scare. And two out of three respondents expressed that they like to see more intervention from state or local governments. The responses also listed 36%. So more than one third of Americans who wanted to see much more or somewhat more action on behalf of the FBI. This poll was conducted October 15th to 17th of 2016, which was the year that there was a great clown scare. There were more than 100 suspicious clown sightings across the US, mostly in the South, but also as far as Seattle and Bangor, Maine. Now we will get into theories about the clown scare in a minute, but whatever the reason for these sightings, I do think there's a memetic element to the sightings that might have caused an uptick in people saying that they were afraid of clowns, especially young people. So, you know, the high numbers, even though Ed thinks that they should have been higher, those high numbers might have been juiced a little bit by the fact that this was the middle of something. But I was curious what responses about clown fears might look like in a normal year without a clown scare. And I found a Chapman University poll from 2021 that lists clowns as a fear of only about 5% of the population. But that seems...

Do you think it's just too much time has passed? Like out of sight, out of mind with clowns? In the sense that kids today, they don't fucking know. Unless you're going to Cirque du Soleil or you accidentally end up in French Canada, I don't think you're gonna fucking see a clown.

No, you'll see... I mean, you'll definitely see scary clowns. You'll see Krusty the Clown. You'll see the Joker. You'll see... You know, you won't see like a Bozo the Birthday Party clown, but I think you'll see clowns.

I just feel like there was probably like a spot in every decade until the 2000s where like there was a popular clown somewhere that millions of people would have seen on television. Even if that is The Simpsons with Krusty...

Ronald McDonald.

Ronald McDonald, who is pretty scary.

Yes. And if you think about it, what a fucking sick... Look, we know from our Satanic Panic episode that Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, donated all of his money to Satanist.

Every dollar.

Every dollar.

He came out and said it.

He said it on at least one talk show that everybody says that they watched. But what a fucking sick mascot to pick to oversee your blood sacrifice of a billion animals. Just a clown cackling atop his throne of flesh and money.

Yeah, he is a real creepy. They have never hit it out of the park with mascots. It's Ronald McDonald, who is terrifying. But I guess the company is old enough that it harkens back to a time when clowns are beloved and popular. And then you've got the Grimace, which Gen Z has just discovered this past year and a half, who have turned him into like this meme-ified scary monster. Then you had a literal burglar, a man who stole McDonald's product, the Hamburglar.

A criminal.

Yeah.

A criminal as a mascot.

A straight up criminal. You have those pom-pom fries or whatever they are that were weird. There were just nuggets that were nuggets that also had human features. And then let's not forget Mack Tonight from the 80s with the crazy moon head.

Truly a nightmare.

Well, you know why. It's not specifically why, but you know who Mack Tonight was, right?

No.

It was Doug Jones, who would later go on to be so many movie monsters.

Yeah, that's cool. I didn't know that. They should just rename McDonald's the Nightmare Factory.

Yeah, Happy Meals. Fucking how about Unhappy Meals?

How about a horror feast?

God fucking McDonald's.

But all these numbers got me wondering more about this clown scare from 2016. Do you remember this happening, Ed?

I sort of do and don't. And the way I say I sort of do and don't is I keep a folder of like dumb seeds, like seeds of ideas. If I like see an article or I see a thing and it makes me laugh, I think it might be interesting to put in something or think about further. And I have forever since 2015, I have like a newspaper article about a kid bothering the town dressed like a clown, which is technically older than 2016. But it seems like that was the beginning of what had started there. And so I knew it was a thing going on, but I didn't know that it had reached this epidemic of clown sightings the way you're saying.

Yeah, I vaguely remember there being some news about it on Twitter. I guess 2016 was a weird year where like there was the election year. And so that was kind of what I was mostly paying attention to. And I also think a lot of this clown scare stuff was really big on local news and Facebook and stuff, which I was kind of checked out of at that point.

Sure.

Also, we live in Los Angeles, so our first thought is probably it's got to be some sort of movie tie in promotional thing. Yeah, like we dismiss a lot of stuff as that not like school shootings, but I wouldn't put it past them. But yeah, I think if you work in the industry and you live in LA a lot of times your brain just goes to like, oh, it's probably like Warner Brothers sent it for it promotion.

Well, I still think we'll get into it in a bit, but I think that may explain some of what was going on. But right around October of 2016, these stories about clowns were fucking everywhere. There were literally headlines I found that were like out of a parody news show. There was one headline, everything to know about clown attacks, and then literally another headline that was clown panic sweeps the nation.

I mean, here's the thing, these both sound like also great clown week episodes.

Yeah, exactly.

Or my fictitious Discovery Channel clown week. Same thing. It's like how to avoid a clown attack, how to survive a clown uprising.

Ed, here's the thing, when this show gets big enough, we'll do our own clown week, and then when that blows up, we'll turn around and sell it to Discovery so that they can launch clown week.

Speaking of headlines, this is the only thing I wrote down in this like word document from 2015 was, quote, teen refuses to stop dressing like a clown at night in terrorizing town. That was the fucking headline. And then this is the only quote I pulled from the article. This is quote, both he and his parents were advised several times that it would really help us out if he wouldn't stand out there doing that, said Captain Dan Bauman in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

So when you sent this to me, I thought that this was like a joke you'd written for something. I didn't realize this was a real headline that you saw.

Yeah, no, I think at the time I was doing late night packets and stuff. So I was kind of sifting through a lot of news articles and shit. And so I remember this being one that I had put aside as like, oh, I can probably write a joke about this.

Yeah.

But then I just took those two elements out and put it into like this document. And I was like, there's nothing to be done here.

Yeah, it's very funny.

Yeah, which sounds like a monologue joke. Yes, actually just a law enforcement official literally said that.

That's amazing. Well, the very first of the sightings in 2016 happened on August 1st, when five pictures of a creepy clown roaming a vacant parking lot under a bridge in downtown Green Bay at night, holding a bunch of black balloons started going viral.

Where's Green Bay?

Green Bay, Wisconsin.

So this is also Wisconsin?

Oh, oh, yeah. So yes, this was also Wisconsin. A viral Facebook page popped up right after these photos started going viral, and it claimed that the clown in the photo was named Gags, G-A-G-S.

That's not helping anyone's image.

Before long, the pictures were being discussed on Fox News, and they made it to the pages of USA Today. And then, very quickly, a Wisconsin filmmaker named Adam Krause came forward and admitted that he was the guy behind Gags, and the pictures were a marketing stunt for an unreleased short film, a then unreleased short film that was featuring Gags the Clown.

We'll see, there you go.

But then things start to get weird. On August 21st, 2016, about 20 days later, and like halfway across the country, rumors started spreading around Greenville, South Carolina that clowns were living in an abandoned house in the woods near an apartment building. Local police weren't able to substantiate these claims, made by children, but the first police report noted that kids spotted a quote, suspicious character dressed in circus clown attire and white face paint, enticing kids to follow him or her into the woods. A woman that same day told a responding deputy that her son had seen quote, clowns in the woods whispering and making strange noises around 830 that night. And when the boy led her to where he saw the clowns, she also then saw clowns flashing green laser lights before they ran away into the woods. And around that same time, the woman's older son was back at the house and reported hearing chains and banging on the front door of their residence.

So, and this was all like on a police report or just someone said they heard that?

This was all from a police report. And the deputy investigating the case said another woman in the same apartment complex, the one kind of near the woods where the clown nest was, said that she saw a clown outside around 2.30 in the morning. It was a large figured clown with a blinking nose standing under a light near the garbage dumpster area. It waved at her and she waved back.

No, don't wave back. Don't wave back. Don't initiate with this.

The suspect did not approach her or harm her.

Or maybe you do wave back. We have to watch whatever Clown Week Discovery Channel special on what to and don't do, how to engage and not engage.

Yeah, it's like bears don't run. You stand your ground. Sharks, you bop them on the nose. Clowns just wave back.

Yeah, wave back or else you end up in that fucking dumpster you're standing next to.

So that was all the same day. And then several children in the area in the investigation afterwards told police that clowns had displayed, quote, large amounts of money in an attempt to lure them into the woods.

It's weird because money is like, kids don't even really get money. Like you throw a lollipop or something, but you're like, look at man, I got a couple sack of joeas for you over here. It's like, wait, what?

They could have flashed like five one dollar bills and a kid would have been like, wow.

Oh, I guess in your mind. Yeah. Or they just like roll on a huffy. That guy's got a huffy? I'll follow anyone for a huffy.

So these kids said that they believe the clowns lived in a house near a pond at the end of a man-made trail in the woods. And according to the police report, Greenville County Sheriff's Office Master, this guy's got so many titles. Greenville County Sheriff's Office Master Deputy, Ryan Flood, said that they investigated the house but found no clues. Flood said it's abandoned. Every time deputies have gone there, they have not been able to find clothing or anything else that would indicate someone lives there. So the clown nest was vacant when they went.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure to keep the sanity of the town at bay. They didn't mention that they found like on the kitchen table inside was just like one balloon animal. Like, that's enough, right? Like, fuck clown nests, man. I guess that's gonna bring your whole resale value of your neighborhood down.

Yeah, they pop up and everyone leaves the neighborhood. Eight days after the initial sightings, police began receiving new reports. In one of two sightings reported on the same night, a teenage girl told sheriff's deputies she saw a man taking pictures of kids and shortly after saw a man wearing a black jacket and a clown mask coming out of the woods. One night later, Greenville City Police responded to a clown sighting near an apartment complex where a witness said the clown left in a car before police arrived.

I don't like a lazy criminal. Like, the mask? Fucking paint your face.

Be a Grimaldi.

Yeah, you gotta Grimaldi up, dude. If you're gonna fucking live this clown life, because a clown mask is for heists. Like, if you're doing, like, a Brinks truck heist, sure, put on a clown mask. But if you're out there, like, trying to scare people as a clown, you're trying to, like, get into a clown nest gang, I would think get to clown up, you know? So I don't like that they just had masks on. Like, fucking trench coat and a mask? Fucking be somebody.

In another incident that was not reported to police but was reported by residents to a local news station, people said that they chased clowns after kids told them that these clowns were by the playground. The people who did the clown chasing told the station they saw the clowns drive away in a dark colored car and the station ended with the line it's not clear how many clowns were inside the vehicle, which I feel like is a real wink to clown cars.

Yeah. It should have been, oh, we saw 33 clowns run into a Mini Cooper.

Exactly.

So that's how we know it's legit.

All of this is really creepy shit, and it's tempting to write it off as a satanic panic style panic, but it seems like there were a lot more actual sightings and reports of clowns than something like the satanic panic, where, you know, in the satanic panic, the public never saw that many Satanists. They heard stories, but it's not like they were seeing Satanists leaving buildings and disappearing into preschools. They just talked about it. So it also never spread into the news in a way, like the clown panic never sounded like these clowns were actually harming anyone. They were a threat, but it wasn't like 15 kids got sacrificed by a clown. It was just they were around and they were scary, which in a way makes it seem more real because there isn't this, you know, supernatural element to it. It's just these people lurking.

Well, speaking of that, I did find the original article of what I quoted in my like little note to myself. It's from November 25th, 2015. In the town of Waukesha, Wisconsin, there is a clown that's been standing on the street and just staring at people and freaking them out. And then they had actually round up a bunch of tweets. And here's a tweet for anyone who's in Waukesha. Does anyone notice the clown in a jumpsuit who stands and stares on Main Street every day for the past week? Another person tweeted, there's a clown standing on the corner in Waukesha. Another person tweeted, this is two blocks from my apartment and harmless or not, it's terrifying. Hashtag hate clowns. And then the last tweet they have here is a person who says, so there was a creepy clown walking around Carroll University last night, that could potentially be a sex offender. Hashtag get me out.

That's a, if I were part of the clown committee, I would be upset at being considered a sex offender with no evidence, just me wearing a clown costume with my dick hanging out and all of a sudden, I am a sex offender.

Yeah, clearly the one mistake you made there was wearing a clown costume.

Yeah.

So anyway, this seems to predate the insanity though. Like this article that I randomly saved years ago, it happens to be in Wisconsin as well, but it does seem to predate the 2016 epidemic of clown people.

Well, there have been a variety of clown clusters throughout the years. There was one in France in 2014.

That's a lay cluster?

Supposedly some people were attacked by a clown, and then that led to a number of sightings of these dangerous clowns. And I think somebody even got chased by a group of people who were hunting clowns.

So clowns were chased? Is there hunting clowns?

Yes.

Wow.

So there's a history across the world, really, of different clown sightings. And I think it's a pretty easy thing for kids who want to stir up shit. I think it's very easy to go from one kid stirring shit up to other kids or even adults wanting to get in on the legend making and the chaos of it. And then it gets out of hand pretty quickly because people get really frightened of people wearing scary clown costumes and harassing people.

It doesn't take much. It sounds like all you need to do is stand in a corner and that's enough to really get people freaked out. Now, it's just so baffling to me after doing our couple of episodes on Satanic Panic that anyone would ever believe a child. Again, this is another story where it's like, oh, I heard there's a nest of clowns in the woods who, you know what I mean? And that didn't sound like it came from adults. And then that little story starts bopping off across the playground and now next thing you know, it's like we got the SWAT team breaking into an abandoned house.

That's part of what I'm saying is the difference here though is that A, that from what I can tell, the story that the clowns all lived in a house together next to a pond in the woods was something that was coming from kids. But it does seem like a number of adults called in reports that there were clowns lurking about their apartments and the city streets.

And there probably were.

So this all started in South Carolina, unless you count the Wisconsin sightings, which were sort of, you know, one was a media thing and one happened the year prior. But the 2016 sightings popped off August 1st in South Carolina. By September 6th, reports were emerging out of North Carolina that someone in a, quote, scary clown mask, red curly wig, yellow dotted shirt, blue clown pants and clown shoes was spotted leaving the woods. And in that case, another witness ran after the clown with a machete in hand until the clown retreated back into the woods. And then the next day...

Is there any evidence of that?

No.

You know why there isn't? Because fucking, you ever try and walk through the woods? We're both from pretty rural areas. You ever try and walk through the woods in regular shoes? It can be a fucking pain in the ass. Like trying to go through the woods over twigs and through little like creeks and stuff and big ass floppy shoes, that's suspect. And then like, oh, I chased the clown with a machete and you didn't catch up to someone in clown shoes? Like that's on you, pal. You slow piece of shit.

I'm also now imagining the clown house in the woods is like an inflatable bouncy castle that all the clowns live in together.

And then if they need to bounce, well, no pun intended, they just deflate it and put it in a backpack and then run off.

Yeah, and move on to the next woods. So then the next day on September 7th, 2016, so my birthday, as I'm celebrating my birthday, a 17 year old girl on her way to school in Greensboro spotted a clown walking through the woods and reported it to the High Point Police Department. And this was the eight suspicious report of clowns in the woods the department had received since August 20th.

Two things. One, this is the second time in the show's history that your birthday has come up organically in a story. And two, Greensboro is where Scott from Astonishing Legends lives.

Scott from Astonishing Legends, put the clowns in your neighborhood on watch.

Or stop riling up you and your clown friends to bother people.

Yeah, that's true. We should, like, you know when people swat people, we should swat Scott and have the swat team show up looking for a red clown wig and yellow shoes.

Wait, people swat people? Is that like a public service? Can we just use a swat team?

No, it's super illegal, but you've never heard of this? Video gamers do it to prank each other, where, like, if you're playing, like, Modern Warfare or whatever or FIFA and you get in a fight with somebody, I'm sure by now police departments take things a little more carefully, but there was a recent, the past, like, five years or so rash of angry video gamers would call the police and say, like, we need a swat team. Somebody's, you know, they're holding someone hostage at this address. And a swat team would often be dispatched to the location and kick the doors in. And I'm pretty sure a kid got killed.

That doesn't sound good at all. There was a swat team outside of my house this morning. You know that.

I do.

I don't think it was video game related, though.

Probably not, based on your neighborhood.

So what you're saying is that we should prank way further than anyone should go with a prank. Scott from Slash and Legends? You're saying we should frame Scott.

We should frame Scott. First, we should plant clown evidence in Scott's house.

In and around his house.

And then call a swat team on him.

Small horn you can squeeze.

Pardon the interruption, but I couldn't risk Ed not answering my call. It is imperative that you know the hosts and staff of Scared All The Time have no intention of swatting their boss or anyone else. Swatting is not condoned by the show, its producers or the law. This has been not a test of the emergency disclaimer system.

After all of these initial reports, rumors really started to fly all around the country and locals all over the country started to get in on the fun. So in Alabama, seven people ended up charged with felonies for making terrorist threats that were clown related.

Yeah, maybe we shouldn't swat Scott then.

Probably not. In Middlesboro, Kentucky, a 20-year-old man was arrested for wearing a clown costume while hiding in a ditch. And in Virginia, two teens were taken into custody for donning clown costumes and chasing children. Officials grew increasingly concerned about vigilante justice being dispensed against clowns. And in early October, somewhere between 500 to a reported, and I don't think this number is true, but a reported 6,000 Penn State students flooded the streets of the college, hunting for a clown that was supposedly stalking the area. Now, no clowns were hurt or even discovered or caught, but it got a little out of control. There's videos of this happening on the internet.

Oh my gosh, it's like the end of after hours.

It got so bad that McDonald's canceled all of Ronald McDonald's public appearances until further notice, which is the first time-

Oh no, they're gonna hang him up by his fucking clown bridges.

I know, it was the first time it had happened since the character's 1963 debut. They said, quote, McDonald's is mindful of the current climate around clown sightings in communities. And as such, is being thoughtful in respect to Ronald McDonald's participation in community events for the time being. Which is a PR speak way of saying we don't want anyone to beat Ronald McDonald's ass on the nightly news, so we're gonna keep him inside.

Yeah, I think that's the first time a corporation's been pretty good about that. You know they only found out about it because whoever plays Ronald is forwarding them email after email. Otherwise, they're like, you get out there to that fucking play place for $7, you piece of shit.

Yeah, he demanded they take out like a $3 million life insurance policy on him. They were like, okay, wait, what's happening?

Yeah, that's one way to find out like how desperate their Ronald is. He's like, listen, I've made commitments to my family. The paperwork's been done. Send me out into Penn State.

So this is how much crazier it got. So Ronald McDonald pulled off the street, put into the witness protection, witness protection so that he doesn't get his ass beat. New York Police Deputy Commissioner John Miller was asked about the clown threat and said, we're tracking it, but we don't see any real threat here. Our main message is don't believe the hype and don't be afraid of the clowns, which I think is a good main message to have.

Yeah, but also like he's, we're talking about North Carolina. We're talking about Wisconsin. You go to New York City and the guy's like, other problems here. Like we have people not dress like clowns doing all of those activities already.

Sure. I just in general think don't believe the hype and don't be afraid of the clowns is generally a good main message for cops to have.

And you know, we've been looking to make some merch. Sounds like a pretty good t-shirt.

Warnings then went international. The Russian Embassy in London issued a warning to Russian and British citizens about clowns on October 12th. And Fijian police warned people against involvement in clown events the next day on October 13th. And then the White House press secretary at the time, John Ernest, was asked about the clown situation at a press scrum. He said he wasn't sure if President Obama had been briefed on the clown situation, but it's obviously a situation that local law enforcement authorities take quite seriously and should thoroughly review perceived threats to the safety of the community.

Could you imagine what lineups must look like at this time period? Ma'am, can you point out which clown ran out of the woods and saw the clowns? I mean, it's like, it's like a It's like a It's like a It's like a It's like a It's.

But Ed, so what the fuck do you think was going on here? Why were there so many goddamn clowns in 2016?

I have no idea. Like, a lot of it's news to me, but also it's surprising that it went global. And I don't know any clowns. I guess we went to college with one or two people who work in that space, like magician space, so they probably know clowns. But I'd be interested to talk to a clown about, like, what is your life in 2016? Are you canceling shows? Like, did this hit the clown community? Like, whatever the clown newsletter is, probably called, like, the Juggle News or something.

The Awuga Free Press.

Yeah, exactly. Like, what articles were they sending to their members? So you know how there's clown colleges? That's, like, a real thing? Do you think any clown colleges during the crazy clown scare of 2016 had to, like, address anything that's, like... Well, two things.

One, the school shooter on the clown campus.

No, but if anything, it would be a regular shooter on a clown campus because they were the ones being hunted. But the two things I think they would have to address is, one, if it's like, hey, I saw on the news the machete clown, you know, he went here. So we have to address that. We have alumni who are currently machete wielders. And then two, yeah, it's like, one, it's like, hey, I saw on the news that the clown was being hunted. And then two, yeah, it's like, graduating class of 2016, you know, what's the commencement speech where it's like, listen, you're entering a world of people who hate you. And it's going to be difficult that it's like, when we got out of college during the Great Recession, it's gonna be like, it's gonna be hard to get a job. Maybe don't tell people you're a clown for a little bit. Read the room.

Who would give the commencement speech at a clown college?

Bozo.

Who's like a grand clown.

It'd have to be like a, it wouldn't be a mime.

Robin Williams. He was dead already though.

Yeah, but he wasn't a clown anyway. He was like a class clown. I want to say that clowns are pretty defensive about like, it's an art form, it's theatrical. You know what I mean? Like we take this craft incredibly seriously. And so I don't know who that is in society, but don't do this. Be a magician, be someone that people love. And then maybe you'll stay out of the news. You know, who knows?

I mean, there were quotes from people who were in like clown communities and clown colleges and stuff. None of the quotes were particularly, it was all just like, you know, we wish this wasn't happening.

Yeah, it's really hurting my bottom line.

Yeah, you know, we try to just bring joy to people. We want to be productive members of society. You know, all the kind of stuff that you would say if you were actually spending most of your time luring children into the woods with vast sums of money to take them to your bounce castle. I think part of the reason it was so surprising to me was because in October of 2016, people were really preoccupied with the election. And so it really shocked me how...

Well, I think even beyond the election taking over the news, it's October and it's people wearing costumes. So I think it probably falls into a little bit of, you know, it's not that unusual to see people dressed up like something weird in most weeks in October.

Yeah, but it's still the number of headlines that were like what to know about the clown panic sweeping America and stuff was surprising to me how many of those headlines there were. I think, so there were a couple of clown things. The freak show season of American Horror Story had come out the year prior, which featured a very scary clown prominently in all the advertising. The weeks that this was happening, Rob Zombie's 31 came out, which had its fair share of scary clowns in it. And about six months later, It Part 1 came out in 2017. So part of me thinks that like some of this may have been someone, I can't imagine anyone really putting that much marketing oomph behind 31, but certainly I could see Warner Brothers trying to do some viral clown stuff that maybe got a little out of control or inspired people to do clown costumes and then they backed away from it because they were like, this is not a good look.

No, yeah, delete those emails, shred all that paperwork. We were never doing anything clown related as like the third clowns beaten to death.

Especially with some of these articles I was reading and like the one in Vox and some other major media outlets are on Halloween 2016. I don't know, there was a tongue in cheek quality to some of the reporting that felt kind of like in on the joke. And I don't know if that's just because...

I think they just don't respect clowns. It's as simple as that. They think it's stupid and the fact that they're writing about it, they're just going to be like, well, how many can fit in that car? Like they don't look at it as a serious issue.

Maybe that's why some of these clowns are starting to fucking walk around with machetes. They want to be taken a little more seriously.

I think so too. But also technically preceding all of this, including going international, was the French incident, right?

Well, there was a French incident in 2014, but the other major clown incident was in May 1981. A similar clown panic took over Boston when numerous kids started reporting that there were clowns lurking in vans all around the city trying to lure them inside with promises of candy. So there were a bunch in Brockton.

Hey, that's where my dad was born. My dad's from Brockton, Massachusetts.

Ask your dad if he remembers 1981.

No, he moved out of Brockton pretty young. It's a place of my birth, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

So these clown sightings spread all around the country and were dubbed at the time Phantom Clowns by a man named Lauren Coleman, who at the time was working in social services, which is how he started hearing rumors of all these clowns about, but would later go on to become one of the world's leading cryptozoologists. He actually has an international cryptozoology museum in Maine, which I desperately want to go to someday.

Well, let's go. We have people in Maine we can stay with.

So he dubbed these clowns the Phantom Clowns that were seen but never caught. And I dug around the internet and couldn't find anything on reports of Phantom Clowns from before 1981. So much like Hat Man, we once again turned to you, the listener. Do you or your family members know of any good scary clowns that haunted the streets of your town from the first half of the century or maybe even before?

Might have even been you.

Let us know.

And if it was you, we will commit to your anonymity. Just tell us your crazy story.

Just yeah, tell us how you accidentally started a clown panic in August of 2016. So yeah, that's the history of scary clown sightings, and I don't know when the next will be. I'm sure the 2016 clown panic will not be the last clown panic that our country experiences.

I mean, in a lot of ways, you know, every four years we get a clown panic.

I guess you could say the release of the Incel film Joker was a bit of a clown panic.

That piece of shit. But yeah, I guess he's not your traditional clown. He's like, he's the clown prince of Gotham, but he's not a clown. No big puffy ball, hat, big shoes.

Correct. Yeah, he's not a Pennywise style clown. He's not a Grimaldi style clown. He's sort of his own criminal style clown.

Now, I loved the book It. Towards the end, there's that scene. I still don't know why it's in it. But other than that, it's a phenomenal book and he's really scary, like way scarier than the movies and stuff.

Yeah, Pennywise in It is one of the greatest villains of all time and that book rules. I love It and it probably should never have been a movie because most of what's good about that book doesn't translate well to the screen. But Ed, we've come to the end of the episode. We are standing before the fear tier. Where do we place clowns on the fear tier?

For me, I think pretty high. I do not care for them. They scare the shit out of me. I don't like when they talk because they always have crazy voice. I don't like when they're quiet because then I'm scared. Like we were saying earlier, all the things that make a clown scary is also what makes a clown a clown. And so they can't even help themselves. And I usually don't find them funny, and I usually don't find them endearing.

That's true. We didn't even talk about the fact that I don't think I've ever seen a funny clown. I've seen a lot of annoying clowns.

Well, there is actually one funny clown I have seen more than once actually in Los Angeles named Puddles. Puddles Pitty Party, as I think his full name. And he's like a comedian singing clown. He's fucking giant. He's like this huge dude. It's kind of like the fucking kingpin from Daredevil. He dressed like a clown, but he's actually very funny and very cool. But if I didn't see him on stage with people I knew, if I just saw him in the street, I'd be terrified because he's like a linebacker dressed like a clown with a little tiny crown on his head. But yeah, so he's the only clown I think I've ever had a good time around. But like I said, if I saw him in any other setting, I'm not cool with it. And I hate fucking Cirque du Soleil and all that shit. I guess those are clowns. It's unclear.

I went to Cirque du Soleil in Vegas for a friend's bachelor party and got pretty fucked up before we went. And I almost had like a panic attack because they were all like speaking gibberish while they were doing the show. No, no, no, it wasn't French. It was like a made up language. It was like, it was like Simlish or something, you know, like, like the Sim language.

Like, yeah, okay, sure.

Made up gibberish. And, and they were like bringing out these giant like animal looking things and slaying them. It all just felt very sacrificial. And like, I felt like I was watching something I wasn't supposed to be seeing. And I was like, I do not like this at all.

I mean, physical specimens, the people who perform in that. Oh, my goodness, like unbelievable. Some of the things you'll see, but never felt comfortable the entire time I was watching that show.

No, I could do without Cirque du Soleil completely.

And I don't even know, is it French? I may just assume it's French because of the name. I think it's got French origins.

I don't know.

Unless you told me otherwise earlier, I honestly thought that the clown was invented in France or something. It just seems very French, maybe because French Canadians keep clown imagery going for some reason.

Yeah, where do you get this? Because earlier you mentioned that unless you went to French Canada, you wouldn't see clowns. What connection do you see between French Canadians and clowns?

According to the article, How Quebec Became an Epicenter for Spreading Joy, it claims that Quebec has an international reputation as a hub for the clowning and circus arts. So Ed feels vindicated off Mike.

So the fear tier for me when it comes to clowns, I would say, I mean, look, a clown is someone who could be armed with a bucket of hot piss and shit fairly easily, which automatically would put them fairly high on the fear tier.

And it might very well be like part of their act.

It could be part of their act. And let's be real, you don't know what a clown is going to do with that bucket. They might be carrying a bucket and you don't even know what's inside it. You might think, oh, that's hot piss and shit in that bucket. And maybe it is, or maybe it's just like a bucket full of ribbons and it'll look really pretty when they dump it over your head. But maybe not. And that's part of what's so scary about clowns is you don't know what's coming.

Yeah, they're also, you know, like a clown is going to have an act where it's like a hot bucket of piss and shit is sitting on like the top of the most rickety ladder. And they'll have like the clown car driving around it a bunch of times. And it's like, is this going to fall? Is it going to fall? And below it, it's like a member of the audience. Will you please sit below this bucket? That's the kind of shit that clowns are doing. Why is their act always involve some crazy shit? Like it's never just like... I just want them once to pull out a normal size handkerchief.

But then they wouldn't be a clown. Then they'd just be like a hobo.

Well, then they'd be a beneficial member of society.

True, true.

So you'd put them at number one? You're number one? The number one for you?

No, no, no, no, no, no. I would put clowns probably maybe like tied with hat man.

Now that you say that, I'm honestly surprised that clowns are not a sleep paralysis demon. They really feel like they would fit every bill of that. They're old enough. They've been around long enough. They're maligned in society.

They're creepy when they're in your bedroom.

Maybe when they're at their creepiest. I would add to my fear tier, is the clown wearing clown shoes or is the clown wearing like Reeboks? Because if I look down, I see some dude in like fucking ASICs, then I'm really worried. Like someone who can definitely chase me. Where if I look over and I see some dude with like fucking Scuba Steve size flipper fucking shoes, I'm not too worried because I could probably run from that. But if I see some dude ready to go.

What if it was a clown wearing Scuba Steve shoes, but also a black trench coat and body armor?

I think that's a person who put a lot of thought into the top half of their body and almost no thought into the bottom half of their body. That's a person who's prepared for everything, but can execute nothing.

Well, good for them.

Good for clowns. I'm glad they survived the potential clown culling of 2016.

Yeah, if things had gotten just a little more hot, who knows we might have had to exterminate them.

Yeah, I guess it got especially dicey if you were one of the clowns who drives a van. And in their defense, they're like, well, I got to carry my bottles of seltzer and giant shoes and thousands of fucking...

Well, look, if you're a clown who drives a van, I'd say it's incumbent upon you to make sure that van is well kept and cleaned on a regular basis.

Has windows.

It has windows. Yeah.

Without curtains.

Yeah, look, there's certain things that you just need to understand you need to be responsible for if you're a responsible member of the clown community and one of those things is a clean van.

Yeah.

That's our show this week. If you or anyone you know is suffering from wanting to become a clown and join this society or if you have any scary clown stories, scary clown movie recommendations, especially if you have any Phantom clown stories from before 1981, drop us a line, you know where to find us, Instagram, Facebook, a little bit on Twitter, not TikTok. We have an email address, which is Scared All The Time Podcast.

Yes, it's ScaredAllTheTimePodcast at gmail.com.

We'd love to hear from you. You guys are awesome, and we will talk to you next week.

And in case this episode is a little shorter, just know that life's going to hand you a handkerchief that you pull on and it just keeps fucking going. And sometimes it's just going to be one or two handkerchiefs. So to use the parlance of our clown times, sometimes you can end up with a long handkerchief, sometimes you end up with a short handkerchief. And when I edit this episode, we'll find out which that is.

This has been Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And we'll see you next week, clowns.

Scared All The Time is co-produced and written by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity Tess Feifel.

Our theme is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****.

We are in this together. Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===