httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPii0GI83ik
After eerily similar events occurred in the Boston area in the 1980s, Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who studies the folklore behind mythical beasts such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, came up with something called “The Phantom Clown Theory,” which attributes the proliferation of clown sightings to mass hysteria.
It also concluded that the common practice of decorating children’s wards in hospitals with pictures of clowns may create the exact opposite of a nurturing environment.
Jesters and others persons of ridicule go back at least to ancient Egypt, and the English word “Clown” first appeared sometime in the 1500s, when Shakespeare used the term to describe foolish characters in several of his plays.
In the 1970s, Gacy appeared at children’s birthday parties as “Pogo the Clown” and also regularly painted pictures of clowns.
When the authorities discovered that he had killed at least 33 people, burying most of them in the crawl space of his suburban Chicago home, the connection between clowns and dangerous psychopathic behavior became forever fixed in the collective unconscious of Americans.
Following the notoriety of Gacy, Hollywood exploited our deep ambivalence about clowns via a terror-by-clown campaign that shows no signs of going out of fashion.
T are also the “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”, the scary clown doll under the bed in “Poltergeist”, the zombie clown in “Zombieland” and, most recently, the murderous clown in “All Hallow’s Eve”.
When we asked people to rate the creepiness of different occupations, the one that rose to the top of the creep list was – you guessed it – clowns.
The highly unusual physical characteristics of the clown only magnify the uncertainty of what the clown might do next.