Unfortunately, this isn’t an installment of Are Your Afraid of the Dark? but part of our new reality, as creepy clown sightings are cropping up across the country without explanation. On August 21st, reports of clown sightings surfaced near the Fleetwood Manor apartment complex in Greenville County, South Carolina. Officials took the strange reports seriously but were unable to uncover any real evidence or suspicious persons. The reports stretched beyond children hearing noises and seeing people with clown face paint: One resident said she saw a clown with a blinking nose standing beside a dumpster at 2:30 a.m. Other children came forward claiming clowns attempted to lure them into the woods with money and that the clowns “live in a house by a pond deep in the woods.” After hearing gunshots, police learned two residents fired in the direction of the wooded area where the sightings had supposedly taken place. A week later, more reports surfaced of clowns simply staring at Greenville residents near laundromats and, again, next to the woods.
Yet still, police couldn’t locate a single clown to question, leaving people to wonder whether this was a hoax, a marketing ploy, or simply child’s play.
But if it is all an elaborate ruse, roughly a dozen other cities are in on it – and some officials are worried there will be a violent end to the clown sightings. And in the five weeks since clowns popped up in Greenville, the pandemic has spread.
Last week, in what quickly became a viral Facebook post, a video of a clown lurking in the brush along a dirt road was taken by a person named Caden Parmelee in Marion County, Florida. The car Parmelee was in paused to film a person with white, sinister face paint, but the video cuts out as the clown begins to move and someone in the car is cut off saying “Let’s get the hell out of…” We can assume the final word of that was “here,” based on Parmelee’s comment to police that he wasn’t looking to die that day. Another Florida resident, Kelly Reynolds of Palm Bay, took up running last weekend when she saw two clowns while she was walking her dog. Reynolds reported to Florida Today, “I never run but I turned and ran back to my home as fast as I can.” Florida, a hotbed for weird shit, also had reports of creepy clown sightings in Pensacola and Gainesville.
The clowns crept up into North Carolina, littering the state with the grim face paint and costumes. A machete-wielding clown tried to lure a woman into a wooded area in Forsyth County. Winston-Salemincreased police presence in certain areas after two children claimed they were offered candy by a clown if they’d follow it into the woods. In both Henrico and Augusta counties, parents and their children reported clowns “leering” at them from cars or on the edge of a forest. While the Augusta clown may still be wandering the forest, a local woman, Holly Brown, reported that the creepy clown was, in fact, her son Angus, a 12-year-old with autism, who donned his Halloween costume a month early. She stated her son was simply excited about the holiday and meant no harm. Given the clown-hysteria, he will only wear the costume on October 31st.
Pennsylvania, too, is rife with creepy clown reports. In Pottsville, there were reports of two people wearing “clown-like clothes,” driving around in a pickup truck scaring teens and children. In Ebensburg, a woman caught a peeping-Tom clown peering through her window. Most recently, York College sent a safety alert out to the campus – a reaction deemed necessary after receiving eight different clown reports since September 24th. More sightings have been reported in Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and, most recently, New York State.