I've never had a great love of clowns. In fact, I've often said that Ronald McDonald has a face of pure evil — his mouth ringed in the scarlet blood of the innocents upon which he surely feasts. Is that a little dramatic? Yes. Does that make clowns any less creepy? Nope, nope, nope.
That's why I literally shuddered at the news out of Bakersfield, California. Namely, the fact that when the sun goes down, there's been an influx in clown sightings. If you're wondering what kind of clowns I mean, let me clear it up: scary ones, wielding weapons, chasing children.
The latest clown sighting came Saturday night when someone rang the Bakersfield Police Department, to let them know that there was a demon clown carrying a gun on the loose. Apparently this is just the latest in a rash of horror clown sightings in the city, according to watch commander Lt. Jason Matson:
"We’ve been having sightings all over the city... they range anywhere from a guy carrying a gun to a guy carrying a knife running up to houses."
Apparently, this comes in the wake of some clown sightings in neighboring Wasco, which aren't quite as ghoulish, though still pretty jacked up, if you ask me. The Wasco clown started as a photography project, and even has his (Hers? Its?) own Instagram account, if you didn't need to sleep tonight. The popularity of that clown has apparently inspired some other people to dress up like clowns and walk around all terrifying-like.
Now, some of these sightings could just be hoaxes, the paranoid ramblings of people who are utterly creeped out by the thought of rambling packs of Pennywises and are starting to see killer clowns everywhere, but some of them certainly aren't.
On Friday, one teen out to prove to everyone else that teenagers are, in fact, the worst, was arrested for dressing up like a clown and then chasing a bunch of terrified kids around. He was then arrested for "annoying a minor," which I had no idea was a thing.
It seems especially cruel to chase a bunch of younger kids around like this because for little kids, clowns are a particular kind of nightmare fuel. One study done in 2008 found that clowns are "universally disliked" by children, who find them "quite frightening" and "unknowable." This is probably due to the fact that with all of that corpse-like white and blood red face makeup, clowns come off as unfamiliar and unnatural, which is what makes them so horrifying.
I am a grown a** woman, and I find clowns "quite frightening" and "unknowable," and there is a very real danger of me peeing my own pants if a clown were to chase me around, so I can't imagine what it feels like to be a little kid in that situation.
In all seriousness, though, I'm not sure what I would do if a bunch of jerks decided to dress up like John Wayne Gacy and menace my neighborhood, besides pour myself a big ol' glass of nope and wait sleeplessly for the sun to come up.
Not cool, Bakersfield jerk clowns. Not cool at all.
More on horrible clowns
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