Speaker 1: So conspiracy realists, welcome to tonight's classic episode. We talked,
Speaker 1: I think, in a couple of shows over these many
Speaker 1: years about something called chlorophobia, which is a huge, a
Speaker 1: huge fear in the post gacy environment of the Western world,
Speaker 1: the fear of clowns.
Speaker 2: Those clowns are scary, y'all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and like you know, pop cultucture hasn't really
Speaker 3: given them a break at least the clowning profession, which
Speaker 3: once was a reputable field, and now you know, folks
Speaker 3: that are clowning for a living have all this chlorophobia
Speaker 3: stuff to deal with with, like movies like It and
Speaker 3: then of course the hugely popular remake of It.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and this particular incident that we are going
Speaker 2: to be discussing or I guess maybe time frame, time
Speaker 2: period where there were just there seemed to be clowns everywhere.
Speaker 2: I think it's a great exploration of our previous discussions. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess the post this happening, but previous to this
Speaker 2: moment in time right now, about how social media really
Speaker 2: was changing everything. Right, this is twenty nineteen October right
Speaker 2: at the end, right around Halloween actually, and there were
Speaker 2: so many videos of clowns just hanging out, purported to
Speaker 2: be just wandering around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not doing professional clowning, just sort of lingering at
Speaker 1: the edge of a roadside or a forest or copes
Speaker 1: of trees. It all began in August in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: when five photographs of what appeared to be a suspicious
Speaker 1: clown were discovered, and these photographs took place in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: But as you said, Matt, this is more than just
Speaker 1: an exploration of some creepy people in unusual dress. This
Speaker 1: is an exploration of the social media world in which
Speaker 1: we now reside. Ye, all right, let's roll it.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Eho.
Speaker 1: It's me No, they call me Ben. We are joined
Speaker 1: as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck.
Speaker 1: At most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: It is the most wonderful time of the year. If
Speaker 1: you're listening to this episode, as it comes out today,
Speaker 1: Conspiracy Realist, Happy Halloween.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Spookables are all around you.
Speaker 3: Spookables, Yes, that like lunchables.
Speaker 2: That's what my son calls them.
Speaker 1: Really, that's a great name, and it's a little bit.
Speaker 1: I like how it has a little bit more edge
Speaker 1: than something being simply spooky. Right, you've probably heard that
Speaker 1: spoopy spoopy. It's like cute spooky.
Speaker 2: Oh nice. Yeah, he's into the real, real deal, legit
Speaker 2: spookable stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I told you guys, I've been
Speaker 3: watching like R rated eighties horror movies with my ten
Speaker 3: year old daughter.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's fine. It's just like, mainly we watched
Speaker 3: the first two Child's Play movies because they're just hilarious.
Speaker 3: They're only rated R because of some slightly bad language.
Speaker 3: But like she kids at her school used those words
Speaker 3: and she knows not to use them and mixed company.
Speaker 3: But we've had a really good time. And last night
Speaker 3: after she went to bed, I watched My Bloody Valentine.
Speaker 3: Have you seen this? It's about a crazed miner in Ontario, Canada,
Speaker 3: and it's the most Canadian horror movie.
Speaker 2: I've ever seen in my life as in m like minors, minors,
Speaker 2: coal miners.
Speaker 1: And I actually get in a conversation met with with
Speaker 1: your wife a few weeks or a month or so back,
Speaker 1: where I was thinking, I've got some books that I
Speaker 1: think Matt's kid will love. The word I think I
Speaker 1: told you this. She told me, I was worried that
Speaker 1: maybe because I don't know what kids read, I was
Speaker 1: worried that maybe the books would be like too scary,
Speaker 1: you know, like scary stories telling the dark. Probably want
Speaker 1: to wait a few years on that one or something
Speaker 1: or amphegory. But her reply was he already has so
Speaker 1: many books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he certainly does.
Speaker 1: Well let him know, let him know when, well, you guys,
Speaker 1: let me know when it is appropriate to send them
Speaker 1: the creepy stuff. Because I think when we're kids, we
Speaker 1: all have this fascination to one degree or another with
Speaker 1: things that scare us, right, with things that make our
Speaker 1: heartbeat race, things that make us mistake a pile of
Speaker 1: clothes in the dark for an evil figure crouching clothes
Speaker 1: to the bed. And one of the biggest, surprisingly common
Speaker 1: fears in the Western world is something called col roaphobia.
Speaker 1: That's a word for the day that means the fear
Speaker 1: of clowns. This is a pretty recent word, it comes
Speaker 1: about in the nineteen nineties, but it describes a long standing,
Speaker 1: arguably ancient unease that is doubtlessly familiar to many of
Speaker 1: our fellow listeners. Clowns are a little bit different here
Speaker 1: in the US because we live in a post gay
Speaker 1: sy environment. John Wayne Gacy, the notorious, infamous serial murderer
Speaker 1: who also had a reputation or an alternate identity as
Speaker 1: a clown. This affected the cultural zeitgeist in a number
Speaker 1: of ways, and it has consequences, ripple effects that remain
Speaker 1: with us today. Matt, you and I I believe, were
Speaker 1: at was it the Museum of Crime or Murder in DC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we saw actual Pogo the clown suits.
Speaker 3: Which was his alter ego. Oh and at the Museum
Speaker 3: of Death in Hollywood they have several of his paintings
Speaker 3: that he did of himself as a clown, and his
Speaker 3: shoes are there as well.
Speaker 1: And this this calls to mind another episode we did
Speaker 1: on the controversy surrounding serial killer memorabilia and art, which
Speaker 1: you know, I listened back to a while ago, and
Speaker 1: I gotta say objectively, not that bad.
Speaker 3: Not bad at all. I can't remember who I heard
Speaker 3: say this, gosh, and then this is this. I think
Speaker 3: it's an interesting point though, the idea that killers should
Speaker 3: not be publicized, their identity should not be publicized, because
Speaker 3: then it allows them to profit off of their crimes.
Speaker 3: I think that's an interesting concept.
Speaker 1: Especially in cases of terrorism where someone simply wants to
Speaker 1: be a martyr for a cause. But back to clowns.
Speaker 1: So because US, at least partially because of John Wayne Gacy,
Speaker 1: but probably because of some other long standing, hardwired psychological
Speaker 1: quirks in our brains, People from all walks of life,
Speaker 1: especially here in these United States, are pretty comfortable nowadays
Speaker 1: being upfront and transparent about their fear of or distrust
Speaker 1: of clowns. People have no problem saying I don't like clowns,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to see it, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: This is a cultural phenomenon. It's not necessarily a global attitude,
Speaker 1: and a lot of other countries clowns are these beloved
Speaker 1: figures of fun and festivity, Like in Central America, you
Speaker 1: know the parade is really poppin' when a gang of
Speaker 1: clowns comes in. I don't know what the group name
Speaker 1: for clowns is. You know how there's like a parliament
Speaker 1: of owls and unkindness of ravens, clowns, a murder of clowns,
Speaker 1: a car of clowns, a honk of clowns. I like
Speaker 1: murder of clowns. So here in the US, the fear
Speaker 1: of clowns eventually, too long ago, reached a boiling point.
Speaker 1: It became a national and then international panic. Here are
Speaker 1: the facts. Our story today starts on August first, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: in Green Bay, Wisconsin, five photos of what appeared to
Speaker 1: be a creepy clown surfaced. This clown was wandering, literally
Speaker 1: wandering around a parking lot under a bridge somewhere in
Speaker 1: Green Bay, and this went viral thanks to the Internet.
Speaker 1: We can only conjecture that it must have been a
Speaker 1: slow news cycle, because the pictures got national media attention.
Speaker 1: Fox News was all over at USA Today was all
Speaker 1: over it. Eventually The New York Times was writing about this.
Speaker 1: Shortly after August fifth. A Facebook page pertaining to the
Speaker 1: pictures or purporting to pertain to the picture's surface, and
Speaker 1: they said the name of this clown is Gags. Gag. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and it wasn't just any clown. It looked
Speaker 2: to be someone who was purposefully trying to be creepy,
Speaker 2: right because the character, this person whoever, was wearing all
Speaker 2: of this makeup and everything. It wasn't like your cutesy
Speaker 2: clown makeup. There were some there's an edge to it
Speaker 2: that appeared to be sinister in some way. And I
Speaker 2: believe it was what the character was holding balloons.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, nah, not your vibe. Huh, that's not a
Speaker 1: lick you're going for. Yeah, it's a very good point, Matt.
Speaker 1: It was purposely done up like a scary Halloween clown,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, not like a fun welcome
Speaker 1: to McDonald's clown, which I would argue was also still
Speaker 1: pretty creepy. Here's what happens. Numerous pundits speculate on this story,
Speaker 1: and because the is not very much in the way
Speaker 1: of solid factual reporting here, there's just not much to
Speaker 1: the story other than these five creepy pictures and a
Speaker 1: Facebook page. At this point, pundits are going wild. They're saying,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Is this a childish prank? Is
Speaker 1: this alone unhinged lunatic? Is this part of something larger.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to that, but first, here's Carol with
Speaker 1: the weather, that kind of stuff or is it an
Speaker 1: attempt at gorilla marketing? And it turned out it turned
Speaker 1: out that our story gets sewed up in a pretty
Speaker 1: i would say, relieving way.
Speaker 3: So eight days later, a filmmaker by the name of
Speaker 3: Adam Krause actually came forward and revealed that this was
Speaker 3: nothing but a marketing stunt. He and his crew were
Speaker 3: actually filming a short piece called Gags the Clown and
Speaker 3: Bloody Disgusting, which is a horror blog quoted Kraus as saying,
Speaker 3: we filmed the short and secret and released photos of
Speaker 3: the sightings quote quote because I wanted to convince my
Speaker 3: town that there was a creepy clown wandering the streets
Speaker 3: late at night. We released the pictures August first, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: and it blew up from that point on. It went
Speaker 3: viral very quickly. I announced that it was just a
Speaker 3: short film eight days later, but that didn't stop the
Speaker 3: craze from kicking into high gear. What do you guys think,
Speaker 3: Is this a form of terrorism like it? Should there
Speaker 3: be some burden of responsibility on individual like this? That
Speaker 3: is doing something that is legitimately terrorizing a town.
Speaker 1: There's not a way to make it illegal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say. According to Captain Kevin Warwick
Speaker 2: Wryh of the Green Bay Police Department where this was
Speaker 2: first occurring, where gags made the appearances and the Facebook
Speaker 2: group started and everything, he said, this person is not
Speaker 2: breaking the law. He can walk in a clown costume
Speaker 2: anywhere he wants.
Speaker 3: You can't call it like menacing or something like that.
Speaker 3: What point had something become menacing? I know that's a crime.
Speaker 1: If someone's loitering, or if someone is giving the reasonable
Speaker 1: if there's reasonable suspicion or that they would be about
Speaker 1: to commit a crime, right, So, and that's tough to
Speaker 1: prosecute one. I don't want to lose this part though,
Speaker 1: because Kraus did say this is for my film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after it's like known or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like every time we see
Speaker 1: a red meat headline in the news, only to see
Speaker 1: it corrected on page thirty two of the next issue
Speaker 1: of the paper, or thrown in at the very end
Speaker 1: and find print on a website for a broadcast news show.
Speaker 1: People just don't care about their attractions and there we go.
Speaker 1: All's well, that ends well, right, This wasn't the first
Speaker 1: time viral marketing had fooled unsuspecting denizens of the Internet
Speaker 1: or the media. Shout out to Blair Witch Project, which
Speaker 1: I think is one of the most famous recent examples.
Speaker 1: But those clown sightings did not stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: In fact, they escalated kind of the way that you
Speaker 1: know one like one of my favorite songs in the
Speaker 1: Hall of Mountain King escalates du Da Dada.
Speaker 2: And things really did get weirder after that because it
Speaker 2: inspired not it inspired people, but it also made those
Speaker 2: creative juices flow about what could I do that would
Speaker 2: be even creepier.
Speaker 1: So we're going to pause here for our usual ad break.
Speaker 1: This one is a little different today because Matt, you
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Speaker 2: Now let's get back to those clowns.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. That's right. Clown sightings began
Speaker 1: to pop up all around the country, and they were
Speaker 1: unrelated to the short film from Wisconsin. The next widely
Speaker 1: reported creepy clown sightings occurred in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on August twenty first, twenty sixteen, there was an
Speaker 3: alleged clown sighting in Greenville at the Fleetwood Manor apartment complex.
Speaker 3: When I was originally reading this, I was really wishing
Speaker 3: it was at the Fleetwood Mac concert. That would have
Speaker 3: been cool. But no, in this complex, children reported witnessing
Speaker 3: clowns or a group of clowns. A murder of clowns.
Speaker 3: Is that we decided on a gaggle of clowns attempting
Speaker 3: to whisper or talk to the children. Now, that's got
Speaker 3: to be not cool, right, that's come on, that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's so it's so strange because at this
Speaker 2: point the the image and the role of a clown
Speaker 2: has been relegated to things like children's parties. Still that
Speaker 2: that's where you will maybe find a clown, or maybe
Speaker 2: at the circus or the rodeo, maybe a swingers club
Speaker 2: or my basement, but wherever it is.
Speaker 3: Well, But culturally we've like flipped the script where now
Speaker 3: I think people first and foremost think of clowns as
Speaker 3: creepy demon child eaters as opposed to you know, friendly
Speaker 3: child performers.
Speaker 1: We do.
Speaker 2: But again, like, if you you can go online right
Speaker 2: now and hire a clown to do a children's party,
Speaker 2: that is one of the main things you can do.
Speaker 2: So if there are clowns out in let's say, in
Speaker 2: a part complex somewhere talking to kids, if you're not
Speaker 2: aware of some kids party that's happening, maybe that's all
Speaker 2: it is. I'm just saying it's it's tough because it
Speaker 2: also creeps me out personally, and I wouldn't like it
Speaker 2: if my son was there and saw some clowns that
Speaker 2: were trying to whisper to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he's the thing of what they were whispering.
Speaker 3: And the children told their parents are the clowns who,
Speaker 3: by the way, were set up with these flashing green
Speaker 3: laser lights. They told the children that they lived in
Speaker 3: an abandoned house in the woods near a small lake.
Speaker 1: As you do. Uh huh, small talk conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: See, that's where it becomes terrifying, right.
Speaker 1: And the police did investigate, and they did find a
Speaker 1: trail in the nearby woods, and the trail did lead
Speaker 1: to a house. There was a small lake by the house.
Speaker 1: But at this point, no evidence of clowns or any
Speaker 1: evidence of clown paraphernalia was ever found. So there wasn't
Speaker 1: even a bottle of seltzer or anything.
Speaker 2: That is so funny to me, no evidence of clowns
Speaker 2: was discovered.
Speaker 1: I love or paraphernalia.
Speaker 3: I love that the notion of clown paraphernag like.
Speaker 1: There's one size sixteen shoe, Yeah, just on the trail.
Speaker 1: And this is strange because it's we we have to
Speaker 1: think of the children and the complex, and then we
Speaker 1: have to think of their families too. What do you
Speaker 1: do when the police throw up their hands and say, well,
Speaker 1: we we couldn't find any clowns or clown paraphernalia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we will be patrolling I guess for the
Speaker 2: next couple days.
Speaker 1: We'll keep an eye out. South Carolina, though, is far
Speaker 1: from a unique case. Over the next few months, reports
Speaker 1: of creepy, suspicious sketch clowns popped up in every single
Speaker 1: US state and Puerto Rico as well. The Guardian was
Speaker 1: following this story. They had some great articles on this.
Speaker 1: They describe it thustly. They say clowns began to terrorize
Speaker 1: children and sometimes attack people, while commentators spoke of panic
Speaker 1: and hysteria. In Pennsylvania, a teenager was reported to have
Speaker 1: been murdered by someone in a clown mask, although police
Speaker 1: later said it was the victim who had the mask.
Speaker 1: So still, in this time of panic, just having a
Speaker 1: clown mask in play during the crime is enough for
Speaker 1: this to be lumped into lumped into the same phenomenon
Speaker 1: of reporting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can see here where if something goes
Speaker 2: viral enough anywhere in the world and it gets shared
Speaker 2: enough on let's say international social media or internationally accessible
Speaker 2: social media, it's kind of what we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: You can see where people will think, oh, well, how
Speaker 2: do I make a post or something, or how do
Speaker 2: I make something happen in my local town that's also
Speaker 2: going to get me or this famous through my post,
Speaker 2: because it really did go fully international after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. The spark was lit all in
Speaker 1: all people in eighteen. Different countries other than the US
Speaker 1: started reporting clown sightings over the course of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and these were You know, it's weird because we know
Speaker 1: the panic in the US has a discrete start date.
Speaker 1: It's August first, twenty sixteen, but we also see some
Speaker 1: preceding attacks or similar instances in Europe. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: there was a creepy clown sited in Northampton, England, and
Speaker 1: these sightings occurred in the town for two months September
Speaker 1: and October. They were also the work of filmmakers. But
Speaker 1: the stuff that we see happening after the US panic
Speaker 1: catches fire internationally. This stuff is genuine, like crime in
Speaker 1: Ontario and Canada, people dressed up as clowns and were
Speaker 1: chasing children and when they got dismissed from school, and
Speaker 1: then someone dressed as a clown was chasing down a
Speaker 1: group of people in Chile with a baseball bat. People
Speaker 1: started using clown makeup and clown mask as a go
Speaker 1: to disguise in their criminal endeavors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was reading a story about in Norway people
Speaker 2: were reporting that they would see weapon wielding clowns chasing
Speaker 2: cars and stuff and apparently it really did catch on
Speaker 2: in a couple of places in Scandinavia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Sweden and October twelfth there was someone dressed
Speaker 1: as a clown who stabbed a teenage boy with a knife,
Speaker 1: and there were some other stabbings across the world. Luckily
Speaker 1: these appeared to be isolated incidents. Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: the international community reacted pretty strongly to this. There was
Speaker 1: a protest held by professional clowns in a Rio Grande
Speaker 1: dus Soul in Brazil. And here I believe it's time
Speaker 1: for us to make a note. In the interest of fairness,
Speaker 1: we have to say hashtag not all clowns. There's a
Speaker 1: huge industry of people who work professionally as clowns, you know,
Speaker 1: in circus trained academy, dellate trained. And these folks have
Speaker 1: no interest in committing crimes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And they certainly don't want to be saddled with the
Speaker 1: stereotype that they want to say. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: job for them. They're not going to dress up and
Speaker 1: wait in the woods to clown at children in the dark.
Speaker 1: That would be like us waiting waiting in the woods
Speaker 1: and then podcasting people hopefully less scary way more nerdy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean no, you're right. It's a it's a
Speaker 2: profession and in a lot of times, in a lot
Speaker 2: of cases of passion for the individual. And there's a
Speaker 2: quote here from this article in sputneknews dot com and
Speaker 2: it says this trend has a really unpleasant impact on
Speaker 2: us as professionals of this art. I and my colleagues
Speaker 2: in this state appear at various events, for example, at
Speaker 2: birthday celebrations, and when we go out in the street
Speaker 2: or arrive at these celebrations, people are looking at us strangely,
Speaker 2: and you can imagine how that would affect you. And
Speaker 2: it goes on to say this has started to affect me.
Speaker 2: Customers are canceling work, replacing clowns with something else. This
Speaker 2: is one of the oldest professions in the world. Our
Speaker 2: goal is to bring joy to everybody, from babies to
Speaker 2: one hundred year olds.
Speaker 1: And this is only one example of a larger global response.
Speaker 1: On October twelfth of twenty sixteen, the Russian Embassy in
Speaker 1: London put out an official warning to UK citizens and
Speaker 1: Russians alike because of the clown scare. So a country
Speaker 1: state department said, okay, if you're here in London watch
Speaker 1: Out for clowns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think of what it's akin to,
Speaker 2: like an orange alert watch out for smog kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we need a clown watch.
Speaker 2: The terror watch that we have while there.
Speaker 1: Like, how many honks is it? You know, watch out?
Speaker 1: London is a four honk city, So out of context,
Speaker 1: that probably sounds very strange, but it's it's a good question.
Speaker 1: You know. This reached state actor level, and then also
Speaker 1: private industry responded. There were shops in New Zealand that
Speaker 1: stopped selling clown costumes or banned it. Many schools banned
Speaker 1: clown costumes or just yeah clown like stuff too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this also remember this is twenty sixteen, so this
Speaker 1: occurs hand in hand with public recognition of the music
Speaker 1: fan base, right the insane clown posse fans known as
Speaker 1: juggalos Yes, who also, by the way, did not have
Speaker 1: a big part in this, because again hashtag not all clowns.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in October though, this starts to also hit one
Speaker 1: of the most popular clowns in the United States, Ronald
Speaker 1: McDonald is sent to the bench by his fast food
Speaker 1: owners because the heat got to him, he had to
Speaker 1: get a low profile was too hot for Ron, so
Speaker 1: he left the public eye for a little while because
Speaker 1: the last thing McDonald's wanted to be associated with was,
Speaker 1: you know, being bad in any way for children, other than,
Speaker 1: of course the food at McDonald's.
Speaker 2: Hey, they've changed their game a little bit.
Speaker 1: Come on, and those fries still, man, they're great.
Speaker 2: And honestly, as weird as it sounds, those chicken mcnugs,
Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: You think it's nostalgia, No it's not.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 1: Part of you is still there now.
Speaker 2: I think they upped their game or something because we
Speaker 2: were very do isn't to get right. I'm not promoting
Speaker 2: McDonald's right now, I promise you. I'm just saying I
Speaker 2: tried one of their chicken McNuggets so that I did
Speaker 2: remember as a child not enjoying. But then they are
Speaker 2: much better now, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what, Matt, maybe I should give it.
Speaker 1: I should give it another shot. I read a really
Speaker 1: interesting essay about the shape of those McNuggets there. You know,
Speaker 1: their their specific shapes and how they're created. But I'll
Speaker 1: still try it. Also, Target pulled clown mask from all
Speaker 1: their stores and from their website, and people started to
Speaker 1: look at this in a critical analytical way. They said, Okay,
Speaker 1: these reports don't actually have much in common. They're occurring
Speaker 1: in various parts of the world that are very different
Speaker 1: from one another. They're often not every time, but often
Speaker 1: it appears there's no real law that was broken. It's
Speaker 1: just someone being creepy. In most cases amounted to something like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a suspicious person or group of people dressed in
Speaker 1: a way that makes me uncomfortable. And another common trope
Speaker 1: was that these clowns appeared to be, as you said,
Speaker 1: no menacing people, and in many cases they were reported
Speaker 1: as giving chase, although sometimes the victims would change their
Speaker 1: story and say, I thought this clown was gonna chase me.
Speaker 1: It was just standing there.
Speaker 3: But there's a ton of YouTube prank videos. Yeah, creepy
Speaker 3: clowns chasing people like.
Speaker 1: A lot, and those are for humor, right, they're for humor.
Speaker 3: But at the time, I'm assuming the person featured has
Speaker 3: to sign a release afterwards or something like that to
Speaker 3: be featured.
Speaker 2: But several of those the faces of the victims are
Speaker 2: so they didn't get permission. I would just say that
Speaker 2: that is illegal.
Speaker 3: That strikes me as illegal.
Speaker 2: That is a form of terrorism in a way, if
Speaker 2: you were going to scare someone out of their wits
Speaker 2: by dressing up as creepily as you can, setting up
Speaker 2: a camera and then chasing somebody while they are in
Speaker 2: fear for their life.
Speaker 1: And some people can see that as humorous, but we
Speaker 1: have to remember those folks who are being chased, or
Speaker 1: those folks who are being menaced, are genuinely frightened. You know,
Speaker 1: they're terrified.
Speaker 2: And I would say, if you find that funny, maybe
Speaker 2: do some reevaluating.
Speaker 3: That's all.
Speaker 1: Well, we can't emphasize this enough. There really were people
Speaker 1: dressed as clowns, and they really were stalking and in
Speaker 1: some cases attacking folks across the planet. By October twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, a little more than three years ago exactly now,
Speaker 1: as you're listening to this news pundits were so deep
Speaker 1: in this story that they started reporting and alleged to
Speaker 1: get this clown led purge or large scale attacks set
Speaker 1: to take place on Halloween. What's interesting about this kind
Speaker 1: of news story is that it really doesn't take much
Speaker 1: for something to be alleged. It could be an anonymous
Speaker 1: tip to the news station that has no follow up,
Speaker 1: So it could literally be anyone calling it's incredibly unethical.
Speaker 1: But it could also be someone from the news station
Speaker 1: who was like, we need some hot for Saturday. So
Speaker 1: luckily there were no documented wide scale purges. However, on
Speaker 1: October thirty, first Halloween twenty sixteen, a family in you
Speaker 1: guessed at, Florida was attacked in mass by a group
Speaker 1: of people dressed as clowns wearing clown mask. They were
Speaker 1: attacked by about twenty people.
Speaker 2: That's insane. Allegedly, they were checking their car right when
Speaker 2: this happened was like eleven pm at night. Then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, these people show up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, you know we all have we all have
Speaker 1: a pretty good fortitude stats. You know, if we're D
Speaker 1: and D characters, we don't scare particularly easy. But even
Speaker 1: for us, getting run up on by twenty people, trust
Speaker 1: a clowns, that's a lot. That's a lot, especially if
Speaker 1: they are if they are armed blades or with you know,
Speaker 1: blunt objects or god forbid guns.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean one of the people. Okay, So
Speaker 2: let's just talk about that. It was a it was
Speaker 2: a group of people in a car. I think it
Speaker 2: was five people in a car, maybe more, and they
Speaker 2: like hit something in the car. Right, they're in their truck.
Speaker 2: They're in this big truck. They hit something in the truck.
Speaker 2: They got out to check out what it was. They
Speaker 2: got As they exited their vehicle to check on everything,
Speaker 2: they get attacked by a bunch of people wearing masks,
Speaker 2: some of them clown asked. Some of them appear to
Speaker 2: be what they would call purge masks. One of the
Speaker 2: victims got stabbed in the head and another one got
Speaker 2: hit in the head with a hockey stick. It was
Speaker 2: a real brutal attack, that is this is just an
Speaker 2: awful thing that occurred. And apparently one of the one
Speaker 2: of the victims, one of the people who got attacked,
Speaker 2: recognized some team that was a part of the.
Speaker 1: Group, right yeah. Jeff Brown, who is one of the victims,
Speaker 1: said that the group of clowns had a knife, hockey sticks, clubs, bats,
Speaker 1: and he was He said they were probably just looking
Speaker 1: for anyone who would get stopped at the light. And
Speaker 1: he said they was able to lift one of the
Speaker 1: masks of a team off in the struggle and recognize
Speaker 1: the kid as a kid from his neighborhood. As far
Speaker 1: as we know, no arrest were made, at least at
Speaker 1: the time of the stories reporting, so we don't know
Speaker 1: what happened with that. But we bring this example here
Speaker 1: to emphasize that unlikes the Unlike some other outbreaks of
Speaker 1: hysteria or global panics, there were genuine crimes happening here.
Speaker 1: There were people conspiring to dress up as clowns and
Speaker 1: attack maybe random people, maybe people that they had their
Speaker 1: eye on for one reason or another. So these sightings
Speaker 1: were real. But what exactly was happening. We'll attempt to
Speaker 1: answer that after a word from our sponsors. Okay, so
Speaker 1: was the I'll say it, I'll take the bullet on
Speaker 1: this one. Was this actually some sort of I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm saying this clown conspiracy to upset the status
Speaker 1: quo in some way through random acts of violence?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a Project Mayhem type thing, but with clowns maybe?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Maybe? I mean, was this perhaps some sort of
Speaker 1: Juggalo esque protest. Again, as far as we know, the
Speaker 1: Juggalo community was not involved with this panic, but you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, was it some sort of
Speaker 1: thing that got spun into a different narrative by the media,
Speaker 1: or was this just another example of mass hysteria like
Speaker 1: the satanic panic, you know, like as we learned in
Speaker 1: our recent True True Detective episode, which is still either
Speaker 1: my least or my most favorite title recently, as we
Speaker 1: learned there there's often more to the story than we
Speaker 1: see reported in the news. To answer our question about
Speaker 1: this phenomenon, it's actually best for us to begin from
Speaker 1: a folklore angle. There's a guy named Benjamin Radford go
Speaker 1: Benz who is the author of a book called Bad Clowns,
Speaker 1: and in his work, Radford busts some myths that we
Speaker 1: have about clowning in the modern day. Specifically, he writes,
Speaker 1: it is misleading to ask when clowns turned bad, they
Speaker 1: were never real good, because although the word chorophobia comes
Speaker 1: about in the nineties, the thing is clowns have been
Speaker 1: around forever in myth and folklore, in unrelated cultures. People
Speaker 1: who had never met before they had things like clowns,
Speaker 1: but they were often antagonistic. They were deceivers, they were tricksters.
Speaker 1: They were associated with entering the edge of the edge
Speaker 1: of civilization, speaking hidden truths. They were associated with infernal
Speaker 1: powers at times, and Let's also consider Alex Pentlands, author
Speaker 1: of a book called Social Physics, How Good Ideas Spread.
Speaker 1: He says the clown phenomenon is in some ways just
Speaker 1: the standard craze. He compares it actually to planking. You
Speaker 1: guys remember planking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's when you delay flat on a thing, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I walked in our old office one time.
Speaker 1: I walked into our rec room and I learned about
Speaker 1: planking because as least as an exercise, because I saw
Speaker 1: about fifteen or more of our colleagues, not speaking, just
Speaker 1: laying on the floor, propped on their elbows, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do. But I stood there for
Speaker 1: a second. No one said anything, no one looked at me,
Speaker 1: and so I decided the most prudent move was to
Speaker 1: walk out backwards, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2: Definitely keep an eye on everyone.
Speaker 3: It was like a flash mob type phenomenon for a while.
Speaker 3: Whe people would like plank on different things, like a
Speaker 3: cabinet or something, and you'd walk in. It was an
Speaker 3: episode of the Office about it. Hm hmm, that's that's
Speaker 3: all I got on planking.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but it just speaks to a larger thing
Speaker 2: when it's kind of what I was saying earlier, when
Speaker 2: there's a trending phenomena like that, it is in our
Speaker 2: nature to want to be a part of the group,
Speaker 2: and you know, glom onto it in a way or
Speaker 2: show your uniqueness by doing this thing in a way
Speaker 2: that only you would do or could do. And you know,
Speaker 2: we're we're just basically comparing that, And it's kind of
Speaker 2: what Pentland is doing here saying that this is what
Speaker 2: the clown thing was. It was another ice bucket challenge.
Speaker 1: Right right. But he also said this fad, this clown
Speaker 1: sighting craze also hit upon a deeply buried cultural meme.
Speaker 1: He said, children are scared of clowns, so this gives
Speaker 1: it more virality than another thing like an ice bucket challenge.
Speaker 1: Not you know, more people were probably terrified of clowns
Speaker 1: than are of ice buckets.
Speaker 3: Did you hear that the ice bucket challenge is a
Speaker 3: conspiracy theory about it?
Speaker 1: I did, Yeah, yeah, yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3: There's a say I think it was just this one
Speaker 3: kind of fringy writer Selina Owen's on a world Net
Speaker 3: daily accusing it of being some sort of satanic ritual
Speaker 3: tricking people into I don't know, exactly. The logic is there,
Speaker 3: But you can you can you can call anything. Any
Speaker 3: of these viral phenomenon could be construed to some sort
Speaker 3: of mass ritual, right, I mean that's sort of what
Speaker 3: it is. Is people glom onto it and they recreate it,
Speaker 3: like the flash mobs versus the creepy clowns versus the planking,
Speaker 3: any of that kind of stuff. You could look at
Speaker 3: as some sort of weird collective, unconscious kind of like dance.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't know, anything can be a ritual, and anything
Speaker 1: could be a satanic ritual, you know, if you have
Speaker 1: the right attitude about it. Isn't magic all about intentionality
Speaker 1: in theory? That's a callback to uh, what was that
Speaker 1: our magic debate on Harmontown. Yeah, So with this in mind,
Speaker 1: when we look at it from a folkloric perspective, we
Speaker 1: see another salient point. Also from the Guardian, again they
Speaker 1: cover this like four or five different times, and they
Speaker 1: said they also attributed part of the panic to the
Speaker 1: ways in which it was described by print and broadcast media.
Speaker 1: They said, consider how charged the vocabulary of the reports
Speaker 1: will be when you hear this on your evening news.
Speaker 1: They don't say someone saw a clown. They refer to
Speaker 1: these things as sightings. Yeah, the same way you would
Speaker 1: say someone cited there was a UFO sighting or a
Speaker 1: locknest sighting, And it mythologizes these human beings when really
Speaker 1: they're just people in costumes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can do it wherever they want as
Speaker 2: long as they're not hurting anybody.
Speaker 1: And then the idea. Okay, So the Mirror over in
Speaker 1: the UK reports this, you know, in the early days
Speaker 1: of the panic spreading to the United Kingdom, they say,
Speaker 1: quote in one of their headlines, creepy clowns approach girls
Speaker 1: walking to school and terrifying UK craze was this was
Speaker 1: a variant of the first sentence in the article, because
Speaker 1: the first sentence in the article in the or says
Speaker 1: two schoolgirls were approached by two creepy clowns yesterday as
Speaker 1: the terrifying American craze hits the UK. It's true that
Speaker 1: it was already quote American craze, but the headline calling
Speaker 1: it a terrifying UK craze wasn't true because there had
Speaker 1: only been a couple of incidents. Yeah, how many incidents
Speaker 1: make a craze? Right? Like when when does a hill
Speaker 1: become a mountain kind of question.
Speaker 3: Right after it's a mole hill, right, it goes straight
Speaker 3: from mole hill to mountain.
Speaker 1: And what's the size of a heap? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, there's linguistic ambiguity there, But it also
Speaker 1: could be kind of a self fulfilling prophecy to call
Speaker 1: this thing a craze before it happens. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if Paul Mission controlled Decan and I go to Applebee's
Speaker 1: after this, and then we start calling it the new
Speaker 1: Applebee's craze that's sweeping the nation, would more people be
Speaker 1: likely to go because they want to To your point, Matt,
Speaker 1: be part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think you might have to
Speaker 2: add in a few more people. If you've got like
Speaker 2: five posts that said the new Applebee's craze, I think
Speaker 2: you've got something going there.
Speaker 1: Not an advertisement for Applebee's, right, nor McDonald's nor McDonald's.
Speaker 1: But in this case, what we see, what we see
Speaker 1: very quickly is the clown stuff itself is exactly as
Speaker 1: we described. It's sort of a viral phenomenon that to
Speaker 1: your point, no people glombed onto sometimes to assist in
Speaker 1: the execution of crimes they were already probably planning to do.
Speaker 1: In other cases, it was people who said, we want
Speaker 1: to prank some folks. But when we look into the
Speaker 1: psychological causes, the socio political environment and soil in which
Speaker 1: this thing exists and grows, then we see there's more
Speaker 1: to the story. We've talked about this before, and this
Speaker 1: is probably just my own crippling cynicism. But anytime I
Speaker 1: see something that is not terrible go viral, I assume
Speaker 1: that it's being pushed to cover up some real horrific,
Speaker 1: terrible thing happening.
Speaker 3: I don't think you're far off, Ben, you know, so, No, No,
Speaker 3: although it is hard to predict virality, I will say that, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know the intentions, it may be that, but it's
Speaker 3: like no one can guarantee a viral smash. Otherwise, you know,
Speaker 3: they'd be hiring those people left and right.
Speaker 2: So I've got a theory about this whole thing that
Speaker 2: I want to present to you guys, all right, laid
Speaker 2: on me. Okay, here are the facts of Matt's theory.
Speaker 3: This we call the section Matt's facts.
Speaker 2: Yes, sure, this is the These are Matt's facts. So
Speaker 2: we've got the gags the clown incident that occurs when
Speaker 2: is it October? Is it October or is it September
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen?
Speaker 1: Though right, the first one occurs in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: August first, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: So that's August early August twenty six, twenty sixteen. Then
Speaker 2: almost a year later, a year and a month later,
Speaker 2: the remake of Stephen King's It comes out, a major
Speaker 2: Hollywood production with massive marketing arms behind it. Okay, it
Speaker 2: would be beneficial for the people making it to reignite
Speaker 2: people's fear of clowns.
Speaker 3: Well, you know about the phony clown protest, Right, the
Speaker 3: phony clown protest was phony. According to Vanity Fair, a
Speaker 3: clown rally against the IT movie was actually a publicity
Speaker 3: stunt for the IT movie. The new IT adaptations have
Speaker 3: probably been causing problems for real life clowns, whose businesses
Speaker 3: have allegedly suffered as a whole new generation of kids
Speaker 3: sour to Bozo's of the world, so it was hardly
Speaker 3: surprised when clowns planned to gather and rally against It
Speaker 3: in New York. It turns out, however, that the rally
Speaker 3: was a fake, nothing more than a publicity stun in
Speaker 3: promotion of the very movie it claimed to be raging against.
Speaker 2: See. So this is what I'm saying, you guys, What
Speaker 2: if this entire thing, starting with gags and the short
Speaker 2: film or whatever was occurring, there was all away to
Speaker 2: get clowns back into our zeitgeist immediately the forefront of
Speaker 2: our minds, so that it would come out and we
Speaker 2: would have to go see it.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I don't I'm honest. I'm gonna be honest
Speaker 1: with you, man, I don't know if I'm one hundred
Speaker 1: percent on board with it, because it feels like when
Speaker 1: real acts of violence started to occur, the company or
Speaker 1: studio involved would want to distance themselves.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why they never admitted to doing it. That's
Speaker 2: why they never admitted to starting the whole craze. See.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there on a we didn't start the fire y.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they went, oh, oh, somebody got stabbed in the head.
Speaker 1: We're out, and we're out. Nobody say anything until the
Speaker 1: trailer releases. I mean maybe maybe perhaps I will say though,
Speaker 1: because I know I'm sounding a bit conspiratorial here and
Speaker 1: it is just my opinion, I will say that now
Speaker 1: more than ever to steal the line from Fox News.
Speaker 1: Yet again, it is now more than ever, it is
Speaker 1: surprisingly easy for some people to influence virality and to
Speaker 1: determine which stories are seen. If anyone listening believes that
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg cannot literally ping someone at Facebook and say
Speaker 1: kill this story and promote this one, then you are
Speaker 1: being offensively naive like that. Because there's so few people
Speaker 1: who control the faucets of information at this point, then
Speaker 1: clearly it could happen. I'm not saying it does. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this is a case in which that occurs.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying the reality is there, and to think
Speaker 1: otherwise is at this point to be wilfully ignorant of
Speaker 1: the reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I would agree. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: levers to be pulled within the realms of social media
Speaker 2: in places where you can post things and then have
Speaker 2: them become viral.
Speaker 1: Or what if met? What if? What if you're right
Speaker 1: and you're even more right than the original theory? What
Speaker 1: if this all dating back to twenty sixteen. Arguably twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen was just one long viral lead up to the
Speaker 1: Yaquing Phoenix Joker film.
Speaker 3: Or maybe there's clown film collusion maybe all of the
Speaker 3: studios that have on their slates of content clown content,
Speaker 3: they've all gotten together to perpetrate this conspiracy against the American.
Speaker 1: Public CFC Clown Film Collusion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think it was Stephen King himself in
Speaker 2: the gags, the clown costume.
Speaker 3: Now he doesn't leave his manner, Oh okay.
Speaker 2: And then it was Joe Hill himself.
Speaker 1: And it's tough to tell the difference. You know, if
Speaker 1: you just saw those guys walk it down the street,
Speaker 1: Joe Hill, do us look like a young Stephen King?
Speaker 1: Does he really? Yes?
Speaker 3: I've never seen it very.
Speaker 1: Much physically, Yeah, yeah, very very much.
Speaker 3: That's unfortunate. What Stephen King is a funny looking dude?
Speaker 3: Always want to You don't think so?
Speaker 2: What a handsome devil Stephen King? You're kidding me, I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I think Stephen King himself would acknowledge that he's a
Speaker 3: funny looking dude. Have you seen Creep Show or he
Speaker 3: plays the weird guy?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, but uh, but I think he tells great stories.
Speaker 1: Shout out to by the way, that's right, Shout out
Speaker 1: to Rob.
Speaker 3: I just got a free trial to shut her.
Speaker 1: Oh it's great.
Speaker 3: Just so I can watch, So I can watch creep
Speaker 3: shreap show, and I'm very much excited to do so.
Speaker 1: Report back if you can't, Let's know what you think
Speaker 1: when you see it. I will. Indeed, this leads us
Speaker 1: to a question that we can't really answer today, A
Speaker 1: couple of questions, and one of them is this, does
Speaker 1: the access to aubiquitous information give us more of an
Speaker 1: ability to think critically about things? Or does it give
Speaker 1: us more of an opportunity to spread and transmit our
Speaker 1: own fears to other populations?
Speaker 3: Well, it's both, right, depends on how you use it
Speaker 3: and how you handle it, how you comport yourself in
Speaker 3: this our internet age.
Speaker 1: But which of those two, I agree? Which of those
Speaker 1: two do we see happening more often? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I think it's the latter. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm right there with you. But we still have
Speaker 1: hope for the future. Right, And we know that outbreaks
Speaker 1: of widespread public hysteria are surprisingly common in the historical record.
Speaker 1: We've got this great book about it that I lug
Speaker 1: around sometimes. And if this odd story about the Great
Speaker 1: Clown Panic of twenty sixteen, as The Guardian called it,
Speaker 1: if this odd story leads us to anything. It's one
Speaker 1: crucial question, what new panic looms on the horizon, And
Speaker 1: that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3: It's right let us know what you think. You can
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