When we think of clowns, several images come to mind: Beloved entertainers who bring joy to your
children, fast-food mascots who you’d never even consider trusting with your children,
and bloodthirsty, supernatural entities who are probably planning to eat your children ... but
even if there’s nothing you love better than a red-nosed idiot in baggy clothes,
it’s hard to deny that clowns can be terrifying. But for some people, this fear can be intense,
and they’d give a warmer welcome to the bubonic plague than they would to a travelling circus.
This overwhelming fear of clowns is known as “Coulrophobia”, taken from the ancient Greek
word “Coulro” meaning “One who goes on stilts” ... so if you don’t already have a fear of clowns,
just take a few seconds to imagine a ten-foot monster with a crimson smile looming over you.
You’re welcome. The term was first used around 1980, and although the World Health Organisation
doesn’t officially recognise it as a phobia, you don’t have to look hard to find evidence for it.
When the world’s oldest clown, Creeky Creekmore, died back in 2014, the response on Facebook
and Twitter was mixed. And that’s putting it mildly. There were many posts praising Creeky
for all the charity work he’d done over his ninety-eight years, but plenty of other people
took the news as an opportunity to tell the world just how much Creeky creeped them out,
and how much they hated clowns in general. There’s just something about clowns that drains
people of sympathy and fills them with terror. Psychiatrists say that while true Coulrophobia
is rare, it’s more common today than it once was, and it’s not unusual for sufferers to go to huge
lengths to avoid being anywhere they could bump into a clown. However, if they do accidentally
wander into a circus and find themselves face to face with their worst nightmare,
they may experience a number of physical symptoms, like nausea, sweating, crying, screaming,
even difficulty breathing – sounds a bit like me after I listened to Radio 1 for ten minutes.
But why clowns? What is it about them that freaks us out? Well, Coulrophobia is thought to be
connected with the “uncanny valley” effect, where we feel unsettled by things that appear human,
but are just a little bit “off”. Human-looking robots, for instance, or ventriloquist’s dummies,
or zombies, or Michael Jackson. It’s the way they move, or smile, or feast on your brains,
or grab their crotch and scream in the middle of a song.It’s just not right.
It interrupts the patterns your brain is used to, making you feel uneasy, and it’s exactly
the same with clowns. They have painted-on smiles, but their real mouths might frown,
or scowl, or grimace, and your brain just doesn’t know how to deal with it.
Humans gather a huge amount of information from facial expressions, and if that information
gets smothered beneath a half inch of grease paint, the system goes haywire.
Oh, and then there’s the red nose, of course. What the holy hell is that all about?
Another theory is that the slightly “off” appearance of clowns makes us think of death.
The face of a corpse, for instance, looks almost like a sleeping face,
but somehow we can tell something’s different, and that bothers us. And it’s not just clown’s
faces that make us whimper and crawl into the foetal position, because humans are also very
sensitive to body language. Clowns walk in a weird way with their huge, floppy shoes,
have an unusual posture, fall over a lot, and can’t seem to resist cramming themselves into
tiny little cars ... and it’s “inconsistent stimuli” like these that are the problem.
We’re hardwired to distrust the weird guy on the bus, the drunk guy in the middle of the street,
the maniac in face paint squirting water at us through a flower. Anything that doesn’t fit
our normal view of the world is automatically viewed as a threat, even if all it’s doing is
making balloon animals and laughing too much. Coulrophobia also ties in with social anxiety,
because we generally only see clowns in a social context. Or at least, we bloody-well should
do - if you stumble across one in your basement then social anxiety is the least of your worries!
Most people have a genuine fear of being mocked by others or picked out from the crowd, but just
how much of a part this plays in coulrophobia isn’t clear. After all, this kind of social
anxiety is common in other settings too - most people would rather soil themselves than get
up and go to the toilet during a comedian’s set - but I’m fairly sure comedophopbia isn’t a thing.
Whatever the cause of coulrophobia, it clearly affects some people more than others. It’s thought
our fear of clowns stems from our childhood, which is peak clown exposure time for most people..
According to psychology professor Joseph Durwin, of California State University,
young children are very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face ... which
is why hiring a clown to visit your sick child could be about as sensible as hiring
Colonel Sanders to visit your sick chicken. That sentiment is backed up by perhaps the
most well-known study of coulrophobia, which was conducted by the University of Sheffield in 2008.
Two-hundred-and-fifty children were asked how they felt about a hospital ward being
decorated with images of clowns. The results were pretty clear, suggesting clowns were universally
disliked by children, with some finding them “frightening” and “unknowable” ... So FYI,
‘hospital clown’ might not be the best line of work to get into these days. Not that it
seems to have held Patch Adams back. When Robin Williams plays you in the film of your life,
you’ve probably done something right. The weird thing is, some people who never saw
a clown in their young lives still lose control of their bowels every time they drive past a circus.
So what’s going on there? Well, evidence suggests phobias can be learned from your parents,
which might help explain why the fear of clowns is still going strong today despite travelling
circuses becoming less and less common in many parts of the world. Thanks for that, Mum and Dad.
It’s most likely, however, that in order to create a truly delicious “Coulrophobia stew”,
your childhood experiences are mixed in with various terrifying pop culture depictions of
clowns, peppered with nightmares, and then baked for a couple of decades on a low heat until you’re
thoroughly phobic. I mean, just think how many weird clowns we’ve seen in films and
TV shows over the years. We had 1988’s “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”, in which alien clowns
massacre their victims before cocooning them in cotton-candy. We’ve had Heath Ledger’s Joker,
a character who had many dark layers to him, not least because Ledger tragically
died shortly after filming his portrayal. Oh, and for any 1970s kids watching this video,
we should probably mention Zal Cleminson, guitarist for the Sensational Alex Harvey Band,
who wore black and white clown makeup on stage, along with colourful bodysuits. Despite the band’s
comedic overtones, Cleminson’s “happy-sad” demeanour certainly gave the performances a
hint of menace. And that’s before you throw their version of Tom Jones’s “Delilah” into the mix.
Benjamin Radford, author of the 2016 book “Bad Clowns”, claims sinister clowns have
not only existed throughout history -- including Harlequin, the King’s fool, and Mr Punch --- but
also suggests they’ve evolved into our modern-day internet trolls. Just like their ancestors,
trolls abuse, tease, and play with people for their own amusement ... and as someone who’s
read his fair share of YouTube comments, I wholeheartedly endorse this theory!
We don’t quite know where the “evil clown” thing started, but it certainly goes back hundreds
of years at least. There’s Edgar Allan Poe’s story “Hop Frog”, which is based on a jester,
and Leoncavallo’s opera “Pagliacci” features several murderous clowns. But
Andrew Stott – professor of English at the University of Buffalo – argues the very
first “scary clown” can be found in “The Pickwick Papers” by Charles Dickens. In one chapter of the
book, Dickens describes a clown as having “a bloated body and shrunken legs – their
deformity enhanced a hundredfold by the fantastic dress – the 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 – all gave him a hideous and unnatural appearance.”
Wow. Doesn’t he sound like fun? Perfect for your five-year-old’s birthday party.
Stott believes Dickens was inspired by Joseph Grimaldi, the “father of modern clowning”,
which makes sense because he edited Grimaldi’s memoirs around the same time.
Grimaldi created the character “Joey” in the early 1800s and is thought to be the first
clown to wear white-face make-up, along with the huge painted-on smile, brightly coloured hair,
and over-the-top costume. Grimaldi, however, was much more loved than Dickens’ macabre creation.
In fact, annual remembrance services are still held for him at All Saints Church in Haggerston,
East London ... so there’s another place to avoid if you aren’t a fan of clowns.
But how did we get from the much-loved Grimaldi to our modern-day “evil” clowns? One person who
bucked the trend was Emmet Kelly, who based his sad clown “Weary Willie” on Depression-era tramps,
with a painted-on smile that wasn’t a smile at all, but a very distinct frown. And then
there’s TV clown “Bozo”, who was very popular with children of the 50s and 60s ... and maybe
it’s a generational thing ... but just take a good look at him. Don’t you get the feeling he
could snap at any moment and start feasting on your internal organs? Maybe it’s just me.
From Bozo, it’s easy to see a connection with Ronald McDonald, that terrifying “Pied Piper”
style clown, whose sole mission in life was to lead children to a mystical mountain of
cheeseburgers in the Land of Coronary Artery Disease. In the early twenty-first century,
it was estimated that more than 95% of American children recognised him, which led to concerns
about childhood obesity, and is one of the reasons he doesn’t tend to appear in adverts anymore.
Well, that and the fact that he’s clearly a demon straight from the Ninth Circle of Hell with a
terrifying death mask for face and a flagrant disregard for the benefits of a balanced diet.
One man who did nothing to help the reputation of clowns was John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial
killer who sexually assaulted and murdered at least thirty-three young men and boys before
burying them in the crawl space underneath his house. In 1975, Gacy became a member of the “Jolly
Joker” clown club and created two characters for himself: “Pogo” who he described as a happy clown,
and “Patches” who was significantly more serious. Gacy never carried out his crimes in costume,
but that didn’t stop the media dubbing him “The Killer Clown” and giving Coulrophobes
yet another reason to double check the lock on the front door before going to bed each night.
And of course, how could I make a video about Coulrophobia and evil clowns without mentioning
the King - Stephen King - and his terrifying creation, “Pennywise the Dancing Clown”. King’s
epic novel “IT” was published in 1986 and has since passed into scary clown legend.
Mostly manifesting as Pennywise, IT is actually an ancient cosmic entity, which awakens once every
generation to feed upon the children of Derry, Maine. It’s easy to draw a parallel between
Pennywise and John Wayne Gacy, of course, but King has never mentioned him in connection with the
character. In fact, King was originally inspired by the children’s tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff”,
but rather than a troll under a bridge, he wanted to write about some other kind
of creature inhabiting a sewer system. And when he asked himself what scared
children more than anything else in the world, there was only one answer: Clowns.
The book was followed by a 1990 TV mini series starring Tim Curry as a
very “Bozo-inspired” Pennywise and the recent films featuring Bill Skarsgard’s
equally horrifying portrayal. Oh, and just to get your Coulrophobia juices flowing even more,
Pennywise comes out to feed every twenty-seven years ... and the movie
was made in 2017 ... twenty-seven years after the original miniseries.
You’re welcome.
A year before IT hit the cinemas, clown sightings suddenly became a very common and
unnerving experience with the advent of “The Great Clown Panic of 2016”, but “phantom
clowns” have been sporadically spotted around the world for decades. The 1980s saw multiple
reports made by children claiming men in clown suits had attempted to lure them into a van,
which spread panic across the USA. And on the other side of the Atlantic in 2013, a clown was
spotted in various locations around Northampton, standing perfectly still and silent, and generally
freaking people the hell out. It turned out to be the work of three students having a bit of fun,---
but unsurprisingly a bunch of YouTubers took inspiration from the stunt, dressing up as
killer clowns and scaring the bejesus out of the general public, gaining millions of views
in the process. I mean, what kind of YouTuber would do something like that, just for views?
The first of the 2016 sightings was reported in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
in early August, when pictures of a creepy clown in an empty parking lot went viral.
A Facebook page went up, proclaiming the clown was called “Gags”, and although it later turned out to
be a publicity stunt for a horror film, the craze had already started to spread. In South Carolina,
a nine-year-old boy told his mother that two men dressed as clowns tried to lure him into the
woods, and by October clown sightings had been reported all over the States, Canada, the UK,
Australia, and in sixteen other countries. People were genuinely terrified.
President of the World Clown Association, Randy Christensen, took a very public stance against
the trend, not least because circuses and other clown-related business were negatively affected.
Professional clowns intensely dislike the “evil clown” persona for obvious reasons,
and have no desire to add to the growing issue of Coulrophobia.
It even got to the point where several news outlets reported the possibility of a
“clown purge” or “attack” on the eve of Halloween, which led to some Florida residents
“packing heat” when they went trick or treating. As it turned out, a widespread clown apocalypse
never came, but one family was attacked on Halloween night by twenty people in clown masks,
so maybe the guns weren’t such a bad idea, after all.
So, yes, the events of 2016 certainly weren’t a great help to anyone suffering from Coulrophobia.
In fact, for them, it was possibly a worse year than 2020 has been for the rest of us!
But the important thing to remember is that most clowns are completely harmless,
and there’s absolutely no reason to be scared of them. No reason at all.
Even if you're in bed one night, in the dark, on your own, and you suddenly hear
the “flop” of massive shoes downstairs, followed by the “parp” of a red nose.
Even if you’re busy recording a YouTube video, and ... Wait, did you hear that?