Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 5 - The Great Clown Scare of 2016

Episode Date: October 17, 2016

Year of the creepy clown. What's behind the insane number of creepy clown sightings happening around the world? Why do we fear clowns? Have these creepy clowns actually hurt anyone? Everything you need to know about the current clown craze in this extended episode of Timesuck.

Earlier this month, the office of the president of the United States was asked if the leader of the free world had been briefed on numerous quote creepy clown sightings happening around the country in 2016. This is in October, if you're listening to this later. In Alabama, a woman called 911 because she was terrified after seeing a man dressed like a clown behaving in a menacing manner in a Walmart parking lot, schools in Ohio were closed recently because of numerous scary clown sightings. A clown in New York chased a teen out of a subway, men in Kentucky arrested for dressing up as a clown and hiding in the woods, and so on, and so on, and so on. There's been so much media coverage and national fear regarding clowns as Stephen King himself, author of itch, creator of Pennywise, arguably the scariest clown

to ever crawl off the written page, asked America to calm down. The master of horror tweeted, hey guys, time to cool the clown hysteria. Most of them are good, cheer up to kiddies, make people laugh. You know, clown fear has gone on, it's gone too far. When Mr. King himself says we should take it easy,

I mean, that is comparable to Hitler in 1944 coming out and just saying, all right, everybody, let's, let's ease up on the juice. Most of them are super cool. I just didn't think it would go this far. Work and wait. It's time to bring in the clowns. It's time to bring in the clowns. It's time for Time Suck.

You're listening to Time Suck. Yeah. Wait. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. First off, I want to see I picked this topic because someone tweeted me about it and I was already thinking about it because there's so much media coverage of clowns right now and because I did a bit on one of my albums about being afraid of clowns myself, which is totally true. I've gotten just lots of Facebook messages

and lots of posts in the last, I would say, two months about this whole clown craze. Like by far the most messages and stuff I've got since that album came out like 2010. So I was already definitely getting more and more curious. We're like, how many articles are out there about clowns? And you know, and so of course I got stuck into a time suck over the weekend and just spend hours just trying to figure out what the hell is going on

with all the clown stuff. And so I had other episodes already recorded for Time Suck, but I wanted to get this one in line faster. I wanted to kind of rush this one forward, bump some other topics later on. And it just feels right kind of, you know, as we're coming up towards Halloween, this feels like a Halloween-ish topic.

And by the way, if you want me to dissect other things that you're really interested, if you would love to dissect other things that you're really interested, if you would love to see me jump into some other topic, hit me up on Twitter at Dcomments, or sorry, I'm sorry, I can't even do my own Twitter, D underscore comments, or Facebook or Instagram at Dan Cummins Comedy. And I'm working on getting a comment section

up and running at timesockpodcast.com. I've just been so busy touring and doing some other stuff that the website is up, but it needs updating and I need to know how to update it. So that'll be going very soon. I'll have a whole little comment thread where we can go back and forth and all that stuff. And so now let's just get into this whole clown thing.

And by the way, I've been prepping these. I've been trying to tinker with the format a little bit, trying to find that balance of research and just humor and make it as topical as I can, but I can't always just do the touring needs and things, being a place where I can record it like the day of and then quickly throw it up there. So this is October 10th.

This is gonna come out next Monday and I'm sure some other articles will come out about Clowns. I just looked on the web right now, and another one came out today, I mean, every day. Literally every day, there's more articles now. This one's like killer clowns. How do you map it out across the UK? Craze continues to terrify.

And there's just this graphic of just city after city after city of all these clown sightings. And then but first before we get into 2016 what's happening right now, let's break it down, let's get into some backstory. And first of all, I think I got to start with like what I think of clowns. And again, if you haven't heard, I do a true story about what happened when I was a kid that made me fearful of clowns, and I'll try to summarize it right now, just to bring you up to speed on where I'm at.

And people always wonder if my bits are true. And on my early albums, I did some obvious absurd things on the first two that are clearly just being ridiculous. But when I do talk about real life, I am honest on these albums. And the I do talk about real life, I am honest. And the clown story is 100% true. Where for some reason when I was little, I was into clowns. I don't know why. There are pictures of me when I was like three, four years old,

wearing like a clown suit with little white makeup. You know, the red nose, the whole thing. Like, that's not what was a clown. Cause apparently, I'm inherently evil. It's the only thing I can come up with. I don't know. But seriously, I was really into clowns. There was some kind of parade in my little town of Riggins, Idaho. Every year, there's been, like a small town parade. And I'm not as a little kid.

Like I marched the parade as a clown. I, for the life of me, I don't know why. I was into that, knowing my family can explain. I just, on my own, I just got into clowns, which is creepy. And, you know, and I've been, I've been referred to as being able to be creepy my whole life. So, I guess, maybe I just am a little creepy.

I guess, I don't know where it comes from. You know, I'm just born with it. You know, some of us here's lucky. Some of us just, you us are just born creeps. So I was into it and I had dolls, I clowned dolls. And then when I was like, you know, it's so blurry when you're a little kid, but just based on where you're living the time, I think I was like, I want to say six years old roughly, maybe seven, one of those two. My parents had HBO and they would leave it on,

not paying attention, or not even just leave it on, but I was smart enough of that age to know what channel HBO was, I guess. I don't know for sure, but I know that when no one was looking one time, I started watching the TV and this and Poltergeist came on. And so it was an intense movie and I'm not gonna not watch it if I if I happen to be walking by and this thing is on as a little kid I'm curious and

I was very unlucky. I watched this scene with a little boy in this movie. This is like a 1982 I believe that movie came out early 80s and I believe that movie came out early 80s. And I'll fact check that later. I'll clear that up if I'm wrong, but around there, but anyway, it was on TV, and there's a scene where this boy has a clown doll sitting in the corner of his room, and he's freaked out by it.

There's spooky stuff happening in the house, and then all of a sudden, he looks over on the chair by the door where the clown is supposed to be his doll, and it's not there. He looks under the bed. It's not there. When he pops up from looking under the bed, it is fucking there. It is on him and it's trying to choke him out with this creepy long arms. It's a really, it's still I'm like getting the chills right now. It's I hate it that I get so freaked out by this shit, but it really traumatized me as

hate it that I get so freaked out by this shit. But it really traumatized me as a kid because I had that same fucking clown doll. It wasn't like something made for the movie. I had, if not exactly the same, a very similar-looking clown doll. We don't have it anymore. So I can't verify exactly, but in my mind, I had the same goddamn doll.

And I had it in my room. It was a bigger doll. It's like that kid sitting on a chair, and the kid in the movie was roughly my age So it was basically like watching myself get in fucking strangled by my own toy and it scared the shit out of me But I didn't say anything because I didn't want to get in trouble because I knew I wasn't supposed to be watching HBO Even if it was like left on or whatever. I wasn't supposed to be watching it so my little kid rationales I took it downstairs and

I just like I hung it off a door knob by some know, I took it downstairs and I just like hung it off a door knob by some little string it had on it and I just beat the shit out of it. You know, I don't know. I'm sure I was saying all kind of little tough thing. You know that it's scary me. Yeah, how tough of you now. I'll kill you. Just punching it away. And then I threw it in the trash, you know, like, yeah, fuck you clown. Get out of here. And then I went to bed, you know, feeling a little better about the whole situation, I'm sure I was still, you know, kind of skived out. But I go to bed. And after I fell asleep, my mom, you know, like any little kid probably like, you know, you leave stuff around, she used to pick up after

you. And just like I do with my kids now. And she must have thought I threw the clown in the trash by mistake. So she put it back in my room. And I wake up to go to the bathroom at some point in the night and that fucking clown is back. He is back in the corner magically reappeared. And so I'm like, oh shit. Like not only is he back, he must be very upset. Because I've been I was working him over. I was beating his ass downstairs. Now he's back. Oh, shit. Not only is he back, he must be very upset because I was working him over. I was beating his ass downstairs. Now he's back, he's clearly not happy, and I'm gonna die.

And it scared me, it paralyzed me with fear. I couldn't even yell out, I still don't wanna get in trouble. I was so afraid of getting in trouble as a kid for some reason that I would just torture myself with fear instead of just letting everybody know what happened. And I can't, I just tried to fall back asleep, I don't know if I fell back asleep at night or stayed up,

but I do know I had recurring nightmares for days, weeks, maybe months for a while. And I do know my mom was real, my mom still is weird about not letting you get rid of stuff. Like my mom will buy me a shirt and then like five years later, just like, so do you wear that shirt? Like she bought me a bike when I was probably like 24, 25, I don't know, she's like, what do you want?

I wore for Christmas and I was like, I don't know, a bike. Like I was thinking about, you know, riding around, so she gets me a bike. And then I just didn't write it a whole bunch. I don't know, whatever. But then like, like 10 years later, she'd still be like, are you still, do you use the bike much?

Are you right? Do you read the bike? And as a kid, she still has my toys. She's still convinced I've told her a thousand fucking times that these Star Wars toys I had as a kid that I played with him way too much. They're not in the box. They're not meant.

They're not worth shit. She will still be like, you know, I bet those Star Wars toys are worth some money. And just like, you have all of them? Do you have, like, like, if I would have, these are toys she bought me over 30 years ago. And, but she has this expectation that if she ever gets you anything,

you just keep it till death, I guess. You just, you have to keep it till death. And so the clown doll, at some point, she knew that I was afraid of it. But she just kept putting it in my room. She wouldn't let me get rid of it. I must have been an expensive clown doll or something. So fucked up. Looking back like, why? Just thrown away. Yeah, eventually I talked to her. But anyway, it went on long enough. I had to sleep in this goddamn same room with this nightmare of a doll after seeing that piece of shit movie that it really deeply ingrained this fear of clowns into me. And then, because I was an idiot, as a kid and like, to scare

myself, I was constantly watching scary movies, even though I was very sensitive to nightmares. I just like to, I've always liked to rob myself up, I guess. So then I was really scared and then I read it around sixth grade and that was a fucking mistake. It is its ancient demonic extraterrestrial monster in the Stephen King book You know that feeds on the people of dairy main every 27 years You know it like comes out of hibernation for three years and hibernates again And it takes the form of whatever you fear most it's kind of this shapeless thing or maybe has a shape, but no one knows for sure what it is. It's like a fun spider at one point because that's supposed to be scary. But for most of the book, it's a clown.

It takes the form of this pennywise clown and scares the shit out of these kids. The main characters in the story and the adults, it has this power to kind of make people forget about it or not see it. And it's kind of like hypnotized adults and only the kids can see it. And so, you know, which plays in your fears a kid that there's a monster that is definitely real, definitely trying to kill you, but your parents cannot see it because it has them hypnotized. So I'm like, fuck myself reading that. That brought it all back.

That brought it. So then that, like, I'm really scared of clowns after that. And my family, cause they're dickheads, they think it's funny. And several Christmas is ago, I opened up this, like this present and I'm not used to getting really pretty easily to give cards. And I was like, that was weird. I got this big package.

And it was a little coffin. No shit, it was like a little coffin. I'm like, what the fuck? And they have me open up in front of everybody. And inside the coffin is this creepy a shit, little clown doll, that I'm now I'm looking in a mirror down the hall and I'm so embarrassing. I'm not even a young grown man at this point.

Oh my dad. And if I saw that goddamn clown and that reflection of this mirror right now, I would lose my shit on this podcast. It would just be a fucking scream, and that would be the end of the, and I would, well, you would never hear it, because I, oh, God, I can't even look at the mirror right now. See, I'm getting myself worked up,

just talking about this subject. And anyway, my mom, the clown doll, I don't wanna keep it, but they haven't housed somewhere when I go home, and they won't tell me where it is. My mom keeps saying that she's gonna like, it'll be like in the bed next to me when I wake up. Uh, my mom, if you don't, yeah, I think, hopefully you know where I get my dark,

since you're humor now. And sometimes you'll send me pictures. She doesn't really send me pictures that often, but sometimes she'll just send me a picture of this clown on like a holiday, like on St. Patrick's Day. It'll be wearing a little green shirt or something, and she'll just say that it's been watching me that it misses me.

It's fucked up. So there you go, so that's why I'm afraid of clowns. So then it got me thinking, though, but I've never re, I've kind of thought it, but I've never researched why are clowns so scary? Kind of scientifically, psychologically, why are they scary? Why are people like me, why, like I kind of scientifically, psychologically, why are they scary? Why are people like me?

Why, like I read other horror books, I read several other horror books, you know. Jack Nicholson, you know, in The Shining, that was a really scary book, but it didn't make me terrified of hauntings. I read a lot of Stephen Cuppet Cemetery was a super scary book. It didn't make me scared of, you know know people coming back out of their graves kind of

zombie-esque you know, there was Yeah, I just didn't I didn't get I didn't get scared of the other things He was like in the stand. I didn't get you know scared of this rolling flag devil character. Why clowns? Okay, here we go according to psychology professor Joseph Dure when at California State University Northridge young children are quote very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face. And they've studied this kind of this phobia in its with clowns and they think there's a correlation to the uncanny valley effect and that's it's called the uncanny valley effect. And also clown behavior is like transgressive,

it's anti-social, you know, like they're breaking social norms, which also creates just kind of unease when you're a kid, you know, when you're taught that people are supposed to follow certain rules, and you know, clowns break those for comedy, but it also can be kind of scary. And then, so the significant aberrations in a clown's face, I'm going to get into this uncanny valley, what it is. It may alter a person's appearance so much that it enters the so-called uncanny valley, in which a figure is lifelike enough to be disturbing, but not realistic enough to

be pleasant. And it scares the kid so much that the phobia can carry over into kind of adulthood. And so just described as further, in aesthetics, the uncanny valley is the hypothesis that human replicas that appear almost, but not exactly like real human beings, elicit feelings of eeriness and revulsion among some observers. And there's like this graph,

like this valley, like this, the graph is the shape of this valley is why they call it this. You know, it denotes a dip in the human observer's affinity for the replica, a relation that otherwise increases with the replica's human likeness. So, so basically what it is in layman's terms is like when a robot doesn't look anything at all like a human. It doesn't elicit any weird feelings because it's like a separate entity.

But then as you start getting closer to looking like a human, you reach this point where like, as it starts to get a little bit closer, a little bit it's kind of cute, like it's like a cartoonish, kind of like a human. And then all of a sudden it reaches this tipping point

where it looks too human like, but it's not quite there. And it just, it fucking skis you out. And I can relate to this. And then so then it like, it's really quite there. And it just, it fucking skives you out. And I can relate to this. And then so then it, like, it's really, really scary. But then as you get more and more and more human, like if you get really human, like, it goes back to being, like, pleasant again.

Because it just looks like a human. And the using an example of, kind of, like, these life-like dolls, and maybe think of this, oh, this weird doll, like, it's on YouTube, and, like, in Japan. They have these, kind of kind of like servant robots, I guess they're trying, basically they're going to be sex bots. They're clearly going to be sex bots. They're like Japanese women robots that are sexy looking.

And they look extremely lifelike. You can look this up on Google and the silicon faces and they're really making the facial expressions and the eye movements close and it is fucking terrifying to me. Like I clearly have this uncanny valley thing. Like it scares me in the same way that certain dolls scare me. Where if the doll looks a little bit too human-like with the eyes, I feel like the eyes are watching me. So in it is, it's just for some reason if things look really close to human but not quite, it really like elicits a lot of fear inside of me.

And there's an actual, so there's, yeah, it's called the uncanny valley effect. And it's this dude, Mishiro Mori, 1970. And he was the guy who kind of figured this out. And also, I'm gonna add another thing, this that I didn't find any research, but this is just me. I think they scare me because they're hiding

the person's real identity. You know, like I'm like, what did they get to hide? Like why you got to make a bond, buddy? I assume it's something terrible. I feel like, you know, if you're a person with nothing to hide from, you don't got to paint your fucking smile on your face. You got to real smile.

Why you got to paint it on? You son of a bitch, because you're fucking murderer. That's why I'm completely rational right now. So, but there was a fear, there's an, and I found out there's a name for this fear, it's called colrophobia. So colrophobia is fear of clowns. And there's not like any official hard data

about how many people really suffer for it, but there's been some soft kind of studies and the estimate is around the 12% of adult suffer from it. I feel like that's low. I feel like if 12% are legitimately afraid of clowns, another 30, 40% are skewed the fuck out, definitely. And I just saw people get scared recently. I was doing a radio, morning radio, Kansas City,

and promote some shows. And there was some people from a local haunted house that was like kicking up into full gear and they came to the morning radio place like there's like these radio complexes where there's like 10 stations in one building. And so they came to promote their local haunted house and there was like five of them all dressed up, there was like a werewolf, a Frankenstein,

like a mad scientist, some kind of Harley Quinn, kind of mental patient woman care, and then there's clown, like a clown with a knife. And no one really cared about the other characters, but like I watched the reaction of like five different DCAs to this group and two of them lost their goddamn minds over the clown. Like one of them was like, out, get out, not funny.

Like was yelling, get out of here. Like not a happy, not a happy reaction to him at all. He was not pleased. And then this other girl, she like was near tears. Like not a happy reaction to him at all. He was not pleased. And then there's other girls, she was near tears. Like she was literally shaking. She hit in the corner of the room. I laughed at both of those, because it wasn't me. So I had a good time with that.

Now, so now we have some science about why clowns get it. And how common it is to be scared of them. But before we get to this current 2016 scary clown epidemic, I wanna know where the clowns even come from. So I did research there. And basically, some type of mass comedic performer is like a gesture type, can be traced almost back to, I think, beginning of a recorded history.

Like, 2500 BC with the Egyptians, they can China, early Native American culture, Hopes, and et cetera. Been around a long time, but the modern kind of painted face clown that we think of can be traced back to a London stage performer named Joseph Grimaldi, he was an English comedian who died in 1837.

Legend has it, he conjured the devil in 1814, and the demon esferati possessed him for the rest of his life. The deal was, the demon would give him the performance skills to become the most famous circus activist day, but the demon would require he eat at least one Christian baby every year in December 25th. And so this is fucked up. A baby went missing every Christmas morning in London for several decades.

Now a little contact eating babies was fairly common in early 19th century London. Okay. I made that up, but I made all that up. But Joseph, he was real, but I bet you some of you were like, I buy that fucking clown. Yeah, beaten babies, that sounds right. True story, though, is he died, a broke, depressed alcoholic,

disabled from numerous accidents, suffered from slaps to heat clowning, it left him physically unable to perform last 15 years of his life. So he's kind of like, he's the originator of the sad clown archetype because Charles Dickens and by the way his oh his clown name was Joey and you can find images of it on the web of this Joseph Cromaldi Joey and he's scary as shit like it is a terrifying, I don't know why the fuck he would choose the costume he did, but

it looks sinister, so sinister. Charles Dickens wrote his memoir, and in the Pickwick papers 1836, he introduced a literary character clearly based on gremaldi that was the sad drunken dying clown in this book. And a lot of people credit that is the origin of the scary clown in today's literature. Fucking Dickens man, you know, he's been making readers sad just for hundreds of years now, almost 200 years. I think great expectation was the first truly depressing

book I ever read. He's King of the Bummers, King of the Bummers story, old Dickens. And then there was this guy Philip Asley who kind of created the modern circus. He's known as the father of the modern circus. He was from 1742 to 1814. And he started off in like, he had like these equestrian kind of events. And he found that out of the

kind of horse little shows he was putting on people like trick writers the most. And he found that he could instead of doing it like other people did just kind of going back and forth. He would do it in a circle. It became the precursor to the modern circus ring. And then he found that in between horses doing tricks, if he had some clowns come out and kind of like, you know, tied people over, like, keep the crowd pumped up, the people like that. And that is how today's circus started.

And then it, you know, goes across the Atlantic. First American clown is Guy John Bill Ricketts. He brought it over to the US, and he was a London performer, as well. And he did exhibitions several times a week, and even as early as 1792 in America, George Washington watched him do stuff. And then he added clowns and stuff as well.

And then it just became a big thing in the 20th century. Which makes sense, there's no TVs and stuff. You know, I guess people had to go do something. And so that's where circus clowns come from. So now you know that. And then I was thinking, where do evil clowns come from? Where's this mythology start? And turns out, late 19th century in theater and opera

and stuff, there was an opera and a play by, it's called, I can never pronounce Italian words, Pagliashi. Pagliashi, it's Italian for clowns, it's this Rugello, Lionel Gavello. Is this guy, is an Italian opera, it's still performed. I guess there was controversy when he came out, there was this other playwright, Coutou Mendes, this French poet and playwright, that did a similar play about clowns as well. But both works feature as murderous clowns

as central characters. So the Pecliaschi is basically about a dude who's the head of a clown troupe, drinks too much, he's an asshole, suspects his wife at Cheat Nahnem, stabs both her and her lover in front of a circus audience. And you know, it's a first example of a guy whose job is to be jolly, but he's actually a dirt bag underneath and a murderer. And yeah, and I just saved you a lot of money.

Not having to watch some dumbass opera. I'm sure operas are great. They just don't do it for me. But yeah, that's the extremely condensed cliff notes of that. But then the modern star character of the Evil Clown, it really steeping King's It, the one I read, published in 1986. That was the first one to really introduce like a major character in a very popular book, who's an evil-ass clown to a huge audience.

And then another guy that kind of didn't do anybody in favors, when I was right about 1982 from Poltergeist. There was also a movie, Killer Clowns from Outer Space came out in 1986. It wasn't his known, but I got heavy rotation. I want to say like, you know, Cinemax Showtime, HBO, one of those. I remember seeing it late at night when I was watching TV I wasn't supposed to. It would come on all the time.

And that was about a bunch of like, you know, horrible clowns. And then there was John Wayne Gacy, 1978. He was arrested, this dude killed like 33 kids and he liked to paint pictures of clowns and he was a fucking like a birthday clown, called Pogo. So that was really bad for clowns. For the good clowns out there, when that guy got caught, they were just like, God damn it.

And then Poltra guys comes and the fuck in son of a, and then they're just like, I quit. I quit. But there's this evil clown archetype. It does play strongly off the dislike caused to it from the thing we talked about earlier. The valley, what the hell was that thing called? I cannot remember.

Uncanny valley, there's, there's, we're already predisposed to not like them. And then these things come out and it makes it worse kind of culturally. And then there was this guy, Joseph Durwin, a freelance journalist, study clowns for years. He studied, this study he said that clowns

are universally disliked by children and some find them quite frightening and knowable. And yeah, again, very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face, okay, we covered that. So anyway, scary, scary, scary. So that's kind of the scary, scary, scary. So that's kind of the background of scary clowns in the consciousness.

And then previous to 2016, there was another incident. 1981, very similar to this year. Evil clowns hiding swept across the country, started in Boston, May 6, 1901. Police received a report that one or two men wearing clown outfits were driving a candy-laden van near Brooklines Longwood School Next day there was a similar report from Franklin Park horseshoe playing grounds this man this clown reportedly had half a clown suit on

He was naked from the waist down, which is to me. I that's the scariest kind of clown Clown from the waist up just scariest kind of clown. Clown from the waist up, just rapy from the waist down. Just didn't save you had a hard on or not. But I mean, I think a clown with a visible erection is like a clown nodded to circus with a visible erection, just kind of wander around, one of the scariest.

I think I feel comfortable saying one of the scariest kind of clowns. Like if someone was like, hey man, do you want to see a clown with a knife or do you want to see a clown with a with a hard on? I'd have to really think about it. I'd have follow up questions, you know, what kind of knife we talking about? How big is this knife? How athletic does he look with the knife? How big is the dick? Is the dick bigger than the knife? Does the dick look more like a weapon than the knife? A lot of stuff.

So anyway, so there was more stuff. There was more stories, more stories, more stories. Either schools are being shut down, just like that happened this year. And then this guy, Lauren Coleman, a university professor with a longstanding interest in clowns, he heard about all these sightings. Notice this sightings started popping up around the country. He started corresponding with this loose kind of group of cryptosoologist people who

were into like bigfoot. And you know, sightings of strange unexplained things, these molder exfiles types. There's nearly 400 of them. He kind of reached out to this network around the country and they started like gathering You know, it was a pre-pre-internet like newspaper clippings and realized that this Scythians were popping up all over the place and it became like a you know He noticed it was a nationwide phenomenon and then he he came up with this theory of the phantom clown And he says phantom clowns are very specific. There's a clown often in a van, kids being approached, she'll end adults, and the clowns never being caught.

And that's what when I did the research, none of these clowns were ever arrested. No one ever caught one of these clowns, like not one. And when the police followed up with these kids, they found that most time they recanted their stories. They took the stories back. Like they were like, no, no clowns. And so yeah, so, so 1981, it turned out there was nothing.

It was a lot of arrests, I mean, I'm sorry, I mean, no arrest, a lot of sightings, no arrest, a lot of smoke, no fire. And so keeping that in mind, I kind of started digging into the 2016 clown phenomenon because there's all these articles about clowns being seen, here clowns being seen there, but when you dig into it,

you're like, yeah, but who saw them? Where's the video? And there might be some prankish type videos that just jackasses have made, whatever, you can anybody can fucking put on a clown outfit and walk around in the woods and have your video, your buddy tape it and be like, well, there's the creepy clown I was talking about.

That's no difference if put on like a gorilla outfit and be like, there's Sasquatch out there. Like that's just, yeah, you're just fucking with people. And again, you know, there was like, there was like one arrest of the, I referenced earlier the dude in the woods, but they never found out like that person was, there was no like, he wasn't like trying to kill somebody

or he was just being fucking, I don't know, creep, I don't even know, I couldn't find out why they, like what he was charged with. I don't know, maybe he's on private property, trespassing, but there was no crazy malicious thing. It's not like you had a backpack of fucking heads. There's nothing so far in 2016. Nothing of substance.

There's all these things. This one started off in South Carolina in August. One woman filed a report with a sheriff because her son saw clowns in the woods, whispering, making strange noises. No clowns got, no arrest made. There was a, in Lagrange, Georgia, September 14th. There was a report of people dressed as clowns

and standing near a white van, like some kind of like kidnap her van. They found a driver who said he had run out of gas, no costumes. And then when they kind of interviewed the people who called in the sightings, the people admitted they made the shit up. And so then that's the actually only kind of charges

that have been filed or like falsifying police reports about this. So why are people doing all this? Why are people making all these claims? And it's more and more, it's building. There's more and more sightings. Why is that happening? This mass hysteria and Jason C. Cat, an associate professor.

And by the way, this episode is gonna run along again, clearly. You already know that, because you know the time thing. This professor of psychology at Western New England University, Springfield, Massachusetts, he suggested another mode of, for the outbreak. People feel, have a need to feel connected to a news event

that has made national headlines. And since the event appears to be difficult to verify, the claim that one has had such an encounter is easy to make and relatively free from the risk of being called out as a fraud. So his theory, it's like low risk of being called out for line and then a benefit of positive attention for reporting such a claim, it may motivate people to like, so people have, I don't know, nothing bored or whatever. And they just kind of work themselves up and they just add to this story

and then they get to like, you know, people love, it's like that phenomenon, I've always been fast and I buy of when people get so excited, like I've been out shooting sizzles or whatever, like little concept, video concept, you're trying to sell a show idea for and you have to go shoot something on the street, some like man on the street segment, for example,

I'm amazed how many people want to be in the background, and they're like waving to the camera. Like, they don't even fucking, they don't even know what channel it might be on, but they just want to be on something. They want to be a part of something that they can tell their friends, oh, I was on this, look at it, I look at it in the back of the football game.

You can see me waving to the camera. And like, they get really excited, I've just never given look it in the back of the football game. You can see me wave into the camera. And like they get really excited, I've just never given a shit about that kind of stuff to me. But a lot of people like it's super excited about wanting to be on the news or something. And I think it's similar motivation. People just want to be like, oh yeah, I was the one who saw that clown. And there is, I'm always amazed how many just like liars there are just in the world. Where it's like they will just, you know, make some shit up, but then they get off on people

being like, what? There's a fucking clown in the woods. Maybe at first there's a part of them. It's like, I just, I should, I misspoke. But then, you know, when they see people being so excited, they're like, oh, oh, no, there was three. There was in one, there was three clowns in the wood. There was one had a knife, one had an axe,

one had a pitch fork. Get the fuck, what were they doing? Had blood on them, the weapons had blood on them. What did you do? I ran for my life, that's what I did, and they chased me, chased me for half a mile. Like the story just gets worked up by people's interest. So then, okay, so I'm thinking,

there's all these lies out there, all this bad rep about clowns. Now we kind of understand where the fear comes from psychologically, but then I started thinking, like has a clown actually ever killed anybody? Has there been a real life penny wise? There have been a real example, even one, of just some clown terrorizing neighborhoods

like Michael Myers, Halloween style, and just fucking slashing people. And no, there is no such story actually. There's people who have committed crimes like, addresses a clown like gang stuff. In Mexico, there was some guy who went up to like a drug cartel guy, addresses a clown and tried to perform a gang-land execution. But to me, that's like a Keanu Reeves, Cape Fear kind of, or Point Break, excuse me, Point Break stuff where, yeah, you wear,

it's like bank robbers have worn clown masks. That's very different than a deranged American horror story, that carrier of matcho clown just wandering the woods, because that's the urban legend. And there is no, sorry, if you're disappointed by that, but hopefully you relieved. There's no real example of that. There was a weird story about somebody who Marlene Warren, she was killed, she opened her

front door, and there was a clown there on her at her door who was holding flowers, and then all of a sudden whips out a gun and shoot her in the chest and kills. No, in the face. I'm sorry, shoot her in the face. Kills her. And the eyewitness to this was her son at the house. But if you dig into the story, no arrests were made, but it looks very, very, very much like her husband at the time. A strange husband was having an affair at work. People report a woman who looked like the woman he was having an affair with buying a clown suit to fit the description of the clown suit several hours earlier before this murder took place at a

local costume shop. The guy's alibi in my opinion seemed flimsy. It just seemed like, to me, again, for whatever they couldn't link the DNA stuff, they don't have enough, you know, stuff to link him and you know, if people can lie to each other, well, I was with you, her, she was with me, and you can't prove them wrong. But that doesn't seem like a random clown. Just kind of shouldn't be able, it seems like a dude who didn't want to get caught, so he dressed like a clown, which is fucked up, you know. And there's been creepy pedophily clowns. So there was a guy, a mon-Paul Kletso,

Karlock Jr. Springfield, Illinois, clown and former minister, Jesus Christ. He entertained thousands of kids in Sunday school, Christian initiatives around the world dressed up like a clown went to the Philippines and got arrested for like child sex trafficking. Like he was going to the Philippines where, you know, fucking kids

isn't as closely monitored, and he was fucking kids. And then local authorities caught him and then he died while being held very suspiciously. Suspiciously, and I say good. And there was another similar thing in the US, as Jose Guadalupe Emenes. His clown name was Elton Lorin.

He was like a professional clown, like doing birthday parties and stuff. You know, that was his job. And he kidnapped a girl in LA, a 12-year-old, and took her out of her house and raped her in a school parking lot. And yeah, took her, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that happened so That that happened That was real thing but but no homicidal psychopath clown But and we're gonna we're gonna round this episode out with this John Wayne gays. Yeah reference to him earlier

This is if you needed some chills this episode. Here you go This guy had this alter ego kind of you know Pogo the clown thing This guy had this alter ego kind of, you know, Pogo the clown thing. There's no evidence that he wore the clown suit. He never admitted to wearing the clown suit when he killed, but it's crazy to me that in the 70s, he was able to entertain children as Pogo, even though he had already served 18 months for tying up and satanizing a teenage boy in the late 60s.

Like, he was found guilty of that. Of tying up a teenager and fucking him in the ass. And then, I guess they clearly didn't have sex offender registry laws. Like we do now. He was able to, you know, legally once he got out and he only served like 18 months. Uh, he was able to go like, do kids parties. That's so fucked up oh man

so messed up so messed up and then later you know seventy eight they find out he killed thirty three young men thirty three young men the majority of which were buried in his crawl space yikes and he was a maniac man he was a maniac there was this uh... like uh... one of the examples of his victims 19 year old student

This is in 77 Robert Donnelly took him from Chicago bus stop What's up with clowns? They'll annoy to it by the way because earlier that let's go guy that Philippines Malesty uncle molesty. He was from Illinois too. Oh Something that don't be a clown in Illinois But anyway, he abducted this 19 year old student, Robert Donnelly, from Chicago, bus stop at gunpoint, drove him home, raped him, tortured him with various devices, repeatedly dunked his head into a bathtub, filled with water until he passed out, then revived him to rape him some more.

And this guy got away. He later testified at Gacy's trial that he was in so much pain that he asked Gacy to kill him just to get it over with Gacy replied, I'm getting around to it and then for whatever reason Gacy decided just to like let him go Maybe just to want to fuck with him later or something Yeah, told the police he was having slave sex with this kid, but it was all consensual and the police believed him You know because he's not like he went to prison for raping some other kid Jesus Christ

Man to be a criminal, I guess back then was a little easier It's not like he went to prison for raping some other kid. Jesus Christ. Man, to be a criminal, I guess, back then was a little easier. Hopefully, hopefully you can't get away with that now. Hopefully, if you have a prior conviction of kidnapping and sodomizing somebody, the next time somebody accuses that, the police are like, let's take this seriously. Let's really take this seriously. 78, Gacy take this seriously. Let's really take this seriously. 78, Gacy confessed to police. It's since 1972, yeah, he committed,

yeah, 25 to 30 murders. Once back, he says, once back at his house, the victims would be handcuffed, otherwise bound, sexually assaulted, tortured. He would stick cloth rags in their mouths to muffled the screams. He would partially drown him and then revive them. He would put them in these like wooden stocks kind of thing So they'd be held still while he torts. He torsures them for hours

And then he would put the body under his bed. This is oh, what's your fucking creepy detail? He the first night after he killed him he would he would put them under his bed and then sleep with their dead body when he's his bed That's scary as shit, right? And then he would bury him in the crawl space. And there's no evidence again. He didn't say that he dressed up as a clown, but in my mind, he's sleeping as Pogo the clown up there. That's so scary. That's so scary.

Why does that make it scarier? Like he's already the most evil thing. And then for some, but then I'm like, you add the clown suit and that's what kicks it over the top for me Okay, so there you go. So let's do some top five takeaways, all right If a friend tells you that you saw a scary clown that they saw a scary clown Excuse me odds are you don't have a clown problem. You do have a full-of-shit friend problem That turns out it's almost always lies

Number two do not hire a male birthday clown for Illinois ever. As I said, it was home of both Pogo and Kletzo, murdering, and or molesting monsters. Number three, don't just don't hire a birthday clown. Pock and period, they're creepy. I don't care if, you know, if there's no evidence of them being homicidal made-axx or even being like pedophiles more than the normal person, the kids are, there are studies that show kids are scared of them. Why would you do that? Why is anyone hiring them?

I'm sorry if you listen to this and you're a great clown. If I can people don't like what you do, stop it. Right me in, if you're like, no, uh, I wanna see some testimonials. I wanna see some testimonials, if you'd be like bullshit, and then you know, some kind of quotes, which you could make up, man, I'd like to see a video, just kids on YouTube being like, man, clowns are the best.

I think I was one of the last of those kids. Number four, all right? There isn't one example of someone dressed as a clown going around murdering people. If you run into a clown, overwhelming odds or that he or she will not murder you, however there's a small chance they may molest you. But statistically, again, no more of a chance than that than someone else doing it.

Yeah, overwhelming odds, they're not going to make you laugh, though, okay? Because they're creepy and they're not amusing. And if they were to molest you, I feel like more damaging than being molested by someone who's not a clown. But I don't want trivialized molestation, but I'm just saying, if in some weird scenario, someone's like, you want to be molested by the dirt bag, dirt bag Johnny over there, or do you want to be molested by Boso, McTicklefinger? Ticklefinger.

I don't know where that Boso-McTicklefinger just made that up. I'm going to go with dirt bag. I don't know where that bow is, so it's a mctickle finger. Just made that up. I'm gonna go with dirt bag. I don't want either one. I'm in Boulder bad, but I feel like I can more easily mentally recover from a non-clown. And five, Stephen King has ever murdered. I feel like there's a very good chance. It'll be at the hands of a clown because if you're a clown, tweet apology aside, you know, that doesn't matter because no one in history has given your career field more negative PR than he did with the publication of it. Like that had to, I have no stast back this up, but clown work had to drop off dramatically in the late eighties.

And that's it. And that's time suck, man. We learned a lot about the 2016 phenomenon, about why people are scared of clowns, about why I'm scared of clowns. I don't know if this one makes you, I hope this thing makes you feel better. I mean, but it is a phobia, so irrational. So, you know, it's by nature, rational.

So if you're scared, you can still be scared. But it did make me feel a little better to know that all these sightings are nonsense. It's just people, it's like a big foot craze. You know, I guess we haven't had one like that, but it's like, you know, when people start talking about, you know, Chubacabra or some shit and there's there, you know, eyewitness accounts

or a bunch of UFO sightings, that one maybe is real. I wanna hold onto that one being real. But you know what I mean? You know, it's just like this mass hysteria. And next week, I wanna find out we're Halloween itself. We're gonna go full Halloween because it's gonna be on Halloween and just find out, you know, what's up, what's up with that?

And take a second to rate time suck. And whatever platform you happen to listen to it on, the more ratings it gets, the more people notice it, the more people listen, the more incentive I have to do more research and have more fun and deliver episode after episode I really enjoy this a lot. And I got five albums on iTunes Amazon you know if you want to check out my stand up or make a Dan Cummins Pandora station you can do that that's easy. And again man reach out you know you just email me if you don't want to go to Twitter

or Facebook or Instagram Dan at Dan Cumminstv. You can give me suggestions on the podcast or tell me what you want to hear in a future episode. And that's it, and I'll talk to you next week on TimeSack. Thank you.