Clown in the Woods - Greenville, SC

[8bitagent]

The reports made to police seem to be getting even more strange.
Another city in SC reporting disturbing clown sightings targetting kids

http://fox6now.com/2016/09/01/this-is-s ... -carolina/
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2016/ ... nburg.html

I forget how to embed youtube videos, but here comedian Patton Oswalt talks about his own horrifying seeing a clown in the woods, which he called "ball retractingly terrifying"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLLa7JVoCX0

[82_28]

cLLa7JVoCX0

Get this bit and then hit the youtube button after you've highlighted it.

[elfismiles]

i was just about to post that patton oswalt clown joke bit.

ETA: And speaking of PO and clowns...



Only 10 more years until we can see The Day The Clown Cried
By Katie Rife@futureschlock
Aug 6, 2015
http://www.avclub.com/article/only-10-m ... rie-223497

Patton Oswalt on the Time He Enlisted Bob Odenkirk and David Cross to Perform Jerry Lewis’s Holocaust Clown Screenplay
http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/patton-o ... lewis.html

[8bitagent]

http://myfox8.com/2016/09/05/two-clown- ... -12-hours/

Clown tries to lure kids in Winston-Salem, two clown sightings reported

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Winston-Salem police say someone in a clown costume tried to lure kids into the woods Sunday night.

The incident happened in the 1200 block of East 29th Street off Hwy. 52 about 8:30 p.m.

The "clown" was described as wearing white overalls, white gloves, red shoes with red bushy hair, a white face and a red nose.
The suspect allegedly tried to lure the kids with treats. The suspect was reportedly seen by two children and heard, but not seen, by one adult. The suspect fled the area when officers arrived.
A second clown sighting happened just after midnight in the 1600 block of Hope Lane, two miles from the first sighting. Officers attempted to locate the subject but were unsuccessful.
Both spots where clowns were reported are in very residential areas near parks/woods.

[Luther Blissett]

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2 ... nders.html

[elfismiles]

Thursday, October 13, 2005
Phantoms, Daemons and Finders

They got mystery written all over their forehead
They kill babies in the crib and say only the good die young - Bob Dylan

Phantom Clowns
...


http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2 ... nders.html

[8bitagent]

5 minute report today from Fox on the rash of child luring clown sightings happening in NC and SC. What's interesting is that there's none of the jokey tone when UFOs are reported on.
creepy stuff
http://video.foxnews.com/v/511437791100 ... show-clips

edit: apparently even more clown sightings reported to police, by both older folks and children in the last 24 hours
http://abc11.com/news/third-clown-sight ... a/1500194/
http://myfox8.com/2016/09/06/third-clow ... reensboro/

[Novem5er]

At the end of Jeff's article (listed above by Luther - thanks!), he shares an excerpt about an investigation into The Finders cult. Other than possible kidnapping and child abuse (all charges were subsequently dropped), they don't have much to do with clowns, but they were/are certainly strange. I did some googling and found a great article talking about The Finders and their leader, including an interview and tour of their base north of Washington, D.C. Again, nothing to do with clowns, but an interesting read.

In Culpeper, where everybody knows everybody, these disembodied messages from God-knows-where have been the talk of the town for more than a year, inspiring as much contempt as conjecture. For every local watching the marquee to test his word power (“I look up everything they put up there, but ‘ataraxia’ wasn’t in the dictionary”), another is convinced his intelligence is being insulted (“There’s no such thing as free money”). Others discern a diabolical plot, swearing it’s Satan playing a one-sided game of Scrabble that Culpeper is sure to lose (“They’re trying to mess with our minds”).

Culpeper gradually realized it had a cult within its bucolic midst. After much head-scratching and compounding of rumors, it became apparent that the messages were being sent by the Finders, a secretive utopian group that over the decades has made its home in various places around the Washington area, most recently in Culpeper. Who the Finders are and what they are doing in Culpeper is a deeper mystery. Did the Finders buy the theater just to have a billboard with which to freak out the locals? Nobody knows.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13010819/finders-keeper

[82_28]

I don't know if this counts as a clown but something similar here I guess.

Reports: Man in 'Scream' mask terrifies Burke-Gilman jogger

Seattle police are looking for someone who scared a woman on the Burke-Gilman Trail Sunday while wearing the mask from the "Scream" movies.

A woman was jogging on the trail about 9 p.m. near the 5200 block of 40th Avenue Northeast when she heard a "whoosh" behind her, police reports indicate. She turned to find a man wearing a "Ghostface" mask standing in the bushes and staring at her.

He reportedly began to walk toward her, prompting the woman to scream and run to a nearby grocery store, where she called 911. Police checked out the area but couldn't find the masked suspect.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/ar ... 206174.php

[Burnt Hill]

At the end of Jeff's article (listed above by Luther - thanks!), he shares an excerpt about an investigation into The Finders cult. Other than possible kidnapping and child abuse (all charges were subsequently dropped), they don't have much to do with clowns, but they were/are certainly strange. I did some googling and found a great article talking about The Finders and their leader, including an interview and tour of their base north of Washington, D.C. Again, nothing to do with clowns, but an interesting read.

In Culpeper, where everybody knows everybody, these disembodied messages from God-knows-where have been the talk of the town for more than a year, inspiring as much contempt as conjecture. For every local watching the marquee to test his word power (“I look up everything they put up there, but ‘ataraxia’ wasn’t in the dictionary”), another is convinced his intelligence is being insulted (“There’s no such thing as free money”). Others discern a diabolical plot, swearing it’s Satan playing a one-sided game of Scrabble that Culpeper is sure to lose (“They’re trying to mess with our minds”).

Culpeper gradually realized it had a cult within its bucolic midst. After much head-scratching and compounding of rumors, it became apparent that the messages were being sent by the Finders, a secretive utopian group that over the decades has made its home in various places around the Washington area, most recently in Culpeper. Who the Finders are and what they are doing in Culpeper is a deeper mystery. Did the Finders buy the theater just to have a billboard with which to freak out the locals? Nobody knows.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13010819/finders-keeper

Discussed here-
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=37950&start=15&hilit=ataraxia

[Cordelia]

NYT & Professional clowns weigh in..........

Creepy Clown Reports Continue, and Clowns Are Not Happy

By CHRISTOPHER MELE SEPT. 7, 2016


Most clowns are professional entertainers, like this one at a convention in 2015. They call scary depictions a fad and blame the media for spreading panic about police reports of sightings.

First there were the reports in Greenville County, S.C., of creepy clowns offering children money to come into the woods. There was also the mysterious late-night sighting of a clown waving under a streetlight.

That caused alarm and prompted the police to increase patrols where the costumed figures had been spotted.

Now, two weeks later and 180 miles away, separate tales of clowns trying to lure children into wooded areas in Winston-Salem, N.C., have set off concerns in that city.

None of this sits well with clowns. Mike Becvar, a professional clown who goes by the name Sir Toony Van Dukes and who runs the website Just For Clowns, said anxiety about the incidents is being needlessly stoked by national news coverage.

“I wonder how the reporting on the story would go if instead of clowns, people were dressing up as aliens, witches, zombies or doctors?” he asked in an email. “What if they were wearing hospital scrubs, lab coats and a stethoscope around their neck. Would the news report that doctors were hiding in the woods trying to lure kids with candy?”

Nevertheless, the police in two states are responding aggressively to reports of costumed strangers.

Continued......
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/cr ... .html?_r=0

Speaking of professional clowns.......


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nop6Aoee-HU

My sib remembered when the circus was in town, accompanying our father early one morning to interview Kelly for the newspaper. Said he was probably drunk (Kelly too ).

[8bitagent]

Kids in Lexington told police a vehicle with a clown and a man in a bear suit approached them yesterday
http://www.wltx.com/news/local/police-p ... /314549418

Lexington, SC (WLTX) - Officers at the Lexington Police department are investigating claims that a man in a clown suit and another person in a bear suit were spotted in an apartment complex there.
Around 6 p.m. Monday, officers were called to the Park North Apartments on Brookhill West.

A group of juveniles said the driver of a car was dressed in a clown costume and the passenger was in a bear suit. One of the kids said the clown got out of the car and tried to speak with them. The other said the clown never got out of the car or spoke to the kids. The vehicle was described as a gold or silver SUV with no license plates.
Though there were inconsistencies in the report, police say they are taking it seriously, and will fully investigate the claims. Officers have increased patrols in the area and will be present during bus pickup and drop off times at the apartment complex.

Another Fayetteville clown sighting near the woods
http://wncn.com/2016/09/07/clown-sighti ... olice-say/

Another Wilmington clown sighting by a child in the woods
http://www.starnewsonline.com/news/2016 ... wn-reports

"I didn’t believe it, but she came in screaming. She saw it running in circles and it knelt down and tilted its head to the side and looked at her," Collins said Wednesday.

Clown sightings now in Laurinburg NC according to police
http://laurinburgexchange.com/news/loca ... burg-woods

Police say there have been two separate reports from Laurinburg residents who say they have seen someone dressed as a clown near Cleveland Street this week. The local sightings come on the heels of reports in North Carolina and South Carolina and elsewhere of people in clown costumes trying to lure kids into the woods with candy. A clown was also reportedly seen in Winston-Salem on Monday trying to lure children into the forest with treats
Last week, a 14-year-old Columbus, Ohio, boy was attacked by a man in a clown mask wielding a knife.
South Carolina law enforcement have also stepped up patrols after getting new reports of people dressed as clowns trying to lure children into the woods.

NJ State Police warn parents about possible creepy clown sightings
http://pix11.com/2016/09/08/nj-state-po ... sightings/

In 1981, Clowns Allegedly Appeared Across Boston, Similar to Current Clown Panic
A deep dive into "phantom clowns" leads us to '80s Boston, "The Paddler," and Donald Trump.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/th ... lown-panic

[km artlu]

The eerie mystery of this is hard to correlate with rational motivations. How can they 100% evade capture? (which I believe was the case in '81 also) They're not exactly inconspicuous, what with the clown garb and makeup.

Organization and logistics are implied here; resources; funding. Cui bono?

[Cordelia]

Hope this doesn't lure the creepy ones north.


Stephen King weighs in on those creepy Carolina clown sightings

"While clowns struck some people as creepy before the 1986 publication of Stephen King’s “IT,” the author’s book about a supernatural being that takes the form of a terrifying clown undoubtedly did not boost positive feelings toward clowns.
Whole generations have grown up associating red noses, oversized shoes and white face paint with otherworldly horror and serial killers. And now, some clowns are playing on people’s fears in North Carolina, where police are investigating sightings of people dressed as clowns wearing scary Halloween masks.

Scary clowns have been reported in a sort of “harlequin triangle” in the Greenville, Greensboro, Winston-Salem section of the Tarheel State. Although there’s nothing illegal in those municipalities about wearing masks or dressing up as a menacing clown, Greenville police have said anyone found terrorizing the public will face arrest.

The Bangor Daily News decided to ask Bangor’s resident clown expert, Stephen King, about why people find clowns scary. If anyone would know, he would.

“When I wrote my novel ‘IT’, I set it in Bangor, because it’s a town with a tough and violent history. I chose Pennywise the Clown as the face which the monster originally shows the kiddies because kids love clowns, but they also fear them; clowns with their white faces and red lips are so different and so grotesque compared to ‘normal’ people,” King wrote this week in an email to the Bangor Daily News. “Take a little kid to the circus and show him a clown, he’s more apt to scream with fear than laugh.”

King attributed the clown scare in the Carolinas to a recurring phenomenon: the supernatural bogeyman who lurks in the shadows. Phantom clown scares have happened before, most notably in the 1980s in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona and a few other places.

“I suspect it’s a kind of low-level hysteria, like Slender Man, or the so-called Bunny Man, who purportedly lurked in Fairfax County, Virginia, wearing a white hood with long ears and attacking people with a hatchet or an axe,” King said. “The clown furor will pass, as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying.”

Although King has helped give clowns a bad name, fear of clowns does pre-date “IT.” The Joker from the Batman comics is a kind of deformed, psychotic clown. Serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 people in Illinois in the 1970s, had a day job performing as a clown at children’s birthday parties and at fundraisers. Fear of clowns even has an unofficial Latin name — “coulrophobia,” which, while not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 listing of mental illnesses, is certainly a real fear for some folks in North Carolina right now, as well as for any 5-year-old that bursts into tears when a circus clown approaches.

Actor “Lon Chaney said (or is reputed to have said), ‘There’s nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.’ Meaning, I suppose, a clown seen outside of its normal milieu, in the circus or at the fair,” King said. “If I saw a clown lurking under a lonely bridge (or peering up at me from a sewer grate, with or without balloons), I’d be scared, too.”

In other words, clowns on the lam are no laughing matter."
http://bangordailynews.com/2016/09/08/n ... ina-scare/

I kinda like clowns so feel sympathy for those who can't hitch a ride to work anymore.

[Cordelia]

Clever lyrics and (coincidental) timing.

NEW YORK — Isn’t it rich? Broadway legend and Hillary Clinton supporter Barbra Streisand lampooned maybe-billionaire Donald Trump before a crowd of wealthy Democrats on Friday night, to the tune of “Send In The Clowns.”

Yes, that Broadway classic from 1973 that you now cannot get out of your head (you’re welcome) was repurposed as a gag at a Clinton fundraiser targeting gay donors and featuring Streisand. Clinton spoke and Streisand sang seven songs at the New York eatery Cipriani, part of a blitz of fundraising events organized recently for Clinton as the presidential race tightened.

Unlike most previous fundraising events, this one was opened to Clinton’s traveling press pool for news coverage.

Herewith, the parody lyrics, with apologies to Stephen Sondheim. Extra points if you can name the original musical.

VERSE 1
IS HE THAT RICH?
MAYBE HE’S POOR?
’TIL HE REVEALS HIS RETURNS
WHO CAN BE SURE?
WHO NEEDS THIS CLOWN?

VERSE 2
SOMETHING’S AMISS
I DON'T APPROVE
IF HE WERE RUNNING THE FREE WORLD,
WHERE WOULD WE MOVE?
NAME ME A TOWN?
JUST WHO IS THIS CLOWN?

BRIDGE
AND WHEN WE THOUGHT WE’D HEARD IT ALL
HUFFING AND PUFFING ABOUT HIS BIG FANTASY WALL
MAKING HIS ENTRANCE ON STAGE...
HE JUST SHOOTS FROM THE HIP
HE’S FULL OF BULL
HE’S LOST HIS GRIP!

VERSE 3
AND IF BY CHANCE
HE GETS TO HEAV’N
EVEN UP THERE HE’LL DECLARE...
CHAPTER ELEV’N!
WHO’D HIRE THIS CLOWN?
THIS SAD VULGAR CLOWN...
“YOU'RE FIRED” YOU CLOWN!

BRIDGE 2
HILLARY’S KIND...
SMART THAT IS CLEAR
WHILE SHE IS GIVING US HOPE...TRUMP IS SELLING US FEAR
LOOK HOW HE CHANGES HIS VIEWS EVERY TIME THAT HE SPEAKS
IT’S LIE AFTER LIE
CAN'T TAKE EIGHT MORE WEEKS!

VERSE 4
THIS IS NO FARCE
MAYBE HE’S BROKE?
IS THIS “THE ART OF HIS DEAL”
OR SOME AWFUL JOKE?
YOU’VE GOT TO ADMIT...
THIS SILLY HALF-WIT...
IS SO FULL OF ­...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... n-the-news