Excerpt from the podcast's transcript:
Chelsey: All right. So this came in 2016. A lot of people were like, Oh, it's because It came out, but it's not because It came out in 2018. So part of what people believe sparked it was, um, outside of sort of cultural consciousness, was the low budget horror director named Adam Kraus. He had a creepy clown stand in the street holding black balloons, trying to make a viral marketing campaign for his short film, which was called Gags. Um, and then a bunch of people called the police and started taking pictures spreading on social media. Another possible beginning point was, uh, have you guys watched the, well Mike, you probably haven't but Sarah, have you watched the Wrinkles, the clown documentary on Hulu?
Chelsey: So Wrinkles was this character created by someone who has remained anonymous. He just kind of seems like a normal dude. And they started filming like creepy clown stuff and spreading it, like found footage. So he put up all these stickers that said, Wrinkles, the clown, with a phone number, and you could call this phone number and there was a creepy message, or he would actually answer the phone. And you know, he used a ‘Hey kid’ kind of voice. And, and he also kind of created this idea that parents could call so that they're to scare their kids into obedience. So parents would actually call and leave messages, not actually wanting Wrinkles to come, but you could hear the kid just like crying and screaming in the background is being like, we're going to call Wrinkles. We're going to have them come over if you don't eat your dinner. But it was a boogeyman scenario. And it was coming a couple of years before the actual panic. So 2016, we've got suddenly this group of kids in Greenville, South Carolina are saying that a clown was trying to lure them in the woods, but in perfect 2016 fashion, it was not with candy, but with large amounts of cash.
Chelsey: So that these, these clowns flashed green lasers at them, came to their door in the night, rattling chains and banging around.
Mike: He left a trail of tide pods in the woods for them to follow. Very 2016.
Chelsey: Anyway, of course, in classic fashion, the mom of one of the children's sort of fuels this by contacting the local news and coming on and they interview a lot of the children who were again, like about seven years old and it's so cute. And you know, he's like,*in child voice* “and then I saw a clown in the woods, and he pointed at me.” It's just really darling. But the mother is like, they might, she might as well be leading like some new coalition against clowns. I feel like she's like a MAD, like mothers against drunk driving, thing going.
Sarah: Mothers against forest clowns.
Chelsey: Exactly. So she reports it. Um, so then more and more people start reporting it because it's on the news. Right. And so one woman says there's a clown with a blinking nose, near a dumpster, but I kind of think it's just this weird attention thing, right? Like the poison Halloween candy, you have people jamming tacks into candy and then putting it on Facebook. Right. And it gets like 40,000 shares or something.
Mike: Is there any evidence that there were ever any actual clowns?
Chelsey: There is no evidence, but I think that some of it had to be because if I was a teenager and this was going on, there's a part of me that might have, like, done some jokes.
Mike: Well, this is the thing is yeah. If we're in the middle of like a clown panic, it actually makes a lot of sense to go dress as a clown and fuck with people.
Chelsey: And I'm sure that happened. So basically those same children that kind of were the first ones in South Carolina told police that a clown lived in a house near a pond at the end of a trail through the woods, which is so fantastically fairytale.
Mike: That's a Thomas Kincaid painting.
Chelsey: And so the police did find this property and found nothing clown related or threatening. Anyway, uh, it kept going, reporting clowns with knives, jumping out of abandoned houses and bushes chasing kids from bus stops. Teenagers started making threats to schools posing as evil clowns, likely to get out tests.
Mike: Oh my God. Kids did that at my school too, but they use bomb threats.
Chelsey: Okay. So this is the best one. All right. So this woman said that she was smoking on her porch at 4:00 a.m. and a man wearing a striped outfit and a clown mask and a red wig walked directly up to her, grabbed her by the throat and said, “I should just kill you now. And then some students and teachers would wish they were never born at the junior and senior high school today.”
Sarah: The junior and senior high school?
Chelsey: Yeah. And then just walked away after that. So yeah, that didn't happen.
Sarah: The junior and senior high school, Mike.
Mike: That doesn't even make sense.
Sarah: When people make up stories about criminals, you can often tell when something is sort of a myth made to circulate on Facebook, partly because the killer always, like they don't kill you. They just say something scary and then leave or whatever. Like people explain themselves to you and don't kill you. And like, say things that are meant to be scary to an audience. Like something that you learned from a horror movie.
Mike: I cannot believe people fell for this.
Sarah: So clowns become a way to get out of school. That's brilliant.
Mike: Do local news reporters, like I do this thing sometimes where people send me a tip and then I just don't do a story on it because it's fake. Do people not know that they can do that?
Sarah: But Mike, if there is a killer clown up there and you didn't report on it, you feel pretty foolish after he did something terrible at the junior and senior high school.
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