I just want to be your friend.
As if coulrophobes don’t have enough to fear with Halloween fast approaching, circuses replacing animals with more clowns, and kids’ birthday parties always looming above the social calendar horizon, here comes this. Law enforcement officials in several states have arrested twelve people for dressing up as clowns and threatening violence. At first thought to be the product of some children’s paranoid imaginations, police realized it was dire when threats involving clown figures turned up on Facebook. And, unless it’s on Facebook, you know it can’t be taken seriously. But it was bad enough to prompt the city of Reading, Ohio to shut down all of its schools on September 23. A number of people have reported being attacked by someone dressed as a clown since August. At least one death has been attributed to the mayhem.
The hysteria reached Texas on September 23 when officials at a middle school in Corpus Christi announced they’d removed a seventh-grader for posting a violent clown threat on Facebook. The devilish little imp stated that someone going by the name “Jax Da’Klown” planned to visit ten schools soon. Just the name “Jax Da’Klown” should incite terror in most normal people, but such a person would probably be fully accepted in the rap / hip-hop community.
Like the infamous “Black Plague” that swept across Europe and Western Asia in the mid-14th century, these murderous charlatans are popping up in unsuspecting neighborhoods. Wreaking havoc on the minds and bodies of ordinary citizens, there appears to be no immediate end to the contagion. I’m concerned the horror won’t stop, even after Halloween comes and goes. Once evil and stupidity punch holes into the human subconscious, they’re almost impossible to eliminate.
Image courtesy of “Poltergeist” (2015).
Chief Writing Wolf 