| When the Clowns Roamed the Streets Looking for Your Children |
For some reason, parents believe clown to be entertaining to young children. They invite them into their
houses and point them out at the circus instead of focusing on the people swinging over their kid's heads.
Bozo was a gentle soul, but the majority of clowns are hated and feared by a vast majority of the
population. They are a contradiction. They smile and laugh but intrude on our personal space and don't
seem to take no for an answer. Most of all, they frighten us. In a recent survey, clowns were ranked just
below snakes and spiders as the physical thing people feared most. Pennywise, the clown from the horror
novel It and that toy clown from Poltergeist are just two of the lasting images of terror with painted faces.
It is difficult to say why we fear clowns, but there is something about the makeup and nature of these free
spirits that conjures nights alone as a child wondering what exactly was under your bed.
On Halloween when people dress up as the things that frighten them, the sight of a person wearing an evil
clown Halloween costume is almost inevitable.
But in 1981 the horror of clowns was real for the people in the Metro area of Boston and soon the fear
began to spring up in other parts of the country. The threat from these clowns, like our unreasonable fear
of them, might have been more in our imagination.
Early that spring in certain districts in Boston reports began to circulate of small children being abducted by
a man or groups of men dressed like clowns. It is impossible to trace to its beginnings, but the entire affair
lasted several month without a single confirmed attack. Yet there were dozens of reports. The reports
came mostly from children themselves and they were given enough weight for the Boston Police to issue
am official warning in May of 1981.
Most of the reports were similar in content. A child, varying in age, would report that either he or
someone he knew had been approached by a person or persons dressed like a clown. Usually the child
said it was another little boy or girl, often matching a description very much like theirs, who they did not
know who fell victim. Sometimes the clown was nice and offered them something, but more often then not
the clown tried to force them into his van. The physical description of each clown varied. Often it was just
the face that was painted up or the upper body while the lower half maintained a sinister look. One clown
was half naked. Another had a clown face, but wore a black shirt with Satan on it and jeans. Most of the
reports had the clown owning a black or dark blue fan, sometimes with a ladder on it.
Reports piled in. Warnings were issued, but no one could ever back up that anything has actually
happened. Missing children numbers in Boston where actually down, and a few of the adult witnesses of
the children who were missing had no reports of clowns. No clown was ever found with a missing child,
nor were any children who had been taken and made their way back home willing to say it was clowns that
had taken them.
The false reports led to clowns being seen everywhere.
Boston was not an isolated incident. The reports extended themselves East Boston, Cambridge, Everett,
Brookline and then to Canton and Randolph, but it was when the story hit nationwide that people took
greater notice. Providence, RI had an explosion of Clown related abductions followed closely by Kansas
City and then by other parts of the country. It was like the clowns were taking over the country and they
wanted our children. After hundred of reports, not a single clown was arrested and eventually the hysteria
died down.
There were lasting effects though. Someone heard I was doing this report and said he remembered the
reports in Everett from when he was a kid. He was forced to walk with his little sister every time he left
the house and his mother and grandmother recited stories of the reports as if any moment the clown would
come through the door and take them. Another reported she loved clown growing up until the Clown
Craze of 81. She now fears even the sight of them, and traces her fear back to walking home from school
expecting one to come out of the bushes or come out from under her bed. My cousin had experiences
with the clown legend as well. At the time she was living with our grandparents, and she vividly remembers
making a huge sign that read "Beware of the Clowns" and hanging it by the fence in their front yard. After
911, the legend surfaced again, this time combining two urban legends in one. The clowns were now in the
malls of America ready to place bombs in stores and take children out to their white vans. These reports
more than doubled around Halloween.
There is little doubt the attacks were the product of overactive imaginations. Jan Brunvard reports one
child reported a well-armed clown pulled an Uzi out and fired before the little tyke was able to beat up the
full grown attacker and force him to run away. While this might be an extreme case, it seems amazing that
juvenile witnesses would carry so much weight. A few years later the country would be rocked again by
similar children reporting they were being used in satanic rituals and then sex abuse scandals a few years
after that, but this outbreak might have a more concrete explanation. Only months before the first incidents
were reported the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murder. The most famous pictures of
Gacy, and the ones more often seen on news reports, was him dressed a clown, ready to entertain
children. He is probably not the soul reason for the reports, but kid's heads have a strange way of
processing information, and parents were undoubtedly influenced by the reports. Mix this with the ever
present fear of clown most children have. Hysteria was reinforced by other false tales and a legend was
born.
houses and point them out at the circus instead of focusing on the people swinging over their kid's heads.
Bozo was a gentle soul, but the majority of clowns are hated and feared by a vast majority of the
population. They are a contradiction. They smile and laugh but intrude on our personal space and don't
seem to take no for an answer. Most of all, they frighten us. In a recent survey, clowns were ranked just
below snakes and spiders as the physical thing people feared most. Pennywise, the clown from the horror
novel It and that toy clown from Poltergeist are just two of the lasting images of terror with painted faces.
It is difficult to say why we fear clowns, but there is something about the makeup and nature of these free
spirits that conjures nights alone as a child wondering what exactly was under your bed.
On Halloween when people dress up as the things that frighten them, the sight of a person wearing an evil
clown Halloween costume is almost inevitable.
But in 1981 the horror of clowns was real for the people in the Metro area of Boston and soon the fear
began to spring up in other parts of the country. The threat from these clowns, like our unreasonable fear
of them, might have been more in our imagination.
Early that spring in certain districts in Boston reports began to circulate of small children being abducted by
a man or groups of men dressed like clowns. It is impossible to trace to its beginnings, but the entire affair
lasted several month without a single confirmed attack. Yet there were dozens of reports. The reports
came mostly from children themselves and they were given enough weight for the Boston Police to issue
am official warning in May of 1981.
Most of the reports were similar in content. A child, varying in age, would report that either he or
someone he knew had been approached by a person or persons dressed like a clown. Usually the child
said it was another little boy or girl, often matching a description very much like theirs, who they did not
know who fell victim. Sometimes the clown was nice and offered them something, but more often then not
the clown tried to force them into his van. The physical description of each clown varied. Often it was just
the face that was painted up or the upper body while the lower half maintained a sinister look. One clown
was half naked. Another had a clown face, but wore a black shirt with Satan on it and jeans. Most of the
reports had the clown owning a black or dark blue fan, sometimes with a ladder on it.
Reports piled in. Warnings were issued, but no one could ever back up that anything has actually
happened. Missing children numbers in Boston where actually down, and a few of the adult witnesses of
the children who were missing had no reports of clowns. No clown was ever found with a missing child,
nor were any children who had been taken and made their way back home willing to say it was clowns that
had taken them.
The false reports led to clowns being seen everywhere.
Boston was not an isolated incident. The reports extended themselves East Boston, Cambridge, Everett,
Brookline and then to Canton and Randolph, but it was when the story hit nationwide that people took
greater notice. Providence, RI had an explosion of Clown related abductions followed closely by Kansas
City and then by other parts of the country. It was like the clowns were taking over the country and they
wanted our children. After hundred of reports, not a single clown was arrested and eventually the hysteria
died down.
There were lasting effects though. Someone heard I was doing this report and said he remembered the
reports in Everett from when he was a kid. He was forced to walk with his little sister every time he left
the house and his mother and grandmother recited stories of the reports as if any moment the clown would
come through the door and take them. Another reported she loved clown growing up until the Clown
Craze of 81. She now fears even the sight of them, and traces her fear back to walking home from school
expecting one to come out of the bushes or come out from under her bed. My cousin had experiences
with the clown legend as well. At the time she was living with our grandparents, and she vividly remembers
making a huge sign that read "Beware of the Clowns" and hanging it by the fence in their front yard. After
911, the legend surfaced again, this time combining two urban legends in one. The clowns were now in the
malls of America ready to place bombs in stores and take children out to their white vans. These reports
more than doubled around Halloween.
There is little doubt the attacks were the product of overactive imaginations. Jan Brunvard reports one
child reported a well-armed clown pulled an Uzi out and fired before the little tyke was able to beat up the
full grown attacker and force him to run away. While this might be an extreme case, it seems amazing that
juvenile witnesses would carry so much weight. A few years later the country would be rocked again by
similar children reporting they were being used in satanic rituals and then sex abuse scandals a few years
after that, but this outbreak might have a more concrete explanation. Only months before the first incidents
were reported the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murder. The most famous pictures of
Gacy, and the ones more often seen on news reports, was him dressed a clown, ready to entertain
children. He is probably not the soul reason for the reports, but kid's heads have a strange way of
processing information, and parents were undoubtedly influenced by the reports. Mix this with the ever
present fear of clown most children have. Hysteria was reinforced by other false tales and a legend was
born.