The Great Clown Panic of 2016 spread even further over the past couple of days.
It reached the upper midwest, with a story from Wisconsin.
Two men, ages 29 and 20, were reported roaming the streets in clown garb and chasing vehicles in the early hours of Friday in this town near Green Bay...
Two days later in the neighboring town of Kimberly, police responded to reports of armed clowns in a park, one brandishing a knife, which turned out to be real, and the other a sledgehammer, which was a plastic prop. The matter was being “addressed,” the police said.
Like so:
A Minnesota soccer coach put on a clown mask as a joke. Because of the clown panic, he was fired.
He wouldn’t have done it if the gorilla costume he normally wears for some annual team tradition hadn’t been damaged.
His team took a picture of him and everything seemed fine until — you’ll want to sit down for this — it got posted on social media.
The student who made the initial report to the superintendent tells Fox 9 she was “appalled” that an adult would wear a clown mask, in light of the reports of scary clown sightings across the country. She says when she found out the person wearing the mask was the school’s soccer coach, she reached out to the superintendent.
Independent School District 15 Superintendent Troy Ferguson defends the decision to discontinue Hildre’s services.
“We all make mistakes and this was a big one,” said Ferguson. “Kids are scared and it’s not okay for adults to be part of that to make kids scared.”
Here's the fearsome photo:
Meanwhile, America's coulrophobia crossed the Atlantic. For example, this awesome Star front page:
Nothing says "America" like "a clown with a chainsaw".
Incidents have also cropped up in Kent.
The reported sighting follows a similar incident in Gravesend where a mother described how two children were taken and "tied up in a van" and "dumped in an alleyway."...
A cyclist was chased through The University of Kent's Canterbury campus by a pack of 'killer' clowns in a Ford Fiesta.
Zeph Fenn, former Criminology and Cultural Studies student at the university, says he was chased across the campus by the car at around 10pm yesterday night (October 9).
The 'killer clown' trend, which first started in America, has been sweeping the country this week. There have been several incidents of sinister looking clowns appearing across Kent, menacing, hounding, stalking and intimidating their targets.
Do we have any information about the demographics of alleged creepy clowns in Britain?
(thanks to Steven Kate, Tim Pendry, and Neurovagrant)
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