Every Halloween as we turn to rewatch the horror movies that inspire premade PartyCity costumes there comes to be frequent encounters with various creepy clown characters. The Creepy Clown has become a pillar archetype of the horror industry (i.e Pennywise, 1982 Poltergeist clown doll scene, fourth season of American Horror Story, etc), going so far as to enter the reality of the public with the viral 2016 Killer Clown movement. But clowns have not always been feared. In fact, before the end of the 1970s, the clown was an innocent children entertainer. Since then, clowns have been steadily developing a bad reputation, a downfall from children’s entertainers to horror culture icons.
Coulrophobia, the phobia of clowns, was not popularized until the 1980s, and before that, a large majority of the 20th-century clowns were seen in America as beloved children entertainers. Before the popularity of coulrophobia, American media had Bozo the clown. From the 1950s to the 1970s Bozo the Clown was the prototype for the happy clown entertainer. Bozo’s character was franchised in 1956, and by 1970 different Bozo performers were viewed and beloved by millions of Americans on TV. Bozo inhabited the role to children in the 1970s that The Wiggles filled for children in the early 2000s. He had live performances around the country and a television show, both were fairly successful and celebrated.
American attitudes towards clowns began to shift from Bozo’s innocence towards fear in 1978 when the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was arrested. Separate from his crimes, Gacey spent his free time dressing up as a clown named Pogo to entertain children in his community. Despite Gacy’s work as a clown having nothing to do with his murders, his very public trial quickly became associated with his clowning. John Wayne Gacy was deemed America’s first Killer Clown, defining the moment that attitudes towards clowns made a turn toward horror.
America’s uncertainty of clowns grew because of Gacy, and the growing fear of clowns became tied to the fear of serial killers. The concept underlying the growing fear was a newfound awareness of the human beneath the clown makeup, and the possibility for that human to be a criminal. As the 1980s progressed and a fear of clowns grew, there were Creepy Clown sightings throughout America that were the precursor to the clown sightings in 2016.
In 1981, a Boston school district sent out a memo to parents based on reports from students. The memo warned parents of clowns in vans that were offering candy to children around the school, a classic stranger danger warning that instilled fear in the community. Situations like this started to happen more across America. Reports of creepy clowns without actual evidence of the creepy clowns became quite popular. The creepy clown outbreak of the early 80s was followed up by the first instances of mainstream horror media portraying creepy clown characters. Its appearance in horror solidified the clown’s media portrayal distinguished from the children’s entertainer origins. Stephen King’s novel “It” was published in 1982 capitalizing on the public’s growing fear of clowns with the character Pennywise. Pennywise’s success led to the development of more clown characters across American horror.
The clown trend in horror steadily maintained until reaching a pinnacle in 2016, the year of the media phenomenon of killer clowns. The viral trend started with a sighting of a clown in Wisconsin that went viral, other sightings began to be reported almost immediately. Notably, the original 2016 clown sighting was a publicity stunt for a horror film that was released in 2018 titled Gags. Then later in South Carolina, children reported a (capitalist) clown trying to lure them into the woods with money. By way of social media and the phenomenon of a viral post, the second wave of creepy clown sightings was able to reach more people and cause more fear.
The clown sightings in the digital age of 2016 became strikingly modern with the clowns switching out candy for money and the presence of social media making it easier for news to spread about copycat clowns. The second wave of creepy clown sightings was not dependent on professional news outlets to report sightings, rather the ease of a tweet allowed for a Blair Witch effect leaving media consumers unaware of what was real and what was fake.
The history of clowns as culture icons leading up to 2016 has guided the once children entertainers into the nightmares of Americans. And the integration of cyberspace into the clown’s timeline has empowered the new identity of the Creepy Clown.