Not a laughing matter: the killer clowns of 2016
Emma Ogren, Assistant Editor
Photo courtesy of Sandy Millar on Unsplash
The year is 2016. “Closer” by Halsey and the Chainsmokers is topping the charts, Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston just started dating and the first season of “Stranger Things” has just been released by Netflix.
Another marker of this milestone year is what Fox Carolina dubbed as the “killer clown panic.”
It all began on August 21, 2016, in Greenville, South Carolina. Local law enforcement got a tip about men dressed as clowns lurking outside of the Fleetwood Manor Apartment complex, which is located about 40 minutes from North Greenville University.
Children who lived in the complex reported clowns who stood behind the building and tried to lure the kids to come into the woods with them. They did so by offering the children cash.
This started occurring in surrounding areas after the first sighting. There were also reports of them being seen at Emerald Commons, which is another apartment complex that is 25 minutes away from NGU.
Because of these incidents, the Greenville County Sheriff’s office implemented around the clock police patrols and 10 p.m. curfews.
Also occurring in August of 2016, a grainy photo set in Green Bay, Wisconsin was released to the public. In the photo was a clown sporting black and white face paint and holding a few black balloons. With this addition to the Greenville clowns, America fell into a killer clown heyday.
Now, the clown found in Wisconsin wasn’t like all of the other ones. This specific sighting actually turned out to be a marketing ploy for a short horror film titled, “Gags.”
After these instances, by October 2016, there had been reports of clown sightings in nearly all 50 U.S. states. This hysteria also grew to be an international phenomenon with the clowns being seen in countries such as Ireland, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Because of the nature of the situation, businesses that relied on clowns were damaged financially. Circuses and birthday entertainment slowed massively during this time.
All in all, 12 arrests were made during this time that linked to the killer clown panic. These mostly had to do with false tips and alleged threats. A few real clowns, however, were arrested for their threats, mainly against teenagers.
One example of these threats was 31-year-old Corey Berry. In Maine, he was drunk, wearing a clown mask and had tapped a machete to his arm, which had been amputated. He told police that he was just trying to play a prank, according to the BBC.
There was one death that came out of this as well. A 16-year-old boy, Christian Torres, was stabbed to death by one of these clowns in Reading, Pennsylvania. The assailant, 29-year-old Avery Valentin-Bair, wore a clown mask while committing the crime. He was found guilty of first-degree murder.
Juliana Hernandez, sophomore digital media and marketing major, remembers the craze. When it happened, she was just 10 years old.
“I didn’t have a phone, I just heard people talk about it after the fact,” she said. “It was really scary because I didn’t know exactly what was going on and heard things about the clowns through word of mouth.”
