UK Beware of clowns

Norfolk police warn of alarming clown epidemic

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On May 6, 1981, the Boston police, responding to persistent complaints, warned parents and school officials that men in clown suits were harassing elementary schoolchildren. One of the men was seen wearing a clown suit just from the waist up; from the waist down he was naked. According to reports, the clown had driven a black van near the recreational horseshoe site of Franklin Park in the Roxbury area of Boston. He also appeared in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston near the Mary F. Curley School.

A day earlier, in the adjoining city of Brookline, two clown men reportedly tried to lure children into their van with offers of candy. The Brookline police had a good description of the van: older model, black, with ladders on the side, a broken front headlight, and no hubcaps. After the clown men and van had been seen near the Lawrence Elementary School on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, the police told school administrators to be “extra cautious.”

By May, 8 reports of clown men in vans harassing children had come in from East Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Randolph, and other cities near Boston. Police were stopping vehicles with clowns delivering birthday greetings and “clown-a-grams,” but no child molesters were arrested.

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The focus of activity now shifts a thousand miles west to Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. On the afternoon of May 22, police cruisers on the Missouri side crisscrossed the city chasing a knife-wielding clown in a yellow van that had been reported at six different elementary schools. Earlier in the day, at eight thirty, a mother had watched a yellow van approach her children as they walked to a school bus stop. The van stopped, and someone inside spoke to her two girls, who then screamed and fled; the vehicle sped away.

The children told their mother that a man dressed as a clown and carrying a knife had ordered them inside. By noon the police had received dozens of similar reports- of a clown in a yellow van. The calls did not taper off until five o’ clock that afternoon.

Residents of the two Kansas cities called it the Killer Clown Affair. Some parents in Kansas were even keeping their children out of school. Before long, “group hysteria” was touted as the explanation for the reports. But incidents continued. The police and volunteers were never able to capture any clowns, but witnesses insisted the costumed figures they had seen were real and not imaginary.

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wfgodot said:

Love the Guardian headline:

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zwiebel said:

Lol, I was just thinking this could be a dangerous pastime in the US, what with all the firearms. Scrolling down at that link, I see there's an American saying exactly that.

I think clown person is more likely to come unstuck by crossing paths with a walker of a tough dog in England - my dog's not aggressive but even he would hit the roof if he came across that at night.

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zwiebel said:

Now it's going too far. Chucky's joined the act.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/scunthorpe-chucky-mask-armed-raider-2911591

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