In the wake of a growing national hysteria over “creepy clowns” which are reportedly menacing communities across America, a spokesman for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College has expressed great disappointment and lamentation.
“It is troubling because it’s a distraction for our clowns who just want to make people laugh and smile,” Feld Entertainment Inc. vice president for communication Stephen Payne told The Chronicle of Higher Education earlier this week. “That’s what our clowns are dedicating to doing.”
Feld Entertainment, the parent company of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, runs the circus’s clown college (and also Monster Jam, Disney on Ice! and much else).
The Ringling Bros. Clown College — which is totally and completely a real thing — has received “intermittent” requests for comment in the last several weeks, Payne said.
During the same time period, a few odd clown sightings in a couple Southern states has morphed into a nationwide creepy clown apocalypse.
In addition to North Carolina and South Carolina, America’s creepy-clown panic has now reached Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Texas, New Mexico, Oregon, Michigan, and Washington.
Reports of creepy clowns generally tend to involve a school in some way. Police say most reports have turned out to be hoaxes.
On Tuesday, officials at Syracuse University published a two-page set of creepy-clown-sighting guidelines which warn students not to attack any clowns they see, as this is likely to violate the law. (RELATED: Syracuse University Warns Students: Please Do Not Assault Clowns)
The guide sagely advises students them to immediately call the police — instead of attacking random clowns — if they witness a clown or a person wearing a clown mask.
“You should stay away from the person, and head in the opposite direction,” it says.
The guide further informs students that dressing as a clown in the near future is likely a very bad idea.
On Monday, approximately 500 Pennsylvania State University students responded to rumors of a creepy-clown sighting by gathering on campus in what The Chronicle describes as “a semi-spontaneous panic.”
Campus police said they received dozens of calls from people in the Penn State community concerned about the clown. However, no actual clown was ever spotted.
Meanwhile, in New Haven, Connecticut, school district officials announced this week that students are not allowed to wear clown costumes or other “symbols of terror” in the weeks leading up to Halloween.(RELATED: Clown Costumes, ‘Symbols of Terror’ Banned In Connecticut Schools)
The New Haven school district made the decision due to an Instagram account called “phillyclown33,” which allegedly has a threatening bio.
In September, legendary horror-fiction writer Stephen King described America’s rash of strange, creepy clown sightings — then on a much smaller scale — as unnerving. (RELATED: This Rash Of Carolina Clown Sightings Even Has Stephen King Freaked Out, You Guys)
“Kids love clowns, but they also fear them,” King told the Bangor Daily News — his hometown newspaper. “Clowns with their white faces and red lips are so different and so grotesque compared to ‘normal’ people.”
“Take a little kid to the circus and show him a clown, he’s more apt to scream with fear than laugh,” King added.
King developed his expertise on the subject of terrifying clowns, of course, when he wrote the 1986 novel “It,” which involves a demonic, supernatural entity that appears as a clown to prey on young children.
“I suspect it’s a kind of low-level hysteria, like Slender Man, or the so-called Bunny Man, who purportedly lurked in Fairfax County, Virginia, wearing a white hood with long ears and attacking people with a hatchet or an axe,” King thoughtfully explained. “The clown furor will pass, as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College holds tryouts for aspiring clowns each year, and is not a degree-granting institution.
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