Attack of the Killer Clowns

What are we talking about? But I don't want to tell you yet. Hopefully you can Okay, don't guess, don't guess, because you are gonna guess it. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. Well, it has come to my attention by me that in some of our stories we're going way back in time, like way way back, and obviously it's because they're creepier, like when they're all super super old. But this one is not. We're not going to use like all of our mile age and the time machine. We're actually going to go just a little bit back, just a little bit. Okay, all right, I guess it's to save on guess because of an inflation, right, yeah, because our time machine clearly uses castoline. So you're some time machine effects and we're going back in time. Welcome to twenty sixteen. Oh do we even need to go back in the machine with we were literally both alive? Everything the same, everything, it just looks the same. It just Yeah, there's Facebook, there's Twitter, there's YouTube, there's printers, there's everything. I don't think there's TikTok right now, TikTok. No, there was not TikTok. We're about to take you, Michelle, into a state with wider streets, less traffic, where people decide to ride either their bikes, their cars, or their horses. I'm just kidding. I don't know. I don't know how Wisconsin is. But we're going to Wisconsin. I've never been there. I've never been there. Maybe there's cheese. I've heard there's cheese there. Yes, I think that's their mottos. All you can eat cheese everywhere. Okay, love it? And yeah. So right here in this situation, Michelle, what you're doing is you're walking home, right. You just got off of work. You work a normal job out in the field somewhere. Maybe not in the field, you work in the city, right and out in the fields of Wisconsin, I'm laboring away in the cheese fields, in the cheese mines, harvesting your cheese, pulling it out of the ground. That's where cheese comes from. Right, Okay, So your car broke down, right, they car's broken. So you've been taking the bus normal, you get used to it. Your town is safe, so there's nothing to worry about. You're just you're taking that walk many times anyway, you've grew up there, you know what it's like. I don't know if you have a Wisconsin accent. I don't know how they speak, but don't you know, is that Wisconsin? I don't know. It sounds very Canadian border Wisconsin cheesehead. Either way, I might be getting all this wrong because I added here to the story that you're walking past a patch of wooded areas and I don't know if there's probably woods there. There's generally trees places anyway, So you're passing by this patch of wooded areas, right, You're just like walking. Maybe you have a backpack and you have a lunch paiale. I don't know. You're just walking. It's full of cheese, and all you can see, like in front of you is just trees brush and the light of the sunset through the branches. Life is good, you're happy. You're a happy person. Maybe I'm skipping, yeah, Maybe you're skipping yeah, because it just seems right. You're skipping. You're listening to your iPod touch I think we still had iPhones and details you start thinking to yourself, Oh, this is so cool. I'm happy to be alive. Do you imagine your life as a future podcaster talking about creepy things and you're like, oh, this is awesome. Suddenly you see something moving through the trees and you stop walking. You turn your head and you look at something red sticking out from the base of one of the trees. Oh no, And then you realize that this shiny, roundish object isn't some type of animal. I don't know if you've seen those animals with the monkeys or whatever with the shiny butts. Yeah, they're called baboons. Okay, a baboon, they're not gonna be there. So you're like, this is definitely not it. So there's not baboons in Wisconsin. So anyway, you see it and you're like, what you're telling me is not a shiny butt? Okay to that, and you're like, this is weird. So you, being Michelle, you're like, I, I don't know what this is. So you start coming up to it, and that's when you see it because it moves and then the face of a clown appears from the side of the tree. No fuck you no, and it just smiles at you with its big white face. You can see its red nose and lips and its yellow teeth because the white paint doesn't do much for clowns because it always stands out like their teeth are yellow. Look, the image of a clown sneaking off to smoke is pretty iconic. I think, just like standing around the corner of where it's supposed to be just having a cigarette off duty. So there are these big objects now that are moving right, he's flip flopping. Those are his shoes and he's just like flip flopping towards you, and it's holding something in his hand and you're like, what is that? Is that a fat? Is that a knife? Or is that one of those funny hammers or what is it? It's ticklet on. I feel like I'm in fight or flight mode, but like I'm entering fight mode with my cheese pale, like just so think I'm getting very scared, and I'm like, am I gonna have to just like nail this guy with this? Am I? Like? What's gonna happen? So you still don't want to drop the lunch failure? No, No, it's my only weapon. It's my only weapon. Now, it's my cheese pail. So you're freaking out and you start running as fast as you can before you trip and strip your knee, and that's why you have a scar on your knee. Really, oh, of course, that's why I have a scar with That's just that was just nothing like, that's not even part of the story. But anyway, the clown, the clown laughs and he just flip flops back into the woods and it's just he disappears, and you're like, well, that was weird if you just run all the way home. Basically, now, I don't know if I should tell you this, but that story never happened because I have all this trauma from that story now and it never happened. It hints at this topic that we have today, and it's about clowns. So if you're afraid of them, watch out because we're gonna have a lot of clown material here. What is the phobia called? Do you have that in your notes? What is that? C? O U L R O phobic, color phobic? I thought it would be something like simple, like clown phobia. You're gonna call it that because right here says cole ro is a Greek word for stilt walkers. Oh yeah, Plus that term came in the nineteen ninety So it's not that not that copore. That's how you pronounce it. Col ra phobia, cora cole rap phobia cold as in cole rah phobia. Yeah, cool, ruh phobia, cora phobia, cobra phobi. Uh. Fear of clowns. That sounds like a song, it does. Fear. That's a cool jingle. Yeah, ah, fear of clowns. Anyway, Yeah, we have a lot of clown stuff going on here, but specifically, here's something that actually happened, right and this is a real thing from twenty sixteen, calls A lot of phone calls started pouring down in Wisconsin. They were talking about a clown that was walking through Green Bay, Wisconsin with four black balloons. What the balloon fact just gave me chills. What is the fear of balloons called? There is an actual fear of balloons. It's called global phobia. I think I might have global phobia. It's funny. Globo is a word in Spanish for a balloon. Well, there you go, global phobia. Well, you know what I think. What I find creepy about balloons that they're quiet, Like they're very quiet and they look really cool. But they're just floating like they're just there. Yeah, they float it weird sometimes depending on how much helium they have. It's like they'll float in the middle of the room they don't go to the ceiling, or they'll float two inches above the ground. And they'll float two inches above the ground in the whole area. Have very vivid images of that. Yeah, of course it's creepy. But then also they pop and birds eat them, so they're bread all around. Animals eat them and choke. So look, look I just had to bring down the energy by talking about dead animals. Anyway, back to clowns. One of the captains from the Green Bay Police Department checked up on these calls and was like, we can't do anything because it's not illegal to dress up as a clown and walk with balloons. Yeah, you can do that, but it is illegal to be in a thong a Yeah, I learned that on Reddit yesterday. Sam be out in the streets and wearing a thong. Yeah, because you're exposing your private parts. But all your private parts are covered, but I guess your ass is a private part that is not being covered. I don't know. That includes the beach, Yeah, that includes the beach. In fact, like the clip that I was watching was someone getting arrested at the beach. Oh sorry, I thought, like, you couldn't be out like going to the bank in a thong. Well, you probably can't. I'm assuming you can't. If you could, you can't be in one when you're at when you're at the beach. I don't know why you'd be able to go to the bank and your thong, But I don't know. Maybe I don't know why I thought of this scenario. But let's say you're getting arrested and you're in your car. You're happy to be wearing a thong. Now you're in your property, like you're in your car, but like the police officer wants you to get out automatically. As soon as you get out, you're gonna be in trouble for that too. Right, it's a fact. It's a fact. But I'm assuming you're didn't. I'm assuming you're getting pulled over and asks to get out of your car for other reasons. First, huh, something to think about, just to pause for thought. Yeah, we bring up the good questions here, Michelle. Today were Yeah, what was that review? It was like informative sometimes, which we loved. We loved that review because we are informative sometimes. So by the way, this was a picture, right like this, this clown with the balloons was actually like it was photographed and this was taken probably from a cell phone. It was a video actually, because it looks like they're tracing it as he's moving. Gags the clown, they called him Gags Gags the clown. Yeah. But this guy, he was walking around and he stands by this column of looks like a freeway, like an underpass, and his shadow is you just have to see the image on Instagram. Yeah, we're gonna post it. Really creepy. But anyway, he was caught next to it, and that actually started this huge It was one of the very early things about this craze. For the twenty sixteen clown sightings. It was bizarre. Was it coming out at that time or was it before it came out? Here we go again with the handied Google. When did it come out? Movies September eight, twenty seventeen, and again in September sixteenth, twenty nineteen. It was happening a while before it obviously the very first it came out before, right, like the Yeah, but this one was coming out makes me wonder is this was this staged? Well, now that we have dates, right, so that was like, oh, it came out September twenty seventeen, and then this was happening in twenty sixteen. I mean that's like a long someone's playing the long game of great like grassroots advertising. Yeah, this got out of hand like really fast, and it was one of those things that you just had to be there to really understand the magnitude of it and what it was like to go out in the streets during this time. And some people believe that it it's just an Internet thing or it's scary. Oh, it's just like the Momo challenge. But no, it actually affected a whole generation of children and of young adults and was even partially responsible for the creation of laws and regulations by cities on the local level, and even messed with the big clown himself, Ronald McDonald. That was a deep guy. That was a pure guest. One early afternoon in early October in Canada, children were chased by clowns as they were leaving Pope Francis Catholic Elementary School in Toronto. I don't know why, but I just imagined them seeing Pope Francis, and then they were the best image of them, like leaving Pope Francis and then their life and then they ran into this clown. Oh man, no, like they were freaking out. They ran across the street completely just scared, like they're just running for their lives. And that attack, which was reported to the police, and two fifteen year olds were detained for dressing up as clowns and causing a panic because they wanted to add the video to their YouTube channel. Understandable, but that sucks that they got arrested basically like detain, not arrested like they were. But you can't do that. All that trauma that they just inflicted on those children for the content delicious. That's some good content they've made anyway. So soon after that, like a few days later, a group of clowns made an announcement on Instagram saying the following this is when it starts getting serious. We are going to kidnap students and behead teachers. What we're not clowning around? What the fuck? Yeah, that's pretty serious. Around that time, a student at a secondary school in North London was approached by a clown and the man sprinted at the student and then as in the clown sprinted at the student and then ran off the property. So this triggered a lockdown and the banning of clown costumes that Halloween. Oh my god, that's so funny. Yeah, and the events continued. Oh my god, it was bad. It was it was intense. Oh my god, tell me more. It was just like it was so many like when we were during the recent because we actually published this stuff on Dark Memory too, and this is a wall back a long time ago. I was looking up info for this. There were so many more that I was like, wow, these get pretty intense. Like in Germany October fifteenth, in the middle of the night, a clown was reported carrying a knife and a gun. And yeah, in Ireland, just five days before that, clowns were spotted with chainsaws and scared students at a school. I love that people have just gone crazy. You know what we're gonna do. We're gonna dress up as clowns and go scare the shit out of people. Like it's not like those are real clowns. Those are fucking whack jobs, which makes it even scarier than it's like a whack job in a clown costume with a knife and a gun, wandering streets at night. What the fuck you think? It just started getting out of hand, like really quickly, thanks to the Internet. Of course, it turned out that that Ireland event was to advertise a new attraction in the area, so the chainsaw was fake, but still it was poor timing, like they shouldn't have done that, And the events continued in Spain, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland. Oh my god, I had no idea. It was like this explosive at the time, and the videos obviously were like going crazy, a lot of videos, a lot of tweets, a lot of posts. People were like, this is the thing to get famous, so obviously I imagine that like podcasting, We're like, yeah, this is the easy way to do it. People are obviously in it too. They were like, ooh, I'm going to scare people, like it sounded like a fun thing, but then all these other things started happening and they're like, maybe not a good idea. It turns out that the president of the World Clown Association, I was wondering when they'd get involved. Yeah, they don't want their name tarnish like this. Yeah, that was the host conventions for face painters, clowns, performance, all these things. Right, they were like, they made an announcement. They're like, this is not cool to dress up as clowns to scare people. And then they defended what a clown is and the traditions and what they stand for and bringing joy and blah blah blah all that stuff. Businesses dependent on the sale of clown related items like face pay wigs and all that stuff and nos all that jazz. So they took a hit. They're like, oh, we stopped selling because the law is getting involved here. However, you know what happens when you ban something you kind of want it, like me and banned books, but I'm what's the list my new reading list? Like I want what is this all about? For them? Like it was people in some areas they were actually selling way more clowns. Like whenever it wasn't outlawed, because it wasn't everywhere that this wasn't allowed, especially in the US, would have the anti clown suit people like you would get all these people protests basically saying you can't take our freedoms away. If if I want to dress up as a clown, I can dress up as a clown and we all know what happened to those people. They picked other things to protest later on. Yeah, so yet it like it's not like England where they're like this is now banned. But people started buying them. They're like, oh, this is cool because obviously a lot of people are buying them because they want to also prank, but also because there's gonna be they're gonna be gone. So some people are like, maybe this becomes a business and somebody that wants this, I can sell it to underground clown That's what I imagine. I imagine. Obviously I exaggerated, but this event was really big. Those worldwide, the underground clown trade people were just paranoid, right. McDonald's Corporation announced that their clown mascot, Ronald McDonald, the famous kid, the famous fate hero among kids that go to McDonald's, and they grew up with it. They said that he was gonna not be as public like he was gonna keeping He's going to be keeping a low profile for like the time being. Well the whole clown stuff was going on. Has he even come back. He hasn't even come back yet. That's when he left. Oh no, have we seen him since this or did they use it as an opportunity to retire him. I don't know, but I was thinking about that bench figure, you know, like McDonald's used to have that weird thing and it's arm around you or whatever, and then you could take the photo. Yeah, back when you would just take normal photos and not just be doing all these sexual things with it and posting it like those pictures were like you're pretending like you're touching it or I never did those they stood out like crazy. Okay, if you give if you give people something nice, something good, and they start this is why you get kicked out of Disneyland, Michelle. When I've never been kicked out, and I've been very drunk at Disneyland, thank you very much before they served alcohol, So I've never been kicked out, Thanks oh many. They stopped with that. I don't know, I haven't seen it. Maybe there's some McDonalds I still have it. I want to know. I want to know where I want a picture of this thing, like taken recently, just in case I'm going to be looking it up, or if the listener, if you have you know of McDonald's that has it. I want to know where it is, just out of curiosity. But anyway, Also, professional clowns were protesting in Brazil. Police officers were investigating these sightings and so much drama. Yeah, people were for me their own groups to hunt clowns. So there's the content creator thinking that he's gonna cash in on this, and you run into a mob of people with guns who hate clowns. It was a big deal in certain areas I imagine, and I don't know why, but I always imagine these and like smaller towns or smaller cities and not so much metropolitan areas, because you couldn't really like everywhere you go there's people, so it's not like now other places where you can walk down a block and you don't bump into anybody. Yeah. Also, if you were in New York or LA and we saw a clown, it wouldn't be that scary. It'd be like, what the fuck, Hey, Jim, good morning. Okay, I don't know what that guy is up to, but something across the street walk it just didn't let him do his thing. It has nothing to do with me, but yeah, clearly if the town is smaller, also, there's less to do so you would go on a clown hunt. I think they imagine just a bunch of guys. You're like hop in and then you go into the back part of the truck and they're just like and they like stand up on the back part of the truck to as they as they drive into the woods, and they have floodlights and it's actually very terrifying. It's more terrifying than the clowns. It seemed like it was harmless fun right, because it was supposed to start off that way. Oh, clowns creepy, But with every trend we end up with weirdos. Some of them started using the clown thing as an excuse to go out there and do things like assault, stabbing people, shooting. So it started off as pranks, it turned out to be a very real scary thing. Our people were actually getting physically hurt, probably mentally too because you're freaking out over something. But there were so many incidents, like too many for me to name them on here. But one of my favorites was in Finland when two clowns jumped in front of a thirty year old man. He was out jogging, right, it was his dog jogging. The intentions of the clowns were not clear, so I don't know if it was to do something bad or just to scare them. Anyway, the dog bit one of the clowns, and the man, darn it, this is he punched the other. But I wanted to imagine that slapping clown slapped. He clown slapped, slap. I think it's if you punch a clown, it's the same as a slap. It's the equivalent. It's the same. We could just say it's the same. So he slapped the clown, his dog bit the other clown. Yeah, and then the clowns just stick off running. And then it was reported and they're like, Okay, that sucks, but that's good for that dog. Just bite those clowns. Man, just go for it. He's acquired a taste for clown blood, for clown meat. But yeah, they were really getting out of hand. Clowns were also being reported breaking into homes, stealing money, and robbing stores stuff like that. Obviously not like super super common, like all the robbers were now clowns, but it was common enough within the clown state, so they were. It just seemed to match. Yeah, there were dozens and dozens of dozens of these things. So, by the way, these are the ones that I found that were in the news, not just the actual police report, so I'm sure there's a lot more. I was curious, like, why clowns, Why are we so afraid of them? Why do we have that I forgot the name cloroxphobia? What was the name cole row? Yeah, colrophobia? So I looked up a few theories and that makes sense. The one on britannica dot com says that we're afraid of clowns because we don't know that the person's intent behind the disguise. So our minds look at something that should appear human, but something is just off. Well, everything's like exaggerated. Everything's the smile, but the frown. There's stuff like a new face can be painted to be seen as if the person is smiling, but really it's sad. Then you add dark eyes and raised eyebrows, and you're like, your brain is basically what is it? It just it can identify because it's never seen it, so it's just this is weird. Plus and it starts talking or making a joke or crying, and you're like, this doesn't make sense. So it is a little. I don't know. Normally it's supposed to trigger this nervous laughter like a daha ha ha in some context as I'm okay with clowns but not balloons. I'm obviously not okay with balloons. I get a little creeped out with clowns, but not like that, Like, yeah, I'm not like ar Like there are some people that are terrified of clowns. I'm not not like I am with mice if I see, But it's like my brain goes off and I honestly, like a cartoon character would faint, Like I have to fight the urge to faint, Like I will stand on a chair and go like, wow, that bad. I have to get my brain under like it goes into like fight or flights so fast. I have to actively get my brain under control. What about them though, It's like their little hands. I think they have those weird little claws. I don't know. They just they're so dirty. Yeah, mice and rats I just can't handle, you know. There was also that famous American serial killer John Wayne Gacy. He dressed up as Pogo the Clown and performed at children's parties. Oh, I didn't know his name, was Pogo went by Pogo, Pogo the clown, and then we can't forget obviously Stephen King's it, Yeah with Penny Wise the dancing clown to be you can be afraid of these things. You have my permission to be afraid of clowns. Still, creepy clowns are not gone. The good news is that there's not some clown conspiracy out there like some people thought during the twenty sixteenth. They're not here trying to take over the world. It's not some time have apocalypse, nothing like that. But but I love it, and that was like definitely that there's just a cult of clowns that have come to take over the world. They're still out there, and I think that's the bad news, Like there's still there. Clowns show up every once in a while because it's an easy grab. You can scare somebody really quickly just by dressing up as a clown. But behind their painted faces, there's no way to know if they're simply trying to entertain or if they have more sinister intentions. That was a clown the Crown Fiasco. That was good. I liked that one a lot. That was good. It was solid. Oh, anyway, there there are people really take advantage into they lean into these trends, which I like leaning into trends like that, but then you always open up these things for weirdos, Like you always open it up and you're like, we had such a good thing going, and then you came here and ruined it. Like drones. I don't know if you people we were out there just flying. Oh who, I take a picture of my house. This is awesome. All of a sudden, like people start taking it up into super high up there, going into freeways and you're like, come on, this is so good. Which just Yeah, we had a drone operator on our corner and especially during the pandemic, we'd hear it launch and then it would just hover above our houses when we were gardening, and it was just like we were like, oh, maybe it's just a kid with a drone, but it's always a man. It's always a fucking man with a drone. And he was like watching us garden. So there's weirdos with drones out there too, Lots of weirdos with drones. Yeah, and there's other things too that there was. They had good air tags. Hello AirTags, great, great idea. Now stokers use them non stop. You haveny cool cameras. Now they're in every Airbnb you've ever checked into. It started out as a good idea. Now I don't know. Now there's definitely footage if you naked somewhere on the dark. Wow. I'm trying to think of like other things that were like like just people ruined. But I'm sure that, Yeah, there's a lot. I'm gonna keep thinking of this stuff. We're gonna keep popping up, like social media stuff where oh this is awesome and then it just goes bad. I mean clowns. I feel like I have the capacity to bounce back like a clown renaissance boing boing people love, Yeah, literally bounced back on their pogo sticks. Also, I guess that's also why what's his name? Gacy named his clown Pogo after a pogo or was it after there's a cartoon called Pogo? And I only know that because my mom's obsessed with it. So I'm like, is interesting? Interesting? Did he name it after a pogo stick? Did John Wayne Gayzy hop on a pogo stick? I'm curious. I want to google that, but at the same time I don't. Yeah, I mean there's probably fan art for it says Pogo. I asked chat gpt Oh good, what did it say? Poglo the Clown was a character created and performed by Wayne Gacy, an American serial killer and rapist who was convicted of burnering at least thirty three young men and boys between nineteen seventy two and ninety Okay, uh huh, that's terrible, though according to reports here, it is Gaysey took the name Pogo from a comic strip called That's the one, Yeah, Pogo Possum Yep, that's the one. My mom is obsessed with. She has all the books of Pogo Possum Wow. Created by cartoonist Walt Kelly in the nineteen forties, The character was known for his friendly, easygoing personality, which stood in stark contrast to Gaysey's violent and sadistic tendencies. That makes me mad that he stole that he corrupted that name. But I don't think of him when I hear the name Pogo, so I think of Pogo the Possum. Ah terrible, but yeah. It says that he used the Pogo persona to gain the trust of his victims, often dressing up as a clown to edertate children and at charitable functions. No, this allowed him to lure young boys and men into his home. Unbelievable. Yeah, people ruin everything. We ruin things. Everybody ruins things. This guy ruined the pogo possum. Wow. So now we're just sad and bummed out. And which is all that we ever like to do is bring that energy down. That is good podcasting when you really start it up high and then bring it down low. You always want to desert for first, just get all the excitement out of the way, and then we end with Brussels sprouts. This steamed Russells sprouts. That is how we end every podcast. You have our guarantee. I don't know where this is going anymore, So what are we going to talk about next weekend? When I don't know? I think it'll be a surprise. Bye guys, Bye,