I love the Internet!
Since we’re offering clown-hating links, here’s a fun online physics game: I Hate Clowns. (Direct online-play link here; requires Virtools plugin.)
I hate clowns. Always have. The only ones I can tolerate are the French “pierrot” style clowns, and even those are skeevy.
Here’s another evil clown for you, from the game “Dead Rising.” This boss was a lot of fun to kill, and creepy as hell.
Remember this Audrey?
I don’t know if my son is afraid of clowns, but he’ll cross the street to avoid a mime.
My mom had a child in her kindergarten class who was afraid of anyone wearing a mask, so the child couldn’t come to school on Halloween.
That’s rather a pity, a mime is a terrible thing to waste…
For a while when I was a kid, my parents had this lady babysitting for me and my sister after school for a few hours. More or less the only memories I have of that time period are vague, panicky recollections of this lady’s house, which was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling clown memorabilia. Swear to Christ.
NajaMama thinks it’s hillarious now, but I ask you… who the hell in their right mind leaves their small children in the care of clown-collectors?!
I do, yes indeedy. Acrobats are fun enough to watch, and mimes like Teller fascinate me, though a costumed mime freaks me right out.
I agree with the “distortion” theory, because I have a similar visceral discomfort with some dolls, and with certain species of monkeys and great apes with very “human” faces. This is particularly true of chimpanzees and macaques. I will avoid either of these if even remotely possible, which is somewhat unfortunate because I’ve had to work with a whole bunch of Rhesus Macaques on several occasions for extended periods of time. I, you know, bucked up and did my job and cared for them in every possible way, but I hated every second of it and even thinking about it now bothers me. The ones I interacted with were mostly very nice critters and I wish it had been a situation where I could have gotten to know them more personally and maybe get over it.
NajaHub also finds clowns thoroughly creepy and gets really wigged out by mimes. Like, hurry up and cross the street, acting totally casual like there’s nothing to be concerned abou–oh crap he’s coming towards us, run!@!!! wigged out.
And the scene in Poltergeist, where the stuffed clown doll stared down the little boy. Until it got down off its chair and hid under the bed, then dragged the boy under and tried to strangle him.
That scene scares the urine out of me.
:eek:
Well that’s just normal. No worries.
What intrigues me is wondering if there are any other similarities. If we were to gather a bunch of kids who share this clown thingy, observe, give tests, whatever…might we find some other similarities?
I’m intrigued by the notion that it may have something to do with the intensity that crumb snatchers focus on reading facial clues. Thing is, my kid was scared at about forty yards, don’t think facial expressions entered into it.
When I win the lottery, I’m gonna fund crackpot research. Just for the hell of it.
I think I am enjoying this game WAY more than I should be 
I hate clowns. I liked Bozo on TV, but never wanted to see him in RL.
Clowns are not funny–no, they are not. Seeing how many of them can fit in a tiny car is stupid. So are pies in the face, unless I can fling one. So are seltzer bottles squirted at others. Maybe that was a class act back in vaudeville days, but we’ve become a bit more sophisticated (thank god). Ned Kelly never did anything for me. You have a fake smile painted on, but a tear painted on your face–what are you, bipolar? WTF? Why not just tie up the balloon in your regular clothes? Why are hiding behind that makeup? Why are big shoes funny? Why are there no black clowns?
I disliked clowns long before John Wayne Gacy or Stephen King etc. They serve no purpose and in the case of Patch Adams, may cause early death.
Some clowns are scary, some are merely annoying.
Some dolls are creepy, some are merely annoying.
Ventriloquist’s dummies are always, always, ALWAYS completely terrifying.
YMMV.
I loathe clowns. Not afraid of them, at this point (as an adult), but still loathe them. When I was a kid, I regularly had nightmares featuring clowns–usually the floating, disembodied heads of clowns. Those nightmares predated Pennywise, “Can’t sleep, clown will eat me.”, the ICP, Gacy’s capture and conviction, and a host of other pop culture references to the archetypal “evil clown.” I think it’s something inherent, fearing clowns, probably motivated by the elements touched on above by several posters. I remember a dorm-room conversation when I was a college freshman wherein almost everyone in the room–a crowd between 6-10 kids–confessed a fear of clowns. In fact, I suspect it’s so common it’s probably the ‘default’ position–a more realistic thread subject might be “Kids Who DON’T Fear Clowns.”
Re: clowns—I read somewhere that it’s the oversized mouth (illusion) that scares kids. I don’t think they’re very funny and never have. I always figured they were the ones who couldn’t do trapeze acts etc. so the circus painted them up and sent them out with the orders, “TRY to be funny.” Brings to mind the old expression, “You can’t polish a turd.”
My sister knew a guy who wanted to be one. There’s a college for it in FL and he signed on but later dropped out. For one thing, it was grueling physical training. For another, he got a lot of unwanted homosexual advances.
Re: mimes (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, bolding mine)
Buffy: So then she’s like, ‘It’s share-time.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah? Share this!’ (Buffy punches the air a few times.)
Oz: So either you hit her or you did your wacky mime routine for her.
Buffy: Well, I didn’t do either, actually. But she deserved it, don’t ya think?
Oz: Nobody deserves mime, Buffy.
Buffy: Kathy does. She deserves to be locked in an invisible box and blown away by an imaginary wind, and —
Oz: Forced to wear a binding unitard?
Buffy: Yeah, the itchy kind! It’s perfect!
When TheKid was in elementary school the only clown-like thing that scared her was venriloquist dummies. I had an Emmett Kelly ventroliquist dummy that was stored in my closet. One day she was digging through my closet and SURPRISE! there he was. Freaked the hell out of her. When I do ventriloquism (without a dummy) she still twitches. Then again, I do things like call for her in creepy voices (BAD MOMMY!). BUT her favorite comedian is Jeff Dunham. Go figure.
Then, last year, she saw “It” on TV. It wasn’t as if she watched it at midnight with all the lights off, no, she watched it on a fully sunny weekend afternoon. Permanently scarred her. A friend of ours is a part-time clown. Went to Clown College and everything. Since TheKid found out that’s what our friend does on the weekend she decided she no longer likes the friend.
She knows it’s irrational, and she knows she never had problems with clowns before “It”, but she can’t even see circus adverts without turning pale and clammy.