All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Aug. 12, 2025 - Skeptoid
16:26
Skeptoid #1001: The Phantom Clown Panic

Clowns have a habit of terrifying many of us. So why shouldn't we be surprised to see mass clown panics? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
The 2016 Clown Panic 00:06:57
Shortly before Halloween 2016, there was a widespread panic about scary clowns.
They'd happened before, dating back at least to the early 1980s in America.
But this time it was different.
Fueled by rumors, social media, and latent concerns about clowns, the sightings and reports of evil, stalking, and threatening clowns spread across the country and eventually around the world, resulting in fear, violence, and even school lockdowns.
Today on Skeptoid, we'll dig into the curious cases of the clown panic of 2016.
A quick reminder for everyone: you're listening to Skeptoid, revealing the true science and true history behind urban legends every week since 2006.
With over a thousand episodes, we're celebrating 20 years of keeping it focused and keeping it brief.
And we couldn't have done it without your curiosity leading the way.
And now we're even offering a little bit more.
If you become a premium member, supporting the show with a monthly micropayment of as little as $5, you get more Skeptoid.
The premium version of the show is not only ad-free, it has extended content.
These episodes are a few minutes longer.
We get rid of the ads and we'll replace them with more Skeptoid.
The extended premium show available now.
Come to skeptoid.com and click Go Premium.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Ben Radford, guest hosting for Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
The Phantom Clown Panic.
Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.
The clown panic of 2016 can be traced back to a bizarre incident in August of that year.
Creepy clowns were reported in Greenville, South Carolina, allegedly luring children into the woods behind a block of apartments.
It was scary and alarming, whether real or rumor.
Most of the handful of reports were from children.
No one was actually harmed by the menacing clowns, who children claimed lived in a house located in a pond at the end of a trail in the woods.
Police who investigated this sinister Hansel and Gretel-like tale found no signs of suspicious activity nor anyone dressed as a clown.
According to an ABC news story at the time, quote, one resident said she was in front of her apartment one evening when one of her sons approached her and stated that he had seen clowns in the woods whispering and making strange noises.
The resident added that she went over to the area that her son had mentioned and observed several clowns in the woods flashing green laser lights before seeing them run off.
If this report is be credited, it suggests that the pranksters were afoot, perhaps teenagers with store-bought clown masks and laser pointers having fun in the months leading up to Halloween.
Either way, it was only the latest in a series of creepy clown reports.
In fact, there have been several earlier sightings across the country, but none of that profile.
Most evil clowns are fictional, though a few, such as serial killer John Wayne Gacy, are real.
But there are other bad clowns reported to roam the streets and parks looking for innocent children to abduct, yet seem to vanish just before police can apprehend them.
Some say they're real, while others claim they're just figments of imagination.
They are known as phantom clowns, a phrase coined by author Lauren Coleman in his book, Mysterious America.
Phantom Clowns.
As discussed in my book, Bad Clowns, one of the earliest reports of phantom clowns occurred in May 1981 when several children in Brookline, Massachusetts, reported that clowns had tried to lure them into a van with promises of candy.
Police searched the area but found nothing.
The following day, Boston parents and police grew worried when children there claimed that adult clowns had been bothering children on their way to school.
Other reports surfaced in other cities and in later years with the same pattern.
Parents were fearful, children were warned, and police were vigilant, but despite searches and police checkpoints, no evidence was ever found of their existence.
Though the public and police didn't know what to make of the panic, folklorists and sociologists had been studying them for years.
Folklorists Sandy Hobbs and David Cornwell, writing in their book Supernatural Enemies, researched the phantom clown panics and concluded that parents, police, and the mass media all played a role in spreading and legitimizing the rumors.
Quote, one student reports that older children told the stories to frighten younger ones.
Others appear to assume that the story derives from an actual incident, even though it may have become exaggerated in the telling, end quote.
When teachers, police, parents, and the news media share warnings about the threat, that further legitimizes the reports.
In their 2024 book, Social Panics and Phantom Attackers, Robert Bartholomew and Paul Weatherhead examined the phantom attacker panics.
These cases typically begin with outbreaks of sensational claims of attacks by elusive, mysterious figures who frighten the public and then seem to vanish without a trace, leaving few, if any, serious injuries, but many questions.
Some of the most recognizable events include the panics surrounding the War of the Worlds hoax, the Monkey Man, Havana Syndrome, Satanists during the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare, The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, and many others.
The Phantom Clown panics fit neatly into this category.
Were the evil clown sightings phantom attackers?
Well, yes and no.
Though there were no actual clowns trying to abduct or harm strangers, there were, of course, copycats, lots of them, who were definitely trying to scare people for fun, clicks, or both.
Throughout the Phantom Clown Panic, no hard evidence was ever found, and more importantly, no children were actually abducted.
This suggests that some form of social delusion or mass hysteria was at play.
If the clowns are real, why were they so invariably incompetent?
Surely at least one of the bad clowns could have succeeded.
Any real clown could easily abduct a child at a birthday party and spirit the victim off into a waiting van.
Dressing as a clown is guaranteed to draw attention, which is exactly the opposite of what real-life child abductors want to do.
Digging a little deeper into the original Greenville sightings, we find an odd detail.
An August 21st report from the Greenville County Sheriff's Office noted that several children of the community stated that several clowns have been appearing in the woods behind Building D and tried to persuade them into the woods further by displaying large amounts of money.
This is a curious and suspicious detail.
Malicious clowns might be expected to lure children with candy or ice cream, but a big stack of Benjamins?
Flashing wads of cash can draw a crowd anywhere, and no clown costume is needed.
Skeptoid Adventures at Sea 00:02:23
It seems like an example of urban legend folklore in the making, perhaps fueled in part by creepy clown sightings in the news and the recent release of publicity photos for the Stephen King killer clown Pennywise from the then upcoming remake of It.
The Greenville clown reports were likely either pranksters, mistakes, for example, assuming that a bang on a door must have been caused by an unseen clown, legend, or a combination of all three.
The chances that one or more people dressed as clowns are actually trying to abduct children is vanishingly remote.
Many people likely recognize this, but parents and police understandably err on the side of caution, citing that it's better to be safe than sorry.
Hey everyone, I want to remind you about a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
Join me and Mediterranean archaeologist Dr. Flint Dibble for a skeptoid sailing adventure through the Mediterranean Sea aboard the SV Royal Clipper, the world's largest full-rigged sailing ship.
This is also the only opportunity you'll have to hear Flint and I talk about our experiences when we both went on Joe Rogan to represent the causes of science and reality against whatever it is that you get when you're thrown into that lion pit.
We set sail from Malaga, Spain on April 18th, 2026 and finished the adventure in Nice, France on April 25th.
You'll enjoy a fascinating skeptical mini-conference at sea.
You'll visit amazing ports along the Spanish and French coasts and Flint will be our exclusive onboard expert sharing the real archaeology and history about every stop.
We've got special side quests and extra skeptical content planned at each port.
This is a true sailing ship.
You can climb the rat lines to the crow's nest, handle the sails.
You can even take the helm and steer.
This is a real bucket list adventure you don't want to miss.
But cabins are selling fast and this ship does always sell out.
Act now or you'll miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Get the full details and book your cabin at skeptoid.com slash adventures.
Hope to see you on board.
That's skeptoid.com slash adventures.
Defending Against Moral Panics 00:07:02
But it didn't go away and soon the panic spread.
Viral videos and threats, many of them originating or shared on social media, resulted in increased police patrols and in some cases, full lockdowns.
In September 2016, police in Flomington, Alabama investigated what were deemed credible threats to students at Flomington High School, shared via social media.
The so-called Flomo Clowns had a Facebook page where they said, quote, I kill people for a living, and displayed several gun emojis.
One post stated, quote, it's going down tonight.
About 700 students at Flomington High School and nearby Flomenton Elementary School were told to shelter in place while the schools, following protocol, were placed on lockdown for much of the day, while dozens of police and law enforcement officers searched the grounds for threats.
The digital trail led FBI investigators to one adult in two teens.
22-year-old Michaela Smith of Flomington was arrested for making a terroristic threat while posting as an evil clown.
She pled guilty and in 2018 received a sentence of five years of probation.
This string of other incidents left parents and teachers wondering if the clown lockdown were the new normal.
In another Alabama school threat, two people dressed as clowns appeared in the Facebook video brandishing a knife and ranting for several minutes about coming for you in Troy, Alabama.
Police identified the two in the video, which had been seen more than 50,000 times, as juveniles who attended the Charles Henderson High School in Troy.
Police did not charge either of the two boys but warned that copycats would not be tolerated.
The rumors can, of course, have serious consequences.
Though children have little to fear from stalking clowns, the urban legend may pose a real danger.
In the Greenville reports, alarm citizens fired weapons into the wooded area, hoping to kill any clowns lurking there.
Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the situation could have turned deadly.
Amid the rumors and scares, an 11-year-old girl in Georgia took a knife to her middle school to fight off clowns.
The girl was arrested September 16th at Bernie Harris Lyons Middle School in Athens.
A police report quoted the unnamed minor as saying that she needed the knife to protect her and her family from the clowns she'd heard were coming out of the woods and attacking children.
By mid-October, the scary clown panic had spread across the country to dozens of states.
The creepy clown panic became so serious that it was even addressed in an October 4th White House press briefing.
Press Secretary Josh Ernest said, quote, I don't know that the president has been briefed on this particular situation.
Obviously, this is a situation that local law enforcement authorities take quite seriously, and they should carefully and thoroughly review perceived threats to the safety of the community, and they should do so prudently, end quote.
Aside from the videos, many of the real-life reports were later admitted to be hoaxes.
For example, a North Carolina man who falsely claimed that a scary clown had knocked on his window at night was arrested for faking the incident.
And a woman from Ohio claimed that a knife-wielding clown attacked her on her way to work and cut her hand.
But she later admitted that she made up the story because she was running late for her job at McDonald's.
There were also a handful of people dressed as clowns and scaring people.
A pair of Canadian teenagers dressed as clowns had fun in a park scaring younger kids, and in Wisconsin, a clown scene at night was revealed to be part of a viral marketing campaign for scary film.
A year earlier, a creepy clown was sighted outside a Chicago cemetery.
In some cases, both adults and school children admitted to making up stories of seeing threatening clowns.
Any other time reports of threatening clowns would likely have been ignored or dismissed, but these incidents came at a time when there were very real terroristic threats and school shootings in the news.
Parents can take comfort that no clowns were actually trying to abduct or harm kids.
Not a single credible report has surfaced of any child being hurt or even touched by a threatening clown.
It's a form of the old stranger danger threat and moral panic, focusing on Satanists, immigrants, and the scary other.
Social panics and phantom attacker scares recur, and just as the 2016 clown panic was not the first of its kind, it also won't be the last.
When the next one happens, and it will, keep in mind that the best defense against these panics is media literacy, skepticism, and critical thinking.
We continue with some scenes from the clown panic in the ad-free and extended premium feed.
To access it, become a supporter at skeptoid.com.
Go premium.
This has been guest host Benjamin Radford.
I'm co-host of Squaring the Strange podcast, author of over a dozen books on critical thinking, skepticism, and folklore, and deputy editor of Skeptic Inquire Science magazine.
You can also find me in several documentary films, including Skeptoid Media's Science Friction and Wrinkles the Clown.
A great big Skeptoid shout out to our premium listeners, including Persephone, Phil Kernick, Ali Middledon, and the Fourth Corner Gnome.
Remember, every Skeptoid episode has a transcript page at skeptoid.com with complete bibliographic references and further reading suggestions.
And they also print out into nicely formatted PDF that you can share.
Skeptoid is a production of Skeptoid Media.
Executive producer is Brian Dunning.
Director of Operations and Tinfoil Hat Counter is Kathy Reitmeyer.
Marketing guru and Illuminati liaison is Jake Young.
Production Management and All Things Audio by Will McCandless.
Music is by Lee Sanders, researched and written by me, Ben Radford.
Listen to Skeptoid for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or iHeart.
You're listening to Skeptoid, a listener-supported program.
I'm Ben Radford from Skeptoid.com.
Hello, everyone.
This is Adrienne Hill from Skookam Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and moose.
And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as $5 per month.
And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double doubles.
And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar.
Why support Skeptoid?
If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, Premium is for you.
If you want to support a worthwhile nonprofit that combats pseudoscience, promotes critical thinking, and provides free access to teachers to use the podcast in the classroom via the Teacher's Toolkit, then sign up today.
Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
Next to giggling, of course.
Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
From PRX.
Export Selection