Calling All Creepy Clowns

I hate clowns.  No, wait.  I detest them.

My mother always loved surprising me on my birthday.  Whether I came home from school to a homemade boxed birthday cake (Betty Crocker’s Super Moist Party Chip Flavor is my favorite), letting me skip school to take me clothes shopping at Kmart or Merry Go Round at the mall (we were always excited to sport a new pair of Chic brand sneakers or a plaid skirt with white knee socks), or deciding to redecorate my bedroom without telling me. 

By the way, who had a Merry Go Round in their mall back in the 90s?  It was my favorite before Express became popular!

 

In most cases, her surprises were a hit.  But the one time it was a total disaster (I’m talking gut-wrenching, tears bursting, screaming like a wild banshee) was when I was two years old.  You would have thought I was possessed as my head twisted away from the surprise to retrieve out of my house and run as far away as I could from the motley themed circus which blew up inside my bedroom.

While my mother's vision looked somewhat like this...

I couldn't help but to envision this...

 

Yes, people... my mom thought it was a good idea to completely sabotage my warm and delightful place of sleep with everything having to do with clowns.  Picture this... you walk into a room after your mother tells you to keep you eyes shut.  Once you have planted yourself, front and center, and she tells you to open you eyes, Voila!  A freak show of clowns and all things having to do with the circus.  I could have swore she hired someone from Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey's circus to help her design this catastrophe. 

 

My mother managed to find clown lamps, a bed with a clown theme and big red shoes at the end of the frame, clown picture books resting on my bright red bookshelf, stuffed circus animals and clowns, and a circus banner wrapped all around my room suffocating my imagination and childlike wonder.  My bedroom was stripped the following day and a new sanctuary of bliss was created because I refused to sleep in the clown bed.

I still remember a toy clown she had bought for both of my sisters and me.  It would laugh when you pulled the little white string out of its back.  There was this one time it had laughed without any of us pulling its string.  I thought the toy was cursed so I tossed it in the endless black hole of circus décor, never to be played with again. 

How many of my readers have had one of these vintage, laughing clown dolls?  Still scares the heck out of me!

 

As the years went by, my fear of clowns became a real pain in the ass as nightmares blossomed into my burden.  And movies like It and Killer Clowns From Outer Space didn't help mend my animosity for clowns.  Stephen King's character, Pennywise, from It scarred my dreams for weeks after I watched that movie.  Balloons?  Never again.

 

And who can forget about the blood sucking clowns from outer space?  With their monstrous, crusty large lips and grotesque yellow eyes.  Sometimes I wonder about the people behind these movies!

 

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called Hop-Frog about a vicious court jester setting a royal court on fire in 1849.  Poe tells writes about Hop-Frog's revenge on the king for always taunting him and his dwarf girlfriend, Trippetta.  Here are a couple of my favorite lines from the story.  

 

"It was broken by just such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention of the king and his councillors when the former threw the wine in the face of Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could be no question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fang- like teeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven companions."

the story continues on and the final paragraph reads:

"The eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass. The cripple hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared through the sky-light.It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that, together, they effected their escape to their own country: for neither was seen again."

 

 

 Currently, we have American Horror Story's Freak Show to thank for introducing us to one of the most grotesque and terrifying clowns of all time; Twisty.  If this character were to meet Stephen King's Pennywise, I think he would kick his ass.  This new character murders with no remorse and seems to bask in his ability to scare the hell out of his prisoners by performing some of the creepiest shows I have seen a clown put on.  He murders by stabbing his victims to death and then enslaves children and young woman in his dungeon he calls home; a broken down school bus.

 

Do you like clowns or do they creep you out?  What is your favorite scary clown story?

 

I'm sharing this picture of Luna because I thought it was super cool!  I didn't touch this photo up.  The green glow screaming from her eyes is unreal.  I've never seen anything like this before, have you?  Have a creatively spooky week my friends!