Don’t be a clown for Halloween, sheriff says

One local lawman is asking constituents to forego playing the fool this Halloween:

Don’t be a clown, suggests Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones, who already had to handle one clown crisis, in Beauregard, Ala., where a teen girl allegedly aimed online threats from “Kaleb Klown” at three schools, plus one in Opelika. The schools went on lockdown. The girl faces a felony charge of making terroristic threats.

You don’t have to go to Beauregard to catch clown hysteria. Reports of creepy clowns are everywhere. Not so many clowns, maybe, but lots of reports of people seeing them. Some of those people now are charged with filing false police reports or spawning a public panic on social media.

How did everyone go loco on Bozo?

Like the Civil War, it started in South Carolina, where children saw clowns in the wood line outside an apartment complex, luring them with money.

The curtain since has fallen on that August caper in Greenville, where a sheriff’s spokesman said he was surprised the clown craze caught fire.

He gave Time magazine a quote that sounds like something we’d say in Columbus:

“We’ve seen a lot of weirder things happen here.”

From South Carolina, a colorful crowd of creepy calls unloaded like a clown car.

National Public Radio posted a list, which included a case in Abilene, Texas, where a man walking his dog confronted two clowns, one armed with an apparent AR-15.

The Texan did as you’d expect: He went home and got a bigger dog. The clowns drove away.

Now folks are so freaked out a clown call inspires vigilantes: A posse of Penn State students mounted a clown pursuit after reports of one on campus. So did students at the University of Connecticut, where they wielded golf clubs, shovels and hockey sticks as they converged on a suspected clown-infested cemetery .

CBS News queried a professional clown who said the hysteria hurt business, as he was “experiencing excessive profanity while performing.”

Imagine the hostility.

Child’s father: “Hey, Kinky the Clown!”

Clown: “It’s Blinky the Clown, sir.”

Father: “Touch my daughter and you won’t need a red rubber nose.” He walks away, telling his daughter: “Remember your pepper spray, sweetie.”

The cacophony of clown calls has convinced some people a mime wouldn’t be a terrible thing to waste. Rather than trap one in a glass box, they’ve Facebook-called for capping the clown with bullets rather than bell caps or big red wigs.

Clowning around this Halloween might not just cause a panic. Blinky could get blown away.

So far no clowns have been capped. An Internet report of a clown in critical condition after gunmen nailed his noggin was a hoax, just like some clown sightings.

When did clowns go bad? Was it when Stephen King’s novel “It” was a TV miniseries in 1990? Or when the novel came out in 1986? Or when police found 27 bodies in “Pogo the Clown” John Wayne Gacy’s house in 1978? Who knows?

Right now, people who see or hear of clowns need to calm down, because killing someone just for wearing a clown costume is illegal, and so is reporting a clown sighting just to freak people out.

Remember that, if you’re dressing up this Halloween. Or going to the circus.

This story was originally published October 9, 2016 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Don’t be a clown for Halloween, sheriff says."