The clown urban legend

THE LEGEND

The legend goes a young girl is babysitting for a family in newport beach california .

The parents go out to dinner and a movy and as the house is so big to put the babysitters mind at rest about being in a big house on her own the farther advises the babysitter to use a certain tv room after putting the kids to bed so she can hear the kids easily she they awaken.

after the parents have gone the babysitter spends some time with the children before bedtime.

After the babysitter has put the kids to bed she goes to the tv room and is bothered by a clown statue in the corner of the room. She tries to ignore it and watches tv.

her nerves get the better of her and she phones the father to ask permission to go to another room to watch tv.

When the father answers the phone she asks if it would be ok if she found a different place in the house to sit or if she read quietly in the kids room.

When the father asks would it not be better to read in the tv room she is in.

She replies she would rather not as the clown statue is really creepy

Immediately the father tells he to go upstairs and get the kids quickly and he advises her of a quick route to the back door of the house.

Go directly to the neighbours house and phone him from there and to do it now.

The babysitter does this and phones the father from the neighbours house and asks what was that all about He advised they did not own a clown statue and that he had called the police and they were on the way.

Truth

Real-life killer clowns

Though urban legends are sometimes inspired by real-life events, I've found no clear precedents for "The Clown Statue" in news reporting of the past 20 years — no stories in which a miscreant poses as a clown doll inside people's homes, at any rate.

In 1990, a West Palm Beach, Florida woman was shot and killed on her doorstep by a clown sporting a bright orange wig (a crime which remains unsolved, so far as I know). Then there'sJohn Wayne Gacy, of course, who, during the mid-1970s, murdered 33 young men and buried their bodies under his Chicago home. The media christened him the "Killer Clown" because he was known for hosting neighborhood parties at which he dressed up as a clown.

Phantom clowns

It was probably the Gacy case and the publicity surrounding it which sparked a wave of "phantom clown" sightings in 1981. The phenomenon, as documented by Loren Coleman inMysterious America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983), originated in Boston with unconfirmed reports of men dressed as clowns trying to lure children into vans. Over the course of a few days, more reports of "clown men in vans" bothering children came in, then more, and soon the sightings had spread to surrounding cities and towns. Eventually there were sightings reported in as many as 10 other states in different parts of the country. No abductions occurred, no arrests were made, indeed no evidence was ever found to substantiate any of these reports, nearly all of which had been made by children under 10 years old.

Similar rumor outbreaks have occurred since the early '80s, and while "The Phantom Clowns" and "The Clown Statue" have little in common as narratives apart from a malevolent clown character, it's possible that the latter was inspired by the former.