stories from you VIII

I'm now 20, but eversince i was 6, i have been afraid of mimes. everytime i would do something, or walk around a quiet place, or if i was sitting down in an empty room, i would imagine a mime.. (black clothes, white shoes and gloves, white face, crosses on the eyes and black lips), crouched down, sneaking up and around behind me. i used to constantly turn around quickly and look behind me, to see if i could catch him. a mental problem u ask? no, i'm perfectly healthy, physically and mentally. Even now, when i think about it, i can still picture that aweful thing creeping around behind me in an empty room/space.
Needless to say i feel exactly the same about clowns. and i don't think its because of horror movies like IT. Because i LOVE horror movies, and i don't scare easily when watching horrors. But watching clown movies genuinely scares the s#*@ out of me. One night, while watching a (what a coincidence) clown horror, a (now ex) boyfriend excused himself from the lounge to go to the bathroom. He came back into the darkened tv room with a towel over his face and i assumed he went to brush his teeth. with his face still behind the towel (as if he was wiping his face), he began calling my name in a demented, droaning way. You know what i'm talking about. Then the jerk dropped the towel and he had painted his face white and put that big red lipstick painted smile on his face. He came closer and closer to me still calling my name, and honestly, i went hysterical. i started screaming for him to stop it and i got majorly pissed with him for doing that because he knew how i felt about clowns. And even though i knew it was him, a guy who i trusted and loved, it still scared the hell out of me. which really shows how scared i am of clowns. i knew who was underneath all that, but i was still scared.

I thought I'd share a true story with you that I'm dreadfully ashamed of. When I was an obnoxious, pimply, 13 year old bully growing up in Connecticut, I figured I would psycologically torture another kid in our class - you know, the poor, red-haired, dumb kid nobody hung out with or liked (his name was "Brett", no less...) I was the sick one, in retrospect, as the only reason I did this was to impress my best friend, another bully. This kid lived in our neighborhood in a small one story house. One night, at 3:30 in the morning, I snuck over to his house in full, white, clown makeup and wig. I hung a dead racoon that I had found in the road over his front porch (a last minute improvisation - and Christ, that carcass stuck...) I approached Brett's window and stared at him lying in bed, wondering what I should do to scare the begeezes out of him. Finally, I shone the flashlight upwards onto my hideous, brightly painted clown face and sneered, as I slowly and deliberately tapped his window (sort of like the vampires in Salems Lot...) It took a good one minute of tapping before he finally woke up and screamed bloody murder. After pressing my face to his window to leave a nice white mark, I ran home, happy as Pennywise in "IT". The poor kid didn't make it to school the next day. When he did return, he found small blotches of white makeup everywhere he went. For weeks I found myself gleefully terrorizing him with small, inconspicuous blotches of white. Till this day, I still have no idea why I did such a horrid thing. Poor Brett never knew who did it; everyone seemed to hate him for no good reason. Even more tragic - Brett died in a car accident with his mother 5 years later. He was screwed up his whole life - NEVER had a friend except his Mom... The whole situation haunts me so badly that I've been to therapy. I used to have visions of going to Hell and seeing Brett there in full clown garb, readying to torture me.

This is a true story...I swear. In Adelaide's central city mall, called "Rundle mall", there is a smoking unfunny clown..[is that a tautology?] and he does the usual hapless balloon bending. He never seems happy and I think he senses people's loathing of clowns. Anyway, another clown who looks like Gacy except fatter and drives a pedal car decided to encroach upon balloon guy's territory. A verbal fight soon escalated into a full scale rumble much to the horror of children and shoppers but much to the delight of others who were, perhaps for the first time, entertained by clowns during the whole spectacle. Imagine greasepaint marks mixed with blood on knuckles and the squeaking of balloons rubbing together and exploding! It was even on the news which featured another trading of insults between the clowns, one calling the other "pathetic" etc. So you see; clowns CAN be entertaining.

Love your site, I think you are doing a great public service. I was never afraid of clowns as a child. I had sex with a clown once on Halloween, it's amazing how the make-up just gets everywhere.
I used to know this guy who ran several discos, he used dress up in evil clown drag. He had this great maniacal laugh. Used to do it every weekend for the clubs. Sometimes he would pass out acid dressed as a clown, usually in candy. When he offered you candy, you just never knew what you were getting. You had to be sure you were committed to a night of partying if you took candy from that clown.

My little sister was only three years old that Christmas. We were sitting around the tree, opening up gifts and having fun. Suddenly, the doorbell rang, and we all ran out to the hall to see who it could be. Lo and behold, it was the evil Christmas Clown (actually, it was my father's secretary who is otherwise a very nice person). My sister ran when we told her that more presents were here. She took one look at the evil Christmas Clown and hid behind my mother's legs, a look of sheer terror on her face, and soon she began to scream because the clown would not go away. My sister is eleven now and hasn't been the same since . . .
As for me, I have never been fond of clowns, and have not been near one since that unfortunate incident, but if I ever see one trying to get near me or my son, I will be forced to tear it limb from limb.

I have always hated clowns - the fact that they like to get right up in your face - they give me the creeps! Well, as an adult, I still can't shake my phobia of clowns. Once I was walking with my husband in downtown Milwaukee to go to dinner. We thought we'd take a short cut to the restaurant by going through a neighboring hotel lobby. As we're walking into the huge atrium area, I start to notice something isn't right. I look around me and find I'm surrounded by hundreds of clowns - it turns out the hotel was hosting a clown convention! My heart stopped. All those creepy clowns in my face with their stupid balloons and props. I screamed and ran out as fast as I could! Do you have the same feeling I do?...I think clowns can sense people who are afraid of them - so it gives them even more reason to get in your face and bother you. They are terrible, terrible people!!!

For years my family and friends have laughed at my incredible dislike and distrust of clowns, it is good to know that there are others out there who know the truth and are not fooled by the farce that clowndom tries to convey to the easily led masses. I don't blame King for the beginning of my phobia, I had it long before I saw or heard of IT. I also get queasy when I see Tammy Baker, any connection?

I agree with another writer on this page who said that sometimes people mistakenly assume people's fear/loathing of clowns stems from stories and movies like Poltergeist and It. I agree that the movies simply use clowns because the moviemakers understand that clowns are innately evil, and that most people fear them, deep down.
A good example of this was a haunted house I participated in about two years ago. I guy I work with rounded up a few of us to volunteer for this haunted house that would benefit a school, or underprivileged kids, or something like that. Well, a couple of us girls dressed up as the standard scary Halloween stuff -witches or vampires or something. But one guy, Brad, dressed up as a CLOWN! And he didn't even wear regular white clown-face paint, but this gray-white stuff that crackled after you applied it, with black around the eyes and a gruesome smile. He decorated his scary room lined all in tin foil, with a strobe light flashing. The poor little kids going through the house would pass into this room, where he was hiding in a corner. He would jump out, brandishing a large knife, and terrorize the kids, who bolted, screaming, out of there. Some of them even came backwards, into the depths of the haunted house that they KNEW was filled with electric chairs, vampires and werewolves, because they knew that was a better fate than what awaited them at the hands of that maniacal clown.

I am very glad to hear that there are many rational people out there who loathe clowns, mimes and animated dolls.
It is very scary to be in a situation where you are horrified by a freak in drippy makeup and your parents, grown-ups who are supposed to know better, are actually SMILING at the clown like the guy is a paragon of the community. I confided this to my sister an she admitted that she feels the same way. We haven't been able to remember a single live instance of clown-torture in our past (we probably have repressed it if there was a situation like that). Pennywise is, for us, the epitome of terror.
We both also have phobias about animated dolls, the worst being those smiling monkey dolls that play the cymbals. We agree that MIMES are EVIL. Animaniacs has some great shorts called "Mime Time" where this guy does a mime act and gets killed in various painful ways. We always cheer, the more painful the death, the better.

Hate em too, when i was about 5 yrs old back in the UK ( I now live in the USA and am 40) my grandmother took me to the local Circus, I was chased by a clown with huge scissors who wanted to give me a "head cut" not a haircut, the thought of those over large scissors near my neck have given me nightmares to this day... then to top things off I was bought one of those clapping monkey things too - with little brass cymbals... it used to go off at night... im still terrified of those... ( these are both true stories) I really have a clown phobia too and it took me a lot to come to this page ( and i'm a British Army vet with Combat Experience!!).. regards

[ articles ] [ comedy ] [ links ] [ picture gallery ]
[ recommended media ] [ stories ] [ threatening letters ] [ main ]