JOHN WAYNE GACY AND THE FEAR OF CLOWNS

2016 was the year of the Killer Clown, at least in recent memory.  What inspired people to dress up like clowns often carrying weapons as a means to inflict psychological trauma to children around the world?  I honestly do not believe that people have any answers.  It was not even the first time that clowns have cropped up around the world in order to inflict trauma on unsuspecting children.  Ironically the clowns who attempted to menace children in the early 1980s began during the time serial killer and former volunteer clown John Wayne Gacy was on trial in Chicago.  It leapt to Boston in 1991 but the sightings did not become violent in Chicago until 1991 and was nicknamed “Homey The Clown” after Damon Wayans’ popular character on In Living Color.”  This bizarre frightening history may very well be while the children of the 80s and 90s, now adults, and in some cases parents, were taking the idea of creepy menacing clowns quite seriously.

CNN did a report on the Clown Craze in 2016 and noted that even the former White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had commented that he had heard about the clowns but was not sure if the President knew.  The sitting president was Barack Obama and considering that the former President was an Illinois senator it was highly likely considering the connection of clowns in Chicago.

According to a documentary Killer Legends that sought to connect real life events to horror movies children of the late 1970s and early 1980s were inundated with events inspired to inflict coulrophobia or fear of clowns.  While the modern day clowns seemed intent to just inspire fear the clowns in Chicago were more proactive.  Witnesses claim that clowns drove around in either white fans or trucks and would try to lure the children in with candy.  One woman interviewed in the documentary was an eyewitness to a child clinging to a fence while a clown tried to kidnap the child.  The sightings were all over the city of Chicago and in a day and age without social media or internet connection its highly improbable that these children were coming up with the claims on their own.  It’s also important to note, as the documentary did that Stephen King did not publish IT until 1986 and the movie Poltergeist in which the young boy, Robby was not assaulted by the clown in the film until after the events in Chicago.  Could King and Poltergeist director, Tobe Hooper been so intrigued by the phenomenon that they included it into their fiction?

Creepy Clown sightings have popped up all over the world for several years and usually the warm months before Halloween then fade away.  No one can seem to explain why it happens or what the reasons are for people to inspire such fear in children.  Some of the clowns were arrested for menacing but few answers on how it began or why it was being done was explained.  The non-violent ones who just dressed in the guise of the clown said it seemed like a cool prank.

Would the current generation of young adults and teenagers who find it so amusing to dress up and terrorize young children if they realized that their machinations were the embodiment of a depraved serial killer?  The majority of those who dressed up as the clowns would have fit perfectly into the preferred victim type of John Wayne Gacy who prowled Chicago years before the clown sightings.  He killed 33 people, many of the young boys were raped, and tortured before their murders.

As early as 1975 parents pleaded with Chicago Police to investigate Gacy, who was the last person to known to have contact with missing young men.  Even though Gacy had been convicted of sodomizing boys in 1964 that had been before he had moved to Chicago.  Since moving to Chicago he had began to build a facade in which to hide his deprayed deeds.  His need to torture and to be in control was at contrast with the face in showed to the public.  In fact, on the surface he was not just an upstanding citizen but he had gone above and beyond to become active within his church and the community.  He volunteered his time dressed as a clown named Pogo, served in local politics, and was a successful businessman.

Gacy also learned to hone his tactics of lying and manipulation in order make the police think he was a “swell guy and devoted family man.”  He did his job so well that it was three years and a living witness later that finally convinced the police to look beyond the charitable work that he did and the financial contributions he made under the guise of humanitarianism to their causes that made them investigate him.

The smell from his house was almost unbearable no matter the amount of lime he used to mask the smell yet his neighbors nor the police he would invite over for barbecues refused to consider that he was capable of such horrendous things.

By modern standards Gacy would be the perfect poster child for a Narcissistic Sociopath, his attempt in the late 1970s to manipulate the court into thinking that he was insane and unable to understand the consequences of his actions failed.  The jury was presented with the images of the decomposing bodies of his victims that he he tortured and tried to hide under his home. He knew quite well what he was doing, had enjoyed it immensely, and his attempt to hide them so close to his person was the work of a sadist who viewed his victims as playthings. Like a petulant, albeit violent child Gacy did not want to part with his toys.2016 was the year of the Killer Clown, at least in recent memory.  What inspired people to dress up like clowns often carrying weapons as a means to inflict psychological trauma to children around the world?  I honestly do not believe that people have any answers.  It was not even the first time that clowns have cropped up around the world in order to inflict trauma on unsuspecting children.  Ironically the clowns who attempted to menace children in the early 1980s began during the time serial killer and former volunteer clown John Wayne Gacy was on trial in Chicago.  It leapt to Boston in 1991 but the sightings did not become violent in Chicago until 1991 and was nicknamed “Homey The Clown” after Damon Wayans’ popular character on In Living Color.”  This bizarre frightening history may very well be while the children of the 80s and 90s, now adults, and in some cases parents, were taking the idea of creepy menacing clowns quite seriously.

CNN did a report on the Clown Craze in 2016 and noted that even the former White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had commented that he had heard about the clowns but was not sure if the President knew.  The sitting president was Barack Obama and considering that the former President was an Illinois senator it was highly likely considering the connection of clowns in Chicago.

According to a documentary Killer Legends that sought to connect real life events to horror movies children of the late 1970s and early 1980s were inundated with events inspired to inflict coulrophobia or fear of clowns.  While the modern day clowns seemed intent to just inspire fear the clowns in Chicago were more proactive.  Witnesses claim that clowns drove around in either white fans or trucks and would try to lure the children in with candy.  One woman interviewed in the documentary was an eyewitness to a child clinging to a fence while a clown tried to kidnap the child.  The sightings were all over the city of Chicago and in a day and age without social media or internet connection its highly improbable that these children were coming up with the claims on their own.  It’s also important to note, as the documentary did that Stephen King did not publish IT until 1986 and the movie Poltergeist in which the young boy, Robby was not assaulted by the clown in the film until after the events in Chicago.  Could King and Poltergeist director, Tobe Hooper been so intrigued by the phenomenon that they included it into their fiction?

Creepy Clown sightings have popped up all over the world for several years and usually the warm months before Halloween then fade away.  No one can seem to explain why it happens or what the reasons are for people to inspire such fear in children.  Some of the clowns were arrested for menacing but few answers on how it began or why it was being done was explained.  The non-violent ones who just dressed in the guise of the clown said it seemed like a cool prank.

Would the current generation of young adults and teenagers who find it so amusing to dress up and terrorize young children if they realized that their machinations were the embodiment of a depraved serial killer?  The majority of those who dressed up as the clowns would have fit perfectly into the preferred victim type of John Wayne Gacy who prowled Chicago years before the clown sightings.  He killed 33 people, many of the young boys were raped, and tortured before their murders.

As early as 1975 parents pleaded with Chicago Police to investigate Gacy, who was the last person to known to have contact with missing young men.  Even though Gacy had been convicted of sodomizing boys in 1964 that had been before he had moved to Chicago.  Since moving to Chicago he had began to build a facade in which to hide his deprayed deeds.  His need to torture and to be in control was at contrast with the face in showed to the public.  In fact, on the surface he was not just an upstanding citizen but he had gone above and beyond to become active within his church and the community.  He volunteered his time dressed as a clown named Pogo, served in local politics, and was a successful businessman.

Gacy also learned to hone his tactics of lying and manipulation in order make the police think he was a “swell guy and devoted family man.”  He did his job so well that it was three years and a living witness later that finally convinced the police to look beyond the charitable work that he did and the financial contributions he made under the guise of humanitarianism to their causes that made them investigate him.

The smell from his house was almost unbearable no matter the amount of lime he used to mask the smell yet his neighbors nor the police he would invite over for barbecues refused to consider that he was capable of such horrendous things.

By modern standards Gacy would be the perfect poster child for a Narcissistic Sociopath, his attempt in the late 1970s to manipulate the court into thinking that he was insane and unable to understand the consequences of his actions failed.  The jury was presented with the images of the decomposing bodies of his victims that he he tortured and tried to hide under his home. He knew quite well what he was doing, had enjoyed it immensely, and his attempt to hide them so close to his person was the work of a sadist who viewed his victims as playthings. Like a petulant, albeit violent child Gacy did not want to part with his toys.