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It\u2019s been a rough few years for people who have a fear of clowns. In the wake of the \u2018clown attack\u2019 craze that reached a fever pitch in 2016, movies about creepy clowns have taken over the entertainment landscape. This fall alone, ads featuring the white-painted faces of characters like IT Chapter Two\u2018s Pennywise and the Joker were plastered across billboards and liable to pop up on TV or computer screens at any moment.
Earlier this month, Magnet Releasing even debuted a documentary about Wrinkles the Clown, the infamous Florida man whose work as a creepy clown-for-hire has gone massively viral in recent years. A local legend, Wrinkles is a 69-year-old retiree who will show up in a terrifying clown suit to scare the pants off anyone you ask him to \u2014 even your misbehaving child. In 2015, he told the Washington Post that he gets hundreds of phone calls a day requesting his services. \u201cWe know that there\u2019s a human underneath and yet, you don\u2019t know their identity,\u201d a voiceover says of Wrinkles in the trailer for the doc. \u201cThat creeps people out.\u201d Indeed.
But why are people afraid of clowns to begin with? Although professional clowns have long been fixtures at family-friendly events like children\u2019s birthday parties and the circus, according to Dr. Rami Nader, a registered psychologist practicing at Vancouver\u2019s North Shore Stress and Anxiety Clinic, the fear of clowns often stems from that feeling of not knowing what\u2019s going on in the mind of the person behind the face paint or mask.
\u201cClowns\u2019 faces are disguised and they have these large artificial displays of emotion. So you have a clown with a painted face and a big smile, but you don\u2019t really know what they\u2019re actually feeling,\u201d he tells TIME. \u201cThere\u2019s this inherent mistrust that what they\u2019re presenting to you isn\u2019t what they\u2019re actually feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frank T. McAndrew, a professor of psychology at Knox College, adds that clowns have a long history of being seen as suspicious. \u201c[Some of the] very first clowns were the court jesters who poked fun at kings and made people in high places uncomfortable. That\u2019s why they exist,\u201d he tells TIME of the history of clowns in medieval Europe. \u201cThey\u2019re designed to make people afraid. If you go all the way back to the beginning of clownhood, they\u2019ve always been bad. They\u2019re pranksters, they play tricks.\u201d As David Kiser, director of talent for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, told Smithsonian Magazine in 2013, even going back to ancient times, clowns have always had a dark side. \u201cIn one way, the clown has always been an impish spirit,\u201d Kiser said. \u201cAs he\u2019s kind of grown up, he\u2019s always been about fun, but part of that fun has been a bit of mischief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, pop culture\u2019s recent trend toward depicting clowns as menacing and murderous hasn\u2019t helped to improve their reputation. \u201cWhen people hear \u2018clown,\u2019 the first associations that pop into their head are the killer clowns in the movies \u2014 It, the Joker\u2014 and then John Wayne Gacy, the real-life mass murderer,\u201d McAndrew says of the 1970s serial killer who became known as the \u201cKiller Clown\u201d for his volunteer clown work. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of hard to get past all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, while many people are apprehensive or fearful of clowns, both Nader and McAndrew agree that someone having an actual phobia of clowns, a.k.a. coulrophobia, is rare. \u201cTo be a phobia, the fear of clowns would have to cause the person a great deal of distress and interfere in their life,\u201d Nader says. \u201cFortunately, we live in a society where clowns aren\u2019t just wandering around, so it\u2019s pretty easy to avoid them or at least not come into contact with them very regularly. Rarely does this fear ever cause a person to experience a disruption in their lifestyle or ability to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if people are so scared of them, why does society\u2019s fascination with creepy clowns continue to endure? McAndrew, for one, chalks it up to human nature. \u201cWe like to learn about dangers in a safe way so that we\u2019re prepared in some unknown future time to deal with them if they ever come our way. So by going to see IT and watching this evil clown lure children in and kill them, we learn strategies for avoiding that kind of fate ourselves,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re not consciously sitting there, watching the movie and thinking these things, but that impulse to like to scare ourselves is there.\u201d Like it or not, it seems like creepy clowns are here to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n