Why are clowns scary?

 

Children are frightened by clown-themed decor in hospitals, a survey suggests. How did the smiley circus entertainers become a horror staple?

Anyone who has read Stephen King's It would probably never choose to decorate a children's ward with clowns.

And it probably comes as no surprise to horror fans that a University of Sheffield study of 250 children for a report on hospital design suggests the children find clown motifs "frightening and unknowable".

One might suspect that popular culture is to blame. In It, made into a television movie in 1990, Stephen King created a child-murdering monster that appeared as a demonic clown.

King's It has sparked a slew of schlocky movies over the past 20 years, known as the killer clown or evil clown genre.

Examples include Clownhouse from 1990 where three boys at home alone are menaced by escaped mental patients who have taken on the identities of clowns they have killed; Mr Jingles from 2006, where a killer clown takes its revenge; and 2004's In Fear of Clowns, in which an artist with coulrophobia is stalked by a clown resembling one of her paintings.

S.I.C.K., Killjoy and the Camp Blood Trilogy are other low-budget examples of the genre. But perhaps the highlight is 2001's Killer Klowns from Outer Space, with the tagline "In Space No One Can Eat Ice Cream".

Clowning around

British horror writer Ramsey Campbell says the recurring theme in popular culture of the scary clown goes back at least as far as silent move star Lon Chaney Sr, who identified the spooky potential when he reportedly said: "There is nothing laughable about a clown in the moonlight."

Dark clown imagery can also be seen in Jacques Tourneur's cult films Night of the Demon and Berlin Express, as well as in the form of the Joker in Batman comics and film adaptations.

"It is the fear of the mask, the fact that it doesn't change and is relentlessly comical," says Campbell, who has explored dark clown themes in his story The Other Side and in his latest novel The Grin of the Dark.

The place of the scary clown in mainstream popular culture can be seen in The Simpsons with Bart's intonation of "can't sleep, clown will eat me". And the real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who often dressed as a clown for neighbourhood parties, provides an unpleasant undertone to the motif.

Search for fear of clowns on the internet and the results include plenty of sites referring to "coulrophobia".

Prof Paul Salkovskis, clinical director of the Maudsley Hospital Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma, saw a patient in Yorkshire some years ago who feared clowns as one of a range of problems.

But he believes children's fear may be less to do with clowns per se and more to do with being unsettled by something as unusual-seeming as a clown.

"People are typically frightened by things which are wrong in some way, wrong in a disturbingly unfamiliar way," Prof Salkovskis says.

"It is almost certainly not a reaction to clowns, but we are sensitive to things which are extraordinary, particularly sensitive when we are young. My three-year-old was terrified by Peter Rabbit at a B&Q. Peter Rabbit is six inches high, not seven feet high."

And obviously it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to suppose that children in hospitals, away from home, in an unfamiliar environment and worried about their health or elements of the treatment, may be more nervous than usual.

"Being away from home or away from a carer makes children more susceptible to fears," Prof Salkovskis says.