I don't fear clowns, but they should fear me

Seems legit.

Every Thursday morning for the past few weeks, I have woken up at 5:30 a.m. to go for a run before work. It is still quite dark at this time of day. And one part of my Thursday route takes me along a path through a heavily wooded area, where it is even darker. If I'm lucky, I get some hints of light from the still-ascendant moon, but on most mornings, the clouds and the thick covering of branches overhead block even that. In such a place, every stir, every breaking twig, every rustle in the leaves can tap into your primal fear and become cause for alarm. But not for me. In fact, I have emerged from this point on every one of these runs disappointed. Why? Because a killer clown has not emerged from the woods. I know it makes me sound like the guy in the horror movie who's not afraid of the monster or not convinced that it's real when I say this, but...

...I so desperately wish one would.

First, some background. In case you somehow haven't heard, killer clowns are on the loose in America. Because 2016 definitely needed to get weirder. No one really knows where the first incidents began, though it seems the first reported one involved children in South Carolina in August. But now they are everywhere. Killer clown sightings or threats have disrupted life and closed schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I grew up; in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near where I went to college, and in Hillsdale, Michigan, where I actually did go to college; in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., where I now live and work; and in many other places throughout the country (and the world). Coulrophobia is the technical term for fear of clowns, and it is, apparently, on the rise.

Pictured: A killer clown? (If looks could kill)

It's possible that all of this is just a mass shared delusion. Much as no one can point to exactly where the sightings began, very few of the sightings themselves (except for one) can be truly substantiated; many of the rest seem to be recycled from a few years back, the work of pranksters or trolls, or urban legends resuscitated and gone viral. It's happened before, and probably will happen again. And, in the meantime, real clowns, the ones who aren't trying to kill you, are suffering, and trying to combat the stereotypes (no, seriously).  

But there has to be some legitimacy to the fear itself, at least, even if the current killer clown wave is not as widespread as reported and believed. Why do we fear clowns? There are many explanations. Some psychologists blame the "uncanny valley" effect of clowns: They look real enough that we are able to recognize that there is something vaguely, indescribably inhuman about them. Others say that certain off-putting physical characteristics about the standard clown make us more psychologically receptive to an anxiety related to their inherent unpredictability.

Other explanations point to the cultural ramifications of two figures, one real, one imaginary: serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who investigators discovered would go to children's parties dressed as a clown; and Pennywise the Clown, aka It, the monster devised by horror author Stephen King. King, incidentally, has told everyone to calm down, despite having helped create this fear, and despite encroachments of the clown hysteria on the Maine setting so familiar to his work (maybe he's just in the pocket of Big Clown). Any of these explanations, or all of them, could be at play.   

Pennywise the Clown

I, for one, have no fear of clowns (again, if this were a horror movie, such a quote would just be begging a clown to off me. But I'm not in one. Right?). I've never been particularly fond of them (except the Joker, of course), but they don't frighten me. And, frankly, they shouldn't frighten you, either. For, as far as I can tell, the clowns that have appeared in this current wave--if any can truly be said to have appeared--are cowards. They prey on the solitary, the vulnerable, the isolated, the defenseless. They appear in the dark, using cheap tricks and cowardly stunts to lure their prospective prey. And they rely on, indeed, they feed on, the fear of their potential victims. Take all that from them, and they have nothing. Take, for example, this admittedly superficially creepy-seeming video of a knife-wielding clown trying to break into a house:



Yes, this does seem frightening. But think about it. A supposedly terrifying clown, seeking to sate its blood lust, thwarted by common house locks? Michael Myers he is not. Here's another example:



So yes, that's a clown in a cemetery at night. It seems pretty scary. But you know what? The person who recorded this video is in a car. Physics tells me who would win that battle.

Fortunately, people are starting to get wise to these "killer" clowns' act. In Australia, a group of people supposedly beat one up. And in England, someone who is somehow not Jared Van Dyke has dressed up as Batman to chase any killer clowns he sees. I cannot quite condone this behavior, as I try not to wish harm upon anyone. But surely, by this point, anyone dressing up as a clown with the intent of creeping people out knows what's coming. They should, anyway. And the clown opponents have the right idea. Depriving these cowardly clowns of the fear on which they thrive is the key to their defeat. Whatever it takes to do that for you, do it.

Yet that is not what I plan to do if my dreams come true and a clown does materialize on that dark stretch of road this coming Thursday. My preferred weapon is not physical. It is psychological. Readers of my blog will know that I am capable of making myself very frightening.

If I see a clown, I plan to return to this dark place within my own soul, to retrieve that voice, to laugh wildly, and then slowly approach the clown as I say something like this:

I know you. I've seen you before. You think that mask makes you scary. You know what that means? It means you don't know the first thing about fear. True fear doesn't need a mask. True fear is what's beneath the mask. True fear is what happens when you look the darkness in the face and the darkness stares back. You have a lot to learn about true fear. Lucky for you, I'm a good teacher. Now, let's get started on the first lesson...

That, with the proper creepy affect, would be enough to scare away anyone of these poseur clowns, I reckon. And if it doesn't work, well...I can pretty safely guarantee that I'm faster than any random clown I encounter. But if it comes to that, I don't think it will be the clown I'm really running away from. I think it will be the monster inside of me, the monster inside all of us, the thing that really makes us scared, that I'll be fleeing. Unfortunately for me, and for everyone, there's no escaping that monster. For, in the end, the clowns are us. And we're the clowns we really need to be afraid of.