Children are 'scared of hospital clowns'

Telegraph ^ | December 26, 2007 | Sarah Womak

[109ACS]

Kramer is afraid of clowns also and I don't blame him.

[Vigilanteman]

These clowns are pretty scary.

[Kaslin]

You have a good point

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Yep. I’m one of them.

Not the sort of “hide under yoru bed in terror” type of fear - but they make me very uneasy, and they’re just downright creepy.

[boomop1]

Sounds like a Stephen King novel.

[metmom]

Now THAT’S scary......

[OCCASparky]

Nancy Pelosi, A clown with or without makeup.

She certainly looks more (ahem) interesting without it...

[andy58-in-nh]

I'd never heard the technical name for the fear of clowns before, but it is certainly common in children (my daughter and several of her cousins have expressed the same fear). I was scared by a jack-in-the-box when I was about 6 years old - it just popped open by itself while I was looking at it. Not only was there a clown inside, but a strangely unsettling picture of a clown on the outside. It completely freaked me out, as I was a child with an active imagination to begin with.

I had a dream that night (well, a nightmare) which repeated about a half a dozen times until I was about 12. The nightmare recurred as an episode of "sleep paralysis" - something else I only learned about many years later as "Old Hag Syndrome". You feel like there is an evil presence in the room sitting on you or pressing you down, and you cannot move or cry out. In my case, it was the Clown. It is quite an eerie thing and a bit traumatic for a child. It hasn't happened to me for over 30 years, yet I still get chills when I think about it. As Stephen King might tell you, the human mind is capable of some pretty wild things.

[randog]

I'm scared of clowns, too:

[mware]

Depends on the clown. I have liked a few of them, Emmett Kelly, that clown in the movie Toby Tyler, Happy the Clown ( a Delware Valley tv clown), and Loranzo (another Delware Valley TV Clown)

[SALChamps03]

Some people think clowns are funny. But I think they're scary. But maybe that's because when I went to the circus as a little boy, a clown killed my dad.

Jack Handy

[montag813]

This man ruined it all for clowns...

[giotto]

added Mr Eldridge, who is also a director of the Clown Museum in London... "We live in a world where everything is banned and it has got rather silly."

This from a clown.

I hate clowns. I don't find them scary, just boring and garish. I do sort of like the white clowns, though--Pierrot or whatever the character is called.

[Cuttnhorse]

Wasn't this guy also afraid of clowns??

[Cuttnhorse]

Oops, sorry I missed your much better photo.

[naturalized]

Adults often don't give children credit for their powers of observation. We should all be wary of anyone, clown or not, that wears a "painted-on" smile. I think children also are unsettled by the body language and "off-stage" conduct of clowns, and the strangeness of having their parents tolerate this in their presence. And freaks like Gacy and Klutzo don't help.

[rhombus]

I’ve never been a big fan of clowns. For too many it’s more about them wanting to be loved than making people laugh.

[CASchack]

[kalee]

ping

[null and void]

Before Steven King: