An eerie phenomenon sweeping across the country does not yet appear to have taken a foothold in this region.
They’re creepy clowns, and to hear tell, they’re hiding behind every streetlight in America.
These are not your jolly Bozos from your favorite Saturday morning kids’ show. Think more of Krusty the Klown’s psychotic brother. Their masks are ghoulish and sinister, and according to the social media fueling the craze, they often target children.
In several of the more than a dozen states with reported sightings, several of those sightings have caused jumpy school officials to go into lockdown.
But not everyone is amused — or concerned.
“I really wish you guys would stop writing about it,” said Kitsap County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Wilson. “They would simply go away.”
It may not be that simple. Social media, plus a dollop of good, old-fashioned fear of the unknown, is the real driver behind it. Each reported sighting, arrest and even reported confrontation simply adds to the story arc, and it doesn’t show any signs of letting up. Wilson is not looking forward to Halloween.
“Yeah, I’m dreading it,” he said. “There are an awful lot of copycats out there.”
The craze seems to have started in Greenville, South Carolina, in August. Since then, there have been dozens of sightings. In one early example, a clown was reported to have attempted to lure a small child into the woods near where the child was playing.
There have been just a smattering of sightings locally, and the last confirmed sighting was at Curtis High School in Tacoma last week. When police arrived, there was no clown to be found.
Lately, there has been a bit of pushback on the part of the formerly intimidated. Recently in Boston, a group of young people brandished bats, pipes, golf clubs and other weapons as they swarmed a cemetery, trying to get their hands on a clown reported to have been seen disappearing into the woodsy grounds. They found nothing.
In Kitsap County, there have been few sightings, few or no actual contacts and little for law enforcement to go on. Sheriff’s deputies are helpless to respond unless they get word of a crime.
“Unfortunately, it isn’t illegal to be creepy,” said Wilson. “Until someone breaks the law, there isn’t a lot we can do.”
Meanwhile, in Bremerton, Police Chief Steven Strachan reported an apparent clown-free zone.
“We don’t have clowns,” Strachan said. “We thought there was a sighting early one morning, but it turned out to be in Port Orchard. It was early in the morning — 7, 7:15a.m. Just two people dressed as clowns, walking along the road. Other than that, nothing.”
But the man with the final word may have been Stephen King, master of the horror genre, whose book “It” really launched the scary clown movement. He weighed in via Twitter a few days ago with a simple plea.
“Hey, enough is enough with the scary clowns,” King tweeted. “Clowns should be able to make people laugh.”
Mark Briant is a reporter for the Bremerton Patriot and Central Kitsap Reporter and can be reached at mbriant@soundpublishing.com.
