We took our Edi flatmate who’s scared of clowns to watch ‘It’ – the clown horror film
It was not very (Penny)wise
Everyone is afraid of something. For some it's the dark, ghosts, or the prospect of crippling student debt. For our flatmate it happens to be clowns.
Luckily for her, Stephen King's terrifying novel-turned-film was playing in the cinema up the road and with a cheeky student discount on the tickets, we couldn't resist.
Her intense fear of clowns started back in 2016 at the height of the 'great clown paranoia' – a period of time when lone 'killer' clowns were terrorising street, woods and coulrophobes (the official term for people scared of clowns) around the world for no apparent reason. This phenomena was, and remains, unexplained.
But for Sarah it only amplified her coulrophobia to dizzying new heights.
Supposedly, the apparent difference between the clown's impossibly joyful exterior and bleak human interior is one of the reasons people are scared of clowns.
This added to people like Tim Curry's 'Pennywise' and clown clad serial killer John Wayne Gacy, creates the potential for a real phobia to develop.
So, with this in mind and having known each other for all of five days, we headed down to the Omni centre.
The film was amazing and struck a pleasant balance between horror, comedy and heart with a surprisingly small amount of clown. However, upon leaving the theatre it was clear that Sarah hadn't fared well.
They say that the symptoms of Coulrophobia range from crying, excessive sweating and shaking to anger and paranoia. In the ten minute walk between the cinema and our flat we witnessed all of the above. 'IT' clearly isn't a movie for a Coulrophobic person. I'm not sure what other conclusion I expected.
On her experience, Sarah said: "I found myself wondering why I had paid actual money to put myself in that position."
To me, it just seemed like a laugh.
Five Days Later
Turns out it wasn't.
Initially, I believed that Coulrophobia wasn't an entirely legitimate phobia as it wasn't a medically recognised condition. However, several days after the screening, Sarah remained in a constant state of terror.
It seems as if we may have permanently scarred her. During the day it's barely recognisable but at night her fear becomes strikingly obvious – she's not sleeping so well.
The walls in Murano happen to be paper thin so I can hear every sound from next door, including the low hum of Netflix and gentle sobbing in the dead of the night.
All in all, it turns out that Coulrophobia does exist and that Coulrophobics do not appreciate being dragged along to films starring Victorian murder clowns.
Their loss.