‘Killer clowns’ have been around Glasgow for over 30 years

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, you’ll have heard about the “killer clowns” craze circulating social media, especially in the UK and USA at the moment.

There have been no reports of clowns killing people in the UK although there  have been reports in the UK of clowns lurking in public areas trying to scare the public – with one man even brandishing a knife. Police are aware of the craze and are asking the public not to join in with these pranks that are thought to have started in the USA. However, this is not the first time there has been a killer clown craze in Glasgow – in fact it’s the third wave of “killer clown” reports since the 1980s.

Clowns taking on the character of a psychotic serial killer is nothing new. Many of the best horror stories or urban myths usually stem from some sinister and shocking true event which is then dramatised and recycled for decades after. The shocking truth that apparently influenced Stephen King’s fictional killer clown Pennywise from his novel IT was a man called John Wayne Gacy from the USA who worked as a clown and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. Since the 1970s there have been huge waves of horror books, films and TV shows all featuring psychotic serial killer clowns.

The killer clown stories went so viral and scared so many people that there was actually a book written in 2013 By P.k Stein, Killer Clowns in Glasgow (the truth behind the myth). The book claims to tell “the story of an urban legend that swept through Glasgow in the days before social networks and mobile phones, a story that brought fear to even the cities toughest housing schemes”. In the 1990s there were a series of unsolved murders, missing people including an escaped mental patient who was a convicted killer and sightings of clowns lurking around primary schools.

Luckily for us, there have been no fatalities or a serious shocking event to spur this craze on again – Halloween is just around around the corner and clowns are one of the few creepy characters I expect to see out on October 31st.