If you have been keeping up with the current news cycle – unless you’ve been hiding under a thick rainbow wig recently – you would know that clown hysteria has taken the country by storm. As stated in the subtitle of this article, these sightings have fueled a wave of fear and fascination with the iconic red-nosed jester, prompting calls for calm from police departments and even from the master of horrors: Stephen King. Now it appears that the “zany trend” is finding its way across the border in places like Nova Scotia, Canada as well as overseas as far away as Great Britain. This series of strange and unfortunate circumstances, of course, does beg the question: How did this phenomenon originally start? This is one question that the remainder of this article will attempt to answer.

Furthermore according to a recent piece in TIME, “The [clown] frenzy was born in South Carolina in late August after unsubstantiated reports surfaced that clowns were spotted trying to lure children into the woods. The craze has since ignited a national phenomenon, with scary clown sightings reported in more than two dozen states from Alabama to Wisconsin.” A significant majority of these cases turned out to be hoaxes. However, a handful of these incidents did result in arrests. In the same TIME piece, it reads that “in Alabama, at least seven people face felony charges of making a terrorist threat connected to “clown-related activity.”’ And more incidents have occurred since then.

With all this clown activity, it also leads one to speculate how the American populace will react to these sightings. For some clairvoyance, we can look at a few examples in order to gauge the outcomes likely to occur. Within the past week, we saw a mob of Penn State college students, some 500 in total, swarmed the surrounding college streets and organized a massive “clown hunt” after one was allegedly spotted near the college campus. “Some people run away from clowns, Penn State runs towards them,” one witness tweeted.

Pennsylvania is just one case, among many, of how people and authorities have reacted to the craze. A Connecticut school district, for example, said it is banning clown costumes and any “symbols of terror.” And an armed clown hoax temporarily put a Massachusetts college on lockdown. The issue has even found its way into the White House Press Room. White House press secretary Josh Earnest, after being prodded with a question about the phenomenon, had this to say: “I don’t know that the President has been briefed on this particular situation. Obviously, this is a situation that law enforcement is taking quite seriously.”

This is not just a problem unique to America, this craze has now gone international. As alluded to in the earlier parts of this article, clown sightings have been documented in places like Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. Focusing on Great Britain, a recent issue of The Guardian provides some insight. ‘“People around the UK have reported a series of sightings of people dressed as clowns frightening children, with six separate reports of “clown incidents” reported by Northumbria police in the past week.”’ The article continues: “One of the most dramatic occurred on Friday morning when a masked man carrying a knife jumped out in front of a group of 11 and 12 year-olds and followed them to school in County Durham. The pupils were left distressed but unhurt by the clown…” Neighborhood sergeant Mel Sutherland said: “The children arrived at school understandably upset and distressed by this incident and we are currently trying to locate this man. We believe this to be part of a much larger prank which is currently sweeping across the USA and parts of the UK.” A truly unfortunate and unsettling set of events.

A dissertation of this type would not be complete without some kind of plea for moral reaction. This cannot be so because the very nature of what these loosely connected events actually are cannot be determined. However, I do believe that some advice can be yielded. Whether it is a social media fad, an expression of profound human anxiety, or folklore with a modern twist, the phenomenon is among us now. Be it better or for worse. I do not know about you, but I think of the latter every time I see a video of one of these masked fools – which frankly is what they are both underneath and the façade they project – rushes a car full of innocent bystanders or trespass onto another individual’s property. It might have started out as a joke. It might have fooled you, as it did me, as a joke. However, as we have just seen, clowns are getting serious. Though some of these encounters between a clown and average person seem staged, their impact is real. This is no longer a laughing matter.