Recent Posts
The Fear of Clowns - Maybe They aren't so Cute after all
The Fear of Clowns - Maybe They aren't so Cute after all
I thought to day I would give my take on coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. I have had many circus visits interrupted by people suffering from the fear of clowns. Honestly I’ve never fully understood such a fear, as to me they’re cute and funny. Now though I don’t fear them, I can honestly say that I get it.
It doesn’t take much to turn a cute clown into a monster. An evil being in the shadows seeking its prey. If you really think about it, it wouldn’t really even be that hard, for most people automatically without caution will trust a clown.
Some of the greatest horror movies were based on clown characters. Take for instance House of a 1000 corpses, filled with clowns, killers and blood and guts. Captain Spaulding, though overzealous looking, doesn’t actually appear to be a threat, that is until his true character is met.
Horror movies are one thing, real life is another. John Wayne Gacy dressed up time after time to entertain the masses as a happy, funny clown. When the makeup came off he was everything but a funny clown, he was one of our more notorious serial killers that filled the dirt basement of his house with dead bodies.
Do coulrophobia sufferers know something that we for whatever reason have failed to grasp? Not likely, it’s a fear like any other fear. I’ve asked my friends who suffer from this fear and the most common reason behind this fear is that no matter how fun a clown looks, you just can’t see the person that’s hidden behind a colorful mask of makeup.