Since late August, there have been reports of terrifying clown sightings in at least 32 states. Many—if not most—of those have been exposed as hoaxes, but the rash of clown headlines has still reportedly spurred a huge spike in clown mask sales for at least one major Halloween retailer.
“Clown mask sales are up more than [300%] from a year ago the same period online,” Brad Butler, COO of the company that operates national Halloween costume chain Halloween Express, told CW 33. “In the top 10, eight of them are ‘evil’ clown masks this season whereas last year, five of the top 10 were ‘evil.’”
While CW33 didn’t receive a response from the other prominent Halloween retailers they reached out to, we feel safe assuming clown mask sales are probably up everywhere, which would there are more clowns out there right now than in any other time in recent history.
In case you haven’t been paying attention to recent red-nosed developments, what started as a few sightings in North and South Carolina has now spread throughout the country. Schools have been shut down over clown reports, people are faking clown attacks to avoid getting fired, and kids are even allegedly reaching out to fake clowns on social media to kill their teachers.
The country’s leading evil clown expert Stephen King has weighed in on the subject, saying he believes the pandemic is a “low-level hysteria.”
“The clown furor will pass, as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying,” he said. “I suspect it’s a kind of low-level hysteria, like Slender Man, or the so-called Bunny Man, who purportedly lurked in Fairfax County, Virginia, wearing a white hood with long ears and attacking people with a hatchet or an axe.”
But while we’ve heard from King, we still don’t even know if word of the crisis has reached President Obama, whose press secretary was asked about the epidemic earlier this week by a Bloomberg reporter.
“I don’t know that the president has been briefed on this particular situation,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. “Obviously, this is a situation that law enforcement is taking quite seriously.”
Posted By: Taylor Berman
