Clown sightings/attempted abductions in the midwest

I've started a thread on this before and i recently started doing more research on it. It seems these attempts seem to be centralized to the midwest and i was wondered if anyone in the Chicago area or in the midwest has heard of any new reports on the local news stations? Here are some new links i have aquired since my last post. articles.chicagotribune.com... and here is a report from a different site. Let’s face it, deep down inside we’ve always suspected that clowns were up to no good. Whether, it’s the frightening wigs, the garish outfits, or the nightmarish face paint, there’s just something creepy and disturbing about these so-called happy hobos and harlequins. In 1981, people’s deep-rooted fear of clowns seemed to be justified, as a rash of evil-clown sightings swept across the country. In the following report, Loren Coleman, a noted delver into the unknown tracks the bizarre case of these masquerading menaces.

***

In the spring of 1981, Boston, Massachusetts, appears to have been the port of entry for a strange new version of the Pied Piper story. During the first week of May, some individuals in multicolored clothes began trying to entice schoolchildren into coming along with them.

On May 6, 1981, the Boston police, responding to persistent complaints, warned parents and school officials that men in clown suits were harassing elementary schoolchildren. One of the men was seen wearing a clown suit just from the waist up; from the waist down he was naked. According to reports, the clown had driven a black van near the recreational horseshoe site of Franklin Park in the Roxbury area of Boston. He also appeared in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston near the Mary F. Curley School.

A day earlier, in the adjoining city of Brookline, two clown men reportedly tried to lure children into their van with offers of candy. The Brookline police had a good description of the van: older model, black, with ladders on the side, a broken front headlight, and no hubcaps. After the clown men and van had been seen near the Lawrence Elementary School on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, the police told school administrators to be “extra cautious.”

By May, 8 reports of clown men in vans harassing children had come in from East Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Randolph, and other cities near Boston. Police were stopping vehicles with clowns delivering birthday greetings and “clown-a-grams,” but no child molesters were arrested.

Frustrated policemen finally pointed out that virtually all of the reported sightings originated with children aged five to seven. The headlines in the May 9 issue of the Boston Globe told the story: POLICE DISCOUNT REPORTS OF CLOWNS BOTHERING KIDS. The public had been calmed, and that was the end of the story. Or so the papers could have had us believe.

The focus of activity now shifts a thousand miles west to Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. On the afternoon of May 22, police cruisers on the Missouri side crisscrossed the city chasing a knife-wielding clown in a yellow van that had been reported at six different elementary schools. Earlier in the day, at eight thirty, a mother had watched a yellow van approach her children as they walked to a school bus stop. The van stopped, and someone inside spoke to her two girls, who then screamed and fled; the vehicle sped away.

The children told their mother that a man dressed as a clown and carrying a knife had ordered them inside. By noon the police had received dozens of similar reports- of a clown in a yellow van. The calls did not taper off until five o’ clock that afternoon.

Residents of the two Kansas cities called it the Killer Clown Affair. Some parents in Kansas were even keeping their children out of school. Before long, “group hysteria” was touted as the explanation for the reports. But incidents continued. The police and volunteers were never able to capture any clowns, but witnesses insisted the costumed figures they had seen were real and not imaginary.

The story of the phantom clowns went unnoticed on a national scale until I began getting a hint we were in the midst of a major new phenomenon. Slowly, after contacting fellow researchers by phone and mail, I discovered that the phantom clown enigma went beyond Boston and Kansas City. Indeed, the reports filtering in demonstrated that a far-reaching mystery was developing. Local media in the individual cities were not aware they were living through a series of events that were occurring nationwide. The national media was not spreading the word, but something quite unusual happened in America in the spring of 1981.

But what was it that happened? Was it a group hysteria, as some newsmen would have us believe? Or more? Phantom clowns in at least six major cities, spanning over a thousand miles of America in the space of one month, is quite a mystery. Were the “clowns in vans” sighted elsewhere in the United States? Are they still being seen? Only time will tell.

Today people kindly try to inform me that the phantom clown sightings of 1981, were just mass hysteria caused by Stephen King’s It, which tells a scary story about a clown who tries to abduct children. But the first editions of Mr. King’s book were not published until 1986. So much for that theory.

Since those sightings in 1981, the world has become a much different place for children. The very real school violence and satanic scares of the last decades have taken a toll on innocence. Phantom clowns were sinister enough in 1981; in the twenty-first century, they are downright terrifying.

Perhaps the phantom clowns have something to tell us. Certainly the shadowy monklike figures mentioned so often in occult literature have become almost too commonplace and familiar. The Men in Black terrorizing UFO witnesses from their Cadillacs may be too obviously sinister. The denizens of the netherworld have apparently dreamed up a new nightmare to shock us. Leagues of phantom clowns in vans thus have now joined the scores of Fortean, ufological, and flying saucer “people” for a new chapter in the story. The cosmic joker is alive an well, and living in a clown suit. Note how these appearences are almost 10 to 15 years apart and usually the same vehicle is described. I find this extremely fascinating and wonder if the supernatural/other side is involved or is this a serial offender at work..

Oh, quit clowning around.

hi op
that is bloody creepy
i did think i.t till you said the dates
could this be the new way to abduct children by et
also makes me think of chitty chitty bang bang
the creepy sweet van man

reply to post by davesmart


I know right, i just discovered it going back to 1981,then 91,then then 2000 then 2008

reply to post by zeroeffect


I'm not sure I see anything paranormal or "phantom" about these reports.......I just see perverts dressed as clowns trying to abduct children

reply to post by zeroeffect

It seems these attempts seem to be centralized to the midwest and i was wondered if anyone in the Chicago area or in the midwest has heard of any new reports on the local news stations?

In midwest here...St. Louis.

Never heard a single word about this on the news and it is not in the papers either.

btw:

Why is this in paranormal??

um nice name for your first link.

could this be the same indiviual/s
thats been doing it for the last 30 odd yrs
it does happen

reply to post by Chamberf=6


Because quite a bit of the reports i have read suggest a phantom or demon of some kind and there are other variants of this story in other countries..

One word, or rather name

Pennywise

reply to post by zeroeffect

Because quite a bit of the reports i have read suggest a phantom or demon of some kind and there are other variants of this story in other countries..

Where are the reports that suggest phantoms or demons? you should have included them in your OP......because that suggests perverts dressed as clowns.

Uhhhhh......your link in the OP "shavedlong****" WTH?????

Originally posted by Raivan31
One word, or rather name

Pennywise

Thought you would say John Wayne Gacy wannabe.

Originally posted by Longshots
Oh, quit clowning around.

That was good.

Seriously though ... not paranormal but creepy still. Sounds like human criminals finding a new way to get at kids. Here, a few summers ago, someone went around in an icecream truck to the town pools trying to steal kids. The creeps will find new ways ....

I remember in elementary big hysteria of clowns in school restroom stalls, if I remember correctly kids were reporting that a clown was coming out of the faucet, toilet, from the roof of the bathroom. Supposably one kid got bit in the hand by the clown...

I'm pretty sure this was all because Steven kings "It"

reply to post by zeroeffect

Here are some new links i have aquired since my last post.

Thought I should point out that these "new links" are from

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

And

October 11, 1991.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space!!

reply to post by zeroeffect


Clowns. Are. Evil.

I would have thought anyone who grew up and had children during and after the 80's - have instilled in their kids, and probably have themselves, an inbuilt natural fear of clowns.

Uhhhhh......your link in the OP "shavedlong****" WTH????? edit on 2/3/2012 by StealthyKat because: (no reason given)

I decided not to click it.

I'm from Chicago (South Side by the lake), ever since I was a little kid the "Homey The Clown" has been a popular "story" it's just an urban legend. It's just a story made up to scare kids so we would not trust strangers, and I think the whole clown thing was to grab our attention, I'm pretty sure it's creeps without a costume kids should worry about.

Still, I don't watch TV anymore so I have not been up to date on news reports, but I believe it to be a revived urban legend.

reply to post by zeroeffect


Okay. So that would be 10, 9, 8, years. If on schedule, the next events should be around 2015.