Seriously: What’s With The Clown Plague Of 2016?

Okay, so we've written a fair bit on clowns recently, but that's only because we can't seem to escape them.

Over the past few months they’ve been popping up everywhere... and we literally mean everywhere. The clown plague first descended upon America, before eventually travelling across the world to Australia as well. Thanks for remembering us?

The whole craze has spurred many conversations about, well, clowns. We asked ourselves, “why do we even find clowns so scary?” Apparently, it has a lot to do with their theatrical disguises and being overly pleasant.

Even our beloved pal Ronald McDonald got caught up in it all. McDonald's made a timely decision to sideline the iconic figure in light of all the creepy clown sightings. Poor guy – hopefully he’s enjoying a vacay somewhere tropical, getting some quality R&R time.

And now Halloween is upon us! Meaning, we should all probably expect much more clown mischief - even in Australia, where Halloween isn’t really a thing.

I had a chat with Christine Love, the manager of Sydney circus supplier Circus Stuff, to see whether there had been a spike in clown costume sales.

“We always do get more people coming through when it’s close to Halloween," she said.

Though she probably can't chalk it up entirely to the clown sightings, she's definitely come across a few suspect customers.

One guy apparently came in and straight-up asked about clown masks. Christine said, "I got the feeling he might have been wanting them for a prank, because he was acting really sheepishly. He didn’t want to say 'scary mask' but I could tell that’s what he wanted.”

Real smooth buddy, real smooth.

Keen on finding out whether the clown plague has helped or dampened business, I asked Christine about her thoughts on this weird new fad.

"It's certainly not doing the industry any good, that's for sure," she said.

"It's flipping something that's supposed to be joyous and fun, turning it into something evil and scary."

I thought it'd be beneficial to get another perspective on all this "clowning around" (bad pun, sorry).

A new Aussie film, Boys in the Trees, features a cast of teenagers riding around neighbourhoods wearing (yep, you guessed it) clown masks. Looks like director Nicholas Verso was way ahead of this trend.

I spoke to Nicholas to get his thoughts on why clowns are scary, and why he decided to use them in Boys in the Trees.

"I think it's because it is such a strange disguise," he said.

"You can't tell what's underneath all the make-up. Who's hiding under the disguise, you know? I think that's what makes it odd."

He also reckons that people are instinctively untrusting of clowns because anything that sets out to look so happy is probably hiding something crooked and dark.

"[People] suspect that something's up, something's not right," said Nicholas.

Interestingly, Hollywood has long capitalised on the scariness of clowns. Nicholas said the most iconic version would have to be Stephen King's IT, which featured an absolutely terrifying dude named Pennywise.

Like most things in our day and age, they come and go. Even though clowns seem to be all the rage right now, give it a few more weeks and we'll probably have some new viral trend to rave about.

"I'm sure if this was the nineties, word just wouldn't have travelled the way it has now... something like this wouldn't have snowballed the way it has," Nicholas agreed.

"Might be Shannon Noll memes one week and creepy clowns the next."

A Shannon Noll plague for Halloween 2017? Now that’s an ominous threat.

Photo: Mushroom Pictures.