Yeah, what is it about clowns that is so freaky?
Clowns are uncanny. They’re sort of recognizable but not entirely, and we don’t like things like that. According to Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Steven Schlozman, who has taught on the psychology of horror, clowns are “familiar enough to be recognizable but weird enough to give you the shivers.”
We know we’re supposed to find them funny, but oftentimes we just... don’t. This can create a sense of dread or tension that bleeds over into this feeling of “creepiness.”
Clowns have appeared in many cultures, but nowadays it’s more common to see them in threatening contexts than as cheerful people at Ringling Bros. Think about serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who dressed up as a clown, or the movie Killer Clowns From Outer Space, or Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King’s It. “You don’t really see clowns in those kinds of safe, fun contexts anymore. You see them in movies and they’re scary,” Martin Antony, a professor of psychology at Ryerson University told Smithsonian. “Kids are not exposed in that kind of safe, fun context as much as they used to be and the images in the media, the negative images, are still there.”
In other words, we’re now more used to envisioning them as killers lurking around the corner — so when the real-life story pops up, it’s easy to remember all the other times we’ve seen clowns be evil. Everything feels more plausible. |
