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That's patreon.com slash ghost town pod. Send in the clowns. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Lebe.

And this is Ghost Town.

In early August of 2016,

photographed surfaced of a strange figure wandering the streets of downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin,

and what looked like some kind of office park plaza.

The images showed a figure dressed in baggy clown clothes with a bright white painted face, dark eyes, and red mouth, holding four black balloons. As you might imagine,

the photos brought up many questions, and as the pictures circulated, in wider communities,

those questions became a sense of panic.

The photos would soon be outed as a promotional method for a short film, but after the film was

released, the clown kept appearing. In forests, on school grounds, looming over sidewalks of rural

neighborhoods and suburbs, figures in clown masks, clown suits,

and paint were being seen at alarming rates all over the world. Everyone wanted to know,

who were they, what were they, and what did they want? With so many questions, the public's reaction

to this bizarre phenomenon went to extremely dark places, including coercion, threats, stalking, and even murder.

Today on Ghost Town, whatever you want to call it, we'll talk about it.

The 2016 clown sightings, the killer clown hoax, or my favorite, the great clown panic of 2016.

The chaos really began three years before in Northampton, England.

In the fall of 2013, a clown that bore a striking resemblance to Stephen King's character Pennywise in the classic horror novel It began appearing.

It stood motionless, often clutching balloons, waving or staring at passerbyes, and sometimes saying,

...