CLOWN WORLD
Once again, the weeks around Hallowe’en saw an outbreak of scary clown behaviour
JOKER ATTACK
On Hallowe’en itself, a 24-yearold man dressed as the Joker from Batman went on a rampage on a Tokyo Metro train. “I thought it was a Hallowe’en stunt,” one witness said, “then, I saw a man walking this way, slowly waving a long knife.” The man stabbed 17 people on the train, fortunately none fatally, then sprayed flammable liquid around the carriage, setting it alight. Sixteen other people suffered minor injuries, including smoke inhalation, while fleeing the attack.
Police boarded the train after it made an emergency stop and arrested the knifeman, named as Kyota Hattori, who was sitting in the carriage, waiting for police, wearing the Joker’s signature green shirt and a purple suit. He told them that he adored the comic book character and “looked up to him”, and had “wanted to kill someone since June” because he had quit his job and seen many of his friendships fall apart.
He told authorities he wanted to kill people so he could be sentenced to death and appeared to have modelled his rampage on the 2019 film featuring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, in which he attacks several men on a train after they harass him. BBC News, 1 Nov 2021.
SCARY CLOWN
In Guelph in Ontario, Canada, police called to an incident were confronted by a clown brandishing a machete while dragging a man out of a building. When the officers arrived, the man made his escape and the clown tried to flee on a bicycle, with the machete sticking out of his backpack. After a short distance he attempted to make himself less conspicuous by tossing away the machete, but retained his mask. This didn’t fool the police, who quickly rounded him up and charged him with drug and theft offences. torontocitynews.ca, 22 Oct 2021.
LESS SCARY CLOWNS
In Levenshulme, Manchester, police investigating reports that residents had been “scared half to death” by people in clown masks knocking on their windows, gave chase to the miscreants, who were later discovered “crying behind a bush” and turned out to be children out trick-or-treating early. manchestereveningnews. co.uk, 20 Oct 2021.
FLORIDA CLOWN MAN
When Florida police pulled over a pickup truck being driven by Louis Branson, 65, for driving with expired license plates, they found a life-size clown mannequin in the passenger seat and a live hand grenade in the back of the vehicle. Apparently, Branson had found the grenade “three or four years ago” when clearing out the house of a veteran and had decided to keep it, leaving it kicking about in the toolbox in the back of the truck ever since. Police removed the grenade and safely detonated it at a nearby facility. They also found cocaine, marijuana and two pipes containing suspected drug residue in the vehicle. “I’m honestly not sure how the clown fits in,” said Flagler County
“I saw a man walking this way, slowly waving a knife”
Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Melissa Morreale. “It looked pretty human-sized. It was crazy.” Branson was charged with driving with an expired license, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of a firearm, weapon or ammo by a convicted felon and drug counts – and described as an “idiot” by Sherriff Rick Staly. nypost.com, 27 Oct 2021.
CLOWN FAIL
A bold marketing initiative by Speech Academy Asia, a public speaking programme in Singapore, seriously misjudged its target audience – they decided to send clowns to hang around outside primary schools with the aim of attracting children and their parents to whom they could promote the academy’s speech classes. Needless to say, it didn’t have the desired effect, with schools keeping frightened children in at collection time and parents being concerned about potential clown abductions. The speaker of the Singapore Parliament, Tan Chuan-Jin, posted a picture of one of the clowns on Facebook with the comment “Whoever is doing what I assume to be some viral marketing nonsense, stop it!” Speech Academy Asia director Kelvin Tan said: “Maybe the clowns were too scary… there was no evil intention behind the costumes and we sincerely apologise for it. We will not do it again.” boingboing.net, 21 Sept 2021.
SCARY CLOWN DOG
In September, Twitter users were briefly transfixed by a photo of a small dog that was felt to bear a startling resemblance to Pennywise, Stephen King’s evil clown from IT. Very little information was provided about the unnamed dog by Twitter user @thegallowboob, but the post was liked more than 200,000 times and attracted comments like “I have a feeling that there are a lot of bones lying around that back yard” and “That dog is plotting how to make your death look like a tragedy while horrifying the entire neighbourhood just to send a message”. dailypost.co.uk, 27 Sept 2021.
CLOWN FAMINE
Meanwhile, it appears that Northern Ireland is experiencing a clown famine, with circus owner David Duffy making a radio appeal for people to come forward to train as clowns. It seems that Brexit and Covid have both taken their toll on the Irish clown population, with many international performers returning to their home countries; then, with England and much of Europe loosening Covid restrictions before Northern Ireland followed suit, the clowns had already found work elsewhere, leaving Duffy’s Circus short of funny-men. BBC News, 29 Sept 2021.