scape design student Christian Lane, right, dress as scary clowns while
volunteering for a haunted house at Three Sisters Park. Photo via Christian Lane.
The terrifying clowns trope dates back hundreds of years, and America’s fascination with them has turned into nothing short of a frenzy as of late.
Creepy clowns have appeared in states across the country – from Greenville, South Carolina, where residents reported one suspect was trying to lure children into the woods, to Eureka College, 30-minutes down the road from Bradley.
Eureka went on lockdown on Oct. 4 after @Clowns_Arrival tweeted “@IllinoisClown @IllinoisClownss @IllinoisClowns we meetin in Eureka tomorrow? Gotta kid we could get.”
Chet Griffith, a junior accounting and business double major at Eureka, said he believes the lockdown was smart, as it assured students the college was doing all it could in a potentially dangerous situation.
“At first, we weren’t all that scared, but then people started to get paranoid and heard stories of actual deaths, and it really scared some people,” Griffith said. “I [walked] to the library to study, and that was locked, and I only saw one group of people out, and two of them were carrying bats.”
And on Oct. 3, the @IllinoisClown Twitter account tweeted, “Next stop….Peoria area, sometime tomorrow! Anyone have a unicycle I can borrow?”
While Eureka cancelled classes and closed buildings, University spokesperson Renee Charles said there was no real threat to Bradley’s campus.
“We are monitoring the issue at other colleges,” Charles said. “There have been no credible threats on, off or around our campus. We will be vigilant in monitoring our campus and take all threats seriously.”
Chief of the Bradley University Police Department Brian Joschko also said the threat was likely not a substantial one.
“To me, it seems mostly based on an online hoax,” Joschko said. “As it tracks back, there seems to be one or two isolated incidents on the East coast. Then, it just became a social media thing.”
While this trend certainly has taken off on social media and was a popular topic of discussion on campus last week, Joschko warned people against taking it lightly and turning it into a joke.
“I would give a strong word of caution that people should not be out as a prank walking around with a clown mask on,” Joschko said. “[If a student put on a clown costume to scare their friends], that’s not something that’s advisable. It’s not going to be seen as funny by the responding law enforcement. It’s probably not going to be seen as funny by the general public.”
He also said he urges students to use their resources if they encounter a suspicious person – including clowns.
“If somebody sees somebody looking suspicious – whether that’s a clown mask, a ski mask, somebody just lurking in the bushes or simply just appears to be out of place given the area – we want them to call the police department,” Joschko said. “That’s what we are paid to do.”
Nothing came of the clown’s reported visit to campus last week, and on Oct. 5, @IllinoisClown tweeted, “Wow….I’ve got the biggest hangover! Hydrating, and heading to #SpringfieldIL #IllinoisClown.”
However, students claimed to have seen other clowns walking around campus at night after Oct. 5, using social media and the Snapchat account “hilltopmadness” to report their experiences.
“I have pepper spray, and I’m ready to fight some clowns,” Kali Dodez, a sophomore English major, said.
But Dodez said despite all the joking, she isn’t comfortable with the scary clowns craze.
“I think it’s wrong to play off people’s fears continuously,” Dodez said. “It doesn’t matter if you mean it. If you know it scares a lot of people, a lot of people are paranoid about it, and you keep doing it because you think it’s funny, that’s a problem.”
