Whether they just make you feel uneasy or you end up having a full-on panic attack when you see one, plenty of people have coulrophobia - a fear of clowns.
I've definitely got it. I hated them even before they started popping up all over the country. Even the nice ones, who just want to make you laugh but fail miserably.
There are photographs of me as little fat kid, happily sitting with clowns at kids' parties, so my phobia is obviously something I've grown into.
Firstly, they're unpredictable, aren't they? That's all part of the clown shtick. Spraying water in people's faces, falling over, it puts you on edge. 'Where's he going?' 'What's he doing?'
Advert
The number of scary/killer clowns from films and TV don't help. Pennywise is most likely responsible for about half of clown phobias, I'd say. And of course, serial killer, John Wayne Gacy did little to help things by having a clown alter-ego called Pogo and then killing more than 30 teen boys and young men.
Well, according to Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, it's actually a bit deeper. In fact, the real reason goes someway to explaining why Stephen King and countless others have chosen to use clowns in the first place.
Credit: Warner Bros
Advert
He called his theory 'the uncanny', which basically means that we get the creeps when something is familiar enough for it to be recognisable but weird enough for it to be 'off'. So, we recognise a clown as a person, but then his face is covered in makeup and that's the bit that leaves us feeling unsettled.
So Stephen King and co. chose clowns to play on the fears that a lot of us already had.
Child and adolescent psychiatrist Steven Schlozman told CTVNews: "We know what a person looks like -they've got two eyes, a nose and a mouth, and so do clowns. But with clowns, their facial features are exaggerated and grotesque.
"There's a permanently painted smile or a permanently painted frown, so you don't actually know what their motivation is."
Advert
People use faces as one of the main ways to determine how someone is feeling, or what they're going to do, but obscuring the face means we can't read what this person is thinking or how they're feeling and we don't like this.
As well as this, there's the theory that wearing a mask/full face paint makes us behave in a way we wouldn't usually, so, really, we should fear them, because WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO NEXT?
Experts reckon I could 'cure' my coulrophobia with therapy, but to be honest, I'd rather just avoid them altogether.
Advert
Featured image credit: Warner Bros
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Clowns