Will this Halloween be scariest ever?

By MIKE VINSON

Editor Mike West wrote a fine column titled, "Scary clown stories pure bunk," which appeared in the Sept. 27, 2016 issue of the "Cannon Courier" newspaper. I'm going to use West's column as a launching pad for this week's column, with a totally different target in sight.
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Clown: a fool, jester, or comedian in an entertainment (as a play); a grotesquely dressed comedy performer in a circus (Merriam Webster's Dictionary).
The roots of "clowns" and "clowning," as we've come to know them can be traced to ancient Greece where strolling clowns were seen in Sparta as early as the seventh century B.C. These clowns were called "deikeliktas," or "those who put on plays."

Throughout the Middle Ages, jesters /fools sustained the art of clowning in the palaces and courts of kings and other nobles. Jesters played an important role in the social culture of Medieval Europe by serving as emissaries between peasantry and nobility: Jesters could answer back to kings, queens, and bishops with unbridled authority. By making fun of anyone and mocking standard social customs, it could be argued that jesters, via their performances, inspired elite rulers to lighten up a bit on the common man.

Over the centuries, the clown became, and remains, an integral part of the traveling circus. It has been written Emmett Kelly is the most famous clown ever. In 1942, Kelley joined Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, possibly the most popular circus in the U.S. at the time.

Some other famous clowns are:
*Red Skelton (famous for his television show)...
*Bozo the Clown (played by many different men over the years)...
*Ronald McDonald (also played by different men over the years) and

*Pennywise the horrifically frightening clown from horror writer Stephen King's novel "IT" and the TV miniseries of the same name.
Moving right along, readers are aware of the "Clown Scare" that, in merely a few months, has managed to instill a degree of fear in practically every state in the entire Continental United States. What sparked this troubling phenomenon?

The first person to spot a clown, the patient zero in the current epidemic of threatening clowns sightings spreading across the US, was a little boy at a low-income apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina.

He ran to his mother, Donna Arnold, and told her what he had seen: two clowns in the woods both brightly dressed and made up. One with a red fright wig and the other with a black star painted on his face. They whispered something to the boy.

"They were trying to lure him to the house," his mother told me [reporter], pointing toward the woods.

A path into the woods led down into a shaded hollow, at the bottom of which was a small pond. Beside it sat a house that seemed abandoned. Someone had boarded up the windows, and the balcony sagged. New bags of potting soil sat near the basement door, though. And a modern security system looked recently installed.

After sunset a car approached the house, a gleaming white, new-model Mercedes that looked as out of place as any clown car. The driver stepped out and said she had recently bought the old house as an investment because it sits on five acres in an otherwise densely populated area. "You think it looks bad now, you should have seen it before I came in," she said.

While we talked she wore an in-ear headset, so it wasn't always clear whether she was speaking to me or someone on her phone. "No," she didn't want to give her name, she said. "Yes," she had heard about the clown sightings.

She gestured toward the apartment complex through the trees. "Every one of them has a phone, and can work it better than I can," she said. "And yet there's not a single video of a clown?"

I followed the path back to deliver the good news to Donna Arnold. The clowns weren't real.

"Ha!" she said. "Come around to the back." Her apartment backed up to the same patch of overgrown woods where the clowns had appeared.
From this patch of woods, the word of prowling clowns began to spread.... (Reference: "The Guardian," October 8, 2016).

Many contend the Clown Scare began as a pure hoax that, inevitably, evolved into a reality of sorts. Regardless the actual truth, the Clown Scare will have law enforcement on high alert come this Halloween night, because a clown costume has been popular Halloween attire for many generations. Still, isn't it your right to dress up as a clown and go to a Halloween party? The answer is "yes"... however do so at the risk of spending Halloween inside a jail cell.
However, readers, I must let you in on an alarming secret: This year, Halloween has been moved from October 31, 2016 to November 8, 2016! For on that day, the truly sinister clowns will reveal themselves, and it might prove to be the scariest day in the history of mankind!

Trick or treat? Just a trick!