Clowns are pretty unsettling at the best of times, so the prospect of running into one on an early-morning jog in the woods is frankly more NOPE than we can articulate.
This video, which has completely blown up on the internet, shows an encounter of exactly that nature, where two guys in America appear to confront a sinister clown figure on a rope bridge.
That's crap-your-pants scary as it is, but one of them suddenly exclaims, "Yo, he has a knife" as the clown turns round and begins to walk towards them.
Realising that they should probably get the hell out of there, the two guys start running away as the clown gives chase.
https://twitter.com/bbyshaf/status/782310532678160384
The video is by no means the first creepy clown sighting to happen in the US recently. In fact, there has been a spate of them.
Since August there have been multiple reports of suspicious clown-related incidents in the states of South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Georgia, according to
CBS News.
There have been seven arrests in the Cincinnati area and a school in Reading, Ohio, was closed for the day after a woman reported that she'd been attacked by a person in a clown costume whilst smoking on her porch.
There's even a Twitter account dedicated to run-ins with the face-painted trouble-makers.
https://twitter.com/ClownSighting/status/782816563388944384
https://twitter.com/ClownSighting/status/782815082283687936
https://twitter.com/ClownSighting/status/782650075809996800
So who's behind it all? The police don't seem to know for sure, but many departments say the majority of 'threats' have been
pranks played by people jumping on the bandwagon.
As
Rolling Stone points out, creepy clowns have been popping up in the months leading up to Halloween since the 1980s. Terrifyingly, clowns in Boston and neighbouring cities would reportedly try to coax children into vans with sweets, but they were never seen by adults.
The most common theory seems to that the clown hoax is an elaborate marketing stunt for the remake of Stephen King's
IT. New Line have wrapped production on the movie, which stars
Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard, just days after the 30th anniversary of the 1986 novel on which it is based.
The supernatural force that acted as the antagonist in the horror classic took many forms, thought it's undoubtedly Pennywise the Dancing Clown that most people remember it for.
But the studio has denied any link to the real-life clown crimes currently sweeping the US. A spokesperson told
The Hollywood Reporter: "New Line is absolutely not involved in the rash of clown sightings."
And with that, we're just off to bury ourselves under several duvet covers.
