Coulrophobia

On the night of October 2, 2016, I had a horrific nightmare. As many of you probably know, there have been creepy clown sightings all over the states. They’ve been caught luring kids into the woods, there were assaults at college campuses (one occurred where my best friend attends, be safe Nicole), there have been sightings of them walking on public streets/dirt roads, and there have been many threats pointed towards school districts and Halloween. It’s 2016 and we’re worried about clowns. Rumor has it that they tend to appear every now and then at this time of the year, where they attempt to pull these same “pranks” we’ve read about today. Many think it’s a joke, however when somebody is chased down, assaulted, harassed or threatened, I don’t think it’s very funny. I’m not writing this blog to spread awareness, I’m writing it to elaborate more on why I only got 7 hours of sleep between October 2 and October 4.

The first night consisted of a vivid and graphic nightmare involving my best friends, Nicole and Marina. We were about to go on our usual Pokemon/mall trip when there were sirens and clowns appearing everywhere. Marina was driving, I was in the passenger seat and Nicole was in the back. Everywhere we turned there was a clown, we stayed in the car until the very last moment we had to get out to get into the mall. When we arrived we were escorted in by a group of police like we were being protected from paparazzi. Tonight was in a “Purge” setting. There were attacks, thefts, chases, and stalking. Police were still out protecting heavily populated areas because it wasn’t a government issued purge, it was an overthrow of the cities, by the clowns. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton were on the television, clowns ran the streets, cops were in full force and people were scared. There were “Clown Lives Matters” posters and propaganda all over the commercials and walls of highly populated areas. Everyone had their doors locked. It was complete chaos.

When Nicole, Marina and I were in the mall most of the people didn’t come to work. The majority of the stores were closed and we could only get into Hot Topic, Spencers and other stores like them. They didn’t care about the clown catastrophe outside, because they’re stores thrived off of it. They already had clown masks in their displays because Halloween was coming up and they were prepared for it in full force. The stores had many skimpy outfits, scary masks, makeup, and whatever else you needed for the upcoming holiday. No one could touch them because these were just the kind of stores they were, they already had these things before the clowns appeared and they already were set for any disturbance involving their inventory. After we got what we came for, we were escorted back to the car.

Afterwards, we continued our Pokemonning around Copperas Cove until late at night. It was around 2 in the morning when we decided it was time to go home. We were the closest to my house, so we went to 29th street. Where we thought the streets were bare, until we arrived outside of my house. Three clowns appeared behind the car and we weren’t sure how to get out because the police were lacking in this part of town. So naturally, we all were shaken. Marina put the car in drive and we sped off. The clowns proceeded to chase us all the way down the road and I woke up.

The second night I went to bed at 11pm and I woke up at 2 in the morning because of yet another nightmare. This one, also included clowns. Except this time, I was with Cody and my little 5 year old sister, Willow.

Cody and I were sitting and drinking coffee on a porch in the front yard (I’m not sure whose porch it was) and Willow was playing in the culdesac where the house was located. We weren’t at the house we currently live in though, so I’m assuming it was just my imagination coming up with a location. The sun just went down, my parents were out of town and we were doing what we always do when Willow had a good day at school. The porch we were on was about a foot tall and you could see the culdesac very clearly because they installed more than one street lamp after the clown appearances started happening more at nighttime.

While Cody and I were drinking coffee, we were discussing this whole clown situation and about how there was a group of them sighted very closely to our location a couple of days ago. I, for one was terrified of the whole situation and Cody kept continuing on about how if he ever came across one that he’d kill it.

Then I just so happened to see movement in my peripherals. Which caused concern.

I look down, and there in the shadows was one of the creepy clowns curled up staring up at us. I let out a scream and couldn’t move, Cody stood up in his chair, cocked the gun he had in his belt and the clown disappeared.

Willow was still playing in the culdesac, until she let out a scream too. By the time we looked up she was running towards us with two clowns behind her. Cody started running towards them but by the time anything happened. I woke up.

I woke up at 2 in the morning to my brain imagining the clown curled up next to my bed and a creepy face in my room that looked a lot like this one:

I woke up and couldn’t move. Not to go to the bathroom. Not to feed the animals. I couldn’t move. The last time I saw creepy faces in my room I was just a kid. I went to therapy for it along with my ADD. It was a while ago. Since the night of October 3rd, I’ve been able to get a full night of sleep because I started doing this technique I used to do when I was younger. I would basically make a barricade with my stuffed animals whenever I thought I’d have a nightmare and it worked for the most part. Well, resorting back to old ways isn’t necessarily a bad thing. So I tried it and the only dreams I’ve had have been about marching band, art, Legos, and other miscellaneous things.

I didn’t write this article as a cry for attention, I just wanted everyone to know why I haven’t gotten much sleep since this clown situation has started occurring. It’s not a joke to people with overactive imaginations and tremendous anxiety issues. I’ve been terrified of clowns my whole life so now that it’s all over social media and the news, it doesn’t make it any better. Judy Blume once said, “Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.” Now that doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and find a clown to beat down, or even watch “It”, but a way of overcoming nightmares/fears is to talk about them. The fact I was capable of even searching on Google for the images in this blog post, shows a little about the fact I’m becoming a little less afraid. Does this mean I’ll be over the whole fear of clowns by the end of the week? Probably not. Will I still get a little anxious at the sight of them? I might. However, I still took the first step in overcoming and just because it’s a little blog post doesn’t mean that I need to justify my ways of slowly, but surely overcoming Coulrophobia.