Police found a knife-wielding clown standing alongside a road in Shawnee Township on Thursday.
As it turns out, he’d been standing there for two weeks, terrorizing anyone who came by there, as he had for the previous three Octobers. He stands in a yard full of other frightful creatures, including the Grim Reaper, a giant spider and a headless horseman.
“We heard the doorbell ringing at 6:30 in the morning,” Deb Hawk recalled, “and thought, ‘Who is the world is at the door at 6:30?’ We saw it was the police.
“It wouldn’t even dawn on me that it was the clown, or that anyone would complain about it.”
The clown hysteria hit close to home for John and Deb Hawk, whose home on Western Ohio Avenue has become a popular spot for trick-or-treaters over the years because of their extensive display of Halloween decorations. Deb’s always loved Halloween and enjoys providing a mild scare to people.
“They’re all pretty creepy, to say the least,” John Hawk said of his wife’s passion. “There’s a wolf man kind of hidden behind a tree. … There’s a 10-foot blow-up spider that we inflate at night with these glowing eyes. There are skeletons hanging all over the place that look pretty cool.”
That display includes her “scary clown,” a life-sized dummy with an orange jumpsuit, a plastic knife in its right hand and a creepy clown mask with jagged teeth and orange-red hair, which alarmed someone enough to call the authorities.
“It wasn’t actually a clown sighting,” said Shawnee Township Police Department Chief Mike Keith. “It was a male in an orange jumpsuit with a knife, trying to hitchhike.”
Unlike all the other complaints about clowns across the region and the country recently, officers actually found something this time. They investigate every complaint about a menacing clown, even if it sounds a little far-fetched.
The Hawks agreed to move the clown farther back from the road, closer to their home. Now the headless horseman guards that corner of the property.
There have been very few actual cases of menacing clowns, a tiny fraction of the number of complaints. A man at the University of Toledo lunged at female students with what appeared to be a small knife earlier this week. A clown chased a boy from a subway car in New York City with a kitchen knife. Some southern Ohio schools closed after threats about dangerous clowns.
Authorities remind people to call when they see suspicious behavior. After all, it’s what a clown’s doing that matters to authorities, not just his dress.
“We would like to stress that it is not an illegal act for someone to dress as a clown,” the Lima Police Department posted on its Facebook page Sept. 29. “We do understand that it may be a peculiar act, and may cause undue alarm depending on the behavior or actions of the person. Please call us if you observe suspicious activity and let us investigate.”
The Auglaize County Sheriff’s Office took it a step farther, saying on its Facebook page someone dressing as a clown could face charges of trespassing or inducing panic if they act in an un-clown-y fashion.
Authorities do have to investigate them, even if officers might be biting their tongues as they do it. After all, John Wayne Gacy, who murdered at least 33 boys and young men in the 1970s, became known as the “Killer Clown” because of his performances as Pogo the Clown at fundraising events, parades and children’s parties.
“When the first claim came out, we did a walk around the school, to make people at ease,” Keith said. “It’s not really that you believe it’s a threat, but you want to put people at ease, including students and parents.
“But think about this: Do you really think someone dressed in a clown suit could really sneak into a school past all the security?”
It would be pretty easy police work, following those size 15 shoeprints in the door.
Still, if you’ve wondered how out of control this clown panic has gotten, consider this. Author Stephen King, whose Pennywise character in “It” pretty much defined the scary clown for a generation, spoke up in defense of most clowns on his Facebook page Monday.
“Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria,” King wrote. “Most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh.”
It could be a long Halloween season.
But back to that clown on Western Ohio Avenue. He might’ve been menacing to one well-meaning person, but he was entertaining to one of the boys in the Hawks’ neighborhood.
“When I start setting up, he comes by this year a couple times a day, and he really liked the clown,” Deb Hawk said. “He would ride his bike, set it on the road and stare at the clown. Then he’d leave to get his buddy and come back here, looking at the clown again.”
She worried how he reacted Friday when the school bus came by, and the clown was gone.
“I’m worried he’ll think someone stole it or we got rid of it,” she said. “I hope he comes by when I’m out there, so I can show him where we moved the clown.”
All she knows is her innocent knife-wielding clown can’t stand alongside her road anymore.
“It’s just ridiculous,” she said. “They’ve really carried this clown thing too far.”
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