When Possessed Clowns Insult You Because You’re A Girl.
Posted by Arsene Hodali in FearTales
Clowns.
When I was four years old, my parents took me to a drive-in movie theater in Brooklyn, NY, that had multiple screens so it could play many movies at once. It was half-circle in shape and had five screens. Ours was the screen on the far right. The place was packed. Before the movie started, we got out of the car, stretched a little, and socialized with the other families around us.
Dusk was fast approaching so we waited in line for some snacks and made our way back to the car to set up the speaker for the show. It was a little chilly so sitting outside with the other kids wasn’t an option. The floodlights at the theater field went black and the opening credits began. I watched with rapt attention from the back seat as The Muppets took Manhattan. But as any four year old would tend to do, I grew impatient with sitting still in the car and my eyes and mind started to wander.
I saw a little girl on the screen directly behind ours, on the far left, and was immediately drawn to her. She looked a little bit like me. I wanted to watch her and see what was going over in her movie. I propped myself up on the back ledge of the car to watch my new friend. She was having trouble communicating what was going on to her parents. They didn’t understand what she meant when she said, “They’re here.”
The girl’s brother was getting ready for sleep one night and glanced over at the chair beside his bed. His toy clown doll sat peacefully by his side, wishing him a goodnight. The boy got into bed. Then he heard movement. He looked around but didn’t see anything out of place. He closed his eyes once again. He heard a “thud” and his eyes flew open. His clown friend was gone. Most likely he fell on the floor. The boy leaned over to check the floor but saw nothing. He leaned farther to check to see if his doll had fallen in such a way that it would be under the bed.
The possessed clown with the evil grin grabbed the boy and dragged him down off the bed.
That’s right. At four years old, in all of my infinite wisdom, I thought that it would be a good idea to watch Poltergeist
I screamed and my parents couldn’t understand why I would have such a reaction to Fozzie Bear. They hadn’t seen me perched at the back of the car watching the spirits of ghosts inhabit the poor, unsuspecting, ugly, creepy clown doll.
From that point forward, I hated clowns. Any clowns I had in my room had to go. I had theater masks on the walls and one afternoon, I got on my Strawberry Shortcake step stool and ripped the suckers down. They were staring at me.
Years went by and clowns always gave me the heebie jeebies. But as I got older, I started resenting this fear that had stemmed from my childhood. I began to realize that it was only a fear if I let it remain one. After all, Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best when he said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”
My junior year of college, I found myself going to the Bloomsburg State Fair in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. I had been there in previous years, but this year redefined my relationship with the aforementioned “bringers of terror.”
After a few hours of going on rides, playing games, and eating deliciously disgusting fair food, we came across what looked like a giant dunk tank. At the top of the tank, sitting on his precarious bench, was a clown of epic proportions. He was quite large and intimidating and his makeup was horrifying.
He was the embodiment of evil.
Instead of being funny and engaging the crowd, he was shouting insults as people walked by. For some cosmic reason, he singled me out of the crowd and started his string of insults including how bad my aim have been since I was a female. My friends, knowing my dislike of anything with a painted face – I hated that you couldn’t tell if their smile was real or not – told me to buy some tickets and go for it. I trembled as I walked up to the attendant with my tickets in hand. Each ticket got me three softballs to lob at the target not far from where the clown sat, wrapped in a metal cage for his safety. The cage had no bottom so if someone could hit the target, he would drop into the large pool about eight feet below him.
Well wouldn’t you know it, I DID have horrible aim. I lobbed a total of 15 softballs at that target and only came close once or twice. I cringed as he howled with menacing laughter. My friends had my back and thought it’d make me feel better to go into the Haunted House for some cheesetastic attempts at horror.
Except the clown went on a break and followed us in there.
The frizzy red hair caught my attention in one of the “fun house” mirrors that had been placed in the hallway entrance into the Haunted House and I whipped around to see him standing only three people behind me in line. His grin was plastered on his face and I thought I was going to throw up. He raised his arm, widened his eyes, and wiggled his fingers in “hello.” He asked if he could switch with the woman in front of him so he could be in our group through the house.
In one particular room that held fake headstones and zombies that were pulling at my clothes and taunting me, he made his move. He snuck up behind me and grabbed my shoulders hard. He snarled something in my ear, but I was too distracted to hear what he said.
I had had enough.
I ripped my arms out of his grasp and turned on him. I slapped him hard enough to get quite a bit of his face paint on my hand and forearm, and then I put one of my legs behind his and pushed as hard as I could. He tripped backwards over my extended foot and fell backwards onto the floor. He sat there in shock and looked up to meet my eyes. I towered over him. I’m only 5’4”, but I’m sure I looked like a giant to him from his seat on the floor.
“Jeez, lady. I was just having some fun,” he said sarcastically.
“So was I,” I replied.
I stared down at his partially-exposed face, now that most of his make-up was on my hand and arm, and finally saw him for what he was. Just a human being trying to be something else.
Just a regular person in a mask.
A mask that I ripped from his body when I slapped him.
photo credit: Daniel Zanini H.