The Truth About 2016's 'Clown Panic'

For those who were worried about the repeated reports of creepy clowns across the country, there was good news and there was bad news.

One expert accurately predicted the "sightings" — many of which were without evidence, fueling 2016's "clown panic" — to die down within a few weeks, before fading into a historical footnote. They reached their pinnacle, after multiple arrests and school lockdowns, and eventually went away.

But the bad news is: The panic could possibly come back at some point.

This is all according to Benjamin Radford, a folklorist and author of 2016's Bad Clowns.

Radford, speaking to PEOPLE in 2016, broke down the spate of that year's clown "sightings," everywhere from Georgia to Maryland to Oregon. He explained why the sightings multiplied, why they attracted such interest and what would likely happen next.

One thing that worried Radford, regarding potential ongoing sightings, was the chance for overreaction: For example, in one case, police said local residents fired into the woods after becoming suspicious of the reported clowns.

"[The panic] really is scaring people," Radford said at the time.

What Was Going on with All Those Clown Sightings?

Radford told PEOPLE the sightings were nothing new. He referred to the most widespread form of the phenomena as "clown panics" and said they traced back decades, to the '80s.

Such reports, he said, often included a white van — a familiar folkloric motif, like the hook-handed serial killer. But there were no clowns to be found beneath the stories.

What happened in 2016 was a blend of two kinds of clown sightings, Radford said:

There are "stalker clowns," or prankish and menacing figures who may turn up in parking lots or parks and who turn out to actually have been someone dressing up as a clown, either as a kind of stunt or for publicity. And then there are "phantom clowns," who are often reported or "seen" by children trying to lure or abduct them, often near wooded areas.

A stalker clown is someone who actually dresses as a clown to scare or prank someone, Radford said. Such incidents have made national, and, in some cases, international news. He said the first breakthrough stalker clown was in 2013 in Northampton, England, in what later turned out to be a combination of performance art and publicity stunt.

Soon after, there were high-profile stalker clowns in Staten Island, N.Y., France and elsewhere, Radford said.

That's an important distinction: "They're essentially all copycats," Radford said.

He said the appeal of being a stalker clown is simple: Being "creepy" — dressing as a scary clown in public, but not usually doing anything else — is usually not illegal.

Thus, it's a "low-risk, high-reward stunt, because it's virtually guaranteed to make local or national news," Radford said.

(There were, however, scattered reports in 2016 of clowns doing more than scaring — instead chasing or assaulting people.)

Radford said phantom clown sightings are distinct from stalker clowns in that there is never evidence the clowns are real — while with stalker clowns, the threat itself may be fake, but the person is real.

What's more, he said, the majority of these phantom sightings are made by children and are about clowns trying to lure them away — in cases not with candy or toys, but with money.

As pieces of folklore, he said, the phantom clown sightings are fascinating. But, as pieces of fact, they are bogus.

"The fact is, to date, there are no confirmed reports of any clowns actually abducting, harming, killing [or] molesting kids," Radford said. "There just aren't. There are zero."

When Are the Sightings More Common?

Radford said phantom clown "sightings" tend to be more common during periods of social uncertainty: In the '80s, when they began, they coexisted alongside the "Satanic panic."

And, in 2016, "America is once again in the middle of social anxiety," Radford said.

The apartment complex in Greenville, S.C., that functions as a kind of "ground zero" for 2016's clown sightings included a mix of both stalker and phantom clowns, police have said:

Both children and adults in the area reported seeing clowns — in some cases by the woods, and in others much nearer their apartments as they were walking home.

"And what's insidious about it is it's not always crystal clear which [kind of sighting] is which," Radford said.

It was unclear what may have started the clown sightings, stalker or phantom, in Greenville — if perhaps, as in previous incidents, an isolated incident of a prankster or performer spawned copycats.

Radford said that one important thing to note in Greenville's case is the psychological effect of "priming," such that if there is a rumor or belief going around in a community — like that kids have noticed some creepy clowns nearby — a person's mind is primed to make connections to that event.

What's more, he said, eyewitness testimony has well-documented flaws by both psychologists and criminologists. A witness to an event, though not intentionally lying, can be mistaken about what they say they saw.

"You have to take some of the eyewitness reports with a grain of salt," Radford said.

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Was Social Media or the News to Blame?

In part, Radford said, yes.

Social media and the internet were powerful amplifiers of the clown sightings, he said. The stalker clown in England, for example, "was ripe for social media, very much a product of our time."

As a space for sharing and spreading such sightings, the internet was a "perfect venue."

"You couldn't have designed it better," Radford said, adding, "This level of panic [and] concern would not exist without the internet."

That gets trickier for the news media, which is inherently drawn to topics that fascinate many people and that are drawing a lot of discussions. If something goes viral on Facebook, it might warrant news coverage, and the mere fact of news coverage validates further stories. As the "clown panic" spreads, so do possible copycats, and the cycle repeats.

"The difficulty in covering it while not promoting it is very real. … Copycats are notoriously difficult to prevent," Radford said. "You don't know what's going to inspire somebody."

He suggested that it's important for news media to remain skeptical of such sightings without more evidence and to voice that skepticism early and often in their coverage. He also noted that just because something on social media may be widely shared or discussed does not mean it is widely endorsed and should not be taken as proof of a thing — users may interact with something for a variety of reasons, beyond believing or agreeing with it.

Remember: "This is a story in large part about folklore, this is a story about rumor," Radford said.

What Made the Clown Sightings Stop?

Radford thought "this particular clown panic has reached its pinnacle."

A "turning point," Radford said, was once schools began locking down after receiving threats from people posing as scary clowns online and who were later arrested. Police also began cracking down on false reporting and the stalker clowns, as in a 2016 case in Kentucky.

Still, Radford said, the elements of clown panic, and the ensuing social media and news coverage, are an "irresistible stew" to many.

"These archetypes are in our culture, they are not going away," he said. "I guarantee you there will be another phantom clown panic — maybe two years, maybe five years, but it'll happen again."