Cast your minds back to 2016. Celebrities were dropping like flies, and reality TV hosts were winning presidential elections. It was a weird year made even weirder by the hysteria around “killer clowns” that emerged in the lead-up to Halloween.


Reports came out of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries of clowns armed with knives jumping out of bushes and scaring children; armed clowns wandering down highways at night trying to terrify drivers; clowns attempting to lure children into the woods; and clowns loitering around in public, menacingly. Eventually, the hysteria died down, but some people are still chasing the high they felt in 2016.



Which brings us to this “drama alert” that claims that clown sightings are back, with clowns specifically being spotted in Ohio. Most people didn’t seem particularly worried by this news, however; as one person put it, “I mean it is October. Buddy went to Spirit Halloween we don’t care.”


@nomoredanny

Clowns are allegedly invading high schools in Ohio

♬ original sound - Danny


Unlike in 2016, there are no legitimate news reports of clown sightings in Ohio in recent weeks. Instead, all we have are bizarre TikTok videos claiming that clowns are “invading high schools in Ohio” and causing a mass exodus of teachers, leading school districts to contemplate shortening the school week from five days to four.


None of the footage used in the TikTok is new. The footage of the reporter holding up a clown mask is from 2016, and the footage of students in a classroom going into “lockdown” is most likely just footage of an active shooter drill.


One TikTok account that seems particularly dedicated to trying to revive the killer clown panic has been posting the same videos for months, alternately associating the videos with killer clowns, skinwalkers and demons. Many of the videos shared to the account feature the same woman running from, and occasionally being caught by, clowns; those videos are from a YouTube channel dedicated to clown videos titled WeeeClownAround.


The 2016 clown panic was incredibly stupid, while also serving as a good example of mass hysteria in the social media age. So let’s not revive it. In which case, feel free to go ahead and ignore any and all alerts of clown sightings you might see online.