NEW YORK (AP) – Send in the frowns.
This year’s nationwide creepy clown craze has become a nightmare before Halloween for actual, working clowns, who say their bookings at parties and other events have dropped sharply, even after many of the social media-fueled scary clown sightings have turned out to be hoaxes.
Some fear going out with their greasepaint makeup and red noses will make them a target of police, or even marauding mobs who take to the streets on so-called “clown hunts.”
“It’s definitely a scary feeling leaving your house and you fear you are going to get jumped because you’re dressed as a clown,” says Cyrus Zavieh, a New York City hospital administrator who also performs professionally as “Cido the Clown.”
“You’re there to make them happy, to make them have fun, and now they are saying, ‘Aaaagghh!'” Zavieh says. “All of a sudden these stories are putting fear into kids. … Before they’d just look the other way, but now it’s like, ‘You’re a scary clown and I hate you.'”