The hysteria will pass, as it did during the 'Stranger Danger' movement in the '80s.
What started as a local oddity seems to be taking a sinister turn, just like before.
Creepy clowns were allegedly seen around Phillipsburg, Easton and neighboring communities, the reports to police mirroring others over the last two months in at least a dozen states. They ranged from jesters just being seen to one chasing a child with a sword. And on Friday, a vague threat had schools in several states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, on alert.
The first supposed "phantom clown" scare proceeded much the same way.
It was an offshoot of the "Stranger Danger" panic of the early 1980s, said Robert Bartholomew, an American sociologist in New Zealand who specializes in social panics, popular delusions and mass suggestion -- all topics of his column in Psychology Today.
Sean Fuller, 18, rides the family's hearse, named Lucie, while dressed as a clown Sept. 27, 2016. He was cited for inappropriately riding a car, and his father Matt says "clown hunters" are now telling the family to watch themselves. (Courtesy photo) It began with sightings in Boston, various reports say, and similar claims began spreading across the country. Verifiable sightings were rare, though one occurred in Kansas City, Missouri, where police launched a search for a knife-wielding clown, according to a 1981 report from UPI.
The resulting "Phantom Clown Theory" has been attributed to mass hysteria and an apparent ingrained uneasiness with the costumed entertainers, exacerbated by popular culture.
"I believe that the surge in phantom clown sightings in 2016 are a reflection of the fears and uncertainties in American society at the present time," Bartholomew told lehighvalleylive.com. "I think they are part of a greater moral panic about the fear of strangers in an increasingly urban, impersonal and unpredictable world. Phantom clowns are essentially the bogeyman in a different cultural guise."
Many of the reported sightings, both in the '80s and now, share similarities, Bartholomew said: The only evidence is unreliable eyewitness reports, mostly from children; the perpetrators are almost never caught, and they never catch a child.
Bartholomew likened it to UFOs, or New Jersey's infamous panic over a 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," in which people -- believing aliens were actually invading Earth -- allegedly reported choking on the Martians' poison gas, feeling their heat rays or seeing the invaders from a distance.
"Most people are not lying," Bartholomew said, "but human perception is notoriously prone to making mistakes. ... The process that generates phantom clown sightings is similar to that which drives Bigfoot and Jersey Devil sightings. It's the same process that is driven by rumors and misperception -- and like Bigfoot and the devil, no one ever finds the body."
Authorities in at least a dozen states have fielded reports of creepy clowns in the last two months, according to a compilation published Friday by USA Today. Reports have spread to the West Coast, where OregonLive.com began compiling a nationwide map of reported clown sightings.
Locally, there have been at least two reports in Easton, four in Phillipsburg and one in Wilson Borough. Other reports include North Catasauqua and South Whitehall Township.
Initially reported as a creeper, a clown cited in Pohatcong Township was actually playing a joke off the recent hysteria, according to the 18-year-old's father, who said supposed "clown hunters" have told his family to watch themselves.
Some, but certainly not all, reports have been serious. One of the sightings in Phillipsburg involved a clown allegedly chasing a child with a sword. Elsewhere, police in Reading said a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed Sept. 25 after someone wearing a clown mask may have provoked a confrontation.
Most recently, a vague social media threat with the hashtag #WeNotClowninAround put schools around the country on alert, including Phillipsburg. Easton Director of Safe Schools John Remaley said the threat has been linked to Grove City, Ohio, but has been felt in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Alabama, among other places.
This threat originated in Ohio, an Easton Area School District security official said Friday. (Facebook photo) The phenomenon has taken on a social status of sorts, said Phillipsburg Mayor Stephen Ellis, who said he has overheard children talking about it at football games and other events.
"The kids are no doubt fabricating some stuff. Not on purpose, just to sensationalize it," Ellis said, noting that any report of a potential threat must be taken seriously.
But, he said, "to say 'I saw a clown' is a popular thing."
Dad: Cited clown going for laughs, not screams
Popular culture and social media get part of the blame for the recurring fascination with creepy clowns.
A mischief-maker known as the Staten Island Clown made rounds in 2014 -- dressed as Pennywise from Stephen King's "It" -- as a promotional stunt for a film producer in the New York City borough, according to SILive.com. Similarly, this past August, the earliest entry on USA Today's list, Gags the Clown began frightening people in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Later, he was revealed to be a viral promotion for an independent horror film.
Still, even some who revel in the spooky-clown genre are trying to distance themselves from the recent phenomenon.
The Facebook page for a movie with a title similar to Friday's threatening hashtag denounced the perpetrators and asked people to stop linking the two: "I have no affiliation with the morons making threats against some school," said the post from "Aint Clownin Round."
New Jersey Clown Farm, a new haunted house in Hunterdon County, has had actors appear at local events in costume as a promotion but said it is not behind the recent spate of reports.
"Absolutely none of the 'creepy clown sightings' are affiliated with NJ Clown Farm," organizers told lehighvalleylive.com in an email. "We have no part in wanting to scare anyone away from clowns."
Real clowns are not happy about the trend. Local entertainer Balloons the Clown -- Neal Fehnel, of Palmer Township -- recently said the creeps should be prosecuted.
"The punishment should be equivalent to that of impersonating a police officer. It's a trusted profession. And a children's entertainer is nothing less than that," he said.
Randy Christensen, the president of the World Clown Association, told a Washington Post columnist that it's not uncommon for scary clowns to appear around Halloween, but that "this is something new."
"I wonder if it just doesn't have to do with the current state of our country," he told the Post.
Bartholomew, the sociologist, said the idea of the "bad clown" has taken hold among popular culture -- that the idea of someone roaming society with their true identity hidden from us makes them "the perfect terrifying figure."
But it will pass, as it has before.
"These reports will wax and wane and eventually morph into something new," he said. "Every era needs their evil-doers ... phantom clowns are just the most recent manifestation and reflect popular fears."
Stephen King himself described the recent clown fright as a "low-level hysteria," according to a report by the Bangor, Maine, Daily News.
"The clown furor will pass," King told the paper, "as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying."
Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.