Bad Clowns

Front Cover
UNM Press, Apr 1, 2016 - Social Science - 200 pages

Bad clowns—those malicious misfits of the midway who terrorize, haunt, and threaten us—have long been a cultural icon. This book describes the history of bad clowns, why clowns go bad, and why many people fear them. Going beyond familiar clowns such as the Joker, Krusty, John Wayne Gacy, and Stephen King’s Pennywise, it also features bizarre, lesser-known stories of weird clown antics including Bozo obscenity, Ronald McDonald haters, killer clowns, phantom-clown abductors, evil-clown panics, sex clowns, carnival clowns, troll clowns, and much more. Bad Clowns blends humor, investigation, and scholarship to reveal what is behind the clown’s dark smile.

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Contents

Introduction
1
1 A Short History of the Earliest Clowns
5
2 The Despicable Rogue Mr Punch
11
3 The Unnatural Nature of the Evil Clown
20
Fear of Clowns
31
5 Bad Clowns of the Ink
41
6 Bad Clowns of the Screen
52
7 Bad Clowns of the Song
78
10 Activist Clowns
127
COLOR PHOTOS FOLLOW PAGE
140
11 Crazed Caged Carny Clowns
141
12 The Phantom Clowns
151
13 Trolls and the Future of Bad Clowns
160
NOTES
165
REFERENCES CITED
173
INDEX
183

Buffoon Boffing and Clown Sex
89
9 Creepy Criminal and Killer Clowns
99

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About the author (2016)

Benjamin Radford is a writer, investigator, and columnist for Discovery News. He is the author of eight books, most recently Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment and Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore, both published by the University of New Mexico Press. Radford lives in Corrales, New Mexico.

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