No laughing matter: White House weighs in on growing hysteria over sightings of scary clowns across more than a dozen states
Instagram has exploded with posts of people dressed in clown costumes staring menacingly at the camera
A series of creepy clown sightings across the United States has caused a wave of hysteria, forcing police and schools to scramble to contain spreading jitters, and even the White House to weigh in.
The spooky sightings were first reported in August in South Carolina when police were called in to investigate what turned out to be bogus accounts of men dressed as clowns trying to lure children into the woods.
But similar sightings have since been reported in more than a dozen states with authorities forced to react to stories of clowns lurking outside schools or businesses, armed clowns driving around in a van or clowns prowling neighbourhoods.
One school in Ohio even shut down over security concerns after a woman said she was attacked by a man dressed as a clown. And hundreds of students at Penn State University, in Pennsylvania, went on the hunt for jesters Tuesday night after reports of creepy clown sightings.
Obviously, this is a situation that local law enforcement authorities take quite seriously and they should carefully and thoroughly review
Coming just weeks before Halloween, when millions of children across the United States don costumes and go house-to-house trick-or-treating, the frenzy has become a social media sensation with the hashtag #IfISeeAClown trending on twitter and the @SpookyClowns account attracting 186,000 followers.