The Many Lives Of Scary Clowns

The frightening yet comic clown is one of the best and most enduring characters in literature, theater, television, and film. Across the centuries, from Shakespeare's Porter in Macbeth to Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog," or Stephen King's Pennywise, horror and comedy have blended to create the perfect recipe for entertainment. This volume gives an in-depth analysis of the clown horror genre, including essays by revered horror scholars such as Kevin Wetmore, Dale Bailey, Kim Hester Williams, Jennifer K. Cox, and Joanna Parypinski. Their essays cover topics such as nostalgia, race, class, and new portrayals of the scary clown as zombies or phantoms. It also offers interviews with actors and directors working in the clown horror genre: Eoghan McQuinn (Stitches), Kevin Kangas (Fear of Clowns), and Jaysen Buterin (Kill Giggles). Some of fiction's most terrifying creations--like the Killer Klowns, Captain Spaulding, Art the Clown, Krusty, Frowny, the Joker, and Twisty--jig through these pages of analysis and deconstruction, asking what these many iterations of scary clowns have to say about our society and its fears.

The frightening yet comic clown is one of the best and most enduring characters in literature, theater, television, and film. Across the centuries, from Shakespeare's Porter in Macbeth to Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog," or Stephen King's Pennywise, horror and comedy have blended to create the perfect recipe for entertainment. This volume gives an in-depth analysis of the clown horror genre, including essays by revered horror scholars such as Kevin Wetmore, Dale Bailey, Kim Hester Williams, Jennifer K. Cox, and Joanna Parypinski. Their essays cover topics such as nostalgia, race, class, and new portrayals of the scary clown as zombies or phantoms. It also offers interviews with actors and directors working in the clown horror genre: Eoghan McQuinn (Stitches), Kevin Kangas (Fear of Clowns), and Jaysen Buterin (Kill Giggles). Some of fiction's most terrifying creations--like the Killer Klowns, Captain Spaulding, Art the Clown, Krusty, Frowny, the Joker, and Twisty--jig through these pages of analysis and deconstruction, asking what these many iterations of scary clowns have to say about our society and its fears.

"So view, and get over it." And so begins the lighthearted attempt of Scary Clowns to relieve coulrophobes of their fear of "grotesquely made-up men wearing overly large trousers, huge shoes, and a red nose." This fear may seem as amusing as the characters that inspire it, but numerous support groups and hundreds of Web sites are dedicated to coulrophobia. Horror movies featuring killer clowns, as well as notorious clown/serial killer John Wayne Gacy, have only fed the fear. Over 80 full-color photographs-from the surreal to the grotesque-populate Scary Clowns, bringing readers face to face with their worst nightmares. A pop-up clown in the middle of the book forces the reader to confront his darkest fear in 3-D. It is all done in the name of good, clean fun, of course. Why are seemingly innocuous clowns so horrifying to so many people? The introduction in Scary Clowns attempts to demystify the strange phobia. By nature silent, a clown makes no noise or complaint as he falls over, throws things, plays with knives, walks on high wires, tumbles, turns, and collapses. Maybe it's the silence that makes him so scary.

A short history of the earliest clowns -- The despicable rogue Mr. Punch -- The unnatural nature of the evil clown -- Coulrophobia: Fear of clowns -- Bad clowns of the Ink -- Bad clowns of the Screen -- Bad clowns of the Song -- The carnal carnival: Buffoon boffing and clown sex -- Creepy, criminal, and killer clowns -- Activist clowns -- Crazed caged carny clowns -- The phantom clowns -- Troll clowns and the future of bad clowns

Help children face irrational fears with this uniquely creative, full-color children's book addressing fears of clowns and nightmares. This book helps children challenge their fears of clowns and nightmares, and can be applied more generally to any irrational fear that children may have. The book shows children that clowns are not scary, and that what we see in nightmares is not real. The book is in bright, brilliant full-color. Each of the pages of text are full-color as well. Children will love the story, the pictures, and the message it sends, which helps kids realize that what may first be thought of as scary, can be viewed in a different way.

With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between. Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke. What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his twent-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth. Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would be born with syndactyly—the unexplained anomal of fused digits—on his left foot. Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling significance. What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous—a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through. This ebook edition contains an excerpt of Dean Koontz’s The Silent Corner.

Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress—that just may cost her life. Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee

The world is full of images of scary clowns: packs of grinning figures with knives plaguing towns; pom-pom clad serial killers; loners who like children in the wrong way. What if, rather than being childhood-spoiling serial killers, clowns were the victims or heroes? An anthologies of fifteen stories about clowns facing humanity's baser natures.