Chefredaktör: ”Det finns ingen clownepidemi”

The 2016 clown sightings, referred to in various regions by names such as "panic", "uprising", "craze", "invasion", "The Great Clown Scare" and the like, are a series of sightings of people dressed as evil clowns first reported in the United States and subsequently in other Western countries, from August 2016. The clown sightings were first reported in the US state of South Carolina. By mid-October 2016 they had been reported in nearly all US states, nine out of thirteen provinces and territories of Canada, and sixteen other countries. While some sightings lacked evidence of criminal activity, others led to arrests. Some people were cited or arrested for making violent clown threats to schools, and some clown incidents involved robberies and assaults on children and adults. In Pennsylvania, a clown allegedly stabbed a high school student to death. By mid-October 2016, in the wake of hundreds of "clown sightings" in the United States and Canada, the phenomenon had spread from North America to Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America.