Clowns

In the dead of night as people sleep, that is when the spirits creep. As the bell tolls three dark things take power, we like to call it the supernatural hour. Hey, welcome to the Supernatural Hour Podcast. I'm your host Raven.

This is Chad. Yeah, this is Emmet. It is Thanksgiving Week. Thanks, evens over.

But it's Thanksgiving Week and it's one of those weeks where just all sensibility and decorum goes out the window. I've been eating meal three times a day for the last week. I'm going to be so happy to throw away leftovers tomorrow. I don't want to see them again for a year.

So I can't eat carbs. They make me sick. And there's mashed potatoes in the fridge, taunting me. And then I made turkey soup with noodles.

They're taunting me. And I actually caved in. I ate a lot of carbs and I'm paying for it now. I've been so sick for the last week.

But it was good. It was worth it. At least it's only once a year. I know, well, Christmas is kind of a wasteland of food debauchery as well.

You're doomed. I might die. Okay, before we go on, and I know it's over, and by the time you hear this, it'll be almost a week after Thanksgiving. But hey, we're going to talk about it anyway.

Everyone's favorite Thanksgiving food really quick. I like the turkey and stuffing. I don't have a favorite. For me, it's the stuffing.

And I'm sorry. If you use stuff, top out there. Awesome. That's your thing.

But I prefer more of a homemade, less processed stuffing. It's not that hard to make from scratch anyway, you know? Yeah. And your cranberries this year were really, really good.

Yeah, I made a homey cranberries this year. And it's ridiculously easy and very delicious. And it has a lot of carbs, and I eat a lot of it. And I think that's one of the things I make music.

And it didn't look like a can when you poured it out. No. The can't stuff isn't bad. The fact that it's shaped like a can is just a little off-putting.

They actually call that jelly cranberry sauce a log. Yeah, it's visually disturbing. It's pretty good too. I like it too.

But your cranberry sauce is really good this year. Okay. All right. So we, because of Thanksgiving, we have a couple of people that aren't here, so, you know, too bad for them.

We miss them. Doc and Jess aren't here in Rogue. Yep. We're able to make it next time, but stuff happens and we just keep plugging along.

We'll soldier on without them. So for the business, again, we're looking at kind of a quiet time of the year from a paranormal activity, advanced paranormal standpoint, kind of on a bit of a hiatus. We do want to recommend to everybody to donate to your local food bank here. The Utah Food Bank is a great cause, a great charity to help.

They can always use our help in helping people to be able to eat during this time of year. Yeah. And this is just on your own. You know, don't bring it to us.

I don't want to. I mean, it's food. That's what it is. What do you got?

If it's Ken Cranberry sauce, don't bring it to me. No, no seriousness. We have a lot of listeners that are not in Utah. And so just, you know, fill this, the spirit of generosity and whatever food bank or whatever local charity near you, you know, strikes your fancy or as close as whatever.

Please, you know, think of those that don't have much at this time of year and just, you know, then to help me handle them. And that's it for the business. Residentials. We've actually had two and I have not been able to go to either of them for various reasons.

So the one is Denise and her sister-in-law. I will find out about that and report on it next podcast. But Emmet, do you want to tell us about last night? Oh, yeah.

We just, this is just actually a training session really for two new people who are really enthusiastic. And we did a venue that we've done before. It's a building that's owned by my employer and we have a really nice arrangement with my employer every time we investigate one of these buildings. We donate $25 to JDRF, which is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

So it's a worthwhile cause. Yeah, that's a great cause. So we just did a warehouse last night. I just wanted to bring these two new people in and it was just the three of us.

And it was pretty active. You know, usually you get, sometimes you get more activity with a smaller group. There's certainly less talking and noise contamination. And they had a good time.

We got a lot of SLS evidence. You told me one thing in particular that was really, really cool. Something that you had seen. Yeah, I actually were walking back.

We'd gone to the far end of the building and walking back. And I saw with my own eyes, it didn't show up on the cameras for the SLS. But you know, we've all seen naked eye orbs from time to time without the camera. And this was like that except it wasn't a round.

It wasn't a orb. It was a very wispy anomaly. And I have not seen one like that before. And it just went shooting right across in front of me from right to left.

And unfortunately neither of the two people who were with me saw it. Their eyes were glued to their nightly screens. But that was totally cool for me. It actually looked like a wispy ghost.

The first time I've seen one that wasn't just a round little blob. Something looked wispy. You know, the interesting thing is, one of the things I tell people in public investigations is don't get so caught up in looking at your instruments that you forget to look around because you'll miss stuff. Good night.

And I've done that myself, you know. But to me, the times where I have seen full body apparitions and in the, in the, what, 12ish years that we've done this as an organized group, I have probably only seen five full body apparitions. And they always come when you least expect it. They never happen when you go, you know, if you go somewhere and say to yourself, I'm going to look for a full body apparition.

They always just kind of, just poof, you know, when you least expect it. But what you just told me reminded me of one. And I put it into my full body apparition genre. But I don't, it sounds more like what you're talking about.

We were at Benson Gris Mill, and this was several years ago. And we were done. We had put away all of our equipment. I had gone up to tell the lady that we were done and, you know, that we were leaving, stopped into the bathroom, was walking down toward, you know, the picnic table area.

And right, just past the picnic table area, you know, there's the little kind of semi-circle blog cabins. And then there's that field, right, kind of there by the barn. And I saw what I believe is the woman in white. And it didn't look like a fully formed woman.

You know, it wasn't like, oh, there's a head and arms and legs, and she's trotting across the field. But it just was woman-ish. I mean, you know, it's kind of a trifle. Yeah, kind of a, like, that could be a skirt, kind of a triangle thing, and then the tops a little, a little skinnier, like it could be a body.

And she moved probably 10 feet, kind of from south to north, and then gone. And that was between the tables and the barn, and that field? Yep. Yep.

And it just, you know, just probably a two second thing. Just long enough for me to register it. But you know, like what you said, it was wispy. I mean, clearly I've never seen that just more wispy than a full-formed body.

And I wasn't expecting it at all either. It just, you know, you look up, there it is. Yeah, and you're like, whoa. And it happens so fast, you usually can't whip out your camera.

You know, by the time it registers, I think that's something paranormal. It's gone. That reminds me of the time I was home, and I was taking the dog out to do her business, and we're going out of the back to where the garage. And I opened that up.

And just as I did, there's an orb right there in front of the door outside. And as soon as I opened the door, the orb like takes off across Patio, and I'm looking at it. Man, I can see the dog is looking at it too, and the dog starts chasing it across Patio. So that's the first time I, you know, it caught me off guard.

I didn't have a camera or anything. But the fact that the dog saw it and took off after it proved to me that it was real. Yeah, it's kind of validating because you're saying, yeah, I'm not the only one that saw that. And, oh, my gosh, dogs can see the spirits too.

You know, that's proof of that because we know they see things that we don't see sometimes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's one of the things. We both saw it.

Well, I have investigated the warehouse that you went to, and it has got some really great activity. I can't wait to get back there again, so I hope we can get in there again sooner than later. We can, whatever you're ready. Awesome.

Well, as soon as I find out about the other residential, I will hopefully it'll be fine. There are next podcasts. Okay. Good.

All right. Well, that segment, a residential segment was brought to you by Castle Photo Art. Go to Castle for all of your photo needs. In our last podcast, we had Castle on as one of our guests and one of the hosts.

And he kind of explained what he's doing with his Castle Photo Art in Castle Nature Studio. And, yeah, we invite you to go out and check his business out. Yeah, I'm waiting to see our recreation photos that we did. I was just thinking about that today.

I need to tester him and say, hey, how does it turn out? You're going to be fantastic. Those should be fun. All right.

So, our main topic today is clowns. All right. Clowns. What a fun genre to be talking about for supernatural hour.

It is supernatural. Just wait, wait. So, Emmet, do you or anyone you know have a fear of clowns? I wouldn't call it a fear.

I don't have a fear of clowns, but because of popular culture in the last 30 years, they've kind of been getting a bum wrap. What really opened my eyes. I don't know if you've seen any of these American Horror Stories, American Horror Stories series on TV. But the one, I think it was the first one they did was about the freak show in Florida.

Did you see that one? You know, I never watched any of that series. It was like, you know, my wife was just so into it. So, I thought I'd watch this.

I kind of got sucked into it. They had a clown in this that was just the most horrifying horror character I've ever seen. This clown was just scared to crap out of me. Is it the one with the big, big smile, the prosthetic smile?

Yeah, he wore a mask. Yeah, because he blew his mouth off. They tried to commit suicide or something when he was young. So, yeah, it was really, oh my gosh, the kind of thing you watched that, it sticks with you for decades.

Right. Now, I'm not scared of clowns. They're not my thing. I can be rather introverted.

And just to me, they're too loud, they're too over the top, they're too colorful, not that I don't like color, but I like things quieter and more subdued. A little more muted. Yeah, if you know, if I was joke, if you know Castle, he just stole all of the... All of the things.

Going to some charisma and left me with nothing. I'm older. Maybe I just didn't know what it was. I'm too good.

And I let him have it. I don't know. It's just clowns to me or just too... The energy is just too much.

And so, they're just not my thing, but I'm not scared of them. But there's a name. If you have a clown phobia, it's called chlorophobia. Did you know that?

I mean, I figured there was a word for it. There's a word for everything. And I saw something and it's like the fear of stilts. Is that weird?

Because I guess clowns were on stilts. No, I did not know that. I thought that's a strange. So, let's go back to the beginning.

So, very beginning that we know of of clowns. Okay. We're going to start the beginning. Work forward.

This sounds like a sound of music song. I'm not going to sing it. I'm listening to it. Now, let me interject here.

The clown that most of us are familiar with circus type clowns, isn't that pretty much an American thing? Yeah, actually it is. Yeah. Because the European tradition is more like a mime or something, right?

Exactly. Well, they say that the first clowns that they really know of and that there might be more are from Rome and Greece. They can go back into Egypt and some of them. I was actually just thinking back into Egypt, you see the pictures depicting the women doing backhand spring things.

I think there's always been some sort of the haillets entertained. Or with white things. Exactly. But in the Roman Greece ones, they were portrayed as more like just the goofy, village idiot, just kind of being silly.

So then fast forward to medieval times and to kind of the jester and even minstrels. Just a form of entertainment. And I think that they said about the jesters is even though they were just lowly court performers, they were the only people that could get away with making fun. Because it was all done in fun and kind of thought of as roasting what we would call it now.

And then over time they did kind of evolve and each country took their own little thing. Like you said, Emmet, the French kind of took clowns as the mimes. You know, your stereotypical white fakes painted with black eyes. Let me do my mime impression.

Okay. That was really bad. That's spot on. Did you try to get out of the box?

Yeah. No, you didn't. I could see you. Okay, that's better.

You know, and to me, I don't know, mimes to me aren't clowns, but I get where they kind of fit in the genre. And then they said that there wasn't really any talk of evil clowns or any sort of nefarious kind of activity clowns until the 1970s, which is incredibly recent. Right. But going back just a little bit further back into the medieval area.

The clowns, they were the peasants and the peasants, they were the people that could express themselves that way make commentary into the hierarchy and royalty and those kinds of things. And they could get it without the repercussions of speaking your mind. They could kind of do it. It's like, well, they were doing that in jest.

Right. And you know, it was all entertainment and fun. And you know, they didn't have Netflix and chill back in the day. They didn't have radio, TV, Internet.

I mean, they had nothing. They had people that would dress up silly and act goofy. Yeah. And so it was colorful and entertaining and different than what you would see in your everyday life.

And so it was unique and fun. You know, you think of like the punch and Judy show with the puppets and the colors and the things there. What can you do to help bring entertainment into a world that didn't have a whole lot of entertainment? Well, I think it's interesting because as I was researching this, the term slapstick came from clowns because they would have these sticks.

There's like two sticks, like a clacker kind of a thing. Two boards with a hinge. And they would actually whack people on the butt and it was part of the entertainment. And then it would make a lot of extra noise because of the way that the slapsticks worked.

Because they were sticks and slapped. And they were clackers. So physical comedy grew out of all this too. Yeah.

So when you hear slapstick comedy, that actually came from the jesters or it's basically a clown thing. Yeah, slapsticks. Right. The 1970s were the evil clowns kind of come out.

Clowns as far as, you know, like in the circus. It was serious business. People would go to clown school. They'd go to clown college and they would learn how to be a clown and they would learn how to apply makeup.

There's like a clown university where you register your face paint. You can't use other clowns, face paint, things, they're trademarked. Yeah. Clowns used to get my daughter really upset when she was little and I used to tell her that she had a paint scholarship at clown college.

But she got out of high school. Yeah, but it was a serious business and these people took it very seriously. There's money to be made at it with entertaining and with, you know, birthday parties and opening of businesses. You think of Ronald McDonald.

You think of who is the other clown? There's Bozo. Bozo and on the Howdy Doo D'Shoot. I mean, clowns were a big part of world culture.

Part of them came about in the circus and kind of that idea of the circus clown that became very popular. But one of the things that the circus clowns would do, would they entertain between acts because it took a little while to set up the animal acts. Right. And so the clowns would come out and entertain and again filling that niche of entertainment to keep people involved during a transition.

And it's perfect for a circus because circus is all about entertainment and it's about over the top and it's about, you know, the noise and looking at everything. And I didn't watch this documentary for this particular podcast for research, but it's something that I saw many, many years ago. But it was some documentary back in the day on TV when I say TV. I mean, it wasn't Netflix.

It wasn't YouTube. It was 100 years ago when you just had free channels. But it was about the Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Brothers clowns. And, you know, I was very impressed because I thought the clowns at the time.

I thought it was just, oh, you know, you put on some silly clothes, paint your face, you go out and you do zany stuff. But that's when I found out about the university and I thought, wow, you know, their face is trademarked. They're out in a trademark. They learn how to do actual magic and they learn how to do these actual tricks.

And there were people that did actually made real clown shoes. Yeah. Oh, there's a whole business. Yeah.

And like the real ones are worth money and the fake clowns shoes are not. It blew me away when I discovered that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a whole industry and they're especially pre 1980s, 1980s, you know, kind of that time where the evil clown started coming in.

Right. Well, my dad would take Castle and I to Ringling Brothers circus up in Salt Lake, every year. It was kind of one of the things that he did. And I remember going and, you know, looking when the clowns came out.

You know, again, it wasn't like thing. It wasn't like, oh, if I could just have a stuffed clown in my bedroom. But while you were there and while you were waiting for the next act, they were entertaining. They were fun.

They were keeping the energy up. I quite enjoyed it. You know, they were silly and a little zany crazy things. Yeah.

Magic and Fire. You don't really get the sad ones at the circus and, you know, the evil ones. At least they, at least, you know, we'll come to that in a minute. But not in clowns.

I think for their time and purpose had a definite place. But then we'd get the 1970s and things to turn. That's about the time when we started seeing 20 clowns getting out of a tiny little car. Right.

There's something, something paranormal going on. There's a portal in that tiny little car. It concerns me a little bit because 1970s are when clowns went mad and 1970s is when I appeared on the scene. So I don't know.

Maybe I had something to do. There's a correlation? No, it's your fault. I know.

There's a correlation. Sorry, clown world. Okay. No.

So in the 1970s, the first, well, you know what? I'm sorry. I need to take one step back. So kind of the last thing we talked about was the French mimes, right?

And then they came, like the American clowns were more what you see, which was kind of the hobo, the sad hobo kind of clowns. And they're not all sad, but just kind of think hobo. And it's killing. Yep.

And then, but you see clowns in some of the old literature that were kind of, they weren't evil, but they were kind of bad, kind of mischievous. Little dark and serious. Little dark. So Edgar Allan Poe has a short story called Hop Frog, which came out in 1849.

And it has a clown in it that's, you know, kind of going the way of evil clowns, but not quite. Was that Poe or Dickens? That was Poe. And then Charles Dickens had one called the Pickwick Papers.

And about the same time there was a French fellow who wrote something and I was going to write it down and I couldn't find it again, but there's some French dude that did something about the same time was kind of a bad clown. So if you know who that is or can find who that is, let me know. We'll throw it up when we put this up on YouTube. So the bad clowns, evil clowns did start to happen kind of that mid 19th century.

Yeah, 1850s-ish. There was Joseph Grubaldi. Yeah, Grubaldi. Yeah.

In the clowns back in Europe, he was kind of there and that story also had, I believe, clown that murdered his wife and her lover or something like that in that story. So he started getting into a little bit of dark nature in some of these clowns, but we hadn't got to the killer clowns from outer space kind of thing of the later. I forgot about those two, so I had to throw those in. So in the 1970s there was the kind of the humorous comedy magazine called National Lampoon.

Can you remember this? Grew up on that. Yeah. And that's the first time that people know of where the two words evil and clown came together because they had a couple stories called evil clowns.

And so that's when they first kind of pop up. Wow. So we could blame the National Lampoon. Yes.

And Willard Scott. The Witherman. He was the first Ronald McDonald. Right.

And again, back to the commercialization of clowns. And I remember in Provo where I grew up, there was a D's restaurant. They had a clown. The Deeper Clown.

You know, one of the big things. The clowns were such a big marketing. Oh, they actually said I remember the D's company would actually send people out dressed as that to do kids parties. Yeah.

I remember that now. Yeah. I must be the same age as you. Yeah.

Yeah, I think we are. So well, yeah, the thing about clowns is, you know, just with their trademark looks, you know, the idea, like, you know, the McDonald's clowns since we brought it up. If you think about it, the McDonald's clown has looked the same forever. More or less.

I mean, I'm sure it's not. The very first one was not. There's been some stylization over the decades. Right.

But I can show you a clown and you can go, oh, Ronald McDonald's. Exactly. You know, it doesn't change. And I can show you a picture of Bozo and you go, oh, that's a boo-boo.

Branding. Mm-hmm. Anyway. So 1970 National Lampoon comes out with her evil clowns.

Well, 1978, John Wayne Gacy. And who is John Wayne Gacy? So John Wayne Gacy is a serial killer. Maybe we'll talk about him further down the road.

But John Wayne Gacy was a clown. I mean, he was actually a very successful person. He managed, like, what, four or five Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. He was married, had a family, but he would do this little sidekick and be a clown and he had his trademark look.

And he ended up killing... It's like 36 adolescents between nine and 20, I think boys. Yeah, when parents found out that he was out doing, you know, kids' parties, just to play a clown that freaked them out. Making blue animals.

Yeah. And so it's kind of from him where the really bad killer clowns, you know, surprised. You know, sprung up. That's where...

So he was the first mass murderer clown. Yeah, and I don't know because we... You know, this isn't a John Wayne Gacy podcast, so we didn't, you know, research him a lot. I'm not sure if it was, you know, if the clown was his cover or if he just happened to be a clown and they found out and they just kind of got put together because it's unusual.

I think he used it as a tool, not for all the... The murder sees also a contractor later and one of the ways they found him was a 16-17 year old boy had been approached by him to do a construction job at a pharmacy where he had been doing another construction job at. And he asked his mother if he could go interview with them and she said, yeah, and the boy never came back. And so they put it together from there.

So it wasn't always a direct clown thing in which he did the murders with, but that was one of the tools in his serial killer tool bag that he used to lure people in. It wasn't as MO, but it was a tool. Yeah. He didn't do it every time, but it was one of the things he would do to...

I didn't make people in Brinky Planet. Yeah, and he was, as you talked about earlier, he was well respected in the community. Part of the thing is, is anybody made claims that maybe something was a little hinky with him? Oh, it can't be him.

He's on the city council and he does this and he's got a business in the country. He represented himself about board and church goer and all of these things. And so that threw a lot of suspicion off of him when there were a few accusations and things that there could have been problems. You leaned on a stellar reputation to bail himself out.

And in my mind, I haven't done years and years of research, but to me, he is the quintessential evil clown. And from him have spawned, like we talked about, Twisty from American Horse, right? And the actor that played the clown Twisty also played John Wayne Gacy in a documentary about John. Same actor?

Same actor. Wow. I know, right? Okay.

And then everyone knows the movie It. Oh yeah. Pennywise? Yep.

I have not seen It. I have. That takes a lot of the blame for the scary clown phenomenon too. And one movie before it that brought kind of the creepy clown into the clown genre was Poltergeist, with the clown puppet that attacked the little boy and Poltergeist.

Because that was shortly after the John Wayne Gacy murders had been discovered and before it. Yeah. So, you know, but starting to get to that idea of the evil clown and, you know, why clowns start freaking us out? And if you watch Poltergeist and saw that movie in the original Poltergeist, it was pretty terrifying, you know, especially for kids.

Oh, yeah. Well, and I don't know. I don't have a fear of clowns. Like I said earlier, I'm not scared of them.

There is not my thing. And my daughter and I recently found this fantastic antique store locally. That's where a lot of your money is going to be going. Just so you know.

You know, all the sides. Just kidding. But in it, it's one of these where each little room in the building is... Themed?

Well, it's themed. I think it's owned. You rent it out. Okay.

You know, like someone goes and I don't want to rent a whole building because they don't have that much stuff. Oh, it's like a grandi cubicle and put your stuff in and consign it to her. I think that's it. You've got your room.

And one of the rooms has creepy dolls in it. And as you know, I like creepy dolls. I buy them for Halloween. But in this room, they're kind of the big punch and judy-esque dolls.

Kind of the... What's the... Oh, what is her name? From Mr.

Rogers. Lady Lane. Okay. The creepy lady Lane doll type.

And they're creepy. And I got to that room. And it wasn't so much the clown dolls themselves. It wasn't like, oh, there's clown dolls.

I don't want to go in the room. I don't know if just the creepiness of the clown dolls has attracted a negative spirit. I talked to the owner and I said, I don't know what it is about that doll room. But I said, I don't even want to go in there.

And he's like, oh, that's my room. I'm like, sorry, but there's something creepy back there. And I said, next time I come, I'm bringing my ghost hunting equipment. And we're going to see what's up with that room.

He was totally cool about it. But those dolls that are back there, they're, they're all creepy. I don't know what I like them. Next time I go, maybe I'll take a picture and we'll post it up somewhere and take a talk or something.

Yeah, that kind of goes back to what we talked about previously with masks and dolls and different things and spirits inhabiting or being around them. And what do you do? What's worse than a creepy clown or a creepy doll, a creepy clown doll? Exactly.

We're going to get there actually. So there was a study done a few years ago where they interviewed and talked to almost 300 children. And these children were little. I mean, not too little, but little enough that they hadn't seen it and they hadn't seen Twisty and they hadn't seen Poltergeist.

They weren't aware of scary clowns. And all of them just had a fear of clowns. And some of the ideas that the scientists that performed the study said was that clowns are, if you look at a monster, if you look at a monster, if you look at a monster, if you look at a werewolf or Frankenstein, it's so far from human that you can kind of separate, oh, that's scary, but it's not human. But clowns are so human-like and they said that just anything that's just a little bit off from the norm can be very, very unsettling.

Yeah, because you can't read their emotions because of the face paints and the different things, but you know that it's a person there, but you can't really tell what's going on because of the way that their facial expressions are because they're painted on literally. Right, they're just a little off and they said also because they're very unpredictable. You don't know when you're going to get squirted with water out of a flower on their shirt. You don't know when they're going to squeeze their honky nose and just the unpredictability is mostly what scares people.

So how did we get from that to characters like the Joker of that man? You know, like... Just kind of a spinoff. They're just kind of spin offs.

Really? They're just taking it and gone totally evil with it. Right. And again, it's the same thing.

It's the, you know, we're going to put a lot of makeup on you. You're going to be unpredictable. You're going to be scary because you're kind of human, but you're mostly human, but just a little off. Yeah, and if you look at the 65, 66, 67 Batman Joker Riddler, they were criminals, criminal masterminds, but they weren't the pure evil.

You know, and you think about them. They weren't like Heath Ledger's version of the Joker and how he did it. And I thought, you know, it was a great performance and very, very scary. But again, you kind of go back to that Batman...

The TV show was campy. You know, it wasn't supposed to be frightening. It was supposed to be... Campy and fun.

Yeah. And crazy like clowns are. Yeah, kind of the original performance. Like a comic book.

It literally was a comic book on TV. And you knew that they were criminals, but they weren't that personification of evil like you get into Pennywise and... Well, and you go into any haunted house now, and there's some sort of a clown element in that haunted house. I mean, even in our Indian Hills horror that we promote heavily, there's a clown or two there.

We've gone into paid haunted houses where there's clown rooms or clowns painted in the hallway and it's become very much a part of the horror genre. Yep. Yeah. They're not just the occasional...

maybe they're sad or there's a press or something going on, but they've got into the actual... ...their personification of evil. Right. You open up the monster book and there's werewolf, you know, vampire clown.

Yep. So as I was researching this, because we are a supernatural slash paranormal podcast, I thought, okay, let's see if we can find a paranormal angle here. And I found two. I found two paranormal things, which I think you're gonna go.

And I'm not saying that's all there is, but that's... these are the two that I found. So the first one back in the day, you know, and based on the pictures, I'm gonna say, you know, 1800s when cameras first came out, you know, they're black and white, kind of had that old... C.P.

atonlec? Yeah, that old, you know, very first photograph kind of looked to it. But the Pueblo Indians would dress in kind of a clown-like costume. You know, maybe not clowns like we think of it, but...

You know, just just goofy. You know, maybe not their normal ceremonial robes, but Jester, Zany, goofy kind of costumes. And as they were in these costumes and the dances they would perform, the whole idea was they let go of their own personalities and opened themselves up to be possessed by spirits. And there wasn't a whole lot of other information about that.

But I found that to be interesting. But that gets kind of back into, you know, where we talked about the idea of not infighting things in, you know, the summoning, because you don't really know what you're gonna get, but in this case they'd actually be opening themselves up for those kinds of things in these rituals. Yeah, and I mean, that was the intent. It wasn't let's dance, you know, let's dress like this and dance and oh hey, we got possessed.

No, it's like, you know, we want to open ourselves up. Well, there's parallels to that in other cultures too. I don't South East Asia. I think they have festivals where thousands of people gather hoping to be overtaken by some kind of spirit, right?

A kind of yearly thing. I think you can see some of that in some of the Pentecostal Christian beliefs also. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

The speaking in tongues and you know, those types of things. So, you know, it's a little, you know, I don't know what I'd say mainstream, but it's a little more common even maybe in some Western beliefs and traditions than we might think. You get enough people together and weird things can happen. And there's me, I'm like, nah, I'm good.

I have a hard time controlling myself. I don't need anybody else in there trying to do weird shit. Oh, I'm sorry. Weird stuff.

One of those things got in parallel. I said, swear, sorry. So the other thing is I'm sure many of you have heard of this if you watch Ghost Adventures, they've actually been there. I'm not going here at some point because I think it would be fun.

But in Tonopah, Nevada, there is a hotel called the Clown Hotel. Have you guys heard of this? Oh yeah. I've heard of Tonopah.

We are still going there. Yeah. I have heard of the Clown Hotel. I don't know if it's Motel or Hotel.

I'm sure it's a motel. The doors are on the outside with clowns painted on them. It's kind of garish. And I've seen pictures of like the office and you go into the office and there's just clown dolls everywhere.

I don't know if they're for sale or just, you know. Just there to creep out? Just because it's a clown hotel. So it's their, you know, their decor.

But yeah, it's creepy. There's no way I would buy anything from there and take it home. Oh no. That's just asking for the full.

No, no, no. See, I love antiques and I have to be very careful buying antiques and bring them home. Because I don't want to bring stuff with you. But apparently near this hotel, there is a graveyard and there's a lot of miners that died in a fire and they're buried in this graveyard.

That's just literally from my understanding, very nearby, like next door or across the street. Close to the hotel. And when asked the owner said, you know, they said, what's the most scary thing or the most, you know, stand out paranormal experience that has happened at this hotel. And he said that a man woke up and there was a clown ghost in his room.

And I thought, yeah, that would be creepy. That would be super creepy. I've not watched the Ghost Adventures episode where they go to the clown hotel because at some point I got very disemheartened with the whole Ghost Adventures franchise and stopped watching it. And so I don't know exactly what they had happened when they were there.

Apparently Zach is terrified of ghosts or ghosts clowns. And so he was kind of facing his sphere. See, he is a, he told the owner that he was chlorophobic. Is he?

Did he just do that for the show? I don't know. But I think that would be fantastic. Well, there's a life-size clown mannequin in the lobby.

And I don't, Zach actually saw this on our move on at once. And other people have seen this same clown mannequin move also. Yes, I've heard that the clown doll moves. And that, you know, it doesn't matter what genre the doll is.

If a doll moves, it's creepy. Can you say, Anna? I was just going to say it could be a raggedy and all. It could be, you know, Anna being gables.

It could be a Barbie. It could be a clown. If it all moves on its own, it's creepy. Yep.

So. Absolutely. We've got to go there one day. We do.

That would be because this is practically our backyard. I know. I was going to say, Tonopod is not very far. You'll have to see how close it is.

Maybe we could do Tonopod and P.O.T. How close are those? I think they're always away. But every 51, I'll be close to me right too.

Of Tonopod? Uh huh. We're going road tripping. Yep.

Okay. I'm not scared of clowns, but I saw pictures of a clown hotel and it looks like... Nobody that stays their sleeps. And looks too much like campaign for my taste.

Raven is not a camper for all of you out there who don't know this. No, campaign for me. They leave a porch light on for you, but it burned out, so... They're going to have it.

Campaign for me, like a motel six. Ew. Okay. So, anything more on clowns before we move on?

I think that's it. I don't have anything else on clowns other than, you know, oh, I do. In 2016, there was a bunch of clown sightings. This is right in the middle of my paper.

And you missed it. Oh, I remember this. I remember this. And there were some that go back to 2014, but in 2016, there were lots of clown sightings of, you know, people would be driving down the road and there'd be clowns, some of them with knives and things.

Just randomly on the side of the road, right? Yeah. And most of that, it's pretty, you know, well understood it wasn't paranormal, but it was a social phenomenon. It was, you know, put out on the internet and kids would do this to creep people out.

And I'm just surprised that more people didn't get killed. I mean, the clowns. The clowns, because I'll tell you what, if, you know, a clown, you know, came up to me and had a machete and I had a gun, the clown, you know, would probably be dead and you take the mask off and it's a 16 year old kid thinking he's having a good time. You know, and I can relate to that.

I had an experience when I was about 14, shortly before Halloween, where I had got this really creepy old man mask. And I'm not a very big, I wasn't a very big guy at the time, but I put on some shoulder pads and a big coat. And I walked around a little bit in the neighborhood and I remember one situation where a friend of mine, they had a trampoline in the back yard. And I came around the corner and their little brother was there jumping on the trampoline and I just kind of went, and he turned and saw me and just screamed because a little feet kicking out, you know, in the air and the trampoline, he couldn't get out of there quick enough.

And I ran off and it was really pretty funny, you know, so I understand the idea of the scaring of people was something like that. And I ran out and hit in the field. Well, he went in and got his brothers and they came out looking for me and I was, you know, stayed very, very silent. Hey, Simon, what's going on?

It started at a young age. Yeah, I went in until they went away and then I snuck out because I might have got beat up pretty good. I agree with you. I see the fun in doing it, but we watched several YouTube videos where they've recorded these and some of them you could tell where actually recording is like they were really really good.

And you could tell that these people were actually afraid and actually scared. And then there's the dumb people where it's like, are you guys actors from a really bad horror movie because they got away? You could tell that they were scared of this clown and then the girl is like, turn around and go back. I'm like, this is how you get killed in horror movies, lady.

You don't turn around and go back. But then some of them you could tell that they were set up. They were staged, you know, because it's like trying to get you two clicks. Yeah, it's like, why would you be filming walking your dog?

Let's go for a walk. Fido, let's go walk. In the dark and I've got my... Oh, wow, there's a clown.

Oh, I'm so scared. Yeah, some of them were just like, oh my gosh. That reminds me of all these Russian paranormal clips, right? Where they just happen to be speaking English, right?

Right. More clicks if you're speaking English than if you're speaking Russian. And they're just out filming their dog or something, but they're speaking English. Yeah, it's pretty suspect.

Yeah. But then the ones that I thought were the creepiest were there were kids that would just just apply clowns and go stare at your ring doorbell. They wouldn't do anything, you know, no jump scares. They would just go stare at your doorbell.

That's pretty creepy. And you'd see it on the video feed or you'd see, yeah. So there are some interesting YouTube videos out there on clowns and these kinds of things. Like I say, I think a lot of that 2016 clown phenomena was manufactured social media stuff.

Stunts. Stunts, you know, kids fooling around. But there were a lot of people that were literally terrified of it because they didn't know what's going on. You know, somebody walks at you and you can't see their face, you can't tell who they are, and they flash them a shetty or a knife.

Don't do it in Texas. You could get shot. Yeah, really, it's for better or worse. You know, clowns are, they're in the list of monsters now and creepy stuff, unfortunately.

Yep. We're stuck with it. So another one which was absolutely a fun one for someone that was doing scares. It was dressed up like the nun from the Conjuring movie The Nun.

And there was a guy filming The Nun going around and just kind of popping into people's view on a public street during the day. You know, just getting the jump. And that's kind of fun. People do things and kind of like that kind of fun.

That's why we go to Horvio and O haunted houses. That's why we do things because it's kind of fun to be a little bit scared. It's not fun to be terrified. Right.

That's not fun if you're truly scaring people out in the woods and they shoot you when you die. So be careful how you scare people. Yeah, so we don't recommend that. That was the last thing I had.