People who have menaced others while dressed as clowns have been scared off by guns in two separate occasions this week.
A woman in Auburn, Maine told the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal that a man dressed as a clown threatened her as she sat on her porch Wednesday night. The 49-year-old woman asked the paper to withhold her identity but said a black SUV pulled up to her home and rolled down one of the rear windows. A clown was sitting in the back seat of the car.
"He had a red Afro wig on and a red nose," she told the publication. "The smile was creepy–the painted-on one. I say, ‘I’m not afraid of clowns. I started laughing. It’s almost Halloween, so I didn’t think too much about it."
But then the clown formed his hand into the shape of a gun, pointed it at the woman, and mimed "bang" at her. The woman was shaken by the display.
"It freaked me out," she told the Sun Journal.
However, the woman was legally armed with her own real handgun.
"I picked up my 9mm, I didn’t point it at him directly, and said, ‘Back at ya, clown,’" she said.
At that point the SUV drove off with the clown still inside. The woman told the paper she reported the incident to police.
In another incident, a Texas man was approached by two people dressed as clowns. Around 10:30pm on Tuesday, a man in the town of Pampa heard laughing outside his home as he was working in his garage, police told KFDA. When he looked outside he saw two people dressed as clowns entering his front yard.
The man reportedly told the clowns to leave, but they ignored him and continued advancing towards his home. That’s when he retrieved a pistol and fired a warning shot.
The clowns ran off after the shot was fired.
Though the two cases ended with the clowns fleeing and the victims left unharmed, the Maine woman told the Sun Journal she was concerned the clown threat is just beginning.
"It seems like something bad is going to happen," she told the paper.