It all started when a man dressed as a so-called 'killer clown' was carrying a knife as he followed four children to school, aged 11 and 12.
Two months later, creepy clown sightings have spread to 37 US states, Canada and the UK. Just yesterday, there were reports of a knife-wielding clown apparently keeping commuters from leaving the New York City subway.
According to Nicholas Christakis at Yale University, the "killer clown" craze is spreading like a disease. "There's an epidemic of sightings, and an epidemic of fear.'
This kind of mass hysteria has always been with us. In 1938, Orson Welles’s notorious radio version of The War of the Worlds ended in a mass panic of people hysterically reporting alien sightings. This isn’t even the first clown panic: they have been surfacing periodically in the US since the 1980s.
According to Christakis, “We’re social animals, and we copy others and learn from them. We also have this emotional contagion that isand learn from them,” says Christakis. “We also have this emotional contagion that is a fundamental part of human experience.”
and learn from them,” says Christakis. “We also have this emotional contagion that is a fundamental part of human experience.”
a fundamental part of human experience.”
Source: Newscientist
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