Reports of scary looking clowns stalking the public have increased so much that McDonalds mascot, Ronald McDonald, is said to be keeping a low profile. The fast food chain said they were being \u201cthoughtful in respect to Ronald McDonald’s participation in community events\u201d in response to the \u201ccurrent climate around clown sightings in communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have been sightings of people dressed as creepy looking clowns across America who are deliberately scaring the public, they are said to carry weapons and even chase people down. So far no attacks or harm to the public have been reported.<\/p>\n
The mass panic has caused police to step in to calm the situation.<\/p>\n
Stemming first from the US, the craze has now spread to the UK with sightings of clowns roaming the streets terrifying the public.<\/p>\n
Supt Mark Pannone of Cumbria Police stated that in one evening they dealt with 19 incidents of clowns scaring people. North Yorkshire Police received at least 8 reports on October 10th<\/sup> from members of the public complaining of, \u201cyoung people dressed up as clowns, jumping out at them or chasing after them.\u201d<\/p>\n Twitter has used the hashtag #killerclowns since the hysteria began.<\/p>\n Assistant Chief Constable Catherine Hankinson of Greater Manchester Police has given the following advice,<\/p>\n \u201cThe safety of people is our upmost priority; we want people to feel safe going about their daily lives.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to stress that no-one has been physically harmed and I want to reassure people that we take reports of this nature extremely seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if you do see any individuals dressed as clowns, you should try and keep calm and report the incident to authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n Aside from McDonalds\u2019 famous mascot, many people who work in the clown profession have revealed their dismay that the creep clown trend is ruining their business. Rob Bowker, spokesman for the UK-based Clowns International said, \u201cThis is nothing to do with clowning, it\u2019s to do with people hijacking a costume and for some sinister reason trying to scare people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese idiots are undoubtedly affecting people\u2019s awareness of clowns and undoing a lot of good,\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy fear is that hospitals will say, \u2018Oh, we can\u2019t have clowns in because the children are getting scared,\u2019 or stuff like that. And then all that work that\u2019s been done over the years will be undone.\u201d<\/p>\n To report an incident contact 101 or the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111. In an emergency dial 999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reports of scary looking clowns stalking the public have increased so much that McDonalds mascot, Ronald McDonald, is said to be keeping a low profile. The fast food chain said they were being \u201cthoughtful in respect to Ronald McDonald’s participation in community events\u201d in response to the \u201ccurrent climate around clown sightings in communities.\u201d There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":18266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}