People started reposting clown sightings in the Carolinas. Now, it's spread to Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Is it a hoax? People also think it's to promote Rob Zombie's remake of It.
But would that go as far as trying to convince kids to follow you to your car?
On instagram, there were a couple captions explaining that their kids had a lockdown at school because there had been a sighting nearby.
Clowns R Jeffree Star.
Why clowns are perceived as scary: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/how-clowns-became-terrifying/381306/
The point of the clown costume initially is how disarming it once was. A clown is a happy thing that's expected to be seen entertaining children, so it works in their favor for streamlining trust from potential child victims. With figures overtime like The Joker, IT, and John Wayne Gacy however, clown PR has gone through changes, changes that make clown danger a little more expected.
On topic, I bumped into this video while browsing a few days ago:
Clowns might be scary for some people because they perceive them as wolf in sheep's cloth, like Turncoat said above, once Clowns were seen as happy individuals that entertain kids, but along the years they had some changes for the worse. Now some people associates them as evil disguised.