Josh is terrified of clowns, and the news that someone dressed as a clown in a neighboring town has been kidnapping children does not help, especially after the kidnapper escapes custody; so when he encounters a threatening clown at the House of Horrors at the amusement park he panics--but will he be able to save himself, much less rescue a little girl who is lost in the hall of mirrors?

Coulrophobia--the fear of clowns. It might seem funny, but for Josh this fear is no joke. Josh has a pulse-pounding, sweat-inducing feeling about the clown that advertises the local pizza place. Or anyone who dresses up as a clown for Halloween. When a class field trip takes him to an amusement park, Josh's friends dare him to enter the Hall of Horrors. Will one of those horrors be wearing a frizzy wig and a red nose? Josh is on his guard, but then someone else gets into trouble and needs help. Can Josh muster the courage to conquer his greatest fear and come to the rescue?

The frightening yet comic clown is one of the best and most enduring characters in literature, theater, television, and film. Across the centuries, from Shakespeare's Porter in Macbeth to Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog," or Stephen King's Pennywise, horror and comedy have blended to create the perfect recipe for entertainment. This volume gives an in-depth analysis of the clown horror genre, including essays by revered horror scholars such as Kevin Wetmore, Dale Bailey, Kim Hester Williams, Jennifer K. Cox, and Joanna Parypinski. Their essays cover topics such as nostalgia, race, class, and new portrayals of the scary clown as zombies or phantoms. It also offers interviews with actors and directors working in the clown horror genre: Eoghan McQuinn (Stitches), Kevin Kangas (Fear of Clowns), and Jaysen Buterin (Kill Giggles). Some of fiction's most terrifying creations--like the Killer Klowns, Captain Spaulding, Art the Clown, Krusty, Frowny, the Joker, and Twisty--jig through these pages of analysis and deconstruction, asking what these many iterations of scary clowns have to say about our society and its fears.

Creepy clowns are everywhere, sighted all over the world. They are watching YOUR children. Why?Put your best face on... The circus is coming to town!A creepy clown stares at a young boy from the woods next to his grade school. The boy tells his father. The father wants to get to the bottom of it. Who are they? What do they want? Questions he never should have asked... The answers are here. This is the terrifying story of a desperate father, a simple medicated "beauty lotion," a secret clinical study at a big Pharmaceutical company north of Chicago, and how SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS changed MY life forever. Nothing will be the same again, for me OR for you. Creepy Clowns: Who are they? What do they want? The answer is as clear as the big red nose on your face.

"So view, and get over it." And so begins the lighthearted attempt of Scary Clowns to relieve coulrophobes of their fear of "grotesquely made-up men wearing overly large trousers, huge shoes, and a red nose." This fear may seem as amusing as the characters that inspire it, but numerous support groups and hundreds of Web sites are dedicated to coulrophobia. Horror movies featuring killer clowns, as well as notorious clown/serial killer John Wayne Gacy, have only fed the fear. Over 80 full-color photographs-from the surreal to the grotesque-populate Scary Clowns, bringing readers face to face with their worst nightmares. A pop-up clown in the middle of the book forces the reader to confront his darkest fear in 3-D. It is all done in the name of good, clean fun, of course. Why are seemingly innocuous clowns so horrifying to so many people? The introduction in Scary Clowns attempts to demystify the strange phobia. By nature silent, a clown makes no noise or complaint as he falls over, throws things, plays with knives, walks on high wires, tumbles, turns, and collapses. Maybe it's the silence that makes him so scary.

Bad clowns—those malicious misfits of the midway who terrorize, haunt, and threaten us—have long been a cultural icon. This book describes the history of bad clowns, why clowns go bad, and why many people fear them. Going beyond familiar clowns such as the Joker, Krusty, John Wayne Gacy, and Stephen King’s Pennywise, it also features bizarre, lesser-known stories of weird clown antics including Bozo obscenity, Ronald McDonald haters, killer clowns, phantom-clown abductors, evil-clown panics, sex clowns, carnival clowns, troll clowns, and much more. Bad Clowns blends humor, investigation, and scholarship to reveal what is behind the clown’s dark smile.

They lurk in the woods. The biggest threat the city has ever faced - clowns. Evil clowns, armed and angry and hungry for human flesh.Yep. Creepy clowns beckon people into the woods and stab them a bunch of times. Like so many times.It's the age old battle of man vs. clown, and with the local police oblivious to the growing clown problem, Phillip Burkholder may be mankind's only hope. He is 15. He is flunking geometry. And possibly social studies. He has little to no clown slaying experience.Crap. We could be looking at a clown-pocalypse scenario. Not good.You know, we could go on and on about it, but it's homicidal clowns. You either want to read something like that or you don't.Warning: May contain graphic violence and a lot of clowns.