45 Years Ago, the Creepy Clown Sightings Started in Missouri

It was nearly a decade ago when many across America started reporting terrifying appearances of creepy clowns including Missouri. What many don't realize, though, is that the phenomenon was born in Missouri more than 45 years ago.

The modern creepy clown sighting phenomenon started in late September of 2016, but it's origin goes back decades to an initial report in Missouri

Anton Kotlovskii via Unsplash

As I recall, it was on September 29, 2016 that two strange clown figures were spotted in Kirksville, Missouri. Shortly after that, odd clown reports happened in Rolla and a few weeks later in Springfield, Missouri. By early October, the scary clown appearances were happening in Kansas City, too. By the time 2016 was complete, there were hundreds of weird clown reports across the nation, but no one was ever identified and connected to these disturbing sightings.

The origin of the creepy clown phenomenon dates back to May of 1981 in Missouri

It started with police initially dismissing the reports as children's imaginations running wild, but on May 23, 1981, officials acknowledged that the sightings were valid. Many kids in the Kansas City, Missouri area say a knife-wielding clown was chasing them. There were 6 schools in that region that reported seeing a yellow van nearby where a menacing clown had been sighted. To my knowledge, no individual was ever arrested or identified to be the guilty party responsible for scaring those kids. It was one of the first cases where there was truly a threatening criminal element to scary clown sightings and it was born in Missouri more than 4 decades ago.