WTF: Parents Are Hiring This Creepy Clown to SCARE Their Kids into Behaving

Society is effed up. There’s just no other way to say it.

When parents aren’t busy letting iPhones and iPads raise their kids (considering 77% of two year olds are now on them daily), apparently they’re hiring creepy ass clowns to SCARE their kids into behaving.

That’s right. As seen in the image above (yes, that’s not just a creepy clown, it’s THE creepy clown parents hire), a 65-year-old guy who dresses in a polka dotted red suit and creepy mask with elongated black eyes and goes by the monicker “Wrinkles the Clown” is offering his services of scaring people’s misbehaving kids into minding their parents in Naples, Florida.

He’s always just silently standing there, wearing big rubber gloves and holding a bunch of balloons.

To be fair, he actually seems like a nice enough guy, but that’s not even the point.

Via WAPO:

For a few hundred bucks cash, [Wrinkles] told The Washington Post, he’ll make an appearance at your party or gathering, prank your friend or even scare your misbehaving kid straight, as he was recently hired to do by one mother looking for a way to reform her trouble-making 12-year-old.

“He was scared of clowns and I showed up across the street from him at the bus stop and he just started crying in front of his friends and ran home,” Wrinkles told The Post, somewhat remorsefully, in his heavy New England accent. “His mother called back a few days later and said ‘Thank you!’ Now when he acts bad, she just has to ask him: ‘Do you want Wrinkles to come back?’”

Surprised the kid didn’t pee his pants.

So now, instead of having behavioral problems, little Johnny will have mental problems and insomnia and be scarred for life?

Sounds like a terrific trade off, huh?

Did you know, a University of Sheffield study found that clowns are universally disliked by children? Apparently the study consisted of 250 kids between the ages of four and 16 surveyed about their clown opinions and guess what? Every last one of them, 100%, disliked clowns! A British children’s hospital even redecorated specifically to remove clown decor because kids are afraid of them.

Fear of clowns is no laughing matter, though. There are many adults who fear them as well. There’s even a word for people who have a clown phobia: coulrophobia.

In other words…

This is literally the stuff nightmares are made of.