Treiskaideka Coulrophobia: 13 Homicidal Clowns That You Should Fear

Finally I have created my list of the 13 most frightening clowns. I started this post a year ago, and finally took the effort to actually write it thoroughly. There are other clowns that could be added to this list, but these are the ones that I came up with last year.

13- Insane Clown Posse ICP should not be feared. Though their lyrics are of murder and debauchery, they are all talk and no action. In his non-fiction book Team Rodent Carl Hiaasen describes how Disney marketed ICP until parental groups objected. Then they dropped the band and another subsidiary of Disney picked them up for distribution. He spends much of the book calling Michael Eisner by the moniker Insane Clown Michael suggesting that the band was cooked up by Imagineers at the behest of Eisner. He speculates that they wrote the lyrics with the intent of stirring up controversy, so that their album would sell well. I don't know whether or not they were created by Disney, but I do know that their homicidal act is just that, an act.

12- Binky from Garfield While he has never killed anyone that we know of, he does have a penchant for torturing animals (especially one cat in particular). Since animal torture is one of the signs of a serial killer, I believe that it's only a matter of time before this sicko starts his murderous rampage. His show consists of large amounts of screaming. In addition, it's pretty creepy that he knows whoever is watching his tortuous show.

11- Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons This clown sidekick ranks pretty low on the list as he has never been able to kill a child that he has attempted so many times to kill. He also has been unable to kill any of the adults that he has attempted to kill, as well as being unable to kill the whole city of Springfield when he attempted. Though he is inept at killing, since he has attempted so many times he has to be included on this list.

10- The Clown Doctors from PeeWee's Big Adventure These clowns rank pretty low on the scale of evil since the only thing that they kill is a bicycle. They do torture Peewee by slowly killing his bicycle though, and they are definitely frightening.


9- "Shoeshine" Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas In one scene of this movie Tommy asks Henry "How am I funny?.. Am I a fucking clown to you?.." This scene has been spoofed many times proving yes, Tommy is a clown...Not a very funny clown, but a terrifying homicidal one.


8- The Clown Doll from Poltergeist In the 1970s and 80s Toby Hooper was the master of horror. He invented the slasher movie with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In 1982 he directed Poltergeist, and with this he created one of the most frightening depictions of a clown ever. There was a clown doll that the family's daughter had that her brother feared. Near the end of the movie, the clown doll comes to life and attacks him. This clown scared the crap out of me as a kid, and brought fear of clowns to new heights.

7- The Joker The Joker has been Batman's nemesis for 70 years. There have been many conflicting stories of the origin of the Joker. The Joker has also been said to be different people. There have been copycats of the Joker operating while he was in Arkham Asylum. Trying to untangle all of these story lines will give you a headache, but that's kind of the point of the Joker. He killed Jason Todd, who was the second Robin. He paralyzed Barbara Gordon (Batgirl). He has at times been credited with killing Bruce Wayne's parents. Just as he appears differently in the comics, he has been portrayed differently in movies and on TV.

Cesar Romero's portrayal of the Joker in the 1960s Batman TV series is a depiction of the crazy, but not demented Joker. This Joker was common in the silver age of comic books, after much of the violence was sanitized by the Comics Code.

Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker in the 1989 film Batman is a prime example of Joker as a gangster/mob boss. This version of the Joker was pretty common in the golden age of comics.



Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker in the 2008 film The Dark Knight is an example of the truly demented, bat shit crazy Joker. This has been a common version of the character since the 1980s, when Frank Miller took over writing Batman.


6-Killer Klowns from Outer Space The campy 1988 classic horror film Killer Klowns from Outer Space featured a gang of extra terrestrial killer clowns that fly around in a UFO that looks like a circus tent. When they kill someone, they wrap them in a compound that looks like cotton candy. The cotton candy substance dissolves the victims so that they can be devoured by the clown creatures.


5- Clown from Spawn Spawn's nemesis in the comic series is a demon that hides in the guise of a fat clown. Clown's real form is Violator, the oldest of the Phlebiac Brothers, who are charged with raising hellspawn to fulfill Satan's purpose for them.


4- Michael Myers as a Child Michael Myers from the Halloween movies, he kills his first victim as a child dressed as a clown on Halloween night. His first victim is elder sister, and promptly after killing her he is sent to an asylum. Though he only had one killing as a clown, his adult total with the William Shatner mask added make him a very prolific killer.


3- Captain Spaulding Introduced in the film Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, Captain Spaulding uses his roadside attraction to kill tourists, usually city folk. Though the character is seen again in The Devil's Rejects, he doesn't don the clown makeup. My personal favorite part about this clown is how he incorporates his victims into his attraction, as is seen in the case of Fish Boy, who is the Captain's take on the old Feejee Mermaid. As a side note the victim who becomes Fish Boy is played by Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Shrute on The Office.


2- Pennywise the Dancing Clown The child killing clown in Stephen King's novel It and the miniseries based on it is terrifying. Like Clown from Spawn, Pennywise is not actually a clown, but a shape shifting beast that takes on the form of a clown to entice children. It then uses their deepest fears to kill them. Pennywise is immortal until killed by adults who were terrorized by it as children.

1-Pogo the Clown aka John Wayne Gacy Pogo is the most frightening clown of all time, because he really did have teenage boys in his crawlspace. Gacy would entertain neighborhood children with his clown character, making balloon animals and doing magic tricks. He would often use some variation of his magic tricks to lure and trap his victims. A favorite trick was showing how to escape from trick handcuffs. After showing this trick he would exchange the trick handcuffs for real handcuffs, trapping his teenage victims with their hands behind their back. They were completely vulnerable to his sexual assaults and murder. Gacy killed at least 33 teenage boys and young men, storing 26 of them in his crawlspace. The stench from below his house became unbearable for his neighbors and he was arrested on July 15th 1978. For the 14 years that he was on death row he painted pictures of himself as Pogo the clown. It is theorized that the setting that he painted the portraits in is a clue to where he buried other victims. In February of 1978 with his crawlspace full he started tossing the bodies of his victims in the Des Plaines River. He was executed with lethal injection by the state of Illinois on May 10th, 1994.

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