Bad Clowns Abound

This year has begun with a big bang in the world of the morbid fear of clowns. Released on April 1st, Benjamin Radford's new book, Bad Clowns (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2016) is no joke.

Circus clowns have no redeeming value in this book. You will find John Wayne Gacy and  It's Pennywise, of course. But almost like a Fortean, Radford has filled this book with an awful collection, literary a "bad clown alley," as a group of evil clowns would be called. Radford, without any bias, one way or the other, tackles the topic of coulrophobia, evil clowns, criminal clowns, killer clowns, and nasty clowns in this insightful book.

Radford also takes on the topic for which I coined a new word, "Phantom Clowns." Indeed, he turns over an entire chapter, #12, to this special variety of clowns. As Radford (page 151) poetically states it, the Phantom Clowns seem "to exist somewhere in the twilight between the cold, clear reality of daylight and the slumbered stuff of nightmares."

In the 1980s, I first devoted an article about Phantom Clowns in Fate, and then expanded my thoughts on these reports in 1983's first edition of Mysterious America. As a reader here, you know I've continued this discussion on this blog.

So, how about an update on recent "bad clown" stories?

First, let's review two clown incidents from 2015, and get to two new ones from 2016.

(1) Antioch, Tennessee.

Vincente David Montano, in the crosshairs.

On August 5, 2015, a predicted theater incident occurred exactly two weeks after a shooting at a showing of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana. It involved a "man in a clown costume," as it was reported in the media. The Mad Max: Fury Road hatchet attack and air pistol shooting resulted in the death of the attacker. That incident took place at the Carmike Hickory 8 Cinema in Antioch, Tennessee. The gunman at the Hickory Hollow Cinema, Vincente David Montano (pictured above, in the news story) was allegedly armed with a hatchet, pepper spray, an Airsoft gun, and a fake bomb. He reportedly was wearing a surgical mask. Later reports said he actually was dressed up as a clown.

(2) Hickory, North Carolina.

Jimmy Daniel Rayon. Another clown?

Now comes word of an incident Friday, August 7, 2015, from Hickory, North Carolina. A woman living in the 1300 block of 20th Avenue NE in Hickory, reported to police that at 4:32 a.m. Friday a clown with an ax knocked at her residence. The suspect then began swinging an ax and attempted to cut the victim. The clown was wearing a mask and a multicolored wig. She was able to remove his mask and recognized him as an acquaintance before he left, according to the Hickory Daily Record. An arrest warrant was issued. The suspect, still at large, is Jimmy Daniel Raybon (pictured above) and he has an outstanding warrant for the charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

(3) Kassel, Germany

Two activists in clown costumes disrupted a meeting of the German anti-migrant party Alternative for Germany by throwing a cake into the face of Beatrix von Storch, one of the party’s leaders and a European Parliament member. The men approached von Storch while she was presiding over a closed-door Alternative for Germany party meeting held in Kassel, Germany, on February 28, 2016. They sang “Happy Birthday” as one of them threw a cake into von Storch’s face and the other filmed the incident.

(4) Sonora, Mexico.

Tony Tambor.

Clowns are an important part of culture in Mexico. But parties can get out of hand, if the children and parents don't like the clown events they buy - or the kids think the games didn't go their way. On the weekend of March 19-20, 2016, Tony Tambor, also known as Marco Antonio Vazquez, claims he was repeatedly punched and kicked at a Sonora, Mexico party for 30 children, according to the Houston Chronicle. Tambor may lose his eyesight, according to the Mexico News Daily.

Sometimes clowns get beat up. Other times they get killed or arrested. Clown behaviors have consequences.

You might also wish to read:

Morgan: Negan, Batman, Watchmen, Xindi-Reptilian, and Ant-Man

Tabloid Prez 2016

Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2015

H/T to R. Sullivan.

Dutch Clown Stabs Russian Boy On Crete: UPDATED

On the island of Crete in Hersonissos, a violent fierce attack by a Dutch hotel clown was made against a Russian family's child.

As you may recall, earlier in 2013, three Dutch clowns beat a boy at the Dutch city of Volendam's clown festivities (which involves over 200 clowns) in January.

In Crete, according to the forensic findings the child, aged 11 years, was stabbed 20 times in the chest, back and left arm. No sexual abuse was found.

Police authorities have arrested a 20-year-old Dutch hotel employee, who allegedly has confessed that he is the perpetrator of the attack on the minor. He was the hotel's clown.

Here are some of the photographs of the suspect from European newspapers. On his back is a tattoo with the words, "Vatos Locos."

Vatos Locos (in English, Crazy Dudes) is a widely used name for a street gang. Gangs using this name are active in several American states. The film Blood in, Blood out (1993) about the life of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca in 1972, was based on the experiences of gang members of Vatos Locos. The video game Call of Juarez: The Cartel features a fictional Vatos Locos gang.

The 11 year-old lost his cellphone and laptop, went searching for them, and then was lost. His parents, who had been looking for their child, did not find him until 3:00 AM in the hotel parking garage.

After a lengthy police interrogation, the young Dutch hotel clown reportedly confessed he stabbed the kid and directed the police to where the knife could be found.

The child is of Russian origin and is with his family in Crete for a holiday. 

Hersonissos (Greek: Χερσόνησος, pronounced [xerˈsonisos] - Chersónisos), also transliterated as Chersonisos and Hersónisos, is a town and a municipality in the north of Crete, bordering the Mediterranean/Aegean Sea. The vicinity of Hersonissos is noted for its prehistoric archaeological finds. On the coast approximately one kilometer to the east of Hersonissos was an ancient temple dedicated to the goddess Britomartis.

Britomartis (Βριτόμαρτις) was the Minoan goddess of mountains and hunting. She is among the Minoan goddess figures that passed through the Mycenaeans' culture into classical Greek mythology, with transformations that are unclear in both transferrals. For the Greeks Britomartis (Cretan dialect for "sweet maiden", "sweet virgin") or Diktynna (derived by Hellenistic writers as from diktya, "hunting nets") was a mountain nymph (an oread) whom Greeks recognized also in Artemis and in Aphaea, the "invisible" patroness of Aegina.
Britomartis ("sweet maid") is an epithet that does not reveal the goddess's name, nor her character, for it has the ring of an apotropaic euphemism. The goddess addressed as "Britomartis" was worshipped in Crete as an aspect of Potnia, the "Mistress." The oldest aspect of the Cretan goddess was as Mother of Mountains, who appears on Minoan seals with the demonic features of a Gorgon, accompanied by the double-axes of power and gripping divine snakes. Her terror-inspiring aspect was softened by calling her Britomartis, the "good virgin," a euphemism to allay her dangerous aspect.
Britomart figures in Edmund Spenser's knightly epic The Faerie Queene, where she is an allegorical figure of the virgin Knight of Chastity, representing English virtue—in particular, English military power—through a folk etymology that associated Brit-, as in Briton, with Martis, here thought of as "of Mars," the Roman war god. In Spenser's allegory, Britomart connotes the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I of England.
In his retelling of the King Arthur legends, Arthur Rex, author Thomas Berger suggests that Queen Guinevere may have become a powerful female knight known as Britomart after the death of the King.
Source.

BTW, media sources are also reporting the attack occurred in the "seaside town of Anissaras" and "in Iraklio, Crete." 

"Anissaras" is a hilly area in east Crete just outside of Hersonissos. "Iraklio" is another spelling for Heraklion, or Heraclion, where the famed ruins of Knossos were excavated and restored by Arthur Evans. English usage formerly preferred the classicizing transliterations "Heraklion" or "Heraclion," but the form "Iraklion" is becoming more common.

(Thanks to Thanassis V. for the news account information on this breaking story.)