News You Can't Use: North Carolina Man Arrested for Lying About Clown Sighting

Despite the best efforts of professional organizations the highly respectable vocation of clowning is not only held in low regard but has perhaps been permanently linked with psychotic criminality. Combine this with the fact that we seem to be nowhere near peak jester despite the heavy saturation that has occurred and it's a recipe for phony killer clown reports from below the Mason-Dixon line. It seems the best way to obtain both highly temporary southern celebrity and the interior of a jail cell is to cook up an apocryphal encounter with Homie the Killer Klown.

A North Carolina man who told police someone dressed as a clown had knocked on his window at night landed in jail on Friday after admitting he fabricated the story, the latest twist in a string of such reported sightings in recent weeks.

More creative than any movie, full of incredible twists and turns like "I just made it all up." I don't what exactly it says about a society when "clown sightings" becomes something that must be recorded and studied, but it's nothing good, that's for sure.

David Wayne Armstrong, 24, described to Winston-Salem police how he had chased the clown into nearby woods, but authorities said in a statement he had lied.

I think I liked it better when you were being levitated into flying saucers instead of opening up a can of whup-tush on Pennywise.

He was arrested on a charge of filing a false police report.

Yes, the sensationalist headline totally misrepresented the reason behind the arrest. Could journalism be somewhat untrustworthy? The answer is clearly "no" so I'm not sure what to think.

Reports of clown sightings in the state and neighboring South Carolina since late August have residents on edge and prompted more police patrols.

I mean, they might make balloon animals or throw a bucket full of confetti on you. Better call in the National Guard.

In most cases, investigators have found no one matching the varying descriptions of the clowns.

Yeah. Imagine that.

Creepy clowns are a fixture of pop culture and entertainment in the United States. 

This is why we're the best country in the world right now and the greatest in all of human history other than Neo-Sumeria.

"We’re still investigating to see what the actual purpose is, whether it’s for ill intent or if it’s a prank," said Officer Gilberto Franco, a Greenville police spokesman.

"Shutting down those drug houses will just have to wait."

I dun chased it into the woods.

A film distributor debunked speculation that the sightings were connected to the release of director Rob Zombie's new independent horror movie "31," which features a gang of sadistic clowns.  

And was also written by a bunch of sadistic clowns, haw haw.

But as of Friday, officers had not found the clown, who according to a statement was chased off by a man wielding a machete.

Whether the nightmare man with the finger knives participated in this remains unknown.

"We don't recommend that," Greensboro police spokeswoman Susan Danielsen said.

Stick with sensible clown counter-measures like shooting them with silver jewelry from a slingshot or chainsaws.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.