Inside the Legend: Everybody Loves A Clown

 

 

 

Rakshasas

“Rakshasa. It’s a race of ancient Hindu creatures. They appear in human form, they feed on human flesh, they can make themselves invisible, and they cannot enter a home without first being invited to.”

Rakshasas are completely evil and are infamous for disturbing sacrifices, desecrating graves, harassing priests, possessing human beings, and so on. They are also known to be powerful creatures that delight in spreading fear, confusion, chaos, and destruction among human families and communities, finishing the trouble they cause in a murderous, ghoulish feast upon human flesh. Because of their delight in the mental torture of their victims, Rakshasas are considered to be the most feared of all creatures.

Different appearances

Rakshasas are also shapeshifters. They prefer their human forms to all others, due the ability to freely mix and participate in human affairs. The most common appearances that Rakshasas take on, however, is that of a tiger and that of a monkey.

In their natural form most Rakshasas have poisonous fingernails and teeth.

Rakshasas just love that flesh

“Rakshasas live in squalor. They sleep on a bed of dead insects and they have to feed a few times every 20 to 30 years – slow metabolism, I guess.”

A common goal of a Rakshasa is to take on a human guise and cause as much division and hatred as possible, especially within one family or group they have chosen as victim. The final goal is to have this hatred erupt into brutal violence, once the violence is over the rakshasa settles down to its ghoulish feast.

The most common method that the Rakshasa uses in it’s “hunt” for human flesh involves using their formidable mental abilities to disguise themselves as a trusted friend or companion. They usually only keep that ruse up long enough to get the victim alone, and then they will strike.

How to hunt a rakshasa

“Legend goes a dagger made of pure brass.”

The thing that makes a Rakshasa an even bigger pain in the neck is that they cannot be affected by most magical spells, although some magical weapons can fry these suckers. Luckily, all Rakasahas have a common weakness- in that any crossbow bolt blessed by a priest will kill them… instantly!

The origin of rakshasas

According to The Ramayana (an ancient Sanskrit epic), Rakshasas were created from the Brahma’s foot. While other sources state that they descended from Pulastya, Khasa, Nirriti, or Nirrita. Another source states that a Rakshasa was a particularly wicked human being in a previous incarnation.

A demonic organization

Rakshasas are a highly organized evil race of spirits. They are an honorable race in their own way and are very devoted to their own dark gods, never mind that they view humans as nothing more than livestock! The female rakashasas easily outnumber the males about two to one.

Rakshasas are immortal, each spirit is eventually born anew in the body of a newborn rakshasa and will grow to have full memory of its previous lives. They have been known to hold grudges over a span of many lifetimes, and will almost certainly try to avenge their previous deaths.

Evil Clowns

Coulrophobia

An extreme fear of clowns, induced by heavy makeup, nose, and a wig used to conceal a wearer's identity.

Phantom Clowns accost New England

“I told him an urban legend about a homicidal phantom clown.”

Let’s face it, deep down inside we’ve always suspected that clowns were up to no good. Whether, it’s the frightening wigs, the garish outfits, or the nightmarish face paint, there’s just something creepy and disturbing about these so-called happy hobos and harlequins. In 1981, people’s deep-rooted fear of clowns seemed to be justified, as a rash of evil-clown sightings swept across the country. In the following report, Loren Coleman, a noted delver into the unknown tracks the bizarre case of these masquerading menaces.

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In the spring of 1981, Boston, Massachusetts, appears to have been the port of entry for a strange new version of the Pied Piper story. During the first week of May, some individuals in multicolored clothes began trying to entice schoolchildren into coming along with them.

On May 6, 1981, the Boston police, responding to persistent complaints, warned parents and school officials that men in clown suits were harassing elementary schoolchildren. One of the men was seen wearing a clown suit just from the waist up; from the waist down he was naked. According to reports, the clown had driven a black van near the recreational horseshoe site of Franklin Park in the Roxbury area of Boston. He also appeared in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston near the Mary F. Curley School.

A day earlier, in the adjoining city of Brookline, two clown men reportedly tried to lure children into their van with offers of candy. The Brookline police had a good description of the van: older model, black, with ladders on the side, a broken front headlight, and no hubcaps. After the clown men and van had been seen near the Lawrence Elementary School on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, the police told school administrators to be “extra cautious.”

By May, 8 reports of clown men in vans harassing children had come in from East Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Randolph, and other cities near Boston. Police were stopping vehicles with clowns delivering birthday greetings and “clown-a-grams,” but no child molesters were arrested.

Frustrated policemen finally pointed out that virtually all of the reported sightings originated with children aged five to seven. The headlines in the May 9 issue of the Boston Globe told the story: POLICE DISCOUNT REPORTS OF CLOWNS BOTHERING KIDS. The public had been calmed, and that was the end of the story. Or so the papers could have had us believe.

The focus of activity now shifts a thousand miles west to Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. On the afternoon of May 22, police cruisers on the Missouri side crisscrossed the city chasing a knife-wielding clown in a yellow van that had been reported at six different elementary schools. Earlier in the day, at eight thirty, a mother had watched a yellow van approach her children as they walked to a school bus stop. The van stopped, and someone inside spoke to her two girls, who then screamed and fled; the vehicle sped away.

The children told their mother that a man dressed as a clown and carrying a knife had ordered them inside. By noon the police had received dozens of similar reports- of a clown in a yellow van. The calls did not taper off until five o’ clock that afternoon.

Residents of the two Kansas cities called it the Killer Clown Affair. Some parents in Kansas were even keeping their children out of school. Before long, “group hysteria” was touted as the explanation for the reports. But incidents continued. The police and volunteers were never able to capture any clowns, but witnesses insisted the costumed figures they had seen were real and not imaginary.

The story of the phantom clowns went unnoticed on a national scale until I began getting a hint we were in the midst of a major new phenomenon. Slowly, after contacting fellow researchers by phone and mail, I discovered that the phantom clown enigma went beyond Boston and Kansas City. Indeed, the reports filtering in demonstrated that a far-reaching mystery was developing. Local media in the individual cities were not aware they were living through a series of events that were occurring nationwide. The national media was not spreading the word, but something quite unusual happened in America in the spring of 1981.

But what was it that happened? Was it a group hysteria, as some newsmen would have us believe? Or more? Phantom clowns in at least six major cities, spanning over a thousand miles of America in the space of one month, is quite a mystery. Were the “clowns in vans” sighted elsewhere in the United States? Are they still being seen? Only time will tell.

Today people kindly try to inform me that the phantom clown sightings of 1981, were just mass hysteria caused by Stephen King’s It, which tells a scary story about a clown who tries to abduct children. But the first editions of Mr. King’s book were not published until 1986. So much for that theory.

Since those sightings in 1981, the world has become a much different place for children. The very real school violence and satanic scares of the last decades have taken a toll on innocence. Phantom clowns were sinister enough in 1981; in the twenty-first century, they are downright terrifying.

Perhaps the phantom clowns have something to tell us. Certainly the shadowy monklike figures mentioned so often in occult literature have become almost too commonplace and familiar. The Men in Black terrorizing UFO witnesses from their Cadillacs may be too obviously sinister. The denizens of the netherworld have apparently dreamed up a new nightmare to shock us. Leagues of phantom clowns in vans thus have now joined the scores of Fortean, ufological, and flying saucer “people” for a new chapter in the story. The cosmic joker is alive an well, and living in a clown suit.

WEIRD NEW ENGLAND. Introduction by Joseph A. Citro. Article by Loren Coleman. Transferred by Dean5339

Clowning Around

The first week of May, 1981, Daniel O'Connell, the Investigative Counselor of the Boston Public School Board, alerted the district's principals that "it has been brought to the attention of the police department and the district office that adults dressed as clowns have been bothering children to and from school. Please advise all students that they must stay away from strangers, especially ones dressed as clowns."

City-wide bulletins were issued by police seeking a man allegedly dressed in a clown suit from the waist up but otherwise naked, reportedly driving a black van in the Franklin park area of Roxbury on May 6. He was also repeatedly seen near an elementary school in Jamaica Plains.

Coleman quotes LaTanya Johnson, a then-sixth grade student at Fairfax Elementary School, who told the Kansas City Star of her sighting of the clown: He was by the fence and ran down through the big yard when some of the kids ran over there. He ran toward a yellow van. He was dressed in a black shirt with a devil on the front. He had two candy canes down each side of his pants. The pants were black too, I think; I don't remember much about his face.

The May 7 Boston Globe coverage states: Various reports about one or two men wearing clown outfits and driving a black van have been called in to authorities throughout the Greater Boston area for the past few weeks.

“We’ve had rumors, but nothing substantiated,” said Cambridge Police Captain Alan Hughes, on May 8 or 9. “Some schools in Cambridge were in a panic two or three weeks ago. It’s died down now…A woman in Jefferson Park called to say she’d seen a clown and we sent a car up there. Then she said, “Maybe I was imagining it.”

Officer O’Toole, a spokesman for the Boston Police, was quoted as saying: No adult or police officer has ever seen a clown. We’ve had calls saying there was a clown. We’ve had calls saying that there was a clown at a certain intersection and we happened to have police cars sitting there, and the officers saw nothing. We’ve had over 20 calls on 911. When the officers get there, no one tells them anything.

But Coleman makes a significant observation that suggests something else was going on: The story of the phantom clowns went unnoticed on a national scale until I began getting a hint we were in the midst of a major flap of a new phenomenon. Slowly, after contacting fellow researchers by phone and mail, I discovered the phantom clown enigma went beyond Boston, Kansas City, and Omaha. Indeed, the reports filtering into me demonstrated that a far reaching mystery was developing. In the individual cities, the local media were not aware they were living through a series of puzzling events that were occurring nationwide.

A fiery death bed

Pyre

A structure, usually a mound of wood, that is used for burning a body as part of a funeral rite. The body is placed upon the pyre and the pyre is then set on fire. In a Viking Funeral the pyre was built on a ship, which was then sent out to sea as if burned.

Macabre

Artifacts; artistic works that are characterized by a grim or ghostly atmosphere. In these artifacts there is an emphasis on the details and symbols of death. Themes are usually deliberate and are often preoccupations in the Goth subculture.

Inside the Legend by Dean5339