【Foreign Archives】

Scared of those creepy clown sightings?Foreign Archives

Stay awake at night haunted by the thoughts of those red-nosed, white-faced creatures with bushy-red hair and white gloves luring children in the woods with the promise of candy?

Well, don't be anymore.

Word of Stephen King, the master of horror who arguably, near-singlehandedly created the collective fears of clowns with his 1986 novel IT, whose eponymous evil being primarily takes the form of a clown.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The bard of Maine tweeted that the "clown hysteria" has goten out of hand and people need to chill over the whole deal:

There have been clown sightings in at least six U.S. states in a wave of reports. North and South Carolina have been particularly hard hit.

Authorities in northern Texas said they're investigating tips about clown threats and clown-related arrests have been made in Ohio and Kentucky.

Last month, King referenced theNorth Carolina sightings in an interview with the Bangor Daily News.

“The clown furor will pass, as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying,” he said.

“When I wrote my novel IT, I set it in Bangor, because it’s a town with a tough and violent history," King continued.

"I chose Pennywise the Clown as the face which the monster originally shows the kiddies because kids love clowns, but they also fear them; clowns with their white faces and red lips are so different and so grotesque compared to ‘normal’ people."

"Take a little kid to the circus and show him a clown, he’s more apt to scream with fear than laugh.”

King is not the only one responsible for the fear of clowns, though.

Serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who killed 33 young men in Illinois in the 1970s, used to perform as a clown at children's birthday parties and fundraisers.

Bonus: The Shining’ book and movie were terrifying in very different ways

(Editor: {typename type="name"/})