My first circus, I was 4 years old. Not thrilled about the awful music, the smells or the huge elephants, but the minute the clown showed up and looked my way--I went running and screaming and no one could pull me back into the tent again!
Clowns are too happy, unnaturally happy. Their features are exaggerated and the human beneath can almost be discerned. His mouth is not as big as the one drawn on, his eyes are not as big as they are drawn on. We see an incongruity in what they pretend to be and what they are. There may be somewhere in our human DNA a bullshit button when it comes to genuine facial expressions.
How about the real-life John Wayne Gacy? The part-time clown/full-time serial killer?
Need anymore confirmation that clowns are evil? Check this out....
A friend dared me to add to my dark anthology erotica series a story about sex with a clown. I did it, and I think I managed to make it feasible and disturbing. Here's a little sample from inside the funhouse:
In her helpless position over the table, wrists in the cuffs under the painful red light, her round buttocks in the air, she presented him with a fantasy so surreal he began to lose his inhibitions and imagine people seeing the clown in his costume leaned over a helplessly chained woman, thrusting his pelvis against her and how strangely arousing that would be. He was used to getting attention for being silly or even scary, but never as a sexual being. The contrast of sex demon and clown aroused his mind even more as he guided himself into her wet cleft.
On that note, hopefully, I managed to change your mind about clowns.