Okay, let’s just get it out on the table, shall we? I have clown issues. Serious, serious clown issues. They make my skin crawl with their exaggerated mouths with leering false smiles and too many teeth and scary alcoholic noses…and…yeah. Pretty much all of it, really.

Yet I haven’t really bothered trying to overcome this phobia as it’s not a daily problem since you don’t often run into roving gangs of clowns accosting you on the street.

So, sure, there was a false sense of security right up until I was innocently having fun at Mardi Gras and found this flung my way:

When I saw this, I had an immediate PTSD flashback to being a kid and sneaking onto HBO latenight to watch Poltergeist I & II, neither of which helped one bit with these phobias.

The whole clown scene in the first movie was bad enough, but the entire second movie…that preacher dude is by far the creepiest villain with inadvertent clownface ever. I tried to find a video of him doing his little sing-song, but lucky for both of us I couldn’t find it. Here’s the trailer instead.:

Ironically, watching the youtube clips I found, I definately came to understand that Poltergeist II was a terrible movie, despite the fact that it seems to be burned in my brain.

No, actually, I realize that’s wrong- only Mr. BigTeethPreacherMolesterClown lives on* in my head, which will probably serve up a really nasty dream starring him tonight.

:::shiver::: Clowns. Those bastards.

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*whose backstory I still remember- he was a doomsday preacher who led his flock into a cave where they starved to death when the world inconveniently failed to end in a timely fashion. Sad, isn’t it?