Terrifying your children into submission is definitely a questionable parenting technique but apparently some families are open to it because it’s possible to hire Wrinkles the Clown to creep out your kids.
Wrinkles the Clown is the subject of a new documentary that details how you can hire the scary character to make an appearance wherever you see fit.
Most people would agree he’d be at home in a haunted house but some have asked Wrinkles to show up to social events or even stand menacingly outside friend’s homes. The meanest of the clown’s clients, however, are definitely the parents who use him to scare children who misbehave.
Watch the trailer for the Wrinkles the Clown documentary here:
Wrinkles has not revealed his true identity in interviews, instead choosing to stay in character, but in an interview with The Washington Post the clown recalled a time he was hired to terrify a mother’s 12-year-old son.
Explaining the situation, Wrinkles said:
He was scared of clowns and I showed up across the street from him at the bus stop and he just started crying in front of his friends and ran home.
His mother called back a few days later and said ‘Thank you!’
Now when he acts bad, she just has to ask him: ‘Do you want Wrinkles to come back?’
Though the man behind the mask remains a mystery, he has revealed he is a divorcee former veteran from Rhode Island, who moved to Florida after he retired.
He told NBC2 he wanted to ‘have fun and have a good time [and] make a little extra money on the side’, so rather than enjoying his retirement by relaxing, he decided to create Wrinkles.
The mischievous man used business cards and stickers to advertise his service in the local area and it wasn’t long before he received hundreds of calls from teenagers, pranksters and even parents looking to enlist his clowning services.
While freaking someone out seems like a very cruel prank, Wrinkles doesn’t see it as such as he explained he just wanted to ‘have a little fun’ before he dies.
Watch the man talk about his hobby here:
Wrinkles the Clown began as something of an urban legend, stemming from a series of viral videos that featured what looked to be a real-life Pennywise.
In 2014, a YouTube page titled ‘HvUseen Wrinkles’ posted security camera footage of a child sleeping in their room before a clown silently emerged from under the bed and destroyed the footage. The video was supposedly shot in Sarasota, Florida, in June 2013 and is said to be one of the earliest ‘sightings’ of Wrinkles the Clown.
Watch it here:
It’s unclear whether the clowns in the viral videos are the same man who turns up to scare children, or whether they were copycat clowns, but they’re certainly just as creepy.
The character can typically be seen wearing a red and white polka dot suit with black gloves, along with a white mask with black eye holes and receding white hair.
One thing’s for sure – spotting Wrinkles would be enough to make me behave, though it might also scar me for life.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.