Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

Recent columns

• Farewell to those who made this space great
• Homeplace founder had recipe for success
• Pam's Snack Shack: Becoming her own boss

• Column archive

Some talented clowns will perform in Roanoke this weekend, but for Andrea Harold and Katie Stetson, that's unwelcome news.

"I'm afraid of anybody dressed up like that," says Harold, who is 19 and works as a sales rep at the Sprint kiosk at Valley View Mall.

"Clowns, mascots, anybody I can't see their face," adds her fellow sales rep Katie Stetson, 22.

Several years ago, mimes became the targets of people who claimed to be afraid of them. Then Ronald McDonald took some hits.

Nowadays, a group of people fearful of clowns in general has sprung up. Known as coulrophobes, they participate in Web sites like ihateclowns.com, where they discuss their fears and can purchase hats and T-shirts with words made popular by Bart Simpson: "Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me."

It's difficult to distinguish between the true 'phobes and those who get a kick out of the claim.

Dissed by media

Leon McBryde of Buchanan is a graduate of the Ringling Circus Clown College and has more than 40 years of professional clowning experience. He thinks people with clinically diagnosed phobias are rare.

He rarely encounters people who fear him, but he knows that negative portrayals of clowns in movies like "It" and "Killer Clowns from Outer Space" have harmed clowning's image. So have untrained people who lack knowledge of the art's history, techniques and ethics.

As Buttons the Clown, McBryde was inducted into the Clown Hall of Fame in 1990. He strongly endorses the quality of the clowning in the Gold Unit of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that's performing at the Roanoke Civic Center this weekend. But that won't be enough to propel some uneasy people to the box office.

Early origins

Heather Davis developed her aversion as a child, when her stepmother hung clowns from the ceiling of their home.

Brittany Davis, 17, dislikes them because their makeup obscures their facial expressions. That, she says, makes them hard to read.

Their grandmother, Celine Barnes, 62, doesn't care for garish illustrations of clown faces that appear on some carnival rides. She finds them frightening.

"There are some clowns that don't know what they're doing, and that kind of scares me," says McBryde, who taught at the Ringling clown college. "I take clowning very seriously.

The most regularly visible clowns in Roanoke are the Kazim Klowns from the Shriners' Kazim Temple. They receive more requests for appearances at parades, nursing homes, club meetings and the like than they can fulfill.

But, they, too, encounter kids and others who recoil.

When children do it, you turn away, says Wayne Robertson, director of the Klown Unit this year. The last thing you do is go toward them.

What makes teens and grown-ups fearful?

"I don't know," says Robertson, 64, "and we've asked."

The Web site ihateclowns.com has some answers: aggressive clowns encountered in childhood, the inability to read their expressions and body language and just inexplicable fear.

Internet chatter provides undocumented claims that actor Johnny Depp had clown nightmares as a child and that Diddy, the rapper-turned-mogul, has a no-clowns clause in his performance contracts.

Some people shrink from Mugsy, the mascot of the Salem Avalanche, and others shiver at the thought of visiting Disney World, with its parade of costumed characters.

Santa Claus scares the bejabbers out of at least 40 percent of the small children who climb onto his lap at Valley View Mall, according to Chris Craft. He works for Cherry Hill Photography, producer of Santa-with-kid pictures at the mall this year. He once headed a Baptist clown ministry, and he's still a clown at times.

A principal once told him that the last time a clown visited her school, terrorized children scattered.

When a clown took the stage at Liberty High School one time, Katie Stetson fled the auditorium.

To break down such fears, Kazim Klown Robertson walks into classrooms as himself, then shows the children how he applies makeup and becomes a clown, while the teacher reassures them.

Hall of Famer McBryde worries more about training young clowns to take the place of his generation than he does about scared people.

In May, he'll again present his Advanced Studies in the Performing Arts of Clowning at Camp Bethel near Buchanan. He expects to draw 150 people from around the world.

The theme will be planning for the future, so the world won't run out of qualified clowns.