'Creepy Clowns' Reports Bogus: Prince William County Schools

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, VA — Heard reports, largely via social media, of creepy clowns lurking around county schools?

Ignore them. There's nothing to them. They are, in a word, bogus. That's the word from Prince William County Schools, police and school-based resource and security officers.

On Monday morning, the school system posted the following on Facebook:

"Clown Threats Not Credible- PWCS, Prince William County Police, and school-based Resource and Security officers, are aware of and investigating disturbing posts that echo clown-focused threats popping up on social media nationwide. THEY FIND NO EVIDENCE OF A CREDIBLE THREAT TO PWCS STUDENTS. PWCS and law enforcement continue to monitor and will always take appropriate action when needed to ensure safety."

Indeed, it's a phenomena throughout the country that began several weeks ago.

There was one last week in Florida that turned up nothing.

Same thing in Annapolis a couple of weeks ago, although police believe children may have made up the accounts of clowns.

The wave of creepy clowns appears to have begun in the Carolinas several weeks ago, when a rash of reports was centered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina.

In several of the cases, a clown or clowns were reported to be in wooded areas and trying to lure or otherwise interact with children. In one case, a woman claimed she saw a clown holding a machete.

But soon some of those tales had begun to unravel. A Winston-Salem man was arrested for filing a false police report after he claimed to have chased a clown into the woods. Video surveillance in an area of a reported clown gathering failed to show any such thing. But just as some of the stories started falling apart in the Carolinas, they began blossoming in Georgia, and now they've made it to Prince William County.

Image: Davocano via Flickr