'Creepy Clowns' Reports Dubious: Manassas Police

MANASSAS, VA — Add Manassas City Police to the list of local agencies nationwide having to reassure residents that if reports of creepy clowns are credible, they will investigate, but that an overwhelming number of such sightings are bogus.

And so the agency did just that Wednesday, two days after Prince William County dutifully did the same thing.

Manassas Police said between Sept. 30 and Wednesday, it has received numerous reports from citizens citing clowns acting suspiciously near schools and also online.

Its statement, in part: " The reports have been broad and very similar in nature to those made throughout the Northern Virginia region and areas along the east coast. Manassas City Police has not discovered any evidence to suggest a plausible threat to the public."

The statement echoes that of Prince William County Police and other school systems having to bat down rumors and faux sightings.

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.

But copycats? Well, a man wearing a clown mask allegedly accosted a woman in her car this week in Fredericksburg.

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