Where Are The 'Killer' Clowns? Creepy Sightings In Minnesota Land Teen In Jail Over Instagram Threats

With communities on high alert over a recent deluge of clown sightings across the country, one of the circus entertainers-turned-creeps was arrested Tuesday in Minnesota after police tracked him down for posting a threatening Instagram post saying people were in danger.

The offending clown, who went by the name Kroacky Klown on social media, turned out to be a teenager. Police in the town of Hopkins, a suburb of Minneapolis, said that there were no other threatening clowns for people to worry about.

“Kroacky Klown has been identified and charges will be pursued for their threats,” Hopkins police Tuesday night on Facebook. “There are no other threatening clowns in our community that we are aware of.”

Ol’ Kroacky scared Minnesota residents when he posted a picture of what can only be described as a drugged-up serial killer version of Ronald McDonald behind bars online with the message that anyone in nine cities was in danger.

“My clown brothers are in every city listed,” he wrote, sending his creepy message to a large swath of the Minneapolis metropolitan area.

Clown sightings have been popping up all over the country ever since late August, when residents of an apartment complex in Greenville County, South Carolina, began complaining of clowns they said were lurking in the woods and trying to convince children to follow them there.

Since then, they’ve been spotted all over the country from Idaho and Washington State to Arizona, Texas, Florida and New Jersey. For more, take a look at this map, which is in no way exhaustive.

What seems to be largely missing from this now-national conversation about the misfits — which has drawn comment from such figures as Stephen King and even a response from the White House (which deferred to the FBI) — is that weirdos dressing up as clowns to scare people kind of happens on a yearly basis even if it doesn’t become quite the craze it is this year. Last year, clowns terrorized people in the U.K. by chasing kids in vans. In 2014, people were freaked out in California by a clown.