The clowns were never here in Rolla, but creepy clowns have emerged this season terrorizing folks around the states, causing panic and with it a lot of social media blitz.

“It is said that there is a gang of clowns that have been coming from North Carolina, … there have been multiple cases of missing children and i’m not very sure about them actually getting hurt, I don’t think they found any bodies or anything like that, but there have been a lot of missing kids reported in NC, along with a couple of arrests in NC and then an arrest in Ohio,” RHS Junior Jorden McBride said.

These ‘clowns’ were said to have been spotted walking around carrying various weapons or attempting to lure children away from their houses; Soon after these events hit social media claims of these clowns were popping up all over the country, including claims here in Rolla.

“[They’re] Either psychopaths in disguises or just weird people trying to have a good time,” RHS junior Tori Rose said.

Although all accounts of the ‘clowns’ being in rolla have been proven a hoax by the Rolla Police Department (RPD), the incident itself has had diverse beliefs on how it would affect the people of Rolla.

“I’m not exactly sure how it would affect Rolla other than there is a lot of people here who would consider like fighting them, where there have been numerous cases of people going out and looking for them, [and those] who want to fight them,” McBride said.

Initially some people wanted to find these clowns while others were concerned or scared because of a rumor spread, mostly by students and online pranksters, that these clowns were coming to Rolla.

“Honestly I was scared for my life, like i’m desperately afraid of clowns and i locked my doors every night. I was scared that i couldn’t even go on walks, cause i do that with my sister,” RHS Senior Christina Bailey said.

Other people had reported that they were receiving strange messages on Facebook that would try to get people to come outside or threaten to harm them, all while using strange accounts listed under the name of a clown.

“Most of them are recently created, they have never changed a name, they have always created a new face page, and they would only post pictures of clowns on the page, or they would just create the account to make it to where they can message people. They send friend requests and they message them basically asking you if you want to come out and play, telling you that you’re going to die soon, stuff to that effect, trying to scare you,” McBride said.

Shortly after the rumors had arose the RPD conducted a thorough investigation and concluded that these incidents were just some people (whose names were not provided) that were goofing around trying to scare people by dressing as clowns or threatening people on Facebook.

“Do your homework honestly, if you’re that bored to dress up as a clown and do that to other students then… no… kids are making jokes and i’m just like okay get [yourself] shot, because that’s totally cool,” Bailey said.