It's hard out there for a clown when merely suggesting that you're coming to a school is enough to provoke a police response. And yet according the Chronicle, that's exactly what happened in Fairfield after the now-deleted Twitter account ClownGanng1 let it be known that he or she planned on attending a number of local schools.

"Fairfield we coming," read one of the tweets captured by KCRA 3. "Grange Middle School and Fairfield High School get ready Tuesday (Oct 4th) at 10:30 am. Happy Clowning hehe."

This, along with another tweet naming "Rodriguez High And PSA" were enough to spark fears from parents and students that something not so funny might be afoot. "Earlier this evening, we were notified of a possible threat to our campus posted on social media," Grange Middle School principal Christine Harrison wrote yesterday in a letter sent out to parents. "As a precautionary measure the Fairfield Police Department will be on campus helping to keep the campus safe."

This seemingly over-the-top response comes during a renewed national fear of the red-nosed bringers of joy. In late August, NBC News reported that children in the town of Greenville, South Carolina claimed a clown attempted to lure them into the woods with "large amounts of money." In early August, a weird clown was spotted walking around late at night in Green Bay, Wisconsin — but that ended up being viral marketing for a short film. Last month a 22-year-old woman and two juveniles were charged with making terrorist threats about scary clowns on social media in the Alabama town of Flomaton, north of Mobile. Just last week Friday night high school football games in a Cincinnati suburb had extra security called in over clown threats.

NBC News has no real explanation for the bizarre, nationwide spike in threats of clown violence/scariness, and it may just be one of those ugly and idiotic things social media has bestowed on the world.

And while possibly a majority of these clown sighting are hoaxes, some actual threats have been made. In New Jersey, officials just arrested a 13-year-old girl and charged her with cyber harassment after they say she made clown-related threats on social media, and the Tampa Bay Times reports that officials in Pasco County, Florida arrested a 12-year-old boy just this afternoon for threatening to kill students under the guise of a scary clown.

Let's hope, along with Pepe the Frog, this all disappears back into the internet hole it came from after the election.

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