“I have this friend of a friend who used to babysit as a teenager. Her clients were pretty wealthy and live in this absolutely huge house out near the country, on the outskirts of the town they live in. I think she’s a doctor and he’s a partner at some law firm, so we are talking huge income. It’s really nice out there, peaceful, but a bit out of the way.
The house is a bit ridiculous; an unbelievable number of rooms. You can easily get lost in the place. They’re a bit anal, especially about the house. They have a large number of inherited family heirlooms lying around the place, and the father is quite the ‘no nonsense’ father, if you know what I mean?
Anyway, this one night they go out for some posh-do dinner party and leave this girl to look after the kids. As I said, he’s pretty anal and doesn’t want her wandering around the house where she might damage some antiquated piece of armour or whatever, so he says she has to stay in this one reception room. It has a kitchen attached to it and has this huge screen TV, so it’s fully decked out to keep her entertained.
So they leave and, being a strict household, they soon obediently go to bed. She takes up residence in this specially designated room and starts watching TV, making herself a snack and what not. Before long she starts to feel uncomfortable. There, in the corner of the room, is this ugly, bulky clown statue. It looks like some grotesque antique piece from the 20’s or around that period and it’s all grimy, covered in what looks like oil.
She can’t help getting the feeling it’s watching her. It’s been said that we have this inbuilt ability to sense being watched, but it is not uncommon for it to play tricks on you. She tried to ignore it, but she can’t shake the sense that those eyes are burning into her. In the end she relents and takes her phone to the toilet in the hall outside. In her head she was telling herself that she’s insane, thinking the statue can hear her, what a ridiculous thought, but she leaves anyway.
‘Hey. It’s Sarah. Look, I’m really sorry to call you up like this but that clown statue you have in the reception room, it’s really making me uncomfortable. Would it be ok to move to another room or just stick a blanket over the thing of something?’
After a long pause he replies.
‘Okay Sarah, I need you to get the children from the room, get them into your car and take them to the nearest house. When you are there, call the police.’
I think it’s safe to say after hearing ‘call the police’ you aren’t about to ask questions. She grabbed the kids and ran.
It turns out the kids had complained of a clown had been watching them sleep in their room. The father put it down to silly stories and had basically disregarded what they had said until the babysitter had seen the thing too. Apparently a Psychiatric Unit had closed down recently in the area and not everyone had stable places to go. The story goes that the police seemed to try and hide their concern, though not very well after hearing the mention of a clown costume before heading over to the house. After a thorough search of the building, they failed to find the clown. It turns out that the patient had been treated for vivid and dangerous fantasies prior to release, but had not been able to complete his course before the closure of the unit.
They didn’t catch him.”