Late in October, the winds are howling as the sun disappears into the empty autumn sky, and we are confronted by masked children racing from door to door saying “trick or treat.” The creepy decorations emerge from neighbors houses. The crisp wind night blows the colorful leaves around, as children and parents rumble throughout the streets.

As some of you may know the new movie It has recently come out to theaters.  This movie is about a clown, and how frightening clowns can be to all ages. This new movie release may lead to kids choosing to dress up as clowns. This was a big occurrence around Halloween time last year, which caused a lot of controversy. Unknown clowns were hiding around and chasing cars and people. This Halloween may cause quite a scare to some.

Who is scared at Triton of these clowns? When Bella Kreticos was asked if she was scared of clowns she replied with “Yes,  very”. Kreticos believes this will be an issue this Halloween she said, “Yes, there will be many clowns. I predict that clowns will be chasing people and cars just like last year.” Others like Rachel Lees think that clowns belong in circuses and not in the streets chasing people. When asked  if she thinks this will be a problem on Halloween night she said, “Yes because people may play pranks and take this too far, but I’m not worried for myself.”

Wonder how the police feel about this issue? Well Officer John Lucey was interviewed for his opinion on this issue. Officer Lucey is not afraid of clowns, and when asked if he thinks this will be a problem on Halloween he said, “I think this is old news and will not recur this year.” I also asked him if he has ever gotten any calls about sightings of clowns. I was surprised to get a yes response. “Around sometime near Halloween we had gotten a phone call that a man dressed as a clown and tried to scare kids on a bus in Salisbury.” I had then asked what happened when he got to the scene and he said, “It was a misunderstanding. The man had tried to scare his own kid on the bus but ended up scaring all the kids, which didn’t end well and we had to get involved.”Asked if he ended up getting in trouble, he said, “No we just had to go see him and discuss what happened.”

A few weeks ago a man called police saying his girlfriend had texted him and said there was a someone dressed as a clown in front of her home, as stated in the Bridgewater police log. The man reported the incident Sunday around 6:30 p.m. in the area of Wall Street. The man said his girlfriend reported seeing a clown sitting in a car. Police arrived and found a clown mask hanging from a head rest on the front seat of the car. This may be the first reported creepy clown sighting in the surrounding area in a while, but a year ago there were numerous reports locally, and nationwide, of people dressed as clowns carrying weapons and threatening violence. In Brockton, last October, dozens of people took to Facebook and Twitter saying there was a man dressed as a clown chasing children.