Recently, there has been national coverage of people reporting sightings of scary clowns in the South.

Investigation into those reports has found that a number of them are hoaxes, while some are real.

Either way, the reports have some people in South Mississippi on edge.

Clowns originated out of comedic act, either from those performing in a circus, or more distantly, from fools in Greek and Roman plays. So, historically they are supposed to be a form of comedic relief.

But apparently that all changed when Steven King released his book, and later a movie, entitled “It.”

I’ve met several people that relate their current fear of clowns to watching the movie or reading the book.

Aspects of life that scare one person may not be scary to others.

Take spiders for instance. Many people are deathly scared of spiders. I’ve had friends remark that I need to remove the spiders from around my house.

But I find spiders to be useful creatures, when they don’t build their webs in trafficked areas around the home.

Admittedly, no one wants to walk into a spider web.

However, allowing spiders to build webs around the house cuts down on the number of mosquitos and other insects.

So, back to clowns. I don’t find them scary, and I’ve watched “It.”

Pennywise is a pretty intimidating character, but he’s not real.

No more real than any other character in a horror movie.

I can see why spiders would be scary; some are poisonous and deadly to humans.

The same goes for snakes.

To me, the factual accounts of people donning clown costumes and scaring people is just that, a reason for someone to scare another for entertainment.

If people weren’t scared of clowns, these people would dress up as something else.