197. Terrifying True Urban Legends: The Clown Panic of 2016 and Poison Candy

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In the summer of 2016, children at a South Carolina apartment complex ran out of the woods screaming. They said there were clowns in the trees. No one believed them. Within weeks, the sightings had spread across the country, school lockdowns, armed mobs, arrests, and a panic so intense that McDonald’s benched Ronald McDonald. But where did it actually start? The answer is stranger than the legend. Then: Halloween night, 1974. An eight-year-old boy in Pasadena, Texas eats a piece of candy from…