They’ve been spotted, and it’s been printed…the attack of the clowns. In multiple cities across North Carolina, there have been numerous sightings of Stephen King’s ‘It’ look-a-likes trampling through the forests and stealing children from their homes (enticing them with cash prizes). Dads have taken to the streets, police have taken action, machetes are in play. The streets aren’t safe anymore! Or at least that’s what the hooligans responsible are making us think.

Although it isn’t illegal to dress up as clowns in places like Greensboro, North Carolina, where many of the sightings have occurred, it is illegal to wear masks. The incidents, although funny and entertaining to some, are much more terrifying for others. Since the threat is not as immediate, the incidents are only wasting police resources.

In a time when society is constantly threatened by guns and drugs, police resources are required much more urgently elsewhere. The clowns have people on edge across the region, making it difficult for families to be okay with their children playing outside.

The fear causes irrational behavior, as shown when a father utilized his machete to scare one clown away. Not only are the people afraid, but the clowns are also in danger. When people get scared, reflexes come out, and these clowns could end up seriously injured by people who only mean well.

While no clown impersonators have been arrested yet, according to CBS news, a few have been arrested in places like Winston-Salem for actually fabricating certain sightings. So now, on top of the paranoia and wasted resources, people are actually getting in trouble for stuff that the clowns are doing.

The whole thing makes me wonder what people would do in actual crisis situations, or in situations where the clowns were actually hurting people. What are America’s priorities? Why am I writing an article about clowns when I could be writing an article about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, or the crisis in Syria? It’s what people want to read and hear about.

It must remind people of Stephen King’s ‘It.’ Pennywise the clown terrorized children throughout a small town in the novel written to scare. Although King saw clowns as fearful even before he wrote the novel, many associate the fear with Pennywise in particular.

“I suspect it’s a kind of low-level hysteria, like Slender Man, or the so-called Bunny Man, who purportedly lurked in Fairfax County, Virginia, wearing a white hood with long ears and attacking people with a hatchet or an axe. The clown furor will pass, as these things do, but it will come back, because under the right circumstances, clowns really can be terrifying,” King said of the clown scare in an interview with Bangor Daily News in Maine.

We aren’t living in a horror film, people. The clowning needs to stop, at least until Oct. 31, Halloween, where it is actually welcome. Luring children has never been okay, what makes it okay now? Unless you are Jason, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface or Michael Meyers please stay off the streets and away from our children.