Scary clowns are usually consigned to works of fiction — and the recent fad where people dress up as them to scare others.
But real ones DO exist, as the case of John Wayne Gacy shows.
Gacy was a serial killer and rapist, whose chilling story is told in The Real Killer Clown on REELZChannel.
The monster murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men after sexually assaulting and torturing them.
He got his nickname the Killer Clown before his sideline dressing as Pogo the Clown at kids’ parties, fundraisers and in parades.
He also previously worked as a KFC manager and as a mortuary attendant, where he used to sleep behind the embalming room.
He later revealed he once climbed into a coffin with a dead male teenager and embraced and caressed their body.
Gacy, who was married twice, carried out his killings over a six-year period from 1972 and 1978.
All the murders took place inside his ranch house in the township of Norwood Park in Cook County, Illinois.
He killed his first victim, 16-year-old Timothy McCoy, by stabbing them to death, but went on to establish a theme with the rest of his killings by taking their lives through strangulation or asphyxiation.
He buried 26 of his victims under the floorboards of his house, and three in other areas on his property, while the bodies of his remaining four known victims were dumped in the nearby Des Plaines River.
Gacy, a former Democratic Party candidate in his local area, was found guilty of the 33 murders in March 1980 and sentenced to death for 12 of them.
He was killed by lethal injection in May 1994 after 14 years on Death Row.
The Real Killer Clown airs tonight at 8/7c on REELZChannel.