SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
How A Real Killer Clown And An Urban Legend Shaped Our Nightmare Of Pennywise
A doctor emails before dawn with a story we can’t shake: a patient dies under a lawn tractor at a mental health facility, and multiple witnesses swear a man in a long coat and hat pushed the victim—but the camera shows no attacker. That chill opens a deeper dive into how fear travels from real life into the stories we tell, landing squarely on Stephen King’s It and the cultural machinery behind Pennywise.
We trace the clown’s staying power across the 1990 miniseries and the 2017–2019 films, then peel back the layers that make the character sting. The specter of John Wayne Gacy looms over the era, shaping public panic around clowns and child safety. We revisit the Stranger Danger wave, how media amplified rare horrors while most harm came from people children already knew, and why a painted smile became the perfect mask for distrust. From Ronald McDonald’s comforting look repurposed as a trap to the controversial question of whether Pennywise ever truly dies, the conversation stays grounded and unflinching.
The story darkens with the Adrian Mellon sequence in Chapter Two, inspired by the real 1984 murder of Charlie Howard in Maine. We talk about hate’s ordinary face, Derry’s supernatural rot as a metaphor for communal denial, and how fiction can force us to name what we’d rather ignore. Looking ahead, we unpack the expanding mythology in Welcome to Derry—deadlights, ancient origins, and a town shaped by a predator older than memory—while asking whether more backstory deepens terror or dulls it.
Threaded through it all is the “pusher” in the long coat, a figure witnesses chase while cameras come up empty. Maybe that’s why stories like It endure: they give shape to the things we sense but can’t pin down. Listen, then tell us your gray-area tale—the book scene that branded your memory or the unexplained moment you still can’t file away. If this conversation pulls you in, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with the friend who insists monsters only live on screen.
Everybody, it's Dr. G, Spirit Tales and Magic. We're going to start the episodes for a while with our shameless plug. If you go out to our website, that's spirittalesandmagic.com, all one word. You can click at the top of the website and go to the podcast, which is where you are now. So obviously you know how to get here. But on that website, you will also find some info about us. You can send us your story, which we very much encourage you to do, and we thank everybody who has. But you can also contact the showline and book us for an event, or at least check into it. I know sometimes we're all over the place with the podcast, and I'll say something like, Tomorrow we're going to cover this, but then something crazy will happen, or I'll get an email that I feel like I should answer. So today's podcast, I had intended on going on with our celebrity ghost stories. But I get two emails this morning at around 5:30. One from a listener in London. You said you were going to talk about Stephen King's movie It. Okay, Invisible. I like the way you did that. It's we're gonna do it today. So now the other email, uh I was torn whether I was even going to mention it or not. Well, it I want you to keep it in the back of your mind. I don't want you to think about it real hard though, because it will start out as an experiment and end up as an obsession. Um, and I don't want to do that to you. So good morning, Doc. I myself am a doctor of psychiatry. I am working in one of the few big mental institutions still in great shape and running today in the United States. I'm not gonna mention where, and I'm sure you can understand why. I wanted to tell you something that happened last night. Like any institution where you put a great deal of people, anytime you have a lot of personalities in a room, things can happen that people would deem crazy when you have a bunch of unstable folks in the room. You know how that is. You interned with your mother at trans-Allegheny for a short amount of time. I will say, yes, you're right. It was a very short amount of time, really wasn't short enough, but he goes on to say that a patient fell in front of a fairly large lawn-mowing tractor and was killed. Now this happened in the early part of the evening. A lot of folks were out on sort of a patio that we have where small groups of people at a time supervised can go out, get some fresh air. It was ruled as an accident, and it is a shame that someone lost their life. Having said that, the doctor in charge at the time must start an investigation, even if it's blatantly simple what happened. And you know, we have to follow the rules, everything has to be documented. So I started the investigation, and like you or Anne Tolliver, and I won't go into that story, I'm gonna wait till you do it. There's a young man here who is positively not crazy. He does not belong here. He was put here under what I'm gonna say is shady circumstances. So he comes up to me and he says, Are you going to interview the folks that were on the patio? I said, Yes, would you like to be the first, considering you were on the patio at the time? I won't go through everybody's interview. I know that you're if you're reading this at all, you're pressed for time. His interview and four consecutive interviews done at separate times with only one person other than myself in the room. Of course, there is a recorder, but you know about all that. There's a camera as well that looks out over the lawn. I reviewed it twice before I started any of the interviews or even started the paperwork. Didn't think much of it. It was pretty much case closed as far as I was concerned. After the interviews I watched it again, and here's why. The people on the patio claimed that a man in a long coat and a top hat or bowler hat pushed the patient in front of the rear deck of the tractor. The driver would have been past the point. There was no way he could have seen it. So that makes it go back and look at the video, and you see as if this woman is diving or being pushed. But there's nobody there. But then I see security and a couple other staffers running in the opposite direction of the disaster. So I catch up with them. What are you doing? Why were you running? We're chasing that patient in the in the in the long coat. You know where I'm going with this. There's no patient in a long coat. I've read a couple of your notes from a long time ago, Doc, on this guy. I listened to the episode where 15 people saw him in a business that you owned, including yourself. I can't seem to put it down. I'm researching this guy. And he's he's like your Mothman, you're right. Are you going to get deeply into this on the podcast, or should we just bury it here? P. Wish you never retired. Call me ow. I will call you Al, but call me Al is a reference to the Simon and Garfunkel song. That's a long story we won't go into. Yeah, we're gonna go into the sky a little bit deeper in the in the podcast. Um caution note, he does become an obsession. Let's get back to Stephen King, shall we? Stephen King's 1986 horror novel, uh, it has multiple vastly different adaptations of it. So while it continues to focus on the fear of its terrifying clown, and not everyone knows this, there was a real-life Pennywise who pretty much inspired this monster. Now, while the stories contain various themes of the paranormal, the supernatural, and even some science fiction, the real-life inspiration that influenced King's creation of Pennywise has remained what people consider the most horrific. The novel was initially adapted into a made-for-television miniseries, and I want to say that that was in nine or in uh 2017 and again in 2019. I believe it was Andy Muschetti who took the task of adapting the novel for a theatrical release. So both found success among Stephen King fans. They stayed true to the source material, both followed the quote Losers club as children and adults, and as they battled the evil clown known as Pennywise, who is murdering children in Dairy Maine. So while King was writing the novel, his influences for the surroundings and headlines plastered all over news stations impacted the creature. So he's supposed to be a shape-shifting clown from another dimension. That should be scary enough on its own. However, some say the real life influences that created him could be even more disturbing. And add an uncanny depth, if you will, to the familiar horror icon Pennywise. So we're going to talk for a minute about John Wayne Gacy. It's a serial killer. He murdered at least 33 young men and boys, and he himself claims to have murdered a lot more. Gacy was a notorious serial killer and a sex offender who often dressed as a clown. He regularly performed at children's hospitals in his clown attire under the name Pogo the Clown, or sometimes under the name of Patches the Clown. So I believe it was the 21st of December, I believe, 1978. Gacy got arrested and he was convicted of the 33 murders. So he's sentenced to death on March the 13th in 1980. And I believe he was executed by lethal injection. I want to say May 10 of 94. Now it's well speculated that the character Pennywise may have been based on this particular serial killer. Its preferred form, its meaning the creature, is that of Pennywise the dancing clown. But the true form of the shape-shifting entity could be much more complex than that. Now again, lots of debate on whether Gacy truly influenced the creation of Pennywise, but the two are very eerily similar. They both dress as clowns, they both target children. When Gacy was convicted of his murders in 1980, King must have begun writing it. Now, whether it was a conscious influence or not remains unknown. They say that real life horror often bleeds into fiction. And we're going to talk about that a little more later. I have a list of things. Undoubtedly, the Gacy murders caused an immense amount of fear in the hearts of Americans. And once Pennywise was introduced, that further perpetuated the necessity to fear people behind white paint and red smiles. And don't forget, in the 80s, we had the Stranger Danger panic. A new wave of public fear pretty much permeated society, was an epidemic of child murders and kidnapping. And it kind of rose beyond belief. And Stranger Danger was a panic that was formed. So much that President Ronald Reagan started the campaign for increased criminal penalties for anyone who attempted or did harmony children. During the Reagan years, family values and safety were at the epicenter of his political platform. With the threat of Gacy and other child murderers, Stranger Danger Panic grew. I had just begun then with a company called Safety Plan B. You'll hear that crop up every once in a while on the podcast. We did a lot of safety seminars all over. Stranger Danger. If you we're going to depart from just a second, the pen and teller had a series called Bullshit. One of those is on Stranger Danger. A huge number of children who are kidnapped or injured. Not all of them, but a very high percentage, and I don't have it in front of me. I don't want to misquote it. It's well into the 90s. It's a person they know. It is a family member or a person that they know. So back to Pennywise. One of the questions we get all the time is: did Pennywise actually die in chapter two? What's your opinion? Chapter 2 saw the losers defeating Pennywise, but did they really kill it? I think the answer is about as complex as the creature's origin. So when clowns don their face paint, your rainbow suits, your wigs, they're nearly unrecognizable. Because of that, all real clowns, if you're worried about that sort of thing, become strangers. With so many children's birthday parties featuring performances from these actors, the fear of a murderous stranger, such as John Wayne Gacy, was all too real to the threat of American society. Now I will interject something here. Been in the entertainment industry since I was eight. And I'm an old man now, so long time. I have worked with, I have booked, I have been in the audience of several clowns, balloon twisters, which usually dresses clowns. And I know a lot of those folks. Some of them are in some of the same magic clubs and organizations that I'm in. And they're great people. So not trying to give the great clowns of the world a bad rip. You've got the good ones, you've got the bad ones, you've got the crazy ones. So I've known a lot of clowns that when they're out of their makeup, they were very philanthropic and would give you their last sandwich. They were some good people. What other characters might have inspired Stephen King's Pennywise? And our lawyers are holding their breath. Ronald McDonald. While Gacy provided the foundation, if you will, for all of the horrors that Pennywise would cause. Ronald McDonald was the model for his appearance. It doesn't connect Ronald or McDonald's or any of those folks in any way to any real life crap that happened. But in various interviews, Stephen King has referred to Ronald McDonald as a trustworthy character that children know and love. Then he states, making him someone that they can trust. Therefore, by modeling an untrustworthy horror creature after a beloved child's icon, well, it created an unsettling divide of who or what can be a source of comfort or terror. Now this certainly does not mean that Ronald was the main source of inspiration for the novel, but his iconic look inspired Pennywise's appearance. And a real crime inspired a scene in chapter two. Three teens killed a gay man in 1984. So there was also a true crime inspiration for the movie It in Chapter 2. However, while the Pennywise inspirations came from Stephen King himself, the inspiration for the crime was something King knew about up close as it happened in Maine. There's a scene early in It Chapter 2 where a man named I believe I want to say Adrian Mellon. It's been a long time since I watched that movie. He's in the corner of Wandary and a group of bigoted teens surrounding the attacking. He didn't do anything to him. They still felt the need to attempt to murder him for no other reason than his sexuality. Put those scenes in the movies to make you feel uneasy. The entire moment was based on a real life event where three local main teens murdered a man. I believe it was Charlie Howard. The teens were responsible for his death in the movie, but they didn't kill him. The man washed up after they threw him over a bridge, and Pennywise was waiting there to finish him off. They say it's a very terrifying moment, senseless brutality and violence on the half of the bigoted teens, and the act of Pennywise killing the man after that. But like we said, the entire moment, it's based on a real-life event, where three local main teens murdered a man named Charlie Howard. They threw him over a bridge and he drowned. Obviously, there was no Pennywise waiting for him. The three teams said they attacked him because they wanted to hurt a gay man. Daniel Ness, 17. Sean L, I believe it was Maybury, 16. And James Francis Baines, I think he was 15. And I can say that because it's a matter of public record. It's been the newspapers. So don't even get on me about it. They pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and I believe that was in October of 1984. They ended up in a juvenile prison for four years. While writing the book, King said that the murder had just happened. It was fresh in my mind. And it fitted my idea of Derry as a place where terrible things happened. And maybe, needless to say, I was outraged. It was a hate crime. The screenwriter for It Chapter 2 said the moment was important for the movie as it showed how dark and evil Derry had become under the influence of Pennywise, even while he is hibernating. King, when interviewed, said it's important to put this out here. In his it book, although he stated, It's our town. We live here. Which means we have to live with Charlie and continue trying to make this right. So where will Pennywise appear next? Welcome to Derry. We'll bring a Pennywise prequel to the series. That's going to be on Showtime Max. TV show opened with. Pennywise has been a central figure in Derry's history in a small main town. He's evil incarnate, arriving on Earth sometime after the dinosaurs died out, but before the ice age, terrorizing the area ever since. The mythology of it explained origin and deadlights and eater of words. dives way deeper into the orange origin of Pennywise and the mythology of the Stephen King universe. Pennywise gets blamed for everything that's horrific that ever happened in Derry's history. Such as the 1906 Ironworks explosion, which I believe killed 108 people, the murder of the Bradley gang. That incident was in 1904, in which lumberjacks slaughtered a number of men at a bar. Welcome to Dairy will further explore the evil clown's influence on the town. And people get to see Pennywise doing what he does best. That could be an older article. I don't follow Pennywise much. Um but I will say I've seen Pennywise in a lot of commercials. And if you watch much TV, which we don't watch a lot of TV, but it seems like when we do watch it, he's hanging out in some of the commercials. And he's how do I want to say this? More of comic relief than he is the killer clown from outer space. So maybe they're trying to make him a little less horrifying. Or maybe it's the shock value of seeing him in the sewer waving his little paw. Movies and books and real life quite often blurring the lines between fiction, reality, what's true and what's not. So we would ask you, what's your story that borders that gray area? Do you have one? Is there a book or a movie that gets in your head and it's hard for you to get out? We'd love to hear it. I'll tell you one of mine. It's the pusher. It's the guy in the long coat and the top hat or bowler hat. He's been described both ways. The further down that rabbit hole you go, the more stuff you find out. And I will say this sometimes when we research a story. If you go back in time on the podcast, you'll see one about the sons of Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth and incidents that happened in a in a train station in New York City. Now, when I originally did that, sometimes when I do a story, I'll leave something out because I just don't think it's pertinent. And when we started doing the podcast, we were restricted on time. We aren't anymore. I can talk for three hours if I want to. And when that time came, until you re-upped, you be right in the middle of a sentence and snap, you're done. Now that's not on this podcast platform, it was on a different one. So, like I said, now it doesn't matter. But as I go back through some of the notes, I don't print the transcripts for the episodes. I do have the capability to do that. But if you would see my office, it already looks like a bomb went off in a library that was half magic shop. So I don't need any more paper in here. Plus, I still have, I don't know, too many pounds of paper with NBAs that need to be shredded. So going back in that episode, witnesses chased a man in a long coat and a bowler hat. And we'll talk later about the places he appears. You're going to hear about him in another episode, fast forward to a few weeks back, in the subways of New York. Cassandra and I may or may not have been involved in an incident in the subways, which you may hear about, which involved something called your ghost story bus and allegedly a bus that was named Blood Money. But at that time, that whatever he is was also seen. Now we have a doctor in a currently operating institution who has witnesses that have seen him. And we're gonna let that die off right there for now. But we would love to hear your stories. Or do you have one that is a movie or is a book that reminds you of a real life incident? Keep in mind there is indeed a world I'm seeing. It's a world that exists all around us all the time, and every now and again, for whatever reason, we get. A glimpse of it and the debt get in. We always say that in hey, tell a paranormal story. Even if it's a line from your favorite Stephen King book. Talk tomorrow, my friends. Good day.
