My then-new girlfriend and I were doing a languid week-long road trip when we stopped for a sundowner walk through a legendary forest with giant trees, Knysna Forest on the southern coast of Africa. We had been walking for an hour without seeing anyone else. She said it would have been a creepy experience for her to have done the forest walk alone.

She then added what creeps her out the most are clowns, that she was mortally afraid of them. Within half a minute my GF blurted a panicked “Justin”, anxiously grabbed my arm and froze. From the distant right, we noticed a family of clowns (mommy clown, daddy clown with his giant shoes, and two tweenie clowns) walking one behind the other diagonally towards us. They crossed our path silently walking in single file about 5 metres ahead of us in the dusky light while my GF was paralysed with panic. They kept walking in silence until they disappeared.

We never saw anyone else other than those clowns on that forest walk. WTF!