Wrinkles the Clown

Born: Unknown

Wrinkles the Clown is a character created by an unidentified performance artist living in Naples, Florida, United States, as part of an elaborate art project. Wrinkles is a curmudgeonly homeless man who dresses as a clown and hires himself out to parents to scare kids for "a few hundred dollars," offering to come to their homes and frighten misbehaving children. The character first appeared in a video uploaded to YouTube in 2015, depicting him emerging from beneath a young girl's bed in the middle of the night. Subsequently, the character appeared in several more videos, either frightening children at their homes or engaging in disturbing behavior such as waving to motorists from a darkened roadside. Concurrently, stickers bearing the clown's face and a telephone number began appearing around Florida and quickly went viral. For years, Wrinkles' identity, motives, and the veracity of his videos were the subject of speculation. On October 4, 2019, a documentary, Wrinkles the Clown, was released, which revealed the performance art nature of the character while leaving his creator's identity anonymous.