Man, the late 2010s has got to be tough If you’re a professional clown. Once upon a time, the clown symbolized something pure and wholesome and childlike. For Baby Boomers, clowns like Bozo and Emmett Kelly and even Ronald McDonald were what people thought of when they thought of clowns, or even just neighborhood clowns for children’s birthday parties. Nothing symbolized pure Americana like a clown. But times have certainly changed.

Thanks to movies like Poltergeist and Stephen King’s It, subsequent generations have become terrified of clowns, and the media presence of characters like the Joker, or even worse, real life serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, have cemented the clown figure into something terrifying. The fact that last year there was a nation wide “creepy clown epidemic” kind of says it all. For most of us, clowns are pretty damn scary. Which is why clowns have become the #1 horror “monster” make up of the modern age.

Thanks to the folks over at The Laughing Squid, we’ve learned of a YouTube tutorial that allows you to create your very own terrifying clown make-up, which crosses a clown with a scarecrow. This makeup is legit terrifying, so don’t wander around town or any local parks looking like this, or you’re going to start the whole creepy clown panic all over again. This tutorial comes from  Ellimacs SFX, who also have a creepy tutorial on how to easily make your very own custom set of fitted monster teeth to go with the make-up. You can check out the video down below:

Has this already inspired your Halloween costume this year? Let us know down below in the comments.

Image: Warner Brothers / Ellimax FX

Here’s even more inspiration.

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