People dressing up as clowns and causing unrest has become a national epidemic over the course of the past few months.

Clown sightings were first reported in South Carolina in early Sept., and since then have spread across the United States according to The Guardian.

The outbreaks are an event of mass hysteria being caused by people thinking irrationally due to high-stress situations, including the 2016 presidential election, according to Pace neurology professor Terence Hines.

“These types of mass hysteria break out from time to time, often during times of stress, and this is a time in this country of stress, because of the asshole Donald Trump,” Terence said. “Who knows why they get started, some random thing happens and they get started.”

Terence said the clowns do not pose a threat, and compared the situation to other cases of mass hysteria, like people in 1947 thinking that pits in their car windshield were caused by radiation –that were actually caused by pebbles-, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon in 1930 where people in Mattoon, Illinois, thought a phantom broke into their houses and gassed them unconscious during the night.

“I’m sure that a lot of people are pranking, and I’m sure a lot of the reports are completely bogus [with kids thinking that they see a clown when it’s actually not one], and they get freaked out. I think there is currently nothing to worry about,” Terence said.

Pace sophomore Jeremy Langdale feels as though the activity is just a trend that will stop within the next month.

“Whoever started this had a very sick sense of humor, which I can appreciate, and then everyone else was like, ‘This guy is doing it, we should do the same,’” Langdale said.

While Langdale has yet to encounter a clown he says that he might be shocked if he saw one.

“On first instinct, I might be like, ‘What the [explicit] is this.’ It is just something you would never expect to see in your daily life, you’re walking or driving home and all of a sudden, there is a clown holding a machete in the middle of the road,” Langdale said.

Since dressing up as a clown is not illegal, Terence says the only way for the activity to be stopped is for people to come to their senses and stop dressing up.

“[Banning clown costumes] is just bullshit, it’s also almost certainly unconstitutional,” Terence said. “People have to come down to earth and go, ‘There is nothing here, nothing to be worried about, move on with your life’.”

The outbreak has caused concern in some school districts. Locally, the Mt. Pleasant Police department investigated a threat made on Instagram by “Jackson The Clown” to Valhalla. The threat was found to not be credible, however the police are still taking it seriously, and The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office said the suspect will be prosecuted if a case can be made against them, according to Daily Voice.

“Jackson the clown…coming for you Valhalla be ready,” the Instagram post read.

As of now, there are no reports of the clowns causing physical harm to anyone, however there have been incidents of clowns getting assaulted by the people they were attempting to scare as reported by the Daily Mail.

“I would love to say that [I would fight a clown] right here and right now, but it’s all about instinct at the time. If a clown came at me with a machete, as if it was ready to [explicit] strike I would probably [run], unless I had a weapon of equal caliber,” Langdale said.