Whatever happened to those creepy clown sightings from a few years back?

Viral marketing for It. Plus it was fun.

Wasn't that around Halloween?

There was a documentary about one of the instigators a couple years ago:

Marketing ploy by the producers of "IT' when it was released.

I was going to start a thread about the same subject, OP. The creepy clown thing was huge in 2016 at the time of the last presidential campaign. I thought it was based on the fears of our current Clown President winning the election.

I think you have to grow up with clowns as an ubiquitous staple of children's entertainment for the creepy clown meme to really work. Post Stephen King's "It" and the original "Poltergeist," people finally started to open up about how gross and scary clowns actually are to (at least some) children. Now you've got a younger generation who are used to thinking of clowns as monsters, and the fact is that clowns deliberately presented as monstrous aren't as scary as "normal" clowns you're forced to share space with at a party or carnival, that everybody but you thinks is funny and harmless. Jesus Christ. Tell me who's scarier, a Scandinavian actor dressed up in a Renaissance Pierrot costume in a horror movie, or THIS, a staple of children's TV when I was growing up.

I thought it had something to do with AHS Cult.

It was a hoax, OP. Yet another example of mass hysteria, like 'Satanic Panic.'

Just marketing.

We had a school near me go on lockdown because of a clown sighting that year. Good times.

^^ LMAO

The Administrative Circus Coven, headed by Orange It, can be found conducting Illicit gatherings at center-ring (f/k/a The Oval Office) during breaks from clown golf games; however, their Daddy Warlock(s) prefers to perform his special brand of sick chicanery on his clown phone throughout the duration of both occurrences.

Biden/Harris. 2020 - We Have Their Backd

One of my friends in London used to go out occasionally as a clown to freak people out during this time.