{"id":453,"date":"2013-06-28T21:20:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T21:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=453"},"modified":"2013-06-28T22:28:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T22:28:22","slug":"dark-carnival-ghost-clown-shot-in-dunk-tank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=453","title":{"rendered":"Dark Carnival: Ghost Clown Shot in Dunk Tank"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_5312\"<\/a>
\nThe Fire Ball swings back and forth at my Chicago carnival, as the glassy-eyed Flying Dumbo turns in twisted circles.<\/p>\n

“The way I see the Dark Carnival is it’s a place where you have all the evil souls that are going to be going to hell. Some of them might ride the ‘Murder-go-round,'” <\/strong>
\nJoseph Bruce, co-founder Insane Clown Posse<\/em><\/p>\n

The carnies were fixing the Ferris Wheel and passing the time talking about bar fights when one started talking about \u201cGhost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGhost got his money, he started flashing it around at the bar saying look what I got,\u201d the carny said. \u201cSomebody shot him in the shoulder. F’in’ Bastard. M’ F’er. Nobody’s seen him since. Now he’s a real Ghost. Ha, ha, ha.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don’t know why I even remember the off-hand conversation on set-up that Sunday in Marlboro, New Jersey but it struck me that the grease covered storyteller had no sympathy for Ghost, as if Ghost deserved to be shot.<\/p>\n

As if the lesson is, \u201cIf you have money, of course, people are going to want to take it from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which also seemed like a lesson of carnivals in general.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, I hitchhiked from New York\/New Jersey to Chicago and was working a carnival in Gage Park, next to Humboldt Park, the most violent neighborhood in Chicago.<\/p>\n

We were at the Chicago season opener for this carnival at 55th and Western, a longtime dividing line between the Latino gangs and the Black gangs.<\/p>\n

There’s enough tension at this jump that at least one of the security guards carried two holstered guns on his hips and another pistol hidden on his person.<\/p>\n

This is from the archives of DNAinfo.com<\/p>\n

CHICAGO \u2014 Two people were killed and nine others were wounded in shootings over about nine hours Wednesday evening.
\nA 15-year-old boy was standing with another teen in the Gage Park neighborhood when he was gunned down Wednesday, police said.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the midst of this season of murders, along a gang fault line, I focused on running the Dumbos. Dumbo the Flying Elephant is a ride with a two-seater car attached by arms to a center, where another Dumbo is perched high on a spinning pole. In the Disney cartoon, Dumbo’s big ears are his wings. The ride is supposed to rise up and give kids the feeling they are flying on Dumbo’s back. <\/p>\n

It’s a common and popular ride, made by one of the biggest manufacturers of carnival rides in the world – Zamperla Amusements, Vicenza, Italy.<\/p>\n

Still, parents like to comment on Dumbo’s glassy eyes and half-witted smile, which makes Dumbo look very, very high. Or as they say on the midway, Dumbo looks like he’s flying twisted.<\/p>\n

One night I heard someone call out to a Ghost and I wondered if I had found him.<\/p>\n

Bo Bo The Clown, \u201che all kinds of laughs\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before the evening lines started to form that night, I waved over Marine Eric as he walked by the Dumbos to the donikers (carnival lingo for port-a-potties). I asked him if the carny running the balloon game was really named Ghost.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, that’s really Bo Bo The Clown,\u201d said Marine Eric, a tall, big, black man in his 30s and a veteran of the Marines and carnivals. \u201cHe’s the funniest guy here. Anything he say make you laugh. He walk by you and say something – you laugh! He all kinds of laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghost, he said, was once known as Bo Bo The Clown when he worked the dunk tank. <\/p>\n

I later heard several carnies talk excitedly about Bo Bo The Clown, as if he was an artist of the insult.<\/p>\n

Bo Bo knew just the right dig, or jab, or verbal slap to get people to step up to the line and throw a ball at the target to sink the hated clown.<\/p>\n

\u201cBo Bo was the greatest ever, no, maybe Ghost is better,\u201d one carny said, who I think felt sorry that Ghost had to change his identity.<\/p>\n

Nicknames in traveling carnivals stick like someone’s identity. It says something about the person, just like the job they do defines them.<\/p>\n

That’s why a carny feels proud if he\/she is working the Giant Wheel vs. working the Nemos in kiddy land.<\/p>\n

Still, carny names can mock. A carny in Chicago got the nickname Sugar Lips. One in New Jersey was Dummy.<\/p>\n

Bo Bo The Clown was unmistakably a show name, a persona he put on when he worked. But carnies work seven days a week during the season.<\/p>\n

Ghost is different. He doesn’t play the tank. Something happened, he isn’t that guy anymore. <\/p>\n

Belief in the Dark Carnival <\/strong><\/p>\n

With a supernatural name like Ghost, his girlfriend could only be named Angel.<\/p>\n

Angel rolled a souvenir cart around the Gage Park carnival, selling cheap, loud items including the multi-colored flashing dolphin necklace I bought for my daughter. Angel is pretty, blonde and in her twenties.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to be a veterinarian, now look at me, right?\u201d she said to me. \u201cI’m going back and get my GED and I’m going to college \u2026 Majoring in business \u2026 So I can open my own shop. I’ll put in all my own stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n

When talking to her, it occurred to me, that many traveling carnival workers have a similar dream: hitting it big – coming back to the carnival to own rides or shops – acting the big shot.<\/p>\n

Ghost is tallish, thin, with black curly hair that comes out the back of his low-on-his brow cap. He looks like a young version of playwright\/actor Sam Shepard.<\/p>\n

Both Ghost and Angel wear shirts with the Hatchet Man, the logo of the band Insane Clown Posse. The Hatchet Man is an outline of a wild-haired man running with a cleaver, ready to strike something or someone.<\/p>\n

I didn’t ask them, but, often people wearing those shirts are fans of ICP and believe in the Dark Carnival. After all, band co-founder Joseph Bruce said traveling carnival workers visited him in a dream and showed him the Dark Carnival. <\/p>\n

In the Dark Carnival, all the dark rides and dark amusements send damned souls to hell.<\/p>\n

Bullets make the ghost<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ghost and Angel were talking when I went up to them during a short break. <\/p>\n

\u201cI heard about a Ghost on the East Coast, would that have been you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He shook his head, as in \u201cI don’t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard there’s another Ghost on the East Coast,\u201d Angel said.<\/p>\n

Then Ghost, lifted his low-brimmed hat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait a minute. What did you hear about this Ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard he was shot in the shoulder,\u201d and I pointed to my left shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I wasn’t shot in the shoulder,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I was shot in the chest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bo Bo The Clown, in full clown regalia, was taunting people from the dunk tank at a carnival in Tennessee when a young man took offense. He drew out a .22 caliber gun and began firing, hitting Bo Bo in the chest.<\/p>\n

It is so wrong, but I had a comical vision of a dunk tank clown squealing for mercy and splashing around as a hillbilly with hurt feelings hurls loud insults and blasts away.<\/p>\n

Mel Brooks once said, \u201cComedy is when I stub my toe. Tragedy is when you fall down a manhole cover and die.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted to ask both Ghost and Angel more about this violent, cathartic upheaval in their carnival lives but they got paid that Friday and disappeared in the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people quit carnivals, they don’t say where they’re going,\u201d Marine Eric said. \u201cThey just not there the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened to Bo Bo wasn’t funny and those bullets literally made Bo Bo a Ghost.<\/p>\n

His vanishing act added to his lore around traveling carnivals. Someday, another carny will hear about him like I heard about the East Coast Ghost. <\/p>\n

Maybe he and Angel did get off the circuit. Maybe they caught a bus to another traveling carnival. Maybe they’ll both change forms again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fire Ball swings back and forth at my Chicago carnival, as the glassy-eyed Flying Dumbo turns in twisted circles. “The way I see the Dark Carnival is it’s a place where you have all the evil souls that are going to be going to hell. Some of them might ride the ‘Murder-go-round,’” Joseph Bruce, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qqmC-7j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}