Down With The Clown

The Main Street Morgue doesn't open until 7:30 p.m., but hundreds of Juggalos are already in line. Though the temperature has dipped into the frigid zone, the clown-faced kids are content to wrestle, flirt and smoke, occasionally pausing to chant "ICP!" "ICP!"

Stuck on a light pole near the front entrance of the haunted house, a hand-painted sign reads "Parental Advisory: Wicked Shit." A handful of cops and firefighters keep the peace with a bemused presence. The line grows longer, and passers-by stare and honk their horns to the delight of the Juggalos, who jeer and make comically horrific faces in reply. From a nearby parking lot, someone launches a 2-liter bottle of Faygo -- a sticky, bargain-brand soda. To the delight of all, it explodes on the pavement. A woman flashes her breasts.

There's plenty of clown love in Kansas City tonight.

"The Main Street Morgue is one of the not-so-great haunted houses. It's more B-style," says Jeff Shehan, a 22-year-old customer-service rep from Prairie Village. Tonight, however, he expects the place to get lots of traffic. "You won't be able to tell the people who work [here] from the people that are coming."

With their geometric hairdos, evil-clown face paint and polychromatic clothing, the Juggalos look like the Morgue's chain-rattling ghouls-for-hire. One employee, who resembles a reject from a Star Wars casting call, works the crowd, pumping up his audience with midway-barker antics and in-your-face screams. The Juggalos holler right back, exploding into cheers after he deftly latches on to the back of a moving car that drags him halfway down Main Street on his hindquarters.

"There's a whole fuckin' bunch of crazy people goin' through that haunted house," says Patrick Stasi, who's decked out in forbidding face paint and a Psychopathic hockey jersey. "We're gonna tear that shit up. I mean, we're not gonna tear it up, but we are gonna have a blast. We're gonna go in there and have some fun and hope everything goes all right. 'Cause when you get a lot of Juggalos together in one place, people start to freak out. Cops, fire marshals, all that shit."

Stasi, Shehan and the other Juggalos roar as an ornately painted cargo van rolls up to the Morgue's front doorway. A burly crew hops out and begins making preparations. The clock creeps closer to show time. Anticipation is high. Insane Clown Posse (ICP) is nearly in the house.

ICP is a Detroit-based rap-metal duo whose self-owned record label, Psychopathic, hosts a number of like-minded artists. With faces painted like satanic jesters, pyrotechnic stage shows and gruesome lyrics, Psychopathic's electroshock aura resembles that of a dozen similarly theatrical acts, including Slipknot and Rob Zombie. But ICP and its affiliates (including Twiztid, Blaze Ya Dead Homie and Psychopathic all-stars Dark Lotus) take the gimmick several steps further, preaching a full-blown mythology.

Legend has it that late one evening, ICP -- originally a workaday gangsta rap unit named Inner City Posse -- was visited by the six spirits of the "Dark Carnival," each of whom instructed the band to deliver a message to the world. The six messages were to take the form of ICP records, called Joker's Cards. Those who paid attention would be rewarded; those who didn't faced punishment. Upon death, Juggalos and nonlisteners get a visit by the Dark Carnival spirits, who test them on their knowledge of the Joker's Cards. A person's score determines whether he'll spend eternity basking in Shangri-la or basting in hell. So Inner City Posse became Insane Clown Posse and added costumes, makeup and enough onstage props to stock a Broadway production of Cats. The band issued its first few Joker's Cards independently to little fanfare, but when the sixth is released on November 5, it's sure to sell briskly. After all, legend also says that cataclysmic world events will occur once the sixth Joker's Card has been delivered.

"If you believe in anything enough, then it has some form of truth to it, for you personally," Shehan says, adjusting a silver neck charm that's been shaped into Psychopathic's hatchet-man logo. "I can't say for sure that there are six faces that I'll see when I die, but I definitely think there's something to it. There's something there."

Shehan isn't the only believer here tonight. The Psychopathic family claims to have a fanbase of more than a million diehards -- Juggalos.

Psychopathic's visit to Kansas City -- a promotional tour for ICP's forthcoming Joker's Card -- included an afternoon pop-in at the KC Comicon, a comic-book convention at the KCI Expo Center.Juggalos have now descended on the Morgue, lured by the chance to meet ICP's founding members, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, who are working inside the haunted house for one night only. It's an opportunity not to be missed.

"This is a big clown town, definitely," Shehan says. "If there's a signing or whatnot, so many people will show up. You wouldn't expect it, but if I go to the mall or something, I usually see at least one or two people that are Juggalos. Just by what they wear or how they handle themselves, you can tell -- the chains, the clothes, the hats."