The Clown Statue

A girl in her teens, is babysitting for a family in Newport Beach, California.

The family is wealthy and has a very large house, with a ridiculous amount of rooms.
The parents are going out for a late dinner/movie.
The father tells the babysitter that once the children are in bed she should go into a specific room (he doesn't really want her wandering around the house) and watch TV there.

The parents take off and soon she gets the kids into bed and goes to the room to watch some TV.
She tries watching TV, but she is disturbed by a clown statue in the corner of the room.
She tries to ignore it for as long as possible, but it starts freaking her out so much that she can't handle it.

She resorts to calling the father and asks, "Hey, the kids are in bed, but is it okay if I switch rooms? This clown statue is really creeping me out."

The father says seriously, "Get the kids, go next door and call 911."

She asks, "What's going on?"

He responds, "Just go next door and once you call the police, call me back."

She gets the kids, goes next door, and calls the police.
When the police are on the way, she calls the father back and asks, "So, really, what's going on?"

He responds, "We don't HAVE a clown statue."
He then further explains that the children have been complaining about a clown watching them as they sleep. He and his wife had just blown it off, assuming that they were having nightmares.

The police arrive and apprehend the "clown," who turns out to be a midget.

He was some homeless person dressed as a clown, who somehow got into the house and had been living there for several weeks.
He would come into the kids' rooms at nights and watch them while they slept.
As the house was so large, he was able to avoid detection, surviving off their food, etc.

He had been in the TV room right before the babysitter right came in there.
When she entered he didn't have enough time to hide, so he just froze in place and pretended to be a statue.

What is the truth?

Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.
Who doesn`t fear clowns?
Clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them frightening and unknowable!

Though urban legends are sometimes inspired by real-life events, I've found no clear precedents for "The Clown Statue" in news reporting of the past 20 years, no stories in which a miscreant poses as a clown doll inside people's homes, at any rate.

In 1990, a West Palm Beach, Florida woman was shot and killed on her doorstep by a clown sporting a bright orange wig (a crime which remains unsolved, so far as I know).
Then there's John Wayne Gacy, of course, who, during the mid-1970s, murdered 33 young men and buried their bodies under his Chicago home.
The media christened him the "Killer Clown" because he was known for hosting neighborhood parties at which he dressed up as a clown.

For all the babysitters... beware... there are killer clowns on the loose!