One of the scariest moments in my own movie-watching history was when Pennywise peeked through the sewer grate in Stephen King's It.

There's a reason why clowns are routinely used to scare adults -- they scared us when we were kids too. That's what a recent poll of children in London found when the University of Sheffield questioned kids age 4-16 in an effort to improve the look of area hospital children's wards. Every child polled -- 250 in all -- reported disliking clowns, and many (even the older children) reported being afraid of them.

I think it's safe to say that children's wards in London won't be seeing any large clown murals when the redecorating starts!