As anticipation for this weekend’s nationwide opening of Stephen King’s creepy clown film It builds, someone tied a bunch of red balloons—the calling card of a sewer-dwelling, child-eating clown named Pennywise—to sewer grates in Lititz, Pennsylvania, earlier this week, setting off a wave of viral hysteria.
Well, it turns out the culprits were a group of teenage girls who just wanted to prank their friends.
“It was like our big summer blowout,” 17-year-old Peyton Reiff tells PennLive. “We just expected it to be a small little thing.”
Thankfully, local police are showing a sense of humor about it, as the girls won’t face any charges for their frightening stunt.