Wilmington police received a second-hand report Tuesday of someone allegedly spotting a clown in the woods off Greendale Drive.

WILMINGTON -- Jessica Collins said it was her younger sister who saw a clown a few nights ago running around by the woods across the parking lot from her Tidewater Townhomes apartment.

"I didn’t believe it, but she came in screaming. She saw it running in circles and it knelt down and tilted its head to the side and looked at her," Collins said Wednesday.

She said some older teenagers claimed in another instance that they saw a clown standing by the fire station on Princess Place Drive, and a couple of days ago another older teen saw a clown running into the woods and his dad went looking for it.

"And you know the shoes clowns wear?" Collins said, miming the large shoes with over-sized footpads clowns are famous for. "They seen its shoe print."

Police unable to locate clown

The Wilmington Police Department received a second-hand report Tuesday of someone allegedly spotting a clown in the woods off Greendale Drive, an official said Wednesday.

Sometime Tuesday at least two residents told management at Tidewater Townhomes, 355 Greendale Drive, that a clown was seen days earlier in the woods near the complex, WPD spokeswoman Linda Rawley said.

The management sent out a memo to residents and then called the Wilmington Police Department.

“We have been made aware that there have been sightings of persons dressed as a clown lurking in the woods on the property,” the memo from Tidewater Townhomes reads. “The Wilmington police have been notified of these sightings but we are asking for your help as well.”

A posting Tuesday on Facebook of the Tidewater memo was shared more than 730 times by Wednesday evening.

Rawley said officers were unable to locate anyone in the woods and were not able to make contact Tuesday or Wednesday with the people who reportedly saw the clown.

“We’ve been keeping an eye in the area. We have nothing more than just a possible sighting,” she said. “We would ask if people do see anything to call police.”

Creepy clowns in the news

It was near 10 a.m. on Tuesday when a man in Greensboro spied a clown. The clown wore typical big-tent get-up -- a wig of red curls, too-big shoes, blue pants and a shirt with yellow polka dots -- topped off with a scary mask, as the witness would describe to police. The regularly-dressed man, for his part, held a machete.

Knife in hand, he ran after the clown, Greensboro police said, causing the jester to flee into the woods. The witness called the police dispatcher, who told him to put down the blade.

"Officers searched the area," the Greensboro police said in a news release Tuesday afternoon, "but were unable to find anyone matching the description."

The incident seems to follow a script that has repeated itself several times over in the area since late August: Witnesses phone local police to report a menacing clown or clowns, but officers cannot verify the sightings. A few weeks before the Greensboro sighting, a family in Greenville, S.C., told authorities a clown tried to lure their children into the forest near their apartment, as The Washington Post reported. Another witness told police he had spotted a clown near the Dumpsters of the same complex.

Since the clown sightings began in late summer, there have been some half-dozen reports. Mashable recently mapped the alleged sightings along the South and North Carolina state line, forming a sort of harlequin triangle between Greenville to the south and Greensboro and Winston-Salem, N.C., to the northeast.

Perplexing existence

The lack of police confirmation has cast doubt on the existence of these clowns. And if they are real, the reason for their existence is just as perplexing. Some speculators have put forth that the clowns may be a viral campaign -- possibly for "31," a new horror movie directed by Rob Zombie featuring homicidal carnival workers.

(If so, it would not be the first time a wandering clown was revealed to be a promotional stunt. At the beginning of August a Green Bay actor copped to walking through the city dressed as a clown holding black balloons as part of an audition for a film. He did not get the part, according to the Associated Press.)

Greenville police announced Thursday that anyone dressed like a clown and terrorizing residents will face arrest. "It's illegal. It's dangerous. It's inappropriate, and it's creating community concern so it needs to stop," police chief Ken Miller said at a media conference, according to Greenville Online.

Theories in Wilmington

The clown sightings are the talk of the quiet complex off Princess Place Drive in Wilmington. Even those who didn't want to be identified had heard the hullabaloo. One theory is it's someone who has heard the social media buzz and decided to be a copycat.

Collins said the rumors are enough for her to keep a closer eye on her four children. Now, as soon as the dusk begins to set in, Collins calls her kids inside.

“I think it’s something to be worried about," she said. "I’m sure these kids aren’t making this stuff up."

This story contains information from The Washington Post.

Reporter F.T. Norton can be reached at 910-343-2070 or Fran.Norton@StarNewsOnline.com.