Police officers joked they were left "completely terrified" as red balloons were tied to drains in a reference to Stephen King's horror novel 'It'.
The red balloon is used by Pennywise, the child-eating clown in the novel, to lure children down into the sewers. The movie version comes to cinemas tomorrow.
The Lititz Borough police department in Pennsylvania posted photos of the red balloons a on Facebook on Tuesday, speculating that a prankster had been tying them to the sewer gates.
The playful message requested “respectfully” that they don’t do it again.
More than 16,000 people shared the post, which concluded with the words “You’ll float too”, the evil clown’s ominous catchphrase which is never fully explained…
"Lititz is now officially the creepiest little town in America," one person commented.
"I don't think we have an accurate balloon count, but it's definitely above 20," Sergeant Stephen Detz with the Lititz Borough Police Department told CBS News. "They pretty much hit the entire town and the area around the town."
Sergeant Detz said there are some "It" fans within the department, so when officers saw the balloons they immediately caught the reference.
In another Facebook post later that day, the police department joked that they had “turned the investigation over to our Criminal Investigations Division.”
