World's Largest Jack-in-the-Box?

Those of you with coulrophobia should jump to the next blog entry now.

A couple of weeks ago, artists Chris Hausbeck and Dawn Exton officially revealed Keeshan Delight Number 9, a giant, bobbing clown head that continuously "springs" from the top of a 40-foot grain silo at Wild Bill's Nostalgia Center in Middletown, Connecticut.

The enormous fiberglass head that was used in the project was discovered wasting away at an antique shop. It was reportedly modeled after Howdy Doody's sidekick Clarabell the Clown, originally played by Bob Keeshan, who later went on to play Captain Kangaroo.

The head was restored, a support structure was built inside the silo and the whole thing was rigged together with a mechanism that lifts the giant, grinning noodle to the top of a pole every 60 seconds. The head is counterbalanced with a 600-pound ball of antlers, whale vertebrae, mortar shells and random bits of rusted metal, which just add to the piece's overall creepiness.

See more imagery, including video of the contraption in action, at the links below.

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