The Eight Most Terrifying Forms of IT

The creature known as IT has many abilities, such as superhuman strength, speed, teleportation, possession, and even deciding who can and cannot see it. All of these abilities help IT accomplish three main goals: hunt, eat, hibernate. IT fights to survive. While the creature’s origins aren’t entirely clear, one thing is certain: IT likes nothing better than the taste of fear in a child. And since most children are afraid of clowns, the creature most commonly takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

One of Pennywise‘s primary methods of instilling fear in the children that he hunts is his ability to shapeshift. There are so many to choose, but these are just eight of IT’s most terrifying forms.

(If you’re looking to learn more about the evolution of this iconic horror story, check out our podcast on Stephen King’s IT Then & Now from Let Your Geek Sideshow.)

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Evil Georgie

Seven year old Georgie Denbrough is the first to go when the creature reawakens after hibernation. His small paper boat floats down the stream, straight to IT hiding in a sewer in the guise of a mischievous clown. And once he rips off Georgie’s little arm, he devours the rest of him too. And how could he forget the face of such a delicious meal?

A year later, when Bill went looking for revenge, he found Pennywise the Dancing Clown and was confronted with a form of Georgie’s rotting corpse. There’s nothing quite as haunting as seeing your little brother decayed and damaged.

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The Leper

When IT meets the hypochondriac Eddie Kasprak, the creature takes the form of a diseased, decaying, and rotted leper. In this form, even a single touch is enough to kill, and we can see how IT kills multiple plants just by touching them.

But IT likes to build suspense, and makes sure that his food has as much fear in it as possible. So even though he is standing right in front of Eddie, handing him a pill, he waits for that delicious fear to kick in before giving chase.

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Headless Boy

Ben Hanscom was reading in the library, learning about the mysterious and elusive history of his the strange town of Old Derry. As he flipped through the pages of these history books, he learned about the Kitchener Ironworks explosion, where a massive amount a children died in an Easter Egg hunt due to an explosion.

In the historic photographs, he sees the head of a child resting in a tree and as if on cue, the charred body of a headless child walks slowly down the stairs. Nothing can get in your head like IT.

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Mrs. Kersh

When the Losers Club reunites in the second movie to defeat the great beast known only as IT, Beverly Marsh returns to the childhood home she once lived in many years ago. It’s there that Beverly meets the charming and kind Mrs. Kersh.

It’s rather hot in her house, and there are too many bugs for Beverly’s comfort, but what really catches her eye is a photo on the wall of Mrs. Kersh’s father… a circus performer named Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Beverly’s worst fears came to life when it was revealed that Mrs. Kersh was in fact Pennywise in disguise, attacking her in the form of a grotesque hag.

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A Mummy

In the first ‘final’ standoff between the Losers Club and Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the kids were slowly but surely defeating him, becoming numb to the fear he once instilled. In one terrifying twist, Pennywise turns his head around, and extends bandages from his face, becoming a mummy.

IT wraps its bandages around Ben’s face, pulling him closer to IT’s snapping jaws in one last attempt to scare the children and claim them as its victims. Form and function go hand in hand with this terrifying creature.

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The Spider

While no one knows for sure, it’s theorized that the truest form of IT while it lives on Earth is a large arachnid with spider or crablike legs. The creature ensnares its victims in its claws.

It’s fitting that the creature is a spider, because like a spider, Pennywise likes to toy with its food and wraps it in an environment of its very worst fear. In IT: Chapter 2 (2019), the Losers encounter a hybridized version of Pennywise the clown with massive spider legs and pincers.

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Pennywise the Dancing Clown

Pennywise the Dancing Clown is the most common form of IT that appears to both the child and adult Losers alike. Oddly enough, clowns are supposed to be child-friendly but are some of the most feared figures- perfect for Pennywise to entice and terrify his victims.

IT knows exactly what children fear, and so it makes sense that his favorite form is the ever-smiling clown. And yet, Pennywise is the form that lulls Georgie, and numerous other child victims, into a false sense of security. The creature knows of the danger of duality, bringing kids closer with the promise of balloons and friendship just before eating them with rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth.

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The Deadlights

While humans simply cannot perceive the true form of the impossibly powerful creature known as IT, or Pennywise, our eyes let us see its form referred to as The Deadlights.

The orange light resting inside the creature can cause insanity with a single look. There is no way to understand the truth of its form. And in all forms, the deadlights rest at the core of ITs being. Beverly even went catatonic upon seeing the deadlights, but survived to fight back against Pennywise one final time.

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Which form of IT do you think is the scariest?